The Hill of Venus. Gallizier Nathan
continued through the night to play their parts without reserve.
When Francesco had ensconced himself on the terrace to witness the revels, he had given no thought to the continuation of the same. He wandered through the labyrinthine walks with troubled mind, every now and then shrinking, a listener both unwilling and unwelcome, from sounds that assailed his ear from rose-bower and cypress-wall. Yet the setting of beauty rendered his repugnance languid. He seemed to feel a detaining hand upon him that would not let him escape. Life had ever been, even in his happiest moods, as a masque, lived in a dream. But to-night the masque had seemed very real. The weird loveliness of the pageant had enthralled his soul, had brought home to him with new and intense poignancy the dark fate which lurked in the background. Aimlessly he strolled on, aimlessly he lost himself in the labyrinthine maze, hoping, yet fearing, to meet Ilaria Caselli.
He had noted now and again a girlish figure flitting around his pathway, in an open space, where a murmuring water flowed. It came out into the starlight and he recognized White Oenoné.
She swayed towards him timidly.
"Though Paris be lost to me, are there not other shepherds in the glades of Ida?"
Her tones blended with the murmur of the stream.
The tumult of sense swept over him. He saw her white smiling face so close to his, in the faint light of the moon her hair shone golden. Then he gave a start and thought of Ilaria, and of her strange request.
"Ay – but thy Paris will return, fair nymph," he replied courteously. "For the Greek knights have won Troy-Town at last, and the false witch who lured him from thy side, has sailed for Argos."
He turned away, noting the shade of disappointment in her face. His steps were aimless no longer. Ilaria was not in the rose-garden, nor would he find her on the terraces through which the flickering torch-light gleamed. He hastened onward towards the ilex-wood which bordered on one side close to the castle. In the dense shadow two dim figures stood. He knew without seeing that one was Ilaria.
"Ilaria!" he called.
She started, took a step towards him, then paused.
On her face he noted the same dazed, half-bewildered look which he had discovered thereon in the pageant.
"Ilaria!" he called once more. His voice had still the same purity of tone as in his childhood.
She came to him slowly, holding out both hands.
"Take me away!" she whispered with a shudder.
Then, from the deeper shadow of the wood, there stepped a form of remarkable elegance, advancing with the graceful, but assumed, demeanor of a man immured in his own conceit. He was tall, with a well-poised head of the purely Latin type. The face was long, but unusually handsome; of olive hue with regular features, that revealed many generations of aristocratic ancestry. The nostrils were delicately chiselled, the eyebrows high and narrow, the thin, cynical lips revealed the sensualist. There was nothing in the countenance of Raniero Frangipani to dismay the observer, until one looked at the eyes. They were narrow and intensely black, filled with a baleful brilliance that feared no man, yet revealed to view a soul utterly depraved.
The Frangipani having changed his masque, was clothed in the richest apparel of the time. Long hose of crimson silk encased the legs, rising from soft shoes of the same color. A coat of black silk, embroidered with golden flowers, and the Broken Loaf, the emblem of his house, was confined at the waist with a golden belt, to which was affixed a poniard with an exquisitely jewelled hilt. He advanced with the graceful yet arrogant swing of the bred courtier, yet his handsome face was not pleasant to behold, as he turned to Francesco with an insolent air:
"I think, Messer Villani, you will find the rose-garden more agreeable than the wood!"
Francesco looked at him coldly.
"I am here at the request of Madonna Ilaria," he replied quietly.
"Indeed!" sneered the Frangipani, advancing a step closer. "Madonna Ilaria did not hint that she preferred the society of a marplot to that of a Frangipani!"
Francesco made an impetuous step forward, feeling for his dagger. But Ilaria caught his arm and clung to it. The two were faintly visible in the starlight.
The Frangipani regarded them for a moment with a contemptuous smile.
"I crave your pardon," he then turned with an ironical bow to the girl. "I feared Messer Villani would be too fatigued after his journey in quest of an ancestor!"
Francesco had turned pale at this palpable insult. There was no doubt that the Frangipani had spied upon him for reasons not difficult to surmise. But ere he could carry out his intent, but too plainly revealed in his set features, Ilaria had interposed herself between the two.
"Leave us!" she turned to the Frangipani with a scorn in her voice that caused the latter to start, while she clung to Francesco's arm, hardly less pale than he.
Raniero Frangipani regarded them for a moment in silence, tapped with his foot, like one to whom a new idea has come, then with a long low sound, very much like a snarl, he vanished in the gloom.
Francesco turned to the girl who still clung to him. She knew the look on his face, but there was in it an expression she had never seen before, penetrating, sorrowful, crushed. His breath came and went in gasps, yet he spoke not.
"Francesco," she said after a pause, while she anxiously watched the play of light and shadow on his face. "Listen! Messer Raniero seems to bear you a grudge. Promise me to avoid a meeting with him! He has said much to me, thinking thereby to win my favor. He now knows, – let that suffice!"
"He has told you much? What has he told you?"
"You have not told me what took you away so suddenly!"
He held up his hand deprecatingly.
"A secret mission of the Viceroy's," he said blushing, as he stammered the falsehood. Yet he could not bring himself to avow even to the girl he loved best on earth, his father's shame. The pain of life could not be made less, by adding more pain.
"Trust me!" he begged. "We have always felt together, – I have never deceived you!"
"Until now!" her voice sounded shrill and strained.
"No! Ilaria, no! Were it mine to tell, – there is no secret for you in this heart of mine. But the matter concerns another! Perhaps – in time – "
He broke off and closed his eyes.
"I crave my youth!" cried Ilaria unheeding. "My youth, and the joy of life which comes but once. If one will not give me what I seek – I look elsewhere, if so I may!" Her lips trembled. "Why do you look at me so?" she continued impatiently after an instant's pause. "Before you came into the wood I saw your eyes, and I see them still in the dark! What was the object of that mission?"
Francesco drooped his head, but made no reply. In a clover leaf at his feet a dew-drop mirrored a star, breaking the light into a thousand tiny shafts.
"I will give you your youth," he spoke at last in a low strained voice that sounded like a broken sob.
Ilaria laid her hand on his and spoke low. Her light soft fingers were fevered.
"What do you mean?"
"It is a simple matter!"
She gazed at him startled, terrified. Suddenly she threw her arms about him.
"Forgive me! Forgive!"
He pressed her to his heart and kissed her dark eyes.
Then slowly they retraced their steps towards the castle.
When Francesco reached his chamber, the moon was slowly sinking through the azure night-sky.
He noted it not. It seemed to him he was standing in the midst of a great void. All life about him had died. And he stood there, digging his own grave, and, as the last spade of turf flew up, the stifling night of annihilation swallowed up the universe.
CHAPTER V
WAVES OF DESTINY
WHEN Francesco waked on