Ushant

“ But be quick; he will not wait over-long." She plucked at [Pg 205] his sleeve. "Do you not understand? The men are coming; you can hear the rattle of the sheaf-blocks at the mast-head of the galley—Constans!"
But Constans looked only at his enemy, Quinton Edge. "I am ready," he said, coldly.
Esmay passed through the long window and so into the drawing-room. To her overly excited senses the signal was already sounding in her ears, and a gradual faintness mounted to her brain, even as water rises about the swimmer advancing through the shingle to the first shock of the surge. ”

“ But King Paushya was angry with Uttanka because he had taken the earrings of his queen. "No, Uttanka," he answered scornfully. "It is well for a Brahman to call down curses and then turn them to nothing. For a Brahman's heart is as soft as butter even though his words are hard. But a Kshatrya's heart is as hard as steel even though his words, tare soft. I shall not therefore free you from my curse and it will remain with you." Then Uttanka said, "Your curse, O King, will not remain with me. You cursed me because I said that the food set before me was unclean. ”

“ As Uttanka drew near to the throne the courtiers stepped aside. When the boy faced King Paushya, he saluted him most humbly. "O King," he said, "I come to you as a suppliant." "Fair youth," replied the king, "ask me what you will, and, if I can, I will grant it to you." But as the king spoke, his heart sank within him, because he feared that Uttanka had come to beg his queen's earrings. "My Lord," said Uttanka humbly, "I am a pupil of the rishi Veda, and as a fee for his teaching he has asked me to bring him your queen's earrings. ”

“ If she had become a woman he no less had grown to manhood, and that one forward step had forced her to recognize the fact. She was silent, feeling a little afraid and wondering at herself. Constans, in more evident discomfiture, blundered on, obsessed by a vague sense of loyalty to his friend.
"Ulick is away—on the expedition to the south [Pg 158] land. He was anxious that you should be found, and I promised to do my best. He will be glad to know."
"When is he coming back?" demanded Esmay, with an entire absence of enthusiasm. ”

“ But the wonder of it lay not in this new knowledge of Esmay's heart, but in the revelation of his own. He loved her, he knew it now, and not as in that brief moment of passion at Arcadia, when even honor seemed well lost. For this was the greater love that draws a man to the one woman in the world who has the power to lift him to the heights whereon she herself stands. A supreme joy, that humbled even while it exalted, swept over Constans. "I will go," he said, and took Ulick's hand in both his own. ”

“ In her legend, however, we find little but pure poetry, and we do not know that Ushas, like Eos, ever chose a mortal lover. Such is the Vedic Ushas, but the Brahmanas, as usual, manage either to retain or to revive and introduce the old crude element of myth. We have seen that the Australians account to themselves for the ruddy glow of the morning sky by the hypothesis that dawn is a girl of easy virtue, dressed in the red opossum-skins she has received from her lovers. ”

“ Piers Major, of the River Barony, spoke decidedly, yet withal not unkindly, for he had been blood-brother to Constans's father, and he liked the boy for his own sake. Constans had gone; to him last of all; unconsciously he had been counting upon his support, whatever else failed, and to be repulsed in this quarter was bitter indeed. The old man looked into [Pg 210] the clouded face before him and continued, earnestly:
"A dream, I tell you. Let the morning wind scatter these vapors; you are young, and the world is before you. ”

“ Ulick stopped and laughed a little sheepishly.
"Well?"
"Frankly, then, I don't want to carry the weight of the wolf-skin; I should feel like a man buried up to his neck in sand. I dreamed of that the other night, and how a raven that had Quinton Edge's face came and pecked at my eyes."
"Then you really don't care," commented Constans, shrewdly.
"No; except to have my fair share of the fighting and feasting—and, of course, Esmay."
Constans laughed. "You always come back to the girl." ”

“ In Vedic belief and ritual goddesses occupy a very subordinate position, they play hardly any part as rulers of the world, and only two—Ushas, the spirit of the dawn, and Sarasvatī, originally the impersonation of a sacred river—acquired special importance. ”

