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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Henry Brocken, by Walter J. de la Mare
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Henry Brocken
+       His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance
+
+
+Author: Walter J. de la Mare
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2005  [eBook #15432]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY BROCKEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+HENRY BROCKEN
+
+
+
+
+    With a heart of furious fancies,
+      Whereof I am commander:
+        With a burning spear,
+        And a horse of air,
+      To the wilderness I wander;
+
+    With a Knight of ghosts and shadows,
+      I summoned am to Tourney:
+        Ten leagues beyond
+        The wide world's end;
+      Methinks it is no journey.
+
+    --ANON. (_Tom o' Bedlam_).
+
+
+
+
+HENRY BROCKEN
+
+His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable
+Regions of Romance
+
+by
+
+WALTER J. DE LA MARE
+
+("WALTER RAMAL")
+
+London
+John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. WHITHER?
+
+    Come hither, come hither, come hither!
+
+    --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+II. LUCY GRAY
+
+    Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray;
+      And, when I crossed the wild,
+    I chanced to see at break of day
+      The solitary child.
+
+    --WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+III. JANE EYRE
+
+    I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams ... where
+    amidst unusual scenes ... I still again and again met Mr.
+    Rochester;... and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his
+    voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving him,
+    being loved by him--the hope of passing a lifetime at his side,
+    would be renewed, with all its first force and fire.
+
+    --CHARLOTTE BRONTE (_Jane Eyre_, Ch. xxxii.).
+
+
+IV. JULIA, ELECTRA, DIANEME
+
+    Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
+      Old Time is still a-flying:
+    And this same flower that smiles to-day
+      To-morrow will be dying.
+
+    The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
+      The higher he's a-getting,
+    The sooner will his race be run,
+      And nearer he's to setting.
+
+    That age is best which is the first,
+      When youth and blood are warmer;
+    But being spent, the worse, and worst
+      Times still succeed the former.
+
+    Then be not coy, but use your time;
+      And while ye may, go marry:
+    For having lost but once your prime,
+      You may for ever tarry.
+
+    ANTHEA--
+
+    Now is the time when all the lights wax dim,
+    And thou, Anthea, must withdraw from him
+    Who was thy servant. Dearest, bury me
+    Under the holy-oak or gospel tree;...
+    Or, for mine honour, lay me in that tomb
+    In which thy sacred relics shall have room:
+    For my embalming, sweetest, there will be
+    No spices wanting when I'm laid by thee.
+
+    --HERRICK (_Hesperides_).
+
+
+V. NICK BOTTOM 43
+
+    BOT. A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find out
+    moonshine, find out moonshine.
+
+    --_A Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act III., Sc. i.
+
+
+VI. SLEEPING BEAUTY
+
+
+VII. & VIII. LEMUEL GULLIVER
+
+    I must freely confess that since my last return some corruptions
+    of my Yahoo nature have revived in me, by conversing with a few of
+    your species, and particularly those of my own family, by an
+    unavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so
+    absurd a project as that of reforming the Yahoo race in this
+    kingdom: but I have done with all such visionary schemes for
+    ever.--_Gulliver's Letter to his Cousin._
+
+    The first money I laid out was to buy two young stone horses,
+    which I kept in a good stable, and next to them the groom is my
+    greatest favourite; for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he
+    contracts in the stable.
+
+    --SWIFT (_A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms_, Ch. xi.).
+
+
+IX. & X. MISTRUST, OBSTINATE, LIAR, ETC.
+
+    And as he read he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to
+    contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, "What shall I
+    do?"...
+
+    The neighbours also came out to see him run; and as he ran, some
+    mocked, others threatened, and some cried after him to return.
+
+ATHEIST--
+
+    Now, after awhile, they perceived afar off, one coming softly and
+    alone, all along the highway, to meet them.
+
+    --BUNYAN (_The Pilgrim's Progress_).
+
+
+XI. LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
+
+    "O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
+      Alone and palely loitering?
+    The sedge has withered from the lake,
+        And no birds sing.
+
+    "O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
+      So haggard and so woe-begone?
+    The squirrel's granary is full,
+        And the harvest's done."
+
+    --KEATS.
+
+
+XII. SLEEP AND DEATH
+
+    Death will come when thou art dead,
+        Soon, too soon--
+    Sleep will come when thou art fled;
+      Of neither would I ask the boon
+    I ask of thee, beloved Night--
+    Swift be thine approaching flight,
+        Come soon, soon!
+
+    --SHELLEY.
+
+
+XIII. & XIV. A DOCTOR OF PHYSIC
+
+    Well, well, well,--
+    ... God, God forgive us all!
+
+    --_Macbeth_, Act V., Sc. i.
+
+
+XV. ANNABEL LEE
+
+    I was a child, and she was a child
+      In this kingdom by the sea;
+    And we loved with a love that was more than love--
+      I and my Annabel Lee--
+    With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
+      Coveted her and me.
+
+    --EDGAR ALLAN POE.
+
+
+XVI. CRISEYDE
+
+    ... Love hadde his dwellinge
+    With-inne the subtile stremes of hir yen.
+
+    Book I., 304-5.
+
+    Y-wis, my dere herte, I am nought wrooth,
+    Have here my trouthe and many another ooth;
+    Now speek to me, for it am I, Criseyde!
+
+    Book III., 1110-2.
+
+    And fare now wel, myn owene swete herte!
+
+    Book V., 1421.
+
+    --CHAUCER (_Troilus and Criseyde_).
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAVELLER
+TO
+THE READER
+
+
+
+The traveller who presents himself in this little book feels how
+tedious a person he may prove to be. Most travellers, that he ever
+heard of, were the happy possessors of audacity and rigour, a zeal for
+facts, a zeal for Science, a vivid faith in powder and gold. Who,
+then, will bear for a moment with an ignorant, pacific adventurer,
+without even a gun?
+
+He may, however, seem even more than bold in one thing, and that is in
+describing regions where the wise and the imaginative and the immortal
+have been before him. For that he never can be contrite enough. And
+yet, in spite of the renown of these regions, he can present neither
+map nor chart of them, latitude nor longitude: can affirm only that
+their frontier stretches just this side of Dream; that they border
+Impossibility; lie parallel with Peace.
+
+But since it is his, and only his, journey and experiences, his wonder
+and delight in these lands that he tells of--a mere microcosm, as it
+were--he entreats forgiveness of all who love them and their people as
+much as he loves them--scarce "on this side idolatry."
+
+H.B.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+    _Oh, what land is the Land of Dream?_
+
+    --WILLIAM BLAKE.
+
+
+I lived, then, in the great world once, in an old, roomy house beside
+a little wood of larches, with an aunt of the name of Sophia. My
+father and mother died a few days before my fourth birthday, so that I
+can conjure up only fleeting glimpses of their faces by which to
+remember what love was then lost to me. Both were youthful at death,
+but my Aunt Sophia was ever elderly. She was keen, and just, seldom
+less than kind; but a child was to her something of a little animal,
+and it was nothing more. In consequence, well fed, warmly clad, and in
+freedom, I grew up almost in solitude between my angels, hearkening
+with how simple a curiosity to that everlasting warfare of persuasion
+and compulsion, terror and delight.
+
+Which of them it was that guided me, before even I could read, to the
+little room dark with holly trees that had been of old my uncle's
+library, I know not. Perhaps at the instant it chanced there had
+fallen a breathless truce between them, and I being solitary, my own
+instinct took me. But having once found that pictured haven, I had
+found somewhat of content.
+
+I think half my youthful days passed in that low, book-walled chamber.
+The candles I burned through those long years of evening would deck
+Alps' hugest fir; the dust I disturbed would very easily fill again
+the measure that some day shall contain my own; and the small studious
+thumbmarks that paced, as if my footprints, leaf by leaf of that long
+journey, might be the history of life's experience in little,--from
+clearer, to clear, to faint--how very faint at last!
+
+I do not remember ever to have been discovered in this retreat. I was
+(by nature) prompt at meals, and wary to be in bed at my hour, however
+transitory its occupation might be. Indeed, I very well recollect
+dawn painting the page my eyes dwelt on, surprising me with its
+mystery and stealth in a house as silent as the grave.
+
+Thus entertained then by insubstantial society I grew up, and began to
+be old, before I had yet learned age is disastrous. And it was there,
+in that cold, bright chamber, one snowy twilight, first suddenly awoke
+in me an imperative desire for distant lands.
