Against Marriage: An Egalitarian

Defense of the Marriage-Free State

Clare Chambers
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Against Marriage
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Against Marriage
An Egalitarian Defence
of the Marriage-Free State

Clare Chambers

1
3
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United Kingdom
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For my family.
Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

Part I. Against Marriage

1. Marriage as a Violation of Equality 11
1.1 Marriage as Oppressive to Women 13
1.2 Marriage as Heterosexist 27
1.3 Is Same-sex Marriage Egalitarian? 29
1.4 Civil Union 39
1.5 Inequality between Married and Unmarried People 42
Conclusion 45
2. Marriage as a Violation of Liberty 47
2.1 State-recognized Marriage versus the Marriage-Free State 49
2.2 Political Liberalism: Neither Comprehensive nor Perfectionist 52
2.3 Marriage as Non-neutral 55
2.3.1 Meaning 57
2.3.2 Bundling 64
2.3.3 Hierarchy 66
2.4 Political Liberalism and Other Statuses 67
2.5 Strict and Lax Neutrality 69
Conclusion 75
3. A Liberal Defence of Marriage? 77
3.1Marriage as Communicative 78
3.2Marriage and Gender Equality 84
3.3Marriage and Care 89
3.4Marriage and Society 97
3.5Marriage and Children 102
3.5.1 Empirical facts 103
3.5.2 Neutral descriptions 109
3.5.3 Children’s interests versus other values 111
Conclusion 112

Part II. The Marriage-Free State

4. The Limitations of Contract 115
4.1 The Appeal of Contract 117
4.2 Contract and Equality 120
viii CONTENTS

4.3 Contract and Liberty 124

4.4 Default Directives in a Contract Regime 125
4.5 Contract and Enforcement 128
4.5.1 Specific performance 133
4.5.2 Compensation 135
4.6 Relational Contract Theory 139
Conclusion 141
5. Regulating Relationships in the Marriage-Free State 142
5.1Piecemeal not Holistic 144
5.2Practice not Status 150
5.3Opting out not Opting in 161
5.4Objections, Clarifications, Applications 165
5.4.1 The place for holistic thinking 165
5.4.2 The relevance of commitment 166
5.4.3 The need for international recognition 168
Conclusion 168
6. Marriage in the Marriage-Free State 170
6.1 Over-inclusivity: Polygamy, Incest, Forced Marriage 172
6.2 Under-inclusivity: Heterosexism, Racism 176
6.3 Internal Inequality: Sexism 187
Conclusion 199
Conclusion 201

Bibliography 205
Index 219
Acknowledgements

Whilst writing Against Marriage I have been extremely fortunate to be based at

the University of Cambridge, with its great intellectual and cultural riches.
I continue to benefit immensely from the support of my colleagues, both aca-
demic and administrative, in the Faculty of Philosophy. They provide an
extremely congenial philosophical environment and also work hard to ensure
that the Faculty is family-friendly, both of which are vital to a successful and
happy academic life. I give particular thanks to Tim Crane and Heather Sanderson
for supporting my application to the excellent University Career Break Scheme
for carers. I am very grateful to Jesus College for providing endless fascinating
discussion with wonderful Fellows, a beautiful environment, and a supportive
and progressive atmosphere. I am also extremely pleased that Cambridge has
such a rich inter-departmental group of political philosophers and theorists,
many of whom attend the fortnightly Seminar in Political Thought that I run
with Duncan Bell and the fortnightly Workshop in Political Philosophy that
I convene. And I am fortunate to teach inspiring, dedicated students.
I worked on parts of Against Marriage during two periods as a Visiting Scholar
at the Center for the Study of Law and Society (CSLS) in the Boalt School of Law
at the University of California, Berkeley, and while an Early Career Fellow at the
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) of
the University of Cambridge. I benefited hugely from the support of both CSLS
and CRASSH and am deeply grateful to both. I am particularly grateful to Sarah
Song and Rosann Greenspan for supporting my applications to Berkeley.
Parts of Against Marriage have been published elsewhere, and I thank the
publishers for their permission to reproduce some material here. An overview of
the argument as a whole was published as ‘The Marriage-Free State’ in Proceed-
ings of the Aristotelian Society Vol. CXIII No. 2 (2013). A version of Chapter 4
was published as ‘The Limitations of Contract: Regulating Personal Relationships
in a Marriage-Free State’ in Elizabeth Brake (ed.) After Marriage: Rethinking
Marital Relationships (Oxford University Press, 2016).
I presented work leading to Against Marriage at a number of universities and
conferences. In approximate chronological order these were: the American
Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC; the Nuffield
Political Theory Workshop at the University of Oxford; the Philosophy Faculty
Colloquium at the University of Cambridge; the Centre for Gender Studies
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Seminar at the University of Cambridge; the Philosophy Graduate Workshop

at Birkbeck College; the Political Theory Project Research Seminar at Brown
University; the University of Warwick Philosophy Seminar; the CSLS Speaker
Series at the University of California, Berkeley; the CRASSH Work in Progress
Seminar; the Institute for Historical Research Seminar at the University of
London; the University of York Morrell Conference on Children, Schools and
Families; the University of Cambridge Workshop in Political Philosophy; the UK
Analytic Legal and Political Philosophy Conference at the University of Leicester;
the Political Thought Conference held at St Catherine’s College, Oxford; the
University of Essex Political Theory Seminar; the University of Hertfordshire
Philosophy Research Seminar; the conference in New Directions in Public
Reason at the University of Birmingham; the University of Leeds Centre for
Ethics and Metaethics and Center for Aesthetics Seminar; the UCL Political
Theory Seminar; the Durham University Philosophy Society; the University of
Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy; the Political Theory
Seminar at the University of Manchester; the conference on Beyond the Nuclear
Family at Umeå University; the Alan Milne Memorial Address at Durham
University; the Religion and Public Justification Workshop at University College
London; the Centre for Ethics, Law, and Public Affairs Seminar at the University
of Warwick; and the Conference on Topics in Global Justice: Agency, Power, and
Policy at the University of Birmingham. I am very grateful to all the participants
for their comments, questions, and stimulating discussion. I am particularly
grateful to the participants in a workshop on the penultimate draft of the
manuscript that I held at Jesus College, Cambridge: Gabriele Badano, Dan Butt,
Phil Cook, Jacob Eisler, John Filling, Sam James, Katharine Jenkins, Jess Kaplan,
Rae Langton, Maxime Lepoutre, David Miller, Phil Parvin, Paul Sagar, Findlay
Stark, and Jens Van’t Klooster.
I received pertinent and helpful comments and suggestions, and some-
times copies of their own work, from Duncan Bell, Elizabeth Brake, Chris
Brooke, Cheshire Calhoun, José Chambers, Esther Dermott, Ira Ellman, Cécile
Fabre, Sarah Fine, Daniel First, William Gallagher, Peter Glazebrook, Jack
Halberstam, Christie Hartley, Matthew Kramer, Duncan Kelly, Patti Lenard,
Andrew Lister, Cécile Laborde, Annabelle Lever, Stephen Macedo, Andrew
March, Mara Marin, Andy Mason, Jo Miles, Melissa Murray, Alasia Nuti, Serena
Olsaretti, Avia Pasternak, Jesper Pedersen, Anne Phillips, Jon Quong, Miriam
Ronzoni, Brook Sadler, Marj Schultz, Liam Shields, Zofia Stemplowska, Adam
Swift, Nick Widdows, Jeremy Williams, Alice Wilson, Lori Watson, and several
anonymous referees. Emily Dyson was an excellent research assistant over the
summer of 2015, researching the recent literature on the same-sex marriage debate
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi

as well as the role of marriage in the major world religions. I should also like to
thank Peter Momtchiloff at OUP for supporting the book.
Against Marriage has taken a particularly long time to write, mainly because its
writing was interrupted by the birth of my sons: Harley in 2009 and Caspar in
2012. I am constantly delighted by them. Most importantly, my partner Phil
has endured the arguments of this book in more ways than one over the years.
I am profoundly grateful for his commitment.
 Introduction

This book is for everyone, regardless of marital status.

It is for the happily married: those whose good fortune is not, and should not
be, dependent on injustice.
It is for the happily unmarried: those who do not wish to structure their lives
and their social status around a monogamous permanent sexual relationship, or
those who do live in that sort of relationship but do not want to have to marry in
order to gain legal protection and equal social status.
It is for the unhappily unmarried: those who would like to be married but who
are denied entry into that institution because of their sex or sexuality or race or
religion or previous marital status. It is also for those made vulnerable by their
partners’ refusal to marry: the many women and fewer men who devote them-
selves to caring for their families, leaving themselves economically dependent.
It is for the unhappily married: those who entered into marriage because it
seemed like the next thing to do, or because they had always dreamed of the party
and the dress and the happy-ever-after fairytale, or because it was the only way to
gain acceptance within their community, or because they genuinely believed in
vows that have become impossible to keep. It is for anyone who married in hope
but now finds themselves in a relationship characterized by fear or abuse or
violence or inequality or mistrust or simple unhappiness, who is now weighing
their own wellbeing against the sadness, stigma, and costs of divorce.
And it is for children, whose social wellbeing should not depend on their
parents’ marital status.
This book is not for everyone regardless of political conviction.
It is not for the socially conservative who wish to retain a particular patriarchal,
heterosexist model of family life at the heart of the state. It is not for religious
fundamentalists who wish not only to practise their own religion but to impose it
coercively on others. These people are likely to vehemently disapprove of this book.
There are others whose views are not the target of this book, but who might
nevertheless find things to endorse. Non-egalitarian libertarians are likely to be
unperturbed by my argument that state-recognized marriage is unequal, but they
 INTRODUCTION

may be more concerned that marriage violates state neutrality and individual
liberty. Many of my proposals could be accepted by libertarians.
My real target audience, though, is those who have some sort of egalitarian
commitment.
The fundamental premise of this book and all my work is feminism: society is
deeply gendered, in a way that harms women, and this is wrong. I have deep
respect for both radical and liberal feminism. Radical feminists are absolutely
right to identify sexual hierarchy and gendered violence as fundamental to
patriarchy; they are right to insist that inequality is not exonerated merely by
being chosen; they are right to insist on the importance of capturing the truth and
the politics in the everyday and the intimate; and they write the most powerful
and challenging philosophy that I know. Liberal feminists are absolutely right to
insist that autonomy and rights are goals for women on an equal basis with men;
they are right to look for concrete legal reforms and workable solutions; they are
right to care about justice; and they are right to take on mainstream political
philosophy on its own terms.
Mainstream Anglophone political philosophy may not be feminist, but it is
egalitarian. And so this book is also aimed at non-feminist egalitarians, and
particularly liberal egalitarians. I argue that the abolition of state-recognized
marriage is something that liberalism not only supports but demands, and
along the way I hope to show that marriage tells us various more general things
about contemporary philosophical liberalism. That is, this book is not just for
those who care about marriage, it is also for those who are willing to countenance
the idea that marriage might tell us something about the liberal project.

