Man changes. Toward the end of summer, Charles-Norton found himself
insensibly altering the glorious routine of his altitudinous existence.
One day he was tempted by the great plain that lay golden in the West.
Idly, he let himself float down the mountain sides, in long descending
diagonals, and suddenly found himself above a farm in the plain. In
the backyard, children were playing; a man was sharpening a plowshare
at a wheel, and out of the kitchen-shed there came a clatter of dishes
and the voice of a woman in song. Seized by a sudden perverse humor,
Charles-Norton swooped into the chicken-yard and snatched a hen which,
feeling herself rising in his hand, straightway shut her eyes and died
of imagination. A scream rose from the earth, and looking down,
Charles-Norton saw the three little children, legs apart, hands behind
them, gazing up with white eyes; the man, back to the wheel, had his
mouth open, as if inviting his vanishing fowl to drop back into it; and
out of the kitchen door a wide woman suddenly popped, her lips working
in malediction. His amusement a bit dampened by this consternation and
by the unforeseen conduct of the hen, Charles-Norton went winging back,
the dead fowl dangling at the end of his arm, to his retreat, and that
night, when the pangs of his conscience had somewhat moderated, enjoyed
the best dinner he had had for many days.
This incident reawakened in Charles-Norton a certain interest in
human-kind. He began to visit the Valley more often.
The Valley was some hundred miles south of his meadow. It was a great
cleft that split the mountain range from crest to center. Its walls were
perpendicular and glacier-polished, and sculptured at the top into smooth
domes and fretted spires. Down these sheer walls, here and there, coming
to them without suspicion, whole rivers fell--some in rockets of
diamonds, others chastely, in thin flight, like shifting and impalpable
veils, others in great lustrous columns that struck the rocky bottom with
thunderous impact and rebounded high in clouds of pulverized silver.
The Valley seemed full of people. They came in from the West, in stages.
They lived in a large structure, at the bottom, which Charles-Norton
surmised to be a hotel, and hundreds camped along the banks of the river,
which wound light-green through the dark-green meadows. They wandered
about incessantly, like ants; most of the time, at the bottom, but a good
deal of the time also along the vertical sides, toiling pantingly up
narrow trails, laid like the coils of a riata, till they reached points
of vantage--domes, pinnacles, heads of falls--whereupon they immediately
sat down and devoured sandwiches.
When Charles-Norton had first discovered the Valley, he had fled from it
at the sight of human beings. But now, often, a secret impulse urged him
to it. He spent days there, crouching upon the top curve of a great
half-dome from which he could look down and watch the little beings at
their lives--walking about, cooking their meals, eating them, or
following the arduous windings of the trails with sweating noses. At
night their fires twinkled red; and once, when Charles-Norton, wrapped in
the secrecy of the dark, had slowly floated the whole length of the
Valley above them, there had come to him, softened and blended by
distance, the harmony of their voices in song.
At first, he had felt but disdain for them, but gradually another feeling
had come to him, they were so slow, and crawly, and helpless--and yet so
indomitable. A vague pity, almost a respect, swelled within him as he
watched them panting, and perspiring, and toiling up the slopes, reaching
thus with untold effort heights insignificant to him, from which they
presently tumbled down again after their inevitable lunch of sandwiches.
This new interest expressed itself rudimentarily in a perverse desire to
tease them. Yielding to it one afternoon, in broad daylight he sailed the
whole length of the Valley, going slowly, resplendent in the sun. He
could see the little beings gather in groups, and see the little yellow
faces screwed up toward him; and upon the stage, gliding in from the West
like a Cinderella coach drawn by six white mice, all the passengers were
standing with milling arms. With a few strong beats, he whizzed out of
range and returned to his meadow, chuckling.
He was back again the next day, though, and the next; and of evenings he
began to hover about the Upper Inn.
The Upper Inn was a little chalet built on the edge of the Valley's
northern wall. It crouched there, small as a toy in the chaos of huge
domes surrounding it, backed up against a great granite-rooted tamarack
as if in fear of the abyss yawning at its feet. From its veranda, a
glance fell sheer, along the glacier-polished wall, to the valley floor,
three thousand feet below.
