"If it had not been for her so great beauty! Surely our women are beautiful—as the gods know how to make common women. But when they saw her—they went back into their houses and covered their faces from the light of her eyes.
"That was the calamity; for a woman must be given in marriage by the heart of a woman—sincere and unafraid. And there was not one without fear. Jiwan Kawi went out into the jungle that night; and he never came back. Fear may have taken him."
The man looked away toward the horizon.
"Then she put on her body the one garment of hindu-widowhood, unadorned; but without marriage. She said, 'I will mourn for the children that have not been—that are not—that cannot be.' The women heard the voice of her mourning; and they forgot her too-great beauty, to serve her too-great pain—when it was late.
"They gave her the little Koob Soonder, to mother. Now it is that the child, who has no wit and little reason, goes out into the place of sacrifice to find Fear; and the woman in a widow's garment goes after, to fetch her back. Then the woman who mourns for unborn children, goes out into the night-paths—as Jiwan Kawi went—and the little Koob Soonder follows, to fetch her back.
"So they are going, always going out into the place of sacrifice—whereFear lives. Some day or some night—Fear will take them."
"What kind of fear?" Cadman asked, with a dry throat.
"Fear is name enough. There is none other."
The man's reply was spoken in conclusive tones. He sat as if oblivious, for several minutes. Then searching them both earnestly with haggard eyes, he spoke direct:
"Have you looked on Dhoop Ki Dhil, for whom you come so far? Have you heard her voice?"
Both the Americans shook their heads.
"Will you look on her in the paths of my understanding? Will you render yourselves to know her in the currents of my blood?"
"We will," Cadman answered tensely.
The man lifted his face toward the night-sky, becoming perfectly still before he spoke:
"She is the breath of the early spring-time, when the pulse of the earth awakes. She is the midnight moon of all summers, in all lands. The rose of daybreak is in her smile; the flames of sunset in her face. Lightnings of the monsoon break from her eyes; and she mothers the mothers of men with their tenderness. Her body moves like flowing water; and she is the joy of all joy and the sorrow of all sorrow, in motion."
The man lifted his hand, as if to interrupt himself.
"The majesties of High Himalaya are in her voice; and distances of star-lit night."
He stopped, seeming to listen to something they could not hear.
"The tides of the seasons flow through the blood of common men," he went on; "they carry the gold of delight away; and the rock-stuff of strength. Then men are old. It is not so with her. Bitter waters of grief have drenched her, they have covered her as the deep covers the lands below; but her ascending flames of life consume them all. She rises like a creature made of jewels, to enlighten men against the snares of that same deep from which she has come up—wearing splendours of loveliness for garmenture.
"The people weep their tears for her pain; but she heals their hurts with a look. She restores their dead memories of youth to old men—their memories of dead loves. She restores the eyes of girlhood to the elder women, who have long been weary with yearning after dead little ones—after dead men. She has taught the little people who cannot think—the child-hearted people—that Love-the-transcendent can never die!
"Dhoop Ki Dhil? She is youth, eternal! She is motherhood—the divine lotus of the world!"
Turning to face Cadman and Skag, the man said gently:
"The way lies before you. Go swiftly now. Peace."
And rising softly in the dead hush, he moved away.
Cadman sat long meditating, before he spoke at all; then it was like thinking aloud:
"A mystic brother of the Vindhas—one with the old man outside; not leaving these little semi-primitives alone—identifies himself with them—that's good business!"
"Let's get on!" breathed Skag.
They made the utmost speed possible, till they came to the village that startled them. The childlike care-freedom was gone. Light-heartedness was quenched. Apprehension took its place; low tones, no laughter—a look of helpless suffering like the large-eyed wonder in the face of a grieved child.
They asked about the next village.
"Fear lives there," they were told.
"What fear?" Cadman asked.
"Do you know the king of all serpents—he who comes over any wall, he who goes through any thatch? He dwells there. He feeds upon the children of men and upon their creatures. He comes only to the edge, but he eats!"
The boy who told them this was so different from other boys they had seen, that Cadman asked him direct:
"Who are you?"
"I am here under a master, doing a certain work in my novitiate," the boy said simply.
"Will you take us there in the morning?" Cadman asked.
The boy looked at them intently, before he answered:
"It is just inside the nesting-place of all the serpents in the world; but Fear is their king. We who are here to serve, have no weapons; and we cannot overcome malignant things with kindness. If you will deliver the people from that serpent-king, by destroying his evil life, all the snakes will go further back into the jungle. For many generations—if the gods will, for always—the innocent people will be safe. I will take you there, if you will kill him."
"We will try," Cadman said, not even turning to look at Skag.
They found the village in total paralysis of all natural activities. It was like a deadly pall. This was no new terror; it was old devastation—bred into the bone of consciousness.
A little girl came near to watch Cadman, who was getting out his gun. She had never seen one before. He whispered to her—it seemed not right to speak aloud in this place—and asked her where was Dhoop Ki Dhil. The child shook her head, but answered him:
"Wherever you will see the sun-melted red."
"What is that?" he wondered.
"That? That is the long-long, wide-wide cloth that covers all her body. It is made of so-thick silk" (she showed him six fingers), "that many times as thick as we know how to make."
"What is the name of the boy who led us here?" he asked next.
"We call himDhanahand many other names; but he is not a small boy, he is a man—very wise and sad."
At that moment they heard a voice like golden 'cellos and golden clarions and golden viols—calling "Koob Soon-n-der, Koob Soon-n-der!" and the boy came past, running hard.
"Soon!" he shouted.
But Skag was at his heels and Cadman followed close, the short firing-piece in his hands.
The paths were narrow, the bamboo dense; the boy leaped into a curve and was lost. They raced after him, till the path broadened at the top of an elevation. Pausing an instant to listen, they saw—directly in front of them a little way distant—a tall post; a dark post, seven or eight feet above the bamboo tops, stiff and straight.
It held their eyes by its strange sheen. It began to lean stiffly toward one side—as if falling. It straightened and leaned the other way. Then undulation crept into it, till the top-end followed the outline of a double loop—like a figure-of-eight.
The snake had chained them this long. Skag recovered with an inward revulsion that rent him. He plunged down the path, his faculties surging—thought, feeling, realisation, volition—tearing him.
He met Dhanah carrying an utterly limp girl in his arms—the boy's face gone grey.
As Skag fled on past Dhanah, the whole story of Dhoop Ki Dhil was eating in his brain like fire. She was somewhere in there ahead of him—somewhere near that monster snake.