*****
As the title indicates, Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-
Free State presents both a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is
a critique of the institution of marriage as it is traditionally understood, and a
rejection of the state recognition of marriage in any form. I sometimes refer to
a society which has state-recognized marriage as a ‘marriage regime’. The positive
thesis is an outline of a state in which personal relationships are regulated, the
vulnerable are protected, and justice is furthered, all without the state recognition
of marriage or any similar alternative. I call this ideal of a state which does not
recognize marriage ‘the marriage-free state’.
In the marriage-free state the term ‘marriage’ would have no legal significance.
The state would not regulate the term, nor would it provide laws that dealt
specifically with the creation and dissolution of marriages. ‘Marriage’ would be
a term like ‘friendship’. It would have meaning, and typically be used to denote a
 INTRODUCTION 

certain sort of relationship, but that meaning would not be a matter of legal
ruling. Like friendship, marriage would mean different things to different people.
Sometimes a friend is a person with whom we share our lives, meeting regularly
and sharing social situations, attending events together, holidaying together,
discussing all areas of life. But it is also perfectly acceptable and meaningful to
use the term to denote someone with whom one has only a virtual connection,
such as through social media. Similarly, for some people marriage would be much
as it is now: a formal, solemnified ceremony bringing with it weighty social
meaning and norms. For others, marriage might be used casually, to denote a
fleeting commitment or even a commitment to an object or a cause. As with
friendship, not all uses of the word marriage would succeed in achieving uptake.
They would not all make sense to others. But their use would not conflict with
any legal definition.
Weddings, then, would still take place in the marriage-free state. No state
ceremony or registration would be involved, but weddings could persist none-
theless. The marriage-free state would place no regulations on where weddings
could take place, since they would not be legal ceremonies: weddings could take
place at home, on a mountaintop, in a swimming pool. But weddings could also
take place exactly as they do now, in a marriage regime: in churches, temples,
synagogues, and mosques; in stately homes and hotels; with receptions and
dresses and bridesmaids and speeches.
So the marriage-free state would still contain weddings. It would also contain
monogamous, committed sexual partnerships, some of which would be called
marriages by their participants and some of which would not. People would
introduce each other as husband, wife, spouse, partner, lover, friend, just as they
pleased. People could wear rings or not, change their names or not, call them-
selves Mrs or Miss or Ms. Official documentation would not distinguish between
these titles other than as needed to respect people’s important interests, such as
when a doctor might ask how a patient preferred to be addressed while receiving
treatment. But there would be nothing illegitimate in a person using marital or
non-marital titles.
The marriage-free state would not recognize or endorse marriages, but nor
would it leave relationships and family unregulated. In existing marriage regimes
there is and must be regulation: to protect vulnerable parties, to settle matters and
disputes that must be determinate in law, and to ensure justice. The conception of
justice used in the marriage-free state is liberal in the sense that it prioritizes both
freedom and equality, with particular emphasis on equality. But the most basic
idea of the marriage-free state and the simplest way to understand it is this: the
marriage-free state starts by working out what would be the just way to regulate
 INTRODUCTION

relationships between unmarried people, and then applies that regulation to

everyone.
Of course, I have my own views about the best form of regulation in many
areas of family life and personal relationships. By and large, though, I do not
defend them here. The aim of this book is not to settle the question of the ideal
content of regulation, a task that would merit several volumes in and of itself, but
rather to propose a form or structure of regulation. If the reader wishes to evaluate
the marriage-free state for herself, without being distracted by dilemmas of
regulatory content, she might ask herself the following questions:
What do I think is the ideal, just way of regulating unmarried people now, in a
marriage regime? What laws should apply to unmarried parents, or unmarried
cohabitants, or unmarried migrants, or unmarried property-owners? What
would it be like if those ideal regulations were applied to everyone, regardless
of marital status?
The society she envisages will be her ideal form of the marriage-free state. The
most fundamental aim of this book is to convince the reader that she should
prefer her ideal version of the marriage-free state to a marriage regime. Along the
way, the arguments of the book suggest better and worse ways of filling in the
content but do not even attempt to specify it completely.

*****
Part I, ‘Against Marriage’, sets out objections to marriage regimes. Chapter 1,
‘Marriage as a Violation of Equality’, makes the foundational egalitarian case
against marriage. It starts with a historical overview of feminist objections to
marriage and notes that feminists tend to criticize marriage for being both sexist
and heterosexist. This two-pronged attack looks puzzling. How can it be both bad
for women to be married and bad for lesbians and gays to be unmarried? The
discussion continues with an analysis of whether same-sex marriage is egalita-
rian. It concludes that, in a marriage regime, same-sex marriage is both required
by and insufficient for equality. Finally, the chapter argues that reformed versions
of marriage such as civil union still enact inequality between those who have and
those who lack the relevant status. It follows that the abolition of state-recognized
marriage best meets the myriad egalitarian objections to the institution.
Chapter 2, ‘Marriage as a Violation of Liberty’, considers liberal objections to
marriage. Perfectionist or comprehensive liberals should reject state-recognized
marriage as limiting autonomy in the service of an unappealing and restrictive
model of human perfection. But political liberals should go further, and reject
state-recognized marriage as prima facie incompatible with neutrality. The chapter
 INTRODUCTION 

clarifies the nature of political liberal neutrality, and establishes that there are many
reasonable conceptions of the good that are not compatible with the state recog-
nition of marriage. This fact means that marriage is not a neutral, political
institution, and that promotion of it is an act of perfectionism.
The chapter then discusses the idea that political liberalism might be compatible
with policies that are prima facie non-neutral if those policies can be supported by
public reason. Political liberalism is ambiguous between two forms of neutrality:
strict and lax. Strict neutrality allows state action only if sufficiently weighty public
reasons can be adduced in favour of a policy; lax neutrality permits the state to act
just as long as some public reason can be given. If political liberalism is to be an
interesting philosophical approach it will defend strict neutrality, so any public
reasons offered in support of state-recognized marriage must be weighty enough
to overcome the non-neutrality of that institution.
This line of argument continues in Chapter 3, ‘A Liberal Defence of Marriage?’
This chapter considers and rejects five potential liberal arguments in favour of
marriage: arguments that, if successful, might work as public reasons for political
liberals or might make marriage into an attractive account of human flourishing
for perfectionist or comprehensive liberals. These arguments are based on com-
munication, gender equality, care, the interests of society, and children’s interests.
The chapter argues that, while these arguments do highlight legitimate public
goods, they fail to show that state-recognized marriage is a necessary or accept-
able way of achieving them.
If marriage is no longer to be recognized by the state, what should replace it?
Part II, ‘The Marriage-Free State’, answers this question. Many theorists defend
relationship contracts. Some argue that enforceable relationship contracts should be
available alongside existing or reformed state-recognized marriage, and available
to either married or unmarried couples. Other theorists argue that relationship
contracts are the best sort of legal regulation to replace marriage. It is this latter
question that is the subject of Chapter 4: ‘The Limitations of Contract’. The chapter
contrasts contract and directive models of regulation, and notes that contract
appears more compatible with liberty than does directive. However, this appearance
is illusory since contracts can undermine liberty, directives can enhance liberty, and
even a contract regime requires default directives. Moreover, there are various
problems with the enforcement of relationship contracts. Specific performance is
rarely appropriate in the relationship context. The alternative, fault-based compen-
satory alimony, risks causing injustice to vulnerable parties such as those who take
on caring responsibilities (usually women) and children. Relational contract theory
attempts to deal with some of these problems but has its own limitations. The
chapter concludes that contract is not the best replacement for marriage.
 INTRODUCTION

Chapter 5, ‘Regulating Relationships in the Marriage-Free State’, sets out a new

model for regulating personal relationships, one that relies on neither contract
nor a holistic status such as marriage or civil partnership. Critics of marriage have
suggested one of these two options, with most recent feminist and egalitarian
work focusing on alternative holistic statuses such as Tamara Metz’s Intimate
Care-Giving Unions or Elizabeth Brake’s Minimal Marriages. These new holistic
statuses, while they improve on marriage, do not avoid a fundamental problem
for egalitarians: an unjust distinction between those who have, and those who
lack, that status. Instead, the chapter sets out three features of regulation in the
marriage-free state. First, it is piecemeal not holistic: relationship functions are
regulated separately, without assuming bundling or an ideal-typical relationship
format. Second, it proceeds via practices not status: regulation applies to those
who are acting in certain ways rather than being dependent on a status that must
be formally acquired. Third, liberty is secured by opting out of default regulations
rather than opting in. This model of regulation is compared with alternatives
found in both political philosophy and legal practice.
Finally Chapter 6, ‘Marriage in the Marriage-Free State’, considers the extent
to which the state should seek to regulate any private religious or secular
marriages that citizens might enter into. In the marriage-free state citizens
could still take part in religious or secular marriage ceremonies. This is why the
marriage-free state is not a marriage-free society. It does not follow, however, that
the state should take no interest at all in such marriages, since they may take place
in the context of oppression or injustice. The chapter sets out the case for
intervention in marriages that are not recognized by the state, drawing on the
model of liberal intervention in cultural practices set out in my first book Sex,
Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice.

