HOW THE NARRATIVE SMACKS AGAIN OF THE SOIL

The charcoal-burner's convoy, bearing at once the evidence and the reward of his humanity, a battered lady on one ass and her flayed friend on another, jogged leisurely through the forest glades. The time was the very top of spring, the morning soft and fair, but none of the party took any heed: the charcoal-burner because he was by habit too close to these things, Isoult because she was in a faint, the black ram because he had been skinned. When Isoult did finally lift her head and begin to look timidly about her, she found herself in a country unfamiliar, which, for all she knew, might be an hour's or a week's journey from High March, where Prosper was. Prosper! She knew that every mincing step of the donkey took her further from him, but she was powerless to protest or to pray; life scarce whispered in her yet. And what span of miles or hours, after all, could set her wider from him than discovery, the shame, the yelling of her foes, had hounded her?

In this new blank discomfiture of hers, she was like one who has been taught patiently to climb by a gentle hand. The hand trusts her and lets go—down, down she falls, and from the mire at the bottom can see the sunny slopes above her, and the waiting guide stretched at rest until she come. The utter abasement of her state numbed her spirit; any other spirit would have been killed outright. But to her one thing remained, that dull and endless patience of the earth-born, poor clods without hope or memory, who from dwelling so hidden in the lap of the earth seem to win a share of its eternal sufferance. Your peasant will bow his back as soon as he can stand upright, and every year draws him nearer to the earth. The rheumatics at last grip him unawares, and clinch him in a gesture which is a figure of his lot. The scarred hills, the burnt plains, the trees which the wind cows and lays down, the flowers and corn, meek or glad at the bidding of the hour—the earth-born is kin to these, more plant than man. I have done ill if I have not thus expounded Isoult la Desirous, for without such knowledge of her you will hardly understand her apathy. She had been lapped so long on the knees of earth; her flights in the upper air had been so short, and her tumble with a broken wing so sharp, that she resumed the crouch, the bent knees, the folded arms, the face in hands of the earth-born, with hardly a struggle. If she had been meant for the air, she would be in the air; if she was meant to die a serf as she had lived, why, at the rate she was spending, death would be quick—ecco! The word comes pat when you talk of such lives as hers, for the Italian peasant is the last of the earth-born, invincibly patient.

So Isoult, it seems, had the grace to know how far she had fallen, but not the wit to try for redemption once more. In accepting her tumble for a fate, I think it is clear that she was so far earthy as to be meek as a woodflower. Says she, If the rain fall, the dew rise, the sun shine, or wind blow mild, each in their due season—well, I will look up, laugh and be glad. You shall see how lovely I can be, and how loving. If the frost bind the ground in May, if you parch me with frozen wind, or shrivel me with heat, or let me rot in the soak of a wet June—well, I will bend my neck; you will see me a dead weed; I shall love you, but you shall hardly know it. If you are God, you should know; but if you are a man—ah, that is my misfortune, to love you in spite of common-sense.

Isoult believed she was abandoned by Prosper; she believed that she deserved it. She must be graceless, would die disgraced, having served her turn, she supposed. If, nevertheless, she persisted in loving, who was hurt? Besides, she could not help it any more than she could help being a scorn and a shame. Fatalist! So it was with her.

The charcoal burner had no curiosity. She hadn't been quite murdered; she was a boy; boys do not readily die. On the other side, they are handy to climb woodstacks, labour saving appliances—with the aid of an ash plant. And he was a clear fat sheep to the good. So he asked no questions, and made no remarks beyond an occasional oath. They slept one night in the thicket, rose early, travelled steadily the next day, and in course reached a clearing, where there were three or four black tents, some hobbled beasts, a couple of lean dogs, and a steady column of smoke, which fanned out into a cloud overhead. Here were the coal stacks; here also she found the colliers, half-a-dozen begrimed ruffians with a fortnight's beard apiece. No greetings passed, nor any introduction of the white-faced boy shot into their midst. One of them, it is true, a red-haired, bandy-legged fellow, called Falve, looked over the newcomer, and swore that it was hard luck their rations should be shortened to fatten such a weed; but that was all for the hour.

At dusk, suppertime, there was a cross examination, held by Falve.

"What's your name, boy?"

"Roy."

"To hell with your echoes. Where do you come from?"