Out into the open caverns of the night Francesco and Ilaria rode. Their eyes still roved from the fading city to the great ships stealing over the water. Their tall masts rose against the last gleaming cranny of the west. Beyond them the mountains towered solemn and stupendous, fringed with aureoles of transient fire. Even in the half-gloom they could see a vague glittering movement on the slopes behind Astura, a glitter that told of armed men marching from the hills, while shadowy ships seemed striding, solemn and silent, out of the night. A thousand oars seemed to churn the water. Sudden out of the gloom leaped the cry of a horn, its voice echoing from the hills. A vague clamor came from the shore. In Astura torches were gleaming like red moths in a garden. From the castle the alarm bell boomed and clashed; then like giants' ghosts the ships crept out to sea, sable and strange against the fading west.
As Francesco turned, sick at heart, he met Ilaria's eyes. Her sweet, proud face was near him once again, overtopping his manhood. The moonbeams played upon her dusky hair.
The silence was intense. Only the pounding of their horses' feet beat insistent clamor into the stillness of the night.
The trees and bushes began to mass themselves into denser shadow against the tinge of ghostly starlight.
Now her face was very close to his.
"At times I feel as if we had lived very, very long ago,--ages and ages ago, when the world was young and only the moon and the stars were old. None walked upon the earth save we two and the world and its beauty was for us alone. Dusky forests covered the land, where strange flowers bloomed, where strange birds sang. Beneath the sunken light of a seared moon we walked hand in hand."--
A great wave of misery swept over him.
"I love you,--I love you," he whispered hoarsely. "Heart of my heart, that is the tale, a tale of three words, which is yet larger than any tale that was ever said or sung. Do you know what this must mean to you and me?"
She drew herself away from him.
"You love me," she repeated, not questioningly, but as one stating a fact. "Yet such love is not for you and me! All men, all circumstances would try to part us!"
"But why? But why?" he cried. "Ilaria, I love you with a love that must last through life and death and all that lies beyond. So, since I am what I must be, I place my life into your hands for good or evil."
He kissed her, then looked hungrily into her eyes.
She gave a wan smile.
"Dear, do not grieve!" she said. "I have always loved you, love you now and think it no shame. Had you consented to become my lover, the man I love had died! What I love best in you, is what held you far!"
"Ilaria!" he cried, loosening the horses' reins, "what is there between you and Stefano Maconi?"
She breathed hard, and her face was very pale.
"I too might have found forgetfulness where others find. That path was not for me. Francesco!" She laid her hand upon his own. "Look in my eyes and see!"
That night they stopped at a wayside inn, as brother and sister, Francesco keeping watch outside, while Ilaria occupied the only guest-chamber of the tavern.
Francesco's eyes stayed with her darkly, sadly, after she had gone inside. His tragic face seemed to look out of the night like the face of one dead.
He had tethered their horses some distance away, so that the occasional tramp of their hoofs should fall muffled on the air. The deeply caverned eyes watching through the night seemed dark with a quiet destiny. The thin, pale face, white in its meditative repose, seemed fit to front the ruins of a stricken land.
It was the face of a man who had watched and striven, who had followed what he held to be truth, like a shadow; who had found the light of life in a woman's eyes, and saw that light slowly go out and vanish in outer darkness.
There was bitterness there, pain, and the ghost of a sad desire that was pleading with death. The face would have seemed stern, but for a certain something that made its shadows kind.
The woods about him seemed to swim in a mist of silver.
Thus he sat through the night. He saw the moon go down in the west. Nothing earthly could come into the sad session of remembrances, the vigil of a dead past.--
The early dawn found them again upon the road.
The evening of another day descended; the green valleys were full of light. Afar on the hills the great trees dreamed, dome on dome, touching the transient crimson of the west. Ilex and cedar stood, sombre giants, in a golden, shimmering sea. The eastern slopes gleamed in the sun, a cataract of leaves, plunging into gloom. The forests were full of shadows and mysterious streams of gold, and a great silence shrouded the wilderness, save for the distant thunder of the streams.
Whenever Ilaria had grown tired, they had stopped in the shelter of the giant oaks, and partaken of the refreshments which Francesco had taken along. At high-noon they had reached what appeared to be a deserted castle, situated in the midst of a flowery oasis. Here they had dismounted and Ilaria had found great delight in roaming through the enchanted wilderness, calling each flower by its name and, now and then, referring to the old rose-garden at Avellino, those happy days of their guileless youth. Francesco's heart was heavy within him as he watched the girlish figure, over whom sorrow had passed with so loving a hand, idealizing and etherealizing her great beauty, never dimming her sweet eyes. Then he had led their steeds down to the stream, which purled through the underbrush, and while they drank, he had seated himself on the bank and buried his head in his hands.
As he came from watering his horses at the stream, he heard the sound of her footsteps amid the vines and pomegranates, chanting some sorrowful legend of lost love. Francesco had discovered a rough bridge across the stream, where giant boulders seemed to have been set as stepping-stones between the western grass-land and the castle. There was a narrow postern giving entrance through the walls. Francesco stood at the gate and listened. Above the thunder of the foaming streams her voice seemed to rise; even the great golden vault of heaven seemed full of the echoes of her passionate song.
He found Ilaria seated on the terrace-way, where the oleanders bloomed. Under the stone bridge the water foamed and purled, the ferns and the moss green and brilliant above the foam. About her rose the knolls of the gold-fruited trees. Further the forests climbed into the glory of the heavens.