*****
It is increasingly common for political philosophers to distinguish between ideal
and non-ideal theory. There are a number of ways of making this distinction.
It is sometimes a distinction between situations of full and partial compliance with
the demands of justice. It is sometimes a distinction between considering and
ignoring issues of implementation, such as whether a policy would command a
democratic mandate in any given polity or whether, in particular political cir-
cumstances, it might bring about unintended consequences. It is sometimes a
distinction between considering and ignoring the realities of power, violence, and
inequality in society. These different ways of making the distinction may overlap.
Against Marriage is a work of ideal theory in the sense that it does not discuss
the likelihood of its proposals being taken up by voters or politicians. Its mode
 INTRODUCTION 

of persuasion is philosophical. I do not offer suggestions as to how to transition

to the marriage-free state via the democratic electoral system of any polity.
Moreover, while I engage in discussion of legal change and analyse the work of
many legal theorists, the discussion is not confined to any particular legal juris-
diction or framework. This is a work of political philosophy rather than of law.
Against Marriage is also a work of ideal theory in the sense that it does not
claim to have accounted for all the unintended consequences of the marriage-free
state. As I note at various points in the book, abolishing state-regulated marriage
may be counter-productive in some social and historical contexts, such as if it is
done as a way of avoiding giving equal rights to lesbians and gays, or if it is done
without providing adequate legislative protection for the vulnerable. There may
be times, that is, when the marriage-free state is worse than the best politically-
feasible alternative. Chapter 1 offers more detailed discussion of this question.
However, Against Marriage is certainly not a work of ideal theory in the final
sense: one that ignores realities of power. On the contrary, the book is firmly
cognizant of prevailing structures of power, violence, and inequality. Its starting
point is that marriage is an institution that has been both the result and the cause
of profound inequality: a mechanism for entrenching structures of privilege and
exclusion, power and oppression, hierarchies of gender and race, and hetero-
normativity. The state has, of course, been both an instrument of oppression and
an instrument of liberation. It has brutally upheld inequality, using law and
violence to maintain patriarchy, colonialism, slavery, and class. And it has
provided the means for dismantling these structures, albeit only partially. This
book assumes that the state rather than anarchy is the route to equality and
liberation: reform rather than bloody revolution, peace rather than violence. For
some this may seem naïve or complicit. But a commitment to peaceful transition
in no way precludes profound critique. Reform can be radical. Against Marriage
demolishes an enduring, popular institution, but it does so with optimism.
PART I

Against Marriage
 1
Marriage as a Violation of Equality

Feminists have long criticized the institution of marriage. Historically, it has been
a fundamental site of women’s oppression, with married women having few
independent rights in law. Currently, it is associated with the gendered division
of labour, with women taking on the lion’s share of domestic and caring work and
being paid less than men for work outside the home. The white wedding is replete
with sexist imagery: the father ‘giving away’ the bride; the white dress symboliz-
ing the bride’s virginity (and emphasizing the importance of her appearance); the
vows to obey the husband; the minister telling the husband ‘you may now kiss the
bride’ (rather than the bride herself giving permission, or indeed initiating or at
least equally participating in the act of kissing); the reception at which, tradition-
ally, all the speeches are given by men; the wife surrendering her own name and
taking her husband’s.
Despite decades of feminist criticism the institution resolutely endures—
though not without change. The most significant change has been in the intro-
duction of same-sex marriages and civil unions in countries such as the UK, the
Netherlands, Belgium, the Nordic countries, Ireland, Spain, France, Canada, and
the USA. In the USA in particular, same-sex marriage has recently been a fiercely
contested and central part of political debate, with many states alternately
allowing and forbidding it as the issue passed between the legislature, the
judiciary, and the electorate, until the issue was settled at the federal level with
a Supreme Court ruling.1
If marriage is to exist as a state-recognized institution then it must, as a
requirement of equality, be available to same-sex couples. There is a great deal
to celebrate in recent moves to widen marriage, and it is hard not to be touched

1
In the 2012 US elections citizens of Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington voted to
allow same-sex marriage or civil union. President Obama publicly endorsed gay marriage during the
campaign. Previously several states, such as Hawaii and California, had voted against same-sex
marriage. The Supreme Court Case Obergefell v Hodges (576 US, 2015) ruled that state bans on
same-sex marriage were unconstitutional.
 MARRIAGE AS A VIOLATION OF EQUALITY

by the scenes of same-sex couples rejoicing as they are finally allowed to marry.2
But even these welcome reforms do not go far enough.
Feminists have been the main critics of the institution of marriage.3 Feminists
attack marriage from several different angles, which can leave the feminist pos-
ition somewhat conflicted on whether reforms such as same-sex marriage render
the institution just. As I argue in this chapter, the best way to meet feminist and
egalitarian concerns is to support the abolition of state-recognized marriage.

2
See, for example, Matt Stopera, ‘60 Awesome Portraits of Gay Couples Just Married in New
York State’ Buzzfeed (25 July 2011) at http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/portraits-of-gay-couples-
just-married-in-new-york#.pnZwZWdzz.
3
There are many feminist critiques of marriage, some of which reject the institution wholesale
and some of which argue for its reform. These include, but are not limited to, the following, listed in
chronological order of first publication: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(London: Constable and Company Ltd, 1996 [1792]); John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and the Subjection
of Women (Ware: Wordsworth, 1996 [1859 and 1869]); Emma Goldman, ‘Marriage and Love’ in her
Anarchism and Other Essays (Createspace, 2011 [1910]); Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
(London: Vintage, 1997 [1949]); Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (London: Penguin Books,
1963); Sheila Cronan, ‘Marriage’ in Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone (eds), Radical
Feminism (New York: Times Books, 1973 [1970]); Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
(London: The Women’s Press, 1979); Marjorie M. Shultz, ‘Contractual Ordering of Marriage:
A New Model for State Policy’ in California Law Review 70(204) (1982); Lenore J. Weitzman, The
Marriage Contract: Spouses, Lovers and the Law (London: Free Press, 1983); Carole Pateman, The
Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); Paula L. Ettelbrick, ‘Since When is Marriage a Path
to Liberation?’ in Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan (eds), We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook
of Gay and Lesbian Politics (London: Routledge, 1997 [1989]); Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender,
and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Martha Albertson Fineman, The Neutered Mother,
The Sexual Family, and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies (London: Routledge, 1995); Claudia
Card, ‘Against Marriage and Motherhood’ Hypatia 11(3) (1996); Jane Lewis, The End of Marriage?
Individualism and Intimate Relations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001); Janet C. Gornick,
‘Reconcilable Differences in The American Prospect Online (25 March 2002) at http://prospect.
org/article/reconcilable-differences; Petra Boynton, ‘Abiding by The Rules: Instructing Women in
Relationships’ Feminism & Psychology 13(2) (2003); Virginia Braun, ‘Thanks to my Mother . . .
A Personal Commentary on Heterosexual Marriage’ in Feminism & Psychology 13(4) (2003);
Sarah-Jane Finlay and Victoria Clarke, ‘ “A Marriage of Inconvenience?” Feminist Perspectives on
Marriage’ in Feminism & Psychology 13(4) (2003); Merran Toerien and Andrew Williams, ‘In Knots:
Dilemmas of a Feminist Couple Contemplating Marriage’ in Feminism & Psychology 13(1) (2003)
Maria Bevacqua, ‘Feminist Theory and the Question of Lesbian and Gay Marriage’ in Feminism &
Psychology 14(1) (2004); Anne Kingston, The Meaning of Wife (London: Piatkus, 2004); Celia
Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson, ‘The Re-branding of Marriage: Why We Got Married Instead of
Registering A Civil Partnership’ in Feminism & Psychology 14(1) (2004); Martha Albertson
Fineman, ‘The Meaning of Marriage’ in Anita Bernstein (ed.), Marriage Proposals: Questioning a
Legal Status (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Nancy D. Polikoff, Beyond (Straight and
Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law (Beacon Press, 2008); Brook J. Sadler, ‘Re-
Thinking Civil Unions and Same-Sex Marriage’ in The Monist 91(3/4) (2008); Tamara Metz,
Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for their Divorce (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2010); Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
 MARRIAGE AS A VIOLATION OF EQUALITY 

Consider the following:

My current position on marriage is that I am against it. . . . Politically, I am against it
because it has been oppressive for women, and through privileging heterosexuality,
oppressive for lesbians and gay men.4

In this quote, and in feminist argument more generally, we can identify two
distinct critiques of marriage. Both are common and yet in tension. The first
states that traditional marriage is bad because it oppresses women. The implica-
tion of this critique is that being married makes women worse off. The second
critique is that traditional marriage is bad because it privileges heterosexuality.
The implication is that being married makes people, both men and women, better
off: it provides benefits that are unjustly denied to lesbians and gays. But these
critiques seem contradictory. If marriage oppresses at least some of its partici-
pants, why would lesbians and gays want to participate in it? On the other hand,
if marriage ought to be extended to lesbians and gays because it confers privilege,
what have feminists been complaining about all this time? And yet the two
critiques are found together in the writings of many feminists.
This split in common feminist critiques of marriage explains why it can seem
so difficult to develop a coherent feminist position and to be sure which sorts of
reforms are progressive and which are reactionary. It explains, that is, the
troubling ambiguities expressed by Merran Toerien and Andrew Williams, who
label themselves a ‘feminist couple’. ‘In short,’ they write, ‘we want to get married
and we do not.’5

1.1 Marriage as Oppressive to Women

Consider first the argument that marriage oppresses women, through a brief
overview of the history of feminist criticism of the institution. Marriage has often
been a trap for women, a state of imprisonment and sometimes brutality
that they must endure, escape, or eschew. That is to say, marriage has played a
significant role in maintaining the wider regime of gender inequality, since it has
been used to consolidate legal, economic, cultural, and symbolic oppression by
confining women to a private sphere in which they are seriously disadvantaged.
Those significant women in history whom we know about are often victims or
refusers of marriage. Consider, for example, Saint Radegund, one of the three

