THE LADY OF SHADOWS

IT was early on the following day when Francesco took the direction of the palace. The city appeared gay and bright; the beautiful isles of Ischia and Capri, like twin outposts guarding an earthly paradise. He had arrived at the hour of dusk, which had soon faded into the swift southern night, and much of the magic of the scene had thus been veiled before his gaze. Now he saw and marvelled.

All around stretched the bay in its azure immensity, its sweeping curves bounded on the left by the rocky Sorrentine promontory, with Sorrento, Meta and a cluster of little fishing villages, nestling on the olive-clad precipices, half hidden by orange groves and vineyards and the majestic form of Monte Angelo towering above. Farther along the coast rose Vesuvius, the tutelary genius of the scene, its vine-clad lower slopes presenting a startling contrast to the dark smoke-wreathed cone of the mountain. On the right the graceful undulations of the Camaldoli hills descended to the beautifully indented bay of Putcoli, while Naples herself, with Portici and Torre del Greco, reposed as a marble quarry between the blue waters of the bay. Beyond, in the far background, the view was shut in by a phantom range of snowy peaks, an offshoot of the Abruzzi mountains, faintly discerned in the purple haze of the horizon.

As Francesco strode along his wonder increased step by step. He seemed to have invaded the realms of the sun, who sent his unrelenting light rays down upon glistening pavements composed of lava, reflecting the beams with all the brilliancy of mosaic. Notwithstanding the glare of August, balconies, casements, terraces and galleries were enlivened by a gay and merry crowd. The gloomy fronts of marble and granite had disappeared under silken hangings and garlands of flowers. Everywhere there was joy and gladness, and the bells from Santa Chiara rang as joyously over the city and gulf as if the papal Inderdict held no terrors for these children of an azure sky.

The situation was nevertheless acute. A Clementine court and a Ghibelline populace, who defied alike the Pontiff and their self-imposed ruler. Excommunication was hanging black over the leaders of this movement; the court was in evil moral repute, and it was difficult to foresee whither matters were drifting under these sun-fraught, cloudless skies.

Francesco requested and obtained immediate audience of the Duke of Lerma, Anjou's representative in the kingdom of Sicily. The interview being terminated, and his duties outlined, he strode out into the palace gardens, which sloped in picturesque terraces down towards the bay.

With fevered pulses he leaned against the parapet of the broad stone wall which encircled the gardens, his eyes resting on the enchanted landscape, the clustered towers of Naples, beyond which rose the smoke-wreathed cone of Vesuvius. Thence his gaze wandered to the sea, which glowed from rose to violet and sapphire, all melting into unity of lapis lazuli, and finally down into the Parthenopean fields, where the atmosphere heaved with the pulsing intensity of high noon.

On all sides the spell of CircÉ enfolded him triumphantly. Truly, here all painful broodings might be forgotten, where thought and sight were alike suffused with the radiance of sea and sky. It was a place of dawns and sunsets, of lights rising amber in the East over purple hills and amethystine waters; of magic glows at evening in the west with cypresses and yews carven in ebony against primrose skies, while the terraces blazed with flower-filled urns, and roses overspread the balustrade with crimson flame.

How vivid the life of the past weeks stood out before Francesco's eyes, a life crowned by the memory of his arrival in this Siren City, and his strange meeting with Ilaria. It seemed like a mocking dream; yet, the pain in his heart informed him, it was true!

How long he had stood there, he did not know, when he suddenly gave a start.

An opening door,—a light foot-fall—he stood face to face with Ilaria.

She paused; stately, unsmiling, reserved. A white silence seemed to enfold her as their eyes met.

"There is some error," she said, with a retrograde movement. "I will withdraw—"

"There is no error!" the words leaped from Francesco's lips. "Or perchance there is! Well,—is it true?"

The words were uttered almost brutally.

"I do not understand!" she replied icily.

"Why are you at Naples?"

His face was a mere whiteness amid shadows.

"Why are you here?" she replied, straightening with a sharp lifting of the head.

"Perhaps I am here to spy on you!"

"The office does you honor! First, a traitor—then, a spy—"

Her words were fierce and bitter.

