Part 10

Then, one by one, and two by two, lights began to appear in the windows, and a great beacon fire, at first all violet, and anon waving into blended emerald and scarlet flame blazed out on the summit of the donjon-tower. And soon all the scene was translucent and fluent with a wondrous glow as if an Aurora had been suddenly born, or the Goddess of the Four Winds, amid blazing laurel and roses while the fairies sang a pæan of welcome (as a Romagna legend tells the tale). For with the out-bursting light, there rose a strange, sweet chorus of unearthly voices in the long-forgotten, Lombard-Gothic tongue; and Flaxius hummed softly to the air:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before: I am listening to the song once more.’

Then shadowy forms were seen among the shades, as if born from them, and blending in them, and as the light grew, they too became beings of light and colour and beauty, lords and ladies of the olden time with their pages and maidens dressed in the Latin-Lombard style; in which as in its sculptures, a rude, Northern strength submitted to, and was blended with, Romano-Greek grace and ornament, even as Hercules was subdued by Omphalé.

‘Five hundred years,’ hummed Flaxius, ‘that garb once more!’

In step with the music, and as if moving with the waves of coloured light, gracefully and stately as swans in a dream, there came by a walking group of gentlemen and ladies, who, seeing Flaxius, paused while one from the latter said to him in old Italian:

‘Mortal, since thou art here sleeping at midnight and in full moon-tide, thou hast won the power to behold us, and share our festivity. Join us and enter the castle.’

Gravely and almost sadly answered the man of the ages in the old Lombard-Gothic tongue:

‘I am as little mortal as ye are immortal, ye shadows of ghosts of days long passed away! But what ye offer me in courtesy, I do with thankful courtesy accept. My lord Agobard of the Amal race, I was by your side when you routed the Romans at Ravenna, and when you retreated, beaten yet glorious before the Huns in the Mark of Tuscany. Know that your name is still to be read in old chronicles. My Lady Chlodoviga, now Luisa, I am glad to see that your fire-sapphire eyes still flash as fiercely from under your golden hair as they did when we last met.’

‘Knowest thou _me_?’ exclaimed a giant-like and ancient warrior, with a vast grey beard, yet who had all the fire of youth, and by whom stood a younger noble who was like the elder in all save age. ‘Am I still remembered on earth?’

‘Well do I know thee, Master Hildebrand, and not I alone but all men living, where’er resounds the German tongue and German hymns to God are sung, for all men who can read it have read the Song of the Father and the Son, of thee and of my Lord Hahdubrand now by thy side, unto whom I offer greeting. While the Book of Heroes shall live ye will live in it.’

‘And _thou_, great master, who hast the serpent tongue of Gunlaug?’

‘Ask me not, but I am of the sorcerer race of the God Frey, and was ere thou wert born.’

So in music and light they all gravely passed into the castle, through brilliant, buzzing groups, harpers and horn-players and _citharœdi_ making music--threading the mazes of a torch-dance, till my Lord Hildebrand led Flaxius before a lady seated beneath a canopy on a double chair like a throne. The canopy was of light-brown silk from Sicily and on it were heavily embroidered dragons and leafy branches in black and gold, with many red and gold disks. The throne was of dark nut wood and ivory.

She who sat on the throne was a queen of beauty, of a beauty long passed away with the chivalry and romance of the early Gothic time. For every age, as Flaxius said, has its own beauty, which busts or portraits never portray to those who come after, though they may have been perfect likenesses, any more than the dried flower retains its early perfume. For there was in the woman’s face a nameless, stern, firm will, an unfamiliarity with little things and small sentiments, the steady glow of a soul which knew only great aims and was used to great efforts, and such were all who were leaders in those days, and in each other they all read their like, which is a noble thing for noble minds. Yet there was in her eyes a glow and glory of beauty and of passion which betrayed unearthly blood and immortal longing, and as she looked with a smile of welcome at Flaxius, there flashed into his mind a feeling of joy which she little suspected, that he was not one who could be bewitched or silenced or bullied by any magic:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before, I gaze upon those eyes once more.’

‘I present to your princely highness,’ said Lord Hildebrand, ‘a stranger of great wisdom, whom we found within the domain. Who he may be, Lady Adelindè, I cannot divine, but I warrant him well worthy a warm welcome.’

‘It is given with a good will,’ replied Adelindè in a deep, sweet voice, which was as marvellous and strange as her eyes, and which seemed like their light changed to sound. ‘And be not alarmed or astonished, sir stranger, to find yourself in what is doubtless to you a marvellous scene of enchantment.’

‘I am not,’ answered Flaxius simply, as he gazed at her. ‘There is nothing here so wonderful as thou art.’