4
Braun, ‘Thanks to my Mother’ p. 421. See also Finlay and Clarke, ‘A Marriage of Inconveni-
ence?’ pp. 417–18.
5
Toerien and Williams, ‘In Knots’ p. 435.
 MARRIAGE AS A VIOLATION OF EQUALITY

patron saints of Jesus College, Cambridge. Radegund was born in the first century
as a German princess, but was captured by the Frankish King Chlothar I as a war
prize when she was 11 or 12. Chlothar forced her to marry him when she became
18. The experience was not pleasant, to put it mildly: ‘Chlothar was rough, brutal,
unfaithful, and often drunk’,6 and he ordered the murder of her only surviving
relative, her brother. Radegund fled the marriage and sought the protection of the
Church, for religious life was one of the few activities that allowed women to live
with neither marriage nor censure.
Or consider Queen Elizabeth I whose mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed by
serial wife-killer King Henry VIII. At first Elizabeth was excluded from rule as her
father had his marriage with her mother annulled, rendering her illegitimate. She
came to the throne in 1558 on the death of her half-sister, Queen Mary
I. Elizabeth’s reign was dominated by discussions of her marriage, and her refusal
ever to marry earned her the nickname ‘The Virgin Queen’ and a cult following.
Early feminists criticized marriage with the full force of condemnation
reserved for the most grievous injustice. For John Stuart Mill in 1869 marriage
was ‘the primitive state of slavery lasting on’,7 a condition secured by wives’ legal
subordination to their husbands in every respect. In England at the time that Mill
was writing, the system of coverture was in place, according to which married
women were subordinate and subsumed to their husbands in law. So wives legally
ceded all their property, as well as custody and control of their children, to their
husbands, were under a legal duty to obey their husbands, were unable to vote or
divorce, and could legally be raped by their husbands. Mill described women’s
legal duty to submit to marital sex as ‘the lowest degradation of a human being,
that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her
inclinations’.8
Some aspects of English coverture were reformed soon after Mill published
The Subjection of Women. In 1870 the Married Woman’s Property Act allowed
women to keep property acquired after marriage, and a further Act in 1882 gave
them rights over the property they owned prior to marriage. But English women
had to wait until 1891 to be given the legal right not to be imprisoned by their
husbands, and until 1991 (that’s not a misprint) to be given the legal right not to
be raped in marriage. Divorce laws were unequal until 1923.9

6
Jesus College, ‘St Radegund’ at http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/about-jesus-college/history/pen-
portraits/st-radegund/https://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/college/about-us/history/people-note/st-radegund.
7 8
Mill, The Subjection of Women p. 121. Mill, The Subjection of Women p. 146.
9
See St Andrew’s University, ‘Women and the Law in Victorian England’ at http://
www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~bp10/pvm/en3040/women.shtml. I am using the word ‘rape’ here in a
 MARRIAGE AS A VIOLATION OF EQUALITY 

Emma Goldman, who was born in Russia but emigrated to the USA, agreed
with Mill that marriage subjected women to men. In 1910 she wrote:
Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the
ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its
returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insur-
ance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments.
If, however, woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy,
her self-respect, her very life, ‘until death doth part’. Moreover, the marriage insurance
condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual
as well as social.10

Simone de Beauvoir argued in 1949 that marriage remained deeply unequal. On

her analysis, marriage is required of women for two reasons: first, they must
provide children and marriage provides the socially acceptable context for
childbearing, and second, ‘woman’s function is also to satisfy a male’s sexual
needs and to take care of his household’.11 Marriage imposes both benefits and
burdens on men and women, ‘but there is no symmetry in the situations of the
two sexes; for girls marriage is the only means of integration in the community,
and if they remain unwanted, they are, socially viewed, so much wastage’.12 For
women, de Beauvoir notes, marriage was the only way to experience sex and
motherhood without punishing social disapproval. ‘For all these reasons a great
many adolescent girls—in the New World as in the Old—when asked about their
plans for the future, reply as formerly: “I want to get married.” But no young man
considers marriage his fundamental project.’13 Nonetheless, the reality of mar-
riage was horrific for many women: ‘the girls concerned had been too carefully
brought up, and since they had no sexual education, the sudden discovery of
eroticism was too much for them. . . . Today many young women are better
informed; but their willingness remains formal, abstract; and their defloration
is still in the nature of a rape.’14
By the 1960s women’s situation had changed. During World War II women in
western countries had experienced unprecedented equal opportunities at work,
with jobs previously reserved for men now having to be done by women. But the
end of the war saw men’s return, bringing social pressure for women to return to
the home so that men could have ‘their’ jobs back. In The Feminine Mystique in

non-legal sense, since legally it was impossible for married women to be raped by their husbands
prior to 1991. An act of forced sex between a husband and wife did not, legally, count as rape.
10
Goldman, ‘Marriage and Love’ p. 89. 11
de Beauvoir, The Second Sex p. 447.
12 13
de Beauvoir, The Second Sex p. 447. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex p. 451.
14
de Beauvoir, The Second Sex pp. 460–1.
 MARRIAGE AS A VIOLATION OF EQUALITY

1963 Betty Friedan wrote about ‘the problem that has no name: . . . the strange
stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle
of the twentieth century in the United States’.15 The cause of this problem,
Friedan argued, was the ‘mystique of feminine fulfilment’16 which dictated that
women should dream only of becoming housewives. This dream left no room for
personal development, for career success, for female personhood:
The new mystique makes the housewife-mothers, who never had a chance to be anything
else, the model for all women; it presupposes that history has reached a final and glorious
end in the here and now, as far as women are concerned. Beneath the sophisticated
trappings, it simply makes certain concrete, finite, domestic aspects of feminine
existence—as it was lived by women whose lives were confined, by necessity, to cooking,
cleaning, washing, bearing children—into a religion, a pattern by which all women must
now live or deny their femininity.17

For Friedan, the solution was not to abandon marriage but for women to
integrate marriage and motherhood with a career and, most fundamentally, for
each woman to ‘think of herself as a human being first’.18
Changing norms of sexual behaviour for women in the 1960s and 1970s may
have gone some way towards weakening the grip of marriage. But marriage
remained an institution subject to feminist critique. Second wave feminists
continued to see marriage as a source of women’s inequality. Sheila Cronan,
radical feminist and founding member of Redstockings, decried the deceits of the
marriage vows. As she put it in 1970, ‘The marriage contract is the only
important legal contract in which the terms are not listed.’19 On the one hand
marriage vows commit the parties to do things in which the courts take no
interest, such as love each other. On the other hand, marriage vows fail to
mention obligations which were legally enforced, such as the wife’s duty to
submit to sex with her husband. As already noted, the criminal act of rape
could not occur within marriage in England and Wales until 1991, in the
House of Lords case of R v R; the UK is by no means an outlier in waiting until
the last gasps of the twentieth century to give women the legal right to refuse sex
with their husbands.
Cronan’s critique of marriage was not confined to marital rape. She argued, as
Mill had one hundred years earlier, that married life is akin to slavery since ‘being
a wife is a full-time job for which one is not entitled to receive pay. Does this not
constitute slavery?’20 True, marriage is consented to, but this fact only makes its

