He lay where he could see her working at the forge. As she worked she
sang:
“When God was making the world,
(Swift is the wind and white is the fire)
The feet of his people danced the stars;
There was laughter and swinging bells,
And clanging iron and breaking breath,
The hammers of heaven making the hills,
The vales on the anvil of God.
(Wild is the fire and low is the wind.)”
His eyes were shining, and his face had a pale radiance from the
reflected light, though he lay in the shadow where he could watch her,
while she could not see him. Now her hand was upon the bellows, and the
low, white fire seethed hungrily up, and set its teeth upon the iron
she held; now it turned the iron about upon the anvil, and the sparks
showered about her very softly and strangely. There was a cheerful
gravity in her motions, a high, fine look in her face.
They two lived alone in the solitudes of Megalon Valley.
It was night now, and the pleasant gloom of the valley was not broken
by any sound save the hum of the stream near by, and the song, and the
ringing anvil. But into the workshop came the moist, fragrant smell of
the acacia and the maple, and a long brown lizard stretched its neck
sleepily across the threshold of the door opening into the valley.
The song went on:
“When God had finished the world
(Bright was the fire and sweet was the wind)
Up from the valleys came song,
To answer the morning stars,
And the hand of man on the anvil rang;
His breath was big in his breast, his life
Beat strong on the walls of the world.
(Glad is the wind and tall is the fire.)”
He put his hands to his eyes, and took them away again, as though to
make sure that the song was not a dream. Wonder grew upon his thin,
bearded face, he ran his fingers through his thick hair in a dazed way.
Then he lay and looked, and a rich warm flush crept over his cheek, and
stayed there.
There was a great gap in his memory.
The evening wore on. Once or twice the woman turned towards the room
where the man lay, and listened--she could not see his face from where
she stood. At such times he lay still, though his heart beat quickly,
like that of an expectant child. His lips opened to speak, but still
they remained silent. As yet he was like a returned traveller who does
not quickly recognise old familiar things, and who is struggling with
vague suggestions and forgotten events. As time went on, the woman
turned towards the doorway oftener, and shifted her position so that she
faced it, and the sparks, flying up, lighted her face with a wonderful
irregular brightness.
“Samantha,” he said at last, and his voice sounded so strange to him
that the word quivered timidly towards her.
She paused upon a stroke, and some new note in his voice sent so sudden
a thrill to her heart that she caught her breath with a painful kind of
joy. The hammer dropped upon the anvil, and, in a moment, she stood in
the doorway of his room.
“Francis, Francis,” she responded in a low whisper. He started up from
his couch of skins. “Samantha, my wife!” he cried, in a strong proud
voice.
She dropped beside him and caught his head, like a mother, to her
shoulder, and set her warm lips on his forehead and hair with a kind of
hunger; and then he drew her face down and kissed her on the lips. Tears
hung at her eyes, and presently dropped on her cheeks, a sob shook her,
and then she was still, her hands grasping his shoulders.
“Have I been ill?” he asked.
“You have been very ill, Francis.”
“Has it been long?”
Her fingers passed tenderly through his grizzled hair. “Too long, too
long, my husband,” she replied.
“Is it summer now?”
“Yes, Francis, it is summer.”
“Was it in the spring, Samantha?--Yes, I think it was in the spring,” he
added, musing.
“It was in a spring.”
“There was snow still on the mountain-top, the river was running high,
and wild fowl were gathered on the island in the lake--yes, I remember,
I think.”
“And the men were working at the mine,” she whispered, her voice shaking
a little, and her eyes eagerly questioning his face.
“Ah, the mine--it was the mine, Samantha!” he said abruptly, his eyes
flashing up. “I was working at the forge to make a great bolt for the
machinery, and some one forgot and set the engine in motion. I ran out;
but it was too late... and then...”
“And then you tried to save them, Francis, and you were hurt.”
“What month is this, my wife?”
“It is December.”
“And that was in October?”
“Yes, in October.”
“I have been ill since? What happened?”
“Many were killed, Francis, and you and I came away.”
“Where are we now? I do not know the place.”
“This is Megalon Valley. You and I live alone here.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“I did not bring you, Francis; you wished me to come. One day you said
to me: ‘There is a place in Megalon Valley where, long ago, an old man
lived, who had become a stranger among men--a place where the blackbird
stays, and the wolf-dog troops and hides, and the damson grows as thick
as blossoms on the acacia. We will go there.’ And I came with you.”
“I do not remember. What of the mine? Was I a coward and left the mine?
There was no one understood the ways of the wheel, and rod, and steam,
save me.
“The mine is closed, Francis,” she answered gently. “You were no coward,
but--but you had strange fancies.
“When did the mine close?” he said, with a kind of sorrow; “I put hard
work and good years into it.” At that moment, when her face drew close
to his, the vision of her as she stood at the anvil came to him with a
new impression, and he said again in a half-frightened way: “When did it
close, Samantha?”
“The mine was closed--twelve years ago, my own dear husband.”
He got to his feet and clasped her to his breast. A strength came to him
which had eluded him twelve years, and she, womanlike, delighted in that
strength, and, with a great gladness, changed eyes and hands with him;
keeping her soul still her own, brooding and lofty, as is the soul of
every true woman, though, like this one, she labours at a forge, and in
a far, untenanted country is faithful friend, ceaseless apothecary to a
comrade with a disordered mind; living on savage meats, clothing herself
and the other in skins, and, with a divine persistence, keeping a
cheerful heart, certain that the intelligence which was frightened from
its home would come back one day. It should be hers to watch for the
great moment, and give the wanderer loving welcome, lest it should hurry
madly away again into the desert, never to return.
