Remuda

“ Give me, quick.'
'The Count d'Este, my master, is well and in Mantua,' the man answered. 'He sent me here with these; he bade me get a mule at a town on the shore; he bade me see you myself and take him all tidings———'
'The letter! the letter!' she cried, with her hands outstretched.
He gave it to her.
'Oh, dear God! what a blessed thing it is that I can read!' she thought as she seized it; herself transformed, her cheeks the colour of the wild rose that was burning on a hundred hills and vales, all her whole face instinct with life and rapture and gratitude and wonder ”

“ She longed to penetrate the secret of these strange dwellings. She said to herself, 'Joconda found me in the hills; may be these people that dwell in stone lower than the surface of the earth are my own people.'
It was an odd fancy that had come into her head, but she thought it so likely that she had been born in some such place as this, hidden away under the leaves and the furze, where men could not reach, nor the scream of their voices intrude.
She had torn and hacked the shrubs away from about the entrance, and the light from the cloudless skies above shone down steadily. ”

“ The air, too, which gives 'distemper if not death' to the stranger, began to work its evil way on him. He began to lose strength, to feel chilly, to have a touch of fever; the burning suns on the rank soil began to pour their poison into his northern blood. She met him on the twelfth day of his stay at Telamone as she came home towards sunset with wild strawberries and blackberries as her afternoon's gleaning.
She looked at him and smiled a little.
'Maremma makes you ill,' she said with unconcealed contentment; 'you are very unwise to stay in it. The sun is always angry with strangers. ”

“ So White Otter stole into his own tepee by night—told his father of his triumph—got a quantity of vermilion and returned to the hills. When he and Red Arrow had bedaubed themselves and their ponies most liberally, they wrapped the scalp to a lance which he had brought out, then moved slowly forward in the morning light on their jaded ponies to the village, yelling the long, high notes of the war-whoop. The people ran out to see them come, many young men riding to meet them. ”

“ VI. The Fire Eater’s Bad Medicine
The Chis-chis-chash had remembered through many “green grasses” that the Fire Eater had proven himself superior to the wrath of the Bad Gods who haunt the way of the men who go out for what the Good Gods offer—the ponies, the women and the scalps. He had become a sub-chief in the Red Lodge military clan. He had brought many painted war-bands into the big camp with the scalps of their tribal enemies dangling from their lance heads. The village had danced often over the results of his victories. Four wives now dressed and decorated his buffalo robes. ”

“ He leaned motionless against the marble pillar and covered his eyes with his hand. She went down the corridor with swift elastic tread, and disappeared beyond the farther archway amidst the grey foliage of the old olive trees that covered the hillside. There were twelve long miles down the mountains and over the meadows and the moors to the tombs; but she was sure of foot and used to fatigue. She went as lightly and as easily most of the way as the fawns did or the kids. When she grew very tired towards the close, she spurred on her aching feet with the thought of Este. He was alone ”

“ The unbroken silence, the cold water, the salutary herbs, all served to contribute to his victory over the fever-fiend of Maremma, and little by little he grew sensible of other things than those deadly chills, those waves of lava heat, which turn by turn had filled his entire consciousness so long. Then he saw that a woman all alone had done this great service for him, and hidden him from his pursuers, and kept vigil by him through many weary days and nights. ”

“ He had meant never to look upon her face again; he had thought of her as of a creature quite as lost and dead as the Mantuan woman was, in her grave beside the reedy waters. Yet an irresistible longing to snatch her away, to send her out into light, peace, safety, to save her from the touch of the hands that had the fetters of the galleys on them, rose up in him stronger than himself, and made him speak words which he knew were as vain as ever had been the call of Este on his murdered love.
She heard him without any movement, and she answered him without emotion. ”

