CHAPTER LXI
I FALL INTO A DISMAL SICKNESS, AND RECOVER THEREOF
When we were got into our cavern, my dear lady, of her own hand and wit, cut some strips of bark to serve as splints, and some of that grass which she used to shred for threads; then ripping up the sleeve of my doublet she, with her gentle, soft fingers, set the bone of my broken arm, and bound it up in the bark as ably and well as any clever surgeon could have served me. After that, seeing that the sweat of agony stood on my face, despite the joy it gave me to feel the touch of her sweet hand, and to note how admirably skillful she was in this business (as in all else), she would have me lie down awhile; and to this end she spread one of our mats on the floor of our living-room, that I might get the benefit of the air, and made up a pillow for my head with a bundle of soft herbs that we kept in store for the conies; and scarce had I laid my head down with a look and a little murmur to express my heartfelt gratitude (for I had no power to speak) when the things about me seemed to swim round and round, and I lost consciousness.
I lay in a foolish dream some time (though what absurdity was in my mind I cannot recall), and waking at length to my proper senses, the first thing I observed was that something cool and soft pressed my forehead, and looking up I perceived my little comrade kneeling beside me, with grave wistfulness in her deep eyes.
"What o'clock is it?" says I, like any fool.
"Nay, never mind about the hour, dear Benet," says she tenderly; and with that she shifts her hand, which was that I felt so gratefully cool on my forehead. But she shifted it only to set the other in its place, whereupon I sighed with comfort. Seeing I was pleased, she smiled sweetly, and says she:
"D'ye know me, Benet?"
"Ay, cousin," says I, "why should I not?"
"'Tis three days since you last called me 'cousin.' Your mind has been wandering away from me."
"Is it possible?" says I.
"I feared you were going to leave me here alone for ever," says she, her voice trembling, and her eyes twinkling with a tear. "But you've come back to me after all," adds she with a faint laugh, and a little gulp as she turned aside to dash the tears away with her unoccupied hand.
"God be praised!" says I.
"Amen, amen, amen!" says she with passion. "And now do you taste of this broth I have made."
So I quickly made a shift to sit up, with her help, and eagerly emptied the gourd of the broth she had prepared; for not only was I prodigious hungry, but a stout determination seized me that I would overcome my weakness, and give this dear, dear companion no further anxiety.
"Give me some more if you have it, cousin," says I.
"To be sure I have more," says she. "What sort of a housewife should I be if my larder were empty when I expected company?"
Watching her narrowly as she hurried herself to refill the gourd, I observed, with a keen pang of sorrow, that her sweet face was thin and worn with care, albeit her fair countenance was overspread with a glow of happy contentment.
She bade me lie down again when I had emptied the second bowl of broth; and then, to please me, she brought her breakfast (for 'twas early morning), and ate it sitting on the ground beside me, which was her will and not mine. And when I asked her what had been amiss with me, she told me I had been light-headed, and would for ever be a-starting off to find my uncle Sir Bartlemy, though too weak to rise, and obedient to her hand, though I knew her not. "But," says she, "since yesterday morning you have had no strength even to speak, and I have heard no sound but – " She stopped, but I knew by the sound that rose from her tender bosom it was her own sobs she had heard. "But all that is past," says she cheerily; "and now you will soon be well again, and strong, won't you?"
"Ay," says I, "I promise you I'll be master of those mountains in a week."
"Benet," says she earnestly, "you must grant me a favor."
"With all my soul," says I.
"Then promise me you will never again essay to pass those terrible mountains. Promise!" says she. "And this also – that you will not approach that pestilent marsh, for I do think 'tis the fetid mists from the corruption there which has thrown you into this sickness."
"You ask too much of me," says I, "for how, but by one of these ways, can I hope to carry you hence? You have not reflected on that."
"Yes, I have," says she quietly. "I know that I am asking you to stay with me in the captivity to which our fortunes have brought us. Have we not sought by all the means in our power to escape? If Providence willed us to go hence, should we be thus cruelly rebuffed? Is it not better, Benet, to live here together than to perish singly? Oh, I cannot bear the thought of that. To be left alone – no one to speak to – no voice to cheer me! Have we been unhappy? Can we ever be without comfort, striving each to make the other happy? We may yet improve our cabin: the summer is at hand."
