the woods was as far above them as I am above other men. She gave me
drink from a fountain, lifting it to me in a cool, green leaf, and the
clear water was sweeter than wine of Cyprus and headier than wine of
Hungary, and I drank delicious madness."
A smile puckered Hildebrand's lips.
"Did you pluck this wild rose of the woods?" he asked.
Robert shook his head, but there was no look of regret in his eyes or
sound of regret in his voice.
"No, no, no! Oh, not then, not yet! There are pleasures of Tantalus as
well as pains of Tantalus. Had I told her I was the King, she would have
flung herself into my arms and there would have been a workaday end to
the wonder. No. I lingered and sipped at sweet desires. I masqued and
ambled Arcady for her; was no more than I seemed, a simple hunter;
flattered her with honest boy-babble, said her farewell with a low sweep
of my cap, and left her with a new happiness in my heart, the happiness
of an unsatisfied longing, an unanswered ache. If your school-boy were
ever an epicure, he would sometimes leave the queen apples of the
orchard unfingered."
"Is this the end of the idyl?" Hildebrand asked, quietly, when the King
had run to the end of his rhapsody. Again Robert shook his head.
"You are a traitor, Hildebrand, to think such treason of your King. What
of the wisdom of Solomon? I am of the mind of the ungodly, and let no
flower of the spring go by me. But I have lived an exquisite
week--sunlight and starlight I have dreamed dreams. In other arms I have
sighed divinely for my dryad; but I know she will prove rarer than my
most adorable guesses. That I will tell you to-morrow."
"To-morrow?" Hildebrand asked.
Robert laughed joyously as he pointed to Theron's dwelling.
"She lives here, Hildebrand. She is the daughter of Theron the
executioner."
Hildebrand shrugged his shoulders. "Fie! A vile parentage!" he
protested.
"I am like Midas," Robert retorted. "All I touch turns to gold. My love
will make her flesh imperial as a pope's niece and her rags as purple as
Caesar's mantle."
Hildebrand smiled admiration.
"I have seldom seen your Majesty so enamoured," he said.
Robert put his arm affectionately round his companion's neck.
"I tell you, Hildebrand," he said, earnestly, "my heart sings as it has
never sung since its earliest love-flutter. I feel like a stainless god
in a sacred garden, listening for the first time to the dear madness of
the nightingale. No subtle Neapolitan ever stirred me as this wood-nymph
does with her flaming hair and her frank eyes. No wonder the old gods
loved mortal women, if they knew my royal joy with this child of earth.
Into the church, man, and leave me to my wooing!"
Hildebrand responded to the release of Robert's arm, and the impatient
gesture of dismissal that followed, by a reverential salutation, which
Robert suddenly interrupted.
"I had forgotten," he said. "Did you do as I bade you, and bring a
hunter's cloak with you?"
Hildebrand bowed. "I hid it behind yonder fallen pillar," he said, and,
going to the spot, he returned to the King bearing a large, green cloak,
which the King threw over his shoulders and gathered about his arms so
as to muffle his royal bravery.
"I woo as the hunter, not as the King," he said.
Hildebrand bowed again. Then, turning, he climbed the hill that led to
the church. Robert's eyes followed him till the doors of the church had
closed upon his minister. Then with swift, noiseless steps he sped in
the opposite direction, and, pausing before the dwelling of Perpetua,
knocked lightly at the door and listened eagerly for answer. He could
hear a sound as of an inner door being opened, of light footsteps
crossing an intervening space; then his answer came in the voice of
Perpetua.
"Who is there?" Perpetua called through the door. She was wondering at
this sudden fulfilment of her father's fears, but she felt no fear
herself. Instantly a voice outside whispered her name:
"Perpetua! Perpetua!"
The words came so softly through the closed door that they might have
been uttered by any one. But she was conscious of a stirring at her
heart as she asked anew:
"Who calls?"
This time the response came clearly, in the unmistakable voice.
"A certain hunter," Robert said; and at the sound a passion of memory
conquered her, banishing her father's cautions.
Robert could hear her give a little, glad cry. He could hear the sound
of a bolt being shot back; then the door opened and Perpetua came out
into the sunlight. Her eyes were very bright, her hands extended in
welcome. He drew back a little in delight at her beauty, and she
advanced to him joyously.
"You have come back?" she said.
Robert caught her outstretched hands.
"How could I keep away?" he asked, looking into her eyes that mirrored
his.
She drew her hands away and spoke softly.
