had opposed Trastevera’s exemption ten years before were now justifying
themselves in Daria’s rebellion.
“They are saying what I feared,” she said, “that it is a mistake to
release the possessor of gifts from the common obligation.”
“They are wrong, then, for nothing has come of it but the momentary
outburst of a sensitive spirit. After all, Daria fulfilled her vows.”
She looked at me curiously for a moment, as if she were not sure what to
make of me. We were walking up and down behind the trees, her dress
a-flutter, her small hands clasping and unclasping, her body rippling
with the expressive accompaniment of excitement which was as natural to
her as the unstrained stillness of repose.
“Do you not think it wrong,” she said, “when the findings of the Council
are scorned, and I—even I—make secret occasion to talk of forbidden
things?”
She wheeled upon me suddenly:
“And this plan which is hatched between your man and Mancha, perhaps you
see no wrong in that?”
She was too guileless herself to have taken that method on purpose, but
I felt my spirit curling like a dried leaf out of all proportion to her
news. I managed to answer steadily.
“He is not my man.” It did not occur to me until afterward that it would
have been a surer form of denial not to acknowledge so readily what man.
“And as for any plans he may have with Mancha or any other, I do not
know what they are. Nor would I be interested except that I see it
troubles you.”
All the time I was resenting unreasonably that Herman should have any
plans with anybody and not broach them first to me.
“I do not know very well what it is myself,” she said more quietly,
“except that it grows out of this unhappy episode of Daria’s. It must
refer to the Wardship, because it is rumored about that the Meet,
instead of breaking up on the evening when the keepers come back, will
hold over another day for Council. That must be because they wish to
talk of matters that may not be opened earlier. It is Mancha, I think,
who wishes it. When some of the elders reproved Daria’s lover for having
allowed himself to love a Ward, and for speaking so lightly of the
Keeping, Mancha said that a man could not help where his heart went, and
that there was too much truth in what the young man said. Myself, I
cannot account for it.”
“I can,” I said, “and though you might not feel at liberty to question
me, I at least may tell you that it has to do with the Ward. He is in
love with her.” And I told her all that I had seen or surmised.
“And your friend?”
“Not knowing what his plan is, I cannot give his reasons.”
“Ah!” she said for all answer, and we walked on without saying anything
further until I asked her what had become of Daria.
“Gone on her wedding month; they went away this morning as soon as she
was fully recovered, having seen no one. They went out by Singing Ford.
And even in that,” she added, “there is something to criticize, for it
is not customary for any one to go away from the Meet while the Keepers
are abroad. Oh,” she cried, striking suddenly upon her breast, “it is
through me, through me, that all this breaking of custom comes.”
“Why do you care so much? All customs pass and in the end are replaced
by better ones.”
“If that is not so,” she said, “if it is not so, Daria’s lover was
right.”
She walked a little from me and bit her hands, as though she would have
eaten down the mortification of one who sees harm come through what is
best in him. Having recovered herself a little came to ask me when I had
last seen Ravenutzi, and if I had observed anything unusual in him. I
had not, and naturally wished to know if she had.
“The shadow,” she said, “the long shadow.”
“Has it come again?”
“It lies at his feet, it stretches behind him and blots out the good
day, it runs before him and covers the Outliers when they sit happy and
at ease. Oh, I am weary because of it, and yet I can find no fault with
him. During the last three days, which must have tried him, he has been
most discreet. But did you think”—she turned to me—“when he broke in
upon the singing to provoke debate, that he meant to turn the talk to
some other meaning than it had?”
“I thought so.”
“Then I am sure of it. Listen,” she said; “if this is true what you tell
me about Mancha, I shall have enough to watch, for the greatest danger
will be when the Ward comes home again.”
“Why then?”
“She will have been six months away from her friends, she will be tired
in body and the glow of the ceremonial will be gone, her heart will turn
toward her family, and the secret will weigh upon her. Then, if ever,
she will need counsel and support—when she comes back—when she first
comes.” She said the words over to herself. “Mancha I can trust as far
as I can trust any man in love; but the girl—I will say no more of her
than that she is much like other girls. I shall be busy there. Ravenutzi
I cannot watch, he disturbs me too much. Do you see as much of him as
possible and bring me word.”
There being no reason why I should not, I promised readily, and so
concluded the interview.