“ So much he had heard; passing by unseen in his grey clothes amongst the grey tangle of leafless branches and tall-growing rosemary.
He now moved into one of the inner cells all the traces of her residence there, the lute, the candelabra, the handsome bronze vessels, the look of which might tempt the San Lionardo men to plunder; then, with the lamp burning but the fire extinguished, he sat down and waited for them, and rested his eyes whilst he did so on the clay busts that wore the likeness of Musa. ”

“ Poor lonely Remus was set in the window to enjoy the fun, but on their return the globe was tenantless. The toy-woman below saw the dismayed little faces peeping over the window sill, and called up to say that she had picked up a dead fish on the cold marble step. The basket went down once more, and was drawn up slowly and sadly with poor Remus's body.
We buried him, too, under the peach-tree on the house-top, and set up the little bronze wolves for a double monument; but the twins have never wanted any more goldfish. ”

“ She had lost her buoyant vigour of movement; she had felt unwell the last few weeks and did not know what ailed her; but she summoned her courage and her strength, walked to the coast, and there set sail in her little boat, that had the pine-bough at its prow. The morning was fine and calm; the sea was blue and so were the skies; there was no chance of foul weather. It would have been nearer to have crossed the country on foot to Telamone; but she did not feel as strong as usual, and the linen she had spun and the matting she had made were heavy to carry. ”

“ I? I think not; but do not touch me; it was so you touched the woman dead in Mantua. It angers me———'
She was about to say 'it frightens me,' but the strong courage inherent in her shrank from the acknowledgment of any fear. When he would have insisted, she still put him away from her with more sternness than he had ever seen.
'We have escaped with our lives tonight,' she said, with reproach and awe in her voice; 'think not of me; pray to God.'
Then she loosened his hand off her once more, and went to where the coffin of Joconda lay, and kneeled down there and murmured her thanksgiving. ”

“ All through the long day he worked unweariedly among the reedy waters, under the frowning shadow of the monastery-crowned rocks. And from her cell she gazed on him—on the bold heroic cast of the head, and the sun-warmed brow from which the waves of hair were dashed; gazed on him where, under the cypress shadows, through the sere rushes, through the sullen waters, he toiled as peasants toil, for her—for her, though she had bidden him forsake even her memory for ever, though she had told him that suffering alone could be his portion through her. ”

“ The braves gathered, but no man dismounted and one by one they turned and rode away. “The bad spirits of the dead may get into our bodies—come away—come away—the sun shines now, but we must be far away when the night sets in. Our medicine-arrows will keep them off after that,” said the Fire Eater.
Much cast down the Red Lodge warriors gathered up their dead and rode slowly back toward the village.
On the morning of the second day the Cheyennes awoke to find the Fire Eater gone, but he had left his horses on their hands. “The young chief’s heart is bad. He has gone away by himself. ”

“ Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of Silvia, a vestal virgin, and the god Mars. The infants were exposed in a cradle, and the floods carried the cradle to the foot of the Palatine. Here a wolf suckled them, till one Faustulus, the king’s shepherd, took them to his wife, who brought them up. When grown to manhood, they slew Amulius, who had caused them to be exposed. ”

“ They were calling him, and as the sun sank to rest, White Otter rose slowly, drew his robe around him, and walked away from the Chis-chis-chash camp.
The split sticks in Big Hair’s lodge snapped and spit gleams of light on the old warrior as he lay back on his resting-mat. He was talking to his sacred symbols. “Though he sleeps very far off, though he sleeps even on the other side, a spirit is what I use to keep him. Make the bellies of animals full which would seek my son; make the wolf and the bear and the panther go out of their way. ”

“ So he and Arndt searched about the hill, and there, sure enough, they found Reutha's tiny shoes hidden under the long grass. At this her brother's tears burst forth afresh.
"Oh! what shall I do to bring back my poor sister? The Hill-men and women will kill her!"
"No," said the old man, "they are very good little people, and they live in a beautiful palace underground. Truly, you will never see Reutha again, for they will keep her with them a [83] hundred years; and when she comes back you will be dead and buried, while she is still a beautiful child." ”

