Lilith
by
George MacDonald

Part 2 out of 6



raven, and would have followed him, but felt it useless.

All at once he pounced on a spot, throwing the whole weight of his
body on his bill, and for some moments dug vigorously. Then with
a flutter of his wings he threw back his head, and something shot
from his bill, cast high in the air. That moment the sun set, and
the air at once grew very dusk, but the something opened into a
soft radiance, and came pulsing toward me like a fire-fly, but with
a much larger and a yellower light. It flew over my head. I turned
and followed it.

Here I interrupt my narrative to remark that it involves a constant
struggle to say what cannot be said with even an approach to
precision, the things recorded being, in their nature and in that
of the creatures concerned in them, so inexpressibly different from
any possible events of this economy, that I can present them only
by giving, in the forms and language of life in this world, the
modes in which they affected me--not the things themselves, but the
feelings they woke in me. Even this much, however, I do with a
continuous and abiding sense of failure, finding it impossible to
present more than one phase of a multitudinously complicated
significance, or one concentric sphere of a graduated embodiment.
A single thing would sometimes seem to be and mean many things, with
an uncertain identity at the heart of them, which kept constantly
altering their look. I am indeed often driven to set down what I
know to be but a clumsy and doubtful representation of the mere
feeling aimed at, none of the communicating media of this world
being fit to convey it, in its peculiar strangeness, with even an
approach to clearness or certainty. Even to one who knew the region
better than myself, I should have no assurance of transmitting the
reality of my experience in it. While without a doubt, for instance,
that I was actually regarding a scene of activity, I might be, at
the same moment, in my consciousness aware that I was perusing a
metaphysical argument.




CHAPTER X

THE BAD BURROW

As the air grew black and the winter closed swiftly around me, the
fluttering fire blazed out more luminous, and arresting its flight,
hovered waiting. So soon as I came under its radiance, it flew
slowly on, lingering now and then above spots where the ground was
rocky. Every time I looked up, it seemed to have grown larger, and
at length gave me an attendant shadow. Plainly a bird-butterfly,
it flew with a certain swallowy double. Its wings were very large,
nearly square, and flashed all the colours of the rainbow. Wondering
at their splendour, I became so absorbed in their beauty that I
stumbled over a low rock, and lay stunned. When I came to myself,
the creature was hovering over my head, radiating the whole chord
of light, with multitudinous gradations and some kinds of colour I
had never before seen. I rose and went on, but, unable to take my
eyes off the shining thing to look to my steps, I struck my foot
against a stone. Fearing then another fall, I sat down to watch
the little glory, and a great longing awoke in me to have it in my
hand. To my unspeakable delight, it began to sink toward me. Slowly
at first, then swiftly it sank, growing larger as it came nearer.
I felt as if the treasure of the universe were giving itself to me--
put out my hand, and had it. But the instant I took it, its light
went out; all was dark as pitch; a dead book with boards outspread
lay cold and heavy in my hand. I threw it in the air--only to hear
it fall among the heather. Burying my face in my hands, I sat in
motionless misery.

But the cold grew so bitter that, fearing to be frozen, I got up.
The moment I was on my feet, a faint sense of light awoke in me.
"Is it coming to life?" I cried, and a great pang of hope shot
through me. Alas, no! it was the edge of a moon peering up keen
and sharp over a level horizon! She brought me light--but no
guidance! SHE would not hover over me, would not wait on my
faltering steps! She could but offer me an ignorant choice!

With a full face she rose, and I began to see a little about me.
Westward of her, and not far from me, a range of low hills broke
the horizon-line: I set out for it.

But what a night I had to pass ere I reached it! The moon seemed
to know something, for she stared at me oddly. Her look was indeed
icy-cold, but full of interest, or at least curiosity. She was not
the same moon I had known on the earth; her face was strange to me,
and her light yet stranger. Perhaps it came from an unknown sun!
Every time I looked up, I found her staring at me with all her might!
At first I was annoyed, as at the rudeness of a fellow creature; but
soon I saw or fancied a certain wondering pity in her gaze: why was
I out in her night? Then first I knew what an awful thing it was to
be awake in the universe: I WAS, and could not help it!

As I walked, my feet lost the heather, and trod a bare spongy soil,
something like dry, powdery peat. To my dismay it gave a momentary
heave under me; then presently I saw what seemed the ripple of an
earthquake running on before me, shadowy in the low moon. It passed
into the distance; but, while yet I stared after it, a single wave
rose up, and came slowly toward me. A yard or two away it burst,
and from it, with a scramble and a bound, issued an animal like a
tiger. About his mouth and ears hung clots of mould, and his eyes
winked and flamed as he rushed at me, showing his white teeth in a
soundless snarl. I stood fascinated, unconscious of either courage
or fear. He turned his head to the ground, and plunged into it.

"That moon is affecting my brain," I said as I resumed my journey.
"What life can be here but the phantasmic--the stuff of which dreams
are made? I am indeed walking in a vain show!"

Thus I strove to keep my heart above the waters of fear, nor knew
that she whom I distrusted was indeed my defence from the realities
I took for phantoms: her light controlled the monsters, else had
I scarce taken a second step on the hideous ground. "I will not
be appalled by that which only seems!" I said to myself, yet felt
it a terrible thing to walk on a sea where such fishes disported
themselves below. With that, a step or two from me, the head of
a worm began to come slowly out of the earth, as big as that of a
polar bear and much resembling it, with a white mane to its red neck.
The drawing wriggles with which its huge length extricated itself
were horrible, yet I dared not turn my eyes from them. The moment
its tail was free, it lay as if exhausted, wallowing in feeble effort
to burrow again.

"Does it live on the dead," I wondered, "and is it unable to hurt
the living? If they scent their prey and come out, why do they leave
me unharmed?"

I know now it was that the moon paralysed them.

All the night through as I walked, hideous creatures, no two
alike, threatened me. In some of them, beauty of colour enhanced
loathliness of shape: one large serpent was covered from head to
distant tail with feathers of glorious hues.

I became at length so accustomed to their hurtless menaces that I
fell to beguiling the way with the invention of monstrosities, never
suspecting that I owed each moment of life to the staring moon.
Though hers was no primal radiance, it so hampered the evil things,
that I walked in safety. For light is yet light, if but the last
of a countless series of reflections! How swiftly would not my feet
have carried me over the restless soil, had I known that, if still
within their range when her lamp ceased to shine on the cursed spot,
I should that moment be at the mercy of such as had no mercy, the
centre of a writhing heap of hideousness, every individual of it as
terrible as before it had but seemed! Fool of ignorance, I watched
the descent of the weary, solemn, anxious moon down the widening
vault above me, with no worse uneasiness than the dread of losing
my way--where as yet I had indeed no way to lose.

I was drawing near the hills I had made my goal, and she was now not
far from their sky-line, when the soundless wallowing ceased, and
the burrow lay motionless and bare. Then I saw, slowly walking over
the light soil, the form of a woman. A white mist floated about her,
now assuming, now losing to reassume the shape of a garment, as it
gathered to her or was blown from her by a wind that dogged her steps.

She was beautiful, but with such a pride at once and misery on her
countenance that I could hardly believe what yet I saw. Up and down
she walked, vainly endeavouring to lay hold of the mist and wrap it
around her. The eyes in the beautiful face were dead, and on her
left side was a dark spot, against which she would now and then press
her hand, as if to stifle pain or sickness. Her hair hung nearly to
her feet, and sometimes the wind would so mix it with the mist that
I could not distinguish the one from the other; but when it fell
gathering together again, it shone a pale gold in the moonlight.

Suddenly pressing both hands on her heart, she fell to the ground,
and the mist rose from her and melted in the air. I ran to her.
But she began to writhe in such torture that I stood aghast. A
moment more and her legs, hurrying from her body, sped away serpents.
>From her shoulders fled her arms as in terror, serpents also. Then
something flew up from her like a bat, and when I looked again, she
was gone. The ground rose like the sea in a storm; terror laid hold
upon me; I turned to the hills and ran.

I was already on the slope of their base, when the moon sank behind
one of their summits, leaving me in its shadow. Behind me rose a
waste and sickening cry, as of frustrate desire--the only sound I
had heard since the fall of the dead butterfly; it made my heart
shake like a flag in the wind. I turned, saw many dark objects
bounding after me, and made for the crest of a ridge on which the
moon still shone. She seemed to linger there that I might see to
defend myself. Soon I came in sight of her, and climbed the faster.

Crossing the shadow of a rock, I heard the creatures panting at my
heels. But just as the foremost threw himself upon me with a snarl
of greedy hate, we rushed into the moon together. She flashed out
an angry light, and he fell from me a bodiless blotch. Strength came
to me, and I turned on the rest. But one by one as they darted into
the light, they dropped with a howl; and I saw or fancied a strange
smile on the round face above me.

I climbed to the top of the ridge: far away shone the moon, sinking
to a low horizon. The air was pure and strong. I descended a little
way, found it warmer, and sat down to wait the dawn.

The moon went below, and the world again was dark.




CHAPTER XI

THE EVIL WOOD

I fell fast asleep, and when I woke the sun was rising. I went to
the top again, and looked back: the hollow I had crossed in the
moonlight lay without sign of life. Could it be that the calm expanse
before me swarmed with creatures of devouring greed?

I turned and looked over the land through which my way must lie. It
seemed a wide desert, with a patch of a different colour in the
distance that might be a forest. Sign of presence, human or animal,
was none--smoke or dust or shadow of cultivation. Not a cloud floated
in the clear heaven; no thinnest haze curtained any segment of its
circling rim.

I descended, and set out for the imaginable forest: something alive
might be there; on this side of it could not well be anything!

