When the birds fly south

by Stanton A. Coblentz

Not long after the last birds had flown south, I began to repent of my madness in detaining Yasma. Once that fierce culminating revolt had collapsed, she did not flame forth any more in rebellion or protest; but I would have welcomed a return of the old impetuous spirit. She was gentle now, exceedingly kindly and gentle; she would hover by me fondly, and her words would be soft-spoken and affectionate; but she was no longer her old self. Something had gone out of her that had made her spirit like fire; and something with the touch of frost had taken its place. The dreary mood of the autumn, with its mute and morbid musing, had not left her even now; but with it another mood was mingled, a chilling mood, a mood as of one dazed and frightened. But of what she was frightened she would not say; she was afraid of the outdoors, and would never go forth except in my company, and then never far; and she liked best of all to linger amid the shadows of the cabin, gazing into the golden log blaze or merely staring at the blank walls and brooding.

And always she appeared to be cold, both mentally and physically cold. An abnormal apathy, almost a lethargy, had drained all her interest in life; she seemed to have few ideas except those which I suggested to her; and blue days and gray days were all as one to her. When I spoke, she would answer, but usually only in monosyllables; she would agree to every statement as though the world held nothing worth disputing; she had the manner of one whose visible form occupies this earth, but whose spirit dwells far-off.

Yet scarcely less disturbing than her mental inertia was the actual bodily cold she felt. She was always shivering, and not seldom when I took the little hands in mine I found them icy. The heavy goatskin robes, which I stripped from my own back and piled about her, seemed without effect; she still shivered, as though the very blood in her veins were chilled. And she hardly seemed to care whether or not she was cold, and, except for my little attentions, might have suffered perpetually. Reluctantly I told myself that she was leading a life for which nature had not fitted her; that she would have done better to join her tribesmen in their migration.

And there came a time when, ironically, I began to wish that she could follow her tribesmen. Alarm was springing up full-fledged in my heart, and I wondered whether her absence could be half so sad as the change that had come over her; whether it would not be far better to lose her for half the year and receive her back, buoyant and happy, along with the first spring flowers. For days I pondered, in dreadful agony of mind; and at last, seeing her growing even more melancholy and more detached, I decided to advise the very step I had once forbidden.

Shall I ever forget the time when I mentioned this most painful subject? ... forget the hurt look in her eyes, the mute reproach? It was on a December evening, when dusk had already engulfed the world, and the wind went soughing by with a distressing monotone, and the wolves on unseen mountain slopes matched the gale in the monody of their wailing. All afternoon I had been noticing how like a languishing flower Yasma looked, with her pale cheeks and drooping eyes; and terror had come upon me, the terror of things I dared not express. Even now I could not suggest Yasma's departure without the pangs of self-sacrifice; but when I saw her huddled in a corner, a pitiable figure that scarcely took note of the leaping firelight and that responded in silence to my caresses, I felt that I had no longer any choice, and hesitatingly proposed the solution that betokened my defeat.

"Yasma," said I, gently, coming to her and taking her hand, "what are you so sad about? Are you still sorry I would not let you go away?"

She turned about slowly, and looked at me with big eyes full of sorrow. "Why do you ask?" she questioned, with none of her old animation. "Why do you ask what you already know?"

"I do not know," I said, quite truthfully, "why you should be so unhappy, Yasma. But it is certain that you are unhappy, and that is all that counts. It hurts me deeply to see you so, and I think that I have been very, very wrong. I cannot adapt your nature to my own, and it was foolish to try. So I want you to forget everything I said before; I am willing for you to go away if you like, and join your kinsmen until the green leaves are once more on the trees."

For a moment she stared at me as if she did not quite comprehend. Then a wistful light came into her eyes, to smolder away in a sad glow, as of one who knows she desires in vain. But there was just a trace of the old energy in her voice as she replied, with words that burned like a rebuke, "Why do you tell me this now? Why did you not tell me before, when the red leaves were still on the trees and the birds were still flying south?"

"I should have told you before," I pleaded, abjectly. "I should have told you. Forgive me, my darling, I did not understand. But is there not time even now? Think, it will be whole long months yet before the spring breezes blow!"