CHAPTER XXIX: WALTER STRAYS IN THE PASS AND IS SUNDERED FROM THE MAID
Morning came, and they arose and went on their ways, and went all daytill the sun was nigh set, and they were come up into the very pass; andin the jaws thereof was an earthen howe. There the Maid bade them stay,and she went up on to the howe, and stood there and spake to them, andsaid: "O men of the Bear, I give you thanks for your following, and Ibless you, and promise you the increase of the earth. But now ye shallturn aback, and leave me to go my ways; and my man with the iron swordshall follow me. Now, maybe, I shall come amongst the Bear-folk againbefore long, and yet again, and learn them wisdom; but for this time itis enough. And I shall tell you that ye were best to hasten homestraightway to your houses in the downland dales, for the weather which Ihave bidden for you is even now coming forth from the forge of storms inthe heart of the mountains. Now this last word I give you, that timesare changed since I wore the last shape of God that ye have seen,wherefore a change I command you. If so be aliens come amongst you, Iwill not that ye send them to me by the flint and the fire; rather,unless they be baleful unto you, and worthy of an evil death, ye shallsuffer them to abide with you; ye shall make them become children of theBears, if they be goodly enough and worthy, and they shall be my childrenas ye be; otherwise, if they be ill-favoured and weakling, let them liveand be thralls to you, but not join with you, man to woman. Now departye with my blessing."
Therewith she came down from the mound, and went her ways up the pass solightly, that it was to Walter, standing amongst the Bears, as if she hadvanished away. But the men of that folk abode standing and worshippingtheir God for a little while, and that while he durst not sunder him fromtheir company. But when they had blessed him and gone on their waybackward, he betook him in haste to following the Maid, thinking to findher abiding him in some nook of the pass.
Howsoever, it was now twilight or more, and, for all his haste, darknight overtook him, so that perforce he was stayed amidst the tangle ofthe mountain ways. And, moreover, ere the night was grown old, theweather came upon him on the back of a great south wind, so that themountain nooks rattled and roared, and there was the rain and the hail,with thunder and lightning, monstrous and terrible, and all the hugearray of a summer storm. So he was driven at last to crouch under a bigrock and abide the day.
But not so were his troubles at an end. For under the said rock he fellasleep, and when he awoke it was day indeed; but as to the pass, the waythereby was blind with the driving rain and the lowering lift; so that,though he struggled as well as he might against the storm and the tangle,he made but little way.
And now once more the thought came on him, that the Maid was of the fays,or of some race even mightier; and it came on him now not as erst, withhalf fear and whole desire, but with a bitter oppression of dread, ofloss and misery; so that he began to fear that she had but won his loveto leave him and forget him for a new-comer, after the wont of fay-women,as old tales tell.
Two days he battled thus with storm and blindness, and wanhope of hislife; for he was growing weak and fordone. But the third morning thestorm abated, though the rain yet fell heavily, and he could see his waysomewhat as well as feel it: withal he found that now his path wasleading him downwards. As it grew dusk, he came down into a grassyvalley with a stream running through it to the southward, and the rainwas now but little, coming down but in dashes from time to time. So hecrept down to the stream-side, and lay amongst the bushes there; and saidto himself, that on the morrow he would get him victual, so that he mightlive to seek his Maiden through the wide world. He was of somewhatbetter heart: but now that he was laid quiet, and had no more for thatpresent to trouble him about the way, the anguish of his loss fell uponhim the keener, and he might not refrain him from lamenting his dearMaiden aloud, as one who deemed himself in the empty wilderness: and thushe lamented for her sweetness and her loveliness, and the kindness of hervoice and her speech, and her mirth. Then he fell to crying outconcerning the beauty of her shaping, praising the parts of her body, asher face, and her hands, and her shoulders, and her feet, and cursing theevil fate which had sundered him from the friendliness of her, and thepeerless fashion of her.