A Voyage to Arcturus, David Lindsay [guided reading books TXT] 📗

of a heart you have a bag of loose dust. Someone has described love to you. You have had it described to you. You have heard that it is a small, fearful, selfish joy. It is not that⁠—it is wild, and scornful, and sportive, and bloody.⁠ ⁠… How should you know.”

“Selfishness has far too many disguises.”

“If a woman wills to give up all, what can there be selfish in that?”

“Only do not deceive yourself. Act decisively, or fate will be too swift for you both.”

Sullenbode studied him through her lashes. “Do you mean death⁠—his death as well as mine?”

“You go too far, Corpang,” said Maskull, turning a shade darker. “I don’t accept you as the arbiter of our fortunes.”

“If honest counsel is disagreeable to you, let me go on ahead.”

The woman detained him with her slow, light fingers. “I wish you to stay with us.”

“Why?”

“I think you may know what you are talking about. I don’t wish to bring harm to Maskull. Presently I’ll leave you.”

“That will be best,” said Corpang.

Maskull looked angry. “I shall decide⁠—Sullenbode, whether you go on, or back, I stay with you. My mind is made up.”

An expression of joyousness overspread her face, in spite of her efforts to conceal it. “Why do you scowl at me, Maskull?”

He returned no answer, but continued walking onward with puckered brows. After a dozen paces or so, he halted abruptly. “Wait, Sullenbode!”

The others came to a standstill. Corpang looked puzzled, but the woman smiled. Maskull, without a word, bent over and kissed her lips. Then he relinquished her body, and turned around to Corpang.

“How do you, in your great wisdom, interpret that kiss?”

“It requires no great wisdom to interpret kisses, Maskull.”

“Hereafter, never dare to come between us. Sullenbode belongs to me.”

“Then I say no more; but you are a fated man.”

From that time forward he spoke not another word to either of the others.

A heavy gleam appeared in the woman’s eyes. “Now things are changed, Maskull. Where are you taking me?”

“Choose, you.”

“The man I love must complete his journey. I won’t have it otherwise. You shall not stand lower than Corpang.”

“Where you go, I will go.”

“And I⁠—as long as your love endures, I will accompany you even to Adage.”

“Do you doubt its lasting?”

“I wish not to.⁠ ⁠… Now I will tell you what I refused to tell you before. The term of your love is the term of my life. When you love me no longer, I must die.”

“And why?” asked Maskull slowly.

“Yes, that’s the responsibility you incurred when you kissed me for the first time. I never meant to tell you.”

“Do you mean that if I had gone on alone, you would have died?”

“I have no other life but what you give me.”

He gazed at her mournfully, without attempting to reply, and then slowly placed his arms around her body. During this embrace he turned very pale, but Sullenbode grew as white as chalk.

A few minutes later the journey toward Adage was resumed.

They had been walking for two hours. Teargeld was higher in the sky and nearer the south. They had descended many hundred feet, and the character of the ridge began to alter for the worse. The thin snow disappeared, and gave way to moist, boggy ground. It was all little grassy hillocks and marshes. They began to slip about and become draggled with mud. Conversation ceased; Sullenbode led the way, and the men followed in her tracks. The southern half of the landscape grew grander. The greenish light of the brilliant moon, shining on the multitude of snow-green peaks, caused it to appear like a spectral world. Their nearest neighbour towered high above them on the other side of the valley, due south, some five miles distant. It was a slender, inaccessible, dizzy spire of black rock, the angles of which were too steep to retain snow. A great upward-curving horn of rock sprang out from its topmost pinnacle. For a long time it constituted their clues landmark.

The whole ridge gradually became saturated with moisture. The surface soil was spongy, and rested on impermeable rock; it breathed in the damp mists by night, and breathed them out again by day, under Branchspell’s rays. The walking grew first unpleasant, then difficult, and finally dangerous. None of the party could distinguish firm ground from bog. Sullenbode sank up to her waist in a pit of slime; Maskull rescued her, but after this incident took the lead himself. Corpang was the next to meet with trouble. Exploring a new path for himself, he tumbled into liquid mud up to his shoulders, and narrowly escaped a filthy death. After Maskull had got him out, at great personal risk, they proceeded once more; but now the scramble changed from bad to worse. Each step had to be thoroughly tested before weight was put upon it, and even so the test frequently failed. All of them went in so often, that in the end they no longer resembled human beings, but walking pillars plastered from top to toe with black filth. The hardest work fell to Maskull. He not only had the exhausting task of beating the way, but was continually called upon to help his companions out of their difficulties. Without him they could not have got through.

After a peculiarly evil patch, they paused to recruit their strength. Corpang’s breathing was difficult, Sullenbode was quiet, listless, and depressed.

Maskull gazed at them doubtfully. “Does this continue?” he inquired.

“No. I think,” replied the woman, “we can’t be far from the Mornstab Pass. After that we shall begin to climb again, and then the road will improve perhaps.”

“Can you have been here before?”

“Once I have been to the Pass, but it was not so bad then.”

“You are tired out, Sullenbode.”

“What of it?” she replied, smiling faintly. “When one has a terrible lover, one must pay the price.”

“We cannot get there tonight, so let us stop at the first shelter we come too.”

“I leave it to you.”

He paced up and down, while the others sat. “Do you