+
+Even while little else than a child I had begun to cast my mind to
+travel. I doubt if ever Columbus suffered such vexation from an itch
+to be gone.
+
+But whither?
+
+Now, it seemed clear to me after long brooding and musing that however
+beautiful were these regions of which I never wearied to read, and
+however wild and faithful and strange and lovely the people of the
+books, somewhere the former must remain yet, somewhere, in immortality
+serene, dwell they whom so many had spent life in dreaming of, and
+writing about.
+
+In fact, take it for all in all, what could these authors have been
+at, if they laboured from dawn to midnight, from laborious midnight to
+dawn, merely to tell of what never was, and never by any chance could
+be? It was heaven-clear to me, solitary and a dreamer; let me but gain
+the key, I would soon unlock that Eden garden-door. Somewhere yet, I
+was sure, Imogen's mountains lift their chill summits into heaven;
+over haunted sea-sands Ariel flits; at his webbed casement next the
+stars Faust covets youth, till the last trump shall ring him out of
+dream.
+
+It was on a blue March morning, with all the trees of my aunt's woods
+in a pale-green tumult of wind, that, quite unwittingly, I set out on
+a journey that has not yet come to an end.
+
+There was a hint in the air at my waking, I fancied, not quite of mere
+earth, the perfume of the banners of Flora, of the mould where in
+melting snow the crocus blows. I looked from my window, and the
+western clouds drew gravely and loftily in the illimitable air towards
+the whistling house. Strange trumpets pealed in the wind. Even my
+poor, aged Aunt Sophia had changed with the universal change; her
+great, solitary face reminded me of some long-forgotten April.
+
+And a little before eleven I saddled my uncle's old mare Rosinante
+(poor female jade to bear a name so glorious!), and rode out (as for
+how many fruitless seasons I had ridden out!), down the stony,
+nettle-narrowed path that led for a secret mile or more, beneath
+lindens, towards the hills.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+    _Still thou art blest compared wi' me!_
+
+    --ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+It is to be wondered at that in so bleak a wind I could possibly fall
+into reverie. But the habit was rooted deep in me; Rosinante was
+prosaic and trustworthy; the country for miles around familiar to me
+as the palm of my hand. Yet so deeply was I involved, and so steadily
+had we journeyed on, that when at last I lifted my eyes with a great
+sigh that was almost a sob, I found myself in a place utterly unknown
+to me.
+
+But more inexplicable yet, not only was the place strange, but, by
+some incredible wizardry, Rosinante seemed to have carried me out of a
+March morning, blue and tumultuous and bleak, into the grey, sweet
+mist of a midsummer dawn.
+
+I found that we were ambling languidly on across a green and level
+moor. Far away, whether of clouds or hills I could not yet tell, rose
+cold towers and pinnacles into the last darkness of night. Above us in
+the twilight invisible larks climbed among the daybeams, singing as
+they flew. A thick dew lay in beads on stick and stalk. We were alone
+with the fresh wind of morning and the clear pillars of the East.
+
+On I went, heedless, curious, marvelling; my only desire to press
+forward to the goal whereto destiny was directing me. I suppose after
+this we had journeyed about an hour, and the risen sun was on the
+extreme verge of the gilded horizon, when I espied betwixt me and the
+deep woods that lay in the distance a little child walking.
+
+She, at any rate, was not a stranger to this moorland. Indeed,
+something in her carriage, in the grey cloak she wore, in her light,
+insistent step, in the old lantern she carried, in the shrill little
+song she or the wind seemed singing, for a moment half impelled me to
+turn aside. Even Rosinante pricked forward her ears, and stooped her
+gentle face to view more closely this light traveller. And she pawed
+the ground with her great shoe, and gnawed her bit when I drew rein
+and leaned forward in the saddle to speak to the child.
+
+"Is there any path here, little girl, that I may follow?" I said.
+
+"No path at all," she answered.
+
+"But how then do strangers find their way across the moor?" I said.
+
+She debated with herself a moment. "Some by the stars, and some by the
+moon," she answered.
+
+"By the moon!" I cried. "But at day, what then?"
+
+"Oh, then, sir," she said, "they can see."
+
+I could not help laughing at her demure little answers. "Why!" I
+exclaimed, "what a worldly little woman! And what is your name?"
+
+"They call me Lucy Gray," she said, looking up into my face. I think
+my heart almost ceased to beat.
+
+"Lucy Gray!" I repeated.
+
+"Yes," she said most seriously, as if to herself, "in all this snow."
+
+"'Snow,'" I said--"this is dewdrops shining, not snow."
+
+She looked at me without flinching. "How else can mother see how I am
+lost?" she said.
+
+"Why!" said I, "how else?" not knowing how to reach her bright belief.
+"And what are those thick woods called over there?"
+
+She shook her head. "There is no name," she said.
+
+"But you have a name--Lucy Gray; and you started out--do you
+remember?--one winter's day at dusk, and wandered on and on, on and
+on, the snow falling in the dark, till--Do you remember?"
+
+She stood quite still, her small, serious face full to the east,
+striving with far-off dreams. And a merry little smile passed over her
+lips. "That will be a long time since," she said, "and I must be off
+home." And as if it had been but an apparition of my eyes that had
+beset and deluded me, she was gone; and I found myself sitting astride
+in the full brightness of the sun's first beams, alone.
+
+What omen was this, then, that I should meet first a phantom on my
+journey? One thing only was clear: Rosinante could trust to her five
+wits better than I to mine. So leaving her to take what way she
+pleased, I rode on, till at length we approached the woods I had
+descried. Presently we were jogging gently down into a deep and misty
+valley flanked by bracken and pines, from which issued into the crisp
+air of morning a most delicious aromatic smell, that seemed at least
+to prove this valley not far remote from Araby.
+
+I do not think I was disturbed, though I confess to having been a
+little amazed to see how profound this valley was into which we were
+descending, yet how swiftly climbed the sun, as if to pace with us so
+that we should not be in shadow, howsoever fast we journeyed. I was
+astonished to see flowers of other seasons than summer by the wayside,
+and to hear in June, for no other month could bear such green
+abundance, the thrush sing with a February voice. Here too, almost at
+my right hand, perched a score or more of robins, bright-dyed,
+warbling elvishly in chorus as if the may-boughs whereon they sat were
+white with hoarfrost and not buds. Birds also unknown to me in voice
+and feather I saw, and little creatures in fur, timid yet not wild;
+fruits, even, dangled from the trees, as if, like the bramble, blossom
+and seed could live here together and prosper.
+
+Yet why should I be distracted by these things, thought I. I
+remembered Maundeville and Hithlodaye, Sindbad and Gulliver, and many
+another citizen of Thule, and was reassured. A man must either believe
+what he sees, or see what he believes; I know no other course. Why,
+too, should I mistrust the bounty of the present merely for the
+scarcity of the past? Not I!
+
+I rode on, and it seemed had advanced but a few miles before the sun
+stood overhead, and it was noon. We were growing weary, I think, of
+sheer delight: Rosinante, with her mild face beneath its dark forelock
+gazing this side, that side, at the uncustomary landscape; and I ever
+peering forward beneath my hat in eagerness to descry some living
+creature a little bigger than these conies and squirrels, to prove me
+yet in lands inhabited. But the sun was wheeling headlong, and the
+stillness of late afternoon on the woods, when, dusty and parched and
+heavy, we came to a break in the thick foliage, and presently to a
+green gate embowered in box.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+    _Thou art so true, that thoughts of thee suffice
+    To make dreams truth, and fables histories._
+
+    --JOHN DONNE.
+
+
+I dismounted and, with the nose of my beast in my bosom, stood awhile
+gazing, in the half-dream weariness brings, across the valley at the
+dense forests that covered the hills. And while thus standing,
+doubtful whether to knock at the little gate or to ride on, it began
+to open, and a great particoloured dog looked out on us. There was
+certainly something unusual in the aspect of this animal, for though
+he lifted on us grave and sagacious eyes, he scarcely seemed to see
+us, manifested neither pleasure nor disapproval, neither wagged his
+tail to give us welcome nor yawned to display his armament. He seemed
+a kind of dream-dog, a dog one sees without zeal, and sees again
+partly with the eye, but most in recollection.