When I reached the plain, I found it, as far as my sight could go,
of rock, here flat and channeled, there humped and pinnacled--
evidently the wide bed of a vanished river, scored by innumerable
water-runs, without a trace of moisture in them. Some of the channels
bore a dry moss, and some of the rocks a few lichens almost as hard
as themselves. The air, once "filled with pleasant noise of waters,"
was silent as death. It took me the whole day to reach the patch,--
which I found indeed a forest--but not a rudiment of brook or runnel
had I crossed! Yet through the glowing noon I seemed haunted by an
aural mirage, hearing so plainly the voice of many waters that I
could hardly believe the opposing testimony of my eyes.

The sun was approaching the horizon when I left the river-bed, and
entered the forest. Sunk below the tree-tops, and sending his rays
between their pillar-like boles, he revealed a world of blessed
shadows waiting to receive me. I had expected a pine-wood, but
here were trees of many sorts, some with strong resemblances to
trees I knew, others with marvellous differences from any I had
ever seen. I threw myself beneath the boughs of what seemed a
eucalyptus in blossom: its flowers had a hard calyx much resembling
a skull, the top of which rose like a lid to let the froth-like
bloom-brain overfoam its cup. From beneath the shadow of its
falchion-leaves my eyes went wandering into deep after deep of the
forest.

Soon, however, its doors and windows began to close, shutting up
aisle and corridor and roomier glade. The night was about me, and
instant and sharp the cold. Again what a night I found it! How
shall I make my reader share with me its wild ghostiness?

The tree under which I lay rose high before it branched, but the
boughs of it bent so low that they seemed ready to shut me in as
I leaned against the smooth stem, and let my eyes wander through
the brief twilight of the vanishing forest. Presently, to my
listless roving gaze, the varied outlines of the clumpy foliage
began to assume or imitate--say rather SUGGEST other shapes than
their own. A light wind began to blow; it set the boughs of a
neighbour tree rocking, and all their branches aswing, every twig
and every leaf blending its individual motion with the sway of its
branch and the rock of its bough. Among its leafy shapes was a
pack of wolves that struggled to break from a wizard's leash:
greyhounds would not have strained so savagely! I watched them
with an interest that grew as the wind gathered force, and their
motions life.

Another mass of foliage, larger and more compact, presented my
fancy with a group of horses' heads and forequarters projecting
caparisoned from their stalls. Their necks kept moving up and down,
with an impatience that augmented as the growing wind broke their
vertical rhythm with a wilder swaying from side to side. What
heads they were! how gaunt, how strange!--several of them bare
skulls--one with the skin tight on its bones! One had lost the
under jaw and hung low, looking unutterably weary--but now and
then hove high as if to ease the bit. Above them, at the end of
a branch, floated erect the form of a woman, waving her arms in
imperious gesture. The definiteness of these and other leaf masses
first surprised and then discomposed me: what if they should overpower
my brain with seeming reality? But the twilight became darkness;
the wind ceased; every shape was shut up in the night; I fell asleep.

It was still dark when I began to be aware of a far-off, confused,
rushing noise, mingled with faint cries. It grew and grew until a
tumult as of gathering multitudes filled the wood. On all sides
at once the sounds drew nearer; the spot where I lay seemed the
centre of a commotion that extended throughout the forest. I scarce
moved hand or foot lest I should betray my presence to hostile
things.

The moon at length approached the forest, and came slowly into it:
with her first gleam the noises increased to a deafening uproar,
and I began to see dim shapes about me. As she ascended and grew
brighter, the noises became yet louder, and the shapes clearer. A
furious battle was raging around me. Wild cries and roars of rage,
shock of onset, struggle prolonged, all mingled with words articulate,
surged in my ears. Curses and credos, snarls and sneers, laughter
and mockery, sacred names and howls of hate, came huddling in chaotic
interpenetration. Skeletons and phantoms fought in maddest confusion.
Swords swept through the phantoms: they only shivered. Maces crashed
on the skeletons, shattering them hideously: not one fell or ceased
to fight, so long as a single joint held two bones together. Bones
of men and horses lay scattered and heaped; grinding and crunching
them under foot fought the skeletons. Everywhere charged the
bone-gaunt white steeds; everywhere on foot or on wind-blown misty
battle-horses, raged and ravened and raved the indestructible
spectres; weapons and hoofs clashed and crushed; while skeleton jaws
and phantom-throats swelled the deafening tumult with the war-cry
of every opinion, bad or good, that had bred strife, injustice,
cruelty in any world. The holiest words went with the most hating
blow. Lie-distorted truths flew hurtling in the wind of javelins
and bones. Every moment some one would turn against his comrades,
and fight more wildly than before, THE TRUTH! THE TRUTH! still his
cry. One I noted who wheeled ever in a circle, and smote on all
sides. Wearied out, a pair would sit for a minute side by side,
then rise and renew the fierce combat. None stooped to comfort the
fallen, or stepped wide to spare him.

The moon shone till the sun rose, and all the night long I had
glimpses of a woman moving at her will above the strife-tormented
multitude, now on this front now on that, one outstretched arm
urging the fight, the other pressed against her side. "Ye are men:
slay one another!" she shouted. I saw her dead eyes and her dark
spot, and recalled what I had seen the night before.

Such was the battle of the dead, which I saw and heard as I lay
under the tree.

Just before sunrise, a breeze went through the forest, and a voice
cried, "Let the dead bury their dead!" At the word the contending
thousands dropped noiseless, and when the sun looked in, he saw
never a bone, but here and there a withered branch.

I rose and resumed my journey, through as quiet a wood as ever grew
out of the quiet earth. For the wind of the morning had ceased when
the sun appeared, and the trees were silent. Not a bird sang, not
a squirrel, mouse, or weasel showed itself, not a belated moth flew
athwart my path. But as I went I kept watch over myself, nor dared
let my eyes rest on any forest-shape. All the time I seemed to hear
faint sounds of mattock and spade and hurtling bones: any moment
my eyes might open on things I would not see! Daylight prudence
muttered that perhaps, to appear, ten thousand phantoms awaited only
my consenting fancy.

In the middle of the afternoon I came out of the wood--to find before
me a second net of dry water-courses. I thought at first that I
had wandered from my attempted line, and reversed my direction; but
I soon saw it was not so, and concluded presently that I had come
to another branch of the same river-bed. I began at once to cross
it, and was in the bottom of a wide channel when the sun set.

I sat down to await the moon, and growing sleepy, stretched myself
on the moss. The moment my head was down, I heard the sounds of
rushing streams--all sorts of sweet watery noises. The veiled melody
of the molten music sang me into a dreamless sleep, and when I woke
the sun was already up, and the wrinkled country widely visible.
Covered with shadows it lay striped and mottled like the skin of
some wild animal. As the sun rose the shadows diminished, and it
seemed as if the rocks were re-absorbing the darkness that had oozed
out of them during the night.

Hitherto I had loved my Arab mare and my books more, I fear, than
live man or woman; now at length my soul was athirst for a human
presence, and I longed even after those inhabitants of this alien
world whom the raven had so vaguely described as nearest my sort.
With heavy yet hoping heart, and mind haunted by a doubt whether I
was going in any direction at all, I kept wearily travelling
"north-west and by south."




CHAPTER XII

FRIENDS AND FOES

Coming, in one of the channels, upon what seemed a little shrub,
the outlying picket, I trusted, of an army behind it, I knelt to
look at it closer. It bore a small fruit, which, as I did not
recognise it, I feared to gather and eat. Little I thought that
I was watched from behind the rocks by hundreds of eyes eager with
the question whether I would or would not take it.

I came to another plant somewhat bigger, then to another larger
still, and at length to clumps of a like sort; by which time I saw
that they were not shrubs but dwarf-trees. Before I reached the
bank of this second branch of the river-bed, I found the channels
so full of them that it was with difficulty I crossed such as I
could not jump. In one I heard a great rush, as of a multitude of
birds from an ivied wall, but saw nothing.

I came next to some large fruit-bearing trees, but what they bore
looked coarse. They stood on the edge of a hollow, which evidently
had once been the basin of a lake. From the left a forest seemed
to flow into and fill it; but while the trees above were of many
sorts, those in the hollow were almost entirely fruit-bearing.

I went a few yards down the slope of grass mingled with moss, and
stretched myself upon it weary. A little farther down stood a
tiny tree full of rosiest apples no bigger than small cherries,
its top close to my hand; I pulled and ate one of them. Finding
it delicious, I was in the act of taking another, when a sudden
shouting of children, mingled with laughter clear and sweet as the
music of a brook, startled me with delight.

"He likes our apples! He likes our apples! He's a good giant!
He's a good giant!" cried many little voices.

"He's a giant!" objected one.

"He IS rather big," assented another, "but littleness isn't
everything! It won't keep you from growing big and stupid except
you take care!"

I rose on my elbow and stared. Above and about and below me stood
a multitude of children, apparently of all ages, some just able to
run alone, and some about twelve or thirteen. Three or four seemed
older. They stood in a small knot, a little apart, and were less
excited than the rest. The many were chattering in groups, declaiming
and contradicting, like a crowd of grown people in a city, only with
greater merriment, better manners, and more sense.

I gathered that, by the approach of my hand to a second apple, they
knew that I liked the first; but how from that they argued me good,
I did not see, nor wondered that one of them at least should suggest
caution. I did not open my mouth, for I was afraid of frightening
them, and sure I should learn more by listening than by asking
questions. For I understood nearly all they said--at which I was
not surprised: to understand is not more wonderful than to love.

There came a movement and slight dispersion among them, and presently
a sweet, innocent-looking, lovingly roguish little fellow handed me
a huge green apple. Silence fell on the noisy throng; all waited
expectant.

"Eat, good giant," he said.

