The Robber Bridegroom (9 page)

122 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM

loser of more than my sense and my money once,

if it had not been for Jamie Lockhart."

"And did the priest marry you then?" Salome asked, and she bent down over Rosamond and looked ready to gobble her up.

But Rosamond said, "Yes, then Father O'Con-nell said the marriage for my husband and me, and the whole house was decorated with flowers in gold vases," and her voice was as clear as a bell.

"It is strange that he remembers nothing of this," said Clement to himself. "He must have thought he had been only to fairyland, with all the glitter about, and never mentioned it."

There has to be a first time for everything, and at that moment the stepmother gave Rosamond a look of true friendship, as if Rosamond too had got her man by unholy means. But Rosamond began to wilt then, like a flower cut and left in the sun.

So the next day Salome got Rosamond away alone and they were sitting by the well, like a blood mother and daughter.

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 123

"My child/' said the stepmother, "do I understand that you have never seen your husband's face?"

"Never," said Rosamond. "But I am sure he must be very handsome, for he is so strong."

"That signifies nothing," said the stepmother, "and works neither way. I fear, my dear, that you feel in your bosom a passion for a low and scandalous being, a beast who would like to let you wait on him and serve him, but will not do you the common courtesy of letting you see his face. It can only be for the reason that he is some kind of monster."

And she talked on until she saw the pride and triumph fading from Rosamond with every breath she took. For Rosamond did not think the trickery went so deep in her stepmother that it did not come to an end, but made her solid like an image of stone in the garden; and her time had come to believe her.

So Salome drew so close to Rosamond that they could look down the well and see one shadow, and she whispered in her ear, "There is

one way to find out what your husband looks

like, and if you want me to tell you: ask me/'

"What way is that?'' asked Rosamond, for at last she had to know.

"It is a little recipe, my dear, for removing herry stains," said Salome, "and there are no berry stains in the world so obstinate that this brew will not rub them out/'

"What brew is that?" asked Rosamond, for she had to learn.

"Pay close attention, and stamp it on your brain," said the stepmother, "so you can remember it until you get home."

Then she repeated the recipe for removing berry stains from the face, as follows: Take three fresh eggs and break them into clear rain water. Stir until this is mixed, then boil it on the stove. Take the curd and set it off to cool. Add a little saffron, a little rue, and a little pepper. Throw into a quart of drinking-whisky and churn it up and down until it foams. Sponge it on, and the stains will go away.

"Remember that," said Salome. "It can't fail."

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 125

And then she reached down and pulled Rosamond's own mother's locket out of her little pouch and dangled it up before the girl.

"You forgot this, in your haste to leave/' she said. "And you had better take it this time, for you might need it/' Then she put it around Rosamond's neck and fastened it with her own hands.

She advised her to take one of the tomahawks with her also, to protect herself with, in case her husband should turn out to be too horrible to look at; but Piosamond was not that far gone that she would take it.

Then the girl thanked her for all her trouble and advice, and embraced her around the neck, and kissed her father, and said she intended to go back to her husband at once, sooner than she was expected, so as to surprise him.

"How happy he will be," said Clement. "And poor Jamie Lockhart!"

"Or how unhappy he will be, one or the other," said Salome, and then she ran in at the last moment to write the recipe for removing berry juice stains down on paper with her fine

126 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM black quill, in case Rosamond might not remember everything that went into it.

While she was out of the way, it was Clement's time to speak to Rosamond alone, and he asked her about her husband for the last time.

"If being a bandit were his breadth and scope, I should find him and kill him for sure/' said he. "But since in addition he loves my daughter, he must be not the one man, but two, and I should be afraid of killing the second. For all things are double, and this should keep us from taking liberties with the outside world, and acting too quickly to finish things off. All things are divided in half—night and day, the soul and body, and sorrow and joy and youth and age, and sometimes I wonder if even my own wife has not been the one person all the time, and I loved her beauty so well at the beginning that it is only now that the ugliness has struck through to beset me like a madness. And perhaps after the riding and robbing and burning and assault is over with this man you love, he will step out of it all like a beastly skin, and surprise you with his gentle-

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 127 ness. For this reason, I will wait and see, but it breaks my heart not to have seen with my own eyes what door you are walking into and what your life has turned out to be."

Then Salome came running with the recipe written out and folded. "Hold this in your hand/' she said.

So Rosamond took it and set out.

"Shall I walk part of the way with you?" her father called, but she went on alone, into the woods.

This time, Rosamond was afraid as she ran along, and she stumbled over the stones and was caught by the sharp thorns. She turned and looked behind her all the way, as if she were frightened of being followed by a beast which would tear her apart. A little whirlwind blew over the grass and pulled her hair down and tangled it with twigs. The little ravine was cold and gray, the mist lay on it, and the stream ran choked with yellow weeds, and the squirrels were shrieking through the woods.

128 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM

At last she came to the lane between the two rows of cedars with the little house there at the end, and the door standing open and dark as before, but now scattered with fallen leaves. So she began walking up the lane, holding the little written recipe in her hand and wearing the locket around her neck, and she said, "If my mother could see me now, her heart would break/'

But when she said that, a cloud rolled over the sky and a cold wind sprang up like Wintertime, and just as she came to the house the yellow lightning gave a flash like swords dueling over the rooftop. There at the window hung the raven in the cage, which had gone all rusty, and Rosamond had forgotten all about him. So he

said,

"Turn back, my \)onny y

Turn away home." But in she went.

There in the dark hall she stood and looked through the door. All the bandits were there

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 129 except her husband, and there was a strange bandit in his place, standing in the middle of the room while they lay on the floor and laughed at him. He was the ugliest man she had ever seen in her life, and she thought her heart would stop beating and her breath would stop in her throat before she could hide down behind the barrel, safe out of sight.