+
+Thus however we stood, stranger, horse, and dog, till a morose voice
+called somewhere from beyond, "Pilot, sir, come here, Pilot." Semi-dog
+or no, he knew his master. Whereupon, tying up my dejected Rosinante
+to a ring in the gateway, I followed boldly after "Pilot" into that
+sequestered garden.
+
+Meanwhile, however, he had disappeared--down a thick green alley to
+the left, I supposed. So I went forward by a clearer path, and when I
+had advanced a few paces, met face to face a lady whose dark eyes
+seemed strangely familiar to me.
+
+She was evidently a little disquieted at meeting a stranger so
+unceremoniously, but stood her ground like a small, black, fearless
+note of interrogation.
+
+I explained at once, therefore, as best I could, how I came to be
+there: described my journey, my bewilderment, and how that I knew not
+into what country nor company fate had beguiled me, except that the
+one was beautiful, and the other in some delightful way familiar, and
+I begged her to tell me where I really was, and how far from home,
+and of whom I was now beseeching forgiveness.
+
+Her thoughts followed my every word, passing upon her face like
+shadows on the sea. I have never seen a listener so completely still
+and so completely engrossed in listening. And when I had finished, she
+looked aside with a transient, half-sly smile, and glanced at me again
+covertly, so that I could not see herself for seeing her eyes; and she
+laughed lightly.
+
+"It is indeed a strange journey," she replied. "But I fear I cannot in
+the least direct you. I have never ventured my own self beyond the
+woods, lest--I should penetrate too far. But you are tired and hungry.
+Will you please walk on a few steps till you come to a stone seat? My
+name is Rochester--Jane Rochester"--she glanced up between the hollies
+with a sigh that was all but laughter--"Jane Eyre, you know."
+
+I went on as she had bidden, and seated myself before an old, white,
+many-windowed house, squatting, like an owl at noon, beneath its green
+covert. In a few minutes the great dog with dripping jowl passed
+almost like reality, and after him his mistress, and on her arm her
+master, Mr. Rochester.
+
+There seemed a night of darkness in that scarred face, and stars
+unearthly bright. He peered dimly at me, leaning heavily on Jane's
+arm, his left hand plunged into the bosom of his coat. And when he was
+come near, he lifted his hat to me with a kind of Spanish gravity.
+
+"Is this the gentleman, Jane?" he enquired.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"He's young!" he muttered.
+
+"For otherwise he would not be here," she replied.
+
+"Was the gate bolted, then?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Rochester desires to know if you had the audacity, sir, to scale
+his garden wall," Jane said, turning sharply on me. "Shall I count the
+strawberries, sir?" she added over her shoulder."
+
+"Jane, Jane!" he exclaimed testily. "I have no wish to be uncivil,
+sir. We are not of the world--a mere dark satellite. I am dim; and
+suspicious of strangers, as this one treacherous eye should manifest.
+I'll but ask your name, sir,--there are yet a few names left, once
+pleasing to my ear."
+
+"My name is Brocken, sir--Henry Brocken," I answered.
+
+"And--did you walk? Pah! there's the mystery! God knows how else you
+could have come, unless you are a modern Ganymede. Where then's your
+aquiline steed, sir? We have no neighbours here--none to stare, and
+pry, and prate, and slander."
+
+I informed him that I was as ignorant as he what power had spirited me
+to his house, but that so far as obvious means went, my old horse was
+probably by this time fast asleep beside the green gate at which I had
+entered. Jane stood on tip-toe and whispered in his ear, and, nodding
+imperiously at him, withdrew into the house.
+
+Complete silence fell between us after her departure. The woods stood
+dark and motionless in the yellow evening light. There was no sound of
+wind or water, no sound of voices or footsteps; only far away the
+clear, scarce-audible warbling of a sleepy bird.
+
+"Well, sir," Mr. Rochester said suddenly, "I am bidden invite you to
+pass the night here. There are stranger inhabitants than Mr. and Mrs.
+Rochester in these regions you have by some means strayed into--wilder
+denizens, by much; for youth's seraphic finding. Not for mine, sir, I
+vow. Depart again in the morning, if you will: we shall neither of us
+be displeased by then to say farewell, I dare say. I do not seek
+company. My obscure shell is enough." I rose. "Sit down--sit down
+again, my dear sir; there's no mischief in the truth between two men
+of any world, I suppose, assuredly not of this. My wife will see to
+your comfort. There! hushie now, here he floats; sit still, sit
+still--I hear his wings. It is my 'Four Evangels,' sir!"
+
+It was a sleek blackbird that had alighted and now set to singing on
+the topmost twig of a lofty pear-tree near by; and with his first note
+Jane reappeared. And while we listened, unstirring, to that rich,
+undaunted voice, I had good opportunity to observe her, and not, I
+think, without her knowledge, not even without her approval.
+
+This, then, was the face that had returned wrath for wrath, remorse
+for remorse, passion for passion to that dark egotist Jane in the
+looking-glass. Yet who, thought I, could be else than beautiful with
+eyes that seemed to hide in fleeting cloud a flame as pure as amber?
+The arch simplicity of her gown, her small, narrow hands, the
+exquisite cleverness of mouth and chin, the lovely courage and
+sincerity of that yet-childish brow--it seemed even Mr. Rochester's
+"Four Evangels" out of his urgent rhetoric was summoning with
+reiterated persuasions, "Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre, Ja ... ne!"
+
+Light faded from the woods; a faint wind blew cold upon our faces.
+Jane took Mr. Rochester's hand and looked into his face.
+
+She turned to me. "Will you come in, Mr. Brocken? I have seen that
+your horse is made quite easy. He was fast asleep, poor fellow, as
+you surmised; and, I think, dreaming; for when I proffered him a lump
+of sugar, he thrust his nose into my face and breathed as if I were a
+peck of corn. The candles are lit, sir; supper is ready."
+
+We went in slowly, and Jane bolted the door. "But who it is that can
+be bolted out," she said, "I know not; though there's much to bolt in.
+I have stood here, Mr. Brocken, on darker nights as still as this, and
+have heard what seemed to be the sea breaking, far away, leagues upon
+leagues beyond the forests--the gush forward, the protracted, heavy
+retreat,--listened till I could have wept to think that it was only my
+own poor furious heart beating. You may imagine, then, I push the
+bolts home."
+
+"But why, Jane--why?" cried Mr. Rochester incredulously. "Violent
+fancies, child!"
+
+"Why, sir, it was, I say, not the sea I heard, but a trickling tide
+one icy tap might stay, if it found but entry there."
+
+"You talk wildly, Jane--wildly, wildly; the air's afloat with
+listeners; so it seems, so it seems. Had I but one clear lamp in this
+dark face!"
+
+We sat down in the candle-lit twilight to supper. It was to me like
+the supper of a child, taken at peace in the clear beams, ere he
+descend into the shadow of sleep.
+
+They sat, try as I would not to observe them, hand touching hand
+throughout the meal. But to me it was as if one might sit to eat
+before a great mountain ruffled with pines, and perpetually clamorous
+with torrents. All that Mr. Rochester said, every gesture, these were
+but the ghosts of words and movements. Behind them, gloomy,
+imperturbable, withdrawn, slumbered a strange, smouldering power. I
+began to see how very hotly Jane must love him, she who loved above
+all things storm, the winds of the equinox, the illimitable night-sky.
+
+She begged him to take a little wine with me, and filled his glass
+till it burned like a ruby between their hands.
+
+"It paints both our hands!" she cried glancing up at him.
+
+"Ay, Janet," he answered; "but where is yours?"
+
+"And what goal will you make for when you leave us," she enquired of
+me. "_Is_ there anywhere else?" she added, lifting her slim eyebrows.
+
+"I shall put trust in Chance," I replied, "which at least is steadfast
+in change. So long as it does not guide me back, I care not how far
+forward I go."
+
+"You are right," she answered; "that is a puissant battlecry, here and
+hereafter."
+
+Mr. Rochester rose hastily from his chair. "The candles irk me, Jane.
+I would like to be alone. Excuse me, sir." He left the room.
+
+Jane lifted a dark curtain and beckoned me to bring the lights. She
+sat down before a little piano and desired me to sit beside her. And
+while she played, I know not what, but only it seemed old,
+well-remembered airs her mood suggested, she asked me many questions.