I was anxious though to see Herman as soon as possible, and sent Lianth
that evening to ask him to come to the middle meadow when the stars came
out in the blue above the dim, receding ranges. But he did not come,
though I walked there a long time and saw the dark well out of the
cañons. I felt the night scents begin to stir with the little winds, and
the tall sequoias bend their tops and talk together, and my heart
cracked with expectancy with every snapped twig and rustling of wild
things going down to drink. I shouldn’t have minded his not coming if he
had anything else to do, but I minded being kept waiting for him. I
minded it still more the next morning when I met him at Fallen Tree and
he said, quite as if he had not thought of it until that time:
“Oh, by the way—I was down at the Hollow last night with Mancha and some
of the others. Was it anything particular you wanted to say to me?”
Well, of course, I had supposed it was rather particular when I had
given him such an opportunity to tell me all about his plan and get
forgiven for not telling it before. I had meant to warn him that
Trastevera, and so, of course, Persilope, had reason to distrust his
mixing himself too much in the affairs of Outland. But of course if he
didn’t see it that way himself there was no occasion for me to be
concerned about it. So I said:
“No, nothing particular.”
“Well,” he said, “when this affair is all over”—just as if it were in
any wise his affair—“we must get together and have a good talk
somewhere.” And though it was mid-morning and there was nothing whatever
to do if he wished to talk, he went off up the creek, and that was the
last I saw of him until evening.
Directly after noon I took Lianth with me and went out toward the Leap
and then up the bank of a tributary rill, and so into a part of the wood
where the Outliers did not much frequent. Lianth, who was a great
talker, grew more and more quiet as my replies were more absent, and the
way grew steeper. We could see the ground rising in front of us through
the trees, and hear the noise of the creek falling far behind.
The boy was walking very close to me, and there was a shy color coming
in his cheek; he glanced right and left under his half long lashes and
came very close.
“Well, isn’t she?” he said. “Isn’t she as beautiful as I said—you know
who?”
“Zirriloë?”
“Well, isn’t she?”
“Lianth,” said I, “if you think I have brought you out here to give you
a chance to talk about forbidden things, you are mistaken. I came
because I wished to be alone. I’m going a little farther among the
trees, and don’t you come until I call you.”
He was helping me up over a broken ledge as I spoke, and stopped there
looking at me irresolutely.
“You aren’t going to try and run away, are you? You look as though you
were—from something.”
“Only from you. You can give the call, and if I don’t answer you can
come to look for me.”
I had learned already many of the Outland methods of communicating by
forest notes rather than trust to the betraying, high-pitched human
voice. None of these was of more use to me than the call for refuge. If
any Outlier wished to be private in his place, he raised that call,
which all who were within hearing answered. Then whoever was on his way
from that placed hurried, and whoever was coming toward it stayed where
he was until he had permission to move on. Though Lianth was somewhat
taken aback at my demand, I knew I should have some little space
unmolested.
I climbed on between great roots of pines where the litter lay in
hummocks between the tracks of winter torrents, and Lianth had called
twice before I bethought myself to answer him and claim a longer time. I
lay down at last in a place where the scrub was a screen to me, and
before I understood what had happened, the laboring breath of my
climbing had burst into thick, choking sobs. I lay face down on the pine
litter and was most terribly shaken with the grief of some dumb, wounded
thing in me that did not know its hurt, but wrenched and cried a long
time unrelievingly. It was so new a thing for me to cry and so strange,
that though I knew this was what I had come there for, I did not know
why I was torn so almost to the dividing of soul and spirit. The crying
lasted a long time, and I was so exhausted by it that it was only by
faint degrees I became aware of eyes upon me. I roused up hastily,
afraid lest in the violence of my grief I had failed to answer some
inquiry of Lianth’s and he had come to find me.
Instead, I met the curious, commiserating eyes of a woman fixed on me
through the leafage of the scrub. As soon as she perceived that I saw
her she parted the brush and came through, holding it still in her hands
behind her, as though it were a door of exit to be kept open. I saw at
once by her figure, which was slight and tall, by her dark hair and by
her dress, that she was not one of the Outliers. Over her tunic she had
wound a long cloak of dark stuff, concealing her limbs, and over that
bound vines and wreathed the leaves in her hair, for adornment or
concealment. As she stood in the shadow there was little to be discerned
of her but the thin oval of her face and the long throat clasped by
linked silver ornaments finely wrought.
