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Page 64
But in the night a storm swept down the mountain pass with sudden fury,
uprooting trees a century old, and rending mighty rocks with sword
thrusts of its lightning. And when it passed Aldebaran lay prone upon
the earth borne down by rocks and fallen trees. Lay as if dead until two
passing goat-herds found him and bore him down in pity to their hut.
Long weeks went by before the fever craze and pains began to leave him,
and when at last he crawled out in the sun, he found himself a poor
misshapen thing, all maimed and marred, with twisted back and face all
drawn awry, and foot that dragged. One hand hung nerveless by his side.
Never more would it be strong enough to use the Sword. He could not even
draw it from its scabbard.
As in a daze he looked upon himself, thinking some hideous nightmare had
him in its hold. "This is not _I_!" he cried, in horror at the thought.
Then as the truth began to pierce his soul, he sat with starting eyes
and lips that gibbered in cold fear, the while they still persisted in
their fierce denial. "This is not _I_!"
Again he said it and again as if his frenzied words could work a
miracle and make him as he was before. Then when the sickening sense of
his calamity swept over him like a flood in all its fulness, he cast
himself upon the earth and prayed to die. Despair had seized him. But
Death comes not at such a call; kind Death, who waits that one may have
a chance to rise again and grapple with the foe that downed him, and
conquering, wipe the stigma coward from his soul.
So with Aldebaran. At first it seemed that he could not endure to face
the round of useless days now stretching out before him. An eagle,
broken-winged and drooping in a cage, he sat within the goat-herd's hut
and gloomed upon his lot, and cursed the vital force within that would
not let him die.
To fall asleep with all the world within one's grasp and waken
empty-handed--that is small bane to one who may spring up again, and by
sheer might wrest all his treasures back from Fortune. But to wake
helpless as well as empty-handed, the strength for ever gone from arms
that were invincible; to crawl, a poor crushed worm, the mark for all
men's pity, where one had thought to win the meed of all men's praise,
ah, then to live is agony! Each breath becomes a venomed adder's sting.
Most of all Aldebaran thought of Vesta. The stroke that marred his
comeliness and took his strength had robbed him of all power to win his
happiness. It was written "by the hearth of him who is the bravest she
shall keep eternal vigil." As yet he had not risen above the level of
his forbears' bravery, only up to it. Now 'twas impossible to show the
world a greater courage, shorn as he was of strength. And even had her
horoscope willed otherwise, and she should come to him all filled with
maiden pity to share his ruined hearth, he could not say her yea. His
man's pride rose up in him, rebellious at the thought of pity from one
in whose sight he fain would be all that is strong and comely. Looking
down upon his twisted limbs, the pain that racked him was greater
torture than mere flesh can feel. Although 'twas casting heaven from
him, he drew his mantle closer, hiding his disfigured form, and prayed
with groans and writhings that she might never look on him again. So
days went by.
There came a time when, even through his all-absorbing thought of self,
there pierced the consciousness that he no longer could impose upon the
goat-herds' bounty. Food was scarce within the hut, and even though he
groaned to die, the dawns brought hunger. So at the close of day he
dragged him down the mountainside, thinking that under cover of the
dusk he would steal into the village and seek a chance to earn his
bread.
But as he neared the little town and the sound of evening bells broke on
his ear, and lighted windows marked the homes where welcome waited other
men, he winced as from a blow. This was the village he had thought to
enter in the midst of loud acclaims, its brave deliverer from the
Province Terror. Then every window in the hamlet would have blazed for
him. Then every door would have been set wide to welcome Aldebaran, the
royal son of kings, fittest to bear the Sword of Conquest. And now
Aldebaran was but the crippled makeshift of a man, who could not even
draw that Sword from out its scabbard; at whose wry features all must
turn away in loathing, and some perchance might even set the dogs to
snarling at his heels, in haste to have him gone.
"In all the world," he cried in bitterness, "there breathes no other man
whom Fate hath used so cruelly! Emptied of hope, robbed of my all, life
doth become a prison-house that dooms me to its lowest dungeon! Why
struggle any longer 'gainst my lot? Why not lie here and starve, and
thus force Death to turn the key, and break the manacles which bind me
to my misery?"
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