A BOWER OF EDEN
After some hours of much needed rest Tristan started out to find
the Monk of Cluny. The task he had set himself was not one easy of
execution, since the Benedictine friar was wont to visit the Roman
sanctuaries following the promptings of the spirit without adhering to
a definite routine. Thus the greater part of the day was consumed in a
futile quest of him of whose counsel he stood sorely in need.
At the hour of sunset Tristan set anew upon his quest. His feet carried
him to a remote region of the city, and when he regained his bearings
he found himself before the convent of Santa Maria del Priorata with
its environing groves of oleander and almond trees.
The moon was floating like a huge pearl of silver through vast seas of
blue. The sleeping flowers were closed, like half-extinguished censers,
breathing faint incense on the night's pale brow. From some dark bough
a nightingale was shaking down a flood of song. The fountains from
their stone basins leaped moonward in the passion of their love and
seemed to fall sobbing back to earth. The night air breathed hot and
languorous across the gardens of the Pincian Mount. Lutes tinkled here
and there. And the magic of the night thrilled Tristan's soul. As in a
trance his gaze followed the white figure that was moving noiselessly
down a moss grown path. A thick hedge of laurel concealed her now. Then
she paused as if she, too, were enraptured by the magic of the night.
The moon illumined the central lawn and the whispering fountains. Tall
cypresses seemed to intensify the shade. In the distance he could
faintly discern the white balustrade, crowning a terrace where green
alleys wound obscurely beneath the canopy of darkest oak, and moss and
violet made their softest bed. In the very centre of it was a small
domed temple, a shrine to Love.
Tristan's senses began to swoon. Was it a hallucination--was it
reality? A moon maiden she seemed, made mortal for a night, to teach
all comers love in the sacred grove.
"Hellayne! Hellayne!"
His voice sounded strange to his own ears.
As in a dream he saw her come towards him. She came so silent and so
pale in the spectral light that he feared lest it was the spectre
of his mind that came to meet him. And once more the voice cried
"Hellayne!" and then they lay in each other's arms. All her reluctance,
all her doubts seemed to have flown at the sound of her name from his
lips.
"Hellayne! Hellayne!" he whispered deliriously, kissing her eyes, her
hair, her sweet lips, and folding her so close to him, as if he would
never again part from her he loved better than life. "At last I have
found you! How came you here? Speak! Is it indeed yourself, or is it
some mocking spirit that has borrowed your form?"
And again he kissed her and their eyes held silent commune.
"It is I who have just refound you!" she whispered, as he looked
enraptured into the sweet girlish face, the face that had not changed
since he had left Avalon, though she seemed to have become more
womanly, and in her eyes lay a pathetic sorrow.
What a rapture there was in that clear tone. But she trembled as she
spoke. Would he understand? Would he believe?
"But--why--why--are you here?" he stammered.
"I have sought you long."
"You have followed me? You are not then a nun?"
"You see I am not."
"But why--oh why,--have you done this thing?"
She made no answer.
"You are here in Rome--and he is here. And you did not know?"
"I knew!" she replied with a little nod, like a questioned child.
"You knew! And he believes that I knew!"
"That is a small matter, dear. For he knows, that you knew not."
The endearment startled him. It seemed to cast her faith upon him.
"What are you doing here?" he said.
"I came because I had to come! I had no choice--!"
"No choice! Then why did you send me away?"
She gave a little shrug.
"I knew not how much I loved you."
"And yet, dearest, you cannot remain here. You know his moods better
than any one else--and you know if he finds us--for your own sake,
dearest, you cannot remain."
In the warmth of his entreaty he had used as endearing words as she.
They were precious to her ears.
"Let him come!" she said, nestling close to him. "Let him come and kill
me!"
She glanced about. He pointed to the castellated building that rose
darkly beyond the holm-oaks.
"Yonder--is yonder your abode?" he stammered.
Suddenly the woman in her gained the mastery.
"Oh no! No! No! Let us hide! Wretch that I am, to risk your life with
mine."
She had flung herself upon him. Around them rioted roses in wild
profusion. To him it seemed like a bosquet of Eden. Upon his breast she
sobbed. But no consideration of past or present could restrain his hand
from gently soothing her silken hair.
"Oh, why did you leave me?" she cried. "Why could we not have loved
without all this? Surely two souls can love--if love they must--without
doing wrong to any one."
His arms stole about her.
"Speak to me! Speak to me!" she whispered with upturned face.
"Had I known that this would happen, I should have known that I did
foolishly," he replied. "You should have known, dearest. You thought to
kill our love by cutting it to earth. You have but made its roots grow
deeper down into the present and the future!"