The weaving of the serpent's head, looping in long reaches above the bamboo tops—looking over them, looking down into them, looking for its prey—had frozen him to the marrow of his bones.
Dhoop Ki Dhil had come out into this blind maze to find and save the heat-blighted child from—that death. He knew what that death was like—he had seen a big snake kill a goat once, in the circus, for food. . . . The frost in his bones bit deeper, because this was Dhoop Ki Dhil—the wonder-woman—who was in there, somewhere close to that snake. He heard the Bombay Doctor's tones again, as he ran; and the words of the brown-robed mystic went like flame and acid through his blood.
. . . Why couldn't he hear Cadman? Cadman had the gun. But if he himself could only reach her before the snake—if he could only— And a soft blur of sun-melted red loomed ahead of him.
Dhoop Ki Dhil did not walk, she did not run; but her glide was almost as swift as Dhanah's flight.
When Skag met her face to face, he shivered with a shock of realisation—her ineffable beauty glowed like coals in a trance of some unearthly devotion. Her human mind was not there—an incomparable calm reigned in its stead.
"Come!" he urged strangely.
She moved with him, tilting her beautiful head to indicate something behind.
He looked—the snake was coming through the long narrow path, coming on; huge undulations, touching the ground but coming through the air, without any look of haste. The path was plenty wide for it, there was plenty time for it—it was overtaking them as if they stood still.
Then, for one eternal moment, Skag knew fear. It was cold—long—metallic. It was invincible—without pity. He heard human voices and the sound of running water—in a dream. Near by, he heard a low sweet laugh. The eyes of fathomless splendour beside him were not looking into his, but they were full of that love which transcends fear. And the birthright of Sanford Hantee rose up in him.
"That's right, come on!" he cried to her.
She looked up; and he followed her glance—one great undulation swayed above them—surging in oozy motion—curving down; just higher than their faces—a broad flat head—thin lateral lips—stark lidless eyes.
Skag ran with his arm about Dhoop Ki Dhil's shoulders. He ran as fast as he could—and still look up. He dared not loosen his eyes from those eyes of evil—he must hold them with what strength he had.
They were utterly patient—those eyes of unveiled malice; as if there had never been strength in the universe but that of sin—as if sin looked down for the first time on something different.
Skag was perfectly definite in his intention; he meant to hold the snake if he could. Some of his training had been in the use of his eyes to control animals under stress.
So he ran with his arm about Dhoop Ki Dhil's shoulders, the flame of his volitional power burning straight up into those pitiless, lidless eyes—till he came into a sentiency that had no cognisance of time.
. . . The raw curse of wickedness and the bitter length of hate, beat down upon him—out of the great snake's naked eyes. The deadly stench of old corruption, poured down upon him—in the great snake's breath.
It challenged the manhood and womanhood of his humankind, with all the crimes of violence they had ever done. Skag met it wistfully at first, with knowledges of loving-kindness; then a rising force that almost choked him, of confidence in ultimate good.
. . . Cadman had found the right path at last. What he saw blotted everything else out. Calling his reserves of control, he sighted with the utmost care. His big-game bullet shattered the serpent's head. It launched backward and Skag heard a heavy stroke on the ground, almost before he realised that the lidless eyes of ancient evil had disappeared from so near his face.
A mighty shout went up from the people, as the monster coils began to thresh living bamboo into pulp. No one saw the hands of the two Americans grip.
Then the majesties of High Himalaya and the distances of star-lit night, poured forth from Dhoop Ki Dhil's lifted lips.
Cadman and Skag followed her among the people going back to the village. Once she whirled with an inimitable movement, flinging her fingers toward Skag, in a gesture that seemed to focus the eyes of the whole world upon him. (And in that instant, the American men could not have spoken a word—for the richness of her in their hearts.)
The light of intelligence flooded her face; her mind had returned to her, unmarred—a radiant scintillance.
"She is naming you 'Rana Jai' for the generations to come," Cadman interpreted. "She says no mortal man ever held the king of all serpents from his stroke—ever delayed him from his chosen prey—this thing they have seen you do. It is your tradition for the future.
"She says I am your guardian, sent by the gods, to destroy the serpent—for your sake—so saving the people." Cadman finished huskily.
"But I didn't reach him, Cadman," Skag protested. "I didn't touch him—inside!"
As they all came into the village enclosure, Dhoop Ki Dhil slipped into a house near by, saying that Dhanah thought the child slept too deeply—she would care for her.
The people were beside themselves with joy. But presently Dhoop Ki Dhil came out, looking straight up. Her hands were palm to palm, reaching slowly upward from her breast to their full stretch; there she gently opened them apart. A perfect hush fell on all.
"The child is gone," Cadman said, in an undertone.
Then the people began a low chant. It was not mourning. It was as if a great multitude sang a great lullaby together.
"Boy, boy! This is a hard knock at our civilisation!"
Cadman was not aware that he had spoken. Skag shook his head.
"God! how I love it!" burst from him; and he had no shame of that love.
Little Koob Soonder's body—in heavy silks of gleaming blue—was laid on a bamboo pyre. Dhoop Ki Dhil tenderly sprinkled flower-petals and incense-oils over all, and lighted the four corners for the motherless one, herself. Cadman and Skag watched the clean flames, till only silver ashes were on the ground. And all the while the people sang their great soft lullaby, without tears or any sign of mourning.
Hours later, the voice of Dhoop Ki Dhil rose on the night—far away. It seemed to compass the planet with its golden power and to descend from the empyrean of sound; further and further—transcending the voices of the wild—the very heart of love, the very soul of light. But they saw no more of her; and the people next morning made no reply to Cadman's natural enquiry; no one would tell what had happened to Dhoop Ki Dhil.
All the way to the edge of the great Grass Jungle, where they had come in, a multitude went before and after—establishing the tradition of their deliverance. Finally Cadman asked the people why they spoke no word of Dhoop Ki Dhil, excepting as to things finished. The people bowed their heads and one answered for them all:
"It is finished. When we of the Grass Jungle mourn, we do not use words."
As they walked slowly into the open, listening to the voices of the child-people, the name "Rana Jai" recurred often.
"I haven't heard what that word means yet," Skag said.
"Rana Jai?" Cadman repeated. "The exact translation is Prince of Victory; but Dhoop Ki Dhil made her meaning clear—Son of Power; a great deal more."