Charles-Norton, of evenings, liked to hover in the void in front of the
Inn, his head even with the veranda, his body dangling beneath, while he
looked through the glass door into the hall within.... Always a red fire
glowed there, within a large black fireplace; and about it, men and
women, in garments fresh and clean after the day's climbing, sat chatting
or reading. Among them was a young woman who interested Charles-Norton.
She was slim and very fair, with hair that lay light upon her head as a
golden vapor, and she wore upon her shoulders, negligently draped, a
scarf within the white shimmer of which a color glowed like a flame.
Beside her nearly always hovered a big young fellow, dark and handsome,
but who did not seem very happy.
One evening she rose abruptly, and before Charles-Norton could guess her
intention, she had opened the door, and was out upon the veranda, gazing
toward him with eyes yet blind with the darkness. Charles-Norton did not
move. They two remained thus long, she looking straight out into the
void, divining perhaps--who knows?--a vague palpitant whiteness, like a
soul, out there in the night; he, moving his great wings slowly and
softly, while his heart within him thumped loud. Then he let himself sink
silently, till beneath the plane of the Inn's floor, circled, and rising
again, took a position at the end of the veranda, from which, peering
around the corner of the house, he could still observe her.
She stood there, tight against the rail, as though she had brought up
abruptly against it, making impetuously for the void. He could see her
slight pliant form, silhouetted against the jeweled horizon; upon her
shoulders, her scarf floated like a vague phosphorescence, and her face
was whitely turned toward the stars. He heard her take a long deep breath
of the night, and then her arms went up and out in a vibrant gesture.
She remained thus, a long moment, her eyes toward the stars, her arms
toward the stars, and her whole slender body, arched slightly backward,
seemed to offer itself to the stars. Then suddenly her head dropped, her
arms dropped, and she straightened, leaning against the rail. The door
behind had opened and closed again, and upon the veranda, now, was the
big loom of another form, a form which carried, at the height of the
head, a warm pulsing glow, like the incandescent point of a red-heated
poker.
They stood immobile, the two, a long time. She had not stirred since her
first start; she remained with her back to the door, her eyes out into
the void. Then the point of light on the larger form slid down, till it
dangled at the end of what Charles-Norton guessed was an arm, and a low
voice toned in the silence. "Why did you leave me?" he said; "why do you
always leave me?"
Her voice answered immediately, clear and warm as a red crystal. "Oh, I
wanted to say good-by to the stars," she said; "I wanted to say good-by
to the stars!"
"And why did you want to say good-by to the stars?" he asked, speaking
softly, as to a child.
"Because," she said, "I am leaving them. Because I am leaving the stars."
"And why are you leaving the stars?" he asked, taking a step toward her.
She turned toward him, now, and laid both her hands lightly upon his
shoulders. "Because, John, I am going to you," she said; "because, John,
I love you."
"Dora!" he cried.
She arrested him with a gesture. "I have loved you long, John," she went
on; "I have loved you long--but I have fought it, fought it, fought it,
John!"
"And why have you fought it?" he asked, again gently, as to a child.
"Because, John--oh, I don't know. Because, John, there is something
within me--which I don't know. Something which yearns, John--for I don't
know what. For peaks, John, for skies, for the stars; for--I don't
know----"
"Dora, Dora," he said, a bit sadly.
"And so I fought it, John, I fought your love. But it has poured into me,
John, as honey fills a chalice; gradually, sweetly, it has filled my
veins, my blood, my heart, John. And to-night, John, my whole being was
swollen with it, John, with the love of you, John, and I came out to say
good-by to the stars----"
"Dora!" he cried again; and this time enveloped her in his arms.
A horrid, impish feeling suddenly pricked Charles-Norton; taking wing he
slid along the veranda and seized, as he passed, from the shoulders of
the girl, the scarf, from the conceited head of the young man, his derby
hat, and flapped off with them in the darkness. The crash of an
astonished chair and a faint little cry followed him for a moment, then
dropped off behind.
Charles-Norton laughed all the way home. Half-way over he dropped, into
the deepest abyss he knew, the derby hat, which arrived at the bottom, no
doubt, in very bad condition. But the scarf was still with him as he
alighted in the meadow and felt against his hand the humid greeting of
Nicodemus, the lonely little donkey.
Across the cabin, as he went to sleep, the empty bunk yawned, somehow,
with unusual insistence. "I wonder what Dolly is doing," he said vaguely,
as he slid down the slumber-chute.