_ BOOK V. THE NIGHT AND THE DAWNING
CHAPTER VI
In the late afternoon, when gray shadows were stealing westward over the quiet hills, came Eldris along the road toward Thorney, with an empty basket on her arm. She looked younger, rounder, better fed; her eyes were darkly blue and full of light, her skin as white as milk. Coming up a slight rise of ground, she saw the long figure lying against the hillside but a short distance away, and recognized it and stopped short, turning white, with a hand against her heart, all unprepared for what she had yearned to see. She went to him swiftly, and knelt beside him as he slept.
"Thank God! He hath returned--he is alive and well!" she whispered. "I had feared--oh, I know not what I feared! How hath he escaped? Ay me, but he is changed! There is that in his face which was not there before, and there is something gone from it. So thin he is--sure he hath been ill."
She hung over him in rapt absorption of tenderness; she listened to his slow and heavy breathing; she longed to draw his rough black head into her arms. Yet she dared scarcely touch him, since even in sleep he was still too much his own; rosy and shy she leaned above him, her face transfigured. They were alone in the world, with gray empty skies above them and gray silent hills rolling upon either hand.
With one finger she touched a lock of his hair, rough and matted, and dearer to her than all silken tresses; and he lay as one dead, very far from her. She whispered his name, but not for him to hear; at the deepness of his slumber she became emboldened. She stroked the hair from his forehead with mother-tender hands; her eyes brooded over him. He was her god; out of his strength he had saved her when she was helpless, so she murmured, ready, womanlike, to glorify; now he lay broken at her feet, with lean lithe limbs relaxed, with lids down-dropped over the gray sombre eyes which never had looked love into her eyes, with lips still grim and set even in the unconsciousness of sleep. She bent her head and with her lips touched the hair that she had smoothed. He stirred, and she started, a guilty thing, crimsoned with shame; but he did not wake. Her ears caught a word, as though in sleep he had felt a warm presence near him.
"Beloved!"
And for a name she listened hungrily, but none came. Who had found a place in that deep stern heart of his?--so she asked herself with a small inward twinge of an emotion new and strange. For whom had his keen eyes softened? Who had listened thralled to the silver speech which was all his? Who had known the strength of his arms? Who had found the spell which would soothe his savage moods to stillness and unloose the flood-gates of his magic? Whose was the name so sacred that even in sleep his lips could guard it?
"That is what he wants," she murmured; "some one to love him, to understand and comfort when he is so black and bitter, and I think it is what he hath never found. Ah, pray God he may find that one!"
Because she loved, it was given her to understand. And, understanding, she caught a glimpse of the tragedy of the loneliness in which those souls must wander whose world is not the world of everyday life and love and death. Quick tears dimmed her eyes, of pity because she understood; and one fell warm on the quiet face at her knee.
Nicanor opened his eyes, without moving, but Eldris saw, and sat stiffened with fear, self-betrayed in her swift flush. He raised himself on an elbow and looked at her, smiling slightly.
"Thou?" he said, with no surprise in his voice, as though he had thought of nothing but to find her there. "I thought Nicodemus said thou hadst not come."
"I did not go to him," said Eldris. "I was at another house a little while. Now I am taken care of by the priests of Saint Peter's."
Nicanor nodded. His eyes had not left her face.
"Perhaps that is best. Why dost thou weep?"
Eldris flushed again. But his gray eyes were inexorable; they dragged truth from her in spite of all her will.
"I--thou wert sleeping, and I thought thee ill, and I--was sorry."
"I am not ill," he answered, and his voice was gentle. "But let us speak of thee. Now I have come, not so soon as I had thought to come. It was not mine to say what I should do."
"You mean--?" Eldris said quickly. "Tell me of it. Tell me all of it, I pray you!"
Nicanor's eyes changed with the quick sweet smile which at rare times had power to lighten his face as a shaft of sunshine lights a thundercloud.
"All?" he repeated indulgently. "So, then, this is the tale."
He sat rocking gently back and forth, hands clasped about his knees, looking not at her at all, but away over the billowing hills.