After that, they had little to say. Certainly Cadman would never forget the length of time he had seen the looming head—less than two feet from Skag's face—the incredible power that flamed up out of the young man's eyes. Certainly Skag was full of content as to the safety of the people. But all realisations were lost in a gnawing depression about Dhoop Ki Dhil.
When they came to Sehora, the station-man held out a letter in quaintly written English; it read:
From the wayside Dhoop Ki Dhil sends greetings to Son of Power, most exalted; and to his guardian, most devoted.
She pays votive offerings from this day, at sunrise and at sunset, for those men—incense and oils and seed—to safety from all evil, and fulfillment of their so-great destiny.
The gods, all-beneficent, have preserved him—Jiwan Kawi, the man of men! He met her in the night-paths; and he goes now with her—to her own people. Jiwan Kawi, the man of men!
The Grass Jungles are in her heart, like dead rose-leaves; their perfume in her blood, is forever before the gods—remembering Son of Power and his guardian.
Dhoop Ki Dhil touches their holy feet.
The two Americans looked into each other's eyes, without words—theCalcutta-bound train was alongside.
"Remember, I'm responsible for you from now on, son!" Cadman said, as he loosed Skag's hand.
The Monkey Glen
Skag and Cadman were back in Hurda where Dickson Sahib lived, and the younger man was disconsolate at the thought of Cadman's leaving for England. During those few last days they were much together in the open jungle around the ancient unwalled city; and once as they walked, two strange silent native men passed them going in toward the wilderness.
"The priests of Hanuman," Cadman whispered.
Skag enquired. He had a new and enlarged place in his mind for everything about these men. Cadman explained that these priests serve the monkey people: to this purpose they are a separate priesthood. Abandoning possessions and loves and hates of their kind, they live lives of austerity, mingling with the monkey people in their own jungles; eating, drinking with them; sleeping near; playing and mourning with them—in every possible way giving expression to good-will. All this they do very seriously, very earnestly, with reverence mingled with pity.
"The masses here think these men worship the monkeys," Cadman added. "It's not true. Most Europeans dismiss them as fanatics—equally absurd. I've been out with them."
Skag had actually seen the faces of the two men just passed. The impression had not left his mind. They were dark clean faces, grooved by much patient endurance, strong with self-mastery and those fainter lines that have light in them and only come from years of service for others.
Cadman certainly had no scorn for these men. He had passed days and nights with their kind in one of the down-country districts. His tone was slow and gentle when he spoke of that period. It wasn't that Cadman actually spoke words of pathos and endearment. Indeed, he might have said more, except that two white men are cruelly repressed from each other in fear of being sentimental. They are almost as willing to show fear as an emotion of delicacy or tenderness.
"The more you know, the more you appreciate these forest men," Cadman capitulated and laughed softly at the sudden interest in Skag's face as he added: "I understand, my son. You want to go into the jungle with these masters of the monkey craft. You want to read their lives—far in, deep in yonder. Maybe they'll let you. They were singularly good to me. . . . It may be they will see that thing in your face which knocks upon their souls."
"What is that?"
Cadman laughed again.
"In the West they know little of these things; but the fact is, it's quite as you've been taught: the more a man overcomes himself, the more powers he puts on for outside work. And when a man is in charge of himself all through, he has a look in his eye that commands—yes, even finds fellowship with the priests of Hanuman."
"Would these priests see such a look?"
"Of course!"
"But why?"
"Because they have it themselves. It's evident as sun-tan, to the seers, who are what they are because they rule themselves. Your old Alec Binz had it right. You handle wild animals in cages or afield just in proportion as you handle yourself. Those who command themselves see self-command when it lives in the eye of another. . . . They called me—those priests did—years ago. I almost wanted to live with them for a while; but it was too hard."
"How was that?"
"They said I must forsake all other things in life to serve the monkey people—that I must stay years with them, winning their faith, before I would be of value—that all life in the world must be forgotten."
Cadman laughed wistfully. "I wasn't big enough," he added, "or mad enough, as you like. Perhaps they'll know you at once, or it might take labour and patience to convince them you have not an unkind thought toward any of their monkey friends and no scorn of them because they serve in such service."
The out and out staring fact of the whole matter, Skag realised, was that these priests believed the monkeys to be a race of men who have been far gone in degeneration. They gave their lives to help the return progress. The order of Hanuman had already endured for many generations. The value of their work was hardly appreciable from any standpoint outside; they counted little the years of a man's life; they were trained in patience to a degree hardly conceivable to a Western mind.
". . . Of course they work in the dark," Cadman said. "The natives try to obey in these matters, but do not understand; and one young European with a rifle can undo a whole lot of their devoted labour among the tree-people. You see, the priests work with care and kindness, following, ministering, accustoming the monkeys to them, never betraying them in the slightest—"
Skag nodded, keenly attentive. He knew well from his experience as a show trainer what it means to get the confidence of the big cats; and how months of careful work could be ruined in a moment by an ignorant hand. Deep, steady, inextinguishablekindnesswas the thing.
"Yes, to be kind and square," Cadman resumed. "And one of the strangest and most remarkable things that ever came to me in the shape of a sentence was from one of these priests. He was an old man, grey pallor stealing in under the weathered brown of his face. He had that look in his eye that has nothing to do with years, but means that a man is so sufficient unto himself that he can forget himself utterly. . . . He spoke of the condition of the tree-folk, of the incommunicable sorrow of them—as if it were his own destiny. The one sentence of his, hard to forget—in English would be like this:
"'After a man has lived with these monkey people for a long time, and always been kind, one of them may come and stand before him and let tears roll down his hairy face. And this is all the confession of sorrow he can make!'"
Skag caught the deep thing that had stirred Cadman. The latter added with a touch of scorn:
"Once I told this thing, as I have told you, to a group of Europeans in a steamer's smoking room. And two of them laughed—thought I was telling a funny story. . . . These priests are apt to be very bitter toward one who wrongs one of their free-friends. They believe that it is a just and good thing to make a man pay with his life, for taking the life of a monkey; because it impedes his coming up and embitters the others. One way to look at it?"
Skag was in and out of the jungle most of the days after Cadman left for Bombay to sail. Closer and closer he drew to the deep, sweet earthiness and the mysteries carried on outside the ken of most men. One dawn, from a distance he watched a sambhur buck pause on the brow of a hill. The creature shook his mane and lifted up his nose and sniffed the dawn of day.