+
+"And am I indeed only like that poor mad thing you thought Jane Eyre?"
+she said, "or did you read between?"
+
+I answered that it was not her words, not even her thoughts, not even
+her poetry that was to me Jane Eyre.
+
+"What then is left of me?" she enquired, stooping her eyes over the
+keys and smiling darkly. "Am I indeed so evanescent, a wintry wraith?"
+
+"Well," I said, "Jane Eyre is left."
+
+She pressed her lips together. "I see," she said brightly. "But then,
+was I not detestable too? so stubborn, so wilful, so demented,
+so--vain?"
+
+"You were vain," I answered, "because--"
+
+"Well?" she said, and the melody died out, and the lower voices of her
+music complained softly on.
+
+"For a barrier," I answered.
+
+"A barrier?" she cried.
+
+"Why, yes," I said, "a barrier against cant, and flummery, and
+coldness, and pride, and against--why, against your own vanity too."
+
+"That's really very clever--penetrating," she said; "and I really
+desired to know, not because I did not know already, but to know I
+knew all. You are a perspicacious observer, Mr. Brocken; and to be
+that is to be alive in a world of the moribund. But then too how high
+one must soar at times; for one must ever condescend in order to
+observe faithfully. At any rate, to observe all one must range at an
+altitude above all."
+
+"And so," I said, "you have taken your praise from me--"
+
+"But you are a man, and I a woman: we look with differing eyes, each
+sex to the other, and perceive by contrast. Else--why, how else could
+you forgive my presumption? He sees me as an eagle sees the creeping
+tortoise. I see him as the moon the sun, never weary of gazing. I
+borrow his radiance to observe him by. But I weary you with my
+garrulous tongue.... Have you no plan at all in your journey? 'Tis not
+the dangers, but to me the endless restlessness of such a
+venture--that 'Oh, where shall wisdom be found?'... Will you not
+pause?--stay with us a few days to consider again this rash journey?
+To each his world: it is surely perilous to transgress its fixed
+boundaries."
+
+"Who knows?" I cried, rather arrogantly perhaps. "The sorcery that
+lured me hither may carry me as lightly back. But I have tasted honey
+and covet the hive."
+
+She glanced sidelong at me with that stealthy gravity that lay under
+all her lightness.
+
+"That delicious Rosinante!" she exclaimed softly.... "And I really
+believe too _I_ must be the honey--or is it Mr. Rochester? Ah! Mr.
+Brocken, they call it wasp-honey when it is so bitter that it blisters
+the lips." She talked on gaily, as if she had forgotten I was but a
+stranger until now. Yet none the less she perceived presently my eyes
+ever and again fixed upon the little brooch of faintest gold hair at
+her throat, and flinched and paled, playing on in silence.
+
+"Take the whole past," she continued abruptly, "spread it out before
+you, with all its just defeats, all its broken faith, and overweening
+hopes, its beauty, and fear, and love, and its loss--its loss; then
+turn and say: this, this only, this duller heart, these duller eyes,
+this contumacious spirit is all that is left--myself. Oh! who could
+wish to one so dear a destiny so dark?" She rose hastily from the
+piano. "Did I hear Mr. Rochester's step by the window?" she said.
+
+I crossed the room and looked out into the night. The brightening moon
+hung golden in the dark clearness of the sky. Mr. Rochester stood
+motionless, Napoleon-wise, beneath the black, unstirring foliage. And
+before I could turn, Jane had begun to sing:--
+
+      You take my heart with tears;
+      I battle uselessly;
+    Reft of all hopes and doubts and fears,
+        Lie quietly.
+
+      You veil my heart with cloud;
+      Since faith is dim and blind,
+    I can but grope perplex'd and bow'd,
+        Seek till I find.
+
+      Yet bonds are life to me;
+      How else could I perceive
+    The love in each wild artery
+        That bids me live?
+
+Jane's was not a rich voice, nor very sweet, and yet I fancied no
+other voice than this could plead and argue quite so clearly and with
+such nimble insistency--neither of bird, nor child, nor brook;
+because, I suppose, it was the voice of Jane Eyre, and all that was
+Jane's seemed Jane's only.
+
+The music ceased, the accompaniment died away; but Mr. Rochester stood
+immobile yet--a little darker night in that much deeper. When I
+turned, Jane was gone from the room. I sat down, my face towards the
+still candles, as one who is awake, yet dreams on. The faint scent of
+the earth through the open window; the heavy, sombre furniture; the
+daintiness and the alertness in the many flowers and few womanly
+gew-gaws: these too I shall remember in a tranquillity that cannot
+change.
+
+A sudden, trembling glimmer at the window lit the garden and,
+instantaneously, the distant hills; lit also the figures of Jane and
+Mr. Rochester beneath the trees. They entered the house, and once more
+Jane drew the bolts against that phantom fear. A tinge of scarlet
+stood in her cheeks, an added lustre in her eyes. They were strange
+lovers, these two--like frost upon a cypress tree; yet summer lay all
+around us.
+
+I bade them good night and ascended to the little room prepared for
+me. There was a great pincushion on the sprigged and portly toilet
+table, and I laboured till the constellations had changed beyond my
+window, in printing from a box of tiny pins upon that lavendered
+mound, "Ave, Ave, atque Vale!"
+
+Far in the night a dreadful sound woke me. I rose and looked out of
+the window, and heard again, deep and reverberating, Pilot baying I
+know not what light minions of the moon. The Great Bear wheeled
+faintly clear in the dark zenith, but the borders of the east were
+grey as glass; and far away a fierce hound was answering from his
+echo-place in the gloom, as if the dread dog of Acheron kept post upon
+the hills.
+
+A light tap woke me in the sunlight, and a lighter voice. Mr.
+Rochester took breakfast with us in a gloomy old dressing-room, moody
+and taciturn, unpacified by sleep. But Jane, whimsical and deft, had
+tied a yellow ribbon in the darkness of her hair.
+
+Rosinante awaited me at the little green gate, eyeing forlornly the
+steep valley at her feet. And I rode on. The gate was shut on me; and
+Mr. Rochester again, perhaps, at his black ease.
+
+I had jogged on, with that peculiar gravity age brings to equine
+hoofs, about a mile, when the buttress of a thick wall came into view
+abutting on the lane, and perched thereon what at first I deemed a
+coloured figment of the mist that festooned the branches and clung
+along the turf. But when I drew near I saw it was indeed a child, pink
+and gold and palest blue. And she raised changeling hands at me, and
+laughed and danced and chattered like the drops upon a waterfall; and
+clear as if a tiny bell had jingled I heard her cry.
+
+And my heart smote me heavily since I had of my own courtesy not
+remembered Adele.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+    _Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, tu-witta-woo._
+
+    --THOMAS NASH.
+
+
+It was yet early, and refreshing in the chequered shade. We plodded
+earnestly after our gaunt shadow in the dust, and ever downward, till
+at last we drew so near to the opposite steep that I could well nigh
+count its pines.
+
+It was about the hour when birds seek shade and leave but few among
+their fellows to sing, that at a stone's throw from the foot of the
+hill I came to where a faint bridle-path diverged. And since it was
+smooth with moss, and Rosinante haply tired of pebbles; since any but
+the direct road seems ever the more delectable, I too turned aside,
+and broke into the woods through which this path meandered.
+
+Maybe it is because all woods are enchanted that the path seemed more
+than many miles long. Often too we loitered, or stood, head by head,
+to listen, or to watch what might be after all only wings, mere
+sunbeams. Shall I say, then, that it began to be thorny, and, where
+the thorns were, pale with roses, when at length the knitted boughs
+gradually drew asunder, and I looked down between twitching, hairy
+ears upon a glade so green and tranquil, I deemed it must be the
+Garden of the Hesperides?
+
+And because there ran a very welcome brook of water through this
+glade, I left Rosinante to follow whithersoever a sweet tooth might
+dictate, and climbed down into the weedy coolness at the waterbrink.
+
+I confess I laughed to see so puckered a face as mine in the clear
+blue of the flowing water. But I dipped my hands and my head into the
+cold shallows none the less pleasantly, and was casting about for a
+deeper pool where I might bathe unscorned of the noonday, when I heard
+a light laughter behind me, and, turning cautiously, perceived under
+the further shadow of the glade three ladies sitting.