"What are you saying?" he flashed. "Betrayal is not man's prerogative alone!"

She shuddered. His words bit brutally into the truth. For a moment she stood rigid, searching his eyes and the very depths of his soul.

And so, for a brief space, they faced each other in silence. Francesco acknowledged anew, and with a mortal pang, that here was a woman for whom a man might give his life and count it naught. A woman to gain whose love, a man might sell his soul. Ilaria had come into her own, as never in her earlier youth. Like all great beauty, hers was serious. It had acquired a touch of majesty and mystery, a depth of intensity and significance.

"Is Raniero at Naples?" Francesco spoke at last.

She faced him defiantly, as if resenting his attitude.

"I knew not you were concerned in your former rival!"

Her utterance seemed part of the incomprehensible cruelty of life. His face was hard and white as he regarded her.

"Perchance my concern is all for my present one!"

"I do not understand—" she faltered, her hands over her bosom. Yet her tone had lost its defiant ring.

As in mute questioning her eyes were on his face.

"As I passed down the Via Forinara last night, I passed a woman and a man. The woman was garbed in crimson, and there was no sign of recognition in her eyes. The woman I knew. Who was the man?"

Ilaria's face was very pale.

"What is he to you,—the monk?"

He came a step nearer.

"Who was the man?"

She gave a little nervous laugh.

"Stefano Maconi,—one of the nobles of the court!" she said, with a drooping of the head. Then with a quick touch of resentment: "Have you heard the name before?"

Francesco ignored the irony of her tones.

"What is he to you?" he queried sternly. His face looked pale and drawn, his eyes shone with an almost supernatural lustre.

"Really," she squirmed, "I knew not that I stood in need of a confessor. I have one already,—and I do not intend to supplant him with another!"

"You have not answered my question!" he insisted. "To the office of your confessor I do not aspire. I am not suited for that exalted position!"

There was something in his eyes that frightened her.

"And why?"—she faltered.

"I should not prove so passive a listener!"

For a moment she faced him in silence. Then, with a sudden return of her old hauteur, she flashed:

"Of what do you accuse me?"

He did not speak. But the look he gave her sent the hot blood curdling to her cheeks; ebbing back, it left them paler than before.

"You have not answered my question!" he said at last.

She lifted heavy lids and eyed him wondering, as one waking from a dream.

"What do you want of me?"

"What is Stefano Maconi to you?" he queried more fiercely, grasping her wrists, and compelling her to raise her eyes to his.

"Stefano Maconi is nothing to me!" she replied hoarsely.

Never had he spoken thus to her. As their eyes met, she noted that he had changed. With a quick pang she saw how thin and haggard he had grown.

"Is this the truth?" Gropingly her hands went out to him, her witch-like eyes held his own and like the cry of a tortured soul it came from her lips:

"It is the truth!"

Her voice died in a sob; her whole body was shaken with convulsive tremors, when she found herself caught up in his arms.

For a moment she abandoned herself wholly to his embrace, while terms of endearment fell deliriously from his lips. Again and again he kissed the pale lips, the eyes of the woman he loved better than life.

How long, it seemed to Ilaria, since she had leaned over the parapets of Avellino, had watched the sunset light fade into the night! And one night of all, how slowly the moon had risen! How white the magnolias had shimmered, while the distant Liris sang his slumber song! How the red roses burned in the moonlight, as she stole down the path to meet him!

How long ago was it? Now, she could remember every detail of that night; how she started when a sleeping bird uttered a dream note among the leafy boughs, how she listened to her own heart-beats, how she found herself caught up in Francesco's arms.

All her youth, all her days had been poisoned by the thought of what she had done. Resolutely, day after day, month after month, had she fought against the demon of remorse. She had shut eyes and ears to the haunting spectre of the past. And now, steadily, pitilessly, she went back, step for step, through the hell of her past life, the mockery that was bitterer than death, the horror of loneliness, the slow, grinding, relentless agony of her nights and days.

The crowding phantoms of the past would not release her from their shadowy grip. Why had he again come into her life? Why had he again crossed her path?