The whisky and the wine were going round, and the bandits were all as dirty and filthy as if she had left them for a year instead of a day. The whole house was tumbled and wrecked, with everything topsy-turvy and the rats back inside and running about unharmed. All her hard work had gone for nothing, and it was as if she had never done it.

The strange bandit was the Little Harp, who had moved in to live with Jamie Lockhart, not failing to bring his little trunk, which was there beside him. And all the men were lying about him and listening to him as if he were their chief, and nobody spoke of their real chief, or asked where he could be.

The jug went round from hand to hand, and soon all the robbers were drunk and the Little Harp was the drunkest of all.

'Where is the girl that you have here?" he cried. "Where do you keep her? Bring her in and give her to me!''

And then all the robbers laughed in great good spirits at the way the Little Harp asked for the girl that belonged to the king of the bandits, which was a thing they had often wished they could do themselves.

"She is away on a visit," they told the Little Harp, "and besides, she belongs to our chief."

"But your chief belongs to me!" cried the Little Harp. "He is bound over to me body and soul, because I saw what I saw and know what I know, and for that I may have his woman and all"

Then he set up such a din to have her that one of the robbers went out and brought in another young girl, but with long black hair, and pushed her through the circle into the Little Harp's arms.

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 131

"There she is!*' they said to quiet him. And for a joke, it was an Indian girl.

He asked them first if they would swear she was not out of the gully but the true bride of the bandit king, and they all swore so long and so hard that Rosamond herself was almost ready to believe that she stood out in the room under the robbers' eyes and was not hiding down behind the barrel.

So the Little Harp said, "What will I do with her first? Bring her the Black Drink!"

The Black Drink was an Indian drink, and some people called it the Sleepy Drink, because whoever tasted it fell over like a dead man with his eyes rolled back, and could not be roused by anything in the world for three days.

So the girl fought and screamed, but they held the Black Drink to her lips and made her drink it and she fell over like the dead, with her hair and her arms swinging in front of her.

All the roomful laughed to see her, and the Little Harp took out his sharp knife and said, "Next I will cut off her little finger, for it offends

i 3 2, THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM me," and he cut off her wedding finger, and it jumped in the air and rolled across the floor into Rosamond's lap. But though she thought she would die of fright, Rosamond stayed where she was, as still as a mouse, and none of them saw where the finger went or hunted for it. for it had no ring on it.

"And now I will teach her the end of her life, for that is the thing she comes here lacking/' said the Little Harp, and he threw the girl across the long table, among the plates and all, where the remains of all the meals lay where they were left, with the knives and forks sticking in them, and flung himself upon her before their eyes.

"You have killed her now/' they said, and it was true: she was dead.

But just at that moment there was the sound of horse's hoofs, and next a terrible shout at the door, and Jamie Lockhart came in.

"What has he done?" he asked, and pointed to the Little Harp where he stood bragging among them all.

"I have killed your bride, and that is the first

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 133 payment," said the Little Harp, holding up the sharp knife. "And the next thing, I will speak out your name and cast evil upon it."

"No, you will not!" shouted Jamie, and for the second time he leaped upon the Little Harp and with his two hands choked the wind out of him for a while.

"Take him away," he told the others, "for I will not have hifti sleeping with me. Roll him down the hill and let him lie, though if the wolves don't touch him, he'll be back with me tomorrow."

So the other bandits carried the Little Harp out and pitched him over the bushes, for Jamie still would not put an end to him: something would not let him have that satisfaction yet.

"Now what has he done?" Jamie cried, and he ran to the dead girl stretched on the table, but when he lifted up her hair it was black, anc( he saw it was the wrong girl. Then he could not speak at all, but fell upon his bed.

Then Rosamond came out from behind the barrel, and touched him where he lay, and told him she had returned, to lie by his side.

But when she woke up out of her first sleep, she looked at him dreaming there with his face stained dark with the berry juice, and she was torn as she had never been before with an anguish to know his name and his true appearance. For the coming of death and danger had only driven her into her own heart, and it was no matter what he had told her, she could wait no longer to learn the identity of her true love.

Up she got and away she crept, and made up the brew which would wipe away the stains. Then she crept back with some of it on a bit of rag. She took Jamie's head on her lap while he still slept and dreamed, and held up the lighted candle to see by, and set to her task. Lo and behold, the brew worked.

Jamie Lockhart opened his eyes and looked at her. The candle gave one long beam of light, which traveled between their two faces.

"You are Jamie Lockhart!" she said.

"And you are Clement Musgrove's silly daughter!" said he.

Then he rose out of his bed.

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 135

"Good-by," he said. "For you did not trust me, and did not love me, for you wanted only to know who I am. Now I cannot stay in the house with you/'

And going straight to the window, he climbed out through it and in another moment was gone.

Then Rosamond tried to follow and climbed out after him, but she fell in the dust.

At the same moment, she felt the stirring within her that sent her a fresh piece of news.

And finally a cloud went over the moon, and all was dark night.

T

IHE NEXT MORNING, when Rosamond came to her senses, she was still lying where she had fallen. This angered her enough, but then from her own bedroom window a head looked out. It was Goat.

' Who are you?" she said. "Goat," he said.

"Why are you here?"

136

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 137

"I work here/' said Goat, "and for the little

locket you wear around your neck I will give you

some news."

"This locket is all I have left in the world," said the poor girl. "And I already know everything and can learn nothing new."

"Do not be so sad as all that," said Goat, "and I will sing you a song."