Day wanes. The further western altitudes shift their pearline gray to
deep blue where the sky is yellowing up behind them; and in the
darkening hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather with the
changing of the light--dead indigoes, fuliginous purples, rubifications
as of scoriæ,--ancient volcanic colors momentarily resurrected by the
illusive haze of evening. And the fallow of the canes takes a faint warm
ruddy tinge. On certain far high slopes, as the sun lowers, they look
like thin golden hairs against the glow,--blond down upon the skin of
the living hills.
Still the Woman and her follower walk together,--chatting loudly,
laughing, chanting snatches of song betimes. And now the valley is well
behind them;-- they climb the steep road crossing the eastern
peaks,--through woods that seem to stifle under burdening of creepers.
The shadow of the Woman and the shadow of the man,--broadening from
their feet,--lengthening prodigiously,--sometimes, mixing, fill all the
way; sometimes, at a turn, rise up to climb the trees. Huge masses of
frondage, catching the failing light, take strange fiery color;--the
sun's rim almost touches one violet hump in the western procession of
volcanic silhouettes....
Sunset, in the tropics, is vaster than sunrise.... The dawn, upflaming
swiftly from the sea, has no heralding erubescence, no awful
blossoming--as in the North: its fairest hues are fawn-colors,
dove-tints, and yellows,--pale yellows as of old dead gold, in horizon
and flood. But after the mighty heat of day has charged all the blue air
with translucent vapor, colors become strangely changed, magnified,
transcendentalized when the sun falls once more below the verge of
visibility. Nearly an hour before his death, his light begins to turn
tint; and all the horizon yellows to the color of a lemon. Then this hue
deepens, through tones of magnificence unspeakable, into orange; and the
sea becomes lilac. Orange is the light of the world for a little space;
and as the orb sinks, the indigo darkness comes--not descending, but
rising, as if from the ground--all within a few minutes. And during
those brief minutes peaks and mornes, purpling into richest velvety
blackness, appear outlined against passions of fire that rise half-way
to the zenith,--enormous furies of vermilion.
... The Woman all at once leaves the main road,--begins to mount a steep
narrow path leading up from it through the woods upon the left. But Fafa
hesitates,--halts a moment to look back. He sees the sun's huge orange
face sink down,--sees the weird procession of the peaks vesture
themselves in blackness funereal,--sees the burning behind them crimson
into awfulness; and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks again up the
darkling path to the left. Whither is she now going?
--"Oti ou kallé là?" he cries.
--"Mais conm ça!--chimin tala plis cou't,--coument?"
It may be the shortest route, indeed;--but then, the fer-de-lance!...
--"Ni sèpent ciya,--en pile."
No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken
that path too often not to know:
--"Pa ni sèpent piess! Moin ni coutime passé là;--pa ni piess!"
... She leads the way.... Behind them the tremendous glow
deepens;--before them the gloom. Enormous gnarled forms of ceiba,
balata, acoma, stand dimly revealed as they pass; masses of viny
drooping things take, by the failing light, a sanguine tone. For a
little while Fafa can plainly discern the figure of the Woman before
him;--then, as the path zigzags into shadow, he can descry only the
white turban and the white foulard;--and then the boughs meet overhead:
he can see her no more, and calls to her in alarm:--
--"Oti ou?--moin pa pè ouè arien!"
Forked pending ends of creepers trail cold across his face. Huge
fire-flies sparkle by,--like atoms of kindled charcoal thudding, blown
by a wind.
--"Içitt!--quimbé lanmain-moin!"...
How cold the hand that guides him!... She walks swiftly, surely, as one
knowing the path by heart. It zigzags once more; and the incandescent
color flames again between the trees;--the high vaulting of foliage
fissures overhead, revealing the first stars. A _cabritt-bois_ begins
its chant. They reach the summit of the morne under the clear sky.
The wood is below their feet now; the path curves on eastward between a
long swaying of ferns sable in the gloom,--as between a waving of
prodigious black feathers. Through the further purpling, loftier
altitudes dimly loom; and from some viewless depth, a dull vast rushing
sound rises into the night.... Is it the speech of hurrying waters, or
only some tempest of insect voices from those ravines in which the night
begins?...
Her face is in the darkness as she stands;--Fafa's eyes are turned to
the iron-crimson of the western sky. He still holds her hand, fondles
it,--murmurs something to her in undertones.
--"Ess ou ainmein moin conm ça?" she asks, almost in a whisper.
Oh! yes, yes, yes!... more than any living being he loves her!... How
much? Ever so much,--_gouôs conm caze!_... Yet she seems to doubt
him,--repeating her question over and over:
--"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
And all the while,--gently, caressingly, imperceptibly,--she draws him a
little nearer to the side of the path, nearer to the black waving of the
ferns, nearer to the great dull rushing sound that rises from beyond
them:
--"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
--"Oui, oui!" he responds,--"ou save ça!--oui, chè doudoux, ou save
ça!"...
And she, suddenly,--turning at once to him and to the last red light,
the goblin horror of her face transformed,--shrieks with a burst of
hideous laughter:
--"_Atò, bô!_"[17]
For the fraction of a moment he knows her name:--then, smitten to the
brain with the sight of her, reels, recoils, and, backward falling,
crashes two thousand feet down to his death upon the rocks of a mountain
torrent.
[Footnote 17: "Kiss me now!"]
[Illustration]