“You are not of the Outliers?” she questioned, though I felt she was
already sure of the fact.
“I am their prisoner.”
I thought she seemed pleased at that, more pleased if, with a swift
searching of my swollen eyes, I could have answered yes to her next
question.
“They do not treat you well? But no”—answering herself—“it is not so
that captives cry. What is your name?”
“Mona.”
She said it over two or three times to fix it in her memory; and then,
caution and curiosity struggling in her:
“You have just come from them? You know them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you”—I could see the pulse of her long throat and the bushes shake
behind with her agitation—“do you know Ravenutzi?”
“I know him.”
“Is he well? How does he look? Is he happy?” Impossible to conceal now
what the question meant to her.
“He is well. As to his looks—sometimes he looks younger, sometimes
older. His hair, I think, is not so gray.”
“Not so gray?”
“I think he dyes it.” I do not know why I should have said this, except
as I saw that no detail of him was too small to seem trivial to her.
“Oh!” she said, startled, looking at me queerly. “Oh!” she gave a short
laugh, “you think he dyes it. Is he happy?”
I considered.
“You are one of the Far-Folk, I believe, and though I am prisoner, the
Outliers have been friends to me. I am not sure I ought to answer you.”
She let go of the bushes and came a step nearer in her anxiety.
“As you are a woman who has wept in secret, and by the hurt which
brought your tears,” she said, “only tell me if he is well and happy.
Surely that cannot touch your honor.”
“I have already said he is well. He has the vigor of a young man. As for
happiness—he says very little, and that not of himself. At least he is
not openly unhappy.”
“Tell me,” she urged, “if you could imagine that in his own land he is
well loved, that there is one there who lives in him, dreams of him,
counts the hours; could you say that he found the time of his hostage
heavy because of her?”
“He is thoughtful at times, and walks by himself. Otherwise I could not
judge. I have not loved myself.”
For answer she let her eyes wander pointedly over my disfigured face and
fallen hair.
“Tell me again,” she said after an interval. “This girl who is the Ward,
is she very beautiful?”
“Very;” but not so beautiful as you, I thought, for there was in the
vivid red of her fine lips, in the purple of her eyes and the delicate
tragic arch of her brows, in the long throat and bosom, all that fire
and motion of passion which the Ward’s face hinted at elusively. I was
casting about for a way of saying this to her not too boldly when I was
advised by the tapping of her foot on the needles that she would not be
turned from her inquiry.
“And Ravenutzi, is he interested in her? Is he much about her? Does she
care for him?”
“She is the Ward,” I said, “she may not think of men; and besides, she
is only a girl, her thought would hardly turn to a white head.”
“True, true”—she pinched her lip with thumb and forefinger—“I had
forgotten; as you say, he is a very old man. No doubt he might be judged
old enough to have speech with her.”
I, not seeing fit to reply to that, rose and stood looking at her, very
curious on my own account, but knowing very well that I should get
nothing from her except what pleased her.
“Shall I tell him you inquired for him?” I wished politely to know, and
was startled at her whiteness.
“Ah, no, no! Do not tell him—tell no one lest he hear of it; he would be
very angry, he would——” She recovered herself. “Ravenutzi is very
honorable. He would not wish to break the terms of his hostage, which
are that he should not communicate with the Far-Folk for three years. It
is a long time,” she said piteously.
“A long time.”
“Then,” she said, “if you could understand how I—how his friends would
wish to assure themselves that he is well, you can see that we would not
wish him disturbed by knowing how much he is missed.”
“I understand very well.”
“Then”—relieved—“you will perhaps tell no one that you have seen me. And
if I could come so near again—I could not have managed it except that
they are all busy at their Meet—if I could let you know, you would not
deny me?”
I suppose the exhaustion of long sobbing had left me in a yielding mood.
I saw no harm in satisfying her anxiety, and said so, though I added
that I might not be long myself among the Outliers.
“If you are there I will find a way to let you know,” she assured me,
and with that she threw herself into the arms of the waiting wood, which
received and seemed to snatch her from my view.