15 16
Friedan, The Feminine Mystique p. 15. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique p. 18.
17 18
Friedan, The Feminine Mystique p. 43. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique p. 344.
19
Cronan, ‘Marriage’ p. 218. 20
Cronan, ‘Marriage’ p. 217.
Another random document with
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Again the impetuous wild thing, she seized one of the bags of nuts
before I had had time to stop her, and went darting off before me
along the forest track, while I was left to follow slowly in a sober
mood.
 Chapter VIII
THE BIRDS FLY SOUTH
It was early in October when the mystery of the Ibandru began to
take pronounced form.
Then it was that I became aware of an undercurrent of excitement in
the village, a suppressed agitation which I could not explain, which
none would explain to me, and which I recorded as much by
subconscious perception as by direct observation. Yet there was
sufficient visible evidence. The youth of the village had apparently
lost interest in the noisy pastimes that had made the summer
evenings gay; old and young alike seemed to have grown restless
and uneasy; while occasionally I saw some man or woman scurrying
about madly for no apparent reason. And meantime all bore the
aspect of waiting, of waiting for some imminent and inevitable event
of surpassing importance. Interest in Yulada was at fever pitch; a
dozen times a day some one would point toward the stone woman
with significant gestures; and a dozen times a day I observed some
native prostrating himself in an attitude of prayer, with face always
directed toward the figure on the peak while he mumbled
incoherently to himself.
But the strangest demonstration of all occurred late one afternoon,
when a brisk wind had blown a slaty roof across the heavens, and
from far to the northeast, across the high jutting ridges of rock, a
score of swift-flying black dots became suddenly visible. In an
orderly, triangular formation they approached, gliding on an
unwavering course with the speed of an express train; and in an
incredibly brief time they had passed above us and out of sight
beyond Yulada and the southern peak. After a few minutes they
were followed by another band of migrants, and then by another, and
another still, until evening had blotted the succeeding squadrons
from view and their cries rang and echoed uncannily in the dark.
To me the surprising fact was not the flight of the feathered things;
the surprising fact was the reaction of the Ibandru. It was as if they
had never seen birds on the wing before; or as if the birds were the
most solemn of omens. On the appearance of the first flying flock,
one of the Ibandru, who chanced to observe the birds before the
others, went running about the village with cries of excitement; and
at his shouts the women and children crowded out of the cabins, and
all the men within hearing distance came dashing in from the fields.
And all stood with mouths open, gaping toward the skies as the
successive winged companies sped by; and from that time forth, until
twilight had hidden the last soaring stranger, no one seemed to have
any purpose in life except to stare at the heavens, calling out
tumultuously whenever a new band appeared.
That evening the people held a great celebration. An enormous
bonfire was lighted in an open space between the houses; and
around it gathered all the men and women of the village, lingering
until late at night by a flickering eerie illumination that made the
scene appear like a pageant staged on another planet. In the
beginning I did not know whether the public meeting had any
connection with the flight of the birds; but it was not long before this
question was answered.
In their agitation, the people had evidently overlooked me entirely.
For once, they had forgotten politeness; indeed, they scarcely
noticed me when I queried them about their behavior. And it was as
an uninvited stranger, scarcely remembered or observed, that I crept
up in the shadows behind the fire, and lay amid the grass to watch.
In the positions nearest the flames, their faces brilliant in the glow,
were two men whom I immediately recognized. One, sitting cross-
legged on the ground, his features rigid with the dignity of leadership,
was Abthar, the father of Yasma; the other, who stood speaking in
sonorous tones, was Hamul-Kammesh, the soothsayer. Because I
sat at some distance from him and was far from an adept at Pushtu,
I missed the greater part of what he said; but I did not fail to note the
tenseness with which the people followed him; and I did manage to
catch an occasional phrase which, while fragmentary, impressed me
as more than curious.
"Friends," he was saying, "we have reached the season of the great
flight.... The auguries are propitious ... we may take advantage of
them whenever the desire is upon us.... Yulada will help us, and
Yulada commands...." At this point there was much that I could not
gather, since Hamul-Kammesh spoke in lower tones, with his head
bowed as though in prayer.... "The time of yellow leaves and of cold
winds is upon us. Soon the rain will come down in showers from the
gray skies; soon the frost will snap and bite; soon all the land will be
desolate and deserted. Prepare yourselves, my people, prepare!—
for now the trees make ready for winter, now the herbs wither and
the earth grows no longer green, now the bees and butterflies and
fair flowers must depart until the spring—and now the birds fly south,
the birds fly south, the birds fly south!"
The last words were intoned fervently and with emphatic slowness,
like a chant or a poem; and it seemed to me that an answering
emotion swept through the audience. But on and on Hamul-
Kammesh went, on and on, speaking almost lyrically, and sometimes
driving up to an intense pitch of feeling. More often than not I could
not understand him, but I divined that his theme was still the same;
he still discoursed upon the advent of autumn, and the imminent and
still more portentous advent of winter....
After Hamul-Kammesh had finished, his audience threw themselves
chests downward on the ground, and remained thus for some
minutes, mumbling unintelligibly to themselves. I observed that they
all faced in one direction, the south; and I felt that this could not be
attributed merely to chance.
Then, as though at a prearranged signal, all the people
simultaneously arose, reminding me of a church-meeting breaking
up after the final prayer. Yet no one made any motion to leave; and I
had an impression that we were nearer the beginning than the end of
the ceremonies. This impression was confirmed when Hamul-
Kammesh began to wave his arms before him with a bird-like
rhythm, and when, like an orchestra in obedience to the band-
master, the audience burst into song.
I cannot say that the result pleased me, for there was in it a weird
and barbarous note; yet at the same time there was a certain wild
melody ... so that, as I listened, I came more and more under the
influence of the singing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice
not of individuals but of a people, a people pouring forth its age-old
joys and sorrows, longings and aspirations. But how express in
words the far-away primitive quality of that singing?—It had
something of the madness and abandon of the savage exulting,
something of the loneliness and long-drawn melancholy of the wolf
howling from the midnight hilltop, something of the plaintive and
querulous tone of wild birds calling and calling on their way
southward.
After the song had culminated in one deep-voiced crescendo, it was
succeeded by a dance of equal gusto and strangeness. Singly and in
couples and in groups of three and four, the people leapt and
swayed in the wavering light; they flung their legs waist-high, they
coiled their arms snake-like about their bodies, they whirled around
like tops; they darted forward and darted back again, sped gracefully
in long curves and spirals, tripped from side to side, or reared and
vaulted like athletes; and all the while they seemed to preserve a
certain fantastic pattern, seemed to move to the beat of some
inaudible rhythm, seemed to be actors in a pageant whose nature I
could only vaguely surmise. As they flitted shadow-like in the
shadowy background or glided with radiant faces into the light and
then back into the gloom, they seemed not so much like sportive and
pirouetting humans as like dancing gods; and the sense came over
me that I was beholding not a mere ceremony of men and women,
but rather a festival of wraiths, of phantoms, of cloudy, elfin creatures
who might flash away into the mist or the firelight.
Nor did I lose this odd impression when at intervals the dance
relaxed and the dancers lay on the ground recovering from their
exertions, while one of them would stand in the blazing light chanting
some native song or ballad. If anything, it was during these
intermissions that I was most acutely aware of something uncanny. It
may, of course, have been only my imagination, for the recitations
were all of a weird nature; one poem would tell of men and maidens
that vanished in the mists about Yulada and were seen no more;
another would describe a country to which the south wind blew, and
where it was always April, while many would picture the wanderings
of migrant birds, or speak of bodiless spirits that floated along the air
like smoke, screaming from the winter gales but gently murmuring in
the breezes of spring and summer.
For some reason that I cannot explain, these legends and folk-tales
not only filled my mind with eerie fancies but made me think of one
who was quite human and real. I began to wonder about Yasma—
where was she now? What part was she taking in the celebration?
And as my thoughts turned to her, an irrational fear crept into my
mind—what if, like the maidens described in the poems, she had
taken wing? Smiling at my own imaginings, I arose quietly from my
couch of grass, and slowly and cautiously began to move about the
edge of the crowd, while scanning the nearer forms and faces. In the
pale light I could scarcely be distinguished from a native; and, being
careful to keep to the shadows, I was apparently not noticed. And I
had almost circled the clearing before I had any reason to pause.
All this time I had seen no sign of Yasma. I had almost given up
hope of finding her when my attention was attracted to a solitary little
figure hunched against a cabin wall in the dimness at the edge of the
clearing. Even in the near-dark I could not fail to recognize her; and,
heedless of the dancers surging and eddying through the open
spaces, I made toward her in a straight line.
I will admit that I had some idea of the unwisdom of speaking to her
tonight; but my impatience had gotten the better of my tongue.
"I am glad to see you here," I began, without the formality of a
greeting. "You are not taking part in the dance, Yasma."
Yasma gave a start, and looked at me like one just awakened from
deep sleep. At first her eyes showed no recognition; then it struck
me there was just a spark of anger and even of hostility in her gaze.
"No, I am not taking part in the dance," she responded, listlessly. And
then, after an interval, while I stood above her in embarrassed
silence, "But why come to me now?... Why disturb me tonight of all
nights?"
"I do not want to disturb you, Yasma," I apologized. "I just happened
to see you here, and thought—"
My sentence was never finished. Suddenly I became aware that
there was only vacancy where Yasma had been. And dimly I was
conscious of a shadow-form slipping from me into the multitude of
shadows.
In vain I attempted to follow her. She had vanished as completely as
though she had been one of the ghostly women of the poems. No
more that evening did I see her small graceful shape; but all the rest
of the night, until the bonfire had smoldered to red embers and the
crowd had dispersed, I wandered about disconsolately, myself like a
ghost as I furtively surveyed the dancing figures. A deep, sinking
uneasiness obsessed me; and my dejection darkened into despair
as it became plainer that my quest was unavailing, and that Yasma
had really turned against me.
 Chapter IX
IN THE REDDENING WOODS
During the weeks before the firelight celebration, I had gradually
made friends with the various natives. This was not difficult, for the
people were as curious regarding me as I would have been
regarding a Martian. At the same time, they were kindly disposed,
and would never hesitate to do me any little favor, such as to help
me in laying up my winter's supplies, or to advise me how to make a
coat of goat's hide, or to tell me where the rarest herbs and berries
were to be found, or to bring me liberal portions of any choice viand
they chanced to be preparing.
I was particularly interested in Yasma's brothers and sisters, all of
whom I met in quick succession. They were all older than she, and
all had something of her naïvety and vivaciousness without her own
peculiar charm. Her three sisters had found husbands among the
men of the tribe, and two were already the mothers of vigorous
toddling little sons and daughters; while her brothers, Karem and
Barkodu, were tall, proud, and dignified of demeanor like their father.
With Karem, the elder, I struck up a friendship that was to prove my
closest masculine attachment in Sobul. I well remember our first
meeting; it was just after my convalescence from my long illness.
One morning, in defiance of Yasma's warning, I had slipped off by
myself into the woods, intending to go but a few hundred yards. But
the joyous green of the foliage, the chirruping birds and the warm
crystalline air had misled me; and, happy merely to be alive and free,
I wandered on and on, scarcely noticing how I was overtaxing my
strength. Then suddenly I became aware of an overwhelming
faintness; all things swam around me; and I sank down upon a
boulder, near to losing consciousness.... After a moment, I attempted
to rise; but the effort was too much; I have a recollection of
staggering like a drunken man, or reeling, of pitching toward the
rocks....
Happily, I did not complete my fall. Saving me from the shattering
stones, two strong arms clutched me about the shoulders, and
wrenched me back to a standing posture.
In a daze, I looked up ... aware of the red and blue costume of a
tribesman of Sobul ... aware of the two large black eyes that peered
down at me half in amusement, half in sympathy. Those eyes were
but the most striking features of a striking countenance; I
remembered having already seen that high, rounded forehead, that
long, slender, swarthy face with the aquiline nose, that untrimmed
luxuriant full black beard.
"Come, come, I do not like your way of walking," the man declared,
with a smile. And seeing that I was still too weak to reply, he
continued, cheerfully, with a gesture toward a thicket to our rear, "If I
had not been there gathering berries, this day might have ended
sadly for you. Shall I not take you home?"
Leaning heavily upon him while with the gentlest care he led me
along the trail, I found my way slowly back to the village.
And thus I made the acquaintance of Karem, brother of Yasma. At
the time I did not know of the relationship; but between Karem and
myself a friendship quickly developed. Even as he wound with me
along the woodland track to the village, I felt strangely drawn toward
this genial, self-possessed man; and possibly he felt a reciprocal
attraction, for he came often thereafter to inquire how I was doing;
and occasionally we had long talks, as intimate as my foreign birth
and my knowledge of Pushtu would permit. I found him not at all
unintelligent, and the possessor of knowledge that his sophisticated
brothers might have envied. He told me more than I had ever known
before about the habits of wood creatures, of wolves and squirrels,
jackals, snakes and bears; he could describe where each species of
birds had their nests, and the size and color of the eggs; he
instructed me in the lore of bees, ants and beetles, and in the ways
of the fishes in the swift-flowing streams. Later, when I had
recovered my strength, he would accompany me on day-long climbs
among the mountains, showing me the best trails and the easiest
ascents—and so supplying me with knowledge that was to prove
most valuable in time to come.
It was to Karem that I turned for an answer to the riddles of Sobul
after Yasma had failed me. But in this respect he was not very
helpful. He would smile indulgently whenever I hinted that I
suspected a mystery; and would make some jovial reply, as if
seeking to brush the matter aside with a gesture. This was especially
the case on the day after the firelight festivities, when we went on a
fishing expedition to a little lake on the further side of the valley.
Although in a rare good humor, he was cleverly evasive when I
asked anything of importance. What had been the purpose of the
celebration? It was simply an annual ceremony held by his people,
the ceremony of the autumn season. Why had Hamul-Kammesh
attached so much significance to the flight of the birds? That was
mere poetic symbolism; the birds had been taken as typical of the
time of year. Then what reason for the excitement of the people?—
and what had Yulada to do with the affair? Of course, Yulada had
nothing to do with it at all; but the people thought she had ordered
the ceremonies, and they had been swayed by a religious mania,
which Hamul-Kammesh, after the manner of soothsayers, had
encouraged for the sake of his own influence.
Such were Karem's common-sense explanations. On the surface
they were convincing; and yet, somehow, I was not convinced. For
the moment I would be persuaded; but thinking over the facts at my
leisure, I would feel sure that Karem had left much unstated.
My dissatisfaction with his replies was most acute when I touched
upon the matter closest to my heart. I described Yasma's conduct
during the celebration; confided how surprised I had been, and how
pained; and confessed my fear that I had committed the
unpardonable sin by intruding during an important rite.
To all that I said Karem listened with an attentive smile.
"Why, Prescott," he returned (I had taught him to call me by my last
name), "you surprise me! Come, come, do not be so serious! Who
can account for a woman's whims? Certainly, not I! When you are
married like me, and have little tots running about your house ready
to crawl up your knee whenever you come in, you'll know better than
to try to explain what the gods never intended to be explained by any
man!" And Karem burst into laughter, and slapped me on the back
good-naturedly, as though thus to dispose of the matter.
However, I was not to be sidetracked so easily. I did not join in
Karem's laughter; I even felt a little angry. "But this wasn't just an
ordinary whim," I argued. "There was something deeper in it. There
was some reason I don't understand, and can't get at no matter how
I try."
"Then why not save trouble, and quit trying?" suggested Karem, still
good-natured despite my sullenness. "Come, it's a splendid day; let's
enjoy it while we can!"
And he pointed ahead to a thin patch of blue, vaguely visible through
a break in the trees. "See, there's the lake already! I expect fishing
will be good today!"