"When thou hadst slipped away from the door of that torture room, I and Hito amused ourselves. And when our game was ended, he had no thought of thee nor thy escape; me it was upon whom all his loving care was centred. So it was commanded that I be taken to the lowest dungeon cell, there to meditate upon the sins which were mine.... I think that in all the world no man knows darkness as do I. Night is not dark; it hath the silver stars above it, and in the world the red earth-stars of men. But I was in darkness which was the darkness of the grave made manifest; it pressed upon mine eyes like leaden weights, and numbed my brain, and was a cloak which smothered me. What hours rolled on I knew not. I was fed or I starved; all was one. There was no time, there was no life, there was no death; there was but a naked soul sitting in still darkness. Five paces is my cell from wall to wall; shoulder high above the floor is a jutting stone. I doubt not that it is red with blood, since each time I passed, it scored me if I had not care."
Her shiver brought his glance back to her; with a smile he woke to recollection of her presence.
"I cry not thy sympathy, sweet sister; for there were times, and these were many, when the door of that dungeon opened wide, and Hito himself could not take from me my freedom. When I was back upon the moors with shepherds, who listened while I spoke; when I was by the camp-fires of Thorney in the Fords and men left their business at my word; and there was no darkness then in all the world. Back on the hills, where the clouds sweep free and the wind calls; back in the press of life, amid the crowding feet of men; back in the Garden of Lost Dreams, where flowers bloomed and grass was green and tender, and brown birds sang of love and life and freedom. And Hito, fond fool, rubbed his hands and thought he held me caged!"
He was very far from her again, in his own strange world; and she sat and watched him, her soul in her shining eyes, if he had but seen it, and knew she could not enter with him. He spoke more quickly; his voice fell to a deeper note, and in it was a mystery at which Eldris caught her breath.
"And out of the darkness there came a Tale to me, and thereafter there was light. And the tale is not yet ended--but it grows, it grows! Night and day it rings within my head; always it is with me, mine and mine only. But there is that in it which eludes me, which I seek and cannot find. And until I find it, the tale is not yet done. And it is of a Child, a Babe who lay within his mother's arms and smiled at all the world."
Eldris started, and her eyes, fixed upon his face, widened and filled with light. And again at her motion Nicanor came back to her. He looked at her, and his own eyes were as she had seen them once before, when upon a day she had told him that the name men called him was the silver-tongued.
"Once thou didst tell that tale to me," he said, "and day or night it hath never left me since. When it is ended, and I have found this thing I seek, then I'll tell it thee."
He took up his speech again, and she hung upon his words, unafraid to watch him since his eyes were turned from her.
"So there was a gray rat within this my dungeon cell; and at such times when the light faded and I was back therein, I coaxed and fed him, and taught him how to fight. Eh, he was a gallant beast, and his scar is yet upon my hand. He, my gaunt gray rat, and this little Christ of thine were all that kept my brain from madness those days when I sat in darkness. And in time, I, with others, was sent off to the mines, and there we labored until word came that men were needed to help our lord, who was attacked in his household by barbarians. But I was left behind when these were started, wounded by one with whom I had a quarrel about this same gray rat. When I reached our lord's house, it was empty, sacked and spoiled, and stationarii patrolled it. So I came onward to Londinium and here again was I left behind. Our lord hath left the country, and we are free to live or die as we may. I had no plan for thee when I bade thee to come hither, for there was no time for planning with Hito's jaws agape for thee." He rose to his feet and stood looking down upon her. "Now we be both alone, and there is but one thing for it that I can see. Thou must come with me. I cannot promise thee ease nor even safety, but what I have, thou shalt have also."
"With thee!" Eldris repeated below her breath, and turned her face from him. It flushed and was radiant; love brimmed over in her eyes. Was she the one who might find her place in that stern, deep heart of his,--she who might learn the spell which would soothe those bitter moods of his to stillness? Her eyes glowed and drooped. And then, slowly, across her face there fell a shadow, and the shadow was of the cross. She knew nothing of evasion; as her heart, so her lips spoke.
"With thee!" she breathed again. A sob caught her throat. In her turn she rose and faced him. "Ah, I would so gladly--so gladly! But--I can go with thee in but one way, and that way as thy wife."
Nicanor looked at her.
"Why, thou knowest that may not be," he said gently, yet with some surprise. "I am a slave, and a slave hath no rights before the law, nor to lawful marriage. It is the law. But come thou!"
Eldris turned white.
"I am Christian!" she said painfully, "and that thing I may not do. Father Ambrose teacheth that Christ hath forbidden."
