Chapter II Memories
tto found himself in a state chamber, whose gloomy vastness was lighted, or rather darkened by one single taper. Through the high oval windows in the deep recess of the wall peered an errant ray of moonlight, which illumined the quaint monastic paintings on the walls, and crossing the yellow candle-light, imbued them with a strange ghostly glare.
When his host had ministered to his comfort and served him with the frugal fare of the cloister, Otto hinted his desire for sleep, and his trusty Saxons entered on their watch before their sovereign’s chamber.
At last, left alone, Otto listened with a heavy heart to the monotonous tread of the sentries. It seemed to him as if he could now take a survey of the events of his life, and pass sentence upon it with the impartiality of the future chronicler. Recollection roused up recollection; and as in a panorama, the scenes of his short, but eventful career passed in review before his inner eye. He thought of what he was, contrasting it painfully with all he might have been. The image of the one being, for whom his soul yearned in its desolation, with the blinding hunger of man for woman and woman’s love, rose up before his eyes, and for the first time he thought of death,—death,—in its full and ghastly actuality.
What was it, this death? Was it a sleep? Merely the absence, not the privation of those powers and senses, called life? What sort of passage must the thinking particle pass through, whatever it may be,—ere it stood naked of its clay? The breaking of the eyes in darkness,—what then succeeded? Would the thinking atom survive,—would it become the nothing that it was?
The aspect of the chamber was not one to dispel the gloomy visions that haunted him. It was scantily furnished in the crude style of the tenth century, with massive tables and chairs. A curious tapestry of eastern origin, representing some legend of the martyrs, divided it from an adjoining cabinet serving at once as an oratory and sleeping apartment. A low fire, burning in the chimney to dispel the miasmas of the marshes, shed a crimson glow over the chamber and its lonely inmate.
For a long time those who watched before his door heard him walk restlessly up and down. At last weariness came over him and he threw himself exhausted into a chair. Then the haunting memory of Stephania conjured up before his half-dreaming senses an alluring, shimmering Fata Morgana—a castle on one of those far-away Apulian head-lands, with their purpling hills in the background and the scent of strange flowers in the air. On many a summer morning they should walk hand in hand through the Laburnum groves, and find their love anew. But the amber sheen of the landscape faded into the violet of night. The vision faded into nothingness. A peal of thunder reverberated through the heavens,—Otto started with a moan, rose, and staggered to his couch.
He closed his eyes; but sleep would not come.
Where was she now? Where was Stephania? Weeks had passed, since they had last met. It seemed an eternity indeed! He should have remained in Rome, till he was assured of her fate! She had left him with words of hatred, of scorn, bitter and cruel. And yet! How gladly he would have saved the man, his mortal enemy, forsooth, had it lain in his power. Gladly?—No! The man who had thrice forsworn, thrice broken his faith, deserved his doom. Now he was dead. But Rome was lost. What mattered it? There was but one devouring thought in Otto’s mind. Where was Stephania? The mad longing for her became more intense with every moment. Now that the worst had come to pass, now that the stunning blow had fallen, he must rouse himself, he must rally. He must combat this fever, which was slowly consuming him; he must find her, see her once more on earth, if but to tell her how he loved her, her and no other woman. Would the pale phantom of Crescentius still stand between them,—still part them as of yore? Not if their loves were equal. His hands were stainless of that blood. On the morrow he would despatch Haco to Rome. Surely some one would have seen her; surely some one knew where the wife of the Senator of Rome was hiding her sorrow,—her grief.
The dim light of the ceremonial lamp, which burned with a dull, veiled flame before an image of the crucified Christ, flickered, as if fanned by a passing breath.
There was deep silence in the king’s bed-chamber, and the drawn tapestry shut out every sound from without.
Noiselessly a secret panel in the wall opened behind Otto’s couch. Noiselessly it closed in the gray stone. Then an exquisite white hand and arm were thrust through the draperies and the lovely face of Stephania beamed on the sleeping youth. She was pale as death, but the transparency of her skin and the absolute perfection of her form and features made her the image of an Olympian Goddess. Her dark hair, bound by a fillet of gold, enhanced the marble pallor of the exquisite face.
Never had the wonderful eyes of Stephania seemed so full of fire and of life. Stooping over the sleeper, she softly encircled his head with her snowy arms and pressed a long kiss on the dry, fevered lips.
With a moan Otto opened his eyes. For a moment he stared as if he faced an apparition from dream-land.—His breath stopped, then he uttered a choked outcry of delirious joy, while his arms tightly encircled the head which bent over him.
“At last! At last! At last! Oh, how I have longed, how I have pined for you! Stephania—my darling—my love—tell me that you do not hate me—but is it you indeed,—is it you? How did you come here—the guards,—Eckhardt,—”
He paused with a terrible fear in his heart, ever and ever caressing the dark head, the beloved face, whose eyes held his own with their magnetic spell. She suffered his kisses and caresses while stroking his damp brow with soothing hand. Then with a grave look she enjoined silence and caution, crept to the door of the adjoining room and locked it from within.
“They guard you so well, not a ghost could enter,” she said with the sweet smile of by-gone days.
He arose and drew the curtains closer. Then he sat down by her side.
“How came you here, Stephania?” he whispered with renewed fear and dread. “If you are discovered,—God have mercy on you,—and me!”
She shook her head.
