I thought it would be as right as turning loose on the Outliers all the
ills of our social disorder. But I didn’t feel like saying anything
further just then. I sat and watched the sheeted rain that veiled the
world a rod beyond our door, saw the sun break and silver it, and heard
the wind calling from the high ridges.
“It is either to go back that way,” Herman insisted, “or stripped and
unremembering.”
“If you were to forget all you know and had to begin over again,” I
suggested, “there would be a sociological experiment for you.”
“Mona, you don’t really want to forget all this?”
“I don’t know,” I said; “a little forgetting is good medicine.” And
singularly I thought of the tall woman in the woods, and wondered when I
should see her again, and what she would have thought of Herman’s idea.
This was the last of the rains, and the very morning of the day when the
Outlier from beyond the Singing Ford came back with the word about
Daria. Messengers were sent to fetch her and her husband, and all we of
Deep Fern went down half a day to meet them. The messengers had found
the former Ward and her young husband on their way, drawn by our wish
and their own willingness. Love had made them subservient, emptied them
of self.
The examination took place in a half hollow full of trees. What sunlight
there was lay in white patches like a stain. All up the green and golden
slope the women sat listening, now discovered by the stirring of the
wind on their loose garments, now disappearing in stillness. Daria stood
up among the men and answered faithfully. It was true, she admitted,
that she remembered things. Some things. She did not know how much. She
had just begun to connect facts with the vague sense of familiarity.
Questioned, the memories revealed themselves but sticks and straws,
wreckage of experience, a name here, there a trivial circumstance, and
there a blank. All of them such images as might have been floating in
her mind at the time, or a little before she drank forgetfulness.
Did she remember the place of the Treasure?
The question, when it came, took her fairly. She spun about, rocking her
arms, burst into dry sobbing. Give her the Cup, she said, she would take
the Cup again if they wished it, but let her not be questioned any more.
In a broad splash of sunlight I could see her shiver, but not her
judges; their faculty for quiescence served them better than speech.
Did she remember?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account