VII
HERMAN DEVELOPS HIS IDEA
On the third day, when the shadows were all out full length in the upper
basin, the sun blinking palely from behind a film of evening gray, the
Maiden Ward came back. Some children paddling for trout in the soddy
runnels saw her come and ran crying the news among the evening fires.
Hearing it the women all ran together distractedly, declaring that there
could be no proper welcome with no men about. This, I thought, was very
quickly noted by the girl, glancing this way and that, losing a little
of the high carriage and manner as she saw how few observed it.
The girl was white, her eyes strained wide in dark circles of fatigue.
Streakings of her fair body showed through the torn dress. I saw her
check and stumble, putting out her hands blindly, overburdened by her
hair. Remembering what importance Trastevera had attached to this
returning, I looked about for her, ready to serve or see. Before I could
reach her, up came Ravenutzi from his pot of coals and anvil of flint
stone down where the rush of the cascade covered the tinkle of his
hammers. I could not help noting the likeness between him and Trastevera
as he came, putting off his smith’s apron ready to her use like a
proffered tool. Some nods, I think, a gesture or two of Trastevera’s,
were all that passed between them. Some essential maleness leapt up in
him at the motions of those small talking hands, and took command of the
situation. I found myself running with the women at his word to spread
skins for the Ward to rest upon, and ordering the children in two lines
to some show of ceremonial welcome. There were some young brothers of
hers in that band, and as she kissed them heartily I saw tears stealing,
and realized how young she was and how hard a thing she had undertaken.
She stood with a palm behind her flat against a pine for support,
overtired and wanting her mother, no doubt, who was not allowed to come
to her. Finally the women took her away to rest.
In all this I had never seen Ravenutzi show to so great advantage. When
we were quite alone Trastevera put out her hand to him as she did not
often in the presence of Outliers.
“Kinsman,” she said, and it was the first time I had heard her call him
that, “I owe you thanks for this.”
She meant more than that he had contrived some warmth for what must
otherwise have seemed to Zirriloë a cold returning. She was thankful
that it had been his wrinkles and streaked grayness to meet the Ward
rather than the hot eyes and shining curls of Mancha.
“I do not know how it is,” said she, “I never pitied myself for being
the Ward, but somehow this pink girl seems to need to be pitied.”
“Any bond,” said Ravenutzi, “will wear at times,” and said it with a
wistful back-stroke of self-commiseration that caused me to think
swiftly of several things. I reflected that in his own place among the
Far-Folk he must have been more of a man than the Outliers conceded to
any smith. Next, that the condition of tame cat, which his hostageship
incurred, pressed more heavily on him than they were in the habit of
thinking. Also I thought of the tall woman, but I did not deliver the
comforting reassurance about her which came readily to my tongue. There
was so intimate and personal a quality in his brief surrender to our
sympathy that it made the mention of another woman an intrusion. It
began to seem likely that she could not be so much to him as he to her.
That would account both for her anxiety not to have him know of her
inquiry, and for his not having mentioned her to Trastevera.
We continued walking up and down under the linked pines, without many
words, but with a community of understanding, which led later to
Trastevera’s opening to him more of her anxieties than she realized. In
the course of an hour or two the women brought the Ward back again, and
made her a little entertainment of compliments and songs. There was a
hard, bright moon in a pale ring, and the breath of the young year
stealing through the forest.
Prassade sang, and Evarra’s man and old Noche. The women sang all
together, rocking, as they sat, but Ravenutzi sang the most and most
movingly. Mancha sang nothing; sat off fondling his weapon, and drank
the girl’s looks. She was very lovely, had got back a little of her
saint’s separateness which became her, and the conscious support of
being admired. If she had looked at him, she might have seen his heart
swimming under his gaze, but I could not see that she did. What favor
she was disposed to show went to Ravenutzi, praising his songs and
affecting to be affected. I thought she built too much on the mere
incident of his having been the only one of the men to meet her. It was
a mere accident growing out of the nature of his work, but it was
natural, perhaps, to have rewarded him for it. The women took her away
early, and nothing whatever had happened.
