Thinking on small things, my thoughts naturally enough turned to the little lady with the clear eyes and black hair who had given me such a roguish nod of recognition in the morning. She was chirp enough and laughing before the people, would her buoyancy continue in the privacy of her own house? Would not the knowledge that her sweetheart,—for sweetheart I had no doubt he must be,—that he was alone in the mountain, cause her woman soul to fear and make miserable her little heart? Maybe at this very moment her hands were covering those sparkling eyes of hers, and the tears trickling through. The thought made me uncomfortable, and after fidgeting about for a time and trying to settle myself to my brew, I gave the job up as a bad one, and resolved to walk over to the house in which she lived,—I had not gone through the Thorp with my eyes shut,—and see what was happening to her. So taking a bit of lace in my pocket,—for young wenches are fond of lace,—I made my way across the street, and pulling the latch-string stepped into the entry. Now it is a ticklish thing this walking unannounced into the abode of a pretty lass who lives alone, and having reached the age when a man can bide his time, and can afford to show some consideration to the woman-folk, which no fiery young spark will do, I stood in the outer room for a spell of time long enough to allow the lass to give her dress a bit pull here and a ruffle and a shake there, and to cast one glance at her neck-gear, of which maidens in all climes I know right well are more than ordinary suspicious. I was confident the grace thus given her could not have been ill received, for I heard her dainty feet running nimbly about putting things to rights. When the footsteps ceased, I entered and found her sitting there demurely composed—well the gods fly away with my donkey if I could do anything but admire the art of the lady. The wench sat before a tapestry assiduously plying her needle at a border, and she looked over her shoulder at me as though she had only just heard me enter. Her black hair was coiled loosely, and the end of the strand stuck coquettishly over her ear in quite a ridiculous way. Her kerchief was knotted about her neck, and the great apron she wore fitted her like a charm. When she looked at me her eyes sparkled with the liquid brilliancy of diamonds, and her cheeks were aglow with rosy colour, for it is invariably the black-haired witch that has the brightest cheeks. She arose as I entered, and curtsied, a sedate, tricky little genuflection, addressing me in a gentle tone, although mind you, as like as not it was some impudent remark she made to me, for I will not trust a woman who is aware that one does not know what she is saying-or worse still, doing. But, in charity, giving her credit for the best, I returned a greeting in my own tongue, and drawing up a stool I sat down opposite her. There was a twinkle in her eye as she turned to and began plying the needle, and in a little while her under lip began to tremble out of very devilment I know; I could see that at times her sides shook under the merriment which she was trying to keep from bursting out upon her lips. To be sure, the situation was a whit comical. I could not speak to her nor she to me, but the little minx should not have been thinking of that. She, there in comfort, tittering and bright, and her lover buried in the heart of a mountain, in dankness, dreariness, and maybe dismay, making his bed among the lava of an ancient volcano. Had I been a maiden with such a strapping lad courting me, egad I’d have been in a state. But I aver as I sat there looking at her and speculating as only an honest packman can, she, the body, threw her dainty white hands into the air and burst into a peal of laughter, so long continued that, although I was laughing myself, I began to fear for the safety of her ribs. And she had no sooner dried her eyes and taken one squint at me than the fit was upon her again, and she clasped her hands over her face and rocked herself in the chair forward and back, while I sat there with my palms one clapped on top of each knee, and like the old fool that I am, I joined with her till my lungs were sore. It was some time before we came to our senses, and then the witch seemed concerned lest I should take my welcome as being inhospitable, and she brought me as fine a reaming swig as I ever clapped lips to. Faith, she knew good liquor, which is not a virtue a man of experience expects of a woman. The god of the contraries created woman, and has looked after her ever since. There sat I and drank the brew and smacked my lips, and watched the lass; but for the life of me I could not discern the smallest trace of distress in her face, nor where it is still more likely to discover itself, in her movements, for woman can keep a cheery face when her heart is the sorest, and even when hope is gone. No, the little lady was merry enough, and yet I could not believe she had a callous heart. Maybe it was her bravery, or maybe she knew something that others did not; for instance that the maker of gods had prepared a comfortable home for himself on the shores of the silent lake; that he had made many journeys to the spot, taking with him on each occasion necessities and even comforts. So I took the bit lace from my pocket, a pretty pattern it was that had been given me to induce me to buy, and so cost me nothing but the carrying, and presenting it to the lass took my departure when the joy was upon her. It is the way I have to ensure a warm welcome when I again return. My curiosity was increased rather than allayed by the visit. All that I knew definitely was that the father had something that the maker of gods coveted, and vice versa; that the expedition against the young man had failed; that the Thorp was in a hubbub, and the young man’s lass was cock-a-hoop. Not enough this to satisfy a packman.

