XXVII
They Dread That a Witch Has Ridden from the Country Towards Moon’s Rising
As Ramon Alonzo and Anemone wandered away from the wood her memories of pails and old age and the magical house dwindled faster, and she seemed even younger than her face amongst its little curls, and that was the face of a girl of seventeen. Often she glanced at her shadow to see if it was there, prompted by some dark memory like the fears that frighten children, but when she saw it going lightly with her light steps over the grass and small leaves she laughed to see it and forgot the memory. At such moments Ramon Alonzo tried to comfort her for those dark ages that she had known and all those wasted years, telling her that the future and years of his love should repay her; but more and more as they wandered away from the wood he noticed that talk of the past would puzzle her. She would listen attentively as though trying to remember or trying to understand, and then she would suddenly laugh to see a butterfly scared at her shadow, or to see the glint of a flower change as her shadow went over it. Then she would go grave again when she saw the grave face of Ramon Alonzo offering her sympathy for all she had suffered; and, puckering her forehead, she would half remember and half understand until she saw a lizard run in the leaves, or a young goat leaping, then all the memory she had of those dark years would go again. So he spoke only of the present and his love, and of the future and how his love would endure, and how it would be with her still in old age to shield her latest years from any sorrow. To this she listened, though when they spoke of old age it seemed to both of them like the ending of a story often told, and even pleasant to hear, but not wholly true. This defeat of invincible youth on a distant day was no more to them than is the thought of defeat to the men of a great army just fresh from their first victory.
Far into the future the radiance of that day shone for them, from where they walked on the hillside hand-in-hand in the morning, till all the years to be seemed to shimmer and glow in the gold of it, as though shafts of that one day’s sunlight could flash across all time. And even backwards its splendour seemed to pierce the mist of the past, casting a glow far off even on years that were gone; but the past, to Anemone, lay in Aragona and not in the dark house. Across a gulf of time that she could not measure, gardens and cottages of Aragona now glowed with a brighter light for her because of the radiance of one wonderful morning. They spoke awhile of those gardens and those cottages, Ramon Alonzo’s swift fancies racing back through the years from far dreams of the future to hear of them; for all ways that were ever trod by Anemone were to him enchanted paths, because they had brought her at last to him. She told of her early days, of her childhood that should have been yesterday, but that magic had separated from her by a bleak waste of years; and now her memories flitted across those years not knowing how many they were, as the swallows come back to us over leagues of sea, straight to their own eaves. And as she told of that old home of her memories, a cottage-garden at twilight in Aragona, the sky all haunted by the hint of some colour too marvellous to tarry till we can name it, but caught and held in her memory, the flowers shining softly with a faint glow of their own, the voices of children playing who must all long since be dead, the air trembling towards starlight; bells and their mellow echoes; faint notes of a lonely far music; as she told he lifted his gaze for a moment away from her lips, and saw, though dazzled a little by the shining gold of her curls, saw Aragona.
This was not the Aragona of her memories, in which every flower welcomed him to come and walk in her garden, and every soft song called him to share old joys of her childhood: it was the Aragona in which night and day men watched with swords at their sides for the man with the bad shadow. And Ramon Alonzo saw that he must look into the future, to pick difficult paths, that would not be lit by any light shining from daydreams. Immediately before him lay Aragona; and what after that? Would his father receive Anemone? He thought of her fair young face, her delicate curls, the rippling light of her eyes, her fairy figure, her merry childish ways rejoicing in girlhood, to which she had returned after such wanderings: daydreams all; his father would not see her as Ramon Alonzo saw. Then he thought of soberer things more reasonably. His father was going to marry Mirandola, with those lightning eyes under that stormy hair, to the neighbour, Señor Gulvarez. If they asked where Anemone came from, she too was a neighbour. If they asked who she was, who was Gulvarez? And if Anemone were unknown, was that not better than to be known as Gulvarez was known, a gross mean man that had excellent pigs, but not himself excellent? So Ramon Alonzo argued, and I give the theme of his argument, considering it worthy thus to be handed down the ages, not for any intrinsic brilliance in the logic, but because it was remarkable that out of that glittering daydream, that was lulling him and
