Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second CrusadeCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
General
Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Crusades -- Second, 1147-1149 -- Fiction
"I shall believe you when I know that you love me," she answered, and
turned away, towards the door of the inner apartments.
Gilbert followed her.
"Beatrix!" he cried. "Beatrix! Hear me!"
She turned once more, with a face like stone.
"I have heard you, I have heard her, and I do not believe you," she
answered.
Without another word she left him and went out. He stood looking after
her for a moment, while his calm face darkened slowly; and his anger
was slow and lasting, as the heating of a furnace for the smelting. He
stooped and picked up his cap, which had fallen to the floor, and then
he, too, followed the Queen, through the vestibule and stairs and
courtyard, to the King's presence.
CHAPTER XXIV
That night they left hastily and went down to the sea with torches; but
it was dawn when they were on board one of the great ships, and the
hawsers were cast off, and the crew began to heave up the anchor. In
his anger, Gilbert had called his men, and had gone on board also, and
many hours passed before he realized what he had done. Then he began to
torment himself.
His angry manhood told him that he was just and that he should not bear
a girl's unbelief when he was manifestly in the right; and his love
answered that he had left Beatrix without protection and perhaps at the
mercy of her father, since he might come by sea at any moment and claim
her from Count Raymond, who would give her up without opposition. He
wondered also why Sir Arnold had not appeared, and whether, having
sailed from Ephesus, he had been shipwrecked. But his thoughts soon
turned back to his work, and he sat on the low rail by the
main-rigging, looking down at the blue water as the ship ran smoothly
along. What was there in Beatrix to hold him, after all? It was nothing
but a boyish memory, revived by a mistaken idea of faith.
But suddenly he felt within him the aching hollow and the grinding
hunger of heart that the loved woman leaves behind her, and he knew
well that his anger was playing a comedy with him, as Beatrix had
accused him and the Queen of playing a play in the past night.
It was hard that she should not have believed him; and yet when one has
seen and heard, it is harder still to believe against sight and
hearing. If she had loved him, he said to himself, she could not have
doubted him. He would never have doubted her, no matter what he might
have seen her do. But at this he began to realize and understand; for
in order to persuade himself, he pictured her sitting as the Queen had
sat, and a man bending over her and kissing her and calling her the
love of his life and heart, and he felt another sort of anger rising
fiercely in him, because the imagined sight was vivid and bad to see.
Thereupon he grew calmer, seeing that she was not wholly wrong, and he
began to curse his evil fate and to wish that he had not followed the
Queen, but had stayed behind at Antioch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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