+
+Not even vanity could persuade me that they were laughing at anything
+more grotesque than myself, so, putting a bold face on matters so
+humiliating, I sauntered as carelessly and loftily as I dared in their
+direction. My courage seemed to abash them a little; they gathered
+back their petticoats like birds about to fly. But at hint of a
+titter, they all three began gaily laughing again till their eyes
+sparkled brighter than ever, and their cheeks seemed shadows of the
+roses above their heads.
+
+"Ladies," I began gravely, "I have left my horse, that is very old and
+very thirsty, above in the wood. Is there any path I may discover by
+which she may reach the water without offence?"
+
+"Is she very old?" said one.
+
+"She is very old," I said.
+
+"But is she very thirsty?" said another.
+
+"She is perhaps very thirsty," I said.
+
+"Perhaps!" cried they all.
+
+"Because, ladies," I replied, "being by nature of a timid tongue, and
+compelled to say something, and having nothing apt to say, I
+remembered my old Rosinante above in the wood."
+
+They glanced each at each, and glanced again at me.
+
+"But there is no path down that is not steep," said the fairest of the
+three.
+
+"There never was a path, not even, we fear, for a traveller on foot,"
+continued the second.
+
+I waited in silence a moment. "Forgive me, then," I said; "I will
+offend no longer."
+
+But this seemed far from their design.
+
+"You see, being come," began the fairest again, "Julia thinks Fortune
+must have brought you. Are we not all between Fortune's finger and
+thumb?"
+
+"If pinching is to prove anything," said the other.
+
+"And Fortune is fickle, too," added Julia--"that's early wisdom; but
+not quite so fickle as you would wish to show her. Here we have sat in
+these mortal glades ever since our poor Herrick died. And here it
+seems we are like to sit till he rises again. It is all so--dubious.
+But since Electra has invited you to rest awhile, will you not really
+rest? There is shade as deep, and fruit to refresh you, in a little
+arbour yonder. Perhaps even Anthea will dip out of her weeping awhile
+if she hears that ... a poor old thirsty horse is tethered in the
+woods."
+
+They rose up together with a prolonged rustling as of a peacock
+displaying his plumes; and I found myself irretrievably their captive.
+
+Moreover, even if they were but sylphs and fantasies of the morning,
+they were fantasies lovely as even their master had portrayed; while
+the dells through which they led me were green and deep and white and
+golden with buds.
+
+It was now, I suppose, about the middle of the morning, yet though the
+sun was high, his heat was that of dawn. Dawn lingered in the shadows,
+as snow when winter is over and gone, and dwelt among the sunbeams.
+Dew lay heavy on the grass, as the dainty heels of my captresses
+testified, yet they trod lightly upon daisies wide-open to the blue
+sky, while daffadowndillies stooped in a silence broken only by their
+laughter.
+
+We came presently to a little stone summerhouse or arbour,
+enclustered with leaves and flowers of ivy and convolvulus, wherein
+two great dishes of cherries stood and bowls of honeycomb and
+sillabub.
+
+There we sat down; but they kept me close too in the midst of the
+arbour, where perhaps I was not so ill-content to be as I should like
+to profess. How then could I else than bob for cherries as often as I
+dared, and prove my wit to conceal my hunger?
+
+"And now, Sir Traveller," said she of the sparkling eyes, named
+Dianeme, "since we have got you safe, tell us of all we have never
+heard or seen!"
+
+"And oh! are we forgot?" cried Electra, laying a lip upon a cherry.
+
+"There's not a poet in his teens but warbles of you morn, noon, and
+night," I answered. "There's not a lover mad, young, true, and tender,
+but borrows your azure, and your rubies, and your roses, and your
+stars, to deck his sweetheart's name with."
+
+"Boys perhaps," cried Julia softly, "but _men_ soon forget."
+
+"Youth never," I replied.
+
+"Why 'Youth'?" said Dianeme. "Herrick was not always young."
+
+"Ay, but all men once were young, please God," I said, "and youth is
+the only 'once' that's worth remembrance. Youth with the heart of
+youth adores you, ladies; because, when dreams come thick upon them,
+they catch your flying laughter in the woods. When the sun is sunk,
+and the stars kindle in the sky, then your eyes haunt the twilight.
+You come in dreams, and mock the waking. You the mystery; you the
+bravery and danger; you the long-sought; you the never-won; memories,
+hopes, songs ere the earth is mute. You will always be loved, believe
+me, O bright ladies, till youth fades, turns, and loves no more." And
+I gazed amazed on cherries of such potency as these.
+
+"But once, sir," said Julia timidly, "we were not only loved but
+_told_ we were loved."
+
+"Where is the pleasure else?" cried Dianeme.
+
+"Besides," said Electra, "Anthea says if we might but find where Styx
+flows one draught--my mere palmful--would be sweeter than all the
+poetry ever writ, save some."
+
+"It is idle," cried Dianeme; "Herrick himself admired us most on
+paper."
+
+"And ink makes a cross even of a kiss, that is very well known," said
+Julia.
+
+"Ah!" said I, "all men have eyes; few see. Most men have tongues:
+there is but one Robin Herrick."
+
+"I will tell you a secret," said Dianeme.
+
+And as if a bird of the air had carried her voice, it seemed a hush
+fell on sky and greenery.
+
+"We are but fairy-money all," she said, "an envy to see. Take
+us!--'tis all dry leaves in the hand. Herrick stole the honey, and the
+bees he killed. Blow never so softly on the tinder, it flames--and
+dies."
+
+"I heard once," said Electra, with but a thought of pride, "that had I
+lived a little, little earlier, I might have been the Duchess of
+Malfi."
+
+"I too, Flatterer," cried Julia, "I too--Desdemona slain by a
+blackamoor. To some it is the cold hills and the valleys 'green and
+sad,' and the sea-birds' wailing," she continued in a low, strange
+voice, "and to some the glens of heather, and the mountain-brooks, and
+the rowans. But, come to an end, what are we all? This man's eyes will
+tell ye! I would give white and red, nectar and snow and roses, and
+all the similes that ever were for--"
+
+"For what?" said I.
+
+"I think, for Robin Herrick," she said.
+
+It was a lamentable confession, for that said, gravity fled away; and
+Electra fetched out a lute from a low cupboard in the arbour, and
+while she played Julia sang to a sober little melody I seemed to know
+of old:
+
+        Sighs have no skill
+        To wake from sleep
+    Love once too wild, too deep.
+
+        Gaze if thou will,
+        Thou canst not harm
+    Eyes shut to subtle charm.
+
+        Oh! 'tis my silence
+        Shows thee false,
+    Should I be silent else?
+
+        Haste thou then by!
+        Shine not thy face
+    On mine, and love's disgrace!
+
+Whereat Dianeme lifted on me so naive an afflicted face I must needs
+beseech another song, despite my drowsy lids. Wherefore I heard, far
+away as it were, the plucking of the strings, and a voice betwixt
+dream and wake sing:
+
+        All sweet flowers
+          Wither ever,
+        Gathered fresh
+          Or gathered never;
+    But to live when love is gone!--
+    Grieve, grieve, lute, sadly on!
+
+        All I had--
+          'Twas all thou gav'st me;
+        That foregone,
+          Ah! what can save me?
+    If the exorcised spirit fly,
+    Nought is left to love me by.
+
+        Take thy stars,
+          My tears then leave me;
+        Thine my bliss,
+          As thine to grieve me;
+    Take....
+
+For then, so insidious was the music, and not quite of this earth the
+voice, my senses altogether forsook me, and I fell asleep.
+
+Would that I could remember much else! But I confess it is the heart
+remembers, not the poor, pestered brain that has so many thoughts and
+but one troubled thinker. Indeed, were I now to be asked--Were the
+fingers cold of these bright ladies? Were their eyes blue, or hazel,
+or brown? or, haply, were Dianeme's that incomparable, dark, sparkling
+grey? Wore Julia azure, and Electra white? And was that our poet wrote
+our poet's only, or truly theirs, and so even more lovely?--I fear I
+could not tell.
+
+I fell asleep; and when I awoke no lute was sounding. I was alone; and
+the arbour a little house of gloom on the borders of evening. I caught
+up yet one more handful of cherries, and stumbled out, heavy and dim,
+into a pale-green firmanent of buds and glow-worms, to seek the poor
+Rosinante I had so heedlessly deserted.
