Chapter XX
It would be pointless to dwell at length upon my second winter in Sobul. In everything essential, it was a repetition of the winter before. There were the same long solitary months, the same monotonous loneliness by the evening firelight, the same trudging through the snow on companionless expeditions, the same arduous gathering of faggots and the same fear of predatory wild things, the same howling of wolves from across the valley and the same clamoring of storm-winds, the same bleak questionings and the same impotent wrath at the unkindliness of my fate.
But in one respect my lot this year was harder to bear. For now there were memories to torment, memories that arose like ghosts when in the long evenings I sat musing by the golden-yellow light of the log blaze. A year ago there had also been memories; a year ago I had also thought of Yasma with sadness; but then there had been no endearing intimacy to haunt every object she had brightened with her presence and every spot her feet had pressed. Now the very cabin she had occupied with me seemed desolate because she had been there; the very pans and kettles and earthen vessels her fingers had touched became sorrowful reminders, while a little spray of wildflowers, gathered by her hands months before and now hanging gray and withered from the log wall, was the perpetual source of longing and regret. How strange and ironic that every gay moment we had passed together should have its melancholy echoes, and that her very smiles and laughter and little winning ways and little loving kindnesses should all return to mock me now!
As I sat dreaming of Yasma, my thoughts would flicker fitfully as the flames writhing in the fireplace. One moment I would blame myself for bringing misfortune upon my beloved; the next moment anger would rise in my heart and I would feel aggrieved at her and at the world because I had been forsaken. And when I remembered that this second lonely winter might not be the last, that next winter and every winter I might be deserted, then a furious resolve blazed up within me; and with a strength born of my wretchedness I determined that never again should I live through the cold season alone. Let Yasma refuse to stay, and I would coax, cajole, entreat, and if need be force her to remain. Was she not my wife? Was it not unreasonable to be abandoned as she had abandoned me? No doubt she would plead that she had never promised to stay, had always insisted on the need for a migration—but might that need not be a mere superstition, born of blind obedience to some secret tribal tradition? And, whatever the necessity that moved her, how could it compare with my own necessity?
Another winter of solitary confinement, I feared, and I should go mad. Already I was tending toward the obsessions that beset one overlong in his own company—and should I do Yasma a favor by bequeathing her a lunatic for a husband? Plainly, she did not understand, could not understand, any more than I could understand her ways; but was it not my duty to protect us both by any means within my grasp? Thus I reasoned, repeating the arguments over and over to myself, until I knew them as the mathematician knows his axioms; and so, partly by logic and partly by sophistry and largely because of the frenzy of my love and despair, I decided upon that step which was to make all succeeding winters different, and was to mark the fateful climax of my life in Sobul.
Having made my resolve, I could face the world with fresh courage. All that winter, when the mountains were white specters beneath the blue sky or when the clouds blotted out the peaks and the snow was sifted down day after day, I kept hope alive not only at the thought of Yasma's return in the spring but by the determination that she should not leave in the autumn. I might be tormented by loneliness; I might read only sorrow in the denuded woods, and menace in the lowering skies; I might quiver at the wail of the wolf, and people the shadows of the night with evil shapes; I might find the peaks cruelly aloof, and Yulada as disdainful as ever on her rock-throne; yet at least I had something to clutch at, something to bring me consolation and make it seem worth while to live.
But there was another thought that lent the world interest. Yulada still drew me toward her with a mysterious fascination; I was as anxious as ever to climb to her feet. My previous failures did not discourage me; I told myself that I had been unlucky, and should succeed if I persisted. Had the upper altitudes not been coated with ice, I should have made the attempt immediately after Yasma's departure; but experience had taught me to wait; and I determined that early in the spring, before the first Ibandru had reappeared, I should again match my strength with the elusive slopes.
It was when March was still young that a benign mildness came into the air; that the snow began to melt, and the streams to run full to the brim. During most of the month the warmth endured; and shortly before the arrival of April the peaks were banded and mottled with wide gray patches, and I concluded that it was time for my new adventure.
I was not at fault in this judgment. Never before had the ascent seemed quite so easy; the way had been smoothed as though by invisible hands. No ice or snow impeded me along the lower slopes, or blockaded me on the upper; no impassable cliff intervened as I followed the windings of the trail through groves of deodar and pine, and along the verge of thousand-foot precipices. But the blue sky, the invigorating breezes and the new-washed glittering peaks all served to strengthen my determination. To climb to Yulada appeared almost a simple matter, and I could scarcely understand why I had not succeeded before.
Yet somehow I could not remain cheerful as the hours went by and I trudged along the stony ledges and over ridge after steep projecting ridge. Or was I being infected with the same superstition as the Ibandru felt? This much, at least, I know: the higher I mounted, the lower my spirits sank; I began to feel as one who sacrilegiously invades a shrine; had I not opposed my determination to my fears, I might not have come within miles of Yulada.
But, after several hours, my stubbornness appeared to be winning. By early afternoon I had mounted high among the bare ridges at Yulada's feet; the stone figure loomed not many hundred yards above, proud and defiant as ever, so huge that she could have held me like a pebble in one hand, and so majestic that she seemed the masterpiece of some titanic artist. Truly, an awe-inspiring, a terrifying sight! Truly, I had reason to feel my own insignificance as I stood gazing at those cyclopean outlines, the steel-gray contours of the exquisitely modelled figure, the firm and haughty face inexorably set like the face of fate itself, the hands upraised as though in supplication to the Unseen, and one foot lifted as if to step into the abyss.
