VII.
DAY wanes. The further western altitudes shift their pearline
gray to deep blue where the sky is yellowing up behind them; and
in the darkening hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather
with the changing of the light—dead indigoes, fuliginous
purples, rubifications as of scoriae,—ancient volcanic colors
momentarily resurrected by the illusive haze of evening. And the
fallow of the canes takes a faint warm ruddy tinge. On certain
far high slopes, as the sun lowers, they look like thin golden
hairs against the glow,—blond down upon the skin of the living
hills.
Still the Woman and her follower walk together,—chatting
loudly, laughing—chanting snatches of song betimes.
And now the valley is well behind them;—they climb the steep
road crossing the eastern peaks,—through woods that seem to
stifle under burdening of creepers. The shadow of the Woman and
the shadow of the man,—broadening from their feet,—lengthening
prodigiously,—sometimes, mixing, fill all the way; sometimes,
at a turn, rise up to climb the trees. Huge masses of frondage,
catching the failing light, take strange fiery color;—the sun's
rim almost touches one violet hump in the western procession of
volcanic silhouettes. …
Sunset, in the tropics, is vaster than sunrise. … The dawn,
upflaming swiftly from the sea, has no heralding erubescence, no
awful blossoming—as in the North: its fairest hues are fawn-colors,
dove-tints, and yellows,—pale yellows as of old dead
gold, in horizon and flood. But after the mighty heat of day has
charged all the blue air with translucent vapor, colors become
strangely changed, magnified, transcendentalized when the sun
falls once more below the verge of visibility. Nearly an hour
before his death, his light begins to turn tint; and all the
horizon yellows to the color of a lemon. Then this hue deepens,
through tones of magnificence unspeakable, into orange; and the
sea becomes lilac. Orange is the light of the world for a little
space; and as the orb sinks, the indigo darkness comes—not
descending, but rising, as if from the ground—all within a few
minutes. And during those brief minutes peaks and mornes,
purpling into richest velvety blackness, appear outlined against
passions of fire that rise half-way to the zenith,—enormous
furies of vermilion.
… The Woman all at once leaves the main road,—begins to mount
a steep narrow path leading up from it through the woods upon the
left. But Fafa hesitates,—halts a moment to look back. He
sees the sun's huge
orange face sink down,—sees the weird
procession of the peaks vesture themselves in blackness
funereal,—sees the burning behind them crimson into awfulness;
and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks again up the darkling
path to the left. Whither is she now going?
—"Oti ou kallé la?" he cries.
—"Mais conm ça!—chimin tala plis cou't,—coument?"
It may be the shortest route, indeed;—but then, the fer-de-lance! …
—"Ni
sèpent ciya,—en pile."
No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken that path
too often not to know:
—"Pa ni sèpent piess! Moin ni coutime passé là;—pa ni piess !"
… She leads the way. … Behind them the tremendous glow
deepens;—before them the gloom. Enormous gnarled forms of
ceiba, balata, acoma, stand dimly revealed as they pass; masses
of viny drooping things take, by the failing light, a sanguine
tone. For a little while Fafa can plainly discern the figure of
the Woman before him;—then, as the path zigzags into shadow, he
can descry only the white turban and the white foulard;—and then
the boughs meet overhead: he can see her no more, and calls to
her in alarm:—
—"Oti ou?—moin pa pè ouè arien!"
Forked pending ends of creepers trail cold across his face. Huge
fire-flies sparkle by,—like atoms of kindled charcoal thinkling,
blown by a wind.
—"Içitt!—quimbé lanmain-moin!" …
How cold the hand that guides him! … She walks swiftly, surely,
as one knowing the path by heart. It zigzags once more; and the
incandescent color flames again between the trees;—the high
vaulting of foliage fissures overhead, revealing the first stars.
A cabritt-bois begins its chant. They reach the summit of the
morne under the clear sky.
The wood is below their feet now; the path curves on eastward
between a long swaying of ferns sable in the gloom,—as between a
waving of prodigious black feathers. Through the further
purpling, loftier altitudes dimly loom; and from some viewless
depth, a dull vast rushing sound rises into the night. … Is it
the speech of hurrying waters, or only some tempest of insect
voices from those ravines in which the night begins? …
Her face is in the darkness as she stands;—Fafa's eyes turned
to the iron-crimson of the western sky. He still holds her hand,
fondles it,—murmurs something to her in undertones.
—"Ess ou ainmein moin conm ça?" she asks, almost in a whisper,
Oh! yes, yes, yes! … more than any living being he loves
her! … How much? Ever so much,—gouôs conm caze! … Yet she
seems to doubt him,—repeating her questionn over and over:
—"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
And all the while,—gently, caressingly, imperceptibly—she
draws him a little nearer to the side of the nearer to the black
waving of the ferns, nearer to the great dull rushing sound that
rises from beyond them:
—"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
—"Oui, oui!" he responds,—"ou save ça!—oui, chè doudoux, ou
save ça!" …
And she, suddenly,—turning at once to him and to the last red
light, the goblin horror of her face transformed,—shrieks with
a burst of hideous laughter:
—"Ató, bô!" *
For the fraction of a moment he knows her name:—then, smitten
to the brain with the sight of her, reels, recoils, and, backward
falling, crashes two thousand feet down to his death upon the
rocks of a mountain torrent.
