“Indeed you must come. Your visits will be welcome.” She smiled, but her smile was twisted and dubious. “I expect great things of Wanza. She will be my entertainer. She will cheer me. Have Joey come to me—” Her voice failed her utterly. She was pale again as the syringa blooms at her side.
“We must push on, now,” I said.
She gathered up her reins.
And so we rode side by side to the little shack on the shore of Hidden Lake. But when she gave me her hand at parting, I stumblingly cried: “If he had not come—if he had not come, I should have tried to win your love!” Something in her eyes caused me to add: “I wonder if I should have succeeded.”
She paled and drew her hand from mine. “I could have loved you, David Dale,” she whispered.
That night when Joey was preparing for bed in the cedar room, I spied a bit of ribbon the color of the gowns Wanza wore, wreathed in among the grasses in the magpie’s cage. And at the sight Joey cried out:
“That’s Wanza’s. I want her! I want her to come back and stay, I do.”
Holding the ribbon in my hand, I passed out to the Dingle.
Here I sat down on the stump by the pool, in a ring of black shadow cast by the cedars, and lifted my face to the stars that were shining through the wattled green roof above my head. I was worn, physically and mentally, by the experiences of the day. I sat there stupidly, scarce moving, letting my pipe go out as I fed my grief with memories. Joey called out at intervals: “Good night, Mr. David, dear.” Each time I responded: “Good night, Joey.” At last no sound came from the cedar room. I knew he slept. It was very still in the Dingle. A toad hopped across the stone walk and a grass-snake flashed through the rose hedge, like a quick flame. Close to the pool’s brink the big flag-flowers vacillated in a faint, upspringing breeze, and the rushes swayed and shuddered above the timorous bluebells. The moon came up slowly, and I saw its face through the tree spaces. I wondered if Haidee were watching it from the shore of Hidden Lake. And then a naked Desolation crept up out of an unknown void, and I saw the gleam of its whitened bones. It gibed me. It trailed its bleached carcass across my arid path. The hour grew hideous. I felt myself alone—grievously alone—on the verge of utmost solitude, reaching out ineffectual hands toward emptiness. I recoiled, my senses whirling, from the limitless nothingness into which my vision pored.
I was clammy, with a cold sweat. My throat was dry. But the horror passed and I grew apathetic at length, and sodden. Then calm, merely. Soon I grew strangely somnolent. I nodded. But after a space I sat tense, my chin sunk, listening. A vague stirring in the night chilled my blood, and at the same time thrilled me. I listened and watched, breathing heavily, alert and narrow-eyed.