If I had been sanguine before, I was now merely appalled. It seemed impossible that I, a pygmy intruder, should ever stand within touching distance of the goddess! Surely some sign would come, as always before, to checkmate my approach; either the fog would rise, or the storms be hatched, or my feet would falter and fall. So I thought as with painstaking slowness I attacked the final few hundred yards, watching every step and half expecting the ground to give way or the earth itself to open.
With vigorous efforts, the last lap might have been accomplished in half an hour; but my cautious crawl took nearer to an hour and a half. During all that time I had scarcely a glimpse of Yulada, for the grade was such that I could observe her only as the pedestrian at the base of a skyscraper may view the flagpole. Yet I was so busy creeping on hands and knees up the steep inclines, that I could give Yulada hardly a thought. I did not doubt that, having mastered the slopes, I should be able to inspect the goddess to advantage.
Finally, in joy not unmixed with dread, I was reaching the end of my climb. One last pinnacle to surmount, and I should stand face to face with Yulada! I could scarcely believe in my own good fortune—would the rock not crumble beneath me, and hurl me into the void? But no! the rock was solid enough; with one climactic effort, I lifted myself over the brink, and stood safely on the peak!
But was I on the peak? What was that irregular gray mass above? I blinked, and observed that I was on a narrow plateau, over which there loomed a great pile of crags, jagged and beetling and apparently without form or design. For a moment I stared in idiotic bewilderment; then gradual recognition came to me. This shapeless heap of rock was Yulada! It was only from a distance that her outlines appeared human; seen at close range, she was but a fantastic formation of stone!
In my first surprise and disappointment at the irony of the discovery, I laughed aloud. Yet I was not slow to understand. I remembered how a fine painting, splendid at several yards, may seem a blur to one who approaches too closely. And was Yulada not a masterwork of nature, intended for inspection only from afar? Her form, as I saw it, was full of flaws and irregularities, but how well distance smoothed away the defects, supplying her with statuesque outlines that were unreal, a verisimilitude that was only illusion!
For almost an hour I lingered at Yulada's feet, trying to penetrate what still remained of her secret. But there seemed little enough to penetrate. The rugged granite of her body, scarred and polished by the tempests of centuries, was responsible for her gray color; her head, neck, face and limbs were barely distinguishable—she was as any other crag which nature, chance sculptress, had modelled into something lifelike and rare.
As I strolled about the base of Yulada, I found myself wondering about the beliefs of the Ibandru, their dread of approaching the stone figure. And suddenly an explanation came to me. What if some wily priest, climbing long ago where I had climbed today, had realized that his power would be enhanced and the fear of Yulada intensified if the people were never to ascend to the peak? And what if, having conspired with his fellow priests, he had passed an edict forbidding his followers, under dire penalties, to mount within five stones' throws of the statue-like figure? Among a superstitious people, could not such a taboo be made impressive?
But though my reason accepted this explanation, I am an inconsistent individual, and my emotions rejected it utterly. Even as I stood gazing up at the rocky mass, fear crept back into my heart; irrational questionings forced themselves once more upon me despite all that good sense could do to keep them out. Were the Ibandru wholly at fault in dreading Yulada? in dreading to stand at her feet? Here again it may have been only my imagination at work; but when a cloud came drifting out of nowhere across the sky and for a moment dimmed the sun, I had a sense of some mysterious overshadowing presence. And all at once I was anxious to escape, to free myself from the uncanny imminence of the peak; and it seemed that the great stone mass above, and the cloud-flecked sky, and the billowy gaunt ranges, were all joined against me in some gigantic conspiracy.
As rapidly as safety permitted, I made my way down from the mountain. But still strange fears disturbed me, that same inexplicable uneasiness which had obsessed me so often in Sobul. Heedless of hunger and fatigue, sore muscles and blistered feet, I continued downward for hours; and that evening I made camp between two sheltered crags just above the timber-line.
Yet the day's torments were not over. As I skilfully struck my two flints to make a fire, a greater and more arresting fire was flaring in the west. Huge masses of cloud were heaped above the dark ranges, and to the east the bars and patches of snow were smoldering with a mellow rose-red. But their light was dim beside that of the clouds, which were luminously golden, as though great flames leapt and sparkled in their heart; and above the clouds the crimson of the sky was such as may overtop the towers of a burning city. Spellbound, I watched; and, as I watched, the crimson seemed gradually to take form; and the shape was at first vague and indistinguishable, but by degrees became more clearly pencilled; and then, perhaps owing to the downward drift of the clouds, and perhaps because my imagination endowed the scene with unreal qualities, I thought that I could make out a face, a red peering face as vast as a mountain! And that face had familiar outlines; and in amazement and horror and dismay I recognized the features—of Yulada!
For one moment only, the hallucination endured; then the countenance became blurred and unrecognizable, and the crimson was drowned out by the gray, and the fierce blaze of sunset was quenched and subdued, and the twilight deepened, and the stars came out. But all that night, while the constellations gleamed above and I lay huddled close to my fire, I could not sleep but restlessly stirred from side to side, for I kept seeing over and over again that terrible vision of Yulada.