Rosamunde, walking within the madhouse garden, where cypresses and dusky
laurels hid the grey stone wall, saw a haze of gold steal into the sky
towards the north. It was towards twilight and a strong wind blew,
ridging the lake with foam, tossing the cypress boughs, moaning over the
house. Rosamunde, puzzled by the glow towards the north, called to
Miriam, who had been spinning in the room above.
Either the Jewess was asleep or the wind drowned the cry, for no face
showed at the narrow window. From the garden an outer stair built on
stone pillars led to a postern opening into the women’s room. Rosamunde
had been given the key of this door; for the garden had been surrendered
to her by Jocelyn’s orders. The mad folk were never loosed from their
vaults; there were two soldiers besides old Nicholas and his wife to
keep watch and ward over the place.
Rosamunde, climbing up the stone stair, found Miriam asleep on her bed
in the corner. She did not trouble to wake the Jewess, but turned to the
near window and looked out over the water. Twilight was descending, and
the towering woods were steeped in the hoarse mystery of a winter’s eve.
The crags in the west were edged with gold, and a luminous mist poured
up towards the clouds. Above the black spires of the waving trees the
sky was lurid, yet not with the sunset. Purple masses of vapour played
over the forest, and there was a hot, parched perfume on the wind.
Rosamunde, troubled by the strange face of the sky, turned and woke
Miriam from her sleep. Together they stood on the landing at the top of
the stone steps and watched the red glow increase in the heavens. There
was some huge power striding over the woods; its sound swelled the
piping of the wind, a far roar as of the voice of a rising sea.
Miriam clung to Rosamunde’s shoulder.
“A wild sunset,” she said, not guessing the truth. “Pah! what a strange
scent on the wind. How black the woods seem. We shall have a storm in
the night.”
Rosamunde looked out on the scene in silence, with Miriam’s breath upon
her cheek.
“It is no sunset,” she said at last; “it is not the full west, and there
is no break in the clouds.”
“What means, then, the light in the sky, sister?”
“A forest fire,” said Rosamunde slowly.
“My God, we shall burn.”
“The water is broad enough to hold us safe.”
A sudden cry pealed out over the mere, where old Nicholas was standing
in his boat, poling back towards the island. He lifted a hand, pointed
to the sky, bent to his work, and brought the boat over with foam at the
prow. Voices answered him from the landing stage, where his old wife and
two soldiers were watching the sky. They entered the court when Nicholas
had moored his boat and clapped to the gate.
Rosamunde and Miriam leant against the stone balustrading of the
stairway, watching the distant fire. The increasing grandeur of the
scene reacted differently upon the two, inspiring fear in the Jewess and
an unconscious calm in the Lady of Joyous Vale. A broad glare now hung
as a curtain above the trees, and against it rose a thousand moving
things. The sky grew full of screaming birds sweeping in terror from the
breath of the fire, their wings whirring and panting towards the south.
Some swooped for the island, settled on the roof and walls, or plunged,
chattering, into the garden beneath. A great raven perched on the tiles
overhead, and sat there croaking like a messenger of death.
Above the contrasted blackness of the forest foreground rose the aureole
of the approaching fire. Pennons of flame tongued towards the heavens,
while vast masses of smoke merged into the clouds. The glare began to
play upon the surface of the mere, splashing the waves with ruddy gold,
gleaming on the foam as it swept from the west. The distant peaks caught
the earthly lightning from afar; the roar of the great furnace gathered
and grew.
Even as the two women watched in silent awe, the meadow lands edging the
lake seemed alive with hurrying shadows. The gloom teemed with desperate
life. The wild beasts of the wood came panting out, herding and
struggling towards the water. The wolf and the hare were flying
together; the boar and the stag galloped side by side. Droves of wild
pigs broke out in black masses, while above, with a perpetual whirr of
wings, birds pinioned with the wind from the drifting smoke.
The live things were soon fighting in the shallows, trampling each
other, bellowing and howling. The water grew alive with struggling
beasts where a pack of wolves had taken to the mere and headed for the
island. They crawled ashore by the stage, trotted hither and thither,
their ululations making the night more terrible.
Ever the fire came nearer, beating up to heaven, rolling southwards with
palpitating splendour. A vast canopy of smoke had overspread the valley.
Soon the deep gloom of the near thickets grew streaked with light as
with the gleaming through of some rich sunset in scarlet and gold. Trees
were falling in the forest, and the wind blew as from a furnace.
Rosamunde and Miriam stood still at the top of the stone stair. The
terror of the night stupefied the senses, numbed even fear by the chaos
of its splendour. It was as the end of all things upon earth, when the
myriad wings of angels should dome the heavens, and the universe should
elapse in fire.
A thousand demoniac voices seemed to answer the howling of the wolves.
All about the island the beasts padded, casting up their snouts, giving
tongue to swell the midnight chorus. The voices of the madhouse were as
the voices of hell.
Rosamunde and the Jewess drew back from the stairway into the room,
stood shivering at the door, listening to the uproar beneath. They heard
a sound as of splintered wood, yells of exultation, old Nicholas’s voice
fierce yet faint, the terse cracking of his whip. Rosamunde, white and
fearful, seized Miriam’s arm, spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“The mad folk have broken loose.”
“Loose!”
“Listen to their cries. They will slay old Nicholas. Quick, we must keep
them out.”
They clapped to the door, locked and bolted it, dragged up the beds and
benches, piled them against it. As they laboured, panting with fear, a
great bird flapped in by the open window, beat blindly about from wall
to wall. Rosamunde ran and closed the casement frame, casting a rapid
glance at the burning forest. Smoke and a myriad ruddy stars were flying
athwart the heavens. The flames had rolled to the rim of the meadowland,
and the valley seemed edged with a wall of fire.
In the court below a grim fight had begun. The madmen who had broken
loose from their vaults had fallen upon old Nicholas and the two
soldiers, penned them in a corner by the gate. The three were
overpowered by the furious many, beaten down, trampled, torn limb from
limb. Then, in the unreasoning madness of their triumph, the mob had
broken down the great gate, and opened the house to the beasts of the
forest.
In a moment the wolves, scenting blood, came padding in, leaping on each
other in the narrow entry. A hundred red-eyed things surged into the
court, foam dropping from their white-fanged snouts. The place became as
a pagan amphitheatre, full of death and immeasurable horror. While the
fire devoured the trees of the forest, the madman and the wolf rent and
slew each other.