CHAPTER V

THE DELLS OF VALLOMBROSA

It was a windless morning. Stillness and sunlight lay upon the world,

when on the back of his own good steed, which had seen heavy service

since last he rode it, Francesco bade farewell to the cloisters of

Monte Cassino. Though hampered by his monk's habit, he sat in the

saddle with the poise of a nobleman, as he gathered up the reins. With

a cut upon his horse's neck and a word in the pointed black ear, he

was off at a swinging gallop, out and away through the open gate, past

the walls of his prison, giving never a thought to the gaze from

twenty pairs of curious eyes which followed him until he was out of

sight.

Free of the cloister! Oh, the rare intoxication of that thought! And

quickly upon it came the memory of that other departure, when he had

turned his back on the south, had strained his eyes towards the

setting sun. Then spring had awakened in the land, everything was

promise, save the life upon which he was entering. The spring had

gone, and with the spring the happiness of his life. A summer

landscape stretched before him; and he rode towards the setting sun.

Francesco rode slowly enough. The fresh, free air came joyously to his

nostrils. His eyes, less sunken than they had looked for months,

though he knew it not, were seeking out those small tokens of beauty,

which friendly nature gladly exhibits to so devoted a seeker. Two

shrines had he already passed without a Pater Noster, filled with a

quick, delirious happiness, which rose continually from his heart to

his lips.

Through the long, strange, secluded days at Monte Cassino, he had

become aware of a profound respite from the ferment of thought. On

this morning, however, the sense of self, with all its complications,

had utterly vanished. The insistent illusions of the past seemed to

have left him. In the high solitudes in which he had been moving,

living inviolate behind a stillness not of this world, he had wandered

alone, yet not alone, through the spiritual landscape of which Fate

had opened the portals.

Of the monks he had left he thought without regret. They were not

remarkable people, only ordinary men, for whom the veil that separates

the seen from the unseen had become thin and sheer. But if not

remarkable themselves, a remarkable force was playing through them.

Dreamers, yet carrying in their dream the memory of the world's

sorrow, they had gained high victory from long meditation on

redemption accomplished, and on the spiritual glory that transcends.

Yet the knowledge, that by the way of renunciation one comes to the

way of fulfillment, had not yet dawned upon Francesco.

The sun, long clear of the tree-tops, had reached the valleys, and, as

he gazed, the light between the great tree-trunks grew from splendor

to splendor, and flashed its level glories through the forest,

transfiguring the leaves to flame. The dark trees, which crowned the

hill, were giving place, as he descended, to woods of fresher green.

In the grass below cyclamen hung their heads dew-freighted. The birds

were at matins. Through the soft foliage the sky shone, a lustrous

amethyst.

His path struck the main road presently. He wound through an enclosed

valley, fairly wide. The world was all awake. The summer sun, though

young in the heavens, already scorched where it fell. As he passed on,

the unfailing peace of the woods received him, that deep tranquillity

of verdurous gloom which absolves the wanderer from the faint glare of

noon. He saw himself once more a tiny boy, and the years between

shrank into a brief bewilderment in his mind. Dreaming dreams long

forgotten, he rode on. A wandering sunbeam fell through the branches.

For a moment everything seemed withdrawn: fret, fever, confusion not

only exiled, but forgotten among the whispering leaves. The purity of

a great silence was encompassing a great surrender.

Behind him, straight above, the Castle of San Gemignano cut abruptly

into the main curve of the sky. Below, a trifle to the south, a sister

castle, beneath which a few affrighted houses closely huddled, rose

against the purple mass of Monte Santa Fioré. But Francesco was

looking away and out over the desolate sun-lit lands, bordered by sere

brown oak woods, and gray olive hills gilded by the sun.

Before him stretched the fields and oak woods and vineyards of Umbria,

a wide undulating valley, enclosed by high rounded hills, bleak or

dark with ilex, each with its strange terraced white city, Assisi,

Spello, Spoleto and Todi. The Tiber wound lazily along their base,

pale green, limpid, scarcely rippling over its yellow pebbles,

screened by long rows of reeds and tall poplars, reflecting dimly the

sky and trees, pointed mediaeval bridges, and crenelated round-towers.

Barracks of mercenary troops, strongholds of bandit-nobles, besieged

and sacked and heaped with massacre by rival factions, tangled

brushwood of ilex and oak, through which wolves and foxes roamed in

quest of their ghastly prey, now gave evidence of a life other than he

had dreamed of even on his mountain height. Burned houses and

devastated cornfields testified to the late presence here of the Wolf

of Anjou. The mutilated corpses along the road offered a ghastly

sight, which the scattered branches of the mulberries tried in vain

to conceal from the wanderer's gaze.

Grieved by the sight that met his progress through devastated Italy,

resignation schooled Francesco's lips to silence. None the less there

sang irrepressibly in his heart the song of the open road. There is

exhilaration in any enlargement, however painful the personal

experiences of the past months began to appear, a symbol at most in

miniature of the turbulent drama of the age. All he saw and heard,

confirmed the dark situation he had heard described; yet the fact of

decision had soothed his bewilderment. There was hope of action ahead.

