Lore of Proserpine

by Maurice Hewlett

It was diaphanous, or diaphanous to strong light behind it. At one time I saw the great beacon of the south-west (Saturn, I think) burning through it; not within the ring, but from behind the litten vapour of which the ring was made. Lesser fires than his were put out by it. It varied very much in shape as it spread or drew out, as a smoker's blue rings are varied by puffs of wind. Now it was a perfect round, now so long as to be less a hoop than a fine oblong. Sometimes it was pear-shaped, sometimes amorphous; bulbous here, hollow there. And there seemed movement; I thought now and again that it was spiral as well as circular, that it might, under some stress of speed, writhe upward like dust in a whirlwind. It wavered, certainly, in elevation, lifting, sinking, wafted one way or another with the ease of a cloud of gnats. It was extraordinarily beautiful and exciting. I watched it for an hour.

At times I seemed to be conscious of more than appearance. I cannot speak more definitely than that. Music was assuredly in my head, very shrill, piercing, continuous music. No air, no melody, but the expectancy of an air, preparation for it, a prelude to melodious issues. You may say the overture to some vast aerial symphony; I know not what else to call it. I was never more than alive to it, never certain of it. It was as furtive, secret, and tremulous as the dawn itself. Now, just as under that shivering and tentative opening of great music you are conscious of the fierce energy of violins, so was I aware, in this surmise of music, of wild forces which made it. I thought not of voices but of wings. I was sure that this ring of flame whirled as well as floated in the air; the motion and the sound, alike indecipherable, were one and the same to me.

I watched it, I say, for an hour: it may have been for two hours. By-and-by it came nearer, gradually very near. It was now dazzling, not to be looked at full; but its rate of approach was inappreciable, and as it came on I was able to peer into it and see nothing but its beauty. There was a core of intensity, intolerably bright; about that, lambency but no flame, in which I saw leaves and straws and fronds of fern flickering, spiring, heeling over and over. That it whirled as well as floated was now clear, for a strong wind blew before and after it as it rushed by. This happened as I sat there. Blinding but not burning, heralded by a keen wind, it came by me and passed; a swift wind followed it as it went. It swept out toward the hollow of the eastern valley-head, seemed to strike upon that and glance upward; thence it swept gladly up, streaming to the zenith, grew thin, fine and filmy, and seemed to melt into the utmost stars. I had seen wonders and went home full of thought.

II

I first saw an Oread in this place in a snow-storm which, driven by a north-westerly gale, did havoc to the lowlands, but not to the folded hills. I had pushed up the valley in the teeth of the storm to see it under the white stress. It was hard work for me and my dog; I had to wade knee-deep, and he to jump, like a cat in long grass, through the drifts. But we reached our haven and found shelter from the weather. High above us where we stood the snow-flakes tossed and rioted, but before they fell upon us being out of the wind, they drifted idly down, come ... in Alpe senza vento. The whole valley was purely white, its outlines blurred by the slant-driving snow. There was not a living creature to be seen, and my dog, a little sharp-nosed black beast, shivered as he looked about, with wide eyes and quick-set ears, for a friendly sight, and held one paw tentatively in the air, as if he feared the cold.

Suddenly he yelped once, and ran, limping on three legs or scuttling on all four, over the snow toward the great eastern escarpment, but midway stopped and looked with all his might into its smoothed hollow. His jet-black ears stood sharp as a hare's; through the white scud I was conscious that he trembled. He gazed into the sweep of the curving hill, and following the direction he gave me, all my senses quick, I gazed also, but for a while saw nothing.

