They brought up there perforce just as overhead the hawk stooped for the third time. Twice before it had raked wide, but now a hoarse cry from the heron announced the strike almost before it could be seen, then both birds plumbed down to earth, the spread of the falcon’s great wings, steadying the fall.
One of the four grooms that followed sprang down, lure in hand, to recapture the hawk and retrieve the game.
Bellarion looked on in silence with brooding eyes, heedless of the satisfaction the Countess was expressing with almost childish delight.
“A brave kill! A brave kill!” she reiterated, and looked to him in vain for agreement. A frown descended upon the white brow of that petulant beauty, rendered by vanity too easily sensitive to disapproval and too readily resentful. Directly she challenged him. “Was it not a brave kill, Bellarion?”
He roused himself from his abstraction, and smiled a little. He found her petulance amusing ever, and commonly provoked her by the display of that amusement.
“I was thinking of another heron that almost fell a victim here.” And he told her that this was the spot on which he had met the dogs.
“So that we’re on holy ground,” said she, enough resentment abiding to provoke the sneer.
But it went unheeded. “And from that my thoughts ran on to other things.” He pointed across the river. “That way I came from Montferrat.”
“And why so gloomy about that? You’ve surely no cause to regret your coming?”
“All cause, indeed, for thankfulness. But one day I shall hope to return, and in strength enough to hood a hawk that’s stooping there.”
“That day is not yet. Besides, the sun is sinking, and we’re far from home. So if you’re at the end of your dreams we had best be moving.”
There was a tartness in her tone that did not escape him. It had been present lately whenever Montferrat was mentioned. It arose, he conceived, from some misunderstanding which he could not fathom. Either to fathom or to dispel it, he talked now as they rode, unfolding all that was in his mind, more than he knew was in his mind, until actual utterance discovered it for him.
“Are you telling me that you have left your heart in Montferrat?” she asked him.
“My heart?” He looked at her and laughed. “In a sense you may say that. I have left a tangle which I desire one day to unravel. If that is to have left my heart there …” He paused.
“A Perseus to deliver Andromeda from the dragon! A complete knight-errant aflame to ride in the service of beauty in duress! Oh, you shall yet live in an epic.”
“But why so bitter, lady?” wondered Bellarion.
“Bitter? I? I laugh, sir, that is all.”
“You laugh. And the matter is one for tears, I think.”
“The matter of your lovesickness for Valeria of Montferrat?”
“My …” He gasped and checked, and then he, who a moment ago had gently chided her for laughing, himself laughed freely.
“You are merry on a sudden, sir!”
“You paint a comic picture, dear madonna, and I must laugh. Bellarion the nameless in love with a princess! Have you discovered any other signs of madness in me?”
He was too genuinely merry for deceit, she thought, and looked at him sideways under her long lashes.
“If it is not love that moves you to these dreams, what then?”
His answer came very soberly, austerely, “Whatever it may be, love it certainly is not, unless it be love of my own self. What should I know of love? What have I to do with love?”
“There speaks the monk they almost made of you. I vow you shuddered as you spoke the word. Did the fathers teach you the monkish lie that love is to be feared?”
“Of love, madonna, they taught me nothing. But instinct teaches me to endeavour not to be grotesque. I am Bellarion the nameless, born in squalor, cradled in a kennel, reared by charity …”
“Beatific modesty. Saintly humility. Even as the dust am I, you cry, in false self-abasement that rests on pride of what you are become, of what you may yet become, pride of the fine tree grown from such mean soil. Survey yourself, Bellarion.”
“That, lady, is my constant endeavour.”
“But you bring no honesty to the task, and so your vision’s warped.”
“Should I be honest if I magnified myself in my own eyes?”
“Magnified? Why, where’s the need. Was Facino more than you are when he was your age? His birth could not have been less lowly, and he had not the half of your endowments, not your beauty, nor your learning, nor your address.”
“Lady, you will make me vain.”
“Then I shall advance your education. There is Ottone Buonterzo, who was Facino’s brother in arms. Like you he, too, was born in the mud. But he kept his gaze on the stars. Men go whither they look, Bellarion. Raise your eyes, boy.”
“And break my nose in falling over the first obstacle in my path.”
“Did they do this? Ottone is Tyrant of Parma, a sovereign prince. Facino could be the same if his heart were big enough. Yet in other things he did not want for boldness. He married me, for instance, the only daughter of the Count of Tenda, whose rank is hardly less than that of your lady of Montferrat. But perhaps she is better endowed. Perhaps she is more beautiful than I am. Is she?”
“Lady,” said Bellarion, “I have never seen anyone more beautiful than you.” The slow solemnity of his delivery magnified and transformed the meaning of his words.
A scarlet flush swept across the ivory pallor of the Countess. She veiled her eyes behind lids
