Part 13

"Go home, now, Peter. To-night is full moon. I must be alone."

"How soon the moon is full again! Annette, let me stay. Indeed, Dear Love, I shall not go away. My God, but you keep me starved! You write `No Entrance Here', over all the doors. Is it not strange, my Dear, that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere. Would marriage strike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be denied the rights of loving if I leave you free? You want the whole of me, you pick my brains to rest you, but you give me not one heart-beat. Oh, forgive me, Sweet! I suffer in my loving, and you know it. I cannot feed my life on being a poet. Let me stay."

"As you please, poor Peter, but it will hurt me if you do. It will crush your heart and squeeze the love out."

He answered gruffly, "I know what I'm about."

"Only remember one thing from to-night. My work is taxing and I must have sight! I must!"

The clear moon looks in between the geraniums. On the wall, the shadow of the man is divided from the shadow of the woman by a silver thread.

They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles! Unwinking, for there are no lids. Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises are cased in the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon. The basket is heaped with human eyes. She cracks off the whites and throws them away. They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear. But she is here, quietly sitting on the window-sill, eating human eyes.

The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof shines like ice.

How hot the sheets are! His skin is tormented with pricks, and over him sticks, and never moves, an eye. It lights the sky with blood, and drips blood. And the drops sizzle on his bare skin, and he smells them burning in, and branding his body with the name "Annette".

The blood-red sky is outside his window now. Is it blood or fire? Merciful God! Fire! And his heart wrenches and pounds "Annette!"

The lead of the roof is scorching, he ricochets, gets to the edge, bounces over and disappears.

The bellying clouds are red as they swing over the housetops.

The air is of silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight. How the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice! Only two black holes swallow the brilliance of the moon. Deflowered windows, sockets without sight.

A man stands before the house. He sees the silver-blue moonlight, and set in it, over his head, staring and flickering, eyes of geranium red.

Annette!

In a Castle

Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip--hiss--drip--hiss-- fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams, and smokes the ceiling beams. Drip--hiss--the rain never stops.

The wide, state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, dim, in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain. Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, and there comes the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors. The arras blows sidewise out from the wall, and then falls back again.

It is my lady's key, confided with much nice cunning, whisperingly. He enters on a sob of wind, which gutters the candles almost to swaling. The fire flutters and drops. Drip--hiss--the rain never stops. He shuts the door. The rushes fall again to stillness along the floor. Outside, the wind goes wailing.

The velvet coverlet of the wide bed is smooth and cold. Above, in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold. The knight shivers in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame. She is always the same, a sweet coquette. He will wait for her.

How the log hisses and drips! How warm and satisfying will be her lips!

It is wide and cold, the state bed; but when her head lies under the coronet, and her eyes are full and wet with love, and when she holds out her arms, and the velvet counterpane half slips from her, and alarms her trembling modesty, how eagerly he will leap to cover her, and blot himself beneath the quilt, making her laugh and tremble.

Is it guilt to free a lady from her palsied lord, absent and fighting, terribly abhorred?

He stirs a booted heel and kicks a rolling coal. His spur clinks on the hearth. Overhead, the rain hammers and chinks. She is so pure and whole. Only because he has her soul will she resign herself to him, for where the soul has gone, the body must be given as a sign. He takes her by the divine right of the only lover. He has sworn to fight her lord, and wed her after. Should he be overborne, she will die adoring him, forlorn, shriven by her great love.

Above, the coronet winks in the darkness. Drip--hiss--fall the raindrops. The arras blows out from the wall, and a door bangs in a far-off hall.

The candles swale. In the gale the moat below plunges and spatters. Will the lady lose courage and not come?

The rain claps on a loosened rafter.

Is that laughter?