I sat up, took the apple, smiled thanks, and would have eaten; but
the moment I bit into it, I flung it far away.

Again rose a shout of delight; they flung themselves upon me, so as
nearly to smother me; they kissed my face and hands; they laid hold
of my legs; they clambered about my arms and shoulders, embracing my
head and neck. I came to the ground at last, overwhelmed with the
lovely little goblins.

"Good, good giant!" they cried. "We knew you would come! Oh you
dear, good, strong giant!"

The babble of their talk sprang up afresh, and ever the jubilant
shout would rise anew from hundreds of clear little throats.

Again came a sudden silence. Those around me drew back; those atop
of me got off and began trying to set me on my feet. Upon their
sweet faces, concern had taken the place of merriment.

"Get up, good giant!" said a little girl. "Make haste! much haste!
He saw you throw his apple away!"

Before she ended, I was on my feet. She stood pointing up the
slope. On the brow of it was a clownish, bad-looking fellow, a few
inches taller than myself. He looked hostile, but I saw no reason
to fear him, for he had no weapon, and my little friends had vanished
every one.

He began to descend, and I, in the hope of better footing and
position, to go up. He growled like a beast as he turned toward me.

Reaching a more level spot, I stood and waited for him. As he came
near, he held out his hand. I would have taken it in friendly
fashion, but he drew it back, threatened a blow, and held it out
again. Then I understood him to claim the apple I had flung away,
whereupon I made a grimace of dislike and a gesture of rejection.

He answered with a howl of rage that seemed to say, "Do you dare
tell me my apple was not fit to eat?"

"One bad apple may grow on the best tree," I said.

Whether he perceived my meaning I cannot tell, but he made a stride
nearer, and I stood on my guard. He delayed his assault, however,
until a second giant, much like him, who had been stealing up behind
me, was close enough, when he rushed upon me. I met him with a good
blow in the face, but the other struck me on the back of the head,
and between them I was soon overpowered.

They dragged me into the wood above the valley, where their tribe
lived--in wretched huts, built of fallen branches and a few stones.
Into one of these they pushed me, there threw me on the ground, and
kicked me. A woman was present, who looked on with indifference.

I may here mention that during my captivity I hardly learned to
distinguish the women from the men, they differed so little. Often
I wondered whether I had not come upon a sort of fungoid people,
with just enough mind to give them motion and the expressions of
anger and greed. Their food, which consisted of tubers, bulbs, and
fruits, was to me inexpressibly disagreeable, but nothing offended
them so much as to show dislike to it. I was cuffed by the women
and kicked by the men because I would not swallow it.

I lay on the floor that night hardly able to move, but I slept a
good deal, and woke a little refreshed. In the morning they dragged
me to the valley, and tying my feet, with a long rope, to a tree,
put a flat stone with a saw-like edge in my left hand. I shifted it
to the right; they kicked me, and put it again in the left; gave me
to understand that I was to scrape the bark off every branch that
had no fruit on it; kicked me once more, and left me.

I set about the dreary work in the hope that by satisfying them I
should be left very much to myself--to make my observations and
choose my time for escape. Happily one of the dwarf-trees grew
close by me, and every other minute I plucked and ate a small fruit,
which wonderfully refreshed and strengthened me.




CHAPTER XIII

THE LITTLE ONES

I had been at work but a few moments, when I heard small voices near
me, and presently the Little Ones, as I soon found they called
themselves, came creeping out from among the tiny trees that like
brushwood filled the spaces between the big ones. In a minute
there were scores and scores about me. I made signs that the giants
had but just left me, and were not far off; but they laughed, and
told me the wind was quite clean.

"They are too blind to see us," they said, and laughed like a
multitude of sheep-bells.

"Do you like that rope about your ankles?" asked one.

"I want them to think I cannot take it off," I replied.

"They can scarcely see their own feet!" he rejoined. "Walk with
short steps and they will think the rope is all right."

As he spoke, he danced with merriment.

One of the bigger girls got down on her knees to untie the clumsy
knot. I smiled, thinking those pretty fingers could do nothing with
it, but in a moment it was loose.

They then made me sit down, and fed me with delicious little fruits;
after which the smaller of them began to play with me in the wildest
fashion, so that it was impossible for me to resume my work. When
the first grew tired, others took their places, and this went on
until the sun was setting, and heavy steps were heard approaching.
The little people started from me, and I made haste to put the rope
round my ankles.

"We must have a care," said the girl who had freed me; "a crush of
one of their horrid stumpy feet might kill a very little one!"

"Can they not perceive you at all then?"

"They might see something move; and if the children were in a heap
on the top of you, as they were a moment ago, it would be terrible;
for they hate every live thing but themselves.--Not that they are
much alive either!"

She whistled like a bird. The next instant not one of them was to
be seen or heard, and the girl herself had disappeared.

It was my master, as doubtless he counted himself, come to take me
home. He freed my ankles, and dragged me to the door of his hut;
there he threw me on the ground, again tied my feet, gave me a kick,
and left me.

Now I might at once have made my escape; but at length I had friends,
and could not think of leaving them. They were so charming, so full
of winsome ways, that I must see more of them! I must know them
better! "To-morrow," I said to myself with delight, "I shall see
them again!" But from the moment there was silence in the huts until
I fell asleep, I heard them whispering all about me, and knew that
I was lovingly watched by a multitude. After that, I think they
hardly ever left me quite alone.

I did not come to know the giants at all, and I believe there was
scarcely anything in them to know. They never became in the least
friendly, but they were much too stupid to invent cruelties. Often
I avoided a bad kick by catching the foot and giving its owner a
fall, upon which he never, on that occasion, renewed his attempt.

But the little people were constantly doing and saying things that
pleased, often things that surprised me. Every day I grew more loath
to leave them. While I was at work, they would keep coming and going,
amusing and delighting me, and taking all the misery, and much of
the weariness out of my monotonous toil. Very soon I loved them more
than I can tell. They did not know much, but they were very wise,
and seemed capable of learning anything. I had no bed save the bare
ground, but almost as often as I woke, it was in a nest of children--
one or other of them in my arms, though which I seldom could
tell until the light came, for they ordered the succession among
themselves. When one crept into my bosom, unconsciously I clasped
him there, and the rest lay close around me, the smaller nearer. It
is hardly necessary to say that I did not suffer much from the
nightly cold! The first thing they did in the morning, and the last
before sunset, was to bring the good giant plenty to eat.

One morning I was surprised on waking to find myself alone. As I
came to my senses, however, I heard subdued sounds of approach, and
presently the girl already mentioned, the tallest and gravest of
the community, and regarded by all as their mother, appeared from
the wood, followed by the multitude in jubilation manifest--but
silent lest they should rouse the sleeping giant at whose door I
lay. She carried a boy-baby in her arms: hitherto a girl-baby,
apparently about a year old, had been the youngest. Three of the
bigger girls were her nurses, but they shared their treasure with
all the rest. Among the Little Ones, dolls were unknown; the bigger
had the smaller, and the smaller the still less, to tend and play
with.

Lona came to me and laid the infant in my arms. The baby opened
his eyes and looked at me, closed them again, and fell asleep.

"He loves you already!" said the girl.

"Where did you find him?" I asked.

"In the wood, of course," she answered, her eyes beaming with delight,
"--where we always find them. Isn't he a beauty? We've been out
all night looking for him. Sometimes it is not easy to find!"

"How do you know when there is one to find?" I asked.

"I cannot tell," she replied. "Every one makes haste to tell the
other, but we never find out who told first. Sometimes I think one
must have said it asleep, and another heard it half-awake. When
there is a baby in the wood, no one can stop to ask questions; and
when we have found it, then it is too late."

"Do more boy or girl babies come to the wood?"

"They don't come to the wood; we go to the wood and find them."

"Are there more boys or girls of you now?"

I had found that to ask precisely the same question twice, made
them knit their brows.

"I do not know," she answered.

"You can count them, surely!"

"We never do that. We shouldn't like to be counted."

"Why?"

"It wouldn't be smooth. We would rather not know."

"Where do the babies come from first?"

"From the wood--always. There is no other place they can come from."

She knew where they came from last, and thought nothing else was to
be known about their advent.

"How often do you find one?"

"Such a happy thing takes all the glad we've got, and we forget the
last time. You too are glad to have him--are you not, good giant?"

"Yes, indeed, I am!" I answered. "But how do you feed him?"

"I will show you," she rejoined, and went away--to return directly
with two or three ripe little plums. She put one to the baby's lips.

"He would open his mouth if he were awake," she said, and took him
in her arms.

She squeezed a drop to the surface, and again held the fruit to the
baby's lips. Without waking he began at once to suck it, and she
went on slowly squeezing until nothing but skin and stone were left.

"There!" she cried, in a tone of gentle triumph. "A big-apple world
it would be with nothing for the babies! We wouldn't stop in it--
would we, darling? We would leave it to the bad giants!"

"But what if you let the stone into the baby's mouth when you were
feeding him?" I said.

"No mother would do that," she replied. "I shouldn't be fit to have
a baby!"

I thought what a lovely woman she would grow. But what became of
them when they grew up? Where did they go? That brought me again
to the question--where did they come from first?

"Will you tell me where you lived before?" I said.

"Here," she replied.

"Have you NEVER lived anywhere else?" I ventured.

"Never. We all came from the wood. Some think we dropped out of
the trees."

"How is it there are so many of you quite little?"

"I don't understand. Some are less and some are bigger. I am very
big."

"Baby will grow bigger, won't he?"

"Of course he will!"

"And will you grow bigger?"

"I don't think so. I hope not. I am the biggest. It frightens me
sometimes."

"Why should it frighten you?"

She gave me no answer.

"How old are you?" I resumed.

"I do not know what you mean. We are all just that."