Staggering, he released her at last, took a backward step and covered his face with his hands.

"I have tried not to lay hands on a thing that it is not mine to touch."

She pointed to his garb. A wondering look passed into her eyes.

At first he noted it not, in the thrall of his own emotions. Then, as she touched him lightly upon the arm, he understood.

"I am here, the legate of Clement, carrying the Interdict, unless Naples acknowledges the supremacy of the Church! For this I have laid aside the cowl!"

Ilaria shivered. He was still a monk,—after all.

There was nothing she could do to help him. That was the bitterest thing of all!

Silence seemed to bind the world into a golden swoon.

"Francesco," she cried, almost with a sob.

He came nearer and took her hands again.

"Let us go down among the terraces!" she said in a whisper. "Let us forget the loud, insistent clamor of the world. Let us be quite still,—as if we were among the poppy-flowers!"

By some strange echoing of the mind the idyls of past days woke like the songs of birds after a storm of rain. Her whole soul yearned out with a wistfulness borne of infinite regret.

Silently they walked down the flower-bordered path.

The panorama from the spot was enchanting. Far below lay the blue waters of the bay; out to seaward lay ancient Baiae with her thousand palaces and the forest of masts at Puteoli; beyond these Sorento and the shimmering islands, bathed by the boundless sea. The vaporous cloud from Vesuvius hung like a cone of snow in the still blue atmosphere.

The foreground was no less enchanting. All round the pavilion lay a verdant, luxuriant wilderness. The mysterious silence of noon brooded over the whole landscape; only a faint hum of life came up from the city. All else was still. Not a living creature seemed to breathe within ear-shot.

He led her to where a fountain plashed in the sun and stone steps ringed a quiet pool.

In the silence she bent over him, her hand on his dark hair.

The tonsure burned her fingers like living fire.

"Why have you done this thing?"

He felt the scorn in her voice; he felt the swift repellence of her body.

Francesco raised his face to that of the woman. It was very pale from the fierceness of the struggle to keep down even the suspicion of emotional sentimentality.

"You ask why I have done this thing?" he spoke dryly at last. "The hour has come when I must tell you, Ilaria! Not that it can steer the vessel of our lives into different channels,—but that at last I may stand vindicated in your sight. I am the son of Gregorio Villani, Grand Master of the Order of St. John. My mother died at my birth. I was raised at the Court of Avellino. So powerful was the influence of my father, that, notwithstanding the protests of the Holy See, he placed his offspring at a Ghibelline court. There came a day when I was summoned to the bedside of my father at San Cataldo. What passed between us during that interview, neither you nor any one on earth may know. I went into his room a happy, care-free youth. I came out the shadow of my former self,—a monk. One year I lived among shadows in the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino. There I took the vows which made me a prisoner, far more closely bound than you can know; for death alone shall release me from a life which has grown to be a torture. I became a monk half from pity, half from fear. The pity is almost gone; the fear has left me long ago. After a time I was called to Rome. The Church I love not! I am unfit to remain in her service. The monks are to me a hateful body. Willingly, gladly, would I see my scapular replaced by the tunic for my coffin. Yet death is not for me to hope for, or even to dream of,—and in vain I ask, what holds the future?"

Ilaria's head had drooped over his; her eyes wandered blindly over the ground. Then a warm drop fell to the stone at her feet.

During his recital the very soul in Francesco seemed to have withered with dread, and he seemed to shrivel up bodily and to grow feeble and old and wilted, as a leaf that the frost has touched.

"The memory pains you," she said at last.

He bit his lips.

"Deem you, I forget when I am silent? But it is not the thing itself that haunts me! It is the fact that I have lost the power over myself—"

"You have suffered—"

"It is the fact that I have come to the end of my courage,—to the point where I find myself a coward!"

"Surely there is a limit to what one may bear—"

"And he who has once reached that limit never knows when he may reach it again!"

He looked up with a sudden piteous catching of the breath.

"What will you do?" she spoke after a pause.

He held her hands in a close, passionate clasp. A silence that seemed to have no end had fallen about them.

"My allotted task," he said at last, in a voice more dead than alive.

