love. And she understood, in some sub-current of thought, why Suffragettes
forced men to use violence upon them; it is but a repressed sexual instinct
breaking out in race-remembrance of marriage by capture.
But more dangerous even than such ideas were many which she learned to
group under a name which one of them gave her. It was not a name that one
can transcribe in any alphabet, but it was exactly like a very short slight
cough, hardly more than a clearing of the throat, a quite voluntary cough of
the apologetic type. She had only to make this little noise, and immediately a
certain landscape opened before her. She was walking on a narrow ribbon of
white path that wound up a very gentle slope. On either side of her were
broad rough screes, with sparse grass and scrub peeping between the stones.
The path led up to a pass between two hills, and near the crest of the ridge
were two towers, one on either side of the path, as if for defence. These
towers were squat and very ugly, with no windows, but mere slits for archery,
and they had no sign of habitation. Yet she was quite sure that Something
lived there, and she was conscious of the most passionate anxiety to visit
whoever it might be. The moon, always in her wane, shone bright above the
path, but little of her illumination extended beyond those narrow limits. [257]
Upon the screes she could see only faint shadows, apparently of some
prowling beast of the jackal or hyena type, for she could hear howling and
laughing, with now and again fierce snarls and cries as though a fight were in
progress "in that fell cirque." But nothing ever crossed the path itself, and she
would walk along it with a sense of the most curious lightness and pleasure.
It was often her intention to go to the towers; but always she was deterred
from doing so by the Old Lady.
It was at a sharp turn of the path round an immense boulder that this
individual usually appeared, coming from a cleft in its face. On the first
occasion she had herself greeted the Old Lady, asking if she could assist her.
For the Old Lady was seated on the ground, working very hard.
"May I help you?" said Iliel, "in whatever you are doing?"
The Old Lady sighed very bitterly, and said that she was trying to make a
fire.
"But you haven't got any sticks."
"We never use sticks to make a fire — in this country."
The last three words were in sing-song.
"Then what do you burn?"
Anything round, and anything red, and anything ripe — in this country."