"I dreamed that you would come back. With my eyes open and with my eyes
shut, I dreamed that you would come back."
Robert's heart leaped at her speech.
"Are you glad to see me?" he questioned, tenderly.
The girl responded with the frankness of a child.
"Very glad. I liked you much that day when we met in the woods hollow,
and those whom I like I am always glad to greet."
Robert took her hand again, and this time she suffered him to hold it
for a little, unresisting, as he led her to where a fallen column at the
edge of the pine wood offered a noble throne.
"Would you have grieved if I had not come again?" he asked her, as they
sat side by side, and the girl answered, simply:
"Much, for my own sake and for yours."
"For mine, too, maiden?" Robert asked, wondering at her words.
[Illustration: "ROBERT CAUGHT HER OUTSTRETCHED HANDS"]
Perpetua shook back her mane of flame.
"Yes, for you said you would come, and truth is the best thing in the
world."
If she had seemed adorable before in the green heart of the ancient
wood, she seemed many times more adorable now to the hot eyes of the man
as she sat there so quietly, speaking so frankly, looking at him so
frankly. He would linger no more over this sweet preface of pleasure. He
asked her eagerly:
"Shall I tell you the best truth in the world? I love you."
The girl's calm eyes studied his flushed face gravely.
"Love is the greatest truth or the greatest lie in the world. We have
met but twice. Can you love so quickly?"
The fierce desire which the King called love clamored for
interpretation. Robert spoke swiftly, warmly, feeding his greedy eyes
with her beauty.
"When I drank the white water from your hands, I drank love with it.
When I looked into your glorious eyes love leaped from them, all armed,
and conquered me. The wood wind blew one tress of your red hair across
my face and the red flame of love ran through my veins and burned out
all memories save only the memory of your face. I would lose a kingdom
to kiss you on the lips. I would surrender the power and the glory to be
kissed upon the lips by you."
He made as if to clasp her in his arms, but in a moment she eluded him
with the quickness of some forest creature. She had risen and was
standing at a little distance before he realized that his longing arms
clasped emptiness.
"You speak with the speech of angels," Perpetua said, speaking low;
"wonderful words that shine like little stars, that make me tremble as
if they were little flames that played about me." She paused for a
moment as if thoughts troubled her; then went on: "And yet I think you
say too much. All I should ask of my lover would be but a true heart and
a true hand."
Anger strove with admiration on Robert's cheeks and in his eyes. He was
untrained to any cross, and the composure with which the girl at once
accepted and held off his homage galled him. But he curbed his
irritation, remembering himself as the beseeching hunter, not as the
commanding King.
Quitting the column, he came to where she stood. She did not move, but
she did not take his offered hand, and he let it fall idly by his side,
while he tried to overcrow her with his bold eyes.
"You have never loved or you would not reason so," he argued. "Let me
look into your eyes. I think you love me a little."
He was very close to her now, but she did not surrender to his lips or
his eyes. A kind of wonder was growing in her face, but she met his gaze
as firmly as she answered his words.
"I have never loved, and yet I know what love might be. The spring wind
sighs in these forests, and the nightingales are my friends. Though I
know only of the world by hearsay, I know that men and women have done
great things for love's sake, and are remembered with songs and tears. I
am not afraid of love."
Her eyes were smiling as she spoke. Life seemed clear and easy to her.
Life seemed clear and easy to her suitor; but his clarity, his ease,
were not those of the mountain maid, and he misunderstood her, weighing
her soul in false scales. He wooed her now with a low, triumphant
challenge.
"I believe you love me a little."
She baffled his challenge by her immediate frankness. The powers of life
were not to be denied in shyness by a child who might have been a nymph
of Artemis.
"I think I might love you a great deal. I will love you with all my
heart if you know how to win me. I will surrender my soul to my true
lord and lover when he comes."
Her eyes softened as she made her sweet confession, and his cheeks
burned to hear her. But her purity only tempted him without touching
him. Again he made to clasp her in his arms.
"He has come. Kiss me, Perpetua!" he cried, exultingly; but she flitted
from his reach as subtly as a shadow shifting with the sun, and there
was command in her voice as she motioned to him to hold aloof.
"Wait! I am not to be won in a whirlwind. Great love is gentle love,
hunter."
He could have cursed at her for avoiding him, yet the avoidance spurred
him to succeed, and his words were tender as caresses.
"When I clasp you in my arms you will forget to be so wise."