"Say not another word," says I; "I ask no more than to continue as we have lived." Indeed, I was like to have become light-headed again with the prospect revealed to me and the overflow of joy in my heart; and this tumult of emotion threw me back again, not yet being quit of my fever, so that I lay down exhausted in a kind of lethargy, from which I could not arouse myself even to taste the food from my dear lady's hand, which she has prepared for me. Nay, towards evening I felt as if my last hour had come for weakness, and when she, kneeling by my side, laid her sweet, cool hand upon my head as before, asking me how I did, 'twas with much ado I could open my eyes to reply by a look that I was very easy in my mind, as indeed I was, suffering no sort of pain, but only a very sweet dreaminess to think she was to be my companion always. So I lay with my drowsiness growing on me, never moving a hand-stir till the moon rose and shone upon me through the mouth of the cavern, where doubtless I looked like one dead, as I think, for my dear lady, still kneeling beside me, began to weep softly, which, though I heard it, I could find no check by any hopeful sign, because of my heaviness. Then, taking my hand and bending low, she murmurs with a broken voice, and such disconsolate tones as were enough to move the heart of the dead:
"You won't leave me, Benet dear – you won't leave me!"
And at that I managed to open my eyes and say "No"; therewith making bold to lift her hand a little. Then she, seeing what I would be at, aided me, so that I laid her lovely hand on my mouth and kissed it.
So, animated with a new vigor, and a sturdy determination that I would not yield to this faintness, but would master it for her sake, I contrived to ask her if she would make me a potion of those herbs the Ingas had given us, which I thought would do me good.
"I have it here ready," says she, "if you can but raise your head to drink of it. Wait; let me slip my arm under your head and around your neck – so."
In this tender fashion she helped me to rise, and set the gourd to my lips, from which I drank the brew to the bottom, which was as good as any apothecaries' drugs, and full as bitter.
This potion, together with my persevering resolution, did me a world of good, so that in a couple of hours I felt strong enough to get up on my feet, if needs be; perceiving which, my lady acceded to my entreaty, and laid herself down to take some repose, which she needed sorely, for I doubt if she had closed an eye all through my sickness. For my own part, I had no longer inclination to sleep, but lay devising means for improving our cavern as my lady had suggested, for one thing resolving I would try to make a partition to my lady's chamber that would let in the light, and yet secure her privacy, which I proposed to do with a sash of canes stretched over with bladder-skin; "and thereon," thinks I, "may she paint some pretty devices with such juice-stains as we can get, that it may have all the pleasant gay look of a painted glass window."
'Twas a great pleasure to me devising all this, but the telling of it the next morning to my lady was yet greater joy, for the delight she showed in the scheme. She brought her chair up, and sitting beside me listened with sparkling eyes a whole hour to all I had to say on this trumpery; but no matter seemed paltry to her which interested me, and I do believe she would have given her serious thought to discourse on a fiddlestick's end if my mind had been bent that way, so entire was her sympathy.
"Benet," says she in the end, "I do think there is no man in the world so ingenious as you in the service of a friend, nor so unselfish neither. For while you thought I wished to quit this place, naught could exhaust your patience in seeking the means; and now that you find I would stay, your first moments of consciousness are devoted to making my life here agreeable. Nay, it seems to me that you have overcome your sickness because you saw that my happiness, my very life, depended on it."
"Why, so I have," said I; and therewith I told her how that I had taken that resolution to live when I felt myself sinking into the heaviness of death.
She looked at me with kind, wondering eyes as I spoke, and for some moments sat in silence, her hands folded on her knees, and bending towards me. Then says she, "Oh! Benet, if we all strove to live for our friends as readily as we offer to die for them, how much more should we merit their love!"
Soon after this she took her bow and arrows and went off in the canoe to seek food for our supper in the wooded slope; but the dear girl did so steer her course that I might as long as possible see her from where I lay by the mouth of the cavern.
CHAPTER LXII
I AM PUT TO GREAT TORMENT BY MY PASSION
As soon as I was strong enough to get about, I went daily with my lady into the woods a-hunting; but as yet my left arm was useless, though getting strong apace, so that I could but play the part of squire to her. But, Lord! to see how dexterous she was with the bow, did give me more pride and pleasure than any of my own prowess. Yet from the tenderness of her love for all living things she was averse from this practice, which we men regard as an amusing pastime, and therefore would she kill nothing but that which was necessary to our existence.