Skag knew that it was good to him, knew how the sensitive grey nostrils quivered wide, drinking deep draughts of cool moist air. The grasses were rested; the trees seemed enamoured of the deep shadows of night. The river gurgled musically from the jagged rocks of her mid-current to the overleaning vines and branches of her borders.
This was a side stream of the Nerbudda. Already Skag shared with the natives the attitude of devotion to the great Nerbudda. She was sacred to the people, and to every creature good, for her gift was like the gift of mothers. When all the world was parched and full of deep cracks, yawning beneath a heaven white and cloudless, and rain forsook the land, and every leaf hung heavy and dust-laden; when heat and thirst and famine all increased, till creatures crept forth from their hot lairs at evening and moved in company—who had been enemies, but for sore suffering—then would she yield up her pure tides to satisfy their utmost craving. . . .
Skag lived deep through that morning. The rose and amber radiance of dawn fell into all the hearts of all the birds; and wordless songs came pulsing up from roots of growing things. The sambhur lifted high his head again and spread the fan of one ear toward the wind, while one breathed twice. Then there fell a sudden rustling on the branches; and swift along the river's brim, the sharp, plaintive cry of monkeys, beating down through all the startled stillness with their wailing voices. These turned, hurrying away in one direction, with fearless leaps and clinging hands and ceaseless chattering. Their cries at intervals, bringing answers, until the air was a-din with monkeys, leaping along the highways of the trees.
Women of the villages, children tending goats, labourers among the driftings of the hills and on the open slopes, holy men and those who toiled at any craft—heard the shrill calls along the margins of the jungle and knew that some evil had fallen on a leader of his kind among the monkey people.
Then Skag saw two priests of Hanuman rising up from the denser shadows where the river was lost in the jungle. Quickly girding themselves, they followed the multitudes. Skag did not miss their stern faces, nor the instant pause as they dipped their brown feet with prayers into the river. He dared to follow. The priests turned upon him, silent, frowning; but he was not sent back.
Skag recalled Cadman's words, but also that he was known among the natives as one white man not an animal-killer. His name Son of Power had followed him to Hurda; word about him had travelled with mysterious rapidity. To his amazement Skag found that the people of Hurda knew something of the story of the tiger-pit and his part in delivering the Grass Jungle people from the toils and tributes of the great snake. . . . He was not sent back.
For a long time, until the forenoon was half spent, the three marched silently. One halted at length to pick up from the leaves a white silk kerchief, bearing in one corner two English letters wrought in needle-work. This was lifted by the elder of the priests and folded in the thick windings of his loin-cloth. Deeper and deeper into the jungle they travelled, never far from the river.
Suddenly the branches parted, the path ceased; a smooth, perfect carpet of tender, green grass spread out before them and reached and clung to the lip of a deep, clear pool—beaten out through the ages, by the weight of the stream falling on a lower ledge of rock from the brow of a massive boulder. The mighty trees of the forest stretched their huge arms over this spot, as if to keep it secret, so that even the fierce sunshine was mellowed before it touched the earth.
In the midst of rich grasses, in the shadow of an overleaning rock, a wounded monkey lay stretched upon fresh leaves. The two priests went near him, softly, while the tree-branches filled in and swayed—under weight of monkeys finding places. Here and there a local chattering broke the stillness for a moment, where some dry branch snapped, refusing to bear its burden.
For minutes the two hesitated, considering the wounded one; then the elder priest drew out the kerchief. Skag did not understand all the words spoken, but he made out that this kerchief was a token that should find the hand that caused the wound "and seal it unto torment." The second priest's lips moved, repeating the same covenant. The elder then turned back toward the city, signifying that Skag might follow.
After they had walked some time, the old priest halted and drew forth the kerchief again. He examined the monogram woven with a fine needle into the corner. To him the shape of the first English letter was like a ploughshare, and the second was like the form in which certain large birds fly in company over the heights of the hill country. The priest looked long, then hid the kerchief once more, and they hurried on.
Near the unwalled city, the priest sat down before the pandit, Ratna Ram, whose seat was under the kadamba tree by the temple of Maha Dev. Ratna Ram was learned in the signs of different languages and could write them with a reed, so that those who had knowledge could decipher his writing, even after many days and at a great distance: Ratna Ram, to whom the gods had given that greatest of all kinds of wisdom, whereby he could hold secretly any knowledge and not speak of it till the thing should be accomplished. (The pandit was well known to Skag who studied Hindi before him for an hour or more, on certain days.)
Taking the reed from Ratna Ram, the old priest carefully reproduced the letters he had memorised—A. V.—explained that he had found a kerchief, doubtless fallen from some foreigner as he walked in the jungle. . . . Did the pandit know the man whose name was written so? . . . Now the priest spoke rapidly in his own tongue, repeating the covenant Skag had heard him pronounce in the monkey glen.
For a while Ratna Ram sat silent. The priest waited patiently, knowing that the pandit's wisdom was working in him and that he was considering the matter.
Then Ratna Ram spoke to the priest:
"Oh, Covenanted, you are learned in many things and I am ignorant. But knowledge of some things has pierced to my understanding like a sharp sword. Consider, oh, Covenanted, Indian Government, who is lord over all this land, over the Mussulman and over us also, over our lands and over all our possessions, in whose hand is the protection of our lives and the safety of our cattle. The foreigner has no honour to the life of any creature of the jungle, neither in his heart, nor in his understanding, nor in his laws. But know this and understand it; to Government the life of one human is heavier to hold in the hand than all the lives of all the tribes of the people of Hanuman. This is a good and wise thing to remember at this time, for there is no safe place to hide from Government in all this land; no, not even in the rocks, if he be searching for those who have taken one of his lives; and there is no force to bring before him to meet his force; and there is no holding the life from him, that he will take in punishment; and if many lives have taken his one life, he will have them all. Consider these sayings."
When Ratna Ram had ceased speaking, the priest sat without answering for a short space; then he inquired:
"Has Government force enough to put between, that we should not accomplish to take the slayer alive?"
"No. His armies are not here; but it would not be many days before they would reach this place."
"Not before our purpose could be fulfilled?"
"It may be, notbefore. But soon after."
"That is well. We fear not death. Shall we not surely die? What matters it? Our covenant stands."
Ratna Ram begged the priest to rest a little under the kadamba tree. Rising up, he gathered his utensils of writing and put them in a cotton-bag; and with a glance at Skag to follow, left the place walking toward the city. Skag knew by this time, that his teacher, the pandit, considered the matter of serious import. They reached the verandah steps of an English bungalow and Skag would have retired, but Ratna Ram would not hear, wishing him to keep a record of this affair.
