The dryad a novel
lips, to quiver about her body as summer air quivers with the heat. Her
naked arms, her naked legs were neither tanned by the sun nor stained
with forest-travel; on the strong fingers of her fine hands the nails
were clear-pink as sea-shells; through the candor of her skin he could
see the blue veins wander. She held a bough of myrtle in her right
hand, and played with it as she gazed at the man on the grass, and a
childlike mirth danced in her kind, wise eyes. Her sweet mouth smiled
at his awakening senses, and then she spoke--and here was a marvel!
He knew what she said as well as if she were his countrywoman, and
yet--it was odd--and yet she did not seem to speak as folk spoke any
French that he had ever heard from salt Normandy to the Spanish hills.
"Good-evening, traveller," the girl said, and at the sound of her
salutation Simon knew that he was not dreaming but wide awake, and he
scrambled clumsily to his feet.
"Saints and angels!" he ejaculated, crossing himself.
The girl laughed, and her laughter was as pleasant as the tinkling of
sheep-bells in a meadow.
"Do not be fearful, friend," she said, in that same flowing,
unfamiliar, appreciable speech; "I will do you no harm."
Hearing this astonishing promise, Simon was quite himself again. That a
lass should pledge her word not to hurt him was hugely amusing.
"No, I should guess not, prettykin," he guffawed. "But what does a fair
maid in this forest?"
The girl's forehead wrinkled a little in displeasure as the bray of his
laughter jarred the serenity of the cloistered trees.
"I live in the forest," she answered.
Simon stared anew at her white arms, her white legs, her unscorched
face and unstained raiment.
"I live here all alone, too, save for the birds and the beasts and the
trees and the flowers. The foolish Athenians are so fearful of the
forest that they never come near its kindly shelter. You are not an
Athenian?"
Simon shook his head stoutly.
"No, I thank Heaven," he said; "I am a Frenchman from Rouen." He spoke
with a proper pride.
"I thought you could not be," the girl said, gravely, "when I saw you
lying so at your ease on the grass and heard you snoring. No Athenian
would do that."
Simon reddened a little. Frenchman of Rouen though he was, he had this
in common with lesser men: he resented the imputation of snoring.
"Do no Athenians snore?" he questioned, grumpily. The girl laughed
again.
"Nay," she said, demurely, "I meant that no Athenian would lie here in
the twilight. I have seen no one sleeping in these shades for ages,
though I have lived in the forest all my life."
"No great slice of time, I take it," Simon suggested, gallantly.
His slow mind was much puzzled by the maid, but his quick flesh was
enamoured and he was much the body-servant. The girl looked at him
thoughtfully.
"Longer than you think. I cannot tell how often I have seen spring
swell into summer, mellow into autumn, and descend into winter, for the
years in their seasons are alike to me; but, I suppose, more than a
thousand times."
Simon stared agape.
"More than a thousand times? Pray, how old may you be, young woman?"
"I cannot tell," the girl answered, thoughtfully. "I do not think of
time. Why should I, being come to my full growth? Time will change me
no more. I shall be as I am for always."
Simon frowned in dubiety.
"What is your name, young woman, and where do you belong?"
"My name is Argathona. I belong to the forest. I am a dryad."
Simon's education had been something neglected, and he had no idea what
a dryad might be. But he was always superstitious, and now suddenly
suspicious.
"Are you a fairy?" he gasped, fearfully.
Argathona shook her head, and waved the myrtle-bough as if to dissipate
his fears.
"I have naught to do with the fairies, nor they with me. I am the
daughter of a dryad, but my father was a mortal man."
"Like me," Simon suggested. Simon plumed himself on his good looks, but
the dryad disagreed.
"I do not think he can have been like you, for my mother said he was
beautiful."
Simplicity's frank arrow quivered in vanity's ample target. Simon
swallowed an oath.
"Oh, oh," he thought, "this is some rustic minx who is making game of
me. Well, I'll humor her whimsy; perhaps we may end with a kiss." He
went on aloud, "When were you born, bonnie lassie?"
"Long ago," the girl answered, gravely, "when the old gods still dwelt
in Hellas."
Simon's bulk was as full of stifled laughter as a pillow is full of
feathers.
"Perhaps you remember the old gods," he hinted, with a grin. The girl's
calm eyes widened with wonder at his folly.
"Assuredly I do. How could I forget my earliest friends? They loved me
so dearly that though I was the child of a mortal they gave me the gift
of immortal youth."
Simon gave a long whistle.
"So you are immortal?"
"My mother was a true dryad," Argathona answered, "born in a tree,
living the tree's life, and dying when the tree died. But she loved an
Athenian and bore me, and as there was no tree in all the woodland that
I could call my own, Zeus gave me this gift to live forever so long as
a tree should grow in Greece."
"And your parents?" Simon inquired, politely. He was so taken with the
girl that he would not quarrel with her crazy tale.
"My father died long ages ago," Argathona said, "when I was a baby. He
died in fight upon the plain of Troy, died by the hand of Paris, the
lover of Helena. Hermes brought the news to my mother here in the wood,
and my mother wept sorely and sighed in vain to die. This was long ago,
long before the time came for the gods to go."
She sighed as she spoke, as one who lingers with tender, pathetic
memories. Simon continued his humoring, though the girl was flagrantly
insane.
