“Tristan,” she said, “must a man live for vanished days alone?”
He turned his eyes from the heavens, leant more heavily upon his sword.
“The past is ever with us,” he answered her; “the dead haunt me, stand round my bed at night. I see not flesh and blood alone, but the grey faces of those who cry to me for vengeance. They are not dead, these ghosts—Columbe, nor Samson, nor the martyrs of the Seven Streams.”
The woman leant her head upon her hand, and gazed out into the night, so that Tristan saw but the curves of her proud face and bended neck. There was pathos in her attitude, the pose of one who yearned for that which life had never fully given.
“Many whom I love are dead,” he answered her.
She threw a glance at him, her eyes bright with the wistfulness that she could not hide. Tristan was blind to that which was in her eyes. For the moment he thought only of Rosamunde, walled from the world in Holy Guard.
He caught a deep breath, did not answer her speedily and frankly as was his wont.
“As the heart goes,” he said; “the rest is nothingness.”
“Nothingness; there you belie your soul.”
His eyes gleamed suddenly, as though he heard some mocking trumpet cry and the trampling squadrons of his foes.
“Before God,” he said to her, lifting the weight of his body from off his sword, “he who has lost friends to death, finds no soft resting-place to ease his soul. A little while—some months ago, not more—I leapt like a boy into the storm and strife of life. My youth is past, my manhood forged beneath the mighty hammer of God’s fate. When dreams elapse, the strong man grips the sword.”
“Strange words,” she said, “for one who is not old.”
He leant his hands again upon the pommel, sighed, and retorted to her with the solemnity of one whose hopes were fierce, whose thoughts ran deep.
“There seems a season in man’s life,” he said, “when all is wrath, passion, and great pain. Youth passes in a year. The world grows full of storm winds, anguish, and huge travail. Battle breathes in the blood. A man must fight and labour, or grow mad.”
“And yet,” he said, catching her very words, “my heart gives out at seasons, and I yearn, even I, to be once more a little child weeping my woes out on my mother’s knees.”