The next day, which ordinarily would have seen the parting of the Meet,
occurred the Council, which broke up in some disorder, without having
accomplished anything. Very early a blind fog came nosing up from the
sea, cutting between the round-backed hills, shouldering them like a
herd-dog among sheep. It threaded unsuspected cañons, and threw up great
combs of tall, raking trees against its crawling flanks. It gripped the
peaks, spreading skyward, whirling upon itself in a dry, ghostly
torrent. The chill that came with the fog drove us down toward Deep
Fern, to a sun-warmed hollow defended by jutty horns of the country
rock. Shed leaves crackled under us, the wind and fog were stayed by the
tall pines at our backs, the sun warmed whitely through the hurrying
mist.
Evarra and some others of the women were there, Zirriloë and the two
keepers beginning their daily turns, and Ravenutzi, sitting with his
long knees drawn up under his clasped hands. Somewhere out of sight the
men were holding council on a matter they had not seen fit to speak to
us about. We had scarcely settled ourselves on the warm leaf-drift when
one of them came to the head of the Hollow and shouted for Noche. There
were so many of us about, the old man could have safely left the Ward
but it seemed to him scarcely courtesy to do so with her Wardship yet so
new. He glanced around through the smother of the fog and found not
another man who could be spared to that duty. Ravenutzi, with his chin
upon his knees, and his velvety opaque eyes looked idly at nothing, but
was aware of the old man’s difficulty. Noche clapped him heavily on the
shoulder.
“Hey, smith,” he said, “will you take a watch for me? I am wanted.”
At this the man who leaned to us dimly from the rim of the Hollow gave a
grunt.
“What,” he said, “will you set the Far-Folk to watch a Ward? These are
gentle times.”
“Why, he is as gray as I am, and twice as wrinkled,” answered Noche,
mightily disconcerted. “Would you have him come to the Council instead?”
The other laughed shortly.
“No, not to the Council, though I daresay it will come to that yet.”
He released the young tree upon which he leaned, which sprang back with
a crackling sound. From his silence Noche drew consent to his
half-jesting proposal and, smiling embarrassedly, like a chidden child,
swung his great body up by the trunk of a leaning oak and disappeared
behind the smoky fog. By such intimations we knew there was something
going forward among the men, but we did not know how much of this the
Ward, who was most involved by it, surmised. She might have guessed from
our not referring to these mysterious comings and goings that it
concerned the keeping of the Treasure. She grew uneasy, started at
sounds, would have Trastevera hold her hand, was in need of stroking and
reassuring.
The fog increased, hurrying and turning upon itself. Runnels of cooler
air began to pour through it, curling back the parted films against the
trees. Now and then one of these air-streams, deflected by the rim of
the Hollow, would rush up its outer slope, blowing leaves and dust like
a fountain, and, subsiding, leave us more sensible of warmth and ease,
in the thick leaf litter below the oaks.
Ravenutzi came over to Trastevera, who sat holding the Ward’s hand, and
stretched himself at her feet, smiling up at her his fawn’s smile. He
held up his hand between him and the pale smear of sunlight with one of
those slight, meaningful gestures so natural to him that it served as a
more delicate sort of speech: “Surely it seemed to say, to-day not even
I can cast a shadow?”
Trastevera, like one too deep in thought to rise to the surface of
words, smiled back. Not finding himself in disfavor, Ravenutzi ventured
a little more to lure her from disturbing meditation. He turned upon his
side, leaning on his elbow, and began to sing. His voice was mellow and
of a carrying quality, with a tang in it like the taste of the
honey-comb in wild honey. Some half-governed energy of passion kept it
under his breath as the warm earth was held under the smother of the
fog. It was a song of the Far-Folk, I know, for there were some words in
it not common to the Outliers, but it had their method of carrying the
mood in the movement and the mind of the singer, rather than in the
words.
“‘Oh, a long time.’
it said,
‘Have I been gathering lilies in the dawn-dim woodland.
‘Oh, long—long!’”
and ran on into a sound like the indrawing of breath before tears, and
began again:
“Scented and sweet is the house
And the door swings outward,
It is made fair with lilies:
But there are no feet on the trail to the house
And the door swings outward.
Long, O long, have I been gathering lilies.”
Just that, three times over; and the first time of the singing it was a
girl wreathing herself with flowers and looking down the trail, sure of
her lover but sighing for his delay. Then it was the tall woman I had
met in the wood, keeping her empty house with fierce loyalty through the
years of his hostage.
“Long, oh long, have I been gathering lilies!”