CHAPTER XI

BY LETHE'S SHORES

Basil the Grand Chamberlain was giving one of his renowned feasts in

his villa on the Pincian Mount. But on this evening he had limited the

number of his guests to two score. On his right sat Roger de Laval,

the guest of honor, on his left the Lady Hellayne. Over the company

stretched a canopy of cloth of gold. The chairs were of gilt bronze,

their arms were carved in elaborate arabesques. The dishes were of

gold; the cups inlaid with jewels. There was gayety and laughter. Far

into the night they caroused.

Hellayne's face was the only apprehensive one at the board. She was

pale and worn, and her countenance betrayed her reluctance to be

present at a feast into the spirit of which she could not enter. She

was dimly conscious of the fact that Basil devoured her with his eyes

and her lord seemed to find more suited entertainment with the other

women who were present than with his own wife. Only by threats and

coercion had he prevailed upon her to attend the Grand Chamberlain's

banquet. With a brutality that was part of his coarse nature he now

left her to shift for herself, and she tolerated Basil's unmistakable

insinuations only from a sense of utter helplessness.

Her beauty had indeed aroused the host's passion to a point where he

threw caution to the winds. The exquisite face, framed in a wealth

of golden hair, the deep blue eyes, the marble whiteness of the skin,

the faultless contours of her form--an ensemble utterly opposed to the

darker Roman type--had aroused in him desires which soon swept away

the thin veneer of dissimulation and filled Hellayne with a secret

dread which she endeavored to control. Her thoughts were with the man

by whom she believed herself betrayed, and while life seemed to hold

nothing that would repay her for enduring any longer the secret agonies

that overwhelmed her, it was to guard her honor that her wits were

sharpened and, believing in the adage that danger, when bravely faced,

disappears, she entered, though with a heavy heart, into the vagaries

of Basil, but, like a premonition of evil, her dread increased with

every moment.

And now the host announced to his guests his intention of leaving Rome

on the morrow for his estate in the Rocca, where an overpunctilious

overseer demanded his presence.

Raising his goblet he pledged the beautiful wife of the Count de Laval.

It was a toast that was eagerly received and responded to, and even

Hellayne was forced to appear joyous, for all that her heart was on the

point of breaking.

She raised her goblet, a beautiful chased cup of gold, in

acknowledgment. But she did not see the ill-omened smile that flitted

over the thin lips of Basil, and she wished for Tristan as she had

never wished for him before.

After a time the guests quitted the banquet hall for the moonlit

garden, and Basil's attentions became more and more insistent. It was

in vain Hellayne's eyes strained for her lord. He was not to be found.--

It was on the following morning when the horrible news aroused

the Romans that the young wife of the strange lord from Provence

had, during the night, suddenly died at the banquet of the Grand

Chamberlain. From a friar whom he chanced to pass on his way to the

Lateran Tristan received the first news.

Fra Geronimo's face was white as death, and his limbs shook as with a

palsy. He had been the confessor of the Lady Hellayne, the only visitor

allowed to come near her.

"Have you heard the tidings?" he cried in a quavering voice, on

beholding Tristan.

"What tidings?" Tristan returned, struck by the horror in the friar's

face.

"The Lady Hellayne is dead!" he said with a sob.

Tristan stared at him as if a thunderbolt had cleft the ground beside

him. For a moment he seemed bereft of understanding.

"Dead?" he gasped with a choking sensation. "What is it you say?"

"Well may you doubt your ears," the friar sobbed. "But Mater

Sanctissima, it is the truth! Madonna Hellayne is dead. They found her

dead--early this morning--in the vineyard of the Lord Basil."

"In the vineyard of the Lord Basil?" came back the echo from Tristan's

lips.

"There was a feast, lasting well into the night. The Lady Hellayne took

suddenly ill. They fetched a mediciner. When he arrived it was all

over."

"God of Heaven! Where is she now?"

"They conveyed her to the palace of the Lord Laval, to prepare her for

interment."

Without a word Tristan started to break away from the friar, his head

in a whirl, his senses benumbed. The latter caught him betime.

"What would you do?"

Tristan stared at him as one suddenly gone mad.

"I will see her."

"It is impossible!" the friar replied. "You cannot see her."

From Tristan's eyes came a glare that would have daunted many a one of

greater physical prowess than his informant.

"Cannot? Who is to prevent me?"

"The man whom fate gave her for mate," replied the friar.

"That dog--"

"A brawl in the presence of death? Would you thus dishonor her memory?

