CHAPTER XVI
She stood again behind a tree, looking on the camp-fire and the three figures that stretched or moved about it. She listened, but now without joy, to the babel of laughter which sped between them. Back and forth it went, endless, tireless. Youth calling and answering to youth; catching a facile fire from each other, and tossing it back as carelessly. Spendthrift they were as young gods; care-free as young animals; with minds untroubled because they need not work, and bodies that were at ease because they were active; scorning the darkness in a gaiety that was delicious because it was thoughtless, and with a thoughtlessness that was lovely because it was young. But, to her, watching, listening, waiting, all thatmerriment was a torment. She was their peer in youth and activity, but she was their superior in that she was thoughtful, for desire is thought not yet translated, and her desire would swell about the world and banish all else from existence so that she could fashion the regal solitude in which so gigantic a mystery might be contemplated.
Why, she thought frowningly, did these children not go to sleep? And why, she wondered, should older people submit to annoyance or be forced to await any young person’s convenience?
But the night was advanced, and young people will sleep. Soon they stretched about the fire, and each composed himself to the slumber which comes as deliciously in its season as waking does; and, for their life favoured it, they fell into sleep as precipitately as though they were falling down a cliff.
She could scarcely wait for the five minutes that was required. Then she plucked a scrap of moss and tossed it on Naoise’s breast.
As he fell asleep so he sprang awake:he went dead asleep: he came wide awake, with every faculty alert, and his limbs as composed for movement as for rest. He saw the scrap of moss lying on his bosom, and, knowing that such things do not travel of their own accord, he looked for the cause, searching keenly among the boles that stretched in endless gleam and gloom about them.
She stood forward a pace.
Had she really moved, or was she impelled? Surely a hand had taken her by the shoulder and pushed her forward! But in the moment that she moved panic seized her as suddenly and overwhelmingly as a hawk swoops upon a mouse. She lifted a hand to her breast so that her heart might not be snatched away, but the hand went on to her lips and covered them in terror lest they should call. She turned with one swift and flying gesture, but the foot that aimed for flight continued its motion, and the full circle held her again facing the terror. For he had already risen, lithe as a cat and as noiseless, and in three great strides he was standing beside her, standing over her, encompassing her about; not now to beretreated from or escaped from or eluded in any way.
And as her heart had leaped so his leaped also, and they stood in an internal tumult, so loud, so intimate and violent, that the uproar and rush of a storm was quietude in the comparison.
They could not speak. There were no words left in the world. There were only eyes that plunged into and fled from each other, and a mighty hand that had gripped her arm and would never release it again. A hand that pushed her backwards and backwards, away from the friendly logs that crackled and flamed; away from the quiet forms that might have rescued her but that lay as though slumbering in stone. She might have escaped with one sound, but the law of her being was that she must not make a sound. She might have escaped by just a show of reluctance; one small opposition, nay, hesitation, to the pressure of that hand. But she would not make that infinitesimal wraith of motion. A weariness as of piled worlds went from his finger to her mind, and it was forbidden her to have any longer an initiative. A lethargy that was utter surrenderstole into her limbs. She did not think, she did not desire: she was as void of speculation as though she were dead; and while his hand continued to guide she would go, and when it ceased she would no longer be capable of either movement or repose.
All fear of interruption had passed, and yet they went on cautiously, noiselessly, as though interruption was imminent or unescapable; putting trees and yet more trees between them and the leaping fire; striving to forget the fire; seeking a more involved darkness, and finding everywhere a gloom that yet revealed them. They could not discover darkness. They could not get to a place where they could cease to see each other. Always it looked black farther on, and always when they got there they could each see the pale confronting face of the other, with the darkness everywhere but in those faces.
They stopped perforce, with that feeling of tremendous discouragement wherein passion sinks back upon itself, where desire ceases and nothing is instant but weariness. His hand yet held her, but it gripped no longer: it lay on her arm as a dead weight:she had only to move an inch and it would fall away: she had but to turn and he would not follow her even with his eyes; but the energy which had drained from him flooded into her in one whirling stream, and when his hand fell away hers took up the duty it relinquished.