And honoured for my queene;
With thee I meane to lead my life,
As shortly shall be seene.\'"
Far away in an interminable vista of rock and forest, which lay behind the King\'s hunting-tower, like the littered ruins of a world, stretched out the wilderness. Silent lay the piles of desolation, rank after rank, and voiceless save for the tales which none could understand of the ages that were gone. And wildest of all, and more silent and full of inarticulate eloquence, was the rift where the Ca?on of the Hermits split the waste in two.
Deep into the bowels of the stony land a soft, little, laughing river had licked its way; and now in a cool channel, flanked with perpendicular walls, it ran on, hundreds of feet below the level of the wilderness, and seemed to rejoice to think how unenduring beside itself was the everlasting rock.
Once or twice in a century a man might find the spot as he followed a trail or sought the riches that lay hidden in the hills. And[Pg 276] there, as he stood upon the brink of that Titanic trench, he could not but feel the overpowering presence of the ages which were young when the foundations of the world were laid. He could not but feel, when he listened to the river far below, singing over its never-ending task, what a paltry scratching was the greatest work a man could do between the cradle and the grave.
Perhaps it was this that made the hermits choose it for a resting-place, and its utter solitude as well. Whatever was the cause, here they had settled, where the perpendicular walls were grimmest and highest; and here, far up in the face of the gaunt cliffs, they had hewn out caves to dwell in. Visibly there was no approach to them; but he who found his way to the little meadows at the foot, and pierced the luxuriant shrubs, that from which the mighty ramparts sprung, would have discovered on either hand a larger cave, which served at once as entrance-hall and corral to the monastery. From the inmost recess of these a rude spiral stair, cut in the solid rock, led upwards to a maze of crooked and inclined galleries communicating with the cells.
Strange as was the hermitage, the hermits were stranger still. Their order was probably without parallel in the history of Christian monasticism. For here in each cell lived monk and nun as man and wife.
[Pg 277]
The origin of the order was lost in obscurity and unknown. The literature on the subject was consequently prodigious. It is hardly too much to say that Oneirian arch?ology lived on it. The accessible data were, however, confined to two rubbings of symbols, said to be carved on the walls of all the cells. The younger members of the Royal Society were prepared to prove from these that the order was Pagan in its origin, and, further, that it was the original unreformed Oriental predecessor of the Eleusinian mysteries. Smart scientific and literary society took this view to a man; but plain people, such as local antiquaries, believed it to be a very ancient heresy of the Carthaginian Church. Both, perhaps, were right. The gloomy pessimism of African Christianity took many fantastic forms; and this, the most fantastic of all, may well have been a Montanist modification of some pre-existing Pagan brotherhood.
At any rate, it is certain that the order was in existence when Kophetua\'s ancestor founded his colony. At that time it was an isolated print of the Cross in a waste of heathendom; and, as soon as it was discovered, the old knight took it under his protection. He found a place for it in his absorptive community, along with all the other ruins of peoples and social systems with which the country was littered. He affiliated it to his beggar-guild. The order[Pg 278] was thereafter regularly subsidised; the hermits were registered; and, though amongst themselves they were all equal, they were placed under an abbot, who represented them in their relation to the state.
In those days the community had been numerous, but now its numbers had greatly fallen off. All children that were born to the hermits were taken away in infancy, to be brought up at a hospital of the order in a neighbouring town; and, though formerly many re-entered the hermitage, most of them now preferred the licence of the beggars\' guild, of which they were free. Penelophon herself had been born in the monastery; but her father, on the death of his wife, had claimed his children in a fit of insane anger at Heaven, and taken to the Liberties of St. Lazarus.
The abbot had now scarce half a score of brethren and sisters to be responsible for; but he regularly made his report, and went to receive his subsidy. It was during one of these expeditions that Kophetua had encountered him out hunting. He was a pale man, with a red, ragged beard, and grey eyes, which glistened under their white lashes with an unhealthy restlessness. His spare figure, too, stooped forward with an air half feeble, half eager, so that his whole aspect was one of aimless intensity. The eagerness of the man had so struck Kophetua that he had accosted him; and, interested in his wild[Pg 279] talk, had accompanied him, without revealing his identity, as far as his cell.