Would she wish it so?"

For a moment Tristan stared at the man before him as if he heard some

message from afar, the meaning of which he but faintly guessed.

Then a blinding rush of tears came to his eyes. He shook with the agony

of his grief regardless of those who passed and paused and wondered,

while the friar's words of comfort and solace fell on unmindful ears.

At last, heedless of his companion, heedless of his surroundings,

heedless of everything, he rushed away to seek solitude, where he would

not see a human face, not hear a human voice.

He must be alone with his grief, alone with his Maker. It seemed to

him he was going mad. It was all too monstrous, too terrible, too

unbelievable.

How was it possible that one so young, so strong, so beautiful, should

die?

Friar Geronimo knew not. But his gaze had caused Tristan to shiver as

in an ague.

He remembered the discourse of Basil and his companion in the galleries

of the Emperor's Tomb.

Twice was he on the point of warning Hellayne not to attend Basil's

banquet.

Each time something had intervened. The warning had remained unspoken.

Would she have heeded it?

He gave a groan of anguish.

Hellayne was dead! That was the one all absorbing fact which had taken

possession of him, blotting out every other thought, every other

consideration.

She was dead--dead--dead! The hideous phrase boomed again and

again through his distracted mind. Compared with that overwhelming

catastrophe what signified the Hour, the Why and the When. She was

dead--dead--dead!

For hours he sat alone in the solitudes of Mount Aventine, where no

prying eyes would witness his grief. And the storm which had arisen and

swept the Seven Hilled City with the vehemence of a tropical hurricane

seemed but a feeble echo of the tempest that raged within his soul.

She was dead--dead--dead. The waves of the Tiber seemed to shout it as

they leapt up and dashed their foam against the rocky declivities of

the Mount of Cloisters. The wind seemed now to moan it piteously, now

to shriek it fiercely, as it scudded by, wrapping its invisible coils

about him and seeming intent on tearing him from his resting place.

Towards evening he rose and, skirting the heights, descended into the

city, dishevelled and bedraggled, yet caring nothing what spectacle he

might afford. And presently a grim procession overtook the solitary

rambler, and at the sight of the black, cowled and visored forms that

advanced in the lurid light of the waxen tapers, Tristan knelt in the

street with head bowed till her body had been borne past. No one heeded

him. They carried her to the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and

thither he followed presently, and, in the shadow of one of the pillars

of the aisle, he crouched, while the monks chanted the funeral psalms.

The singing ended the friars departed, and those who had formed the

cortege began to leave the church. In an hour he was alone, alone with

the beloved dead, and there on his knees he remained, and no one knew

whether, during that horrid hour, he prayed or blasphemed.

It may have been toward the third hour of the night when Tristan

staggered up, stiff and cramped, from the cold stone. Slowly, in a

half-dazed condition, he walked down the aisle and gained the door of

the church. He tried to open it, but it resisted his efforts, and he

realized it was locked for the night.

The appreciation of his position afforded him not the slightest dismay.

On the contrary, his feelings were rather of relief. At least there

was none other to share his grief! He had not known whither he should

repair, so distracted was his mind, and now chance or fate had settled

the matter for him by decreeing that he should remain.

Tristan turned and slowly paced back, until he stood beside the great,

black catafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning.

His steps rang with a hollow sound through the vast, gloomy spaces of

the cold and empty church. But these were not matters to occupy his

mind in such a season, no more than the damp, chill air which permeated

every nook and corner. Of all of these he remained unconscious in the

absorbing anguish that possessed his soul.

Near the foot of the bier there was a bench, and there he took his seat

and, resting his elbows on his knees, took his dishevelled head between

his trembling hands. His thoughts were all of her whose poor, murdered

clay lay encased above him. In turn he reviewed each scene of his life

where it had touched upon her own. He evoked every word she had spoken

to him since they had again met on that memorable night.

Thus he sat, clenching his hands and torturing his dull inert brain

while the night wore slowly on. Later a still more frenzied mood

obsessed him, a burning desire to look once more upon the sweet face

he had loved so well. What was there to prevent him? Who was there to

gainsay him?

He arose and uttered aloud the challenge in his madness. His voice

echoed mournfully along the aisles and the sound of the echoes chilled

him, though his purpose gathered strength.