If I had required further proof that my wits had surrendered to

Yasma's charms, I might have found evidence enough during the
days that followed the tribal celebration. Though smarting from her
avoidance of me, I desired nothing more fervently than to be with her
again; and I passed half my waking hours in vainly searching for her.
Day after day I would inquire for her at her father's cabin, would
haunt the paths to the dwelling, would search the fields and
vineyards in the hope of surprising her. Where had she gone, she
who had always come running to greet me? Had she flown south like
the wild birds? At this fancy I could only smile; yet always, with a
lover's irrational broodings, I was obsessed by the fear that she was
gone never to return. This dread might have risen to terror had the
villagers not always been bringing me tidings of her: either they had
just spoken with her, or had seen someone who had just spoken with
her, or had observed her tripping by toward the meadows. Yet she
was still elusive as though able to make herself invisible.
Nevertheless, after about a week my vigilance was rewarded.
Stepping out into the chill gray of a mid-October dawn, I saw a
slender little figure slipping along the edge of the village and across
the fields toward the woods. My heart gave a great thump; without
hesitation, I started in pursuit, not daring to call out lest I arouse the
village, but determined not to lose sight of that slim flitting form. She
did not glance behind, and could not have known that I was
following, yet for some reason quickened her pace, so that I had to
make an effort to match her speed.
Once out of earshot of the village, I paused to regain my breath, then
at the top of my voice shouted, "Yasma! Yasma!"
Could it be that she had not heard me? On and on she continued,
straight toward the dark fringe of the woods.
Dismayed and incredulous, I repeated my call, using my hands as a
megaphone. This time it seemed to me that she halted momentarily;
but she did not look back; and her pause could not have filled the
space between two heart beats. In amazement, I observed her
almost racing toward the woods!
But if she could run, so could I! With rising anger, yet scarcely
crediting the report of my eyes, I started across the fields at a sprint.
In a moment I should overtake Yasma—and then what excuse would
she have to offer?
But ill fortune was still with me. In my heedless haste I stumbled over
a large stone; and when, bruised and confused, I arose to my feet
with an oath, it was to behold a slender form disappearing beyond
the shadowy forest margin.
Although sure that I had again lost track of her, I continued the
pursuit in a sort of dogged rage. There was but one narrow trail amid
the densely matted undergrowth; and along this trail I dashed,
encouraged by the sight of small fresh-made footprints amid the
damp earth. But the maker of those footprints must have been in a
great hurry, for although I pressed on until my breath came hard and
my forehead was moist with perspiration, I could catch no glimpse of
her, nor even hear any stirring or rustling ahead.
At length I had lost all trace of her. The minute footprints came to an
end, as though their creator had vanished bird-like; and I stood in
bewilderment in the mournful twilight of the forest, gazing up at the
lugubrious green of pine and juniper and at the long twisted
branches of oak and ash and wild peach, red-flecked and yellow and
already half leafless.
How long I remained standing there I do not know. It was useless to
go on, equally useless to retrace my footsteps. The minutes went by,
and nothing happened. A bird chirped and twittered from some
unseen twig above; a squirrel came rustling toward me, and with big
frightened eyes hopped to the further side of a tree-trunk; now and
then an insect buzzed past, with a dismal drone that seemed the
epitome of all woe. But that was all—and of Yasma there was still no
sign.
Then, when I thought of her and remembered her loveliness, and
how she had been my playmate and comrade, I was overcome with
the sorrow of losing her, and a teardrop dampened my cheek, and I
heaved a long-drawn sigh.
And as if in response to that sigh, the bushes began to shake and
quiver. And a sob broke the stillness of the forest, and I was as if
transfixed by the sound of a familiar voice.
And out of the tangle of weeds and shrubs a slender figure arose,
with shoulders heaving spasmodically; and with a cry I started
forward and received into my arms the shuddering, speechless,
clinging form of Yasma.
It was minutes before either of us could talk. Meanwhile I held the
weeping girl closely to me, soothing her as I might have done a child.
So natural did this seem that I quite forgot the strangeness of the
situation. My mind was filled with sympathy, sympathy for her
distress, and wonder at her odd ways; and I had no desire except to
comfort her.
"Tell me just what has happened, Yasma," I said, when her sobbing
had died down to a rhythmic murmuring. "What has happened—to
make you so sad?"
To my surprise, she broke away, and stood staring at me at arm's
length. Her eyes were moist with an inexpressible melancholy; there
was something so pitiful about her that I could have taken her back
into my arms forthwith.
"Oh, my friend," she cried, with a vehemence I could not understand,
"why do you waste time over me? Have nothing to do with me! I am
not worth it!" And she turned as if to flee again into the forest; but I
seized her hand and drew her slowly back to me.
"Yasma! Yasma!" I remonstrated, peering down into those wistful
brown eyes that burned with some dark-smoldering fire. "What has
made you behave so queerly? Tell me, do you no longer care for
me? Do you not—do you not love me?"
At these words, the graceful head sagged low upon the quivering
shoulders. A crimson flush mounted the slender neck, and suffused
the soft, well rounded cheeks; the averted eyes told the story they
were meant to conceal.
Then, without further hesitation, my arms closed once more about
her. And again she clung close, this time not with the unconscious
eagerness of a child craving protection, but with all the fury and force
of her impetuous nature.
A few minutes later, a surprising change had come over her. We had
left the woods, and she was sitting at my side in a little glade by a
brooklet. The tears had been dried from her eyes, which were still
red and swollen; but in her face there was a happy glow, and I
thought she had never looked quite so beautiful before.
For a while we sat gazing in silence at the tattered and yet majestic
line of the forest, a phantom pageant whose draperies of russet and
cinnamon and fiery crimson and dusty gold were lovely almost
beyond belief. A strange enchantment had come over us; and we
were reluctant to break the charm.
Yet there were questions that kept stirring in my mind; questions to
which finally I was forced to give words.
"Tell me, Yasma," I asked, suddenly, "why have you been behaving
so queerly? Why were you running away from me? Is there
something about me that frightened you?"
It was as if my words had brought back the evil spell. Her features
contracted into a frown; the darkness returned to her eyes, which
again burned with some unspoken sorrow; a look of fear, almost like
that of a haunted creature, flitted across her face.
"Oh, you must never ask that!" she protested, in such dismay that I
pitied her even while I wondered. "You must never ask—never,
never!"
"Why not?" I questioned. "What mystery can there be to hide?"
"There is no mystery," she declared. And then, with quick
inconsistency, "But even if there were, you should not ask!"
"But why?" I demanded. "Now, Yasma, you mustn't treat me like a
five-year-old. What have I done to offend you? Tell me, what have I
done?"
"It is nothing that you have done," she mumbled, avoiding my gaze.
"Then is it something someone else has done? Come, let me know
just what is wrong!"
"I cannot tell you! I cannot!" she cried, with passion. And, rising
abruptly and turning to me with eyes aflame, "Oh, why must you
insist on knowing? Haven't I done everything to protect you from
knowing? Do you think it has been easy—easy for me to treat you
like this? But it is wrong to love you! wrong even to encourage you!
Only evil can come of it! Oh, why did you ever, ever have to come
among our tribe?"
Having delivered herself of this outburst, Yasma paced back and
forth, back and forth amid the dense grass, with fists clenched and
head upraised to the heavens, like one in an extremity of distress.
But I quickly arose and went to her, and in a moment she was again
in my arms.
Truly, as Karem had declared, the ways of women are not to be
explained! But I felt that there was more meaning than I had
discovered in her behavior; I was sure that she had not acted
altogether without reason, and, remembering all that had puzzled
me, I was determined to probe if possible to the roots of her seeming
caprice.
"You have never been the same to me since the firelight celebration,"
I said, when her emotion had spent itself and we once more sat
quietly side by side in the grass. "Maybe something happened then
to make you despise me."
"No, not to make me despise you!" she denied, emphatically. "It was
not your fault at all!"
"Then what was it?" I urged.
"Nothing. Only that Hamul—Hamul—"
In manifest confusion, she checked herself.
"Hamul-Kammesh?" I finished for her, convinced that here was a
clue.
But she refused to answer me or to mention the soothsayer again;
and, lest the too-ready tears flow once more, I had to abandon the
topic. None the less, I had not forgotten her references to Hamul-
Kammesh and his prophecies.
But I still attached no importance to the predictions—was I to be
dismayed by mere superstition? I was conscious only that I felt an
overwhelming tenderness toward Yasma, and that she was
supremely adorable; and it seemed to me that her love was the sole
thing that mattered. At her first kiss, my reason had abdicated; I was
agitated no longer by scruples, doubts or hesitancies; my former
objects in life appeared pallid and dull by contrast with this warm,
breathing, emotional girl. For her sake I would have forsworn my
chosen work, forsworn the friends I had known, forsworn name and
country—yes, even doomed myself to lasting exile in this green,
world-excluding valley!
In as few words as possible I explained the nature of my feelings. I
was able to give but pale expression to the radiance of my emotions;
but I am sure that she understood. "I do not know what it is that
holds you from me, Yasma," I finished. "Surely, you realize that you
are dearer to me than my own breath. You made me very happy a
little while ago when you came into my arms—why not make me
happy for life? You could live with me here in a cabin in Sobul, or
maybe I could take you with me to see the world I come from, and
you would then know where the clouds go, and see strange cities
with houses as tall as precipices and people many as the leaves of a
tree. What do you say, Yasma? Don't you want to make us both
happy?"
Yasma stared at me with wide-lidded eyes in which I seemed to read
infinite longing.
"You know I would!" she cried. "You know I would—if I could! But
ours is a strange people, and our ways are not your ways. There is
so much you do not understand, so much which even I do not
understand! It all makes me afraid, oh, terribly afraid!"
"Do not be afraid, Yasma dear," I murmured, slipping my arm about
her shoulders. "I will protect you."
"You cannot protect me!" she lamented, withdrawing. "You cannot
even protect yourself! There is so much, so much from which none
can protect themselves!"
Not realizing what she meant, I let this warning slip past.
"All that I know," I swore, passionately, "is that I want you with me—
want you with me always! Let happen what may, I want you—and
have never wanted anything so much before!"
"Oh, do not speak of that now!" she burst forth, in a tone almost of
command. "Do not speak of that now! First there are things you must
know—things I cannot explain!" And she sat with eyes averted,
gazing toward the scarlet and vermilion dishevelled trees, whose
branches waved like ghostly danger signals in the rising wind.
"What things must I know?"
"You will have to wait and find out. Maybe, like us, you will feel them
without being told; but maybe time alone will be your teacher. The
traditions of my tribe would stop me from telling you even if I knew
how. But do not be surprised if you learn some very, very strange
things."
"Strange or not strange," I vowed, "all I know is that I love you. All I
care to learn is when—when, Yasma, you will say to me—"
"Not until the spring," she murmured, with such finality that I felt
intuitively the uselessness of argument. "Not until the flowers come
out from their winter hiding, and the birds fly north. Then you will
know more about our tribe."
Without further explanation, she sprang impulsively from her seat of
grass. "Come," she warned me, pointing to a gray mass that was
obscuring the northern peaks. "Come, a storm is on the way! If we
don't hurry, we'll be wet through and through!"
And she flitted before me toward the village with such speed that I
could scarcely get another word with her.
 Chapter X
THE IBANDRU TAKE WING
As October drifted by and November loomed within two weeks'
beckoning, a striking change came over Sobul. The very elements
seemed to feel and to solemnize that change, which was as much in
the spirit of things as in their physical aspect; and the slow-dying
autumn seemed stricken with a bitter foretaste of winter. Cold winds
began to blow, and even in the seclusion of the valley they shrieked
and wailed with demonic fury; torn and scattered clouds scudded like
great shadows over granite skies, and occasionally gave token of
their ill will in frantic outbursts of rain; ominous new white patches
were forming about the peaks, to vanish within a few hours, and
appear again and vanish once more; and daily the dead leaves
came drifting down in swarms and showers of withered brown and
saffron and mottled red, while daily the flocks of winged adventurers
went darting and screeching overhead on their way beyond the
mountains.