"The priest of Hanuman trustsyou," he said, "and my righteousness to him, as well as to Government, must have witness."
He knocked. A girl came to the door. All life was changed for Skag. . . . The girl, seeing the shadowed face of the pandit, inquired if he sorrowed with any sorrow.
"Only the sorrow that over-shadows thy house, Gul Moti-ji."
Ratna Ram explained that he had come in warning, but also in equal service for the priests of Hanuman who wanted the life of her cousin—A. V.—the young stranger from England. The fact that the young man was away from Hurda this day was well for him, because he had shot and wounded a great monkey, the king of his people.
In the next few minutes Skag missed nothing, though his surface faculties were merely winding spools, compared to the activity of a great machine within. He grasped that A. V. stood for Alfred Vernon, the girl's cousin, a young man recently from England. . . . Yes, A. V. had occasionally gone into the jungle with a light rifle. Sometimes he had brought in a wild duck, or a greymarhattahare; once a black-horned gazelle, but usually a parrot, a peacock or a jay. . . . Yes, sometimes he had been gone for hours. . . . Yes, she had told him about the evil and also the danger of shooting monkeys.
Skag now recalled the young man with the rifle—a well-fed, well-groomed, well-educated young Englishman, thoroughly qualified sometime, to make a successful civil engineer and a career and fortune for himself in India.
The girl apparently had not seen Skag so far. The pandit had called her Gul Moti-ji. So this was the Rose Pearl—the unattainable! . . . And now the pandit informed her that though the cousin might be scornful, it would only be because he was foolish with the foolishness of the ignorant.
"But I am not scornful. I understand—" the girl said. "I am only considering swiftly what can be done."
"They are waiting the death of the great monkey—"
The girl's eyes were filled with shadows and great energies also.
"If his life could be saved?"
"Then his life could be saved, Gul Moti-ji," the pandit replied briefly, but Skag knew he meant the life of the cousin.
"Is it far?"
"Yes, two hours' walk."
Someone within the door of the bungalow now spoke, saying: "Carlin, dear, I may be a bit late—you must not be troubled about me."
The girl answered the voice within. . . . So her name was also Carlin. She had many names surely, but Skag liked this last one best. She turned to the pandit now, speaking slowly:
"Did one of the priests of Hanuman come to you with this story—just now?"
"Yes, Gul Moti-ji."
"Is he waiting?"
"Yes."
"Will he take me—to the place of the wounded one?"
The pandit considered. Skag felt very sure that the priest would do this.
"I will ask him. I can do no more. If the monkey still lives—your cousin's only hope will be in your healing power, Hakima."
"Wait—I will go with you, now."
Skag released his breath deeply when she had re-entered. Apparently she had not seen him so far.
The old priest arose as the three approached the kadamba tree.
"Peace, Brother," the girl said to him.
"Unto thee also, peace," he replied.
Skag marvelled at the inflections of her voice—low trailing words that awoke at intervals into short staccato utterances. It was all awake and alive with feeling. She did not ignore a fact the English often miss, that there are certain unwritten laws of these elder people which are as potent and unswerving as any mind-polished tablets that have come down to England from Greece and Rome.
It was an hour of marvelling to Skag. He saw something that he had not seen so far in India. To her face the darker Indian blood was but a redolence. Doubtless it was because of this—some ancient wonder and depth of lineage—that Skag had looked twice. He had never looked upon a woman this way before. No array of terms can convey the innocence of his concept. . . . She was tall for a girl—almost eye to eye with him.
He didn't quite follow her words of Hindi, but his mind was running deep and true to hers, in meanings. She told the priest that she had come to save her cousin, who never could be made to understand what he had done, even though he lost his life in forfeit. She said the monkey people would be devastated, if he paid his life; that the priests of Hanuman would be driven deeper and deeper into the jungles; that her heart was with them in soundness of understanding, for she was of India who hears and understands. She held up a little basket saying she had brought bandages, stimulants, nourishments, and had come asking permission to go with the priests now, to the wounded one, to care for him with her own strength. . . .
Skag saw that her scorn for the ignorance that had caused the wound was a true thing; that she felt something of the mystery of pity for the monkey people; that she could be very terrible in her rage if she let it loose, but that she loved this stupid cousin also. All Skag's faculties were playing at once, for he perceived at the same time this girl would see many things of life in terms of humour and it would be good to travel the roads with her because of this. . . . Apparently she had not seen him, Sanford Hantee, to this moment.
The priest weighed her words and spoke coldly, saying that his order did not consider consequences to men, when they took life. A monkey king had been shot. The wound was eating him to death. It was unwritten law which may never be broken, for the life of one who kills a monkey to be taken by the priests of Hanuman. Up through the ages this law had not served to destroy the monkey people, but to protect them.
The girl said gently: "Let me go to him. Do you not see that I am indeed of this land, with its blood in my veins?"
Ratna Ram had taken his seat once more under the kadamba tree. It was early afternoon and the three were travelling through the jungle. The girl Carlin was always looking ahead—one thing only upon her mind—time and distance and words, as clearly obstructions to her, as the occasional branches across the path. Once when Skag fixed a big stone for her to pass dry across a shallow ford, she turned to thank him, but her eyes did not actually fill with any image of himself. He missed nothing—neither the standpoint of the priest, nor of the English, nor the vantage of this girl who stood between.
It was a queer breathless day for him, altogether to his liking, but more intense than he understood. The girl's lithe power, the tirelessness of her stride, the quick grace, low voice and steady-shaded eyes full of, full of—
Skag hadn't the word at hand. Cadman Sahib would know. . . . That look of the eyes seldom went with young faces, Skag reflected; in fact, he had only found it before in old mothers and old nurses and old physicians. Certainly it had to do with forgetting oneself in service. . . .
The priest began to talk or chant as he strode along. It was neither speech nor song. It did not bring the younger two closer together, though they saw that monkeys were following, up in their tree-lanes. At times when Skag dropped behind, he wondered why the girl did not see the things that delighted him—a sparkling pool, the gleam of damp rocks, the velvet moss with restless etchings of sunbeam. Yet he knew that it was only to-day she looked past these things; that these really were her things; that she belonged to the jungle, not to the house. . . . She must greatly love this stupid cousin. . . . Skag never tired watching the firm light tread of her—like the step of one who starts out to win a race. . . . There was jubilant music of a waterfall—the priest reverently stopped his chanting.
