The Waters of Edera | Page 3

the

song of the river louder on her ear. The heath ceased to grow within a
few yards of the stream and was replaced by various water plants and
acacia thickets; she slid down the banks between the stems and alighted
on her bare feet where the sand was soft and the water-dock grew thick.
She looked up and down the water; there was no one in sight, nothing
but the banks rosehued with the bloom of the heather, and, beyond the
opposite shore, in the distance, the tender amethystine hues of the
mountains. The water was generally low, leaving the stretches of sand
and of shingle visible, but it was still deep in many parts.
She stripped herself and went down into it, and washed the blood
which had by this time caked upon her flesh. It seemed a pity, she
thought, to sully with that dusky stain this pure, bright, shining stream;
but she had no other way to rid herself of it, and she had in all the
world no other clothes than these poor woollen rags.
Her heart was still sore for the fate of the conquered ram; and her eyes
filled again with tears as she washed his blood off her in the gay
running current. But the water was soothing and fresh, the sun shone on
its bright surface; the comfrey and fig-wart blew in the breeze, the
heather smell filled the atmosphere.
She was only a child, and her spirits rose, and she capered about in the
shallows, and flung the water over her head, and danced to her own
reflection in it, and forgot her sorrow. Then she washed her petticoats
as well as she could, having nothing but water alone, and all the while
she was as naked as a Naiad, and the sun smiled on her brown, thin,
childish body as it smiled on a stem of plaintain or on the plumage of a
coot.
Then when she had washed her skirt she spread it out on the sand to dry,
and sat down beside it, for the heat to bake her limbs after her long bath.
There was no one, and there was nothing, in sight; if any came near she
could hide under the great dock leaves until such should have passed. It
was high noon, and the skirt of wool and the skirt of hemp grew hot
and steamed under the vertical rays; she was soon as dry as the shingles
from which the water had receded for months. She sat with her hands
clasped round her updrawn knees, and her head grew heavy with the

want of slumber, but she would not sleep, though it was the hour of
sleep. Some one might pass by and steal her clothes, she thought, and
how or when would she ever get others?
When the skirt was quite dried, the blood stains still showed on it; they
were no longer red, but looked like the marks from the sand. She tied it
on round her waist and her shirt over it, and wound an old crimson sash
round both. Then she took up her little bundle in which were the
wooden cup and a broken comb, and some pieces of hempen cloth and
a small loaf of maize bread, and went on along the water, wading and
hopping in it, as the water-wagtails did, jumping from stone to stone,
and sometimes sinking up to her knees in a hole.
She had no idea where she would rest at night, or where she would get
anything to eat; but that reflection scarcely weighed on her; she slept
well enough under stacks or in outhouses, and she was used to hunger.
So long as no one meddled with her she was content. The weather was
fine and the country was quiet. Only she was sorry for the dead ram. By
this time they would have hung him up by his heels to a tree, and have
pulled the skin off his body.
She was sorry; but she jumped along merrily in the water, as a
kingfisher does, and scarcely even wondered where its course would
lead her.
At a bend in it she came to a spot where a young man was seated
amongst the bulrushes, watching his fishing net.
"Aie!" she cried with a shrill cry of alarm, like a bird who sees a fowler.
She stopped short in her progress; the water at that moment was up to
her knees. With both hands she held up her petticoat to save it from
another wetting; her little bundle was balanced on her head, the light
shone in her great brown eyes. The youth turned and saw her.
She was a very young girl, thirteen at most; her small flat breasts were
those