The Unknown Sea Part 5

Too loyal of heart to dream of excuse, he rendered instant obedience to the unwelcome summons, headed round, hoisted every st.i.tch, and slanted away after the white wings. Yet he chafed, angry and indignant against so unwarrantable an imposition on his good faith. Go he must, but for a fair understanding, but to end an intolerable a.s.sumption that to a witch creature he owed payment indefinitely deferred at her pleasure.

He owed her his life; no less than that she might exact.

He found he was smiling despite a loath mind and anxious. Now he would see of what colour were her eyes.

The young witch Diadyomene leaned forward from a rock, and smiled at the white body's beauty lying in the pool below. She was happy, quivering to the finger-tips with live malice; and the image at her feet, of all things under heaven, gave her dearest encouragement. Her boulder shelved into a hollow good for enthronement, draped and cushioned with a s.h.a.g of weed. There she leant sunning in the ardent rays; there she drew coolness about her, with the yet wet dark ribbons of seaweed from throat to ankle tempering her flesh anew. No man could have spied her then.

By a flight of startled sea-birds, he nears. She casts off that drapery.

Through the gorge comes Christian, dripping, and stands at gaze.

With half-shut eyes, with mirth at heart, she lay motionless for him to discern and approach. She noted afresh, well pleased, his stature and comely proportions; and as he neared, his ruddy tan, his singular fair hair and eyes, she marked with no distaste. The finer the make of this creature, the finer her triumph in its ruin.

He came straight opposite, till only the breadth of water at her feet was between.

'Why has "Diadyomene, Diadyomene" summoned me?' he said.

Against the dark setting of olive weed her moist skin glistened marvellously white in the sun. A gaze grave and direct meeting his could not reconcile him to the sight of such beauty bare and unshrinking. He dropped self-conscious eyes; they fell upon the same nude limbs mirrored in the water below. There he saw her lips making answer.

'I sent you no summons.'

Christian looked up astonished, and an 'Oh' of unmistakable satisfaction escaped him that surprised and stung the young witch. He stood at fault and stammered, discountenanced, an intruder requiring excuse.

'A seagull cried your name, and winged me through the reefs to sh.o.r.e, and led me here.'

'I sent you no summons,' she repeated.

A black surmise flashed that the white bird was her familiar, doing her bidding once, this time compa.s.sing independent mischief. Then his face burned as the sense of the reiteration reached his wits: she meant to tell him that he lied. Confounded, he knew not how to justify himself to her. There, below his downcast eyes, her reflected face waited, quite emotionless. Suddenly her eyes met his: she had looked by way of his reflection to encounter them. Down to the mirror she dipped one foot, and sent ripples to blot out her image from his inspection. It was a mordant touch of rebuke.

'Because I pardoned one trespa.s.s, you presume on another.'

'I presume nothing. I came, unhappily, only as I believed at your expressed desire.'

'How? I desire you?' She added: 'You would say now you were loath to come.'

'I was,' he admitted, ashamed for his lack of grat.i.tude.

'Go--go!' she said, with a show of proud indifference, 'and see if the gull that guided you here without my consent will guide you hence _without my consent_.'

Insult and threat he recognised, and answered to the former first.

'Whatever you lay to my charge, I may hardly say a word in defence without earning further disgrace for bare truth.'

'You did not of yourself return here? For far from you was any desire ever to set eyes on me again?'

So well did she mask her mortal resentment, that the faint vibration in her voice conveyed to him suspicion of laughter.

'On you--I think I had none--but for one thing,' he said, with honest exact.i.tude.

'And that?'

Reluctantly he gave the truth in naked simplicity.

'I did desire to see the colour of your eyes.'

She hid them, and broke into charming, genuine laughter.

'Do you know yet?' she said.

'No, for they are set overdeep for a woman, and the lashes shadow so.'

'Come nearer, then, and look.'

He stepped straight into the pool knee-deep and deeper, and with three strides stood below. She bent her head towards him with her arms upon her knee, propping it that a hand might cover irrepressible smiles. Her beautiful eyes she opened wide for the frank grey eyes to consider. Many a breath rose and fell, and neither offered to relinquish the intimate close.

Beautiful eyes indeed! with that dark, indescribable vert iris that has the transparent depth of shadowed sea-water. They were bright with happy mirth; they were sweetly serious; they were intent on a deep inquiry into his; they were br.i.m.m.i.n.g wells not to be fathomed; oh, what more? what haunted their vague, sad, gracious mystery?

'Are you satisfied yet of their colour?' she asked quietly, bringing him to a sense of the licence he indulged.

'Of their colour--yes.'

'How, then, are you not satisfied?'

'I do not know.'

'Bare truth!'

'What thoughts, then, lay behind while you looked down so?'

She kept her mouth concealed, and after a pause said low as a whisper: 'Looking at your eyes, I wondered if they would alter greatly when your time came--to die.'

'Ah, no, no,' he said, startled; 'how could you!' His mind only caught the suggestion to reflect upon her transparent eyes stricken with the tragedy of death. From so gentle a tone he could not gather a sinister hint; moreover, she smiled to effect a blind.

'Now that your quest is over, I in turn desire certain knowledge. Gratify me, and so shall your rash footing here to-day stand redeemed.'

She signed for him to follow, and led the way by rock and pool to the entrance of the cave. There upon a boulder she leaned, and pointed him up to the rock above, where the rough inscription he had set there remained unimpaired.

'That is your handiwork?'

'Yes.'

'What does it mean?'

His heart thumped. To her he had addressed that legend, not knowing what she was.

'I do not know that you are fit to hear.'

Her just indignation refrained from him, and his heart smote him.

'Ah! I should not judge. Hear then!' and he read.