  Next morning after I had broken my fast, my host beckoned me to come with him, and issuing forth into the open air we made our way towards the house of the father. Reaching this, we found a crowd of men and women surrounding the doorsteps expectantly waiting, and among other familiar faces, and standing well apart as was her habit, I saw my little lady of the raven locks. We had not long been in our positions before the door of the house opened, and forth stepped the father, surrounded by his thirteen councillors. The father held in his hand a scroll, and this he proceeded to read to the assemblage. Having thoroughly mastered my vocabulary, I caught the drift of the document to be a demand for the instant return to the confines of the Thorp of the maker of gods, ending with a dignified threat of future pains and penalties should the sulky craftsman not comply with the strong request. Those around me seemed to look upon it as a weighty document, but little the people know about the working of the brain of one whose days are spent in creating the beauties of life. When the father had done with his reading, the parchment was placed with great care inside a round gourd-like box, painted a brilliant red, and tightly bound with wire, and this was handed to my host, who again beckoning me to follow, made off towards the mountain. I asked him whither he was bound, and making out from words and signs that he intended to journey round the base of the mountain, I went to where my ass was tethered, and, mounting the drab brute,—for my host swung a strapping stride,—I so accompanied him. It was a weary journey on the ambling beast, picking our way among rocks and dangerous goat-paths; but at last when we had made as near as I could judge an eighth of the circumference of the extinct volcano, we came to a brawling mountain-stream that poured down from the snows. This I found fell through a fissure in the rock. Stopping here, my guide took the box in his hand and dropped it into the aperture, and by pointing out the hole and then towards the centre of the mountain, led me understand that the message would float to the Yellow Lake, on the shores of which the truant was encamped, and that its glaring red tints in the dark waters were to attract the young man’s eyes. I afterwards found that the people had stretched a net across the stream at a point near to the Thorp, so that no message which the maker of gods might return could float down the stream unnoticed.

  Sure enough on the following morning a message from the man in the mountain had arrived, and was found caught in the meshes of the net. There was no mistaking the tenor of the message. When the father read it to the people it turned out to be resolute and defiant. Workmen had been all the morning busily engaged in erecting the framework of something that looked to be a triumphal arch, and these, when they heard the contents of the missive, appealed to the father to say whether or no they were to proceed with their work. After a consultation with his elders, the father told them to go on, and they returned with the unwillingness that men display when they fear their labours will be in vain. Surely they were not erecting an arch to celebrate the return of their craftsman! That would be absurd! It would be nothing more than an encouragement to him to again take the huff, and retire into the earth. Yet I could come by no other explanation, cudgel my brains as I might ; and although sorely put to it, I refrained from appearing too inquisitive, for people despise an inquisitive guest.

  Chapter 7

  Three days passed, and again the black sounds of the drum vibrated through the Thorp and across the plain. Each day a message had been sent to the truant, and each morning a reply had been found caught in the net, and the replies had grown rapidly sharper and shorter. This time I was fortunate in obtaining a favourable position to see and to hear. The father was agitated. His pride had been touched. His authority had been mocked, and honour of the Thorp placed in jeopardy. When the people were all assembled-for it was compulsory to answer to the sound of the great drum-the father addressed a few words to them, telling them-the meaning was transmitted to me partly by pantomime-that the matter now rested in their hands, for all he had power to do had been done. Then he read the latest from the mountain. My young friend wrote scornfully. He told the father and the Thorp to do their worst,—some stupid thing it would be he had no doubt,—but to go ahead with whatever stupid thing it might happen to be. That their worst was of little account he knew, for he said (conceited young rascal) that there was not an ounce of masculine brain in the whole place when he was absent. He reminded them all that the Thorp would have been known only to the goats were it not for his work-and another’s; that they were the flesh and he-and another—the soul; and that although the flesh, like a stubborn ass, sometimes revolted, such a revolt never put the soul to serious inconvenience, and never certainly did the flesh get the better of the soul in the long run. He ended with a scathing sentence to the effect that the father had always considered himself of some importance; but that when he, the father, had to receive his august guest breechesless, he would learn that the man was of no importance, and the clothes all important.