On all lips there was the same tale of the unbearable tyranny of the

Provencals, of their mean extortions, their cold sensuality, their

cruelty past belief. Everywhere he found the smouldering fire of a

righteous wrath, everywhere the vaulting flames of a high resolve. The

appearance on the soil of Italy of Conradino was filling the adherents

of the Swabian dynasty with chivalric passion. And Francesco--finding

his own spirit swift to respond to the call--was suddenly reminded

that he had been sold to the Church, who protected the tyrant, to the

Church whose passive servant he was, to do as he was bidden by the

Father of Christendom. And, with the thought, a dread crept cold among

his heart-strings. His friends were phantoms in the sunshine,--a vast

gulf lay between them, now and forevermore.

He was about to be forced into the actual world of practical affairs

and ecclesiastical politics. The shock was rude; he could not as yet

relate the two worlds in his mind, nor project force from one into the

other. What was the Pontiff's desire with regard to himself? Why had

he summoned him to Rome, where he must needs meet anew those in whose

eyes he had become a traitor, a renegade? Had he not suffered enough?

Was the measure of his humiliation still incomplete?--And

Ilaria--Ilaria--

Francesco had ridden all day, stopping for refreshments only, when the

need was most felt, or his steed demanded some rest.

It was a golden evening when he rode into the dells of Vallombrosa.

Everything seemed golden,--a soft and melting gold. The sky, the air,

the motionless holm-oaks, the ground itself, overgrown with short,

tawny moss, beat back a brilliant amber light. The sky flamed orange

and saffron, and the distant lake of Bolsena rolled as a sea of fire.

A company of pilgrims proceeded through the wood, illumined by level,

golden rays, that struck under the high branches, turning the beds of

fern to pale green flame, and the tree-trunks to unsubstantial light.

The fever of the noon-tide had become tranquil in the evening glow. In

their wake a confused mass of men and weapons flashed suddenly into

the sunlight. Another procession with its gay dresses and colored

tapers gleamed like a rainbow among the branches.

To Francesco, always delighting in pageantry, the charm of the scene

tingled through consciousness almost as powerfully as the Masque of

the Gods he had witnessed on that never-to-be-forgotten night at

Avellino. And the same dull particular pain shot through his heart,

intensified a thousand times, as they came nearer through the sun-lit

forest-aisles,--a dark horseman, superbly clad in white velvet, and

beside him the exquisitely moulded, stately form of a woman, both

mounted on palfreys magnificently caparisoned, and followed by a

company of young cavaliers, giddy and gay in their festal array. But

every drop of blood left Francesco's heart, and his cheeks were pale

as death, as in the woman who laughed and chatted so gaily he

recognized Ilaria Caselli,--in the man by her side Raniero Frangipani.

He would have wheeled his steed about and fled, but an ice-cold hand

seemed to clutch at his heart, benumb his senses and paralyze his

endeavors. His eyes were riveted on Ilaria's face; the evening air,

cool and gentle, had waked a sweet color on her cheeks, and her dusky

eyes seemed to reflect the dancing motes of light which permeated the

ether. So bewildering, so intoxicating was her beauty, that Francesco

fairly devoured her with his gaze, as one doomed to starvation would

devour with his eyes the saving morsel which another's hand had

snatched from him. A groan of utter misery betrayed his presence to

the leaders, unseen, as otherwise he might have hoped to remain. The

Frangipani passed him, without taking any notice of the monk, an

accustomed sight indeed in these regions, abounding in chapels and

sanctuaries and the huts of holy hermits. Whether the woman obeyed the

summons of an inner voice, or whether the despairing gaze of the youth

compelled her own,--as she was about to pass him, Ilaria suddenly

reined in her palfrey and met Francesco's gaze. For a moment she

turned white to her very eyes, then a shrill laugh rang like the

breaking of a crystal through the sun-lit wood; the cavalcade cantered

past, many a curious glance being turned on the monk, who in some

unknown way had provoked Ilaria Caselli's sudden mirth.

The sun had set. Filmy rose-clouds brooded in an amethyst mist over

the distant levels of the sea. Then, with the swiftness of the south,

dusk enveloped the dells of Vallombrosa.

The procession had long vanished from sight. Still Francesco stared in

the direction where Ilaria's laughter had died away, as if forced to

do so by some terrible spell. When the awful pain of his heart had to

a degree subsided, he felt as if something had snapped in two in its

dark and desolate chambers. Could love become so utterly forgetful of

its own,--could love be so utterly cruel and blind? Only a miracle

could now save his soul from perishing in its own darkness!

The glory of the night had, as it were, deepened and grown richer. The

purple sky above was throbbing, beating, palpitating with light, of

stars and planets, and a great gold-red moon was climbing slowly over

the misty plains of Romagna. Fireflies whirled in burning circles

through the perfumed air, and from the convent of Vallombrosa came the

chant of the Ave Maris Stella, answered from some distant cloister in

the greenwood: "Vale Carissima!--Vale Carissima!"