The White Doe · III

Some two or three hours must have passed since the young huntsman had been snoring soundly, relishing to the full one of the most peaceful sleeps of his life, when suddenly he half-opened his eyes with a start, and half-sat up, still full of that stupor with which one returns to consciousness all of a sudden after a profound slumber.

In the gusts of the air and mingling with the faint murmurs of the night, he thought he perceived a strange murmur of slender, sweet, and mysterious voices talking among themselves, laughing or singing each for their own part and something different, forming a hubbub as loud and confused as that of the birds awakening at the first ray of the sun among the foliage of a poplar grove.

This strange murmur was only heard for an instant, and then everything returned to silence.

“Without a doubt I was dreaming of the nonsense the lad told us,—exclaimed Garcés, rubbing his eyes very calmly, and in the firm persuasion that whatever he had believed he heard was nothing more than that vague trace of a daydream which remains upon waking in the imagination, as the last cadence of a melody remains in the ear after the final note has trembled and died away. And mastered by the invincible languor that weighed down his limbs, he was about to rest his head upon the grass once more, when he heard again the distant echo of those mysterious voices, which accompanying themselves with the murmur of the air, the water, and the leaves, sang thus:”

CHORUS

“The archman who kept watch at the top of the tower has leaned his heavy head against the wall.

“The poacher who hoped to surprise the doe has been surprised by sleep.

“The shepherd who awaits the day consulting the stars, sleeps now and will sleep until dawn.

“Queen of the water-nymphs, follow our steps.

“Come rock yourself in the branches of the willows over the face of the water.

“Come intoxicate yourself with the perfume of the violets opening among the shadows.

“Come enjoy the night, which is the day of spirits.”

While the soft notes of that delightful music floated in the air, Garcés remained motionless. After it had faded away, with great caution he parted the branches a little, and not without experiencing some startle he saw the does appear as they came down the mountain towards the river’s pool in a troop, bounding over the brushwood with incredible lightness at times, stopping as if to listen at others, playing among themselves, now hiding in the thicket, now stepping out again onto the path.

Ahead of her companions, more agile, prettier, more playful and cheerful than all of them, leaping, running, stopping and running again, in such a way that she seemed scarcely to touch the ground with her feet, went the white doe, whose strange color stood out like a fantastic light against the dark background of the trees.

Although the young man felt inclined to see something supernatural and marvelous in everything around him, the truth of the matter was that, setting aside the momentary hallucination that for an instant troubled his senses, feigning music, murmurs, and words, neither in the shape of the does nor in their movements, nor in the short grunts with which they seemed to call one another, was there anything with which a practical hunter in this kind of nocturnal expedition should not already be very familiar.

As he cast off the first impression, Garcés began to understand it thus, and laughing inwardly at his disbelief and his fear, from that moment on he occupied himself solely with ascertaining, taking into account the direction they were following, the exact spot where the does were.

His calculation made, he took the crossbow between his teeth, and crawling like a snake behind the mastic bushes, went to place himself some forty paces farther from the spot where he had been before. Once settled in his new hiding place, he waited long enough for the does to be already inside the river, in order to make the shot surer. Scarcely did that peculiar noise begin to be heard which is produced by water beaten into blows or violently stirred, when Garcés began to rise little by little and with the greatest precautions, resting on the ground first on the tips of his fingers, and then on one of his knees.

Once on his feet, and making sure by feel that the weapon was ready, he took a step forward, stretched his neck out over the bushes to command a view of the pool, and leveled the crossbow; but at the very point when, alongside the crossbow, he cast his gaze in search of the object he was to wound, an imperceptible and involuntary cry of astonishment escaped his lips.

The moon, which had been rising slowly across the wide horizon, was motionless and as if suspended in the middle of the sky. Its sweet clarity flooded the grove, made the restless surface of the river gleam, and made objects visible as if through a blue gauze.

The does had disappeared.

In their place, filled with stupor and almost with fear, Garcés saw a group of most beautiful women, some of whom were entering the water playfully, while the others were finishing shedding the light tunics that still hid the treasure of their forms from his covetous sight.

In those brief and broken morning dreams, rich in smiling and voluptuous images, diaphanous and celestial dreams like the light that then begins to peer through the white curtains of the bed, there has never been a twenty-year-old imagination that sketched with the colors of fantasy a scene resembling the one presented at that moment to the eyes of the astonished Garcés.

Already stripped of their tunics and their veils of a thousand colors, which stood out against the background suspended from the trees or carelessly thrown upon the carpet of the turf, the maidens roamed at their leisure through the grove, forming picturesque groups, and entered and left the water, making it leap in luminous sparks over the flowers of the bank like a fine shower of dew.

Here one of them, white as a lamb’s fleece, thrust her fair head out among the green and floating leaves of an aquatic plant, of which she seemed a half-opened flower, whose flexible stem was guessed at rather than seen trembling beneath the infinite circles of light of the ripples.

