“Clodagh,” I said after some minutes—“do you know why I called you Clodagh?”
“No? Tell me?”
“Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover called Clodagh: and she was a. …”
“But tell me first,” cries she: “how did one know one’s lover, or one’s wife, flom all the others?”
“Well, by their faces. …”
“But there must have been many faces—all alike—”
“Not all alike. Each was different from the rest.”
“Still, it must have been vely clever to tell. I can hardly conceive any face, except yours and mine.”
“Ah, because you are a little goose, you see.”
“What was a goose like?”
“It was a thing like a butterfly, only larger, and it kept its toes always spread out, with a skin stretched between.”
“Leally? How caplicious! And am I like that?—but what were you saying that your lover, Clodagh, was?”
“She was a Poisoner.”
“Then why call me Clodagh, since I am not a poisoner?”
“I call you so to remind me: lest you—lest you—should become my—lover, too.”
“I am your lover already: for I love you.”
“What, girl?”
“Do I not love you, who are mine?”
“Come, come, don’t be a little maniac!” I went. “Clodagh was a poisoner. …”
“Why did she poison? Had she not enough dates and wine?”
“She had, yes: but she wanted more, more, more, the silly idiot.”
“So that the vices and climes were not confined to those that lacked things, but were done by the others, too?”
“By the others chiefly.”
“Then I see how it was!”
“How was it?”
“The others had got spoiled. The vices and climes must have begun with those who lacked things, and then the others, always seeing vices and climes alound them, began to do them, too—as when one rotten olive is in a bottle, the whole mass soon becomes collupted: but originally they were not rotten, but only became so. And all though a little carelessness at the first. I am sure that if more men could spling now—”
“But I told you, didn’t I, that no more men will spring? You understand, Clodagh, that originally the earth produced men by a long process, beginning with a very low type of creature, and continually developing it, until at last a man stood up. But that can never happen again: for the earth is old, old, and has lost her producing vigour now. So talk no more of men splinging, and of things which you do not understand. Instead, go inside—stop, I will tell you a secret: today in the wood I picked some musk-roses and wound them into a wreath, meaning to give them you for your head when you came tomorrow: and it is inside on the pearl tripod in the second room to the left: go, therefore, and put it on, and bring the harp, and play to me, my dear.”
She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned, incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her home to her lonely yali, till the pale and languished moon, weary of all-night beatitudes, sank down soft-couched in quilts of curdling opals to the Hesperian realms of her rest.
So sometimes we speak together, she and I, she and I.
That ever I should write such a thing! I am driven out from Imbros!
I was walking up in a wood yesterday to the west—it was a calm clear evening about seven, the sun having just set. I had the book in which I have written so far in my hand, for I had thought of making a sketch of an old windmill to the northwest to show her. Twenty minutes before she had been with me, for I had chanced to meet her, and she had come, but kept darting on ahead after peeping fruit, gathering armfuls of amaranth, nenuphar, and red-berried asphodel, till, weary of my life, I had called to her: “Go away! out of my sight”—and she, with suddenly pushed underlip, had walked off.
Well, I was continuing my stroll, when I seemed to feel some quaking of the ground, and before one could count twenty, it was as if the island was bent upon wracking itself to pieces. My first thought was of her, and in great scare I went running, calling in the direction which she had gone, staggering as on the deck of some labouring ship, falling, picking myself up, running again. The air was quite full of uproar, and the land waving like the sea: and as I went plunging, not knowing whither, I saw to my right some three or four acres of forest droop and sink into a gulf which opened to receive them. Up I flung my arms, crying out: “Good God! save the girl!” and a minute later rushed out, to my surprise, into open space on a hillside. On the lower ground I could see the palace, and beyond it, a small space of white sea which had the awful appearance of being higher than the land. Down the hillside I staggered, driven by the impulse to fly somewhither, but about halfway down was startled afresh by a shrill pattering like musical hail, and the next moment saw the entire palace rush with the jangling clatter of a thousand bells into the heaving lake.
Some seconds after this, the earthquake, having lasted fully ten minutes, began to lull, and soon ceased. I found her an hour later standing among the ruins of her little yali.
Well, what a thing! Probably every building on the island has been destroyed; the palace-platform, all cracked, leans half-sunken askew into the lake, like a huge stranded ark, while of the palace itself no