The fair girl knitted her brows in a frown at his overboldness. For his
life the King could not tell why he refrained from again attempting to
embrace her--and yet he did refrain, standing and listening while she
reproved him, and to his ears there seemed to be something of irony and
something of mirth in her smooth, cool tones.
"Then you shall not clasp me in your arms till I am sure of myself and
you."
Robert wrestled with an unwelcome sense of reverence. Surely it was
madness to be baffled by a country maid. He held out his comely hands,
he commanded every appealing intonation of his musical voice.
"Child," he cried, "you shall not deny me now. I am your hunter, sweet,
and you my quarry. Be happy, being mine."
He moved upon her as he spoke, trusting to charm her with the spell of
speech that never yet had known defeat. But the girl stretched out her
hand to stay him, and he paused, angry and yet curious to see how far
she would carry contradiction.
"Stand back!" she said. "I am not afraid of love. I am not afraid of
you. But your voice is not the voice of the woods, and your eyes shine
with another light. You cannot snare me so."
He saw that she distrusted him; he saw that she did not fear him; he
knew that he had not won her, yet believed himself near to the winning.
"If you love me--" Robert cried.
The girl stretched out her arms to the wide sky in protest.
"If I love you!" Her arms dropped to her sides and she continued, sadly,
"I have dreamed of you very often, but I never dreamed of you thus."
"All lovers love fiercely," Robert insisted, passionately.
Perpetua shook her head. "I do not believe you."
Chafing to find himself so powerless to soften her, Robert made a
gesture of despair.
"Ah!" he sighed, "we waste irrevocable seconds that should be spent in
kisses."
Perpetua moved a little closer to him. The man's pain in his voice
stirred the woman's pity in her heart, and she spoke more tenderly than
she had spoken for some time.
"Hunter, if you love me, you shall tell my father your tale and he will
be your friend as he is mine, and we will marry and live and die in the
woodland."
She stood before him, beautiful as the living image of a goddess
offering herself to a mortal with Olympian simplicity. So might Oenone
have willed to wed with Paris. Robert stared at her, amazed, confounded.
"I cannot marry you," he protested. "You are the executioner's
daughter."
Now, indeed, the warm color of her cheeks grew warmer and her eyes
darkened with indignation.
"My father is a good and honest man, but were I the child of a robber,
were I a fosterling of a wolf of the woods, I am a woman--the woman you
say you love."
Robert waved her words away disdainfully, peevishly.
"I cannot marry you."
Perpetua's cheeks paled and her lips quivered a little, and her eyes
were moist beneath their lowered lids, but she answered him as firmly as
before and more sadly.
"Good-bye, then. I am not sorry you came, for I cherish sweet thoughts
of you, but I shall be glad to see you go."
She turned as if to glide into the woods, but Robert stayed her, calling
to her in a voice of loud command.
"I will not lose you!" he cried. "If I cannot win you as the simple
hunter, I will command you as the King. I am Robert of Sicily."
As he spoke he slipped the green mantle from his arms and shoulders,
flung it from him, and stood before her in the royal garments of the
King. Perpetua gazed in astonishment at the rich habit, at splendor such
as she had never seen.
"You are the King?" she whispered.
[Illustration: "I AM ROBERT OF SICILY"]
Robert answered proudly, confident now of reward.
"I am, indeed, the King."
Perpetua looked on him with the same fearless honor wherewith she would
have faced some monster in the forest.
"If you are the King, what have you to do with me?" she asked.
Robert answered her joyously, passionately.
"You shall be my loveliest mistress now, my loveliest memory forever."
But even as he spoke the fire in his blood was chilled by the scorn and
wrath in Perpetua's eyes.
"God pity and God pardon you," she prayed. "You are called Robert the
Bad by honest men. Be called so always by clean women!" Her outstretched
right hand seemed to hurl her imprecation into his brain. Blind fury
seized upon him.
"You play the fool with me!" he said, and advanced upon her only to
recoil as she slipped her hand to her girdle and drew the long, keen
knife that rested there.
"Keep away from me!" she warned him. "For I am strong and young, and I
might kill you." Her face was pitifully pale now in its great sorrow,
but the determination in her eyes menaced more than steel.
"I think I could master you," Robert sneered, but he kept his place,
watching her.
"Then you should kill me," Perpetua sighed. "And that might be best, for
you have destroyed my beautiful dream."