Another yonder, with her hair loose over her shoulders, swayed suspended from the branch of a willow over the river’s current, and her small rose-colored feet made a silver streak as they brushed the smooth surface. While these remained still reclining at the water’s edge with sleepy blue eyes, voluptuously breathing in the perfume of the flowers and lightly shivering at the touch of the cool breeze, those others danced in a dizzy round, capriciously intertwining their hands, letting their heads fall back with delightful abandon, and striking the ground with their feet in alternating cadence.

It was impossible to follow them in their agile movements, impossible to embrace with a single glance the infinite details of the picture they formed, some running, playing, and chasing one another with merry laughter through the labyrinth of the trees; others cleaving the water like a swan, and breaking the current with their raised bosoms; others, finally, plunging into the depths, where they remained for a long time only to return to the surface, bringing one of those strange flowers that are born hidden in the bed of the deep waters.

The gaze of the astonished huntsman wandered absorbed from one side to the other, not knowing where to fix itself, until seated beneath a canopy of greenery that seemed to serve her as a dais, and surrounded by a group of women each more beautiful than the last, who were helping her strip off her very light garments, he thought he saw the object of his hidden adorations, the daughter of the noble Don Dionís, the incomparable Constanza.

Moving from surprise to surprise, the enamored youth no longer dared give credit even to the testimony of his senses, and believed himself under the influence of a fascinating and deceptive dream.

Nevertheless, he struggled in vain to persuade himself that everything he saw was the effect of the derangement of his imagination; because the more he looked at her, and the more leisurely, the more he convinced himself that that woman was Constanza.

There could be no doubt, no: hers were those dark eyes shaded by long eyelashes, which scarcely sufficed to soften the light of her pupils; hers that abundant blonde hair which, after crowning her brow, spilled over her white bosom and rounded shoulders like a cascade of gold; hers, in short, that graceful neck supporting her languid head, slightly inclined like a flower yielding to the weight of dewdrops, and those voluptuous forms that he had perhaps dreamed of, and those hands resembling bunches of jasmine, and those tiny feet, comparable only to two patches of snow that the sun has been unable to melt, and which in the morning whiten among the greenery.

At the moment Constanza stepped out of the grove, without any veil to hide the hidden treasures of her beauty from her lover’s eyes, her companions began once more to sing these words with a most sweet melody:

CHORUS

“Spirits of the air, dwellers in the luminous ether, come wrapped in a shred of silvery mist.

”Invisible sylphs, leave the chalice of the half-open lilies, and come in your mother-of-pearl chariots harnessed with flying butterflies.

”Naiads of the springs, abandon the mossy bed and fall upon us in a fine rain of pearls.

”Emerald beetles, fireflies of fire, black butterflies, come!

”And come ye all, spirits of the night, come humming like a swarm of insects of light and gold.

”Come, for already the tutelary star of mysteries shines in the fullness of its beauty.

”Come, for the moment of marvelous transformations has arrived.

”Come, for those who love you await you impatiently.”

Garcés, who remained motionless, felt upon hearing those mysterious songs that the asp of jealousy was biting his heart, and obeying an impulse more powerful than his will, wishing to break once and for all the enchantment that fascinated his senses, with a trembling and convulsive hand parted the foliage that hid him, and with a single leap placed himself on the riverbank. The enchantment broke, everything vanished like smoke, and casting his gaze around him, he saw and heard nothing save the bustling flurry with which the timid does, surprised in the midst of their nocturnal games, fled in terror from his presence, one this way, another that, some leaping over the brushwood, others running at full speed along the mountain track.

“Oh! well did I say that all these things were nothing more than the devil’s phantasmagoria,” exclaimed the huntsman then; “but fortunately this time he has been a bit clumsy leaving me the best prey between my hands.”

And indeed it was so: the white doe, wishing to escape through the thicket, had plunged into the labyrinth of its trees, and becoming tangled in a web of honeysuckle, struggled in vain to free herself. Garcés aimed his crossbow at her; but at the very point when he was about to strike her, the doe turned toward the huntsman, and with a clear and shrill voice stopped his action with a cry, saying to him: “Garcés, what are you doing?” The youth hesitated, and after an instant of doubt, let the weapon drop to the ground, terrified at the mere idea of having been able to wound his mistress. A loud and strident peal of laughter came at last to rouse him from his stupor; the white doe had taken advantage of those short moments to finish untangling herself and flee light as lightning, laughing at the trick played on the huntsman.

“Ah! cursed spawn of Satan,” said the latter with a terrifying voice, picking up the crossbow with untold swiftness; “soon you have sung victory, soon you have believed yourself out of my reach;” and saying this, he let the bolt fly, which whistled as it parted and went to lose itself in the darkness of the thicket, at the bottom of which there sounded at the same time a cry, followed afterward by some stifled moans.

“My God!” exclaimed Garcés upon perceiving those distressing laments. “My God, can it be true! And beside himself, like a madman, scarcely realizing what was happening to him, he ran in the direction where he had fired the bolt, which was the same one whence the moans came. He reached it at last; but upon arriving, his hair stood on end with horror, the words stuck in his throat, and he had to grasp the trunk of a tree so as not to fall to the ground.”

Constanza, wounded by his hand, was expiring there before his eyes, wallowing in her own blood, among the sharp brambles of the mountain.