CHAPTER XXVII. THE SILENT FOUNTAIN

I turned and followed the spotted leopardess, catching but one glimpse

of her as she tore up the brow of the hill to the gate of the palace.

When I reached the entrance-hall, the princess was just throwing the

robe around her which she had left on the floor. The blood had ceased to

flow from her wounds, and had dried in the wind of her flight.

When she saw me, a flash of anger crossed her face, and she turned her

head aside. Then, with an attempted smile, she looked at me, and said,

“I have met with a small accident! Happening to hear that the cat-woman

was again in the city, I went down to send her away. But she had one of

her horrid creatures with her: it sprang upon me, and had its claws in

my neck before I could strike it!”

She gave a shiver, and I could not help pitying her, although I knew

she lied, for her wounds were real, and her face reminded me of how she

looked in the cave. My heart began to reproach me that I had let her

fight unaided, and I suppose I looked the compassion I felt.

“Child of folly!” she said, with another attempted smile, “--not crying,

surely!--Wait for me here; I am going into the black hall for a moment.

I want you to get me something for my scratches.”

But I followed her close. Out of my sight I feared her.

The instant the princess entered, I heard a buzzing sound as of many

low voices, and, one portion after another, the assembly began to be

shiftingly illuminated, as by a ray that went travelling from spot to

spot. Group after group would shine out for a space, then sink back into

the general vagueness, while another part of the vast company would grow

momently bright.

Some of the actions going on when thus illuminated, were not unknown to

me; I had been in them, or had looked on them, and so had the princess:

present with every one of them I now saw her. The skull-headed dancers

footed the grass in the forest-hall: there was the princess looking in

at the door! The fight went on in the Evil Wood: there was the princess

urging it! Yet I was close behind her all the time, she standing

motionless, her head sunk on her bosom. The confused murmur continued,

the confused commotion of colours and shapes; and still the ray went

shifting and showing. It settled at last on the hollow in the heath, and

there was the princess, walking up and down, and trying in vain to wrap

the vapour around her! Then first I was startled at what I saw: the old

librarian walked up to her, and stood for a moment regarding her; she

fell; her limbs forsook her and fled; her body vanished.

A wild shriek rang through the echoing place, and with the fall of her

eidolon, the princess herself, till then standing like a statue in front

of me, fell heavily, and lay still. I turned at once and went out: not

again would I seek to restore her! As I stood trembling beside the

cage, I knew that in the black ellipsoid I had been in the brain of the

princess!--I saw the tail of the leopardess quiver once.

While still endeavouring to compose myself, I heard the voice of the

princess beside me.

“Come now,” she said; “I will show you what I want you to do for me.”

She led the way into the court. I followed in dazed compliance.

The moon was near the zenith, and her present silver seemed brighter

than the gold of the absent sun. She brought me through the trees to the

tallest of them, the one in the centre. It was not quite like the rest,

for its branches, drawing their ends together at the top, made a clump

that looked from beneath like a fir-cone. The princess stood close under

it, gazing up, and said, as if talking to herself,

“On the summit of that tree grows a tiny blossom which would at once

heal my scratches! I might be a dove for a moment and fetch it, but I

see a little snake in the leaves whose bite would be worse to a dove

than the bite of a tiger to me!--How I hate that cat-woman!”

She turned to me quickly, saying with one of her sweetest smiles,

“Can you climb?”

The smile vanished with the brief question, and her face changed to a

look of sadness and suffering. I ought to have left her to suffer, but

the way she put her hand to her wounded neck went to my heart.

I considered the tree. All the way up to the branches, were projections

on the stem like the remnants on a palm of its fallen leaves.

“I can climb that tree,” I answered.

“Not with bare feet!” she returned.

In my haste to follow the leopardess disappearing, I had left my sandals

in my room.

“It is no matter,” I said; “I have long gone barefoot!”

Again I looked at the tree, and my eyes went wandering up the stem until

my sight lost itself in the branches. The moon shone like silvery

foam here and there on the rugged bole, and a little rush of wind went

through the top with a murmurous sound as of water falling softly into

water. I approached the tree to begin my ascent of it. The princess

stopped me.

“I cannot let you attempt it with your feet bare!” she insisted. “A fall

from the top would kill you!”

“So would a bite from the snake!” I answered--not believing, I confess,

that there was any snake.

“It would not hurt YOU!” she replied. “--Wait a moment.”

She tore from her garment the two wide borders that met in front, and

kneeling on one knee, made me put first my left foot, then my right on

the other, and bound them about with the thick embroidered strips.

“You have left the ends hanging, princess!” I said.

“I have nothing to cut them off with; but they are not long enough to

get entangled,” she replied.

I turned to the tree, and began to climb.

Now in Bulika the cold after sundown was not so great as in certain

other parts of the country--especially about the sexton’s cottage; yet

when I had climbed a little way, I began to feel very cold, grew still

colder as I ascended, and became coldest of all when I got among the

branches. Then I shivered, and seemed to have lost my hands and feet.

There was hardly any wind, and the branches did not sway in the

least, yet, as I approached the summit, I became aware of a peculiar

unsteadiness: every branch on which I placed foot or laid hold, seemed

on the point of giving way. When my head rose above the branches

near the top, and in the open moonlight I began to look about for the

blossom, that instant I found myself drenched from head to foot. The

next, as if plunged in a stormy water, I was flung about wildly, and

felt myself sinking. Tossed up and down, tossed this way and tossed that

way, rolled over and over, checked, rolled the other way and tossed up

again, I was sinking lower and lower. Gasping and gurgling and choking,

I fell at last upon a solid bottom.

“I told you so!” croaked a voice in my ear.