She turned as she spoke, and, casting her weapon from her, to fall upon
the soft grass, she ran into the wood. For a moment the King stood
still, stupidly conscious of the humming of the bees, stupidly staring
after the flying child. Then he stirred himself into pursuit, crying,
"Stay, fool, stay!" but desisted instantly, for the girl was as fleet as
a fawn, and could run surely where his feet would stumble. Already she
was out of sight in the thick of the trees.
"Go, fool, go!" he shouted. "If you are crazy enough to repel
greatness!" And flinging himself upon the fallen column, he buried his
face in his hands to keep back the bitter tears.
V
LYCABETTA
Lying there in his wild rage, he babbled to himself.
"Am I mad? Shall I, Sicily, be defied by this cold Amazon? She shall
burn as a witch for this; she shall burn! She has put some spell upon
me, and she shall burn for my burning. I would not have her now, but she
shall die in pain."
Drowned in his frenzy of thwarted passion and baffled anger, the King
was unaware that a woman had entered the open space from the
mountain-path, and was moving with light steps across the grasses
towards the spot where he sat and ate his heart. The new-comer was
beautiful with a beauty so different from that of the girl whose kingdom
was the hill-top that few to whom the one seemed perfect would have
found the other all-conquering fair. Tall and imperious as some evil
empress of old Rome, her black hair bound with ivy leaves of gold, her
fine body draped in strangely dyed silks--snake-colored, blue and green
and golden-scaled--that shot a shimmering iridescence with every
movement of the limbs, whose whiteness their transparency rather
betrayed than veiled, she trod the earth with such an air as Balkis may
have worn when she came a-visiting Solomon. The painters of the antique
world would have welcomed in that voluptuous flesh, in the poppy of her
mouth, in the midnight of those eyes that glowed with the fires of
Thessalian incantations, their ideal for some image of the goddess of
all-conquering desire. The Sophists of the antique world would have read
her story charactered in every lithe line, in every appealing motion,
and saluted in her the priestess of sheer appetite, for whom the gods
were dead, indeed, yet living in their material form--Dionysus as wine,
Aphrodite as the act of love, Apollo as the kindling sunlight.
As Balkis came to seek Solomon, so this woman came to the
mountain-summit seeking a king. But she had thought to greet him coming
out of the gray church, and it was with a start of surprise that she
saw the glittering figure crouched in an attitude of woe upon the fallen
column, and recognized in that image of abasement the Prince of Naples,
the young lord of Sicily. Swiftly, but with the stately grace of those
who of old time moved and allured in the streets of Rome when the feast
of Flora was towards, she passed through the thick grasses to the column
and the King. She knew it was he by his habit, by the familiar form,
though she could not see his face, and she wondered why he sat there
alone and with such show of grief. She was by his side without his
hearing her, and it was not until she spoke that he knew of her
presence.
"My lord!" she said, softly, in a voice as sweet as the voices of the
women who sang the praises of the mystic Venus in the secret gardens of
Cyrene.
Robert jerked his head from his hands, startled to find that he was no
longer alone, but, when he saw who it was that had interrupted his
meditations, wonder and joy contended in his countenance.
"Lycabetta!" he cried; "Lycabetta, by the gods! Why is the priestess of
love on these summits?"
Lycabetta had dropped on her knees at his feet in Oriental abasement,
but her face was raised to his and her eyes were lamps of passion.
"Sire," she sighed. "If I disturb your Majesty's quiet, sign and I will
retire."
Robert, bending to her, caught her by the shoulders, and, lifting her to
her feet, kissed her mouth.
"No, no!" he cried. "Stay, fair priestess of the ungovernable flesh.
What brought you here?"
Lycabetta knitted her white fingers together beseechingly.
"Your Majesty is a most Christian king. Will you promise me your pardon
if I confess to a pagan superstition?"
Robert kissed her again and laughed. Her trained senses knew the
unreality of his kisses, of the words with which he answered her.
"Exquisite idol, I could pardon you much for the sake of your kisses.
What bountiful wind has blown you to the height of this Sicilian
hillock?"
Lycabetta answered him humbly, the false humility enhancing her
exuberant beauty.
"When I and my women followed your Majesty from Naples--for what could
such poor sunflowers as we are do without our sun?--I learned that on
this hill there stood long ago a temple to Venus, very propitious to
women of my kind, who came and prayed there. Your father suffered no
daughters of delight to ply their trade in Syracuse, and so in gratitude
for our happy restoration I came to kneel in the ancient, sacred dust.