"No,—no,—no—!" she started up suddenly. "Cannot you see,—will you never understand—oh! the bitterness, the misery of it all!"

She clung to him with all her might.

"Come away with me! What have you to do with this dead world of priests and monks! They are full of the dust of bygone ages! Come out of this plague-ridden Church,—come with me into the sunlight! I love you—I have always loved you,—always—"

She bent blindly towards him.

"Take me away from here,—Francesco,—take me away from here! Since I came here my feet seem to have grown heavy with this lotus-laden air. At times it sweeps over me like desperation,—I lose the faculty of thinking, I lose the power over myself!"

"I thought you were at Astura!" he said tentatively, the affair in the Red Tower flashing through his consciousness.

She gave a quick start.

"I am a woman, and I stand alone! I have lived in hell ever since I set foot in Astura. Almost have I lost the courage to look life in the face. How I have wanted you!" she continued, with a wan, wistful smile. "Ever I see you standing against the background of a great silence, a silence that engulfs, that maddens, that kills! And you will go from me, leave me a prey to this gray, suffocating loneliness, which hovers as a pall over my soul! I am nothing to Raniero! He seeks his pleasures elsewhere! The lure of the body drove him to me,—it has vanished,—thank God even for that! I should die in his embrace. He knows that I loathe him, that my soul spurns him! And he knows that I love you! Yet, though he has forfeited every right, human and divine, he grudges my love to another. For days and days he left me alone within the gray walls of Astura, until in a fit of desperation I left one night, and came here, to forget. His insults began in Rome. He went so far as to bring his mistress to the Frangipani palace. I have heard it whispered there is a curse on Astura. 'Astura—mala terra,—maledetta!' A beggar uttered these words, whom Raniero struck for obstructing his path, on the day when we arrived!"

A sudden blood-red cloud seemed to come before Francesco's eyes. With a voice bare of intonation, he recited his own adventure in the Red Tower, voicing his suspicions and fears.

Ilaria betrayed no surprise.

"He has never forgiven FontÉ Gaia," she said, with drooping head. "And yet he was untrue to me even then! From that hour matters began to grow worse. Recklessly he cast the last semblance of decorum to the winds. When I protested against living under the same roof with his mistress, he smilingly brought me to Astura, leaving me, as he said, in undisturbed possession. My youth destroyed, my soul poisoned, I accepted my fate! I am the lady of the Frangipani! Sold, and bought, and paid for!"

Ilaria had made mere truth of the matter, neither justifying nor embellishing. Her clear, bleak words were the more pathetic for their very simpleness.

With a great cry, he took her in his arms, kissed her dusky tresses, kissed her flower-soft face. The dimmed sunlight, falling in upon them, enveloped them as with a halo.

"And you are happy here?" he spoke at last.

She gave a shrug.

"Here as elsewhere it is a phantom scene," she said, with her wan smile. "But if the fellowship of phantoms be ordained, it is well that they be like those of Naples, radiant."

"Am I too, then, a phantom like the rest?"

Like an echo a voice said:

"A phantom—like the rest."

"And is he—a phantom too?"

She looked up into his eyes.

"Raniero—"

"That other—"

Her face was very pale.

"Why do you dwell on him?"

"Are you not Queen of Phantoms,—Proserpina,—Lady of Shadows, you—as in the masque at Avellino?"

She shivered in his arms. He pressed her more closely to his heart.

"It was a long time ago!"

"And then as now you moved in a masque, in which I have no part."

A long silence enfolded them. She nestled close to him.

"I am tired,—very tired," she crooned, as a child about to fall asleep. "Francesco, help me to forget the years! I am afraid!"

"Afraid?"

"Of myself! Sometimes I dare not be alone at night! No,—no,—it is not that! The inner darkness! There is no weeping there,—only silence,—silence,—and the gathering gloom!"

She held his hands in her own.

"But for this," she cried with passionate pressure, "I should long have cursed God and died—"

Her voice died away in the empty stillness without response.

"It is peace I crave," she said wearily, "a peace, such as broods over a sunset world!"

"The peace of a dying day!" he replied. "The peace I seek is of a day that stoops not to evening."