“ Quinton Edge doffed his hat as though to intimate that the interview was at an end, then stepped lightly across the hedge of arrows and proceeded at an even pace to the eastern angle of the fortress, around which he disappeared.
Ulick's eyes were sparkling as he turned to Constans.
"He is at least a man," he said, half proudly, half enviously.
But Constans only set his teeth the harder. "I could have gone out, met him face to face and killed him," he said, sombrely, "only for you and your Esmay." ”

“ Constans smiled with youthful cynicism.
"Of course," he answered, magnificently condescending. "You are a woman, and knew no better."
She snatched her hand away. "Yes, I am a woman, Master Constans, and some day you will know what that means." She moved away, majestically as does a goddess, conscious of her power but magnanimously refraining from using it. Constans and Ulick laughed after the manner of men-kind who find it easy to disbelieve in what they do not understand. ”

“ Ushas is the dawn or the goddess of dawn, and Tvashtri is the mechanic among the deities, corresponding more or less closely to the Greek Hephæstus.
Though many of these beings are still in Vedic poetry departmental powers with provinces of their own in external Nature, they are also supposed to be interested not only in the worldly, but in the moral welfare of mankind, and are imagined to "make for righteousness." It is true that the myths by no means always agree in representing the gods as themselves moral. ”

“ Esmay had turned away her head, but a treacherous mirror intercepted the confession in her eyes and flung it back to him who had compelled its utterance. Now a man may never yet have seen that look on a woman's face, but he need not fear lest he fail to recognize it when at last his time comes. Constans saw, and suddenly the primeval passion of the world seized and shook him. ”

“ Uttanka gladly accepted the invitation, and King Paushya and he sat down together to eat. But the food that was placed before Uttanka was cold and had been cooked by a woman with unbraided hair. One of her hairs had fallen into it and had thus made the food unclean. Uttanka was stung by the insult. "King Paushya," he said angrily, "because you have given me unclean food, you shall lose your sight." On hearing the curse. King Paushya grew as angry as Uttanka. "Brahman youth," he cried, "you have called food that is clean unclean. You will therefore never have a son born to you." ”

“ Will you be seated on this stone bench, you jackass?
Sansthānaka. I am sheated. [They seat themselves.] Do you know, shir, I remember that Vasantasenā even yet. She is like an inshult. I can't get her out of my mind.
Courtier. [Aside.] He remembers her even after such a repulse. For indeed,
The mean man, whom a woman spurns,
⁠But loves the more;
The wise man's passion gentler burns,
⁠Or passes o'er. ⁠9
Sansthānaka. Shome time has passhed, shir, shince I told my shervant Sthāvaraka to take the bullock-cart and come as quick as he could. And even yet he is not here. ”

“ I am stricken with curiosity to hear this story of Hari—do thou, O venerable Sir, relate this.
Parāçara said: Having seen Pārvati dallying with her lord Sambhu, Ushā, the daughter of Bāna, was inspired with a similar desire. The charming Gauri, knowing the hearts of all, said to her:—"Do not grieve; you shall have a husband". "But when will this be and who shall be my husband?" thought Ushā within herself, on which Pārvati said:—"He who shall appear to you, princess, in a dream, on the twelfth lunation of the light half of Vaishāk, shall be your lord". ”

“ Formerly this open space had been paved with small oblong blocks of stone, but these had long since been incorporated with the walls of the fortress, and in their stead was a stretch of thick, short turf. Pacing slowly along, there came in sight the figure of a man, his head bent down and his hands clasped behind his back. Constans recognized him instantly, even before Ulick's eager whisper had reached his ear. It was Quinton Edge. ”

“ Then, as the first violence of the storm expended itself, Esmay heard her name uttered, and realized that Ulick was holding her hand in both his own.
"Don't!" she pleaded, and drew her hand away.
Ulick's face hardened. "I might have known it," he said, bitterly. "Yet he who has been false to friendship may betray love as well."
"He is dead," she said, and Ulick started.
"Constans—dead!" he stammered.
"Hanged at the yard-arm of the Black Swan. But Quinton Edge still lives." [Pg 228]
"You loved him?" persisted Ulick, the sense of his injury still strong within him. ”

