In the morning we set out, and made for the forest as fast as we could.
I rode Lona’s horse, and carried her body. I would take it to her
father: he would give it a couch in the chamber of his dead! or, if he
would not, seeing she had not come of herself, I would watch it in the
desert until it mouldered away! But I believed he would, for surely she
had died long ago! Alas, how bitterly must I not humble myself before
him!
To Adam I must take Lilith also. I had no power to make her repent! I
had hardly a right to slay her--much less a right to let her loose in
the world! and surely I scarce merited being made for ever her gaoler!
Again and again, on the way, I offered her food; but she answered only
with a look of hungering hate. Her fiery eyes kept rolling to and fro,
nor ever closed, I believe, until we reached the other side of the
hot stream. After that they never opened until we came to the House of
Bitterness.
One evening, as we were camping for the night, I saw a little girl go
up to her, and ran to prevent mischief. But ere I could reach them, the
child had put something to the lips of the princess, and given a scream
of pain.
“Please, king,” she whimpered, “suck finger. Bad giantess make hole in
it!”
I sucked the tiny finger.
“Well now!” she cried, and a minute after was holding a second fruit
to a mouth greedy of other fare. But this time she snatched her hand
quickly away, and the fruit fell to the ground. The child’s name was
Luva.
The next day we crossed the hot stream. Again on their own ground,
the Little Ones were jubilant. But their nests were still at a great
distance, and that day we went no farther than the ivy-hall, where,
because of its grapes, I had resolved to spend the night. When they saw
the great clusters, at once they knew them good, rushed upon them, ate
eagerly, and in a few minutes were all fast asleep on the green floor
and in the forest around the hall. Hoping again to see the dance, and
expecting the Little Ones to sleep through it, I had made them leave a
wide space in the middle. I lay down among them, with Lona by my side,
but did not sleep.
The night came, and suddenly the company was there. I was wondering with
myself whether, night after night, they would thus go on dancing to all
eternity, and whether I should not one day have to join them because of
my stiff-neckedness, when the eyes of the children came open, and they
sprang to their feet, wide awake. Immediately every one caught hold of
a dancer, and away they went, bounding and skipping. The spectres seemed
to see and welcome them: perhaps they knew all about the Little Ones,
for they had themselves long been on their way back to childhood!
Anyhow, their innocent gambols must, I thought, bring refreshment to
weary souls who, their present taken from them and their future dark,
had no life save the shadow of their vanished past. Many a merry but
never a rude prank did the children play; and if they did at times cause
a momentary jar in the rhythm of the dance, the poor spectres, who had
nothing to smile withal, at least manifested no annoyance.
Just ere the morning began to break, I started to see the
skeleton-princess in the doorway, her eyes open and glowing, the fearful
spot black on her side. She stood for a moment, then came gliding in,
as if she would join the dance. I sprang to my feet. A cry of repugnant
fear broke from the children, and the lights vanished. But the low
moon looked in, and I saw them clinging to each other. The ghosts
were gone--at least they were no longer visible. The princess too had
disappeared. I darted to the spot where I had left her: she lay with
her eyes closed, as if she had never moved. I returned to the hall. The
Little Ones were already on the floor, composing themselves to sleep.
The next morning, as we started, we spied, a little way from us, two
skeletons moving about in a thicket. The Little Ones broke their ranks,
and ran to them. I followed; and, although now walking at ease, without
splint or ligature, I was able to recognise the pair I had before seen
in that neighbourhood. The children at once made friends with them,
laying hold of their arms, and stroking the bones of their long fingers;
and it was plain the poor creatures took their attentions kindly. The
two seemed on excellent terms with each other. Their common deprivation
had drawn them together! the loss of everything had been the beginning
of a new life to them!
Perceiving that they had gathered handfuls of herbs, and were looking
for more--presumably to rub their bones with, for in what other way
could nourishment reach their system so rudimentary?--the Little Ones,
having keenly examined those they held, gathered of the same sorts, and
filled the hands the skeletons held out to receive them. Then they bid
them goodbye, promising to come and see them again, and resumed their
journey, saying to each other they had not known there were such nice
people living in the same forest.
When we came to the nest-village, I remained there a night with them, to
see them resettled; for Lona still looked like one just dead, and there
seemed no need of haste.