"And this peace,—have you found it?"

Her eyes were fixed gravely on his own.

"I am as one who gropes in twilight by a path half seen, towards a goal he does not know. Not for me the peace of the goal! But there is peace also of the quest: a peace I would not forego!"

They had arisen and walked for a time in silence, seeking the remoter regions of the garden. The softened siesta lights gave to the distant hills an aspect of pearl and jasper.

It was drawing towards sunset; red banners streaked the amethyst of the western sky.

A saffron mist enveloped the curves of Vesuvius, shot with gold and crimson, merging in dusky purple. In the plains the fertile fields reclaimed round the base of CastiglionÉ gleamed russet with vines, gray with olives. Beyond the grim walls of distant Astura stretched the chalk-lands of Torre del Greco.

As they walked side by side, Francesco felt the rhythmic life in Dana's body. The wan, appealing face was close to his. An instant, and the passion of the sky leaped into it. Theirs was the calm of a still pool, which hovers till the wind breaks it into the myriad agitations of life. He drew her towards him; her head resting on his shoulder, as if there she had found a home.

The evening star shone out in the fading sky.

The dusk was travelling towards the night.

Creation shivered towards a deeper dream.

The summer moon had risen, shedding its magic light over the Gulf of Naples.

The very soul of Francesco was thrilled by the harmony around him; the harmony in the moon's golden trail, which fell upon the waters, a blazing path, reaching from Posilippo to the rim of the horizon, harmony in the soft murmur of the sea, and the light breeze which carried, together with the salt freshness of the sea-air, sweet perfumes from the shores of Sorento with their lemon and orange groves; harmony in the silvery curves of Vesuvius, wrapped in luminous mists, its rugged cone emitting a white smoke, which trailed along the upper zones of the air, the summit of the mountain flaring up from time to time, like dying embers consecrated to the gods, the gods who had died, had risen again, and had again expired.

"How wondrous lovely the night!" Francesco at last turned to his silent companion. "All nature seems as one magic blossom—"

"My blossom-season is past," she answered very lightly.

"It is always blossom-season where Proserpina treads," said Francesco, his eyes fixed on the face he loved so well.

"You look almost as you did, when we were both happy."

"Is it so long ago? Yes, I am old, Ilaria. Our youth seems far, far away!"

"Perhaps I too am not old enough, to be young! Our youth—" she paused with a sob.

Francesco gazed at her solicitously.

"Even here?"

She gave him a wan, small smile.

"Just now, one might forget!"

"It is a great art, to forget," said Francesco tenderly. "You need it, Ilaria! What sufferings have been yours!"

She returned his look.

He understood.

Ilaria saw the pain written on his brow, as he looked at her with tenderness undisguised. She felt his spirit lying openly before her, as when they were both at the Court of Avellino.

"From the look on your forehead," she said softly, "you have lived long in your cell, since last we met! So it was meant, I think, from the beginning!"

"Assuredly so it was meant," he replied. "But I am very sorrowful, for I see not what was meant for you!"

She smiled at him, as if to reassure.

"If Fate has guided my life ill, not yours the fault," she said soothingly.

In her, reserve still obtained, yet without a trace of her late perplexing defiance. Asperity had given way to a great gentleness.

"Yet," Francesco hesitated,—"I am tormented by one thought: that for you it had perchance been better, if—"

He paused with drooping eyes, then continued:

"I could not profit by the dispensation of Clement and remain a true man. But you—" and again he paused.

A flash of her old-time perverseness lighted up Ilaria's sad eyes.

"Why pause?" she asked, arching her brow. "You mean that which is moral disaster for one, might be salvation for the other? And that, since my salvation should be dearer to you than your own—"

She broke out into quizzical mirth. But she was swiftly grave again, though tremulous.