She ceased her chanting as Francesco came to her and made room for him on the long bench of stone. There was a tinge of petulance about the red mouth, the pathetic perverseness of a heart that loved not by the will of circumstance. Ilaria was as a woman deceived by dreams. She had loved a dream, and since fate bowed not to her desire, she turned her back in anger upon the world.
How Francesco loved her, she knew full well. Yet she could not forget that he had chosen the garb he wore rather than herself. Her very love for him stiffened her perverseness and caused her to delight in torturing him.
Francesco sat on the stone seat and looked up at her with questioning gaze. To Ilaria there was a love therein such as only once comes into a woman's life, yet the look troubled her. She feared its appeal, feared the weakening of her own resolve.
"Francesco," she said at last.
He took her hand, his eyes fixed solemnly upon the face he loved so well.
"You will return to Naples?" she queried with a show of indifference.
"Naples is far from me as yet," he said with bowed head.
"Let me not hinder you,--since go you must."--
"Are you so anxious to be relieved of me?" he said bitterly.
"The fate of Conradino,--the fate of our friends hang in the balance."
"I could not save them single-handed, though I would!"
"Yet save them you must! You must redeem your past,--for my sake! Why not part here, since part we must? There are other claims upon my soul!"
"Raniero Frangipani still lives--"
"I shall never return to him!"
He did not answer her for a moment. Her eyes were troubled, she looked as one whose thoughts were buffeted by a strong wind. Above them the zenith mellowed to a deeper gold, and they had the noise of the waters in their ears.
"Ilaria," he said at last, "what would you with me? Am I not pledged to guard your life,--your honor?"
"Ah," she said, drooping her lashes, "I shall not clog your years! The springtime of life has passed,--for each of us!"
"But not my love for you!" he cried fiercely, with the tone of a man tortured by suspense.
Ilaria looked at him, and she saw the love upon his face, like a sunset streaming through a cloud. She pitied him for a moment, but hardened her heart the more.
"I am weary of the world," she said.
"Weary, Ilaria? Are you not free?"
She looked at him quizzically.
"The wife of Raniero Frangipani?"
"Have you not broken the chains?"
"Mine the forging--mine the suffering," she said, almost with a moan. "Though I have left him, I am not free. Nor are you! Though you burn your garb--you are forever a monk--the slave of Rome! Who is free in life?" she added, after a brief pause. "I am fearful of the ruffian passions of the world,--the lusts and the terrors,--even love itself! Life seethes with turbulence and the great throes of wrath. I would be at peace,--I have suffered--God, how I have suffered!"
Francesco rose up suddenly, and began to stride to and fro before her. He loved Ilaria, he knew it at this moment, with all the strongest fibres of his heart. He had hoped too much, trusted too much to the power of his own faith. He turned and faced her, there, outwardly calm, miserable within.
"Must this thing be?" he asked her.
There was such deep wistfulness in those words of his that she bent her head and would not look into his face.
"Francesco," she said, "I pray you, plead no further with my heart. I shall turn nun,--there is the truth."
"As you will--" he said, and a cord seemed to snap in his heart. "It is not for me to parley with your soul, not for me to revive a past that had best never been!"
Ilaria's gaze seemed far away. Her eyes, under their dark lashes, seemed like spring violets hiding in shadows.
There was an infinite pride, an infinite tenderness in the wistful face, as she turned to Francesco.
"Ah," she said with a sudden kindling, "why has it been decreed thus? I think my whole soul was made for beauty, my whole desire born for fair and lovely things. You will smile at me for a dreamer,--dreaming still, after the devastating storms of life have spent themselves over my head,--but often my thoughts seem to fly through forests, marvellous green glooms all drowned in moonlight. I love to hear the wind, to watch the great oaks battling, to see the sea, one laugh of gold. Now, every sunset harrows me into a moan of woe. Yet I can still sing to the stars at night, songs such as the woods weave from the voice of a gentle wind, dew-laden, green and lovely. Sometimes I feel faint for sheer love of this fair earth."
Francesco's eyes were on her with a strange, deep look. Every fibre of his being, every hidden instinct cried out in him to fold her in his arms, to hold her there forevermore, safe from the world, from harm. But, as if she had divined his thoughts, she drew away from him.
He stood motionless, with head thrown back, his eyes gazing upon the darkening windows of the east. The sound of the running waters surged in his ears; the colors and odors of the place seemed to faint into the night. As for Ilaria, she stared immovable into space.
At last she turned to Francesco.
"And are they all,--all lost?"
His lips hardened.
"All, save the lords of Astura."
Her face was pale as death.
Francesco took her hands in his, bent over them and kissed them passionately.
A soft light shone in her eyes; yet underneath there was that inexplicable perverseness in her heart that at certain moments makes a woman treacherous to her own desires.
And Ilaria, as if to inflict a mortal wound on him she loved best, beckoned her own fate on with a bitterness that Francesco could not fathom.
"Listen," she said. "You will go to Naples,--you may be of service to the Swabian cause,--I must not--I will not--detain you,--besides,--I am weary of the world,--I am weary of it all! Take me to San Nicandro by the Sea--there I shall strive to forget!"
Francesco watched her, listening like a man to the reading of his own doom. Ilaria did not look at him. Her head was bowed down. And as he sat there, gazing on the face he so passionately loved, her eyes, her lips, Francesco could hardly restrain himself from putting his arms about her and holding her close, close to his heart. But an icy hand seemed to come between them, seemed to hold them apart.
"I will do as you wish!" he said.
The west was an open gate of gold. The darkening forests were wreathed in veils of mist. The island with the dark foliage of its trees and shrubs, lay like some dusky emerald sewn on the bosom of a sable robe.