"How big will the baby grow?"

"I cannot tell.--Some," she added, with a trouble in her voice,
"begin to grow after we think they have stopped.--That is a frightful
thing. We don't talk about it!"

"What makes it frightful?"

She was silent for a moment, then answered,

"We fear they may be beginning to grow giants."

"Why should you fear that?"

"Because it is so terrible.--I don't want to talk about it!"

She pressed the baby to her bosom with such an anxious look that I
dared not further question her.

Before long I began to perceive in two or three of the smaller
children some traces of greed and selfishness, and noted that the
bigger girls cast on these a not infrequent glance of anxiety.

None of them put a hand to my work: they would do nothing for the
giants! But they never relaxed their loving ministrations to me.
They would sing to me, one after another, for hours; climb the tree
to reach my mouth and pop fruit into it with their dainty little
fingers; and they kept constant watch against the approach of a giant.

Sometimes they would sit and tell me stories--mostly very childish,
and often seeming to mean hardly anything. Now and then they would
call a general assembly to amuse me. On one such occasion a moody
little fellow sang me a strange crooning song, with a refrain so
pathetic that, although unintelligible to me, it caused the tears
to run down my face. This phenomenon made those who saw it regard
me with much perplexity. Then first I bethought myself that I had
not once, in that world, looked on water, falling or lying or
running. Plenty there had been in some long vanished age--that was
plain enough--but the Little Ones had never seen any before they saw
my tears! They had, nevertheless, it seemed, some dim, instinctive
perception of their origin; for a very small child went up to the
singer, shook his clenched pud in his face, and said something like
this: "'Ou skeeze ze juice out of ze good giant's seeberries! Bad
giant!"

"How is it," I said one day to Lona, as she sat with the baby in
her arms at the foot of my tree, "that I never see any children
among the giants?"

She stared a little, as if looking in vain for some sense in the
question, then replied,

"They are giants; there are no little ones."

"Have they never any children?" I asked.

"No; there are never any in the wood for them. They do not love
them. If they saw ours, they would stamp them."

"Is there always the same number of the giants then? I thought,
before I had time to know better, that they were your fathers and
mothers."

She burst into the merriest laughter, and said,

"No, good giant; WE are THEIR firsters."

But as she said it, the merriment died out of her, and she looked
scared.

I stopped working, and gazed at her, bewildered.

"How CAN that be?" I exclaimed.

"I do not say; I do not understand," she answered. "But we were
here and they not. They go from us. I am sorry, but we cannot help
it. THEY could have helped it."

"How long have you been here?" I asked, more and more puzzled--in
the hope of some side-light on the matter.

"Always, I think," she replied. "I think somebody made us always."

I turned to my scraping.

She saw I did not understand.

"The giants were not made always," she resumed. "If a Little One
doesn't care, he grows greedy, and then lazy, and then big, and then
stupid, and then bad. The dull creatures don't know that they come
from us. Very few of them believe we are anywhere. They say
NONSENSE!--Look at little Blunty: he is eating one of their apples!
He will be the next! Oh! oh! he will soon be big and bad and ugly,
and not know it!"

The child stood by himself a little way off, eating an apple nearly
as big as his head. I had often thought he did not look so good as
the rest; now he looked disgusting.

"I will take the horrid thing from him!" I cried.

"It is no use," she answered sadly. "We have done all we can, and
it is too late! We were afraid he was growing, for he would not
believe anything told him; but when he refused to share his berries,
and said he had gathered them for himself, then we knew it! He is
a glutton, and there is no hope of him.--It makes me sick to see him
eat!"

"Could not some of the boys watch him, and not let him touch the
poisonous things?"

"He may have them if he will: it is all one--to eat the apples, and
to be a boy that would eat them if he could. No; he must go to the
giants! He belongs to them. You can see how much bigger he is than
when first you came! He is bigger since yesterday."

"He is as like that hideous green lump in his hand as boy could look!"

"It suits what he is making himself."

"His head and it might change places!"

"Perhaps they do!"

"Does he want to be a giant?"

"He hates the giants, but he is making himself one all the same: he
likes their apples! Oh baby, baby, he was just such a darling as
you when we found him!"

"He will be very miserable when he finds himself a giant!"

"Oh, no; he will like it well enough! That is the worst of it."

"Will he hate the Little Ones?"

"He will be like the rest; he will not remember us--most likely
will not believe there are Little Ones. He will not care; he will
eat his apples."

"Do tell me how it will come about. I understand your world so
little! I come from a world where everything is different."

"I do not know about WORLD. What is it? What more but a word in
your beautiful big mouth?--That makes it something!"

"Never mind about the word; tell me what next will happen to Blunty."

"He will wake one morning and find himself a giant--not like you,
good giant, but like any other bad giant. You will hardly know him,
but I will tell you which. He will think he has been a giant always,
and will not know you, or any of us. The giants have lost themselves,
Peony says, and that is why they never smile. I wonder whether they
are not glad because they are bad, or bad because they are not glad.
But they can't be glad when they have no babies! I wonder what BAD
means, good giant!"

"I wish I knew no more about it than you!" I returned. "But I try
to be good, and mean to keep on trying."

"So do I--and that is how I know you are good."

A long pause followed.

"Then you do not know where the babies come from into the wood?" I
said, making one attempt more.

"There is nothing to know there," she answered. "They are in the
wood; they grow there."

"Then how is it you never find one before it is quite grown?" I
asked.

She knitted her brows and was silent a moment:

"They're not there till they're finished," she said.

"It is a pity the little sillies can't speak till they've forgotten
everything they had to tell!" I remarked.

"Little Tolma, the last before this baby, looked as if she had
something to tell, when I found her under a beech-tree, sucking her
thumb, but she hadn't. She only looked up at me--oh, so sweetly!
SHE will never go bad and grow big! When they begin to grow big
they care for nothing but bigness; and when they cannot grow any
bigger, they try to grow fatter. The bad giants are very proud of
being fat."

"So they are in my world," I said; "only they do not say FAT there,
they say RICH."

"In one of their houses," continued Lona, "sits the biggest and
fattest of them--so proud that nobody can see him; and the giants
go to his house at certain times, and call out to him, and tell him
how fat he is, and beg him to make them strong to eat more and grow
fat like him."

The rumour at length reached my ears that Blunty had vanished. I
saw a few grave faces among the bigger ones, but he did not seem to
be much missed.

The next morning Lona came to me and whispered,

"Look! look there--by that quince-tree: that is the giant that was
Blunty!--Would you have known him?"

"Never," I answered. "--But now you tell me, I could fancy it might
be Blunty staring through a fog! He DOES look stupid!"

"He is for ever eating those apples now!" she said. "That is what
comes of Little Ones that WON'T be little!"

"They call it growing-up in my world!" I said to myself. "If only
she would teach me to grow the other way, and become a Little
One!--Shall I ever be able to laugh like them?"

I had had the chance, and had flung it from me! Blunty and I were
alike! He did not know his loss, and I had to be taught mine!




CHAPTER XIV

A CRISIS

For a time I had no desire save to spend my life with the Little
Ones. But soon other thoughts and feelings began to influence me.
First awoke the vague sense that I ought to be doing something; that
I was not meant for the fattening of boors! Then it came to me that
I was in a marvellous world, of which it was assuredly my business
to discover the ways and laws; and that, if I would do anything in
return for the children's goodness, I must learn more about them
than they could tell me, and to that end must be free. Surely, I
thought, no suppression of their growth can be essential to their
loveliness and truth and purity! Not in any world could the
possibility exist of such a discord between constitution and its
natural outcome! Life and law cannot be so at variance that
perfection must be gained by thwarting development! But the growth
of the Little Ones WAS arrested! something interfered with it:
what was it? Lona seemed the eldest of them, yet not more than
fifteen, and had been long in charge of a multitude, in semblance
and mostly in behaviour merest children, who regarded her as their
mother! Were they growing at all? I doubted it. Of time they
had scarcely the idea; of their own age they knew nothing! Lona
herself thought she had lived always! Full of wisdom and empty of
knowledge, she was at once their Love and their Law! But what seemed
to me her ignorance might in truth be my own lack of insight! Her
one anxiety plainly was, that her Little Ones should not grow, and
change into bad giants! Their "good giant" was bound to do his best
for them: without more knowledge of their nature, and some knowledge
of their history, he could do nothing, and must therefore leave
them! They would only be as they were before; they had in no way
become dependent on me; they were still my protectors, I was not
theirs; my presence but brought them more in danger of their idiotic
neighbours! I longed to teach them many things: I must first
understand more of those I would teach! Knowledge no doubt made
bad people worse, but it must make good people better! I was
convinced they would learn mathematics; and might they not be taught
to write down the dainty melodies they murmured and forgot?

The conclusion was, that I must rise and continue my travels, in
the hope of coming upon some elucidation of the fortunes and destiny
of the bewitching little creatures.

My design, however, would not so soon have passed into action, but
for what now occurred.

To prepare them for my temporary absence, I was one day telling
them while at work that I would long ago have left the bad giants,
but that I loved the Little Ones so much--when, as by one accord,
they came rushing and crowding upon me; they scrambled over each
other and up the tree and dropped on my head, until I was nearly
smothered. With three very little ones in my arms, one on each
shoulder clinging to my neck, one standing straight up on my head,
four or five holding me fast by the legs, others grappling my body
and arms, and a multitude climbing and descending upon these, I was
helpless as one overwhelmed by lava. Absorbed in the merry struggle,
not one of them saw my tyrant coming until he was almost upon me.
With just one cry of "Take care, good giant!" they ran from me like
mice, they dropped from me like hedgehogs, they flew from me up the
tree like squirrels, and the same moment, sharp round the stem came
the bad giant, and dealt me such a blow on the head with a stick that
I fell to the ground. The children told me afterwards that they
sent him "such a many bumps of big apples and stones" that he was
frightened, and ran blundering home.