“ Constans grew sober again. "Strange that it should be the same man, Quinton Edge, for whom we are both seeking. I can see, however, that my arrow must not leave the string until first you have had speech with him."
"But that is just what I cannot do," returned Ulick, with a frown. "It is a week now that any one has seen him, and yet neither galley nor troop has left the city since the new moon."
"He must show himself in time; we have only to wait." ”

“ But shir, the shervant isn't here yet.
Courtier. Be easy in your mind. He will be here presently.
[Enter Vasantasenā in the bullock-cart, and Sthāvaraka.]
Sthāvaraka. I'm frightened. It is already noon. I hope Sansthānaka, the king's brother-in-law, will not be angry. I must drive faster. Get up, bullocks, get up!
Vasantasenā. Alas! That is not Vardhamānaka's voice. What does it mean? I wonder if Chārudatta was afraid that the bullocks might become weary, and so sent another man with another cart. My right eye twitches. My heart is all a-tremble. There is no one in sight. ”

“ This we left on the left hand, as well as the tasam, and ascended a valley where the little village of Ushy with its stone huts and barley fields is situated. The 150 inhabitants are at home only at seedtime and harvest; the rest of the year they are away, tending their sheep. Thence we proceeded the following day to the pass Ushy-la. The way is marked by a succession of mani heaps and chhortens, and the pass by rods so thin as to be invisible at a distance, and the streamers they carry look like a flock of tied birds. ”

“ Her thoughts travelled back to the human link that had united them for so long—the woman whom each had called mother, although to Nanna it had been only a step-relationship. How impossible it had once seemed that there could be any new adjustment of life's machinery; how difficult the realization that nature is accustomed to settle these matters in her own time and way, and invariably does so! Yet here was Esmay suddenly returned to herself, moving about, alert and eager, knitting her brows over the one important problem of the moment, the question of supper. ”

“ The girl recoiled as though from a blow, and Constans felt the shame of having actually struck one. "But not you," he stammered, and raged inwardly at [Pg 196] himself. She forgave him in a look. "But, Esmay," he said, humbly. She smiled to him to go on.
"You are thinking of the world beyond, but indeed you do not know it—its cruelty to the weak, above all to a woman. Here, at least——"
"Here the least of all," she interrupted, but would not look at him to make her meaning clearer.
"Yet you see how I could not let you go alone or even with Nanna," he urged. ”

“ He, Ulick, had captured him alone and unaided; surely such an exploit deserved recognition, and Ulick de [Pg 80] sired to keep the prisoner as his own property. Could he do so, no matter what claim might be urged against his right?
The old man listened, and looked at Constans indifferently. Then he spoke in the inflectionless monotone of extreme old age:
"A House-dweller and a snake, my son—crush them when you can, for the woods are full of shadows, and a man cannot always see where to plant his foot. I have lived very long, and I know." ”

“ A tree has fallen by the roadside, and killed a woman in its fall. O cruel! How couldst thou do this deed of shame? And when I see that a woman was slain by thy fatal fall, I too am felled to the earth. Truly, my heart's fear for Vasantasenā was an evil omen. Oh, heaven grant that all may yet be well! [He approaches Sansthānaka.] Jackass, I have persuaded your servant Sthāvaraka to return.
Sansthānaka. How do you do, shir? Sthāvaraka, my little shon, my shlave, how do you do? ”

“ But, run as he would, he could not gain a yard.
"Arcadia House," muttered Constans, under his breath, as he noticed the direction taken by the runner. What more natural than that a man should seek his own home at such a time? But Constans's brow was clouded as he followed in Quinton Edge's footsteps.
Arcadia House, and why? There could be but one answer to that question after Nanna's message, conveyed to him through Ulick's dying lips. Esmay had disappeared, and yet had remained in Arcadia House. He, who knew Quinton Edge, would understand. ”