She nodded dreamily.
"Perchance you speak truth!" she said. "You see me here by your side,
having crossed leagues and leagues to seek your soul, my home--my only
home forever. And as surely as the bee goes back to its one hallowed
oak have I refound you. And as surely as the ocean knows that every
breath of vapor lifted from its face shall some day come back to its
breast, so surely did you know that your love must return to you."
"Unless," he said, "it sinks into the unseen springs that are so deep
that they are lost from sight forever."
"Lost--nothing is lost. The deepest water shall break out some day and
reach the lake--the river. Then, why not now? I am one who cannot wait
for eternity."
"And yet, eternity I fear, is waiting for us!"
There was a deep silence, lasting apace.
"Ah, I know," she said at last. "I know I ought to think as you do. I
should be conscience stricken now, as I was then. I should be glad that
you left me. But I am not--I am not. I am here, dearest, to ask you if
you love me still?"--
"Love you?" he replied in a transport, holding her close, while he
covered her eyes and her upturned face with kisses. "I love you as
never woman was loved--as the night loves the dew in the cups of the
upturned flowers--as the nightingale loves the dream that weaves its
phantom webs about her bowers. I love you above everything in heaven or
on earth. You knew the answer, dearest. Why did you ask?"
"I see it in your eyes. You love me still," she crooned, her beautiful
white arms about his neck, "notwithstanding--"
He started. And yet, after the scene she had witnessed on that night,
her doubts were but too well-founded. Yet she had not queried before.
"Strange fortunes crossed my path since I came here," he said.
"Ambition lured--I followed, as one who lost his way. Would you have
had me do otherwise?"
In his eyes she read the truth. Yet the shadow of that other woman had
come between them as a phantom.
"Oh, no,--although I never thought that you were made for statecraft."
"I am in the service of the Senator. And the Senator of Rome is her
foe."
"And you?"
"I am his servant."
She laughed nervously.
"I never thought you would come to this, my love."
"Nor ever should I have thought so. But fate is strange. The Holy
Father is imprisoned in the Lateran. To him I wended my way. But
the only service I did him was to prevent his escape--unwittingly.
I visited the sanctuaries. But though prayers hovered on my lips,
repentance was not in my heart. And then it came to pass. And I feel
like one borne in a bark that has neither sail nor rudder. And if,
instead of being far-floated to these Roman shores, I am headed for a
port where all is security and peace, can I prevent it? I am borne on!
I close my eyes and try to think that Fate has intended it for my good."
"For your good!" she said bitterly.
"For yours no less, perchance."
"How so, dearest? What good can come to me from your soul's security?
To me, who believe our love is rightful?"
"And yet you sent me from you--into darkness--loneliness--despair?"
She stroked his hair.
"It was fear as well as conscience that prompted. You once said that
all things are right, that may not be escaped. You said, that if God
was at the back of all things, all things were pure--"
"I know I said it! But, what I meant, I know not now. I saw things
strangely then."
"There were days when I, too, lost my vision," she said softly, "when I
said to myself: there is truth and truth--the higher and the lower. It
was the higher, if you like to call it so, Tristan, that prompted the
deed. Since then I have come down to earth, and the lower truth, more
fit for beings of clay, proclaims my presence here--"
"What will you do?" he queried anxiously.
"I know not--I know not! I came here to be with you--without ever a
thought of meeting him again whom I have wronged--if wronged indeed
I have. He has vowed to kill you! Oh, to what a pass have I brought
you--my love--my love! Let us fly from Rome! Let us leave this city. He
will never know. And as for me--he but loves me because I am fair to
look upon, and lovable in the eyes of another. What I have suffered in
the silence, in the darkness, you will never know. You shall take me
with you--anywhere will I go--so we shake the dust of this city from
our feet."
She leapt at him again and flung her arms about his neck, her face
upturned. He had neither will nor power to release himself. He scarcely
had the strength to speak the words which he knew would stab her to the
heart.
Even ere he spoke she fell away from him as if she had read his mind.
"So you persuaded him of your repentance," she cried. "You are friends
over the body of your murdered love! And I--who gave all--am left
alone,--the foe of either. It was nobly done."
He stared at her as if he thought she had gone mad.
"Listen, Hellayne," he urged, taking her hands in his, in the endeavor
to soothe her. "What spirit of evil has whispered this madness into
your ears? Even just now you said, he has sworn to kill me. How could
there be reconciliation between Roger de Laval and myself--who love his
wife?"
"Then what is it?" she queried, her eyes upon his lips as if she were
waiting sentence to be pronounced upon her.