Besides the hermits, Kophetua was probably the only man who knew where the rocky monastery was; and it was his first thought, after he had left Penelophon, that it was there he would be able to find a safe refuge for her. So, with the first glimmer of dawn, he had summoned her from her prison, and silently stolen out to the stables. Here he had saddled his horse, and, strapping a cushion across its withers, had ridden away, with Penelophon before him.
They spoke little as they went; she was too happy, and he half afraid. For, in the soiled and shabby gown she wore, and with her hair knotted loosely up as best she could, she seemed once more the same strange thing that first had fascinated him in its rags and filth. Presently she grew tired, and her head gradually fell upon his breast. Then, as she nestled close to him, a sense of peace came into his heart. Even as he had gone to fetch her from the turret he knew the desire of finding her a refuge was not the only reason for what he did. Another lay whispering deep down in the bottom of his thoughts. At first he would not own it; but now, as he neared the monastery, and the beggar-maid nestled still closer in her weariness, the little voice spoke louder, the fancy seemed less wild, and throne and crown and people grew faint and far away.
[Pg 280]
The abbot was getting water from the stream as, having descended the difficult bridle-way by which the hermitage was reached, they approached it along the meadows. He looked up in great surprise to see riding towards him a young man in a plain hunting dress, with a girl in a grey gown, old and patched, on the saddle before him. It was many years now since a pair had come to join the hermit community, and they were younger than any novices he himself could remember. So he set down his gourd, and came forward eagerly to meet them.
"Welcome! welcome, my children!" he cried. "Even so should ye come to the holy place, riding upon one horse, even as one thought shall henceforth bear you both through life till the end. Come, my son, trust thy wife a moment to me, that I may lift her down. Then take her to thy breast for ever."
A faint flush overspread Penelophon\'s wan face as the hermit held up his arms to take her. And as for Kophetua, he felt his heart leap in a kind of reckless ecstasy; the blood rushed tingling through his veins, and the whispering thought that had lain so quiet seemed to spring up and speak aloud.
The moments flew by, and Kophetua let them go with never a word. Penelophon gazed with wide eyes upon him, in shy wonder that he still held back the truth.[Pg 281] But Kophetua could not speak. The long romantic ride, the almost unearthly scene about him, and the abbot\'s unexpected welcome had strangely affected him. That plain little word "wife" was full of magic. It seemed to have transformed his life into an old tale and himself into its unreal hero. An excitement of a delicacy he had never known took possession of him. It was like playing in a masquerade, where the audience believed what they saw was real. It was play with all the spice of earnest, and he could not bring himself to break the spell. It would be time enough to explain to-morrow, he thought. To-night, at any rate, the hermit\'s mistake would assure them of shelter, which it was possible he might deny if he knew the truth.
So Kophetua put his horse in the great cave on the abbot\'s side of the stream, and then they all went together up to his cell, where his wife prepared a frugal meal. Long they sat together, listening to the anchorites as they talked of the blessedness of the married state; and each time they spoke of them as man and wife Kophetua\'s heart beat with fresh delight, and the beggar-maid blushed anew.
Night fell at last, and the hermit led them further up the long winding stair, all dark and slippery with the dripping moisture, to the cell that was to be theirs. There he placed a flickering lamp in a little recess,[Pg 282] and then, with his blessing, left them alone in the heart of the living rock.
For a little while they occupied themselves examining the gloomy abode. But the feeling of oppression, from the vast masses of rock that encompassed them, grew insupportable to the King, and he led the beggar-maid to the mouth of the cave. There they stood in silence, side by side, looking out upon the night. Before them was the giant wall of grey rock, pierced here and there with dark holes, that were caves like their own. In one glimmered a feeble light, and from it crept a weird, low sound, as of a man and a woman monotonously chanting a weary prayer. Then it ceased; the light died out with the chant, and, save for the voice of the heedless river, as it hurried on far below them, all was hushed in the majesty of the night.
The sense of perfect solitude that fell upon Kophetua then was strangely sweet. Far beyond the dark fringe of jungle that crowned the cliff rolled the solemn stars, but even they seemed nearer than the world he had left. As the last sign of life disappeared, he turned instinctively to the companion of his place. He saw her dimly in the faint starlight gazing wistfully at him. As their eyes met she leaned earnestly towards him, and half put out her hand in an unfinished gesture of supplication.
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CHAPTER XXI. HUNTER AND HUNTED.
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CHAPTER XXIII. AN OFFICIAL REPORT.
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