"I, too, have lost myself in the quest of happiness," she said, clasping and unclasping her white fingers. "Dread and desire have beaten me hither and thither! Great waves have tossed me! On the very day of your departure from Avellino the Viceroy asked me whom I would wed! Your name leaped to my lips. I told him I would have none other. Even as I spoke the dread seized me! I said to myself: this thing can never be! Then you went away—and I was engulfed in darkness. When we met at Rome I realized what I had done! Yet in the very effort to keep you far, I drew you near! Thus Fate had willed it! When we met at FontÉ Gaia, I knew what in one sunset of Avellino I had merely dreamed: my love for you lived—in all my life the one abiding light. Longing and horror racked me! She is cold, and foul, and false, that White Lady—and the gifts she offers turn to poison in the grasp. But it was that other who conquered,—your White Lady,—not mine! She was ever a generous enemy, and in taking you from me, she has given me back my love!"

She had been looking at him with wide piteous eyes, even as a child might do. On a sudden she covered her face, dropped into a seat among the bays and myrtles, and broke into wild weeping.

The strong sense of bondage came back with a fuller force as though to menace her with the fateful realism of her lot. A hand seemed to sweep down and wave her back with a meaning so sinister that she had the feeling of standing on the brink of a mysterious sea, whose waves sang to her a song of peril, of misery and desire in the dim green twilight of some coral dungeon. The lure of the unknown beat upon her eyes, while love and hate, like attendant spirits, beckoned her onward with a weird, perpetual clamor.

Francesco tried in vain to soothe her, calling her by all the endearing names of the past, and pressing her closely to his heart.

"I do not understand," she cried, sobbing convulsively. "I have wished no one ill! Ever have I desired only fairness and love, and fullness of sweet life. And the beauty I seek is befouled by my seeking, my love has stained my beloved; and when I clutch at life, life crumbles within my grasp. Wherein has my quest been wrong?"

"Not wrong," he said unsteadily—"not wrong,—I trust!"

She looked at him bewildered.

"I, too, would turn from that agonizing God upon the Cross to paths where roses bloom," Francesco replied, heavy-hearted. "I have been walking amid shadows, and I have lost the way."

She caught at his hand and drew it piteously to her lips, but made no attempt to retain it.

"I am that Proserpina who has lost the spring," she said, raising her haunting eyes to his. "Yet one comfort is left me still,—one stay, that shall not fail!"

"And that?"

There was a strange expression about her face, but she was silent.

A shudder seized him with the swift suspicion of her meaning.

"You shall not!" he cried almost roughly. "You shall not! I, too,—did I give way to that fierce longing,—you shall not yield to that crawling weakness!"

But Ilaria interrupted him.

"Oh! my dear, I meant not that!" she said. "Of weakness I might reck little, of the hurt to you I should reck much. There is that in my heart for you which shall keep me safe henceforth from what would grieve you!"

"What is it then?" he asked relieved. "The comfort,—the stay,—of which you spoke?"

She smiled through her tears; the old-time smile.

"I do not see your life," he said anxiously. "What is it—what shall it be? Till that be known to me, Ilaria, I shall not know rest or peace. You are beautiful,—too beautiful for this licentious court! Here you cannot remain—alone!"

"I fear the twilight," she said, with a shudder. "There is but one goal for me, and, when the hour comes, you shall lead me there. Proserpina will turn Lady of Shadows in very truth, and move veiled through her rose garden."

"But why must this thing be?" he queried with a choking sensation. "I, too, have sinned—"

"Of sin I know nothing," said Ilaria mournfully, "I apprehend neither the word, nor the thing!"

"Then why this last extremity?"

"Will you not understand?" she interposed petulantly. "Your presence here has shown me once for all that I may not continue to walk in the old way; I may not walk in yours, and I would not have you walk in mine! You wavered towards it of late! Once upon a time I should have rejoiced; now my spirit is full of fear."

She crept close to him and looked up at him with tremulous lids.

He caught her to him with all the old-time love in his eyes. All fears, all misgivings, all doubts of the woman he loved, were utterly blotted out in their embrace, and over Ilaria's features there flitted the gleam of a long forgotten happiness.

Her look was far away. Of a sudden she turned to Francesco.

"Will you remain at Naples?"

He gave a shrug.

"Days—weeks—who can tell? A Ghibelline victory may turn the tide."

"I have something to say to you," she said, her face very close to his. "I have long wished to say it: beware of Raniero!"