THE DAWN

AN undefined melancholy overshadowed the world. Autumn breathed in the wind. The year, red-bosomed, was rushing to its doom.

On the summit of a wood-crowned hill, rising like a pyramid above moor and forest, stood two men silent under the shadows of an oak. In the distance glimmered the sea, and by a rock upon the hillside, armed men, a knot of spears, shone like spirit sentinels athwart the west. Mists were creeping up the valleys, as the sun went down into the sea. A few sparse stars gleamed out like souls still tortured by the mysteries of life. An inevitable pessimism seemed to challenge the universe, taking for its parable the weird afterglow of the west.

Deep in the woods a voice sang wild and solitary in the gathering gloom. Like the cry of a ghost, it seemed to set the silence quivering, the leaves quaking with windless awe. The men who looked towards the sea heard it, a song that echoed in the heart like woe.

The duke pointed into the darkening wood.

"Trust your own heart: self is the man! Through a mistaken sense of duty have you been brought nigh unto death and despair! Trust not in sophistry: the laws of men are carven upon stone, the laws of Heaven upon the heart! Be strong! From henceforth, scorn mere words! Trample tradition in the dust! Trust yourself, and the God in your heart!"

The distant voice had sunk into silence. Francesco listened for it with hands aloft.

"I must go," he said.

"Go!"—

"I must be near her through the night!"

"The moon stands full upon the hills! I will await you here!"

Dim were the woods that autumn evening, dim and deep with an ecstasy of gloom. Stars flickered in the heavens; the moon came and enveloped the trees with silver flame. A primeval calm lay heavy upon the bosom of the night. The spectral branches of the trees pointed rigid and motionless towards the sky.

Francesco had left the duke gazing out upon the shimmering sea. The voice called to him from the woods with plaintive peals of song. The man followed it, holding to a grass-grown track that curled at random into the gloom. Moonlight and shadow lay alternate upon his armor. Hope and despair battled in his face. His soul leaped voiceless and inarticulate into the darkened shrine of prayer.

The voice came to him clearer in the forest calm. The gulf had narrowed, the words flew as over the waters of Death. They were pure, yet meaningless, passionate, yet void; words barbed with an utter pathos, that silenced desire.

For an hour Francesco roamed in the woods, drawing ever nearer, the fear in him increasing with every step. Anon the voice failed him by a little stream that quivered dimly through the grass. A stillness that was ghostly held the woods. The moonlight seemed to shudder on the trees. A stupendous silence weighed upon the world.

A hollow glade opened suddenly in the woods, a white gulf in a forest gloom. Water shone there, a mere rush-ringed and full of mysterious shadows, girded by the bronzed foliage of a thousand oaks. Moss grew thick about the roots, dead leaves covered the grass.

And ever and anon a dead leaf dropped silently to earth, like a hope that has died on the Tree of Life.

Francesco knelt in a patch of bracken and looked out over the glades. A figure went to and fro by the water's brim, a figure pale in the moonlight, as the form of the restless dead. The man kneeling in the bracken pressed his hands over his breast; his face seemed to start out of the gloom as the face of one who struggles in the sea, submerged, yet desperate.

Francesco saw the woman halt beside the mere. He saw her bend, take water in her palms and dash it in her face. Standing in the moonlight, she smoothed her hair between her fingers, her hands shining white as ivory against the dark bosom of her dress. She seemed to murmur to herself the while, words wistful and full of woe. Once she thrust her hands to the sky and cried: "Francesco! Francesco!" The man kneeling in the shadows quivered like a wind-shaken reed.

The moon climbed higher and the woman by the mere spread her cloak upon a patch of heather and laid herself thereon. Not a sound broke the silence; the woods were mute, the air lifeless as the steely water. An hour passed. The figure on the heather lay still as an effigy on a tomb. The man in the bracken cast one look at the stars, then crossed himself and crept out into the moonlight.

Holding the scabbard of his sword, he skirted the mere with shimmering armor, went down upon his knees and crawled slowly over the grass. Hours seemed to elapse before the black patch of heather spread crisp and dry beneath his hands. Breathing through dilated nostrils, he trembled like one who creeps to stab a sleeping friend. The moonlight seemed to shower sparks upon him, as with supernatural glory. Tense anguish seemed to fill the night with sound.