Now be she fairy or sorceress or ghost-devil of a peeress or diabolical princess, a woman is always a woman, and the Lady Adelindè, who was something of all of these at once, divined that Flaxius was no common mortal such as she had been accustomed to catch and cajole now and then, to turn out of doors that he might find himself Rip van Winkled or Barbarossa’d or Seven Sleepered and seven years older in the morning, lying with a rheumatism on a cold stone. The lightly-rosy snow of her fair cheeks flushed to richer red at the steady glance of the stern, grey-blue eyes of her grim guest, in whom she at once felt a power perhaps beyond her own--_chi sa?_--and it was with a tone into which she infused her very best sorcery--the kind formerly conserved for kings--that she invited Flaxius to rest himself beside her on the throne.

‘You will join our banquet?’ she asked with another professional smile.

‘I have had nothing to eat all day,’ replied Flaxius, in true old Lombardo-Roman tone. (Note that there was a great deal in this manner and tone, and the princess caught it.) ‘For we all require food,’ added Flaxius. ‘Mortals or spirits, all eat and drink.’

‘_We!_’ reflected Adelindè. ‘The “mortals _and_ spirits” was an after-thought! I wonder who or what he is!’

‘Even mortals,’ continued Flaxius, ‘require scent and taste in their food, else it would not nourish them. Mere spiritual beings live simply on taste and scent, while the still more refined, or divine, exist on perfume alone. You, fairest Adelindè, have, I doubt not, very often dined on a daisy, had the scent of a pink for an _entrée_, and a sniff of a rose for dessert, but that much you absolutely required. There were even mortal queens of yore who were thus refined. Chrimhilde was one. The chronicle does not mention it, but it is true that when our old friend Hildebrand, with hero Hagen, ravished her rose-garden, they destroyed her larder.’

‘No, he is not a common mortal,’ flashed Adelindè through her mind, for she always thought in sheet-lightning ere she spoke. (And I pray you note that this metaphor is truthful enough, for a later Latin writer tells us that the voices of all unearthly beings are like thunder, there being even in their softest, dulcet tones--_si symphonia canere vel ad tibiam versus fundere_--even when they sing their sweetest in symphonies or pour forth their souls unto the witching flute, a softly murmuring undertone, or strange, dark suspicion of the grandeur of the Voice of God as it speaks in the stars.) And the spiritual sheet-lightning of Adelindè’s thought was materialised in her glances.

Meanwhile the banquet, or revel, grew wild and bold. Flaxius ate like a mortal, or like three--(‘Decidedly he is only human,’ thought Adelindè)--and drank like four, five, or six. But there was no change in the grey-blue eyes, or in his voice.

‘No, he is in-human,’ reflected the lady. ‘Mortal man could never drink like _that_!’

Yet she had seen stout drinkers in her time, in the old Roman-Longobardi days. Yes, they drank like bricks, for, as ye know, a dry brick will absorb its own equivalent of fluid. Which the Latins rendered, _Ranas superat bibendo_, and the old Italians ‘like a German’ or a cardinal--cardinal virtues being, alack, more like carnal vices in those days.

Wilder pealed the music, louder laughed and roared the company. From a revel which would have maddened a mortal, it became a Sabbath of sorcerers and witches, a Pandemonium of passions, an Inferno broken loose. Even the figures in the marvellous mosaics on the vaulted ceiling above--saints and kings and queens and warriors brave, such as we still see at Ravenna--became animated and danced or embraced, trailing after them gorgeous and jewelled robes, so that as there had been over much decay and silence and death before in the ruin, even so there now seemed to be as much excess of life and tumult.... A reverend bishop reeled and tumbled down ... while saints too fondly fondled saintesses--a rosy wine-light seemed to tinge the air, as if the very hall itself were drunk, and all were swimming in a ruby sea. _Quasi vinis Græcis Neptunus suffudit mare!_

The princess, wild as a mænad, wanton as a faun, had cast herself on the heart of her guest, while she seemed joyous as a mad panther,--the maddest of all things when gay,[5]--but she still realised to her unbounded awe, that she in all _deliria_ of delight had never for an instant cast a charm or fascination over her mystic guest.

But what was to her astounding, well-nigh petrifying, a thing new to her since a thousand years, the princess felt a mighty thrilling influence in her heart, a new-born spirit speaking in her soul, that she herself was at last being won, instead of being the winner! But why this should have so fearfully struck and startled her, not without a joyous after-glow of hope, will appear anon.

‘Great and marvellous man,’ she at length exclaimed, recovering her breath--then bursting into her true self and life,--’twas like a pale moon exploding into a noonday sun--‘tell me who or what art thou, now speaking our long-forgotten Lombard tongue, knowing all my court and me, inaccessible to my power, and oh, that I should ever dare to think and dream it! perhaps mastering me!’

‘Dost thou desire it?’ asked Flaxius calmly.