Then they came to the great rock and the second priest arose, his eye glancing past Skag and Carlin to the eye of his fellow of the order of Hanuman.
For an instant the silence was of an intensity that hurt.
"Is he—?" Carlin began.
The priest who had brought them answered, though there had been no words:
"No, the king yet lives."
Under the shadow of the overleaning rock, stretched on fresh wet leaves, the monkey king was lying. His eyes were bright, but the haze of fever was over them; thin grey lips parted and parched; a strained look about the mouth. He breathed in quick, panting breaths—too far gone to be afraid, as Carlin leaned over; but there was a forward movement in the over-hanging branches, a swift breathless shifting of the monkeys.
She opened the little basket. Skag watched her face as she first laid her hand on the monkey's head. He saw the thrill of horror and understood it well, for this was alien flesh her hand touched—not like the flesh of horse or dog or cow which is all animal. She struggled with a second revulsion, but put it away. She found the wound in the shoulder and asked for hot water, which a priest quickly prepared and brought in an earthen jar. She bathed the wound, and put some liquid on his dry lips. The tree man was too full of alien suffering to be cognisant, as yet; but the great test was now, when under her hands appeared a little instrument of jointed steel. . . . She was talking to him softly as to a sick child. He drew a quick breath—his eyes wide as a low cry came from him, and the whole forest seemed to quiver with a suffocating interest, monkeys ever pressing nearer. Skag saw one little brown hand stretch (twisting as if to bury its thumb) and lay hold of Carlin's dress. . . . Then he sighed, like a whip of air when a spring is released and Skag saw the bullet in the instrument.
It was held before him. She dropped it into Skag's hand thinking it was the priest's. . . . Then she dressed the wound, giving medicine and nourishment until the tree king slept.
The afternoon was spent.
The Monkey Glen (Continued)
In the lull Carlin appeared to have no thought of going back to Hurda. The younger priest made her comfortable with dry leaves. Skag brought a log for her to lean against. For the first time she appeared to notice that he was not one of the priests of Hanuman. . . . She did not speak. Dusk was falling. At intervals she would look into his face. The priests brought fruit and chapattis. Delicate sounds of a wide stillness began to steal through the shadows. Creatures of the forest crept out from their lairs and called, one to another. Down towards the river a tiger coughed; and there was a shiver along the branches where the monkeys sat. The priests had merely glanced at each other. Carlin had not seemed to hear.
Three torches were kept blazing through the night, and by their light the girl gave medicine and nourishment to the wounded one from time to time. She did not speak to Skag, who often sat before her for an interval, but she would occasionally look into his face, her eyes dwelling with a curious calm upon him.
In the morning the wounded one was conscious. That day the suffering wore upon him, and they brought wet leaves as the sun rose higher and kept them changed beneath him, for coolness. . . . The fever left him after the heat of noon. Not until then, did Carlin look upon Skag and speak at the same time.
"Have I seen you before? . . . Who are you?"
When Skag heard himself answer, he realised his voice had something in it he had never known before.
. . . That afternoon Carlin went back to Hurda, but came again for an hour late in the afternoon. The next morning early, she came once more and Skag was there. That afternoon, the elder priest said:
"He will live."
"Yes," Carlin repeated softly.
"But you don't seem glad," Skag said.
She was looking back toward the city.
"I was wondering if I could make them see what it means to spend the afternoon in the jungle with a rifle."
"Couldn't they understand that this work of yours has delivered your cousin from death?"
"Oh, no, they would laugh at that. They would remind me that I have always been strange. Even if my cousin lost his life, they would not learn. The priests would be called fanatics and would be made to suffer and all the monkey-peoples—"
Skag could see that.
"Why do you not leave them?"
"Oh, I do not hate my people. I have many brothers, real men; and then you must know English Government does wonderful things."
They were starting back toward the city leaving the two priests. Most strangely, as no one Skag had ever met, Carlin could see the native and the English side of things. He felt that Cadman would say this of her, too. He wanted sanction on such things, because he felt that already his judgment was not cold—on matters that concerned her. Everything about her was more than one expected. She seemed to have an open consciousness, which saw two or all sides of a question before speech.
A great weakness had come upon Skag. It was in his limbs and in his voice and in his mind. It had not been so when the priests were near, nor when there was work to do. Now they were alone; the jungle was vast with a new vastness. The girl was taller and more powerful—her sayings veritable, equitable. There were golden flashes among the rich shadows of her mind, like the cathedral dimness of the jungle on their right hand as they walked, slanting shafts of sunlight raining through.
They walked slowly. Skag reflected that since his first sight of the sambhur, he had watched and done nothing. All his life had been like that. Yet this girl watched and worked, too. She loved the English and the natives, too. She had skilled hands, a trained body, a cultured mind—certainly a wonderful mind, as full of wonder as this jungle, with a sacred river flowing through.
Moreover, she could ask questions like Cadman—the spirit of things. He told her of his mother, of his running away from school when he first saw the animals at Lincoln Park Zoo, how they enveloped him, so that he thought nothing but of them, lived only for animals later as a circus trainer, and had come to India to see the life of the wild creatures outside of cages. . . . His tongue fumbled in the telling.
"But I do not see yet, why the priests of Hanuman let you go with them—"
"Nor I," said Skag.
"But they know you are not an animal-killer—"
They walked rather slowly. . . . Night was upon them when they reached the edge of the jungle and heard voices. The back of Skag's hand nearest Carlin was swiftly touched and she whispered breathlessly:
"My people. They are coming for me—good-bye—-"
The last few words had been just for him; the tone might have come up from the centre of himself.
Skag was alone, but he did not hurry into the city. There was more in the solitude than ever before, more mystery in the jungle, more in the dusty scent of the open road. Greater than all, in spite of all doubting and realisation of insignificance, there was unquestionably more in himself.
Early the next morning, Skag was abroad in the city and saw the two priests of Hanuman approach Ratna Ram. They raised their hands in silent greeting as he came near and immediately arose and turned toward Carlin's bungalow. Skag was glad to follow, when they signified he might, for the thing at hand was his own deep concern. There was a catch in his throat as Carlin appeared on the verandah. Her eyes met Skag's before she spoke to the priests.
"Is he worse?"
The elder spoke for both, as is the custom:
"Peace be on thee, thou of gentle voice and skillful hands. We greet thee in the name of Hanuman; and are come, to render up to thee the forfeit life, even according to our covenant; for thou hast saved the wounded king, and he will not die. Behold the cloth with the shape of the foreigner's sign in it; this we held for a token that the foreigner's life was ours: this we render now to thee. His life is thine and not ours."