When I came to myself it was night. Above me were a few pale stars
that expected the moon. I thought I was alone. My head ached badly,
and I was terribly athirst.

I turned wearily on my side. The moment my ear touched the ground,
I heard the gushing and gurgling of water, and the soft noises made
me groan with longing. At once I was amid a multitude of silent
children, and delicious little fruits began to visit my lips. They
came and came until my thirst was gone.

Then I was aware of sounds I had never heard there before; the air
was full of little sobs.

I tried to sit up. A pile of small bodies instantly heaped itself
at my back. Then I struggled to my feet, with much pushing and
pulling from the Little Ones, who were wonderfully strong for their
size.

"You must go away, good giant," they said. "When the bad giants see
you hurt, they will all trample on you."

"I think I must," I answered.

"Go and grow strong, and come again," they said.

"I will," I replied--and sat down.

"Indeed you must go at once!" whispered Lona, who had been supporting
me, and now knelt beside me.

"I listened at his door," said one of the bigger boys, "and heard
the bad giant say to his wife that he had found you idle, talking
to a lot of moles and squirrels, and when he beat you, they tried
to kill him. He said you were a wizard, and they must knock you,
or they would have no peace."

"I will go at once," I said, "and come back as soon as I have found
out what is wanted to make you bigger and stronger."

"We don't want to be bigger," they answered, looking very serious.
"We WON'T grow bad giants!--We are strong now; you don't know how
much strong!"

It was no use holding them out a prospect that had not any attraction
for them! I said nothing more, but rose and moved slowly up the
slope of the valley. At once they formed themselves into a long
procession; some led the way, some walked with me helping me, and
the rest followed. They kept feeding me as we went.

"You are broken," they said, "and much red juice has run out of you:
put some in."

When we reached the edge of the valley, there was the moon just
lifting her forehead over the rim of the horizon.

"She has come to take care of you, and show you the way," said Lona.

I questioned those about me as we walked, and learned there was a
great place with a giant-girl for queen. When I asked if it was a
city, they said they did not know. Neither could they tell how far
off, or in what direction it was, or what was the giant-girl's name;
all they knew was, that she hated the Little Ones, and would like
to kill them, only she could not find them. I asked how they knew
that; Lona answered that she had always known it. If the giant-girl
came to look for them, they must hide hard, she said. When I told
them I should go and ask her why she hated them, they cried out,

"No, no! she will kill you, good giant; she will kill you! She is
an awful bad-giant witch!"

I asked them where I was to go then. They told me that, beyond
the baby-forest, away where the moon came from, lay a smooth green
country, pleasant to the feet, without rocks or trees. But when I
asked how I was to set out for it,

"The moon will tell you, we think," they said.

They were taking me up the second branch of the river bed: when they
saw that the moon had reached her height, they stopped to return.

"We have never gone so far from our trees before," they said. "Now
mind you watch how you go, that you may see inside your eyes how to
come back to us."

"And beware of the giant-woman that lives in the desert," said one
of the bigger girls as they were turning, "I suppose you have heard
of her!"

"No," I answered.

"Then take care not to go near her. She is called the Cat-woman.
She is awfully ugly--AND SCRATCHES."

As soon as the bigger ones stopped, the smaller had begun to run
back. The others now looked at me gravely for a moment, and then
walked slowly away. Last to leave me, Lona held up the baby to be
kissed, gazed in my eyes, whispered, "The Cat-woman will not hurt
YOU," and went without another word. I stood a while, gazing after
them through the moonlight, then turned and, with a heavy heart,
began my solitary journey. Soon the laughter of the Little Ones
overtook me, like sheep-bells innumerable, rippling the air, and
echoing in the rocks about me. I turned again, and again gazed
after them: they went gamboling along, with never a care in their
sweet souls. But Lona walked apart with her baby.

Pondering as I went, I recalled many traits of my little friends.

Once when I suggested that they should leave the country of the bad
giants, and go with me to find another, they answered, "But that
would be to NOT ourselves!"--so strong in them was the love of place
that their country seemed essential to their very being! Without
ambition or fear, discomfort or greed, they had no motive to desire
any change; they knew of nothing amiss; and, except their babies,
they had never had a chance of helping any one but myself:--How were
they to grow? But again, Why should they grow? In seeking to
improve their conditions, might I not do them harm, and only harm?
To enlarge their minds after the notions of my world--might it not
be to distort and weaken them? Their fear of growth as a possible
start for gianthood might be instinctive!

The part of philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man
who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him
evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.




CHAPTER XV

A STRANGE HOSTESS

I travelled on attended by the moon. As usual she was full--I had
never seen her other--and to-night as she sank I thought I perceived
something like a smile on her countenance.

When her under edge was a little below the horizon, there appeared
in the middle of her disc, as if it had been painted upon it, a
cottage, through the open door and window of which she shone; and
with the sight came the conviction that I was expected there. Almost
immediately the moon was gone, and the cottage had vanished; the
night was rapidly growing dark, and my way being across a close
succession of small ravines, I resolved to remain where I was and
expect the morning. I stretched myself, therefore, in a sandy
hollow, made my supper off the fruits the children had given me at
parting, and was soon asleep.

I woke suddenly, saw above me constellations unknown to my former
world, and had lain for a while gazing at them, when I became aware
of a figure seated on the ground a little way from and above me. I
was startled, as one is on discovering all at once that he is not
alone. The figure was between me and the sky, so that I saw its
outline well. From where I lay low in the hollow, it seemed larger
than human.

It moved its head, and then first I saw that its back was toward me.

"Will you not come with me?" said a sweet, mellow voice, unmistakably
a woman's.

Wishing to learn more of my hostess,

"I thank you," I replied, "but I am not uncomfortable here. Where
would you have me go? I like sleeping in the open air."

"There is no hurt in the air," she returned; "but the creatures
that roam the night in these parts are not such as a man would
willingly have about him while he sleeps."

"I have not been disturbed," I said.

"No; I have been sitting by you ever since you lay down."

"That is very kind of you! How came you to know I was here? Why
do you show me such favour?"

"I saw you," she answered, still with her back to me, "in the light
of the moon, just as she went down. I see badly in the day, but
at night perfectly. The shadow of my house would have hidden you,
but both its doors were open. I was out on the waste, and saw you
go into this hollow. You were asleep, however, before I could reach
you, and I was not willing to disturb you. People are frightened
if I come on them suddenly. They call me the Cat-woman. It is not
my name."

I remembered what the children had told me--that she was very ugly,
and scratched. But her voice was gentle, and its tone a little
apologetic: she could not be a bad giantess!

"You shall not hear it from me," I answered, "Please tell me what
I MAY call you!"

"When you know me, call me by the name that seems to you to fit me,"
she replied: "that will tell me what sort you are. People do not
often give me the right one. It is well when they do."

"I suppose, madam, you live in the cottage I saw in the heart of
the moon?"

"I do. I live there alone, except when I have visitors. It is a
poor place, but I do what I can for my guests, and sometimes their
sleep is sweet to them."

Her voice entered into me, and made me feel strangely still.

"I will go with you, madam," I said, rising.

She rose at once, and without a glance behind her led the way. I
could see her just well enough to follow. She was taller than
myself, but not so tall as I had thought her. That she never turned
her face to me made me curious--nowise apprehensive, her voice rang
so true. But how was I to fit her with a name who could not see her?
I strove to get alongside of her, but failed: when I quickened my
pace she quickened hers, and kept easily ahead of me. At length I
did begin to grow a little afraid. Why was she so careful not to be
seen? Extraordinary ugliness would account for it: she might fear
terrifying me! Horror of an inconceivable monstrosity began to
assail me: was I following through the dark an unheard of hideousness?
Almost I repented of having accepted her hospitality.

Neither spoke, and the silence grew unbearable. I MUST break it!

"I want to find my way," I said, "to a place I have heard of, but
whose name I have not yet learned. Perhaps you can tell it me!"

"Describe it, then, and I will direct you. The stupid Bags know
nothing, and the careless little Lovers forget almost everything."

"Where do those live?"

"You are just come from them!"

"I never heard those names before!"

"You would not hear them. Neither people knows its own name!"

"Strange!"

"Perhaps so! but hardly any one anywhere knows his own name! It
would make many a fine gentleman stare to hear himself addressed by
what is really his name!"

I held my peace, beginning to wonder what my name might be.

"What now do you fancy yours?" she went on, as if aware of my thought.
"But, pardon me, it is a matter of no consequence."

I had actually opened my mouth to answer her, when I discovered that
my name was gone from me. I could not even recall the first letter
of it! This was the second time I had been asked my name and could
not tell it!

"Never mind," she said; "it is not wanted. Your real name, indeed,
is written on your forehead, but at present it whirls about so
irregularly that nobody can read it. I will do my part to steady
it. Soon it will go slower, and, I hope, settle at last."

This startled me, and I was silent.

We had left the channels and walked a long time, but no sign of the
cottage yet appeared.

"The Little Ones told me," I said at length, "of a smooth green
country, pleasant to the feet!"

"Yes?" she returned.

"They told me too of a girl giantess that was queen somewhere: is
that her country?"