My litter bore me part of the way, till the path became too steep and I
had even to climb like a peasant or abandon my purpose."
Robert smiled condescension.
"Dear goddess of exquisite desires, our piety has power to pardon your
paganism. I am king over the pagan shrine as over the Christian altar.
But, before I absolve you, I have a command to lay upon you." His smile
became cruel as he spoke, for a scheme of revenge, exquisitely evil,
possessed him.
"Your slave listens," Lycabetta said, lifting her hands to her jewelled
forehead in sign of submission.
Robert flung his arm around her and drew her down beside him on the
column.
"Lycabetta," he said. "If I know you well, you are a creature of little
scruple, to whom what fools call virtue is a soundless word, and
virginity but an unpierced pearl of price in the market." He paused for
a moment, weighing his revenge, tasting it, finding it sweet to savor.
"To-night I will deliver into your care a young girl, proud of her
purity, strong in her simple innocence. It shall be your task to make
her into a courtesan like yourself, shaming and staining the flower of
her girlhood into a flaming rose of vice. You can do this?"
"It is an easy task, sire."
Robert shook his head, and the cruelty in his face deepened.
"You will not find it easy. I think she will resist you. I know she will
resist you. Conquer her resistance by what means you please. I shall not
question them." His voice broke into a scream of rage. "Break her
spirit, degrade her body, slay her soul, and when she is as I would have
her be, send me word that I may come and laugh at her."
Lycabetta watched him curiously.
"It shall be done, sire," she said, dispassionately.
"She is angel-fair. Fools would say she was angel-good--fools who
believe in angels. She will plead with the speech of angels. You must be
pitiless."
Lycabetta shrugged her shoulders. In her heart she wondered if the King
were losing his wits.
"Were she my sister, sire, your whim should be my law. Trust me, I shall
make her worthy of our ancient rites. But, sire, forgive me if I doubt
this fierce resistance. We women are all alike in the end."
Robert turned away from her with a stifled groan.
"I thought so till this morning," he said, heavily.
Lycabetta guessed at the secret and pricked with a question.
"Surely this moon-flower never defied you, sire?"
Instantly the King turned on her, his fair face so hideous with fury
that Lycabetta slipped from his side and cowered before him.
"Silence, jade!" he snarled, beastlike. "If you play with me, I will
nail you naked to your own door for Syracusan clowns to mock at."
Lycabetta grovelled in the grass at his feet.
"Forgiveness, sire," she begged.
Robert shook his rage from him, for he needed the woman to play out the
evil play.
"Go into the chapel," he ordered her, "and whisper to the captain of the
guard that I need Hildebrand."
Pagan though the woman was, she respected the ruling faith and made bold
to protest.
"Sire, if I disturb the ceremony--"
Robert rose and towered above her, disdainful in pride.
"I am the King. There is no church, no shrine, no ceremony where I am
not. Go!"
Not daring to disobey, Lycabetta left him, and, mounting the steps of
the chapel, opened the door cautiously and entered. Robert seated
himself again with burning brain and heart. A little white, bell-like
flower grew at his feet. He trampled it with his heel into the grass,
crushing it shapeless.
"How I shall triumph over this Diana," he said, aloud, hugging his foul
thought, "when every seaman can command her!"
Then he sat in silence, brooding over sins, till Lycabetta came out of
the chapel and descended the steps, followed by Hildebrand, who came to
Robert.
"You called me, sire?" he said.
Robert sprang to his feet and drew Hildebrand apart.
"Speed to the city," he whispered. "When it dusks, send my two Moorish
slaves to Theron's hut. They must persuade or force the girl to go with
them and bear her to the house of Lycabetta."
Hildebrand bowed.
"I obey, sire. Will you enter the chapel? They wait for you."
"They shall wait till the world's end, if I choose," Robert answered,
sourly. "If I choose that they shall sit there till they die and rot,
what is that to you?" He dropped moodily on the seat and sat staring
fiercely at the empty air.
Hildebrand left him and joined Lycabetta.
"The King is peevish," he whispered to her, and Lycabetta whispered back
to him:
"Some girl has crossed him. It is the first time he has known refusal,
and it maddens him like mandrake."
Hildebrand looked thoughtful.
"She may prove court favorite yet, if his mood changes. Maybe we were
wise to use her gently. Let me bring you to your litter."
She gave him her hand and the pair descended the mountain-path, leaving
the King again alone.
VI
THE ARCHANGEL