  The old man’s face grew crimson as he read, and when he came to the end of the letter, and read the last line, “A pretty looking father of the Thorp you will look with bare shanks,” I began to think that I would at last have an opportunity to prove the efficiency of certain compounds of herbs and minerals which I had been trying to dispose of—at a shrewd profit, although that could not be known—to the people, but without success, for they persisted in shaking their heads at the lotions and salves, and disbelieving. However, it was not to be, for the old man pulled himself together and stood with his short arms folded across his drum-like breast waiting the people’s pleasure. This letter could be looked upon as nothing else than a bad slap-in-the-face for the Thorp. Not one individual in a score of scores will put up with nonenticity1, and much less will elders of men, with a community at their back to bear the burden of satisfying outraged dignity, put up with slight or slur on the town’s good name. From the Thorp’s point of view this instance of contempt was made all the more glaring by the knowledge that, as far as I was able to understand, an irresponsible and unimportant person had in his keeping the honour of the place. Now it is well known that those holding temporary authority cannot for a moment admit that anyone not having a gilded chain around his neck and a fur-tipped cloak about his shoulders, can be of more than incidental use to the community. This is so the world over, and yet poets, painters, pundits, preachers, and play-actors, with a self-conceit which the world refuses to honour, have been known to hold that their callings are as high as are those of money-lenders, the dealer in slaves, the publican, and such-like pillars of a country’s edifice, whom the people invariably choose to bear the dignities of civic office. And here I had stumbled on a strong example of artistic perversity. A mere maker of people’s gods, a carver of rich ornaments which the elders themselves bought of him, this man flouting the very men who supported him; and moreover, if the truth were known, men who had laid past more goods in a twelve month than the maker of gods was likely to treasure up in a life-time. The thing was preposterous. The thing was absurd. Yet the young man in the mountain coolly asked the elders and the people what they were going to do about the matter, and, on my soul, I could see the authorities were somewhat out of their depth. A crisis like this did not arise every day, and I suppose there was no precedent to go upon. If they had been fighting any other body, the elders would doubtless have requested the maker of gods to appear before them, and would have considered that they were conferring an honour on him by allowing him to get them out of their difficulty. But nature built the walls, and superstition flooded the moat that encircled this artist from his adversaries.

  After the reading of the letter there followed a grave council. Patriarch after patriarch addressed the assemblage, slowly, solemnly, stately, but without propounding a satisfactory way out of the difficulty. They got no nearer to the centre of the ancient volcano from whence the headstrong artist persisted in firing verbal bombs into the midst of the Thorp. The greybeards prosed away, and the people, having been led to expect a decided course of action, began to realise the seriousness of the situation, and to grumble and murmur at the unreadiness of their representatives to throttle the revolt of their eccentric townsman without further delay. A half a score of the elders having spoken, there fell a long silence. The people were dispirited, and the father and his council looked helpless.