"I am the Senator's man!"
The words fell upon her ears like the knell of doom.
"He will release you! I will go to him--if your pride is greater, than
your love."
She was all woman now, deaf to reason and entreaty, thinking of nothing
but her great love of him.
He drew her down beside him on the marble seat.
"Listen, Hellayne! You do not understand--you wrong me cruelly. Naught
is there in this world that I would not do to make you happy--you,
whose love and happiness are my one concern while life endures. But
this thing may not be. The Senator of Rome is away on a pilgrimage. He
has chosen me to watch over this city till his return. Danger lurks
about me in every guise. Its nature I know not. But I do know that
there is some dark power at work plotting evil. There is one I do not
trust--the Lord Basil."
Hellayne gave a start.
"The bosom friend, so it would seem, of the Count Laval."
The color had left Tristan's face.
"You have met?"
"He appears to have taken a great liking to my lord. Almost daily does
he call, and they seem to have some secret matter between them."
Tristan gripped Hellayne's hand so fiercely that she hardly suppressed
an outcry.
"Have you surprised any utterance?"
"Only a name. They thought I was out of earshot."
"What name?"
"Theodora!"
She watched him narrowly as she spoke the word.
He gave a start.
"Theodora," Hellayne repeated slowly. "She who saved your life when my
poor efforts failed."
There was a tinge of bitterness in her tone which did not escape
Tristan's ear. Ere he could make reply, she followed it up with the
question:
"What is there between you and her?"
"For aught I know it is some strange whim of the woman, call it
infatuation if you will," he replied, "which, though I have repelled
her, still maintains. It was at her feast I first met the Lord Roger
face to face."
"How came you there?" she questioned with pained voice.
Tristan recounted the circumstances, concealing nothing from the time
of his arrival in Rome to the present hour. Hellayne listened wearily,
but the account he gave seemed rather to irritate than to reconcile her
to him, who thus laid bare his heart before her.
"And so soon was I forgot?" she crooned.
"Never for a moment were you forgot, my Hellayne," he replied with all
the fervor of persuasion at his command. "At all times have I loved
you, at all times was your image enshrined in my heart. Theodora is
all-powerful in Rome, as was Marozia before her. The magistrates, the
officers of the Senator's court, are her creatures,--Basil no less than
the rest. Would that the Lord Alberic returned, for the burden he has
placed upon my shoulders is exceeding heavy. But you, my Hellayne, what
will you do? I cannot bear the thought of knowing you with him who has
wrecked your life, your happiness."
In Hellayne's blue eyes there was a great pain.
"Why mind such trifles since you but think of yourself?"
"You do not understand!" he protested. "Can I with honor abandon the
trust which the Senator has imposed? What if the dreadful thing should
happen? What if sudden sedition should sweep his power into the night
of oblivion? Could I stand face to face with him, should he ask: 'How
have you kept your trust?'"
Steps were approaching on the greensward.
Hellayne turned pale and Tristan's arm closed about her, determined to
defend her to the death against whosoever should dare intrude.
Then it was as if some impalpable barrier had arisen between the man
and the woman. It seemed the last hard malice of Fate to have brought
them so near to what was not to be.
Hardly had Tristan drawn her throbbing bosom to his embrace when a dark
shadow fell athwart their path and, looking up, he became aware of a
forbidding form that stood hard by, wrapped in a black mantle that
reached to his heels. From under a hood which was drawn over his face
two beady eyes gleamed with smouldering fire, while the hooked nose
gave the face the semblance of a bird of prey, which illusion the cruel
mouth did little to dispel.
Hellayne, too, had seen this phantom of ill omen and was about to
release herself from Tristan's arms, her face white as her robe, when
the speech of the intruder arrested her movement.
"A message from the Lady Theodora."
A hot flush passed over Tristan's face, giving way to a deadly
pallor as, hesitating to take the proffered tablet, he replied with
ill-concealed vexation:
"Whom does the Lady Theodora honor by sending so ill-favored a
messenger?"
The cowled figure fixed his piercing eyes first upon Tristan then upon
Hellayne.
"The Lord Tristan will do well to pay heed to the summons, if he values
that which lies nearest his heart."
But ere he, for whom the message was intended, could take it, Hellayne
had snatched it from the messenger, had broken the seal and devoured
its contents by the light of the moon which made the night as bright as
day.
Then, with a shrill laugh, she cast it at Tristan's feet and, ere the
latter could recover himself, both the woman and the messenger had gone
and he stood alone in the bosquet of roses, vainly calling the name of
her who had left him without a word to his misery and despair.