“Then to my home,” said he.
And at these words she smiled, for they came to her thoughts like lights to a dark chamber. The past was all gone, but there was still the future. She let him guide her whither he would; and he made a wide circle about Aragona, and then walked towards his home. The sunset faded and a star came out, and peered at them; others stole out and watched them, and still they strode on swiftly through the night.
Anemone spoke little, for she was troubled about the future. What if it should crumble like the past? What if the parents of this splendid young man should refuse to receive one whose natal house was mouldering walls under a sagging roof that was more moss than thatch, upon which oats were growing.
Only once she spoke of this on their walk through the dark. But he, thinking yet of Gulvarez, answered so certainly that his father would receive her that she feared so great assurance to be unreasoning; for she knew nothing of the mean gross man that the Lord of the Tower was to receive as a son-in-law.
The stars that had come out earliest beckoned quietly to others as soon as they saw that pair, and the others came up hastily, and all that peering multitude all night long saw Ramon Alonzo and Anemone walking, till the lustre went out of their watching and they all faded away.
In the paleness of morning the young man saw his home lifting a gable above the dark of the forest. He did not tell Anemone what it was, for there was a certain spot from which he wished her to see it first, because from there he believed that the Tower looked fairest. But he told her that they were very near his home, for he saw that she was weary. Before they came to that spot from which he wished her to see the Tower, they saw a man coming towards them. It was too far to see his face; yet at the first glance Ramon Alonzo thought of Peter, though it was not ever his wont to be up so early and he had no cause to be going by that road. Then he watched awhile to see who it could be. Peter it was. And with a letter for Ramon Alonzo that his father had written overnight.
“I started full early,” said Peter.
Ramon Alonzo took the letter, while Peter’s eyes drank in the sight of his young master; then he looked at Anemone and saw how it was, and said nothing.
“My lady,” said Ramon Alonzo to Peter, looking up from his letter.
And Peter went down on one knee in the road and kissed Anemone’s hand. And this first greeting that she had from the Tower, an omen full of good fortune, heartened Anemone for a fleeting instant. Then she turned to Ramon Alonzo, and saw him reading the letter with great astonishment. At first the news, however strange, seemed good: she could not read the parchment, yet this she read clear in the face of Ramon Alonzo. But then the tenor of the letter changed, and she saw him read the end with troubled anxiety.
XXVIII
Gonsalvo Sings What Had Been the Latest Air from Provence
Thus it came about that the Lord of the Tower sent again for Father Joseph, and bade him write him a letter; and the letter was folded and sealed and given to Peter to bear to Ramon Alonzo at the magical house in the wood.
On the day that Father Joseph had left the Tower to go to his own small house the Duke lay in his bed all day very restless. It was the third day of his strange illness. Whenever a step was heard outside his room he watched his door with a fierceness alight in his eyes which only faded from them when he saw Mirandola. He seldom spoke to her, but he could not curse her; he accepted the food that she brought him, and none else ventured near him. And so that day went by and the evening came, and Gulvarez in the room where the boar-spears hung took an old guitar of his host’s, that years and years ago Gonsalvo had played; and striking up a tune Gulvarez sang. And the tune was one that so long haunted valleys of Andalusian hills that none knew who first sang it or whence it came. It was a common love-song of the South. The words were vague, and varied in different villages, so that a lover had wide choice how he would sing the song. Gulvarez sang it with a heavy feeling, looking towards Mirandola and singing all the tenderer lines the loudest. When he had finished his hostess thanked him, and Gonsalvo began to tell of old songs that he too had known, but his lady checked him that Mirandola might speak; and they both sat silent, waiting for their daughter to thank Gulvarez.
Then Mirandola said: “ ’Tis a pleasant song. I pray the Saints that the Duke hear it not.”
She said it with such an awe that alarm touched Gulvarez.
“The Duke?” he stuttered.
“Yes, I pray he hear not,” she said. “For he hath a most strange fury, and small sounds trouble it much. I fear lest he should rise from his bed and slay you.”
And she listened, even as she spoke, to hear if the Duke were stirring. And Gulvarez grew red and said: “Not at all,” and “By no means”; and the Lady of the Tower said “Mirandola!” and the Lord of the Tower knew not what to say.
And a silence fell and Gulvarez still glowed red, like a misty autumnal sun in a still evening. And only Mirandola was quite at ease.
At last to break that silence Gonsalvo sang a merry love-song that in his own young days was newly come from Provence. Only those had known it then who kept an