+
+But I was gone but a little way when I was brought suddenly to a
+standstill by another sound that in the hush of the garden, in the
+bright languor after sleep, went to my heart: it was as if a child
+were crying.
+
+I pushed through a thick and aromatic clump of myrtles, and peering
+between the narrow leaves, perceived the cold, bright face of a little
+marble god beneath willows; and, seated upon a starry bank near by,
+one whom by the serpentry of her hair and the shadow of her lips I
+knew to be Anthea.
+
+"Why are you weeping?" I said.
+
+"I was imitating a little brook," she said.
+
+"It is late; the bat is up; yet you are alone," I said.
+
+"Pan will protect me," she said.
+
+"And nought else?"
+
+She turned her face away. "None," she said. "I live among shadows.
+There was a world, I dreamed, where autumn follows summer, and after
+autumn, winter. Here it is always June, despite us both."
+
+"What, then, would you have?" I said.
+
+"Ask him," she replied.
+
+But the little god looking sidelong was mute in his grey regard.
+
+"Why do you not run away? What keeps you here?"
+
+"You ask many questions, stranger! Who can escape? To live is to
+remember. To die--oh, who would forget! Even had I been weeping, and
+not merely mocking time away, would my tears be of Lethe at my mouth's
+corners? No," said Anthea, "why feign and lie? All I am is but a
+memory lovely with regret."
+
+She rose, and the myrtles concealed her from me. And I, in the midst
+of the dusk where the tiny torches burned sadly--I turned to the
+sightless eyes of that smiling god.
+
+What he knew, being blind, yet smiling, I seemed to know then. But
+that also I have forgotten.
+
+I whistled softly and clearly into the air, and a querulous voice
+answered me from afar--the voice of a grasshopper--Rosinante's.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+    _How should I your true love know
+    From another one?_
+
+    --WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+But even then she was difficult finding, so cunningly had ivy and
+blackberry and bindweed woven snares for the trespasser's foot.
+
+But at last--not far from where we had parted--I found her, a pillar
+of smoke in the first shining of the moon. She turned large,
+smouldering eyes on me, her mane in elf locks, her flanks heaving and
+wet, her forelock frizzed like a colt's. Yet she showed only pleasure
+at seeing me, and so evident a desire to unburden the day's history,
+that I almost wished I might be Balaam awhile, and she--Dapple!
+
+It would be idle to attempt to ride through these thick, glimmering
+brakes. The darkness was astir. And as the moon above the valley
+brightened, casting pale beams upon the folded roses and drooping
+branches, if populous dream did not deceive me, a tiny multitude was
+afoot in the undergrowth--small horns winding, wee tapers burning.
+
+Presently as with Rosinante's nose at my shoulder we pushed slowly
+forward, a nightingale burst close against my ear into so passionate a
+descant I thought I should be gooseflesh to the end of my days.
+
+The heedless tumult of her song seemed to give courage to sounds and
+voices much fainter. Soon a lovelit rival in some distant thicket
+broke into song, and far and near their voices echoed above the elfin
+din of timbrel and fife and hunting-horn. I began to wish the moon
+away that dazzled my eyes, yet could not muffle my ears.
+
+In the heavy-laden boughs dim lanterns burned. There, indeed, when we
+dipped into the deeper umbrage of some loftier tree, I espied the
+pattering hosts--creatures my Dianeme might have threaded for a
+bangle, yet breeched and armed and fiercely martial.
+
+Down, too, in a watery dell of harts-tongue, around the root of a
+swelling fungus, a lovely company floated of an insubstantiality
+subtile as taper-smoke, and of a beauty as remote as the babes in
+children's eyes.
+
+We passed unheeded. Four bearded hoofs rose and fell upon the moss
+with all the circumspection snorting Rosinante could compass. But one
+might as well go snaring moonbeams as dream to crush such airy beings.
+Ever and again a gossamer company would soar like a spider on his
+magic thread, and float with a whisper of remotest music past my ear;
+or some bolder pigmy, out of the leaves we brushed in passing, skip
+suddenly across the rusty amphitheatre of my saddle into the further
+covert.
+
+So we wandered on, baffled and confused, through a hundred pathless
+glens and dells till already gold had begun to dim the swelling moon's
+bright silver, and by the freshness and added sweetness of the air it
+seemed dawn must be near, when, on a sudden, a harsh, preposterous
+voice broke on my ear, and such a see-saw peal of laughter as I have
+never tittered in sheer fellowship with before, or since. We stood
+listening, and the voice broke out again.
+
+"Tittany--nay, Tittany, you'll crack my sides with laughing. Have
+again at you! love your master and you'll wax nimble. Bottom will
+learn you all. Trust Time and Bottom; though in sooth your weeny
+Majesty is something less than natural. Drive thy straw deeper,
+Mounsieur Mustardseed! there squats a pestilent sweet notion in that
+chamber could spellican but set him capering. Prithee your mousemilk
+hand on this smooth brow, mistress! Your nectar throbbeth like a
+blacksmith's anvil. Master Moth, draw you these bristling lashes down,
+they mirk the stars and call yon nothing Quince to mind--a vain,
+official knave, in and out, to and fro, play or pleasure; and old Sam
+Snout, the wanton! Lad's days and all--'twas life, Tittany; and I was
+ever foremost. They'd bob and crook to me like spaniels at a trencher.
+Mine was the prettiest conceit, this way, that way, past all
+unravelling till envy stretched mine ears. Now I'm old dreams. Gone
+all men's joy, your worships, since Bully Bottom took to moonshine.
+Where floats your babe's-hand now, Dame Lovepip?"
+
+There he lolled, immortal Bottom, propped on a bed of asphodel and
+moly that seemed to curd the moonshine; and at his side, Titania slim
+and scarlet, and shimmering like a bride-cake. The sky was dark above
+the tapering trees, but here in the secret woods light seemed to cling
+in flake and scarf. And it so chanced as our two noses leaned forward
+into his retreat that Bottom's head lolled back upon its pillow, and
+his bright, simple eyes stared deep into our own.
+
+"Save me, ye shapes of nought," he bellowed, "no more, no more, for
+love's sake. I begin to see what men call red Beelzebub, and that's an
+end to all true fellowship. Whiffle your tufted bee's wing, Signior
+Cobweb, I beseech you--a little fiery devil with four eyes floats in
+my brain, and flame's a frisky bedfellow. Avaunt! avaunt ye! Would now
+my true friend Bottom the weaver were at my side. His was a courage
+to make princes great. Prithee, Queen Tittany, no more such cozening
+possets!"
+
+I drew Rosinante back into the leaves.
+
+"Droop now thy honeyed lids, my dearest love!" I heard a clear voice
+answer. "There's nought can harm thee in these silvered woods: no bird
+that pipes but love incites his throat, and never a dewdrop wells but
+whispers peace!"
+
+"Ay, ay, 'tis very well, you have a gift, you have a gift, Tittany's
+for twisting words to sugarsticks. But la, there, what wots your
+trickling whey of that coal-piffling Prince of Flies! I'm Bottom the
+weaver, I am. He knows not his mother's ring-finger that knows not
+Nick Bottom. Back, back, ye jigging dreams! 'Tis Puckling nods. Ha'
+done, ha' done--there's no sweet sanity in an asshead more if I quaff
+their elvish ... Out now ... Ha' done, I say!"
+
+Then indeed he slumbered truly, this engarlanded weaver, his lids
+concealing all bright speculation, his jowl of vanity (foe of the
+Philistine) at peace: and I might gaze unperceived. The moon filled
+his mossy cubicle with her untrembling beams, streamed upon blossoms
+sweet and heavy as Absalom's hair, while tiny plumes wafted into the
+night the scent of thyme and meadow-sweet.
+
+I know not how long they would have kept me prisoner with their
+illusive music. I dared not move, scarce wink; for much as immortality
+may mollify hairiness, I had no wish to live too frank.
+
+How, also, would this weaver who slumbered so cacophonously welcome a
+rival to his realms. I say I sat still, like Echo in the woods when
+none is calling; like too, I grant, one who ached not a little after
+jolts and jars and the phantasmal mists of this engendering air. But
+none stirred, nor went, nor came. So resting my hands cautiously on a
+little witch's guild of toadstools that squatted cold in shade, I
+lifted myself softly and stood alert.
