Chapter XXIII
As the evening twilight came earlier and the trees were burnished a deeper scarlet and gold, a strange mood came over Yasma. She was no longer her old frolicsome self; she would no longer go dancing light-heartedly among the woods and fields; she would not greet me with laughter when I returned to our cabin, nor play her little games of hide-and-seek, nor smile at me in the old winsome whimsical way. But she was as if burdened with a deep sorrow. Her eyes had the look of one who suffers but cannot say why; her actions were as mechanical as though her life-interest had forsaken her. She would sit on the cabin floor for hours at a time, staring into vacancy; she would stand with eyes fastened upon the wild birds as their successive companies went winging southward; she would gaze absently up at Yulada, or would mumble unintelligible prayers; she would go off by herself into the forest, and when she returned her cheeks would be moist.
At times, indeed, she struggled to break loose from this melancholia. For a moment the old sweet untroubled smile would come back into her eyes, and she would take my hand, and beg me not to mind her queer ways; but after a few minutes the obsession would return. Now and then she would be actually merry for a while, but I would fancy that in her very gaiety there was something strained; and more than once her jovial mood ended in tears. I could not understand her conduct; I was more deeply worried than she could have known; and often when she sat at my side, wrapped in some impenetrable revery, I would be absorbed in a bleak revery of my own, wherein Yasma would have the central place.
Yet, even at this late date, it would have been possible to avert catastrophe. Dimly I recognized that I had only to release Yasma from her promise, and she would be once more her buoyant, happy self. But I could not bring myself to the necessary point. In part I was restrained by the very urge of self-preservation, by the threat of madness if I must live alone winter after winter; in part I was held back by sheer stubbornness, the determination not to surrender the prize on which I had set my heart. And in part I was misled by my own blindness. I still felt that I had only to win this one victory, and happiness would shine for me again; that once I had weaned Yasma from her long yearly absences, neither of us would have anything more to fear.
Had my eyes only been open, I would have been warned not by Yasma's attitude alone, but by the hints of her kinsmen. Not until later did I take note of the gradually changing attitude of the villagers, and link together a multitude of signs, each slight in itself, which testified to the unspoken reproach I had aroused. But what I did observe even at the time, yet did not properly weigh or fathom, was the uneasiness and even alarm in the manner of Yasma's father and brothers. When Karem bade farewell before disappearing for the winter, he mentioned Yasma in scarcely veiled tones, bidding me not to "clip her wings"; when Barkodu bade farewell, he adjured me not to try to adapt the Ibandru to my own nature. And when Abthar came to say good-bye, it was with the manner of one who suffers a great sorrow; the grizzled face became tender and the stern eyes soft when he counselled me to take good care of his child. But he had the air of one who reluctantly bows to the inevitable, and spoke as though knowing that his words would be without effect.
I had hoped that after Abthar and Karem and the other tribesmen had gone, Yasma would recover from her despondency. But, if anything, her depression grew as the days went by. It was as though the departing ones took with them her slight remaining joy in life; with each of her kinsmen that disappeared, some new corner of her small universe crumbled away. Her eyes would now travel toward the south as if to seek there some great and glorious good hidden from her forever; and it gave me many a pang to see how she craved what was not to be. But still my purpose held firm.
Eventually there came a day when all but a few of the cabins were empty; then a day when even those few were vacant—when all except our own were deserted. The evening before had still seen two or three belated men strolling about the village; but now we were alone, utterly alone except for the screaming wild things in the woods and the unperturbed figure of Yulada above. And now at last Yasma and I were face to face with our fate.
And now the long-incipient revolt flamed forth. It was a wild, chilly day of wind and flying cloud, reminding me of that other day, a year before, when Yasma had left me. All morning she had been in a somber mood, and I had been unable to break through her silence; all afternoon she had been standing, like one in a daze, peering up at the dreary gray curtain of clouds. My remarks to her, my questions, my pleas, my soft-toned phrases of affection, were all without effect; she heard me only as one in a dream may hear murmurs from the waking world. Never before had I been so far from her; she could hardly have been more remote had she joined her kinsmen on their mysterious flight!
Late that afternoon I was busying myself in the cabin, lighting a fire and preparing some simple articles of food, for I could not let myself spend all my time brooding like Yasma. A brilliant light gleamed in her eyes; ecstasy and longing and terror and furious enthusiasm convulsed her features; she seemed a living blaze of vehemence and desire. Urgently she seized my hand, and led me unresisting into the open; then passionately pointed upward, upward to a triangle of black dots darting across the gray heavens.
"See!" she cried. "See, the birds fly south! The last birds fly south!"
I glanced skyward, but first peered at her in fright, for it occurred to me that brooding and excitement might have deranged her mind. But except for her extreme agitation, she appeared quite normal; her eyes flashed with a beautiful flame, and her old animated, fiery self had revived.
"Let me go from here!" she pleaded, almost in a transport. "Let me go, oh, let me go the way of the birds!"
I stood as if paralyzed by the force of her words; and if she had made a motion to leave, I might not have been able to detain her.
"Oh, let me go the way of the birds!" she repeated. "Do not hold me, my beloved! I want to go far from here, across the mountains, the way the birds go!"
But dread of losing her was beginning to possess me, and I made my first defense against the wild power of her appeal. "No!" I forbade. "You shall not go! You shall stay here with me!"
"No, I must go! Yulada calls! For now the last birds fly south, the last birds fly south! Oh, I must go, my beloved!"
In these words there was an intensity of longing that was almost pitiable. But my own longing was at storm pitch; and desperately I reiterated what I had just said.
"But Yulada orders me to go! I cannot resist her call! It is burning away in me like a torment!" she wailed, and raised her arms imploringly toward the gray skies, across which another band of winged travelers was careering. "Oh, I must not be late! Good-bye, my beloved!"
And she started away from me, and in a moment might have been obscured amid the shadows.
But terror of losing her filled my heart; and I darted after her, and an instant later had her in my arms.
"Yasma! You shall not go! You shall not!" I found myself crying, in a frenzy that equalled her own. And my arms clung about her, and forced the quivering form closely to me. "You must not go! You cannot! You promised to stay! I will not let you go, I will not, will not!" And what more I said I cannot now recall; but I held her to me tenaciously, distractedly, in an abandon of fear and passion; and she could not struggle free from my clasp.
And as the darkness deepened, and a red rift in the clouds like a fiery omen marked the way of the setting sun, my madness subsided, and hers subsided too; and she lay in my arms, a limp, huddled mass.
"Let it be as you wish. I will not go," she was saying, in tones wherein there seemed to be scarcely a trace of life. "I will not go. I will stay with you here—if Yulada permits."
And she buried her face against my breast, and her whole form shook and shuddered. And as I reached out a trembling hand to comfort her, there came a weird querulous calling from the deep gloom above; and I knew that still another flying thing, perhaps the last, had gone gliding on its way beyond the mountains.