I remember one day, when she had drawn her bow to shoot a dove that sat pluming its wings on a bough, she relaxed the string and returned the arrow to her sheaf.
"'Tis a fine fat pigeon," says I, "and we have naught for our supper: why have you spared it?"
"Do you not see her mate in the bough above?" says she. And so we supped on fruit and cassavy that night; but with no regret.
However, if there were moments of pain in these expeditions, there were long hours of delight; for now the woods were as like to Paradise as the mind of man can conceive, nothing lacking to enchant the senses; and to speak of all the rare and beautiful flowers and fruits we carried home to garnish our cavern would be an endless undertaking. And as these woods, valleys, and purling streams were like Paradise, so was I like a blessed soul therein; and I doubt if many men in all their lives sum up so much pure joy as every minute yielded to me. Here, day after day, I strolled beside my dear lady in the shade of delicate flowers, enveloped in sweet odors, and with warbling birds around us. But to my senses the sweetest music was her voice, the daintiest bloom her cheek, the most intoxicating perfume her breath. Looking around, it seemed to me that all Nature did but reflect her beauty, and therein lay its perfection. There were favorite spots where we would rest, noting the development of familiar things – how these buds expanded, how that fruit ripened, how the young birds began to stretch their naked necks beyond the nest's edge, crying for food; indeed, there was such scope for observation, and my dear lady was so quick to perceive and appreciate all things of beauty, that no moment was dull or tame.
While we indulged to the full our love for rambling, we were not unmindful of domestic things. The season was now come for plucking silk grass, and of this we cut an abundance, and laid it on the rocks to dry; for my lady designed to plait it, in the Ingas' style, into a long strip, which she might make up into clothing by-and-by. This plaiting was the first work I put my hand to, and though I bungled sadly over it to begin with, I grew defter in time, so that I could do it as well in the dark as in the day. Many an evening we sat weaving our grass hour after hour, with no light but that of the stars as they twinkled forth, chatting the whole while of other matters. But before I got to this proficiency – indeed, as soon as I could plait decently – I made a hat for my lady; not so much like a woman's as a boy's, that it might go fairly with her habit; and this, with a couple of bright tail-feathers from a macucagui6 stuck in jauntily o' one side, became her mightily, though I say it; but, for that matter, anything looked well that she took for her use.
About this time we had the good fortune to catch a partlet sitting on a nest of fifteen eggs; taking these home without delay, we clapped the eggs in a corner of our conies' cavern, where the hen, after some little ado, sat down upon them, being hemmed in with the hurdle that parted off my bed-chamber from our parlor, which I fetched out for that purpose.
About a fortnight later my Lady Biddy came to me in great glee one morning to say that every one of the eggs were hatched out; and I know not which looked the more content, this old hen strutting carefully amidst her chicks as proud as a peacock, or my dear lady casting some cassavy pap before them for a meal.
And now the conies multiplying prodigiously, that cavern was full of young live things, so that there was as much work to provide for their mouths as our own; but there was never too much for my lady to do, and she would not part with a single one.
"They are my children," she would say, with a little sadness in her smile.
With these innocent pleasures and hard work my lady beguiled the days, and so two months passed away – two months, as I say, of inexpressible delight for me. Not a day passed without my discovering some new charm in her person, some fresh grace in her character, which I had previously overlooked. And how to keep this adoration that filled my soul from overflowing by my lips, or my eyes, was almost more than I could compass.
One day when I was culling a nosegay, and seeing in the pale pink and cream hue of the flowers resemblance to my lady's cheek, I (being then alone) did with extravagant passion bury my face in the fresh cool bloom, kissing them till my transport was spent. Then, looking again at the blossoms, I was sobered to perceive how I had crushed out their freshness and beauty, so that they no longer bore any likeness to my dear lady's face.
So then I resolved I would not suffer myself to fall in love with her; but that was easier said than done. For 'twere as easy to promise you would not grow hungered or athirst. However, one thing was possible, if I had any manhood, and that was to keep my love from being known to my dear lady.
Nevertheless, before long I had reason to believe she had guessed my secret, for she also grew silent and downcast beyond her wont, and more than once I spied her looking at me with pity and sorrow, as if she knew of my trouble.