‘Does the lost soul desire to be freed from hell?’ cried the princess, in a long, wailing tone of a spirit in despair. ‘Does the prisoner on the rack wish the torture to cease? Man of mystery!’ she suddenly cried, ‘dost thou know my life and my doom?’

‘Well do I know it,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and now look me well in the eyes, thou daughter of the old Lombard line of kings, and yet a spirit’s child, for thy fated hour has come at last. Yet ere I tell thee more, answer me, great soul, what has this life which thou didst take of thy own free choice--when thou hadst liberty to choose among all--what has this life become, which was, as thou didst once declare, the only heaven thou couldst understand?’

‘It has become a hell,’ replied Adelindè, with an immortal shudder; ‘a hell of weary, worn-out, oft-repeated imagery of splendour, a tiresomeness of idle power, with the real torment of the conscience that I was--a fool!’

‘He or she is a long way advanced towards freedom or wisdom,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘who has found out that he--or she--is a fool. Well, lady, thus it was that centuries ago there lived on earth a beautiful princess of the Lombard line, who had a sorceress mother, and a fairy Amal-Alruna ancestress, and who, having been trained to all the mysteries and magic of the North, as well as of Rome, and of many races, attained to such power as had rarely been given to woman. Yet through it all she retained beauty and the love of power and pleasure, of magnificence, and the keen, fierce delight of preying on the hearts and lives of men, and of living, even as thou livest here now, Adelindè!

‘And having gained great power, and on one occasion by mighty worship and great services to _Tinia_--the great ruling spirit of the Tuscan land--obtained full and free choice as to her future life for ever, she said: “What that life for saints may be I know not, but this I know, that the life which I now lead is all that heart can desire, and I would fain live it so long as a single fibre of my soul remains as it is.”

‘Near and dear to her in those days was one who had lived in the ages, and been her teacher, and more, and had tried to win her from her worldly wont, and all in vain. So they went their ways, she to splendour and pageantry in life and after life, and he to study and observe in existences beyond her ken. And in her gaiety and luxury the ages rolled on, and as they rolled, there wore away the happiness of her elfin life, and torment set in, the torment ordained to every one on earth who succeeds in having to satiety and excess his own will.’

‘Man, thou speakest true,’ wailed the princess, as the voices of revelry sank lower, and the figures fading began to pass away, and the lights grew dim. The music became softer in its modulations, and the mind of Flaxius ran insensibly into unspoken song, in accompaniment with the line:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before.’

‘One by one,’ he resumed, ‘the enchanted princess lost her passions and longings. She had delirious desires, keen appetites, an immortal and beautiful thirst, an exquisite appreciation of all that is beautiful, dainty caprices, delicate and true. Wit, humour, whim, wild-will, and Attic salt were as life to her; she revelled in music and song and letters--as thou dost in this life, or as thou didst when in the body.’

The poor princess grew tearful; the marble pallor of her fading cheek might have made sorrow in the hardest heart.

‘Yes, it all wore into triteness and commonplace, even the being hungry and eating, desiring and realising the same things over and over again, for _she_ had a soul, and every soul is damned, as soon as it is clogged and stops working, like a bee that has wished itself into eternal honey.’

Adelindè cried on.

‘But one thing survived--it generally _is_ about the last thing to die out of any woman’s heart--and that was the desire to fascinate men, to win them, to impose on them, and to have her own way. She felt it in her head and heart like a curse; she knew it was the poison of her soul; everything else grew stale, but that kept fresh.

‘And it had been decreed that if she could ever meet a man who could resist and conquer her, the spell would end; but, alas, she had wished for and won such a stupendous stock of enchanting charms that she was perfectly _irresistible_ and simply distracting, which is a thing that stands between many a woman and her salvation, in all ages. For it has kept more souls in the dark, and made more ugly fools, who might have become spiritually beautiful, than any cause on earth. So from such mothers many men are fools: an Agrippina has always a Nero for a son.’

Crushed to naught, fair Adelindè wept, till, lifting her eyes to those of the guest, a sudden, tremendous convulsion, one of transcendent rapture, mingled with strangest amazement, thrilled over her. She bent on him a glance which might have split a stone.

The music played on ever more softly, more sweetly to their words in perfect time.

‘Now I know thee, Flaxius,’ she cried. ‘_Vicisti_, thou hast conquered! The last link of the chain which bound me for centuries to earth is broken. And even in the hour in which we meet, beloved master, and in the instant of our love, because it is our love, and I am conquered, I leave thee for the better life beyond! But, ah! to have remained with thee, I would have gladly endured this ghostly existence, which had become a torment. All this is ended. Now these walls will know me no more; the peasant benighted will no longer see strange lights flickering over the ancient ruin; the enchantment has departed, and the spell of golden glory and glamour will no longer shine at midnight in these halls. The wanderer may now safely sleep here; he will behold no longer the elfin array, or my Lombard lords and ladies of the olden times, nor be enchanted by their queen. Sound for the last time my fairy music--your sweet strains will never more be heard in the court of Adelindè! Farewell, O master, we shall meet again soon, and full often in a better life--such as thou hast chosen--a life not clogged by earthly desires or petty worldly aims.’

