“I’m sorry, that was dumb,” she murmured at last.
“It’s O.K. We ought to go on, maybe.”
She nodded.
He ate one more tomato for the road as they packed up their remnants. She went first again, which seemed right as she knew the way far better than he did. He followed her back to the axial path, the way she called the south road. Behind them and before them, to left and right, it was quiet, and the deep, clear light of evening never changed.
After they had crossed the last of the three creeks and begun the first steep climb, he found that he kept gaining on the girl instead of keeping about the same distance behind her. The quick pace she went had slowed, or become fitful.
At the crest of a foothill ridge from which, through a screen of thin, pale birches, the bulk and mass of the mountain loomed above and ahead, a darkness, she stopped. Arriving beside her in a couple of strides, Hugh said, “I could use a breather,” for it had been a steep pull, and he thought she was tired and did not like to admit it.
She turned to him a drained face, a death’s-head.
“You don’t feel it?” He could scarcely hear her voice.
“Feel what?”
His heart had jumped, and was pounding uncomfortably.
She shook her head. She made a slight, hurried gesture towards the dark wall of the mountain.
“There’s something ahead of us—?”
“Yes,” she said, on the in-breath.
“Blocking our way?”
“I don’t know.” Her teeth chattered as she spoke. She was drawn together, hunched up like an old woman.
Hugh said aloud, “Listen, I want to get to the town.” His anger was not against the girl but against her fear. “Let me go first.”
“We can’t go on.”
“I have to go on.”
She shook her head, despairing.
Determined to resist her reasonless panic, Hugh put his hand gently on her arm and began to say, “We can make it—” but she dodged from his touch as if his hand were hot iron, and her pinched face went dark with anger as she said aloud, “Don’t ever touch me!”
“All right,” he said with a flash of answering contempt. “I won’t. Calm down. We have to go on. They’re waiting for us. I said I’d come. Come on!”
He led off. To save his pride he did not look back to see if she was following; but he kept listening, down the long descent, for the light sound of her coming behind him. When the path went up again, he looked back for her. He knew what it was like to be afraid here. She kept fairly close behind him, and did not falter or hang back. Her face was closed like a fist under the black tangle of hair. In the high trees the wind made a sound like the sea heard from far off, the sea that lay far, far, far to the west, to the left, in the direction of the dark. Between the night and day they walked on the long path. It went on and on, and if she had not been coming behind he would have stopped. There was no end to the slope of the mountain, and he was getting tired. He had never felt so tired in his life, a weakness all through his body, a languor that might have been pleasant if only he could sit down, could lie down, could stop and have rest. It was hard to go on, and it would be so much easier to go downhill.
“Hugh!”
He turned, and looked around bewildered for some time before he saw her. She was not behind him but above him on the slope, standing among dark firs. It was a dark place, the sky closed out by meeting branches and rocky slopes.
“This way,” she whispered.
He realized that she was standing on the path. He had slanted off on a random track between trees, downhill.
The few steep paces back up to the path were a heavy labor.
“I’m getting tired,” he said shakily.
“I know,” she whispered. She looked as if she had been crying, her face puffed and blotchy. “Keep on the path.”
“O.K. Come on.”
At the end of the slope under the firs the way leveled out but was no easier, because the weariness kept growing, the heaviness, the longing to lie down. She came beside him now; there was room for them to walk together. When had the path become so wide, a road? She forced his pace now. He tried to keep up. It was not fair. He had not hurried her when she could not go on by herself.
“There—”
The gleam in the wide, cold evening: firelight, lamplight. Fear and tiredness were only shadows cast by that yellow gleam, shadows that fell behind them on the road.
They came into the town. There between the first houses they stopped.
The girl stood beside him, her weary, puffy face cocked back in defiance. “I’m going to the inn,” she said.
He tried to shake off his dullness. Now that he was here where all his desire had tended he felt heavy, awkward, out of place. He had not the courage to go present himself at that great house, and did not know where else to go. “I guess I will too,” he said.
“They’re expecting you at the manor.”
“The what?”
“The manor. Isn’t that what they call where a lord lives? Lord Horns house. Where you were last time.”
Her tone was sharp and jeering. Why did she turn against him after the hard way they had come together? She was unreliable, not to be trusted. She liked to see him make a fool of himself. Well, that was a wish easily granted.
“So long,” he said, and turned towards the first side street that led up the hill.
“One street farther down. The one with the steps,” the girl said, and went on towards the peak-gabled, bow-windowed, galleon-like bulk of the inn.
He followed, passed the inn, turned left up the many-stepped street. The air smelled of woodsmoke like all autumn in a breath; a child’s voice called far off where the town below ran out into pale pastures. There was a strange noise in the low-fenced yard by the top house of the street: geese hissing, Hugh realised when he saw the big, white-shouldered birds eying him. There were birds and beasts here in the town, there were voices, but still no voice sang. The geese hissed and shifted. Although he had come where he desired to come he was tired and cold, a chill not from wind or weather but from within, from the marrow of the bone and the dark pit of the bowels, a hollow, weary coldness.
He passed under the iron gateway and between the lawns and came to the high house, its roofs dark against the evening sky, two windows throwing a soft light across the walk. He lifted the knocker in the shape of a ram’s head, and knocked.
The old servant opened the door, and he heard his own name pronounced as they said it here, foreign, all one word, spoken with energy and welcome. The old man hurried before him through the unlit galleries, and opening the door to a crimson-walled, firelit room, announced him joyously by that same splendid half-familiar name: “Hiuradjas!”
Allia was there in the glowing room. She rose, dropping some handwork, and came forward, her hands held out to him. Her light hair was lifted by the lift and turn of her body. There is no way to expect beauty, or to deserve it. He took her hands. He could have fallen at her feet. He did not know her language but her voice said, “You are welcome, welcome, welcome! You have come back at last!”
He said, “Allia,” and she smiled again.
She asked him something. The look of her blue eyes and the tone of her voice were so gentle in their concern that he said, “It was hard coming, it was frightening—I got tired—” but he saw from her gesture now that she was only asking him if he would sit down, which he did, gratefully. Then he was up again because Lord Horn had come in, greeting him with cordiality and with something else which Hugh did not recognize at first: respect. This man, elderly, called “Lord,” clearly used to personal authority, showed towards him not deference, not mere politeness, but the regard of equality: as if they were of the same family. As if Horn spoke to some quality in him which he did not know himself, but which the old man knew and greeted.
Allia’s friendliness, though shy and mannerly, was much less sober than her father’s. All conversation they could have was a kind of running language lesson. She happily performed the necessary pointing and handwaving and face-making, and laughed at her misunderstandings and at his mistakes. Yet in her too he sensed an attitude towards him which he did not want to call respect but dared not call love; the most he could admit to himself was that she seemed to like him, to admire him—what for? What had he done? Nothing. How could she value him for what he was? Equally nothing. Yet in her soft, frank look and voice and even in her laughter at his blunders there was the underlying grave temper of admiration. Such admiration as he felt for her: but it was her due. All she was and did was admirable and beautiful. If he was to be admired it was only by a kind advance. Nothing was due him. But to earn, to deserve what she gave him undeserved, to be the man she mistook him for, he would do anything.