  But a flash came from the blue. The termagant, who had stood near to the ambo, her hard features set harder than usual, suddenly hustled an elder from his seat, and stepping into his place began without so much as a preliminary cough to address the gathering. Before she had spoken a half score sentences the words began to pour from her in a torrent. Her clenched fist shook under the very noses of the elders, and she heaped scorn upon their grey heads for their unreadiness; her face grew red as the breast of the fire-bird, her arms jerked spasmodically, her voice rose to a shriek, and she fairly carried the people off their feet with her eloquence. I saw the father’s soul curl up within him when her burning glance fell upon him. She would have no young, shiftless, long-haired dabbler-in-clay flout the Thorp, were she, instead of an old maunderer, head of the council, that she wouldn’t! He snap his fingers at them indeed! Why he depended on them for his very bread and brew. Their stock of gods was quite enough for the time being ; but that aside, if she had to tuck up her petticoats, and with bared leg tread the clay and herself fashion the gods to the best of her ability, she must do so rather than let a menial dictate to his superiors. She would show him! He was a thief, for had he not run off with their breeches? Energetic action was needed, and energetic action they would have. Let them, the people, follow her, leaving the members of the council to look wisely the one at the other, and she would show them how to make the young nincompoop sue for forgiveness and mercy; and saying this she jumped to the ground and made through the crowd, her Amazonic face looking for all the world like a Buddhist idol, and the people, carried away by her fury, and catching from her the insanity of rage, closed around her and swept up the street leaving the father seated in the midst of his ring of councillors. Poor man! authority only runs so far as one has power to exercise it, and in this instance it did not run to his wife.

  The scene now became a bustling one. Men, women, and children followed pell-mell after the termagant, eager to know what her plan of action might be, and many of them no doubt eager also to resent the insult to the Thorp. I have found even in countries of the true faith not to speak of savage and cunning peoples like the Christians and Mahometans, that folk are ever ready to turn their hand against any of their fellows who live a life untrammelled by the petty customs and respectabilities that happen to obtain in the land. Those who have only respectability to recommend them cannot brook anything but a like respectability in others. So the people followed like sleuth hounds in fine fettle. The termagant made straight for the stream, and striding along the goat-path that skirted the bank came at last to the great rock against which I had leaned my back on the morning of my interview with the maker of gods. At this point, as I have already told, the river narrowed to a mere gash in the rock, and the boulder hung invitingly over the very edge of the gash. In an instant the crowd divined her purpose, and with a hurrah the men were beside the boulder, and using their united strength began to rock the rock. Farther and farther it swung as their strength delivered at proper intervals told on its balance, until at last, it hung for a moment as though fearing the leap, then slipped a hand’s-breadth and plunged with the report of thunder into the deep running waters. As far as I am concerned, I was drenched by the sheet of water the great rock sent flying to the sky, and through the falling spray I saw the termagant, a glorious look of satisfied revenge on her face, and her finger still pointing to the bed of the stream.

  It is one thing to dictate terms to an opponent so long as a man knows that whenever it may suit his convenience he has it in his power to say to his enemy, “Very well. You refuse to concede my conditions, so I withdraw my demands for the time being, and we will now resume our normal relations.” But to attempt to dictate terms when the enemy holds the key to the position is a very different matter, indeed. In a few hours’ time, the chances were, before he ever dreamed of such a thing happening, the maker of gods was likely to find his circumstances changed from the first to the unenviable second of these positions. The water journeying out of the mouth of the cavern struck with a roar the great stone, paused as though surprised at the obstacle encountered, madly ranged around for a time in swirl and eddy, and finding no outlet, ran in spasmodic, angry waves back again into the darkness as if to carry the bad news to the waters above that their ancient bedway had been dammed. The boulder stood quite twice the height of a man above the bosom of the stream, and it so nearly filled the chasm that the waters found a passage only in chinks and caverns, through which it spurted with the force of a syphon. As the stream rose inch by inch, I thought of the grinning gods away in the dark passage, hangingat best only a few inches above the surface of the water. They must be submerged by this time, and the apertures through which we had so painfully crept by doubling our backs until our noses nearly touched our ankles, must now be full of water. The termagant knew what she was about when she led the people to the rock. The man in the mountain, instead of isolating himself from the people of the Thorp, was now their captive. Such a simple way too of turning the tables, but great inventions are usually simple ones. It occurred to me that when the time came for removing this obstruction the matter might prove rather more difficult than had been the placing of it in its present position; but I little dreamt that it would turn out to be an impossibility, and that the falls, which soon began to thunder over the great stone, should stand to this day a monument to the man who went into the mountain.

 

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