One day, when I addressed her as "my lady," she said:
"Why should you call me by a title here where there is no distinction? Why not call me 'sister,' Benet, or plain 'Biddy'? – for we are as brother and sister to one another, are we not, and must ever be?"
This hint showed what was in her mind; and yet if she had learnt my secret, God knows it was against the best I could do to hide it.
I called her "sister" after that, hoping it would train my mind to think of her in that relation; but it did not, so that I knew not what remedy to get for the fever of my heart.
One morning we were made merry at breakfast by the partlet making her way over the rocks that divided us from the conies' cave, and bringing all her brood to pay us a visit, which was as much as ever she could tempt them to undertake, and called for prodigious chuckling and scratching on her part. Our diversion somewhat relaxed the feeling of restraint within me, and when my dear lady, taking up a chick in her fair hands, held it up that I might see how bright and free were its eyes, I, looking all the while upon the lovely girl's head that was so near me, was within an ace of bending down to touch it with my lips. Now this being a Tuesday was the day for grinding our cassavy meal, and perceiving by my heat that I dare not trust myself to stand by our bench all the morning beside my lady, I made believe I had a relish for fish that day, and begged her to take her rod and line and go a-fishing while I ground the cassavy.
"Nay," says she, "do you go a-fishing, for your arm is not yet strong enough to do this hard work alone."
But I protested I was able to do this, my arm being as well as ever it had been, and that she was a better angler than I (as indeed was true), and so she presently took her rod and went over the rocks to a pool where fish abounded. When I had ground my meal and set the kitchen neatly in order, I betook myself to the rocks straightway; for I could never abide to let my lady be long out of sight for fear of accident befalling her. And that I might not scare the fish, I approached the pool noiselessly; but turning a rock that screened that part from view I was brought of a sudden to a stand by spying my poor little comrade sitting on a big stone, her rod lying idly beside her, her elbows on her knees, and her face buried in her hands. She made no sound, but I could see, by the twitching of her shoulders, that she was sobbing. Then would I have given all the world to be able to go thither and comfort her – to draw her to me and soothe her as a brother might his sister. But reflecting that we were but brother and sister in name, and that I should but add to her distress by my endeavors to assuage it, I drew back as silently as I had come, and going back to the cavern I sank down on my stone stool as wretched and sore at heart as might be.
"Poor soul," thinks I, "she must needs weep at times to relieve her overcharged heart. There are birds that do pine away in captivity. This is no home for her. These chicks and conies can never replace the friends she has lost and can never hope to rejoin. Here there is naught to hope for; even Nature must cease to charm her when she sees that these mountains and waters serve as the bars of a cage. What cheerful word can I whisper? What can I do to bring joy into those dear eyes?"
In this sort did I spend the time till I heard her voice feigning to hum a merry ditty, when I also put on a careless look to hide my care.
She had caught half a dozen fishes, so that she could not have given way long to grief; nor was it in her nature to yield to useless regrets. If I had judged only by her present manner I should have said that nothing was amiss with her, for she persevered in sprightly conversation, albeit I could join in it but poorly; still, as we sat to our dinner, I noted that the lids of her pretty eyes were swollen and red. Also I observed that her cheek was thinner than it used to be, and the blue veins in the back of her hand more clearly marked. Then it struck me that perhaps her dejection arose from failing health, and that the vapors from the fens, wafting over the lake, had already attacked her, as they had before seized me.
Then of a sudden the thought came to me as I looked at her —
"What should I do without my dear little comrade?"
And at this reflection it seemed as if the food I was eating must choke me.
God knows how I got through that meal. When it was over, I made a pretense of feeding the conies to go apart where I might give vent to the terrible emotion that brought me to a despairing grief. And saying again, "What should I do without her?" I wept like any child, but with the difficulty of a man, so that I felt as if my heart was being torn out of my breast, and beat my foot upon the ground in agony.
However, this weakness passed away with my tears, and then bracing myself up with more manly fortitude I swore, betwixt my clenched teeth, that all the powers of Nature should not keep my lady prisoner there. As I said this, my eye fell upon a mark on the rock, left by the turbid swollen waters, and marking how the waters were now fallen from this height a good five fathoms, I conceived a means of escape which had never before occurred to me.