Slower and slower he went, with his eyes on the ground, bewildered
by all that was happening. A few feet from the cave he stood still,
counting aimlessly the round spots of light made by the beams slanting
through trees that hid with their greenness, as in the centre of the
sea, that hollow rock. As over and over he counted them, he heard,
first with the ear only, then with the mind also, a footstep going to
and fro within the cave. Lifting his eyes he saw the same figure seen
on the cliff--the figure of a woman, beautiful and young. Her dress was
white, save for a border of feathers dyed the fatal red of the spirits.
She had arranged in one corner the spears, and in the other the
brushwood and branches used for the fire, and spread upon the ground
the skins, and now began pulling vainly at the great stone pitcher of
the Fomorians.
Suddenly she saw him and with a burst of laughter flung her arms round
his neck, crying, ‘Dhoya, I have left my world far off. My people--on
the floor of the lake they are dancing and singing, and on the islands
of the lake; always happy, always young, always without change. I have
left them for thee, Dhoya, for they cannot love. Only the changing,
and moody, and angry, and weary can love. I am beautiful; love me,
Dhoya. Do you hear me? I left the places where they dance, Dhoya, for
thee!’ For long she poured out a tide of words, he answering at first
little, then more and more as she melted away the silence of so many
inarticulate years; and all the while she gazed on him with eyes, no
ardour could rob of the mild and mysterious melancholy that watches us
from the eyes of animals--sign of unhuman reveries.
Many days passed over these strangely-wedded ones. Sometimes when he
asked her, ‘Do you love me?’ she would answer, ‘I do not know, but
I long for your love endlessly.’ Often at twilight, returning from
hunting, he would find her bending over a stream that flowed near to
the cave, decking her hair with feathers and reddening her lips with
the juice of a wild berry.
He was very happy secluded in that deep forest. Hearing the faint
murmurs of the western sea, they seemed to have outlived change. But
Change is everywhere, with the tides and the stars fastened to her
wheel. Every blood-drop in their lips, every cloud in the sky, every
leaf in the world changed a little, while they brushed back their hair
and kissed. All things change save only the fear of change. And yet
for his hour Dhoya was happy and as full of dreams as an old man or an
infant--for dreams wander nearest to the grave and the cradle.
Once, as he was returning home from hunting, by the northern edge of
the lake, at the hour when the owls cry to each other, ‘It is time to
be abroad,’ and the last flutter of the wind has died away, leaving
under every haunted island an image legible to the least hazel branch,
there suddenly stood before him a slight figure, at the edge of the
narrow sand-line, dark against the glowing water. Dhoya drew nearer. It
was a man leaning on his spear-staff, on his head a small red cap. His
spear was slender and tipped with shining metal; the spear of Dhoya of
wood, one end pointed and hardened in the fire. The red-capped stranger
silently raised that slender spear and thrust at Dhoya, who parried
with his pointed staff.
For a long while they fought. The last vestige of sunset passed away
and the stars came out. Underneath them the feet of Dhoya beat up the
ground, but the feet of the other as he rushed hither and thither,
matching his agility with the mortal’s mighty strength, made neither
shadow nor footstep on the sands. Dhoya was wounded, and growing weary
a little, when the other leaped away, and, crouching down by the water,
began: ‘You have carried away by some spell unknown the most beautiful
of our bands--you who have neither laughter nor singing. Restore her,
Dhoya, and go free.’ Dhoya answered him no word, and the other rose and
again thrust at him with the spear. They fought to and fro upon the
sands until the dawn touched with olive the distant sky, and then his
anger-fit, long absent, fell on Dhoya, and he closed with his enemy and
threw him, and put his knee on his chest and his hands on his throat,
and would have crushed all life out of him, when lo! he held beneath
his knee no more than a bundle of reeds.
Nearing home in the early morning he heard the voice he loved, singing:
Full moody is my love and sad,
His moods bow low his sombre crest,
I hold him dearer than the glad,
And he shall slumber on my breast.
My love hath many an evil mood,
Ill words for all things soft and fair,
I hold him dearer than the good,
My fingers feel his amber hair.
No tender wisdom floods the eyes
That watch me with their suppliant light--
I hold him dearer than the wise,
And for him make me wise and bright.
And when she saw him she cried, ‘An old mortal song heard floating from
a tent of skin, as we rode, I and mine, through a camping-place at
night.’ From that day she was always either singing wild and melancholy
songs or else watching him with that gaze of animal reverie.
Once he asked, ‘How old are you?’
‘A thousand years, for I am young.’
‘I am so little to you,’ he went on, ‘and you are so much to me--dawn,
and sunset, tranquillity, and speech, and solitude.’
‘Am I so much?’ she said; ‘say it many times!’ and her eyes seemed to
brighten and her breast heaved with joy.
Often he would bring her the beautiful skins of animals, and she would
walk to and fro on them, laughing to feel their softness under her
feet. Sometimes she would pause and ask suddenly, ‘Will you weep for me
when we have parted?’ and he would answer, ‘I will die then’; and she
would go on rubbing her feet to and fro in the soft skin.
And so Dhoya grew tranquil and gentle, and Change seemed still to
have forgotten them, having so much on her hands. The stars rose and
set watching them smiling together, and the tides ebbed and flowed,
bringing mutability to all save them. But always everything changes,
save only the fear of Change.