Very gradually, without alarm on my part, a blur of colour seemed to form itself and centre in one spot, half-way up the concave of the down; very pale yellow, a soft, lemon colour. At first scarcely more than a warm tinge to the snow, it took shape as I watched it, and then body also. It was now opaque within semi-transparency; one could trace an outline, a form. Then I made out of it a woman dressed in yellow; a slim woman, tawny-haired, in a thin smock of lemon-yellow which flacked and bellied in the gale. Her hair blew out to it in snaky streamers, sideways. Her head was bent to meet the cold, her bare white arms were crossed, and hugged her shoulders, as if to keep her bosom warm. From mid-thigh downward she was bare and very white, yet distinct upon the snow. That was the white of chilled flesh I could see. Though she wore but a single garment, and that of the thinnest and shortest, though she suffered cold, hugged herself and shivered, she was not of our nature, to die of such exposure. Her eyes, as I could guess, were long-enduring and steadfast. Her lips were not blue, though her teeth seemed to chatter; she was not rigid with the stiffening that precedes frozen death. Drawing near her by degrees, coming within fifteen yards of where she stood and passioned, though she saw me, waited for me, in a way expected me, she showed neither fear nor embarrassment, nor appealed by looks for shelter. She was, rather, like a bird made tame by winter, that finds the lesser fear swallowed up in a greater. For myself, as when one finds one's self before a new thing, one stands and gazes, so was I before this being of the wild. I would go no nearer, speak I could not. But I had no fear. She was new to me not strange. I felt that she and I belonged to worlds apart; that as soon might I hope to be familiar with fox or marten as with her. My little black dog was of the same mind. He was glad when I joined him, and wagged his little body—tail he has none—to say so. But he had no eyes for me, nor I for him. We stood together for company, and filled our eyes with the tenant of the waste. How long we watched her I have no notion, but the day fell swiftly in and found us there.

She was, I take it, quite young, she was slim and of ordinary proportions. When I say that I mean that she had nothing inhuman about her stature, was neither giant nor pygmy. Whether she was what we call good-looking or not I find it impossible to determine, for when strangeness is so added to beauty as to absorb and transform it, our standards are upset and balances thrown out. She was pale to the lips, had large, fixed and patient eyes. Her arms and legs showed greyish in the white storm, but where the smock was cut off the shadows it made upon her were faintly warm. One of her knees was bent, the foot supported only by the toes. The other was firm upon the ground: she looked, to the casual eye, to be standing on one leg. Her eyes in a stare covered me, but were not concerned to see me so near. They had the undiscerning look of one whose mind is numbed, as hers might well be. Shelter—a barn, a hayrick—lay within a mile of her; and yet she chose to suffer the cold, and was able to endure it. She knew it, I supposed, for a thing not to be avoided; she took it as it came—as she would have taken the warmth and pleasure of the sun. We humankind with our wits for ever turned inward to ourselves, grieve or exult as we bid ourselves: she, like all other creatures else, was not in that self-relation; her parts were closer-knit, and could not separate to envisage each other. So, at least, I read her—that she lived as she could and as she must, neither looked back with regret nor forward with longing. Time present, the flashing moment, was all her being. That state will never be ours again.

I discovered before nightfall what she waited for there alone in the cruel weather. A moving thing emerged from the heart of the white fury, came up the valley along the shelving down: a shape like hers, free-moving, thinly clad, suffering yet not paralysed by the storm. It shaped as a man, a young man, and her mate. Taller, darker, stoutlier made, his hardy legs were browner, and so were his arms—crossed like hers over his breast and clasping his shoulders. His head was bare, dark and crisply covered with short hair. His smock whipped about him before, as the wind drove it; behind him it flacked and fluttered like a flag. Patiently forging his way, bowing his head to the gale, he came into range; and she, aware of him, waited.

He came directly to her. They greeted by touchings. He stretched out his hands to her, touched her shoulders and sides. He touched both her cheeks, her chin, the top of her head, all with the flat of the palm. He stroked her wet and streaming hair. He held her by the shoulders and peered into her face, then put both arms about her and drew her to him. She, who had so far made no motions of her own, now uncrossed her arms and daintily touched him in turn. She put both her palms flat upon his breast; next on his thighs, next, being within the circle of his arms, she put up her hands and cupped his face. Then, with a gesture like a sigh, she let them fall to his waist, fastened them about him and let her head lie on his bosom. She shut her eyes, seemed contented and appeased. He clasped her, with a fine, protecting air upon him, looking down tenderly at her resting head. So they stood together in the dusk, while the wind tore at their thin covering, and the snow, lying, made a broad patch of white upon his shoulder.