The princess had eaten nothing, and her eyes remained shut: fearing she
might die ere we reached the end of our journey, I went to her in the
night, and laid my bare arm upon her lips. She bit into it so fiercely
that I cried out. How I got away from her I do not know, but I came to
myself lying beyond her reach. It was then morning, and immediately I
set about our departure.
Choosing twelve Little Ones, not of the biggest and strongest, but of
the sweetest and merriest, I mounted them on six elephants, and took
two more of the wise CLUMSIES, as the children called them, to bear the
princess. I still rode Lona’s horse, and carried her body wrapt in
her cloak before me. As nearly as I could judge I took the direct way,
across the left branch of the river-bed, to the House of Bitterness,
where I hoped to learn how best to cross the broader and rougher branch,
and how to avoid the basin of monsters: I dreaded the former for the
elephants, the latter for the children.
I had one terrible night on the way--the third, passed in the desert
between the two branches of the dead river.
We had stopped the elephants in a sheltered place, and there let the
princess slip down between them, to lie on the sand until the morning.
She seemed quite dead, but I did not think she was. I laid myself a
little way from her, with the body of Lona by my other side, thus
to keep watch at once over the dead and the dangerous. The moon was
half-way down the west, a pale, thoughtful moon, mottling the desert
with shadows. Of a sudden she was eclipsed, remaining visible, but
sending forth no light: a thick, diaphanous film covered her patient
beauty, and she looked troubled. The film swept a little aside, and
I saw the edge of it against her clearness--the jagged outline of
a bat-like wing, torn and hooked. Came a cold wind with a burning
sting--and Lilith was upon me. Her hands were still bound, but with her
teeth she pulled from my shoulder the cloak Lona made for me, and fixed
them in my flesh. I lay as one paralysed.
Already the very life seemed flowing from me into her, when I
remembered, and struck her on the hand. She raised her head with a
gurgling shriek, and I felt her shiver. I flung her from me, and sprang
to my feet.
She was on her knees, and rocked herself to and fro. A second blast of
hot-stinging cold enveloped us; the moon shone out clear, and I saw her
face--gaunt and ghastly, besmeared with red.
“Down, devil!” I cried.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, with the voice of a dull echo from
a sepulchre.
“To your first husband,” I answered.
“He will kill me!” she moaned.
“At least he will take you off my hands!”
“Give me my daughter,” she suddenly screamed, grinding her teeth.
“Never! Your doom is upon you at last!”
“Loose my hands for pity’s sake!” she groaned. “I am in torture. The
cords are sunk in my flesh.”
“I dare not. Lie down!” I said.
She threw herself on the ground like a log.
The rest of the night passed in peace, and in the morning she again
seemed dead.
Before evening we came in sight of the House of Bitterness, and the next
moment one of the elephants came alongside of my horse.
“Please, king, you are not going to that place?” whispered the Little
One who rode on his neck.
“Indeed I am! We are going to stay the night there,” I answered.
“Oh, please, don’t! That must be where the cat-woman lives!”
“If you had ever seen her, you would not call her by that name!”
“Nobody ever sees her: she has lost her face! Her head is back and side
all round.”
“She hides her face from dull, discontented people!--Who taught you to
call her the cat-woman?”
“I heard the bad giants call her so.”
“What did they say about her?”
“That she had claws to her toes.”
“It is not true. I know the lady. I spent a night at her house.”
“But she MAY have claws to her toes! You might see her feet, and her
claws be folded up inside their cushions!”
“Then perhaps you think that I have claws to my toes?”
“Oh, no; that can’t be! you are good!”
“The giants might have told you so!” I pursued.
“We shouldn’t believe them about you!”
“Are the giants good?”
“No; they love lying.”
“Then why do you believe them about her? I know the lady is good; she
cannot have claws.”
“Please how do you know she is good?”
“How do you know I am good?”
I rode on, while he waited for his companions, and told them what I had
said.
They hastened after me, and when they came up,--
“I would not take you to her house if I did not believe her good,” I
said.
“We know you would not,” they answered.
“If I were to do something that frightened you--what would you say?”
“The beasts frightened us sometimes at first, but they never hurt us!”
answered one.
“That was before we knew them!” added another.
“Just so!” I answered. “When you see the woman in that cottage, you will
know that she is good. You may wonder at what she does, but she will
always be good. I know her better than you know me. She will not hurt
you,--or if she does,----”
“Ah, you are not sure about it, king dear! You think she MAY hurt us!”
