San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1925-12-27
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They'll burn her if they can
find her." said the dark one.
Eyes, they'll burn her."
"But they should torture her
first! They cut up gypsy witch
in the forest last year, and nipped
her with hot pincers."
'Yes, they did,"
Sending the young lord stark
mad, and then vanishing like a
breath on a mirror! She ought to
be roasted in cage over a slow
fire with dozen cats"
Eyes"
lib, swaddled, hidden from sight
and sustained by the frail arm of
his bearer. struggled again.
"Be stillw said the girl in a
whisper that was urgent and saw
age. Her heart seemed to. shake
her body, but her feeling was of
tension, not of fear. "Sending the
young lord stark madw Oh, her
darling, her darling! But her
death should restore him, for then
the chain would be broken. A
numbness came to her again-the
merciful deadening whenever her
thought turned to him that had
held her since her slow tears of the
dawn. The two gossips were no
longer at her side. The arch of
the gateway, like a dark mouth,
waited. Others were passing under
it, and now she herself. The
downward-pointing spikes of the
raised portieullis were like a row
of triangular fangs above her
head.
"Hey, sister! Are you on your
way to find the young ones
father?" said a guardsman.
The girl bent her covered head
a trifle lower, hugging the heavy
tomcat.
Soft, puddled, hoof-chopped
ground underfoot. Vacant air.
Blurred vistas. Crows descending
upon great rubbish heap where
lay the body of dead goat. The
town, like a straight, high-walled
prison, was behind; before was lib
erty-to find a self-chosen death.
Sidonia kept straight on, skirt
ing the rubbish heap, whose stencil
was -subdued by the motionless,
moist air. Beneath the low, gray
sky one would have said that no
wind would ever again unfurl its
wings. Fine wells of ashen vapor
with a blush tinge dimmed every
distance. And the boundary of
every distance was the forest.
Folk moved sparsely upon the
self-made, rutted road. The small
black figure of the girl turned
aside, going over wasteland toward
tract of trees-the nearest forest
fringe.
Sidonia stood still. She looked
slowly all about her. She breathed
the dead-leaf smell, which is like
stale incense. A leaf, yellow as
gold, fell Pickering. without a
sound. Neither doors nor raftered
roof had this vague, beautiful,
hearthless home, that was aloof,
yet without hostility 1t was sad,
serene; giving out, like a perfume,
the stagnant odor of mortality.
The cat, as she bent to set him
down, sprang convulsively from
her arms. He gave a little yowl,
and with flattened ears ran
straight into the coverts, vanish
ng as though the earth had
indeed swallowed him. He was
freed from the menace of pelted
stones, from the curses and shud-
1erings of the citizens who named
him "witch's familiar" and from
the agonies of the bonfire into
which, as Satan's beast, he might
De tossed to cap some general re-
ioicing.
Now the girl was as completely
alone as person should be who
las come to the end of life. She
stripped the black shroud from her
elf and was revealed in the mantle
If azure and argent. She with
irew her feet from the wooden
hoes, for they hampered her. and
he grass and sodden leaves were
This unbreathing, lovely
olltude, peopled with the stems of
rees and dreaming of death, drew
Ter into its dream.
Death, DEATH" softly repeated
'idonia's thought, and she knew
where death waited. She moved
reading the sound-muffling leaf
riffs with small, cold, naked feet.
he wiry bracken brushed her.
allen trunks, as she penetrated
eeper, lay athwart her path.
Dated with green-black moss; but
he skirted them, for there was no
eed for haste now. Two DAYS be-
ore she had adventured in lust
UGH a golden dimness, seeking for
1ve. And faint, horrid scream
ad tingled to her ears. Silence
ow. No. Hush! Listen! A
'raith Of string music, elusive as
wisp Of yapor, drifted through
he mist of trees. A lovers air
lting, whining. Somewhere
lddler, having set his back toward
he town, followed a faint patb
trough the wild, turning, as he
'ent, the wheel-like wooden bow
rat chafed the trings of his viclle
he love-search had found a voice
t pain, but the death-search a