But the stormy days, with all the wildness and force and passionate
abandon of wind and rain, were less impressive for me than the days
of calm. Then, when the placid sky shone in unbroken blue, all
nature seemed sad with a melancholy I had never felt among my
native hills. There was something tragic about the tranquil, ragged
forest vistas, shot through as with an inner light of deep golden and
red, and standing bared in mute resignation to the stroke of doom.
But there was something more than tragic; there was something
spectral about those long waiting lines of trees, with their foliage that
at times appeared to reflect the sunset, and at times seemed like the
painted tapestries of some colossal dream pageant. More and more,
as I gazed in a charmed revery at the gaudy death-apparel of the
woods, I was obsessed with the sense of some immanent presence,
some weird presence that hovered intangibly behind the smoldering
autumn fires, some presence that I could not think of without a
shudder and that filled me with an unreasonable awe.
Certainly my feelings, uncanny as they were, were to be justified
only too fully by time. Already I had more than a suspicion that the
season of southward-flying birds was a season of mystic meaning for
the Ibandru, but little did I understand just how important it was. Only
by degrees did realization force itself upon me; and then I could only
gape, and rub my eyes, and ask if I were dreaming. Stranger than
any tale I had ever read in the Arabian Nights, stranger than any
fancy my fevered mind had ever beckoned forth, was the reality that
set the Ibandru apart from all other peoples on earth.
As the weeks went by, the agitation I had noted among the natives
was intensified rather than lessened. I was aware of a sense of
waiting which grew until the very atmosphere seemed anxious and
strained; and I observed that the men and women no longer went as
usual about their tasks, but flitted to and fro aimlessly or nervously or
excitedly, as though they had no definite place in the world and were
hesitating on the brink of some fearful decision.
And then, one day when October was a little beyond mid-career, I
thought I detected another change. At first I was not sure, and
accused my imagination of playing pranks; but it was not long before
I ceased to have any doubts. The population of Sobul was dwindling!
Not half so many children as before were romping in the open
among the houses, not half so many women could be seen bustling
about the village, or so many men roaming the fields—the entire
place wore a sudden air of desolation. And in more than one cabin,
previously the home of a riotous family, the doors swung no longer
upon their wooden hinges, but through the open window-places I
caught glimpses of bare floors and dark walls innocent of human
occupancy.
When had the people gone? And where? I had not seen anyone
leave, nor been told that anyone was to leave; and I witnessed no
ceremonies of farewell. Could the missing ones be victims of some
terror that came down "like a wolf on the fold" and snatched them
away in the night? Or were they merely visiting some other tribe in
some other secluded valley?
These problems puzzled me incessantly; but when I turned to the
Ibandru for information, their answers were tantalizing. They did not
deny that some of their tribesmen had left, and did not claim that this
had been unexpected or mystifying; but they were either unable or
unwilling to furnish any details; and I was not sure whether they felt
that I was probing impertinently into their affairs, or whether some
tribal or religious mandate sealed their lips.
I particularly remember the answers of Karem and Yasma. The
former, with his usual jovial way of avoiding the issue, advised me to
have no worries; the whole matter was really no concern of mine,
and I might be assured that the missing ones were not badly off or
unhappy. By this time I must have learned that the Ibandru had
queer ways, and I must prepare for things queerer still; but, until I
was one with the tribe at heart, I must not expect to understand.
Yasma's answer, though vague enough, was more definite.
"Our absent friends," she said, while by turns a sad and an exalted
light played across her mobile features, "have gone the way of the
birds that fly south. Yulada has beckoned them, and they have
escaped the winter's loneliness and cold, and have hastened where
the bright flowers are, and the butterflies and bees. See!"—
Ecstatically she pointed to a triangle of swift-moving dots that glided
far above through the cloudless blue.—"They are like the wild geese!
They flee from the biting gales and the frost, and will not return till
the warm days are here again and the leaves come back to the
trees. We must all go like them—all of us, all, all!"
"And I too—must I go?" I asked, never thinking of taking her words
literally.
Yasma hesitated. The light faded from her eyes; an expression of
sorrow, almost of compassion, flooded her face.
"That I cannot say," she returned, sadly. "You must feel the call within
you, feel it as the birds do, drawing you on to lands where robins
sing and the lilac blooms. No one can tell you how to feel it; it must
come from within or not at all, and you yourself must recognize it.
But oh, you cannot help recognizing it! It is so strong, so very strong!
—and it takes your whole body and soul with it, draws you like a
rainbow or a beautiful sunset; and bears you along as the wind bears
a dead leaf. You cannot resist it any more than you can resist a
terrible hunger—you must submit, or it will hurl you under!"
"I do not understand," said I, for despite the ardor of her words, I had
only the dimmest idea of the overmastering force she described.
"Perhaps," she returned, gently, "you cannot know. You may be like a
color-blind man trying to understand color. But oh, I hope not! I hope
—ever and ever so much—that you'll hear the call thundering within
you. Otherwise, you'll have to stay here by yourself the whole winter,
while the snow falls and the wolves howl, and you won't see us
again till spring!"
Her emotion seemed to be overcoming her. Fiercely she wiped a
tear from her cheek; then turned from me, to give way to her
misgivings in the seclusion of her father's cabin.
But I was not without my own misgivings. Her words had revived
haunting premonitions; it was as if some sinister shadow hovered
over me, all the more dread because formless. What unhallowed
people were these Ibandru, to go slinking away like specters in the
night? Were they a tribe of outlaws or brigands, hiding from justice in
these impenetrable fastnesses? Or were they the sole survivors of
some ancient race, endowed with qualities not given to ordinary
humans? With new interest I recalled the stories told me by the
Afghan guides before my fateful adventure: the reports that the
Ibandru were a race of devils, winged like birds and with the power
of making themselves invisible. Absurd as this tale appeared, might
there not be the ghost of an excuse for it?
As for Yasma's predictions and warnings—what meaning had there
been in them? Was it indeed possible that I might be left alone all
winter in this desolate place? And was that why Abthar had advised
me to make ready for the cold season while his own people had
apparently done nothing to prepare? But, even so, how could they
escape the winter? Was it not a mere poetic vagary to say, as Yasma
had done, that they went to lands where robins sang and the lilac
bloomed—how cross the interminable mountain reaches to the semi-
torrid valleys of India or the warm Arabian plains? Or was it that, like
the bears, they hibernated in caves? Or, like the wild geese that they
watched so excitedly, were they swayed by some old migratory
instinct, some impulse dormant or dead in most men but preserved
for them by a long succession of nomad ancestors? Although reason
scoffed at the idea, I had visions of them trekking each autumn
across four or five hundred miles of wilderness to the borders of the
Arabian Sea, surviving on provisions they had secreted along the
route, and returning with the spring to their homes in Sobul.
Unlikely as this explanation appeared, nothing more plausible
occurred to me. But as the days went by, my sense of mystery
increased. The people were fleeing almost as though Sobul were
plague-ridden—of that there could be no further doubt! Daily now I
missed some familiar face; first a child who had come to me of
evenings to run gay races in the fields; then an old woman who had
sat each morning in the sun before her cabin; then Yasma's brother,
Barkodu, whose tall sturdy form I had frequently observed in the
village. And then one evening when I inquired for Karem, I was told
that he was not to be seen; and the people's peculiar reserved
expression testified that he had gone "the way of the birds that fly
south." And, a day later, when I wished to see Abthar in the hope
that he would relieve my perplexed mind, I found no one in the cabin
except Yasma; and she murmured that her father would not be back
till spring.
But did I make no effort to solve the enigma? Did I not strive to find
out for myself where the absent ones had gone? Yes! I made many
attempts—and with bewildering results. Even today I shudder to
think of the ordeal I underwent; the remembrance of eerie midnights
and strange shadows that flickered and vanished comes back to me
after these many, many months; I feel again the cool, forest-scented
breeze upon my nostrils as I crouch among the deep weeds at the
village edge, or as I glide phantom-like beneath the trees in the cold
starlight. For it was mainly at night that I wrestled with the Unknown;
and it was at night that I received the most persuasive and soul-
disturbing proof of the weirdness of the ways of Sobul.
My plans may not have been well laid, but they were the best I could
conceive. From the fact that I had never seen any of the Ibandru
leaving, and that more than once in the morning I had missed some
face that had greeted me twelve hours before, I concluded that the
people invariably fled by night. Acting on this view, I hid one evening
in a clump of bushes on the outskirts of the village, resolved to wait if
need be until dawn. True, no one might choose tonight for the
migration; but in that case I should lie in hiding tomorrow night, and if
necessary again on the night after.
As I lay sprawled among the bushes, whose dry leaves and twigs
pricked and irritated my skin, I was prey to countless vexations. The
night was cold, and I shivered as the wind cut through my thin
garments; the night was long, and I almost groaned with impatience
while the slow constellations crawled across the heavens; the night
was dark, and fantastic fears flitted through my mind as I gazed
through the gloom toward the ghostly line of the trees and cabins.
Every now and then, when some wild creature called out querulously
from the woods, I was swept by desire to flee; and more than once
some harmless small beast, rustling a few yards off, startled me to
alarm. But in the village nothing stirred, and the aloof, shadowy huts,
scattered here and there like the monsters of a nightmare, seemed
to bristle with unspeakable menace.
Yet nothing menacing became visible as the long reaches of the
night dragged by and the constellations still swung monotonously
between the faint black line of the eastern ranges and the equally
faint black peaks to the west. At length, lulled by the sameness and
the silence, I must have forgotten myself, must have drowsed a bit,
for I have a recollection of coming to myself with a start, bewildered
and with half clouded senses.... The night was as tranquil as before,
the trees and houses as dark; but as I glanced skyward I detected
the merest touch of gray. And, at the same time, I had a singular
sense that I was no longer alone. Intently I gazed into the gloom—
still nothing visible. But all the while that same shuddery feeling
persisted, as if unseen eyes were watching me, unseen ears
listening to my every motion. Again I felt an impulse to flee; my limbs
quivered; my heart pounded; instinctively I crawled deeper into the
bushes. And, as I did so, I saw that which made me catch my breath
in horror.
From behind one of the nearer cabins, two long lithe shadows
darted, gliding noiselessly toward me through the darkness. No
ghost could have shown dimmer outlines, or walked on more silent
feet, or flooded my whole being with more uncanny sensations.
Straight toward me they strode, looming gigantic in my tortured
imagination; and as they approached I hugged the bushes more
closely, trembling lest the phantoms discover me. Then suddenly
they swerved aside, and passed at a dozen paces; and through the
stillness of the night came the dull rhythm of sandalled feet.
For a minute I watched in silence. Then, encouraged by the pale
radiance which was swallowing the feebler stars and softening the
blackness above, I choked down my fears and crept stealthily out of
the thicket. Before me the two shadows were still vaguely visible,
gliding rapidly toward the southern woods. Like a detective trailing
his prey, I stumbled among the weeds and rocks in their wake. But,
all the time, I felt that I was pursuing mere wraiths; and, though I
walked my swiftest, I found it impossible to gain upon them. They
were several hundred yards ahead, and several hundred yards
ahead they remained, while I put forth my utmost effort and they
appeared to make no effort at all. And at last, to my dismay, they
reached the shaggy boundary of the woods; merged with it; and
were blotted out.
With what poor patience I could still command, I took the only
possible course. While dawn lent gradual color to the skies, I
hovered at the forest edge; and in the first dismal twilight I began to
inspect the ground, hopeful of discovering some telltale evidence.
But no evidence was to be had. I did indeed find the footprints I was
looking for; the trouble was that I found too many footprints. Not two
persons but twenty had passed on this path, which I recognized as a
trail leading toward Yulada. But all the tracks were new-made, and
all equally obscured by the others; and it was impossible to say
which were the freshest, or to follow any in particular.