"There is a city in that grassy land," she replied, "where a woman
is princess. The city is called Bulika. But certainly the princess
is not a girl! She is older than this world, and came to it from
yours--with a terrible history, which is not over yet. She is an
evil person, and prevails much with the Prince of the Power of the
Air. The people of Bulika were formerly simple folk, tilling the
ground and pasturing sheep. She came among them, and they received
her hospitably. She taught them to dig for diamonds and opals and
sell them to strangers, and made them give up tillage and pasturage
and build a city. One day they found a huge snake and killed it;
which so enraged her that she declared herself their princess, and
became terrible to them. The name of the country at that time was
THE LAND OF WATERS; for the dry channels, of which you have crossed
so many, were then overflowing with live torrents; and the valley,
where now the Bags and the Lovers have their fruit-trees, was a lake
that received a great part of them. But the wicked princess gathered
up in her lap what she could of the water over the whole country,
closed it in an egg, and carried it away. Her lap, however, would
not hold more than half of it; and the instant she was gone, what
she had not yet taken fled away underground, leaving the country
as dry and dusty as her own heart. Were it not for the waters under
it, every living thing would long ago have perished from it. For
where no water is, no rain falls; and where no rain falls, no springs
rise. Ever since then, the princess has lived in Bulika, holding
the inhabitants in constant terror, and doing what she can to keep
them from multiplying. Yet they boast and believe themselves a
prosperous, and certainly are a self-satisfied people--good at
bargaining and buying, good at selling and cheating; holding well
together for a common interest, and utterly treacherous where
interests clash; proud of their princess and her power, and despising
every one they get the better of; never doubting themselves the most
honourable of all the nations, and each man counting himself better
than any other. The depth of their worthlessness and height of their
vainglory no one can understand who has not been there to see, who
has not learned to know the miserable misgoverned and self-deceived
creatures."

"I thank you, madam. And now, if you please, will you tell me
something about the Little Ones--the Lovers? I long heartily to
serve them. Who and what are they? and how do they come to be there?
Those children are the greatest wonder I have found in this world
of wonders."

"In Bulika you may, perhaps, get some light on those matters. There
is an ancient poem in the library of the palace, I am told, which
of course no one there can read, but in which it is plainly written
that after the Lovers have gone through great troubles and learned
their own name, they will fill the land, and make the giants their
slaves."

"By that time they will have grown a little, will they not?" I said.

"Yes, they will have grown; yet I think too they will not have grown.
It is possible to grow and not to grow, to grow less and to grow
bigger, both at once--yes, even to grow by means of not growing!"

"Your words are strange, madam!" I rejoined. "But I have heard it
said that some words, because they mean more, appear to mean less!"

"That is true, and such words HAVE to be understood. It were well
for the princess of Bulika if she heard what the very silence of
the land is shouting in her ears all day long! But she is far too
clever to understand anything."

"Then I suppose, when the little Lovers are grown, their land will
have water again?"

"Not exactly so: when they are thirsty enough, they will have water,
and when they have water, they will grow. To grow, they must have
water. And, beneath, it is flowing still."

"I have heard that water twice," I said; "--once when I lay down
to wait for the moon--and when I woke the sun was shining! and once
when I fell, all but killed by the bad giant. Both times came the
voices of the water, and healed me."

The woman never turned her head, and kept always a little before me,
but I could hear every word that left her lips, and her voice much
reminded me of the woman's in the house of death. Much of what she
said, I did not understand, and therefore cannot remember. But I
forgot that I had ever been afraid of her.

We went on and on, and crossed yet a wide tract of sand before
reaching the cottage. Its foundation stood in deep sand, but I
could see that it was a rock. In character the cottage resembled
the sexton's, but had thicker walls. The door, which was heavy and
strong, opened immediately into a large bare room, which had two
little windows opposite each other, without glass. My hostess walked
in at the open door out of which the moon had looked, and going
straight to the farthest corner, took a long white cloth from the
floor, and wound it about her head and face. Then she closed the
other door, in at which the moon had looked, trimmed a small horn
lantern that stood on the hearth, and turned to receive me.

"You are very welcome, Mr. Vane!" she said, calling me by the name
I had forgotten. "Your entertainment will be scanty, but, as the
night is not far spent, and the day not at hand, it is better you
should be indoors. Here you will be safe, and a little lack is not
a great misery."

"I thank you heartily, madam," I replied. "But, seeing you know the
name I could not tell you, may I not now know yours?"

"My name is Mara," she answered.

Then I remembered the sexton and the little black cat.

"Some people," she went on, "take me for Lot's wife, lamenting over
Sodom; and some think I am Rachel, weeping for her children; but I
am neither of those."

"I thank you again, Mara," I said. "--May I lie here on your floor
till the morning?"

"At the top of that stair," she answered, "you will find a bed--on
which some have slept better than they expected, and some have waked
all the night and slept all the next day. It is not a very soft
one, but it is better than the sand--and there are no hyenas sniffing
about it!"

The stair, narrow and steep, led straight up from the room to an
unceiled and unpartitioned garret, with one wide, low dormer window.
Close under the sloping roof stood a narrow bed, the sight of which
with its white coverlet made me shiver, so vividly it recalled the
couches in the chamber of death. On the table was a dry loaf, and
beside it a cup of cold water. To me, who had tasted nothing but
fruit for months, they were a feast.

"I must leave you in the dark," my hostess called from the bottom
of the stair. "This lantern is all the light I have, and there are
things to do to-night."

"It is of no consequence, thank you, madam," I returned. "To eat
and drink, to lie down and sleep, are things that can be done in
the dark."

"Rest in peace," she said.

I ate up the loaf, drank the water every drop, and laid myself down.
The bed was hard, the covering thin and scanty, and the night cold:
I dreamed that I lay in the chamber of death, between the warrior
and the lady with the healing wound.

I woke in the middle of the night, thinking I heard low noises of
wild animals.

"Creatures of the desert scenting after me, I suppose!" I said to
myself, and, knowing I was safe, would have gone to sleep again. But
that instant a rough purring rose to a howl under my window, and I
sprang from my bed to see what sort of beast uttered it.

Before the door of the cottage, in the full radiance of the moon, a
tall woman stood, clothed in white, with her back toward me. She
was stooping over a large white animal like a panther, patting and
stroking it with one hand, while with the other she pointed to the
moon half-way up the heaven, then drew a perpendicular line to the
horizon. Instantly the creature darted off with amazing swiftness
in the direction indicated. For a moment my eyes followed it, then
sought the woman; but she was gone, and not yet had I seen her face!
Again I looked after the animal, but whether I saw or only fancied
a white speck in the distance, I could not tell.--What did it mean?
What was the monster-cat sent off to do? I shuddered, and went back
to my bed. Then I remembered that, when I lay down in the sandy
hollow outside, the moon was setting; yet here she was, a few hours
after, shining in all her glory! "Everything is uncertain here,"
I said to myself, "--even the motions of the heavenly bodies!"

I learned afterward that there were several moons in the service of
this world, but the laws that ruled their times and different orbits
I failed to discover.

Again I fell asleep, and slept undisturbed.

When I went down in the morning, I found bread and water waiting me,
the loaf so large that I ate only half of it. My hostess sat muffled
beside me while I broke my fast, and except to greet me when I
entered, never opened her mouth until I asked her to instruct me
how to arrive at Bulika. She then told me to go up the bank of the
river-bed until it disappeared; then verge to the right until I came
to a forest--in which I might spend a night, but which I must leave
with my face to the rising moon. Keeping in the same direction, she
said, until I reached a running stream, I must cross that at right
angles, and go straight on until I saw the city on the horizon.

I thanked her, and ventured the remark that, looking out of the
window in the night, I was astonished to see her messenger understand
her so well, and go so straight and so fast in the direction she
had indicated.

"If I had but that animal of yours to guide me--" I went on, hoping
to learn something of its mission, but she interrupted me, saying,

"It was to Bulika she went--the shortest way."

"How wonderfully intelligent she looked!"

"Astarte knows her work well enough to be sent to do it," she
answered.

"Have you many messengers like her?"

"As many as I require."

"Are they hard to teach?"

"They need no teaching. They are all of a certain breed, but not
one of the breed is like another. Their origin is so natural it
would seem to you incredible."

"May I not know it?"

"A new one came to me last night--from your head while you slept."

I laughed.

"All in this world seem to love mystery!" I said to myself. "Some
chance word of mine suggested an idea--and in this form she embodies
the small fact!"

"Then the creature is mine!" I cried.

"Not at all!" she answered. "That only can be ours in whose existence
our will is a factor."

"Ha! a metaphysician too!" I remarked inside, and was silent.

"May I take what is left of the loaf?" I asked presently.

"You will want no more to-day," she replied.

"To-morrow I may!" I rejoined.

She rose and went to the door, saying as she went,

"It has nothing to do with to-morrow--but you may take it if you
will."

She opened the door, and stood holding it. I rose, taking up the
bread--but lingered, much desiring to see her face.

"Must I go, then?" I asked.

"No one sleeps in my house two nights together!" she answered.

"I thank you, then, for your hospitality, and bid you farewell!"
I said, and turned to go.

"The time will come when you must house with me many days and many
nights," she murmured sadly through her muffling.

"Willingly," I replied.

"Nay, NOT willingly!" she answered.

I said to myself that she was right--I would not willingly be her
guest a second time! but immediately my heart rebuked me, and I had
scarce crossed the threshold when I turned again.

She stood in the middle of the room; her white garments lay like
foamy waves at her feet, and among them the swathings of her face:
it was lovely as a night of stars. Her great gray eyes looked up
to heaven; tears were flowing down her pale cheeks. She reminded
me not a little of the sexton's wife, although the one looked as if
she had not wept for thousands of years, and the other as if she
wept constantly behind the wrappings of her beautiful head. Yet
something in the very eyes that wept seemed to say, "Weeping may
endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

I had bowed my head for a moment, about to kneel and beg her
forgiveness, when, looking up in the act, I found myself outside
a doorless house. I went round and round it, but could find no
entrance.

