THE TESTING OF THE NEW THING
And now there was gloom in the household. Pŭl-Yūn was gaining strength daily and as irritable as your convalescent is permitted to be. His leg was not yet sound enough or supple enough to attempt the descent of the face, for the knee-joint creaked from its six weeks of disuse; on the other hand, it could not get enough of play within the limits of the cave. His nerves excited him, his temper was less even than when he was helpless, and, worst of all, his conscience would not let him be. Thus came Aidôs down to men.
Dêh-Yān put up with her man's petulant outbreaks and slaved for him harder than ever. A diet of dark bear-meat—solid bear-meat daily and twice a day, although admirably suited to keep up the bodily warmth, is hard upon the liver unless regulated by abundant exercise, which in the case of her husband was out of the question. She cast about for something lighter, but game was getting scarce in the immediate neighbourhood of the cave, and indeed in the glen itself; she had hunted it too closely and too long. It was the depth of winter in the mountains, migratory life had long since left for the lower levels, resident life was scanty. Dêh-Yān betook herself to trapping. A bird of some kind her man should have.
Pŭl-Yūn, peering moodily from his cave-platform, watched her bending over a trap far below and a long way off. The cackle of a chough came up clearly through the cold air, a danger-signal, and it struck him as singular that the bird should be calling so far from the woman, for as a rule they ignored her movements unless she were within, say, a hundred paces, yet he put the matter from him, no dream had given him prescience of impending danger.
The girl, busied at her work, crouched beside her gin, her deer-skin quiver upon her shoulder, her bow laid beside her hand. The man was annoyed at the sight, he distrusted this new-fangled plaything of hers; why could she not carry spears as he would have done, as he was going to do in a week or so? Everything she did, or failed to do, had power to annoy the poor fellow now. That she bore with him so quietly was an offence in itself. Had she answered him back, had she met him half-way in the quarrel which he had been provoking for a week past, he would have taken such an attitude in good part. That is to say he would have found it natural and treated it naturally, beaten her, to wit, as every savage man has ever done since the male subjugated the female.
But Dêh-Yān's gentle, unselfish reserve, and perpetual activities on his behalf, gave him never an opening.
So he watched her moodily, jealously—come, the secret is out at last, we have a name for the complaint.