The old man laid the silk kerchief at Carlin's feet.
Skag had thought the danger over yesterday, but he saw that the young Englishman's life held in ransom, had only just now been returned to the girl. . . . That forenoon was the time to Skag of the great tension. Carlin had stood for a moment longer than necessary on the verandah, after the priests had turned away. It was as if she would speak—but that might signify anything or nothing. It was just a point that made the hours more breathless now, like the sentence of quick low tones last night, when the voices of her people were heard at the edge of the jungle. Were these everything or nothing—glamour or life-lock? Often he remembered that her eyes had sought his to-day, even before looking to the priests for news.
He stood at the edge of the jungle at high noon. The city was filmed in heat. Faint sounds seemed to come out of the sky. Skag was watching one certain road. The trance of stillness was not broken. He turned back into the green shade. . . . He would not delay in Hurda. He would not linger. His friend Cadman had been gone for some days. Yet about going there was a new and intolerable pain.
Skag forced himself back from the clearing. He felt less than himself with his eyes fixed upon that certain road; a man always does when he wants something terribly. Still he did not enter the deep jungle. At last he heard a step. He turned very slowly, not at all like a man to whom the greatest thing of all has happened. . . . Carlin had come and was saying:
". . . I heard voices in the house this morning when you came. Someone was listening, so I could not speak. . . . Something keeps growing—something about our work in the jungle. I want to go to the monkey glen again—now."
It was like unimaginable riches. There were moments in which he had counterpart thoughts for hers in his own mind; as if she spoke from another lobe of his own brain. Her words expressed himself.
"I thought you would be here," she told him presently. "I wanted to see you again."
She was flushed from crossing the broad area tranced in noon heat; and now the green cool of the jungle was sweet to her, and they were close together, but walking not so slowly as last night. . . . Loneliness came to them when they reached the empty place where the wounded one had lain in the shelter of the rock. They felt strangely excluded from something that had belonged to them. All the wide branches above were empty. Still that was only one breath of chill. Tides of life brimmed high between them; they had vast mercies to spare for outer sorrows.
"He may not have done so well after being moved," she whispered.
Skag was thinking of the cough he had heard. The monkeys had understood that. . . . Just now the younger of the two priests of Hanuman appeared magically. There was quiet friendliness deep in his calm, desireless eyes.
"All is well," he told them. "They have carried their king to a yet more secret place, where we may not—"
He did not finish that sentence but added: "Only we who serve them may go there. All is well. They would not have moved him, had they not been sure that life was established in him."
The priest did not linger. Then Carlin wanted to know everything—how India had called Skag at the very first. . . . Was it all jungle and animal interest; or was he called a little to the holy men? Did he not yearn to help in the great famine and fever districts; long to enter the deep depravities of the lower cities with healing?
Skag had listened in a kind of passion. Wonderful unfoldment in regard to these things had come to him from Cadman Sahib, but as Carlin touched upon them, they loomed up in his mind like the slow approach to cities from a desert. Carlin's eyes, turned often to his, were like all the shadows of the jungle gathered to two points of essential dark, and pinned by a star veiled in its own light.
"I thought it was only the wild animals that called to me, but now I know better," he said. "And my friend Cadman, who has gone, opened so much to me. He often spoke of the holy men, until one had to be interested—"
Carlin halted and drew back looking at him with a kind of still strength all her own.
"You do not know that the natives thinkyouare something of the kind?"
"I—a holy man?"
"I heard them speak of you last night. You see they have heard of your deliverance of the Grass Jungle people."
Skag was learning how wonderfully news travels in India.
"Of course, it was all easy to believe, after what I saw—"
"What did you see?" he asked.
"That the two priests of Hanuman permitted you to follow them here—"
Then Carlin verified what Cadman had said, that the priests make no mistakes in these things. . . . Presently Skag was listening to accounts of Carlin's life. He was insatiable to hear all. In some moments of the telling, it was like a phantom part of himself that he was questing for, through her words. Her story ran from the Vindhas to the Western Ghat mountains, touching plain and height and shore (but not yet High Himalaya), touching tree jungle, civil station, railway station and cantonments; stories including a succession of marvellous names of cities and men; intimations that many great servants of India and England were of her name; that she had seven living brothers, all older; all at work over India. Finally Skag heard that Carlin had spent eight years in England studying medicine and surgery, and again that the natives called her theGul Moti, which means the Rose Pearl; orHakima, which means physician. But her own name was Carlin!
When they came back to the edge of the jungle again, it was the hour of afterglow. Its colours entered into him and were always afterward identified with her. Carlin left him, laughingly, abruptly; and Skag was so full of the wonder of all the world, that he had not thought to ask if he should ever see her again.
As night came on, Skag thought more and more of the parting; and that there had been no words about Carlin's coming again. He felt himself living breathlessly towards the thought of seeing her; and it was not long before this fervour itself awoke within him a counter resistance. Manifestly this pain and yearning and tension—was not the way to the full secret. As carefully stated before, Skag approved emphatically of the Now. The present moving point was the best he had at any given time. He thought a man should forget himself in the Now—like the animals.
Yet the hours tortured. That night had little sleep for him, and the marvels of Carlin—face and voice, laugh, heart, hand—grew upon him contrary to all precedent. This was a battle against all the wild animals rolled into one; most terribly, a battle because there seemed such a beauty about the yearning which the girl awoke in him.
He was abroad early next day. The thought had come, that she might find him in the jungle at noon or soon afterward as yesterday. As the dragging forenoon wore on, Skag was in tightening tension. He hated himself for this, but the fact stubbornly remained that all he cared for in the world was the meeting again. It seemed greater than he—this agony of separation. It brought all fears and self-diminishing. It told him that Carlin would run from him, if she knew he wanted her presence so. He knew her kind of woman loves self-conquest—the man who can powerfully wait and not be victimised by his own emotions. . . .
So it was that Skag fled from himself, when there was still a half hour before noon. He could not meet her, longing like this.
There was sweat on Skag's forehead as his limbs quickened away from the place of meeting yesterday. The more he left it behind, the more sure he became that Carlin would come. It seemed he was casting away the one dear and holy thing he had ever known—yet it resolved to this: that he dared not stand before her with his heart beating as if he had run for miles and his chest suffocating with emotions—the very features of his face uncertain, his voice unreliable. . . . If a man entered the cage of a strange tiger, as little master of himself as this—it would be taking his life in his own silly hands. Skag couldn't get past this point, and he had a romantic adjustment in his mind about Carlin and the tiger—one all his own.