When I returned to the village, not a person was stirring among the
cabins; an unearthly stillness brooded over the place, and I could
have imagined it to be a town of the dead. Had I not been utterly
fatigued by my night in the open, I might have been struck even
more strongly by the solitude, and have paused to investigate; as it
was, I made straight for my own hut, flung myself down upon my
straw couch, and sank into a sleep from which I did not awaken until
well past noon.
After a confused and hideous dream, in which I lay chained to a
glacier while an arctic wind blew through my garments, I opened my
eyes with the impression that the nightmare had been real. A
powerful wind was blowing! I could hear it blustering and wailing
among the treetops; through my open window it flickered and sallied
with a breath that seemed straight from the Pole. Leaping to my feet,
I hastily closed the great shutters I had constructed of pine wood;
and, at the same time, I caught glimpses of gray skies with a
scudding rack of clouds, and of little white flakes driving and reeling
down.
In my surprise at this change in the weather, I was struck by
premonitions as bleak as the bleak heavens. What of Yasma? How
would she behave in the storm?—she who was apparently
unprepared for the winter! Though I tried to convince myself that
there was no cause for concern, an unreasoning something within
me insisted that there was cause indeed. It was not a minute,
therefore, before I was slipping on my goatskin coat.
But I might have spared my pains. At this instant there came a
tapping from outside, and my heart began to beat fiercely as I
shouted, "Come in!"
The log door moved upon its hinges, and a short slim figure slipped
inside.
"Yasma!" I cried, surprised and delighted, as I forced the door shut in
the face of the blast. But my surprise was swiftly to grow, and my
delight to die; at sight of her wild, sad eyes, I started back in wonder
and dismay. In part they burned with a mute resignation, and in part
with the unutterable pain of one bereaved; yet at the same time her
face was brightened with an indefinable exultation, as though
beneath that vivid countenance some secret ecstasy glowed and
smoldered.
"I have come to say good-bye," she murmured, in dreary tones. "I
have come to say good-bye."
"Good-bye!"—It was as though I had heard that word long ago in a
bitter dream. Yet how could I accept the decree? Passion took fire
within me as I seized Yasma and pressed her to me.
"Do not leave me!" I pleaded. "Oh, why must you go away? Where
must you go? Tell me, Yasma, tell me! Why must I stay here alone
the whole winter long? Why can't I go with you? Or why can't you
stay with me? Stay here, Yasma! We could be so happy together, we
two!"
Tears came into her eyes at this appeal.
"You make me sad, very sad," she sighed, as she freed herself from
my embrace. "I do not want to leave you here alone—and yet, oh
what else can I do? The cold days have come, and my people call
me, and I must go where the flowers are. Oh, you don't know how
gladly I'd have you come with us; but you don't understand the way,
and can't find it, and I can't show it to you. So I must go now, I must
go, I must! for soon the last bird will have flown south."
Again she held out her hands as for a friendly greeting, and again I
took her into my arms, this time with all the desperation of impending
loss, for I was filled with a sense of certainties against which it was
useless to struggle, and felt as if by instinct that she would leave
despite all I could do or say.
But I did not realize quite how near the moment was. Slipping from
my clasp, she flitted to the door, forcing it slightly open, so that the
moaning and howling of the gale became suddenly accentuated.
"Until the spring!" she cried, in mournful tones that seemed in accord
with the tumult of the elements. "Until the spring!"—And a smile of
boundless yearning and compassion glimmered across her face.
Then the door rattled to a close, and I stood alone in that chilly room.
Blindly, like one bereft of his senses, I plunged out of the cabin,
regardless of the gale, regardless of the snow that came wheeling
down in dizzy flurries. But Yasma was not to be seen. For a moment
I stood staring into the storm; then time after time I called out her
name, to be answered only by the wind that sneered and snorted its
derision. And at length, warmed into furious action, I set out at a
sprint for her cabin, racing along unconscious of the buffeting blast
and the beaten snow that pricked and stung my face.
All in vain! Arriving at Yasma's home, I flung open the great pine
door without ceremony—to be greeted by the emptiness within. For
many minutes I waited; but Yasma did not come, and the tempest
shrieked and chuckled more fiendishly than ever.
At last, when the early twilight was dimming the world, I threaded a
path back along the whitening ground, and among cabins with roofs
like winter. Not a living being greeted me; and through the wide-open
windows of the huts I had glimpses of naked and untenanted logs.
 II
Blossom and Seed
 Chapter XI
THE PRISONER
When I staggered back to my cabin through the snow-storm in the
November dusk, I could not realize the ghastliness of my misfortune.
My mind seemed powerless before the bleak reality; it was not until I
had re-entered the cabin that I began to look the terror in the face.
Then, when I had slammed the door behind me and stood silently in
that frigid place, all my dread and loneliness and foreboding became
concentrated in one point of acute agony. The shadows deepening
within that dingy hovel seemed living, evil things; the wind that
hissed and screeched without, with brief lulls and swift crescendos of
fury, was like a chorus of demons; and such desolation of spirit was
upon me that I could have rushed out into the storm, and delivered
myself up to its numbing, fatal embrace.
It was long before, conscious of the increasing chill and the coaly
darkness, I went fumbling about the room to make a light.
Fortunately, I still had a half-used box of matches, vestiges of the
world I had lost; and with their aid, I contrived to light a little wax
candle.
But as I watched the taper fitfully burning, with sputtering yellow rays
that only half revealed the bare walls of the room and left eerie
shadows to brood in the corners, I almost wished that I had
remained in darkness. How well I remembered Yasma's teaching me
to make the candle; to melt the wax; to pour it into a little wooden
mould; to insert the wick in the still viscid mass! Could it be but a
month ago when she had stood with me in this very room, so
earnestly and yet so gaily giving me instructions? Say rather that it
was years ago, eons ago!—what relation could there be between
that happy self, which had laughed with Yasma, and this forlorn self,
which stood here abandoned in the darkness and the cold?