“ She sailed in over the seaweed and the sand of the choked-up bay of Telamone under the shadow of its castle on the rock. She moored her boat hastily and went into the sorry place to try her fortune. The townspeople, such a few as they were, would buy nothing; but there chanced to be there a pedlar who had known her as a child in the house of Joconda. He was one of those who bring goods and news together from the outer world into Maremma, and round whose packs the housewives and the gossips gather eagerly. ”

“ The peril of last night will renew itself when I am not there. He may kill you and himself, perhaps, but there will be no other way of escape.'
'That will be as it must be; men have hidden all their life, I think, in Maremma. There are many stories———'
'I do not wish to say what hurts you; we will not speak of him; but listen—for yourself, This man is dear to you—dear, no doubt, through his beauty and his misfortunes—but what future will he give you, with what misery does he not dower you? ”

“ She was absorbed in her efforts to help him; she did not notice that he was a man young, and wonderfully handsome, with the beauty of the Greek ideal; beauty which not exposure, or imprisonment, or shame, or terror, or privation, or the ghastly horrors of the galleys had had any power to destroy, though they had wasted, darkened, and dimmed it, as dust and ill-usage obscure the soilless glory and fine lines of the marble god. Of all this she saw nothing, thought nothing; it was enough for her that he was hunted and in fear, like the beasts and the birds of the Maremma. ”

“ Thus during the days did White Otter eat and sleep, or lie under the cottonwoods by the creek with his chum, the boy Red Arrow—lying together on the same robe and dreaming as boys will, and talking also, as is the wont of youth, about the things which make a man. They both had their medicine—they were good hunters, whom the camp soldiers allowed to accompany the parties in the buffalo-surround. They both had a few ponies, which they had stolen from the Absaroke hunters the preceding autumn, and which had given them a certain boyish distinction in the camp. ”

“ And among [85] these poor little maidens, who worked so hard and sang so mournfully, was his own sister Reutha.
"No one cares for me," she murmured; and her song had in it a plaintive sweetness, very different from the way in which the little Danish maiden spoke on earth. "Reutha is alone—her hands are sore with toil—her feet bleed—but no one pities her. Arndt sleeps in gorgeous clothes, while Reutha toils in rags. Arndt is the master—Reutha is the slave! Poor Reutha is quite alone!" ”

“ The Chis-chis-chash should never see blackened ashes on a cheek which was only fitted for the red paint. The shield of the Fire Eater should never face to the lance—the little brown bat flapped fiercely in the wind and screamed for blood and scalp braids. ”

“ It was with her as when the moor-hen was shot on the waters, as when the woodlark was trapped in the net. No one cared. There was no 'angiolin' beside the stars!
She was now almost numb with cold. The water drenched her, rain and salt water both poured over her, and the night had grown bitterly cold. She supposed it was night, she could not tell. ”

“ Sometimes, when he watched her from the entrance-way come across the moors, with the sunbeams about her head and the shadows about her feet, old classic fancies came to him as they had come to Sanctis, and she seemed to him like a young Immortal for whom all mortal love were too fleeting and profane. ”

“ The soil of Maremma was treacherous as Iago, and, though she made no count of it, her days were full of danger as the timid snipe's for whom the fox waits in the brushwood, and the muzzle of the gun slips through the reeds, and the hawk watches above in the air, and the dog steals through the fennel and brankursine. She in her courage and ignorance hardly ever thought of these perils, and trusted to the earth and to the water as a child to its progenitors. ”

“ The ancients supposed that the souls after death wandered all over the world, and disturbed the peace of its inhabitants. The good spirits were called Lares familiares, and the evil ones were known by the name of Larvæ, or Lemures. They terrified the good, and continually haunted the wicked and impious; and the Romans had the superstition to celebrate festivals in their honour, called Lemuria, or ♦Lemuralia, in the month of May. They were first instituted by Romulus to appease the manes of his brother Remus, from whom they were called Remuria, and, by corruption, Lemuria. ”