The Hill of Venus
"I must go," he said.
"Go!"--
"I must be near her through the night!"
"The moon stands full upon the hills! I will await you here!"
Dim were the woods that autumn evening, dim and deep with an ecstasy
of gloom. Stars flickered in the heavens; the moon came and enveloped
the trees with silver flame. A primeval calm lay heavy upon the bosom
of the night. The spectral branches of the trees pointed rigid and
motionless towards the sky.
Francesco had left the duke gazing out upon the shimmering sea. The
voice called to him from the woods with plaintive peals of song. The
man followed it, holding to a grass-grown track that curled at random
into the gloom. Moonlight and shadow lay alternate upon his armor.
Hope and despair battled in his face. His soul leaped voiceless and
inarticulate into the darkened shrine of prayer.
The voice came to him clearer in the forest calm. The gulf had
narrowed, the words flew as over the waters of Death. They were pure,
yet meaningless, passionate, yet void; words barbed with an utter
pathos, that silenced desire.
For an hour Francesco roamed in the woods, drawing ever nearer, the
fear in him increasing with every step. Anon the voice failed him by a
little stream that quivered dimly through the grass. A stillness that
was ghostly held the woods. The moonlight seemed to shudder on the
trees. A stupendous silence weighed upon the world.
A hollow glade opened suddenly in the woods, a white gulf in a forest
gloom. Water shone there, a mere rush-ringed and full of mysterious
shadows, girded by the bronzed foliage of a thousand oaks. Moss grew
thick about the roots, dead leaves covered the grass.
And ever and anon a dead leaf dropped silently to earth, like a hope
that has died on the Tree of Life.
Francesco knelt in a patch of bracken and looked out over the glades.
A figure went to and fro by the water's brim, a figure pale in the
moonlight, as the form of the restless dead. The man kneeling in the
bracken pressed his hands over his breast; his face seemed to start
out of the gloom as the face of one who struggles in the sea,
submerged, yet desperate.
Francesco saw the woman halt beside the mere. He saw her bend, take
water in her palms and dash it in her face. Standing in the moonlight,
she smoothed her hair between her fingers, her hands shining white as
ivory against the dark bosom of her dress. She seemed to murmur to
herself the while, words wistful and full of woe. Once she thrust her
hands to the sky and cried: "Francesco! Francesco!" The man kneeling
in the shadows quivered like a wind-shaken reed.
The moon climbed higher and the woman by the mere spread her cloak
upon a patch of heather and laid herself thereon. Not a sound broke
the silence; the woods were mute, the air lifeless as the steely
water. An hour passed. The figure on the heather lay still as an
effigy on a tomb. The man in the bracken cast one look at the stars,
then crossed himself and crept out into the moonlight.
Holding the scabbard of his sword, he skirted the mere with shimmering
armor, went down upon his knees and crawled slowly over the grass.
Hours seemed to elapse before the black patch of heather spread crisp
and dry beneath his hands. Breathing through dilated nostrils, he
trembled like one who creeps to stab a sleeping friend. The moonlight
seemed to shower sparks upon him, as with supernatural glory. Tense
anguish seemed to fill the night with sound.
Two more paces and he was close at the woman's side. The heather
crackled beneath his knees. He held his breath, crept nearer, and
knelt so near that he could have kissed Ilaria's face. Her head lay
pillowed on her arm. Her hair spread as in a dusky halo beneath it.
Her bosom moved with the rhythmic calm of dreamless sleep. Her lips
were parted in a smile. One hand was hid in the dark folds of her
robe.
Francesco knelt with upturned face, his eyes shut to the sky. He
seemed like one faint with pain; his lips moved as in prayer. A
hundred inarticulate pleadings surged heavenward from his heart.
Again he bent over her and watched the pure girlish face as she slept.
A strange calm fell for a time upon him; his eyes never wavered from
the white arm and the glimmering hair. Vast awe held him in thrall. He
was as one who broods tearless and amazed over the dead, calm face of
one beloved above all on earth.
Hours passed and Francesco found no sustenance, save in prayer. The
unuttered yearnings of a world seemed molten in his soul. The moon
waned. The stars grew dim. Strange sounds stirred in the forest-deeps;
the mysterious breathing of a thousand trees. Life ebbed and flowed
with the sigh of a moon-stupored sea. Visions blazed in the night-sky
and faded away.
Hours passed. Neither sleeper nor watcher stirred. The night grew
faint. The water flickered in the mere. The very stars seemed to gaze
upon the destinies of two wearied souls.
Far and faint came the quaver of a bird's note. Gray and mysterious
stood the forest spires. Light! Light at last! Spears of amber darting
in the east. A shudder seemed to shake the universe. The great vault
kindled. The sky grew luminous with gold.
It was the dawn.
Ilaria stirred in her sleep. Her mouth quivered, her hair stirred
sudden under the heather, like tendrils of gold shivering in the sun.
Even as the light increased, Francesco knelt and looked down upon her.
Hope and life, glorious, sudden, seemed to fall out of the east, a
radiant faith begotten of spirit-power. Banners of gold were streaming
in the sky. The gloom fled. A vast expectancy hung solemn, breathless,
upon the red lips of the day.
A sigh, and the long, silken lashes quivered. The lips moved, the eyes
opened.
"Ilaria! Ilaria!"