+
+And in a while out of that numerous company stepped one whom by his
+primrose face and mien I took to be Mounsieur Mustardseed, and I
+followed after him.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+    _Care-charming Sleep ...
+    ... sweetly thyself dispose
+    On this afflicted prince!_
+
+    --JOHN FLETCHER.
+
+
+Away with a blink of his queer green eye over his shoulder he
+sauntered by a devious path out of the dell. Forgetful of thorn and
+brier, trickery and wantonness, we clambered down after him, out of
+the moonlight, into a dark, clear alley, soundless and solitary amid
+these enchanted woods.
+
+As I have said already, another air than that of night was abroad in
+the green-grey shadows of the woods. Yet between the lofty and
+heavy-hooded pines scarce a beam of dawn pierced downward.
+
+Wider swept the avenue, but ever dusky and utterly silent. Deeper moss
+couched here; unfallen moondrops glistened; mistletoe palely sprouted
+from the gnarled boughs. Nor could I discern, though I searched close
+enough, elder or ash tree or bitter rue. We journeyed softly on till I
+lost all count of time, lost, too, all guidance; for as a flower falls
+had vanished Mustardseed.
+
+Far away and ever increasing in volume I heard the trembling crash of
+some great water falling. What narrow isles of sky were visible
+between the branches lay sunless and still. Yet already, on a mantled
+pool we journeyed softly by, the waterlily was unfolding, the swan
+afloat in beauty.
+
+In a dim, still light we at last slowly descended out of the darker
+glade into a garden of grey terraces and flowerless walks. Even
+Rosinante seemed perturbed by the stillness and solitude of this wild
+garden. She trod with cautious foot and peering eye the green,
+rainworn paths, that led us down presently to where beneath the vault
+of its trees a river flowed.
+
+Surely I could not be mistaken that here a voice was singing as if out
+of the black water-deeps, so clear and hollow were the notes. I burst
+through the knotted stalks of the ivy, and stooping like some poor
+travesty of Narcissus, with shaded face pierced down deep--deep into
+eyes not my own, but violet and unendurable and strange--eyes of the
+living water-sprite drawing my wits from me, stilling my heart, till I
+was very near plunging into that crystal oblivion, to be fishes
+evermore.
+
+But my fingers still grasped my friend's kind elf-locks, and her
+goose-nose brooded beside mine upon that water of undivulged delight.
+Out of the restless silence of the stream floated this long-drawn
+singing:
+
+    Pilgrim forget; in this dark tide
+    Sinks the salt tear to peace at last;
+    Here undeluding dreams abide,
+        All sorrow past.
+
+    Nods the wild ivy on her stem;
+    The voiceless bird broods on the bough;
+    The silence and the song of them
+        Untroubled now.
+
+    Free that poor captive's flutterings,
+    That struggles in thy tired eyes,
+    Solace its discontented wings,
+        Quiet its cries!
+
+    Knells now the dewdrop to its fall,
+    The sad wind sleeps no more to rove;
+    Rest, for my arms ambrosial
+        Ache for thy love!
+
+I cannot think how one so meekened with hunger as I, resisted that
+water-troubled hair, eyes that yet haunt me, that heart-alluring
+voice.
+
+"No, no," I said faintly, and the words of Anthea came unbidden to
+mind, "to sleep--oh! who would forget? You plead merely with some old
+dream of me--not _all_ me, you know. Gold is but witchcraft. And as
+for sorrow--spread me a magical table in this nettle-garden, I'll
+leave all melancholy!"
+
+I must indeed have been exhausted to chop logic with a water-witch. As
+well argue with minnows, entreat the rustling of ivy-leaves. It was
+Rosinante, wearying, I suppose, of the reflection of her own mild
+countenance, that drew me back from dream and disaster. She turned
+with arched neck seeking a more wholesome pasture than these deep
+mosses.
+
+Leaving her then to her own devices, and yet hearkening after the
+voice of the charmer, I came out again into the garden, and perceived
+before me a dark palace with one lofty tower.
+
+It seemed strange I had not seen the tower at my first coming into
+this wilderness. It stood with clustered summit and stooping
+gargoyles, appealing as it were to fear, in utter silence.
+
+Though I knew it must be day, there was scarcely more than a green
+twilight around me, ever deepening, until at last I could but dimly
+discern the upper windows of the palace, and all sound waned but the
+roar of distant falling water.
+
+Then it was I found that I was not alone in the garden. Two little
+leaden children stood in an attitude of listening on either side of
+the carved porch of the palace, and between them a figure that seemed
+to be watching me intently.
+
+I looked and looked again--saw the green-grey folds, the tawny locks,
+the mistletoe, the unearthly eyes of this unstirring figure, yet, when
+I advanced but one strenuous pace, saw nought--only the little leaden
+boys and the porch between them.
+
+These childish listeners, the straggling briers, the impenetrable
+thickets, the emerald gloaming, the marble stillness of the lofty
+lichenous tower: I took courage. Could such things be in else than
+Elfland? And she who out of beauty and being vanishes and eludes, what
+else could she be than one of Elfland's denizens from whom a light and
+credulous heart need fear nothing.
+
+I trod like a shadow where the phantom had stood and opened the unused
+door. I was about to pass into the deeper gloom of the house when a
+hound appeared and stood regarding me with shining eyes in the faint
+gloaming. He was presently joined by one as light-footed, but
+milk-white and slimmer, and both turned their heads as if in question
+of their master, who had followed close behind them.
+
+This personage, because of the gloom, or the better to observe the
+intruder on his solitude, carried a lantern whose beams were reflected
+upon himself, attired as he was from head to foot in the palest
+primrose, but with a countenance yet paler.
+
+There was no hint of enmity or alarm or astonishment in the
+colourless eyes that were fixed composedly on mine, nothing but
+courtesy in his low voice.
+
+"Back, Safte!--back, Sallow!" he cried softly to his hounds; "is this
+your civility? Indeed, sir," he continued to me, "it was all I could
+do to dissuade the creatures from giving tongue when you first
+appeared on the terrace of my solitary gardens. I heard too the
+water-sprite: she only sings when footsteps stray upon the banks." He
+smiled wanly, and his nose seemed even sharper in his pale face, and
+his yellow hair leaner about his shoulders. "I feared her voice might
+prove too persuasive, and deprive me of the first strange face I have
+seen these many decades gone."
+
+I bowed and murmured an apology for my intrusion, just as I might
+perhaps to some apparition of nightmare that over-stayed its welcome.
+
+"I beseech you, sir," he replied, "say no more! It may be I deemed you
+at first a visitor perchance even more welcome--if it be possible,...
+yet I know not that either. My name is Ennui,"--he smiled
+again--"Prince Ennui. You have, perchance, heard somewhere our sad
+story. This is the perpetual silence wherein lies that once-happy
+princess, my dear sister, Sleeping Beauty."
+
+His voice seemed but an echo amongst the walls and arches of this old
+house, and he spoke with a suave enunciation as if in an unfamiliar
+tongue.
+
+I replied that I had read the ever-lovely story of Sleeping Beauty,
+indeed knew it by heart, and assured him modestly that I had not the
+least doubt of a happy ending--"that is, if the author be the least
+authority."
+
+He narrowed his lids. "It is a tradition," he replied; "meanwhile, the
+thickets broaden."
+
+Whereupon I begged him to explain how it chanced that among that
+festive and animated company I had read of, he alone had resisted the
+wicked godmother's spell.
+
+He smiled distantly, and bowed me into the garden.
+
+"That is a simple thing," he said.
+
+Yet for the life of me I could not but doubt all he told me. He who
+could pass spring on to spring, summer on to summer, in the company of
+beasts so sly and silent, so alert and fleet as these hounds of his,
+could not be quite the amiable prince he feigned to be. I began to
+wish myself in homelier places.
+
+It seems that on the morning of the fatal spindle, he had gone
+coursing, with this Safte and Sallow and his horse named "Twilight,"
+and after wearying and heating himself at the sport, a little after
+noon, leaving his attendants, had set out to return to the palace
+alone. But allured by the cool seclusion of a "lattice-arbour" in his
+path, he had gone in, and then and there, "Twilight" beneath the
+willows, his hounds at his feet, had fallen asleep.
+
+Undisturbed, dreamless, "the unseemly hours sped light of foot." He
+awoke again, between sunset and dark; the owl astir; "the silver gnats
+yet netting the shadows," and so returned to the palace.