I had stopped under one of the windows, on the point of calling
aloud my repentant confession, when a sudden wailing, howling scream
invaded my ears, and my heart stood still. Something sprang from
the window above my head, and lighted beyond me. I turned, and saw
a large gray cat, its hair on end, shooting toward the river-bed.
I fell with my face in the sand, and seemed to hear within the house
the gentle sobbing of one who suffered but did not repent.




CHAPTER XVI

A GRUESOME DANCE

I rose to resume my journey, and walked many a desert mile. How
I longed for a mountain, or even a tall rock, from whose summit I
might see across the dismal plain or the dried-up channels to some
bordering hope! Yet what could such foresight have availed me?
That which is within a man, not that which lies beyond his vision,
is the main factor in what is about to befall him: the operation
upon him is the event. Foreseeing is not understanding, else surely
the prophecy latent in man would come oftener to the surface!

The sun was half-way to the horizon when I saw before me a rugged
rocky ascent; but ere I reached it my desire to climb was over, and
I longed to lie down. By that time the sun was almost set, and the
air had begun to grow dark. At my feet lay a carpet of softest,
greenest moss, couch for a king: I threw myself upon it, and
weariness at once began to ebb, for, the moment my head was down,
the third time I heard below me many waters, playing broken airs
and ethereal harmonies with the stones of their buried channels.
Loveliest chaos of music-stuff the harp aquarian kept sending up to
my ears! What might not a Händel have done with that ever-recurring
gurgle and bell-like drip, to the mingling and mutually destructive
melodies their common refrain!

As I lay listening, my eyes went wandering up and down the rocky
slope abrupt above me, reading on its face the record that down
there, ages ago, rushed a cataract, filling the channels that had
led me to its foot. My heart swelled at the thought of the splendid
tumult, where the waves danced revelling in helpless fall, to mass
their music in one organ-roar below. But soon the hidden brooks
lulled me to sleep, and their lullabies mingled with my dreams.

I woke before the sun, and eagerly climbed to see what lay beyond.
Alas, nothing but a desert of finest sand! Not a trace was left
of the river that had plunged adown the rocks! The powdery drift
had filled its course to the level of the dreary expanse! As I
looked back I saw that the river had divided into two branches as
it fell, that whose bank I had now followed to the foot of the rocky
scaur, and that which first I crossed to the Evil Wood. The wood
I descried between the two on the far horizon. Before me and to
the left, the desert stretched beyond my vision, but far to the
right I could see a lift in the sky-line, giving hope of the forest
to which my hostess had directed me.

I sat down, and sought in my pocket the half-loaf I had brought with
me--then first to understand what my hostess had meant concerning
it. Verily the bread was not for the morrow: it had shrunk and
hardened to a stone! I threw it away, and set out again.

About noon I came to a few tamarisk and juniper trees, and then to
a few stunted firs. As I went on, closer thickets and larger firs
met me, and at length I was in just such a forest of pines and other
trees as that in which the Little Ones found their babies, and
believed I had returned upon a farther portion of the same. But
what mattered WHERE while EVERYWHERE was the same as NOWHERE! I had
not yet, by doing something in it, made ANYWHERE into a place! I
was not yet alive; I was only dreaming I lived! I was but a
consciousness with an outlook! Truly I had been nothing else in
the world I had left, but now I knew the fact! I said to myself
that if in this forest I should catch the faint gleam of the mirror,
I would turn far aside lest it should entrap me unawares, and give
me back to my old existence: here I might learn to be something by
doing something! I could not endure the thought of going back, with
so many beginnings and not an end achieved. The Little Ones would
meet what fate was appointed them; the awful witch I should never
meet; the dead would ripen and arise without me; I should but wake
to know that I had dreamed, and that all my going was nowhither! I
would rather go on and on than come to such a close!

I went deeper into the wood: I was weary, and would rest in it.

The trees were now large, and stood in regular, almost geometric,
fashion, with roomy spaces between. There was little undergrowth,
and I could see a long way in every direction. The forest was like
a great church, solemn and silent and empty, for I met nothing on
two feet or four that day. Now and then, it is true, some swift
thing, and again some slow thing, would cross the space on which
my eye happened that moment to settle; but it was always at some
distance, and only enhanced the sense of wideness and vacancy. I
heard a few birds, and saw plenty of butterflies, some of marvellously
gorgeous colouring and combinations of colour, some of a pure and
dazzling whiteness.

Coming to a spot where the pines stood farther apart and gave room
for flowering shrubs, and hoping it a sign of some dwelling near, I
took the direction where yet more and more roses grew, for I was
hungry after the voice and face of my kind--after any live soul,
indeed, human or not, which I might in some measure understand.
What a hell of horror, I thought, to wander alone, a bare existence
never going out of itself, never widening its life in another life,
but, bound with the cords of its poor peculiarities, lying an eternal
prisoner in the dungeon of its own being! I began to learn that it
was impossible to live for oneself even, save in the presence of
others--then, alas, fearfully possible! evil was only through good!
selfishness but a parasite on the tree of life! In my own world
I had the habit of solitary song; here not a crooning murmur ever
parted my lips! There I sang without thinking; here I thought
without singing! there I had never had a bosom-friend; here the
affection of an idiot would be divinely welcome! "If only I had
a dog to love!" I sighed--and regarded with wonder my past self,
which preferred the company of book or pen to that of man or woman;
which, if the author of a tale I was enjoying appeared, would wish
him away that I might return to his story. I had chosen the dead
rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing
thinking! "Any man," I said now, "is more than the greatest of
books!" I had not cared for my live brothers and sisters, and now
I was left without even the dead to comfort me!

The wood thinned yet more, and the pines grew yet larger, sending
up huge stems, like columns eager to support the heavens. More
trees of other kinds appeared; the forest was growing richer! The
roses wore now trees, and their flowers of astonishing splendour.

Suddenly I spied what seemed a great house or castle; but its forms
were so strangely indistinct, that I could not be certain it was
more than a chance combination of tree-shapes. As I drew nearer,
its lines yet held together, but neither they nor the body of it
grew at all more definite; and when at length I stood in front of
it, I remained as doubtful of its nature as before. House or castle
habitable, it certainly was not; it might be a ruin overgrown with
ivy and roses! Yet of building hid in the foliage, not the poorest
wall-remnant could I discern. Again and again I seemed to descry what
must be building, but it always vanished before closer inspection.
Could it be, I pondered, that the ivy had embraced a huge edifice
and consumed it, and its interlaced branches retained the shapes of
the walls it had assimilated?--I could be sure of nothing concerning
the appearance.

Before me was a rectangular vacancy--the ghost of a doorway without
a door: I stepped through it, and found myself in an open space like
a great hall, its floor covered with grass and flowers, its walls
and roof of ivy and vine, mingled with roses.

There could be no better place in which to pass the night! I
gathered a quantity of withered leaves, laid them in a corner, and
threw myself upon them. A red sunset filled the hall, the night
was warm, and my couch restful; I lay gazing up at the live ceiling,
with its tracery of branches and twigs, its clouds of foliage, and
peeping patches of loftier roof. My eyes went wading about as if
tangled in it, until the sun was down, and the sky beginning to grow
dark. Then the red roses turned black, and soon the yellow and
white alone were visible. When they vanished, the stars came instead,
hanging in the leaves like live topazes, throbbing and sparkling
and flashing many colours: I was canopied with a tree from Aladdin's
cave!

Then I discovered that it was full of nests, whence tiny heads,
nearly indistinguishable, kept popping out with a chirp or two, and
disappearing again. For a while there were rustlings and stirrings
and little prayers; but as the darkness grew, the small heads became
still, and at last every feathered mother had her brood quiet
under her wings, the talk in the little beds was over, and God's
bird-nursery at rest beneath the waves of sleep. Once more a few
flutterings made me look up: an owl went sailing across. I had only
a glimpse of him, but several times felt the cool wafture of his
silent wings. The mother birds did not move again; they saw that
he was looking for mice, not children.

About midnight I came wide awake, roused by a revelry, whose noises
were yet not loud. Neither were they distant; they were close to
me, but attenuate. My eyes were so dazzled, however, that for a
while I could see nothing; at last they came to themselves.

I was lying on my withered leaves in the corner of a splendid hall.
Before me was a crowd of gorgeously dressed men and gracefully robed
women, none of whom seemed to see me. In dance after dance they
vaguely embodied the story of life, its meetings, its passions, its
partings. A student of Shakspere, I had learned something of every
dance alluded to in his plays, and hence partially understood several
of those I now saw--the minuet, the pavin, the hey, the coranto,
the lavolta. The dancers were attired in fashion as ancient as
their dances.

A moon had risen while I slept, and was shining through the
countless-windowed roof; but her light was crossed by so many
shadows that at first I could distinguish almost nothing of the
faces of the multitude; I could not fail, however, to perceive
that there was something odd about them: I sat up to see them
better.--Heavens! could I call them faces? They were skull fronts!
--hard, gleaming bone, bare jaws, truncated noses, lipless teeth
which could no more take part in any smile! Of these, some flashed
set and white and murderous; others were clouded with decay, broken
and gapped, coloured of the earth in which they seemed so long to
have lain! Fearfuller yet, the eye-sockets were not empty; in each
was a lidless living eye! In those wrecks of faces, glowed or
flashed or sparkled eyes of every colour, shape, and expression. The
beautiful, proud eye, dark and lustrous, condescending to whatever
it rested upon, was the more terrible; the lovely, languishing eye,
the more repulsive; while the dim, sad eyes, less at variance with
their setting, were sad exceedingly, and drew the heart in spite of
the horror out of which they gazed.