As she said this, the princess cast herself in a last passionate embrace on the breast of Flaxius, and as she did so, he felt that her life and form were passing away to a purer, more idealised existence. The figure faded, the features, the face, last of all the ineffable splendour of the Sorceress’s eyes, in which there was the radiance of a divine, parting smile: she spoke no more, the music died away.

‘O love, in thy glory go!’ said Flaxius. ‘Never yet passed into life eternal a sweeter soul, never yet was a fairer goblet of the ancient time remelted into a nobler form. O love, in thy glory go! Lovelier form did never fade, brighter rose was never broken. ’Tis but a brief minute since thou wert in thy inferno of despair, and now by one instant’s flash of love and humility, thy beautiful soul is passing through the golden-pearled portals, and through the halls of the heavenly unknown. Even I cannot tell, not in this short space, what sphere contains the fairy soul that hath forsook her mansion in this earthly nook. O love, in thy glory go!’

Silent and alone sat Flaxius as the shades vanished one by one. Last of all there stood before him the giant forms of Hildebrand and his son Hahdubrand. The warrior pressed his hand and spoke no word, but Flaxius read in his eyes deep and full feeling--the knowledge of all that had passed, and a farewell.

‘Yes, farewell, my brave old companion of ancient days,’ said Flaxius. ‘Thou, too, mayst pass away to lands beyond. Thou didst battle for glory and fame, and hast learned from me that it has been truly won. _Du kannst zu Land ausreiten_--so, warrior, fare thee well!’

So he sat there till all had passed away, the glitter and glamour of chivalry and a fairy court; till the high towers had become a low, grey ruin, and the spiders’ webs hung again in the palace halls, and there were vines on crumbling walls, and the stones, themselves to ruin grown like him, seemed death-like old. Then, as in waves, the weeds grew again up to where he sat; and as the rising sun cast its first ray on him, he started as if from a dream.

‘_Comedia luget, scena est deserta_,’ he murmured. ‘Now if I wished to preach a new faith to mankind, Adelindè has given me the text. For I now see that hell _is_ the place where every mortal can have to his heart’s content his own desire, as Pluto declared. And this hell may be on earth, in life, and all may know it in their very hearts.

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius on the revise, ‘two or three morals not mentioned in the conclusion. _Item_, the Spirit that is in the trees, the Being in green leaves among the groves, the rocks and waters, or the wanton weeds, reveals unto the poet wondrous things which, being written, are as real in truth, in beauty, and in goodness for the world, as aught that ever happened in the past. He who has mastered this in every sense lives in a fairyland while here on earth, yet they are few who ever master it.

‘And yet again that great prosperity gives birth to a vanity which is often an intermittent weakness in men, and a steady madness in women, as may be clearly discerned in the memoirs or lives of all who have flourished in the atmosphere of courts, wherein, as in a hot-house, things worth no more than weeds in nature or in their proper state, are as exotics, nursed up into such condition by prosperity, that they despise every flower or plant which grows in the open air. For who, indeed, has not known some feeble-minded man or woman whose head has been so turned by having everything he or she wanted, that either is fain to scream as at some great inhuman injustice when a miracle is not wrought in some dire need--as in the want of “diamonds like the duke’s”!’

‘Now it was in the instant when her vanity was humiliated for ever, and she realised that there was, indeed, a man who was too much for her, that Adelindè first saw herself in very truth as she was, like Hawthorne’s Man of Straw, and grasped the tremendous truth of Christian humility. Which is enough time for a great mind to be saved, just as one handful of powder will in an instant overthrow a lordly tower, while it may require a ton thereof, and a long time, to destroy a mud-bank.

‘But every mortal, be he who he may, has learned a great lesson, and taken his first step to divinity, when he has learned in very truth that he is not a god.

‘Finally, there are many who imagine that old age cannot attack a man while he has health, strength, and physical or worldly appetite. And so long as he is a brute or a fool, were it for a thousand years, he could indeed go on eating, drinking, and frolicking with his kind. But with experience there comes a soul, and to that soul in time a weariness of all that earth contains, be it what it may. Now it is a curious thing to observe that as the average growth of intellect in England has increased--I pray ye here put on your studying-caps--the average of life and the duration of vitality and intelligence has increased with it. When the great Duke of Marlborough pleaded extreme old age in asking for merciful indulgence--he was then sixty-three--no one thought it strange. ’Tis hardly worth the while to say, that now, few people would lend grace to such a plea, for life is lengthening, and ‘twill lengthen on slowly--it may be--surely, into wondrous Time.