"I did not make the law," said Nicanor. "Could I do so, I'd give thee gladly the name of wife. But even thus, more of honor I could not give thee. It is not what I wish to do, but what I must do." He took her face between his hands. "Child, the law is made, not by man, but by men; and it is not for man only, but for men. Were it not found good by men, it could not be. And the law, in its wisdom, saith that a slave is a beast, a thing without rights; and I am a slave. There is no law which could marry me to thee.... I cannot give thee marriage,--I, a slave."
"And I, a Christian, cannot go without," said Eldris, very low. Two tears rolled from beneath her wan closed lids. Nicanor bent his tall head and kissed them away, with what tenderness a brother might give a sister dearly loved. But with sudden wild sobbing Eldris flung up her arms and clasped his neck, and hid her face against him.
"Oh, I would go with thee!" she wept. "Heart of my heart, I would follow to the world's end, wherever thy path might lead me. I love thee, Nicanor, oh, my man of the silver tongue! and I shall love thee even till I die. But go with thee I may not--I dare not! Is this right? Were thy law and my religion made for this, to wreak such woe upon those who follow them? It is cruel,--it is more cruel than death, and I would to God that I were dead!"
Nicanor stood a moment silent, stroking her dark hair gently.
"No man would hold thee less worthy, since the case is as it must be. Never have I heard of slaves who took thy view of this. All thy life shalt thou have honor and protection. Were it in my power to mend matters, and I did not, the fault would then lie with me. As it is, it is no man's fault, and we have the right to make the best we may of it."
She shook her head, struggling with her tears. His tone changed; it deepened and thrilled until she thrilled with it; in it she heard the concentration of all loneliness and all bitterness.
"Come to me, Eldris, for I need thee sorely! All my life have I gone chained, desiring what I could not win, longing for what lay beyond me. Must it be so again? Once one said: 'Seek thou the sanctuary while yet there may be time; and when thou art entered in all else shall be as nothing, for there thou shalt have peace.' Then I did not understand; now know I too well. That is what all my life I have never found, though I have sought in many places, and for a weary while. Therefore pray your God to pity me and all who are as I, for I am ridden by ten thousand devils--a flame consumes me which I cannot quench. An ambition is not all a blessing to him who hath it! Oh, the dreams that were mine, which the high gods gave to me, and which are gone,--gone as the smoke goes and shall never come again! The glimpse I have had of a world that should be mine and never can be mine hath shown me all that I have lost. I beat my hands against the bars, and what doth it avail? I am a slave--a slave was I born and a slave shall I die. There is beauty in the world, and I may not see it; there is knowledge in the world, and I may not share it; and my soul is sick with longing for what all men may have but I. There is a thing within me which cries panting for release, and rends me because I know not how to set it free. It is agony and delight, pain and joy beyond all naming; and once I thought it only joy. Thus ever hath it been: what I have thought would bring me peace hath brought me pain, and pain that I know not what I have done to deserve. It was not thus when I lived a brute's life among the brutes in far, gray, northern hills; there was I content, not knowing that I wanted something more. Now have I stretched my hands out to a star, and found it so far beyond my reach that for me its light is lost in darkness which will never lift. Yet the star is shining,--but not for me."
The torrent of his speech checked. His voice dropped from the strain of its hoarse passion. He gathered her two hands closer on his breast.
"We be two outcasts, thou and I!--thou shunning, I shunned. Yet we still have each the other. Now do I come seeking the sanctuary of thy love, thy balm and healing for the hands and heart I have beaten against my bars. Wilt thou deny? Must I be turned away? Eldris, come!"
"Oh!" cried Eldris, her heart in her stricken voice. Long she looked at him, with eyes drowned in tears and lips quivering, all her struggle in her torn face. But suddenly she drew her hands from his, and slipped to her knees before him, and hid her face in shaking fingers.
"Oh, God!" she prayed,--and once Nicanor had heard words babbling so from a man upon the rack who never knew that he had talked aloud,--"keep me from going with him! I want to so--oh, I want to so! Make me strong--never let me yield to what is sin! Keep me from going with him! I love him so that I would sin for him! Dear Jesus Lord, keep me from doing that! But make me strong very quickly, or I must go--how can I stay when he so sorely needs me? Oh, God, God, God, I could comfort him so well! We cannot help it, neither he nor I. Nay, I will not weaken,--I will be strong, quite strong,--but in pity Thou must help a little too! I love Thee and the little Jesus, but I love him more--oh, nay--not more! I did not mean it!" She raised her streaming face, turning at the last from the Power whence no help came, to the human strength beside her. "Oh, beloved, help me, for I cannot fight alone!"