“I am sure she will never be unkind to you, even if she do hurt you!”
They were silent for a while.
“I’m not afraid of being hurt--a little!--a good deal!” cried Odu. “But
I should not like scratches in the dark! The giants say the cat-woman
has claw-feet all over her house!”
“I am taking the princess to her,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because she is her friend.”
“How can she be good then?”
“Little Tumbledown is a friend of the princess,” I answered; “so is
Luva: I saw them both, more than once, trying to feed her with grapes!”
“Little Tumbledown is good! Luva is very good!”
“That is why they are her friends.”
“Will the cat-woman--I mean the woman that isn’t the cat-woman, and has
no claws to her toes--give her grapes?”
“She is more likely to give her scratches!”
“Why?--You say she is her friend!”
“That is just why.--A friend is one who gives us what we need, and the
princess is sorely in need of a terrible scratching.”
They were silent again.
“If any of you are afraid,” I said, “you may go home; I shall not
prevent you. But I cannot take one with me who believes the giants
rather than me, or one who will call a good lady the cat-woman!”
“Please, king,” said one, “I’m so afraid of being afraid!”
“My boy,” I answered, “there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm
is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his
face and he will run away.”
“There she is--in the door waiting for us!” cried one, and put his hands
over his eyes.
“How ugly she is!” cried another, and did the same.
“You do not see her,” I said; “her face is covered!”
“She has no face!” they answered.
“She has a very beautiful face. I saw it once.--It is indeed as
beautiful as Lona’s!” I added with a sigh.
“Then what makes her hide it?”
“I think I know:--anyhow, she has some good reason for it!”
“I don’t like the cat-woman! she is frightful!”
“You cannot like, and you ought not to dislike what you have never
seen.--Once more, you must not call her the cat-woman!”
“What are we to call her then, please?”
“Lady Mara.”
“That is a pretty name!” said a girl; “I will call her ‘lady Mara’; then
perhaps she will show me her beautiful face!”
Mara, drest and muffled in white, was indeed standing in the doorway to
receive us.
“At last!” she said. “Lilith’s hour has been long on the way, but it
is come! Everything comes. Thousands of years have I waited--and not in
vain!”
She came to me, took my treasure from my arms, carried it into the
house, and returning, took the princess. Lilith shuddered, but made no
resistance. The beasts lay down by the door. We followed our hostess,
the Little Ones looking very grave. She laid the princess on a rough
settle at one side of the room, unbound her, and turned to us.
“Mr. Vane,” she said, “and you, Little Ones, I thank you! This woman
would not yield to gentler measures; harder must have their turn. I must
do what I can to make her repent!”
The pitiful-hearted Little Ones began to sob sorely.
“Will you hurt her very much, lady Mara?” said the girl I have just
mentioned, putting her warm little hand in mine.
“Yes; I am afraid I must; I fear she will make me!” answered Mara. “It
would be cruel to hurt her too little. It would have all to be done
again, only worse.”
“May I stop with her?”
“No, my child. She loves no one, therefore she cannot be WITH any one.
There is One who will be with her, but she will not be with Him.”
“Will the shadow that came down the hill be with her?”
“The great Shadow will be in her, I fear, but he cannot be WITH her, or
with any one. She will know I am beside her, but that will not comfort
her.”
“Will you scratch her very deep?” asked Odu, going near, and putting his
hand in hers. “Please, don’t make the red juice come!”
She caught him up, turned her back to the rest of us, drew the muffling
down from her face, and held him at arms’ length that he might see her.
As if his face had been a mirror, I saw in it what he saw. For one
moment he stared, his little mouth open; then a divine wonder arose in
his countenance, and swiftly changed to intense delight. For a minute he
gazed entranced, then she set him down. Yet a moment he stood looking up
at her, lost in contemplation--then ran to us with the face of a prophet
that knows a bliss he cannot tell. Mara rearranged her mufflings, and
turned to the other children.
“You must eat and drink before you go to sleep,” she said; “you have had
a long journey!”
She set the bread of her house before them, and a jug of cold water.
They had never seen bread before, and this was hard and dry, but they
ate it without sign of distaste. They had never seen water before,
but they drank without demur, one after the other looking up from
the draught with a face of glad astonishment. Then she led away the
smallest, and the rest went trooping after her. With her own gentle
hands, they told me, she put them to bed on the floor of the garret.