"When was that, pray you?"
"I cannot truly tell you. I was but a child, and had seen no more than
some few hundred summers. They were banished, all the beautiful gods,
into the twilight, into the Hollow Land. They came to say us farewell,
the great gods, the Cloud-Compeller and his queen, and the Lord of the
Sun and the Lady of the Moon and sea-born Aphrodite and Virgin Athena
and all the Olympians with them. They rode away in a noble company, and
I stood with my mother under the shade of my mother's oak and watched
them as they went."
This was more than Simon could patiently stomach, and he let some
laughter slip.
"Of course you expect me to believe all this?" he chuckled,
irreverently. The dryad answered him tranquilly.
"Why should I deceive you, mortal? My mother could not leave her oak,
so the gods would have taken me to dwell in the Twilight Land, but I
would not leave my mother, and we lost the adorable gods and lingered
here in the greenwood. Here my mother taught me all the woodland arts,
woodcraft, and glamour, and the speech of the beasts and the meaning of
what the birds sing and the trees whisper, and the properties of the
plants for heal and for hurt, and how to weave and spin and be familiar
with the stars--and all the things that it is needful for a dryad to
know. But soon my mother vanished as a mist of the morning, for the oak
grew old and withered, and its time had come and hers. I have lived
here all alone ever since."
"All alone!" Simon echoed, sceptically, and "All alone!" the white
child repeated simply. There was no sound of sadness in her voice, no
shadow of sadness in her eyes. She spoke of strange things as naturally
as Simon would have talked of his breakfast or his boots or any other
workaday matter. Cunning leered in Simon's eyes, cunning lurked in
Simon's voice as he chuckled his next question:
"No mortal lover?"
Argathona answered him with a grave simplicity that took the sting out
of his sneer.
"I have never left this greenwood; I have never longed to leave it.
What use were it for me to make friends with your race who die in a
day?"
"Excuse me," Simon interpolated; for Simon was thirty years old, and
hoped to live to ninety, but the dryad took no heed of his interruption.
"For many generations few mortals have come to this forest; none, I
think, since Alexander died."
"That was not the day before yesterday, neither," Simon commented.
He was wondering if the maid were truly mad or merely a piece of
mystification. Anyway, she was very fair, the grass was soft, the night
air kindly, a rising moon smiled through the trees, and Simon was
always ripe for love-making.
"Sweeting," he began, jovially, "if you have never loved mortal man it
is high time that you quarrel with this continence, and though I do not
greatly credit your tale, I am ready to woo you merrily."
It is always disconcerting to a swain, be he sentimentalist or
sensualist, to find that his proposals of passion are entertained with
hilarity. So it was with Simon when the girl greeted him with a peal of
the cheerfulest laughter that ever had rattled about his ears, while
she swayed on her shapely legs like a bell-flower to a breeze. So
children laugh at their play; so gods laugh at the muddles of mortals,
bright, sweet, whole-hearted laughter, brilliant as the songs of birds.
"You foolish Bœotian," she said, when a pause in her laughter left
her breath to speak, "you do not think I would welcome your wooing?"
And once again the musical gusts of merriment shook her, and her eyes
danced and her whole body trembled with delight.
Simon glowered at her, very red-faced, very sulky, very hot on his
purpose. He had overcrowed coy reluctance ere this.
"Welcome or no welcome," he cried, "I mean to clip you in my arms. The
forest is silent, you are my prize, you shall follow your mother's
example."
He made a step towards the girl as he spoke, with his face as red as
a peony, and stretched out his big, brown hands to seize her white
body. To his surprise she made no effort to evade him, and for one
wild moment it was pleasure to clasp her soft body close to his; but
before he had time to turn his clasp into an embrace he found himself,
to his bewilderment, plucked from the ground as if he had been caught
in the clutch of a whirlwind, and then in another astonishing instant
he realized that the maiden had flung him from her as if his mighty
mass of manhood had been no bulkier than a cradled doll, and that he
was travelling rapidly through the air towards his mother earth. Then
he countered the ground with a prodigious thump that seemed to squelch
the breath out of his lungs and to shake every bone and strain every
sinew of his body. Sick and dizzy and all of an ache he lay on his back
on the grass, rigid as a man in a catalepsy, and staring in unfamiliar
terror at the maiden, whose beautiful face was suddenly fierce with
anger.
"You fool," she cried, "learn that I rule in this forest. I have dealt
thus gently with you for this once"--Simon groaned inwardly as she said
this, and wondered if he had a whole bone left in his body--"but if you
vex me again I shall be tempted to do you some hurt."
Simon made an effort to move, and the effort hurt him sorely, and he
marvelled at the girl's ideas of gentleness and hurting. The Olympian
sternness of Argathona's brow softened a little at the sight of that
supine image of misery.
"Will you promise to offend no more?" she asked, and Simon cried back
at her, speaking from the very core of his heart:
"I promise."
The dryad's frown faded, her serene calm rekindled.
"You will do well to keep your word," she said, merrily, "for my sinews
are knit with the vigor of the Age of Gold, and I have no need to fear
the children of men."
"As to that," Simon protested, as stoutly as he could under the
somewhat undignified conditions, "I have my failings, it may be, but I
am an honest soldier, and I never broke my word in my life."