I rose and went among the apparitions, eager to understand something
of their being and belongings. Were they souls, or were they and
their rhythmic motions but phantasms of what had been? By look
nor by gesture, not by slightest break in the measure, did they
show themselves aware of me; I was not present to them: how much were
they in relation to each other? Surely they saw their companions
as I saw them! Or was each only dreaming itself and the rest?
Did they know each how they appeared to the others--a death with
living eyes? Had they used their faces, not for communication,
not to utter thought and feeling, not to share existence with their
neighbours, but to appear what they wished to appear, and conceal
what they were? and, having made their faces masks, were they
therefore deprived of those masks, and condemned to go without faces
until they repented?

"How long must they flaunt their facelessness in faceless eyes?" I
wondered. "How long will the frightful punition endure? Have they
at length begun to love and be wise? Have they yet yielded to the
shame that has found them?"

I heard not a word, saw not a movement of one naked mouth. Were
they because of lying bereft of speech? With their eyes they spoke
as if longing to be understood: was it truth or was it falsehood
that spoke in their eyes? They seemed to know one another: did
they see one skull beautiful, and another plain? Difference must
be there, and they had had long study of skulls!

My body was to theirs no obstacle: was I a body, and were they but
forms? or was I but a form, and were they bodies? The moment one
of the dancers came close against me, that moment he or she was
on the other side of me, and I could tell, without seeing, which,
whether man or woman, had passed through my house.

On many of the skulls the hair held its place, and however dressed,
or in itself however beautiful, to my eyes looked frightful on the
bones of the forehead and temples. In such case, the outer ear
often remained also, and at its tip, the jewel of the ear as Sidney
calls it, would hang, glimmering, gleaming, or sparkling, pearl or
opal or diamond--under the night of brown or of raven locks, the
sunrise of golden ripples, or the moonshine of pale, interclouded,
fluffy cirri--lichenous all on the ivory-white or damp-yellow naked
bone. I looked down and saw the daintily domed instep; I looked
up and saw the plump shoulders basing the spring of the round full
neck--which withered at half-height to the fluted shaft of a gibbose
cranium.

The music became wilder, the dance faster and faster; eyes flared
and flashed, jewels twinkled and glittered, casting colour and fire
on the pallid grins that glode through the hall, weaving a ghastly
rhythmic woof in intricate maze of multitudinous motion, when sudden
came a pause, and every eye turned to the same spot:--in the doorway
stood a woman, perfect in form, in holding, and in hue, regarding
the company as from the pedestal of a goddess, while the dancers
stood "like one forbid," frozen to a new death by the vision of a
life that killed. "Dead things, I live!" said her scornful glance.
Then, at once, like leaves in which an instant wind awakes, they
turned each to another, and broke afresh into melodious consorted
motion, a new expression in their eyes, late solitary, now filled
with the interchange of a common triumph. "Thou also," they seemed
to say, "wilt soon become weak as we! thou wilt soon become like
unto us!" I turned mine again to the woman--and saw upon her side
a small dark shadow.

She had seen the change in the dead stare; she looked down; she
understood the talking eyes; she pressed both her lovely hands on
the shadow, gave a smothered cry, and fled. The birds moved rustling
in their nests, and a flash of joy lit up the eyes of the dancers,
when suddenly a warm wind, growing in strength as it swept through
the place, blew out every light. But the low moon yet glimmered
on the horizon with "sick assay" to shine, and a turbid radiance
yet gleamed from so many eyes, that I saw well enough what followed.
As if each shape had been but a snow-image, it began to fall to
pieces, ruining in the warm wind. In papery flakes the flesh peeled
from its bones, dropping like soiled snow from under its garments;
these fell fluttering in rags and strips, and the whole white
skeleton, emerging from garment and flesh together, stood bare and
lank amid the decay that littered the floor. A faint rattling
shiver went through the naked company; pair after pair the lamping
eyes went out; and the darkness grew round me with the loneliness.
For a moment the leaves were still swept fluttering all one way;
then the wind ceased, and the owl floated silent through the silent
night.

Not for a moment had I been afraid. It is true that whoever would
cross the threshold of any world, must leave fear behind him; but,
for myself, I could claim no part in its absence. No conscious
courage was operant in me; simply, I was not afraid. I neither
knew why I was not afraid, nor wherefore I might have been afraid.
I feared not even fear--which of all dangers is the most dangerous.

I went out into the wood, at once to resume my journey. Another
moon was rising, and I turned my face toward it.




CHAPTER XVII

A GROTESQUE TRAGEDY

I had not gone ten paces when I caught sight of a strange-looking
object, and went nearer to know what it might be. I found it a
mouldering carriage of ancient form, ruinous but still upright on
its heavy wheels. On each side of the pole, still in its place,
lay the skeleton of a horse; from their two grim white heads ascended
the shrivelled reins to the hand of the skeleton-coachman seated
on his tattered hammer-cloth; both doors had fallen away; within
sat two skeletons, each leaning back in its corner.

Even as I looked, they started awake, and with a cracking rattle
of bones, each leaped from the door next it. One fell and lay;
the other stood a moment, its structure shaking perilously; then
with difficulty, for its joints were stiff, crept, holding by the
back of the carriage, to the opposite side, the thin leg-bones
seeming hardly strong enough to carry its weight, where, kneeling
by the other, it sought to raise it, almost falling itself again
in the endeavour.

The prostrate one rose at length, as by a sudden effort, to the
sitting posture. For a few moments it turned its yellowish skull
to this side and that; then, heedless of its neighbour, got upon
its feet by grasping the spokes of the hind wheel. Half erected
thus, it stood with its back to the other, both hands holding one
of its knee-joints. With little less difficulty and not a few
contortions, the kneeling one rose next, and addressed its companion.

"Have you hurt yourself, my lord?" it said, in a voice that sounded
far-off, and ill-articulated as if blown aside by some spectral wind.

"Yes, I have," answered the other, in like but rougher tone. "You
would do nothing to help me, and this cursed knee is out!"

"I did my best, my lord."

"No doubt, my lady, for it was bad! I thought I should never find
my feet again!--But, bless my soul, madam! are you out in your
bones?"

She cast a look at herself.

"I have nothing else to be out in," she returned; "--and YOU at
least cannot complain! But what on earth does it mean? Am I
dreaming?"

"YOU may be dreaming, madam--I cannot tell; but this knee of mine
forbids me the grateful illusion.--Ha! I too, I perceive, have
nothing to walk in but bones!--Not so unbecoming to a man, however!
I trust to goodness they are not MY bones! every one aches worse
than another, and this loose knee worst of all! The bed must have
been damp--and I too drunk to know it!"

"Probably, my lord of Cokayne!"

"What! what!--You make me think I too am dreaming--aches and all!
How do YOU know the title my roistering bullies give me? I don't
remember you!--Anyhow, you have no right to take liberties! My
name is--I am lord----tut, tut! What do you call me when I'm--I
mean when you are sober? I cannot--at the moment,--Why, what IS my
name?--I must have been VERY drunk when I went to bed! I often am!"

"You come so seldom to mine, that I do not know, my lord; but I may
take your word for THAT!"

"I hope so!"

"--if for nothing else!"
"Hoity toity! I never told you a lie in my life!"

"You never told me anything but lies."

"Upon my honour!--Why, I never saw the woman before!"

"You knew me well enough to lie to, my lord!"

"I do seem to begin to dream I have met you before, but, upon my
oath, there is nothing to know you by! Out of your clothes, who
is to tell who you may not be?--One thing I MAY swear--that I never
saw you so much undressed before!--By heaven, I have no recollection
of you!"

"I am glad to hear it: my recollections of you are the less
distasteful!--Good morning, my lord!"

She turned away, hobbled, clacking, a few paces, and stood again.

"You are just as heartless as--as--any other woman, madam!--Where
in this hell of a place shall I find my valet?--What was the cursed
name I used to call the fool?"

He turned his bare noddle this way and that on its creaking pivot,
still holding his knee with both hands.

"I will be your valet for once, my lord," said the lady, turning
once more to him. "--What can I do for you? It is not easy to
tell!"

"Tie my leg on, of course, you fool! Can't you see it is all but
off? Heigho, my dancing days!"

She looked about with her eyeless sockets and found a piece of
fibrous grass, with which she proceeded to bind together the
adjoining parts that had formed the knee. When she had done, he
gave one or two carefully tentative stamps.

"You used to stamp rather differently, my lord!" she said, as she
rose from her knees.

"Eh? what!--Now I look at you again, it seems to me I used to hate
you!--Eh?"

"Naturally, my lord! You hated a good many people!--your wife, of
course, among the rest!"

"Ah, I begin, I be-gin---- But--I must have been a long time
somewhere!--I really forget!--There! your damned, miserable bit of
grass is breaking!--We used to get on PRETTY well together--eh?"

"Not that I remember, my lord. The only happy moments I had in your
company were scattered over the first week of our marriage."

"Was that the way of it? Ha! ha!--Well, it's over now, thank
goodness!"

"I wish I could believe it! Why were we sitting there in that
carriage together? It wakes apprehension!"

"I think we were divorced, my lady!"

"Hardly enough: we are still together!"

"A sad truth, but capable of remedy: the forest seems of some
extent!"

"I doubt! I doubt!"

"I am sorry I cannot think of a compliment to pay you--without
lying, that is. To judge by your figure and complexion you have
lived hard since I saw you last! I cannot surely be QUITE so naked
as your ladyship!--I beg your pardon, madam! I trust you will take
it I am but jesting in a dream! It is of no consequence, however;
dreaming or waking, all's one--all merest appearance! You can't be
certain of anything, and that's as good as knowing there is nothing!
Life may teach any fool that!"

"It has taught me the fool I was to love you!"

"You were not the only fool to do that! Women had a trick of falling
in love with me:--I had forgotten that you were one of them!"
"I did love you, my lord--a little--at one time!"


 


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