She had her reward, yet she wept. She had carried herself before him
with the bright ways of an unvexed girl these twelve years past; she had
earned the salt of her tears. He was dazed still, but, the doublet of
his mind no longer unbraced, he understood what she had been to him, and
how she had tended him in absolute loneliness, her companions the wild
things of the valley--these and God.
He drew her into the workshop, and put his hand upon the bellows and
churned them, so that the fire roared joyously up, and the place was red
with the light. In this light he turned her to him and looked at her.
The look was as that of one who had come back from the dead--that naked,
profound, unconditional gaze which is as deep and honest as the primeval
sense. His eyes fell upon her rich, firm, stately body; it lingered for
a moment on the brown fulness of her hair; then her look was gathered to
his, and they fell into each other’s arms.
For long they sat in the solemn silence of their joy, and so awed were
they by the thing which had come to them that they felt no surprise when
a wolf-dog crawled over the lizard on the threshold, and stole along
the wall with shining, bloody eyes to an inner room, and stayed there
munching meat to surfeit and drowsiness, and at last crept out and lay
beside the forge in a thick sleep. These two had lived so much with
the untamed things of nature, the bellows and the fire had been so long
there, and the clang of the anvil was so familiar, that there was a
kinship among them, man and beast, with the woman as ruler.
“Tell me, Samantha,” he said at last, “what has happened during these
twelve years, all from the first. Keep nothing back. I am strong now.”
He looked around the workshop, then, suddenly, at her, with a strange
pain, and they both turned their heads away for an instant, for the same
thought was on them. Then, presently, she spoke, and answered his shy,
sorrowful thought before all else. “The child is gone,” she softly said.
He sat still, but a sob was in his throat. He looked at her with a kind
of fear. He wondered if his madness had cost the life of the child. She
understood. “Did I ever see the child?” he asked.
“Oh yes, I sometimes thought that through the babe you would be yourself
again. When you were near her you never ceased to look at her and fondle
her, as I thought very timidly; and you would start sometimes and gaze
at me with the old wise look hovering at your eyes. But the look did not
stay. The child was fond of you, but she faded and pined, and one day
as you nursed her you came to me and said: ‘See, beloved, the little
one will not wake. She pulled at my beard and said, “Daddy,” and fell
asleep.’ And I took her from your arms.... There is a chestnut tree
near the door of our cottage at the mine. One night you and I buried her
there; but you do not remember her, do you?”
“My child, my child!” he said, looking out into the night; and he lifted
up his arms and looked at them. “I held her here, and still I never held
her; I fondled her, and yet I never fondled her; I buried her, yet--to
me--she never was born.”
“You have been far away, Francis; you have come back home. I waited, and
prayed, and worked with you, and was patient.... It is very strange,”
she continued. “In all these twelve years you cannot remember our past,
though you remembered about this place--the one thing, as if God had
made it so--and now you cannot remember those twelve years.”
“Tell me now of the twelve years,” he urged.
“It was the same from day to day. When we came from the mountain, we
brought with us the implements of the forge upon a horse. Now and again
as we travelled we cut our way through the heavy woods. You were changed
for the better then; a dreadful trouble seemed to have gone from your
face. There was a strong kind of peace in the valley, and there were so
many birds and animals, and the smell of the trees was so fine, that we
were not lonely, neither you nor I.”
She paused, thinking, her eyes looking out to where the Evening Star was
sailing slowly out of the wooded horizon, his look on her. In the pause
the wolf-dog raised its big, sleepy eyes at them, then plunged its head
into its paws, its wildness undisturbed by their presence.
Presently the wife continued: “At last we reached here, and here we
have lived, where no human being, save one, has ever been. We put up the
forge, and in a little hill not far away we found coal for it. The days
went on. It was always summer, though there came at times a sharp frost,
and covered the ground with a coverlet of white. But the birds were
always with us, and the beasts were our friends. I learned to love even
the shrill cry of the reed hens, and the soft tap-tap of the wood-pecker
is the sweetest music to my ear after the song of the anvil. How often
have you and I stood here at the anvil, the fire heating the iron, and
our hammers falling constantly! Oh, Francis, I knew that only here with
God and His dumb creatures, and His wonderful healing world, all sun,
and wind, and flowers, and blossoming trees, working as you used to
work, as the first of men worked, would the sane wandering soul return
to you. The thought was in you, too, for you led me here, and have been
patient also in the awful exile of your mind.”
“I have been as a child, and not as a man,” he said gravely. “Shall I
ever again be a man, as I once was, Samantha?”
“You cannot see yourself,” she said. “A week ago you fell ill, and since
then you have been pale and worn; but your body has been, and is, that
of a great strong man. In the morning I will take you to a spring in the
hills, and you shall see yourself, beloved.”
He stood up, stretched himself, went to the door, and looked out into
the valley flooded with moonlight. He drew in a great draught of air,
and said: “The world--the great, wonderful world, where men live, and
love work, and do strong things!”--he paused, and turned with a trouble
in his face. “My wife,” he said, “you have lived with a dead man twelve
years, and I have lost twelve years in the world. I had a great thought
once--an invention--but now--” he hung his head bitterly. She came to
him, and her hands slid up along his breast to his shoulders, and rested
there; and she said, with a glad smile: “Francis, you have lost nothing.
The thing--the invention--was all but finished when you fell ill a week
ago. We have worked at it for these twelve years; through it, I think,
you have been brought back to me. Come, there is a little work yet to,
do upon it;” and she drew him to where a machine of iron lay in the
corner. With a great cry he fell upon his knees beside it, and fondled
it.
Then, presently, he rose, and caught his wife to his breast.
Together, a moment later, they stood beside the anvil. The wolf-dog fled
out into the night from the shower of sparks, as, in the red light, the
two sang to the clanging of the hammers:
“When God was making the world
(Swift is the wind and white is the fire)”