“I have followed you hither from Rome,—I passed you on the night of your flight. Count Tammus, the commander of Paterno, at one time the friend of the Senator of Rome, has offered me the hospitality of the castelio. No one knows of my presence here, save an old monk, who believes me some itinerant pilgrim, in search of the End of Time,” she whispered with her far-away look. “The End of Time.”
“They say it is close at hand,” Otto replied, holding her hands tightly in his. “Oh, Stephania, how beautiful you are! That which has broken my spirit, seems not to have touched your life!”
“My life is dead,” she replied. “What remains,—remains through you. Therefore time has lacked power. But that which has been and is no more, stands immovable before my soul.”
He gazed at her with large fear-struck eyes.
“Then—your heart is no longer mine?”
The grasp of the hands in his own tightened.
“Would I be here, silly dreamer? I love you—my heart knows no change. It loved but once—and you!”
All the happiness, slumbering in the deep eyes of the son of Theophano, burst forth as in a glorious aureole of light.
“Then you have never—”
She raised her hand forbiddingly.
“I could not give to him who is gone that which I gave to you! When we first met I was your foe. I hated you with all the hate which a Roman has for the despoiler of his lands. When I gave you my love,—which, alas, was not mine to give, I did so, a powerless instrument of Fate. Side by side have we trod life’s narrow path,—neither of us could turn to right or left without standing accounted to the other. It was not ours to say love this one or that other. We were brought together by that same mysterious force, to which it is vain to cry halt. We knew,—I knew,—that it must, sooner or later, carry us to doom and death; but resistlessly the whirlwind had taken us up in its glistening cloud: Thus are we lost;—you and I!”
He listened to her with a great fear in his soul.
“How cold your hands are, my love,” he whispered. “Cold as if the flow of blood had ceased. Can you feel how it rushes through my veins,—so hot—so boiling hot?”
“You have the fever! Therefore my hands appear cold to you. But,—you spoke truly,—in my hand is death,—and death is cold! Life I have none,—you have taken it from me!”
“Stephania!”
It sounded like the last outcry of a broken heart.
“Why recall that which could not be averted? Were it mine to change it, oh, that I could!”
“Do you really wish it?”
“I wish but your happiness. Can you doubt?”
“I do not doubt. I love you!”
“Stephania—my darling,—my all!”
And he kissed her eyes, her lips, her hair, and she suffered his caresses as one wrapt in a blissful dream.
“I learned you were stricken with the fever,—the last defence left to us by nature against our foes. I have come, to watch over you, to care for you,—to nurse you back to health,—to life—”
“And you braved the dangers that beset your path on every turn?”
“How should I fear,—with such love in my heart for you!”
“Then you—will remain?” he whispered, his very life in his eyes.
“For a time,” she answered, in a halting tone, which passed not unremarked.
“And then?” he queried.
Her head sank.
“I know not!”
“Then I will tell you, my own love! We will return to Rome together, you and I; Stephania, the empress of the West,—would not that reconcile your Romans,—appease their hate?”
Stephania gazed for a moment thoughtfully at Otto, then she shook her head.
“I fear,” she replied after a pause, “we shall nevermore return to Rome.”
As she spoke, her soft fingers stroked caressingly the youth’s head, which rested on her bosom, while her right hand remained tightly clasped in his.
“I do not understand you,” he said with a pained look.
“Do not let us speak of it now,” she replied. “You are ill;—the fever burns in your blood. It likes you well, this Roman fever,—and yet you persist in returning hither ever and ever,—as to your destiny—”
“You are my destiny, Stephania! I cannot live without you! Had you not come, I should have died! God, you cannot know how I love you, how I worship you, how I worship the very air you breathe. Stephania! On that terrible, never-to-be-forgotten day, when your words planted death in my heart, he, who of all my Saxons hates you with a hatred strong and enduring as death, warned me of you! ‘Must you love a Roman,’ he said to me—’and of all Romans, Stephania, the wife of the Senator? Once in the toils of the Sorceress, you are lost! Nothing can save you.’—Can I say to my heart, you shall love this one,—or you shall not love this one? Shall I say to my soul, you shall harbour the image of this one, but that other shall be to you even as a barred Eden, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword? I have seen the maidens of my native land; I have seen the women of Rome;—but my heart was never touched until we met. My soul leaped forth to meet your own, when first we stood face to face in the chapel of the Confessor. Stephania,—my love for you is so great that I fear you.”
“And why should you fear me? Were I here, did I not love you?”
“My life has been a wondrous one,” he spoke after a pause. “From dazzling sun-kissed heights I have been hurled into the blackest abyss of despair. And what is my crime? Wherein have I sinned? I have loved a woman,—a woman wondrous fair,—Stephania!”
“You have loved the wife of the Senator of Rome!”
His eyes drooped. For a time neither spoke.
“Thrice have I crossed the Alps, to see, to rule this fabled land,—and now I want but rest,—peace,—Stephania—” he said with a heart-breaking smile.
“You are tired, my love,” replied the beautiful Roman. “From this hour, I shall be your leech,—I shall be with you, to share your solitude,—to watch over you till the dread fever is broken. And then—”
“And then?” he repeated with anxious look.
“But will you not weary of me?” she said, avoiding the question.
He drew her close to him.
“My sweetheart—-my own—”
“And you will not fear, you will trust and obey me?”
“Were you to give me poison with your own hands, I would drain the goblet without fear or doubt.”
Stephania had arisen. She was pale as death.
“If love were all!” she muttered. “If love were all!”
Then she drew the curtains closer and extinguished the light.