Tristan advanced, and, after a moment's pause, with the silver

embroidered hem of the pall in his hands, suddenly swept off that

mantle of black cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all but

quenched the tapers. He caught up the bench upon which he had been

sitting and, dragging it forward, mounted it and stood, his chest on

a level with the coffin lid. His trembling hands fumbled along its

surface. He found it unfastened. Without thought or care how he went

about the thing, he raised it and let it crash to the ground. It fell

on the stone flags with a noise like thunder, booming and reverberating

through the gloomy vaults.

A form all in purest white lay there beneath his gaze, the face covered

by a white veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her departed

soul to forgive the desecration of his loving hands, he tremblingly

drew the veil aside.

How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She lay there like

one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and, as he

gazed, it was hard to believe that she was truly dead. Her lips had

lost nothing of their natural color. They were as red as he had ever

seen them in life.

How could this be?

The lips of the dead are wont to assume a livid hue.

Tristan stared for a moment, his awe and grief almost effaced by the

intensity of his wonder. This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen

aspect of one that would never wake again. There was a warmth about

that pallor. And then he bit his nether lip until it bled, and it

seemed a miracle that he did not scream, seeing how overwrought were

his senses.

For it had seemed to him that the draperies on her bosom had slightly

moved, in a gentle, almost imperceptible heave, as if she breathed. He

looked--and there it came again!

God! What madness had seized upon him, that his eyes should so deceive

him! It was the draught that stirred the air about the church, and blew

great shrouds of wax down the taper's yellow sides. He manned himself

to a more sober mood and looked again.

And now his doubts were all dispelled. He knew that he had mastered

any errant fancy, and that his eyes were grown wise and discriminating,

and he knew, too, that she lived! Her bosom slowly rose and fell; the

color of her lips, the hue of her cheek, confirmed the assurance that

she breathed!

He paused a second to ponder. That morning her appearance had been such

that the mediciner had been deceived by it and had pronounced her dead.

Yet now there were signs of life! What could it portend, but that the

effects of a poison were passing off and that she was recovering?

In the first wild excess of joy, that sent the blood tingling and

beating through his brain, his first impulse was to run for help. Then

Tristan bethought himself of the closed doors and he realized that, no

matter how loudly he shouted, no one would hear him. He must succour

her himself as best he could, and meanwhile she must be protected from

the chill night air of the church, cold as the air of a tomb. He had

his cloak, a heavy serviceable garment, and, if more were needed, there

was the pall which he had removed, and which lay in a heap about the

legs of the bench.

Leaning forward Tristan slowly passed his hand under her head and

gently raised it. Then, slipping it downward, he thrust his arm after

it, until he had her round the waist in a firm grip. Thus he raised

her from the coffin, and the warmth of her body on his arms, the ready

bending of her limbs, were so many added proofs that she lived.

Gently and reverently Tristan raised the supple form in his arms, an

intoxication of almost divine joy pervading him as the prayers fell

faster from his lips than they had ever since he had recited them on

his mother's knee. He laid her on the bench, while he divested himself

of the cloak.

Suddenly he paused and stood listening with bated breath.

Steps were approaching from without.

Tristan's first impulse was to rush towards the door, shouting his

tidings and imploring assistance. Then, a sudden, almost instinctive

dread caught and chilled him. Who was it that came at such an hour?

What would any one seek in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin at

dead of night? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they but

chance passers-by?

That last question remained not long unanswered. The steps came nearer.

They paused before the door. Something heavy was hurled against it.

Then some one spoke.

"It is locked, Tebaldo! Get out your tools and force it!"

Tristan's wits were working at fever pace. It may have been that he was

swift of thought beyond any ordinary man, or it may have been a flash

of inspiration, or a conclusion to which he leapt by instinct. But in

that moment the whole problematical plot was revealed to him. Poisoned

forsooth she had been, but by a drug that but produced for a time the

outward appearance of death, so truly simulated as even to deceive the

most learned of doctors. Tristan had heard of such poisons, and here,

in very truth, was one of them at work. Some one, no doubt, intended

secretly to bear her off. And to-morrow, when men found a broken church

door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege down to some

wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices.

Tristan cursed himself in that dark hour. Had he but peered earlier

into her coffin while yet there might have been time to save her. And

now? The sweat stood out in beads upon his brow. At that door there

were, to judge by the sound of their footsteps and voices, some five

or six men. For a weapon he had only his dagger. What could he do to

defend her? Basil's plans would suffer no defeat through his discovery

when to-morrow the sacrilege was revealed. His own body, lying cold and

stark beside the desolated bier, would be but an incident in the work

of profanation they would find; an item that in no wise could modify

the conclusion at which they would naturally arrive.