Sudden silence followed, a vast hush as of undreamed hope. The woman's
eyes were silently searching the man's face. He bent and cowered over
her as one who weeps. His hands touched her body, yet she did not
stir.
"Ilaria! Ilaria!"
It was a hoarse, passionate outcry that broke the golden stupor of the
dawn. A sudden light leaped lustrous into the woman's eyes, her face
shone radiant in its etherealized beauty.
"Francesco!"
"Ah! At last!"
A great shudder passed through her body. Her eyes grew big with fear.
"Speak to me!"
"Ilaria!"
"Raniero?"
"Dead!"
A great silence held for a moment. The woman's head sank upon the
man's shoulder. Madness had passed. Her eyes were fixed upon his with
a wonderful earnestness, a splendid calm.
"Is this a dream?"
"It is the truth!"
Through the forest aisles rode the Duke of Spoleto.
He saw and paused.
"I return beyond the Alps to join the forces of Rudolf of Hapsburg. My
men are at your disposal. I shall wait for you on yonder hillock."
He wheeled about and was gone.
Again silence held for a pace.
Presently Ilaria gave a great sigh and looked strangely at the sun.
"I have dreamed a dream," she crooned, "and all was dark and fearful.
Death seemed near; lurid phantoms,--things from hell! I knew not what
I did, nor where I wandered, nor what strange stupor held my soul. All
my being cried out to you--yet all was dark about me, horrible
midnight, peopled with foul forms! Oh, that night,--that night--"
Shivering, she covered her eyes as if trying to banish the memory.
"It has passed," she breathed after a pause, during which Francesco
had taken her in his arms, kissing her eyes, her lips, and the
sylph-like, flower-soft face. "I see the dawn!"
"Our dawn!"--Francesco replied, pointing to the hillock beyond.
For a time there was a great silence, as if the fates of two souls
were being weighed in the scales of destiny.
It was Francesco who spoke.
"How you have suffered!"
She crept very close to him, smiling up at him with the old-time smile
through tear-dimmed eyes.
"It counts for naught now! Are not you with me?"
The sky burned azure above the tree-tops. Transient sunshafts quivered
through the vaulted dome of breathless leaves, as slowly Francesco and
Ilaria strode towards the camp of the Duke of Spoleto on the
sun-bathed hillock above the Nera.
The End.
* * * * *
POLLYANNA
_By Eleanor H. Porter_
Author of "Miss Billy," "Miss Billy's Decision," etc.
_12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, net $1.25; postpaid $1.40_
"Enter Pollyanna! She is the daintiest, dearest, most irresistible
maid you have met in all your journeyings through Bookland. And you
forget she is a story girl, for Pollyanna is so real that after your
first introduction you will feel the inner circle of your friends has
admitted a new member. A brave, winsome, modern American girl,
Pollyanna walks into print to take her place in the hearts of all
members of the family."
_Of "Miss Billy" the critics have written as follows:_
"To say of any story that it makes the reader's heart feel warm
and happy is to pay it praise of sorts, undoubtedly. Well,
that's the very praise one gives 'Miss Billy.'"--_Edwin L.
Shuman in the Chicago Record-Herald._
"The story is delightful and as for Billy herself--she's _all
right_!"--_Philadelphia Press._
"There is a fine humor in the book, some good revelation of
character and plenty of romance of the most unusual
order."--_The Philadelphia Inquirer._
"There is something altogether fascinating about 'Miss Billy,'
some inexplicable feminine characteristic that seems to demand
the individual attention of the reader from the moment we open
the book until we reluctantly turn the last page."--_Boston
Transcript._
"The book is a wholesome story, as fresh in tone as it is
graceful in expression, and one may predict for it a wide
audience."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._
"Miss Billy is so carefree, so original and charming, that she
lives in the reader's memory long after the book has been laid
aside."--_Boston Globe._
"You cannot help but love dear 'Billy;' she is winsome and
attractive and you will be only too glad to introduce her to
your friends."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
* * * * *
THE CAREER OF DR. WEAVER
_By Mrs. Henry W. Backus_
_12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, net $1.25; postpaid $1.40_
A big and purposeful story interwoven about the responsibilities and
problems in the medical profession of the present day. Dr. Weaver, a
noted specialist, and head of a private hospital, had allowed himself
to drift away from the standards of his youth in his desire for wealth
and social and scientific prestige. When an expose of the methods
employed by him in furthering his schemes for the glorifying of the
name of "Weaver" in the medical world is threatened, it is frustrated
through the efforts of the famous doctor's younger brother, Dr. Jim.
The story is powerful and compelling, even if it uncovers the problems
and temptations of a physician's career. Perhaps the most important
character, not even excepting Dr. Weaver and Dr. Jim, is "The Girl,"
who plays such an important part in the lives of both men.
"The story becomes one of those absorbing tales of to-day which
the reader literally devours in an evening, unwilling to leave
the book until the last page is reached, and constantly alert,
through the skill of the author, in following the characters
through the twisted ways of their career."--_Boston Journal._
"The story is well-written, unique, quite out of the usual
order, and is most captivating."--_Christian Intelligencer._
* * * * *
THE HILL OF VENUS
_By Nathan Gallizier_
Author of "Castel del Monte," "The Sorceress of Rome," "The Court of
Lucifer," etc.