Deeper and deeper into the jungle he went, along the little river, but all paths appeared to lead him to the monkey glen; and there he sat down at last and remembered all that Alec Binz had told him about handling himself in relation to handling animals, and all that Cadman Sahib had told him from the lips of wise men of India . . . but all that Skag could find was pain—rising, thickening clouds of pain.
He kept seeing her continually as she entered the jungle (walking so silently and swift, her face flushed from crossing the open space this side of the city in the terrible heat of noon)—and then not finding him there. Something about this hurt like degrading a sacred thing, but he didn't mean to. He repeated that he didn't mean to hurt her. . . . Then suddenly it occurred to him that it was all his own thinking about her coming at noon. There had been no word about it. She might not have thought of coming again. This was like a cold breath through the jungle. It was as intolerable as the other thought of her disappointment.
. . . There was an almost indistinguishableslitheringof soft pads in the branches. Skag looked up suddenly and the air seemed jerked with a concussion of his start. The monkeys were back. They had been watching, the branches filling. When he looked up, the whole company stirred nervously.
Skag laughed. It was good. There was but one formulated thought—that Carlin would be glad to hear this; she would appreciate this. The return of the monkeys had a deep significance to Skag, because he had really first seen the wonder of Carlin just here—working over the wounded one. The immediate tree-lanes were filled with watchers in suffocating tension then. It was curiosity now—nothing covered, but playful. Skag wished he could chant like the priests, for the monkey-folk. He wished he had many baskets of chapattis to spread out upon the grasses for them. . . . As he sat, face-lifted, he heard that tiger-cough again.
The monkeys huddled a second—it was panic—then they melted from sight. It was like the swift blowing away one by one, of the top papers of a deep pile on a desk.
Skag was now essentially absorbed. It couldn't be a mistake. The monkeys knew. He himself knew from days and nights with the big cats. There was no cough just like that. It was in a different direction from before, back toward the city this time, but as before, muffled and close down to the riverbed. . . . Nothing of the cub left in that cough; neither was there hurry or hunger or any particular rage or fear. A big beast finishing a sleep, down in some sandy niche by the river; a solitary beast full of years, a bit drowsy just this moment, and in no particular hurry to take up the hunt. Such was the picture that came to Skag with a keen kind of enjoyment. The thrill had lifted his misery for a minute. This was something to cope with. It took away the heart-breaking sense of inadequacy.
It wasn't the thrill of a hunt that animated Skag. The fact is, he hadn't even a six-shooter along. This was the closeness of the real thing again—the deep joy, perhaps, of testing outside of cages once more, the power that had never failed. And just now along the river and beyond the place where the cough came from—Carlin was coming!
The last of the monkeys had flicked away. Skag arose and held his hand high, palm toward her. She beckoned, but still came forward. Skag moved without haste, but rapidly. All the beauty and wonder of Carlin was the same; it lived in his heart, integrate and unparalleled as ever, but some power had come to him from the cough of the tiger. Around all the fear, even for her life, was the one splendid thing—that she had followed him into the monkey glen.
She was nearing the place where the cough had come from, yet Skag did not run. A second time he held up his hand, palm outward, but she still came forward laughing.
"You ran from me?"
"I did not think of you coming so far—to-day."
Skag had stepped between her and the river, turning her toward the city, but Carlin drew back.
"I have come so far. I want to go to our—to the monkey glen!"
She was watching him strangely. Skag understood something that moment: that he might know of Carlin's delight through her eyes, of all joy and good that he might bring, but that he should never know from her eyes if he brought hurt. Skag put this back into the deep place of his mind.
"All right. We'll go back," he said. "They were here—the whole troupe. Just a minute ago, they swung away—"
He saw for an instant her wonderment that he had come alone. She would have been very glad to see the monkey people again; she could not quite see why she should have missed this; she did not understand his words—that he had not expected her to follow into the glen.
She was sitting down on her own log, but he stood. Skag was driven to speak. The need had now to do with one of his favourite words. It was a matter ofequitythat he speak. The words came in a slow ordered tone:
"I was waiting for you there—back at the edge of the jungle—but it came to me that I was not ready."
Carlin had been looking away into the three-lanes. Her eyes came up to his.
"Not ready?" she said.
"All night I could only remember one thing—"
"What thing?"
"That you had not told me you would come again."
Carlin's shoulders lifted a little. She cleared her throat, saying:
"I thought of it."
"This morning the idea occurred that you might come to the jungle at noon—like yesterday, but the hours wouldn't pass after that. I met something different that would not be quiet—"
"Where?"
"I mean in myself."
Carlin's eyes widened a little, but she only said:
"Oh!"
"It would not rest. I could not wait in calm. I was afraid you wouldn't come—yet I was afraid of your coming. My face worked of its own accord, and my words would not say what I knew—"
"When was that?"
"It was worse when I reached the jungle a little before noon and began to watch for you."
"And—you ran away?"
"I was not good to look upon."
"But you are not like that now—quite controlled—like blue ice—"
Skag turned his eyes slowly back the path by the river where the cough had come from.
"I am better now," he said.
"I wonder if anyone ever thought of running away like that?"
"It is not a good feeling to be at the mercy of oneself," Skag said.
Carlin caught a quick breath. There was a steadiness in his eyes. It was steadier than anything she knew. The light of it was so high and keen that it seemedstill.
"Nothing like this has happened before," he said quietly.
Carlin arose. Their eyes met level.
"Everything is changed," he went on. "It was like a grief that you were not here—when the monkeys came in. . . . I'm not right. I did not know before that a girl was part of me. It was all animals before. I'm not ready—but I will be! You are good to listen, but really you had to—"
Carlin let her lids fall a second.
"I mean I couldn't stop when it started."
There was silence before he finished: "I know everything better. I know all the creatures better—all the cries they make. And yet I'm less—I'm only half—"
It was then her hand came out to him.
"Does it mean anything to you?" he asked.
"Yes—"
"Does it mean everything to you—too?"
Her voice trailed. It was closer. It was everywhere. It was like a voice coming up from his own heart:
"Yes, everything—especially because you could run away. . . . ButI—came!"
They were walking toward Hurda among the shadows, Skag closer to the river. . . . The night was coming with a richness they had never seen—tinted shadows of purple, orange and rose—almost a living gleam to the colours; the evening air cool and sweet.