When the birds fly south

by Stanton A. Coblentz

Chapter VII

YASMA

Even before I began to succumb to the mysteries of Sobul, the country was captivating me with a subtle spell. There seemed to be something magical about the noiseless atmosphere, the untroubled blue skies and the aloof calm circle of peaks; I came almost to feel as if this were the world and there were no universe beyond; and my memories of the years before were becoming remote and clouded as memories of a dream.

But the enchantment of Sobul was not merely the wizardry of its woods and open spaces, its colors and silences and eagle heights. There was a more potent sorcery of twinkling eyes and caressing words that was fettering me in soft, indissoluble bonds—a sorcery that might have proved powerful in any land on earth. And the priestess of that sorcery was Yasma. Perhaps she did not realize the fateful part she was playing, for was not she, as I, swept along by a dark current there was no resisting? And yet she enacted her role remorselessly as though assigned the lead in a cosmic drama; and, blinded herself by the unseen powers, she could not have realized how certainly and how tragically she was intertwining her fate with mine.

From the first I had been charmed by her open manner and her evident lack of self-consciousness. She had been free as a child in talking and laughing and romping with me, and I had tried to think of her as a child, and little more,—undeniably a fascinating playmate, but certainly not a serious companion for a thirty-three-year-old geologist. But if I had imagined that I could dismiss her so easily, I was merely deluding myself; the time was to come, and to come very swiftly, when I should realize how much more than a child she was.

Possibly it is that the girls of the Ibandru come early to maturity; or possibly they do not labor under civilized repressions, and are seldom other than their natural selves. At all events, Yasma suffered from few of those inhibitions which would have hampered her western sisters. Finding something in me to interest her, she was at no pains to conceal her interest, but would act as unhesitatingly as if she had been the man and I the woman. At first, during my illness, I had attributed this to mere kindness; later I had ascribed it to a natural curiosity as to a stranger from a strange land; but there came a time when I could no longer believe her motives purely impersonal, and when, while knowing that she acted without design, I had inklings that she was rushing with me toward a fire in which we might both be singed.

Why, then, did I not try to forestall our mad dash toward the flames? Surely I, who was older and more experienced, was also somewhat wiser; surely I might have prevented complications that she could not even foresee. Ah, yes!—but love has queer ways, and makes a jest of men's reason, and tosses their best intentions about like spindrift ... and I was but subject to the frailties of human-kind. Writing at this late date, I find it hard to say just why I did what I did (even at the time, would I have known?); and it is impossible to explain why she did what she did. But let me recount a few incidents; let me describe as well as I can the growth of that strange, wild love, which even now torments me in recollection.

I particularly remember one afternoon when we sallied off into the woods together, on a sort of frolic that combined work and play, to gather the wild walnuts that grew abundantly in those parts. It was Yasma that suggested the expedition, and I had been quick to accept the proposal, which had brought back memories of boyhood "nutting parties" among the New Hampshire hills. As we set out through the forest on a little inconspicuous trail, it was indeed delightful to be together; and for the moment I was almost ready to bless the fate that had sent me to Sobul.

What a rare companion she made that day! She would go darting and tripping ahead of me like a playful wild thing, and then, when I had lost sight of her amid the underbrush, she would startle me with a cry and would come running back in loud laughter. Or else she would enthusiastically point out the various trees crowded together in that virgin forest—the sedate oaks, the steeple-like deodars and pines, the alder and the ash, the juniper and wild peach; or, in places where the undergrowth was dense, she would show me species of wild rose and honeysuckle, of currants and hawthorn, of gooseberry and rhododendron, as well as of a score of native herbs whose names I have forgotten. Or her sharp eyes would spy out the birds' nests in the trees (nests that my untrained vision would never have detected), or she would call attention to some gray or blue or red-breasted moving thing, which would flash into view and slip away like some shy phantom into the twilight of the vines and shrubbery or amid the light-flecked, latticed roof of green. Occasionally, when not too busy dancing along the trail or playing some merry prank or pointing out the shrubs and flowers, she would sing a snatch of some native song—sing it in an untrained voice of a peculiar sweetness and power, which affected me strangely with its note of joy tinged always with an indefinable and haunting melancholy.

At length, after perhaps an hour of this careless adventuring, I noticed that the ground was beginning to rise sharply, and judged that we were not far from the valley wall. And it was then that Yasma paused, clapping her hands in delight and pointing to a cluster of big, gracefully rounded trees, whose nature I recognized immediately, although their pinnate leaves were broader than those of the black or American walnut and their trunks were smoother and not so intensely brown.