So, at the need of one soul, into the world another soul was born, and the long travail of spirit rending flesh was ended.
"Dear heart, be strong!--thy will shall be my will. If it be sin to thee, thou shalt not sin through me!" Nicanor said, and knelt beside her.
Nerveless and shaken with strangling sobs, she crept into the shelter of his arms, trusting him wholly now that his word was hers, pleading unconsciously that he save her from herself and from him. He lifted her to her feet, soothing her with touch and voice, forgetting himself in her distress. Her religious scruples he could not comprehend; the gods of religion were to be invoked when one wanted material benefits from them, not held as mentors to dictate one's course in life. But since she had such scruples, and since he was learning new, strange tolerance for and sympathy with others, it was not his to blame her for them; rather to remember that though they might be nothing to him, they were all to her, and were therefore not to be held lightly. So, because he was slowly gaining the strength to think of others before himself,--and of strength this is the surest test,--and because the tenderness of a strong man is greater than all the tenderness of a woman, he soothed her and brought her peace; and, it may be, in bringing it he found a measure of it himself. She was very dear to him,--dear as one might be who was not enshrined above all her kind forever. Heart and soul he was another's, for all time and all eternity; yet life was his to live and to make the best of it, even though there was a locked and guarded chamber in it of which the key was lost....
Hand in hand they walked homeward in the faint twilight glow. He left her at the church gate, and himself turned away, back toward the house of Nicodemus, walking with bent head and broad shoulders bowed. But his face was not all sombre; something of the courage he had given her remained to him, and his eyes were softened with the new tenderness which still lived. For it is one of the compensations as well as of the penalties of life, that what one gives, one shall get again.
At the threshold sudden distaste seized him; after what he had been through, the thought of the well-meaning, brutish chatter of Nicodemus and his wife was not to be endured. He turned back again and went as far from them as he could get, down to the river-ford. Here he sat upon the beach, away from the passing of the people; and the waters rippled at his feet. The west had cleared; overhead the faint rose of the sky was paling, but across the broad river was splashed a pastel of orange and blue and crimson; and the red, misty ball of the sun was dipping below the world's dark rim.
"This is love also," Nicanor said aloud, as though one had been by to hear him. "As she loveth me, so I love. There is love of a man for a maid, and of husband for wife; and there is love of sire for child, and of a friend for a friend, and of these all are different. Yet it is all one love, touching life on every side.... Why, then, it takes in all the world!"
His voice changed and rang with quick and startled exultation.
"Gods of my fathers! I have found it--I have found that thing I sought! It is love, not fear, nor wrath, nor power, that gave that little Child his power! And because it takes in all the world, this little One of whom men tell hath this love, then, for all the world. Now this is strange! Oh, Little Brother, I have found my tale, and it shall be greater than any tale that I have made before!"
His eyes deepened and flashed to the quick surge of power which shook him; now well and truly should all men name him Nicanor of the silver tongue. He was a slave, yet men should bow before him. No iron bars might longer hold him down; Fate, that mocking Fate of his, could no longer keep him chained. But over all the triumph in his face there grew also the old awe as in those days of boyhood, long ago, when first he knew himself for but the tool with which the work was wrought. His face changed and grew longing; his keen eyes dimmed. Quite suddenly he rose to his knees, kneeling as he had seen Eldris kneel, and clasped his hands as Eldris had clasped hers.
"Oh, Little Brother of the World, if thou lovest all men, love me also, for I have no one else. When I have sought love, it hath ever turned from me, prospering nothing. But since it seemeth that all men must love something, woman, or fame, or gold, it may be that it is not for me to love one woman only, but all men. If it be that I must choose, I will lose love of woman, and love of friend, and love of child; I will live alone to the end of my days, if but this soul of mine, which singeth in my loneliness, may return to me and my lips be no longer dumb. Love hath chained them; let now love set them free. And this my tale shall be strong as the wind that calls across the hills, and pure as flame, and great as love which takes in all the world, to the end that it may be worthy. Mine it is, and mine only; I made it, and it is blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh, and none may take it from me. Yet it is all, and I am naught but the voice which speaks."
His voice sank. He sat in silence, looking beyond the sunset, his hands about his knees.
So slowly the waters closed over the sun, and the day died, and the shadow of night descended upon Thorney. _