Two more paces and he was close at the woman's side. The heather crackled beneath his knees. He held his breath, crept nearer, and knelt so near that he could have kissed Ilaria's face. Her head lay pillowed on her arm. Her hair spread as in a dusky halo beneath it. Her bosom moved with the rhythmic calm of dreamless sleep. Her lips were parted in a smile. One hand was hid in the dark folds of her robe.

Francesco knelt with upturned face, his eyes shut to the sky. He seemed like one faint with pain; his lips moved as in prayer. A hundred inarticulate pleadings surged heavenward from his heart.

Again he bent over her and watched the pure girlish face as she slept. A strange calm fell for a time upon him; his eyes never wavered from the white arm and the glimmering hair. Vast awe held him in thrall. He was as one who broods tearless and amazed over the dead, calm face of one beloved above all on earth.

Hours passed and Francesco found no sustenance, save in prayer. The unuttered yearnings of a world seemed molten in his soul. The moon waned. The stars grew dim. Strange sounds stirred in the forest-deeps; the mysterious breathing of a thousand trees. Life ebbed and flowed with the sigh of a moon-stupored sea. Visions blazed in the night-sky and faded away.

Hours passed. Neither sleeper nor watcher stirred. The night grew faint. The water flickered in the mere. The very stars seemed to gaze upon the destinies of two wearied souls.

Far and faint came the quaver of a bird's note. Gray and mysterious stood the forest spires. Light! Light at last! Spears of amber darting in the east. A shudder seemed to shake the universe. The great vault kindled. The sky grew luminous with gold.

It was the dawn.

Ilaria stirred in her sleep. Her mouth quivered, her hair stirred sudden under the heather, like tendrils of gold shivering in the sun.

Even as the light increased, Francesco knelt and looked down upon her. Hope and life, glorious, sudden, seemed to fall out of the east, a radiant faith begotten of spirit-power. Banners of gold were streaming in the sky. The gloom fled. A vast expectancy hung solemn, breathless, upon the red lips of the day.

A sigh, and the long, silken lashes quivered. The lips moved, the eyes opened.

"Ilaria! Ilaria!"

Sudden silence followed, a vast hush as of undreamed hope. The woman's eyes were silently searching the man's face. He bent and cowered over her as one who weeps. His hands touched her body, yet she did not stir.

"Ilaria! Ilaria!"

It was a hoarse, passionate outcry that broke the golden stupor of the dawn. A sudden light leaped lustrous into the woman's eyes, her face shone radiant in its etherealized beauty.

"Francesco!"

"Ah! At last!"

A great shudder passed through her body. Her eyes grew big with fear.

"Speak to me!"

"Ilaria!"

"Raniero?"

"Dead!"

A great silence held for a moment. The woman's head sank upon the man's shoulder. Madness had passed. Her eyes were fixed upon his with a wonderful earnestness, a splendid calm.

"Is this a dream?"

"It is the truth!"

Through the forest aisles rode the Duke of Spoleto.

He saw and paused.

"I return beyond the Alps to join the forces of Rudolf of Hapsburg. My men are at your disposal. I shall wait for you on yonder hillock."

He wheeled about and was gone.

Again silence held for a pace.

Presently Ilaria gave a great sigh and looked strangely at the sun.

"I have dreamed a dream," she crooned, "and all was dark and fearful. Death seemed near; lurid phantoms,—things from hell! I knew not what I did, nor where I wandered, nor what strange stupor held my soul. All my being cried out to you—yet all was dark about me, horrible midnight, peopled with foul forms! Oh, that night,—that night—"

Shivering, she covered her eyes as if trying to banish the memory.

"It has passed," she breathed after a pause, during which Francesco had taken her in his arms, kissing her eyes, her lips, and the sylph-like, flower-soft face. "I see the dawn!"

"Our dawn!"—Francesco replied, pointing to the hillock beyond.

For a time there was a great silence, as if the fates of two souls were being weighed in the scales of destiny.

It was Francesco who spoke.

"How you have suffered!"

She crept very close to him, smiling up at him with the old-time smile through tear-dimmed eyes.

"It counts for naught now! Are not you with me?"

The sky burned azure above the tree-tops. Transient sunshafts quivered through the vaulted dome of breathless leaves, as slowly Francesco and Ilaria strode towards the camp of the Duke of Spoleto on the sun-bathed hillock above the Nera.

The End.