The Hermit and the Wild Woman | Page 8

eat
before sleeping, for his heart hungered more than his body; and his salt
tears made the honey-comb bitter.

III

ON the fourteenth day he came to the valley below his cliff, and saw
the walls of his native town against the sky. He was footsore and heavy
of heart, for his long pilgrimage had brought him only weariness and
humiliation, and as no drop of rain had fallen he knew that his garden
must have perished. So he climbed the cliff heavily and reached his
cave at the angelus.
But there a great wonder awaited him. For though the scant earth of the
hillside was parched and crumbling, his garden-soil reeked with
moisture, and his plants had shot up, fresh and glistening, to a height
they had never before attained. More wonderful still, the tendrils of the
gourd had been trained about his door, and kneeling down he saw that
the earth had been loosened between the rows of sprouting vegetables,
and that every leaf sparkled with drops as though the rain had but
newly ceased. Then it appeared to the Hermit that he beheld a miracle,
but doubting his own deserts he refused to believe himself worthy of
such grace, and went within doors to ponder on what had befallen him.
And on his bed of rushes he saw a young woman sleeping, clad in an
outlandish garment, with strange amulets about her neck.
The sight was very terrifying to the Hermit, for he recalled how often
the demon, in tempting the Desert Fathers, had taken the form of a
woman for their undoing; but he reflected that, since there was nothing
pleasing to him in the sight of this female, who was brown as a nut and

lean with wayfaring, he ran no great danger in looking at her. At first
he took her for a wandering Egyptian, but as he looked he perceived,
among the heathen charms, an Agnus Dei in her bosom; and this so
surprised him that he bent over and called on her to wake.
She sprang up with a start, but seeing the Hermit's gown and staff, and
his face above her, lay quiet and said to him: "I have watered your
garden daily in return for the beans and oil that I took from your store."
"Who are you, and how do you come here?" asked the Hermit.
She said: "I am a wild woman and live in the woods."
And when he pressed her again to tell him why she had sought shelter
in his cave, she said that the land to the south, whence she came, was
full of armed companies and bands of marauders, and that great license
and bloodshed prevailed there; and this the Hermit knew to be true, for
he had heard of it on his homeward journey. The Wild Woman went on
to tell him that she had been hunted through the woods like an animal
by a band of drunken men-at-arms, Lansknechts from the north by their
barbarous dress and speech, and at length, starving and spent, had come
on his cave and hidden herself from her pursuers. "For," she said, "I
fear neither wild beasts nor the woodland people, charcoal burners,
Egyptians, wandering minstrels or chapmen; even the highway robbers
do not touch me, because I am poor and brown; but these armed men
flown with blood and wine are more terrible than wolves and tigers."
And the Hermit's heart melted, for he thought of his little sister lying
with her throat slit across the altar steps, and of the scenes of blood and
rapine from which he had fled away into the wilderness. So he said to
the stranger that it was not meet he should house her in his cave, but
that he would send a messenger to the town across the valley, and beg a
pious woman there to give her lodging and work in her household.
"For," said he, "I perceive by the blessed image about your neck that
you are not a heathen wilding, but a child of Christ, though so far astray
from Him in the desert."
"Yes," she said, "I am a Christian, and know as many prayers as you;
but I will never set foot in city walls again, lest I be caught and put
back into the convent."
"What," cried the Hermit with a start, "you are a runagate nun?" And he
crossed himself, and again thought of the demon.
She smiled and said: "It is true I was once a cloistered woman, but I

will never willingly be one again. Now drive me forth if you like; but I
cannot go far, for I have a wounded foot, which I got in climbing the
cliff with water for your garden." And she pointed