+
+But the spell had fallen--king and courtier, queen and lady and page
+and scullion, hawk and hound, slept a sleep past waking--"while I,
+roamed and roam yet in a solitary watch beyond all sleeping.
+Wherefore, sir, I only of the most hospitable house in these lands am
+awake to bid you welcome. But as for that, a few dwindling and harsh
+fruits in my orchards, and the cold river water that my dogs lap with
+me, are all that is left to offer you. For I who never sleep am never
+hungry, and they who never wake--I presume--never thirst. Would, sir,
+it were otherwise! After such long silence, then, conceive how
+strangely falls your voice on ears that have heard only wings
+fluttering, dismal water-songs, and the yelp and quarrel and
+night-voice of unseen hosts in the forests."
+
+He glanced at me with a mild austerity and again lowered his eyes. I
+cannot now but wonder how the rhythm of a voice so soft, so
+monotonous, could give such pleasure to the ear. I almost doubted my
+own eyes when I looked upon his yellow, on that unmoved, sad, mad,
+pale face.
+
+I had no doubt of his dogs, however, and walked scarcely at ease
+beside him, while they, shadow-footed, closely followed us at heel.
+
+"Prince Ennui" conducted me with shining lantern into a dense orchard
+thickly under-grown, marvellously green, with a small, hard fruit upon
+its branches, shaped like a medlar, of a crisp, sweet odour and,
+despite its hardness, a delicious taste. The interwoven twigs of the
+stooping trees were thickly nested; a veritable wilderness of moonlike
+and starry flowers ran all to seed amid the nettles and nightshade of
+this green silence. And while I ate--for I was hungry enough--Prince
+Ennui stood, his hand on Sallow's muzzle, lightly thridding the dusky
+labyrinths of the orchard with his faint green eyes.
+
+Mine, too, were not less busy, but rather with its lord than with his
+orchard. And the strange thought entered my mind, Was he in very deed
+the incarnation of this solitude, this silence, this lawless
+abundance? Somewhere, in the green heats of summer, had he come forth,
+taken shape, exalted himself? What but vegetable ichor coursed through
+veins transparent as his? What but the swarming mysteries of these
+thick woods lurked in his brain? As for his hounds, theirs was the
+same stealth, the same symmetry, the same cold, secret unhumanity as
+his. Creatures begotten of moonlight on silence they seemed to me,
+with instincts past my workaday wits to conceive.
+
+And Rosinante! I laughed softly to think of her staid bones beside the
+phantom creature this prince had called up to me at mention of
+"Twilight."
+
+I ate because I was ravenously hungry, but also because, while eating,
+I was better at my ease.
+
+Suddenly out of the stillness, like an arrow, Safte was gone; and far
+away beneath the motionless leaves a faint voice rang dwindling into
+silence. I shuddered at my probable fate.
+
+Prince Ennui glanced lightly. "When the magic horn at last resounds,"
+he said, "how strange a flight it will be! These thorny briers
+encroach ever nearer on my palace walls. I am a captive ever less at
+ease. Summer by summer the sun rises shorn yet closer of his beams,
+and now the lingering transit of the moon is but from one wood by a
+narrow crystal arch to another. They will have me yet, sir. How weary
+will the sleepy ones be of my uneasy footfall!"
+
+And even as Safte slipped softly back to his watching mate, the patter
+and shrill menace of voices behind him hinted not all was concord
+between these hidden multitudes and their unseemly prince.
+
+The master-stars shone earlier here; already sparkling above the tower
+was a canopy of clearest darkness spread, while the leafy fringes of
+the sky glowed yet with changing fires.
+
+We returned to the lawns before the palace porch, and, with his
+lantern in his hand, the Prince signed to me to go in. I was not a
+little curious to view that enchanted household of which I had read so
+often and with so much delight as a child.
+
+In the banqueting-hall only the matted windows were visible in the
+lofty walls. Prince Ennui held his lantern on high, and by its flame,
+and the faint light that flowed in from above, I could presently see,
+distinct in gloom, as many sleepers as even Night could desire.
+
+Here they reclined just as sorcerous sleep had overtaken them. But how
+dimmed, how fallen! For Time that could not change the sleeper had
+changed with quiet skill all else. Tarnished, dusty, withered,
+overtaken, yellowed, and confounded lay banquet and cloth-of-gold,
+flagon, cup, fine linen, table, and stool. But in all the ruin, like
+buds of springtime in a bare wood, or jewels in ashes, slumbered youth
+and beauty and bravery and delight.
+
+I lifted my eyes to the King. The gold of his divinity was fallen, his
+splendour quenched; but life's dark scrutiny from his face was gone.
+He made no stir at our light, slumbered untreasoned on. The lids of
+his Queen were lightlier sealed, only withheld beauty as a cloud the
+sky it hides. His courtiers flattered more elusively, being sincerely
+mute, and only a little red dust was all the wine left.
+
+I seemed to hear their laughter clearer now that the jest was
+forgotten, and to admire better the pomp, and the mirth, and the
+grace, and the vanity, now that time had so far travelled from this
+little tumult once their triumph.
+
+In a kind of furtive bravado, I paced the length of the long, thronged
+tables. Here sat a little prince that captivated me, dipping his
+fingers into his cup with a sidelong glance at his mother. There a
+high officer, I know not how magnificent and urgent when awake,
+slumbered with eyes wide open above his discouraged moustaches.
+
+Simply for vanity of being awake in such a sleepy company, I strutted
+conceitedly to and fro. I bent deftly and pilfered a little cockled
+cherry from between the very fingertips of her whose heart was
+doubtless like its--quite hard. And the bright lips never said a word.
+I sat down, rather clownishly I felt, beside an aged and simpering
+chancellor that once had seemed wise, but now seemed innocent,
+nibbling a biscuit crisp as scandal. For after all the horn _would_
+sound. Childhood had been quite sure of that--needed not even the
+author's testimony. They were alert to rise, scattering all dust,
+victors over Time and outrageous Fortune.
+
+Almost with a cry of apprehension I perceived again the solitary
+Prince. But he merely smiled faintly. "You see, sir," he said, "how
+weary must a guardianship be of them who never tire. The snow falls,
+and the bright light falls on all these faces; yet not even my Lady
+Melancholy stirs a dark lid. And all these dog-days--" He glanced at
+his motionless hounds. They raised languidly their narrow heads,
+whimpering softly, as if beseeching of their master that long-delayed
+supper--haplessly me. "No, no, sirs," said the Prince, as if he had
+read their desire as easily as he whom it so much concerned. "Guard,
+guard, and hearken. This gentleman is not the Prince we await, Sallow;
+not the Prince, Safte! And now, sir,"--he turned again to me--"there
+is yet one other sleeper--she who hath brought so much quietude on a
+festive house."
+
+We climbed the staircase where dim light lay so invitingly, and came
+presently to a little darker chamber. Green, blunt things had pushed
+and burst through the casement. The air smelled faintly-sour of brier,
+and was as still as boughs of snow. There the not-unhappy Princess
+reclined before a looking-glass, whither I suppose she had run to view
+her own alarm when the sharp needle pierced her thumb. All alarm was
+stilled now on her face. She, one might think, of all that company of
+the sleepy, was the only one that dreamed. Her youthful lips lay a
+little asunder; the heavy beauty of her hair was parted on her
+forehead; her childish hands sidled together like leverets in her lap.
+"Why!" I cried aloud, almost involuntarily, "she breathes!"
+
+And at sound of my voice the hounds leapt back; and, on a traveller's
+oath, I verily believe, once, and how swiftly, and how fearfully and
+brightly, those childish lids unsealed their light as of lilac that
+lay behind, glanced briefly, fleetingly, on one who had ventured so
+far, and fell again to rest.
+
+"And when," I cried harshly, "when will that laggard burst through
+this agelong silence? Here's dust enough for all to see. And all this
+ruin, this inhospitable peace!"
+
+Prince Ennui glanced strangely at me.
+
+"I assure you, O suddenly enkindled," he said in his suave, monotonous
+voice, "it is not for _my_ indifference he does not come. I would
+willingly sleep; these--my dear sister, all these old fineries and
+love-jinglers would as fain wake." He turned away his treacherous eyes
+from me. "Maybe the Lorelei hath snared him!..." he said, smiling.
+
+I relished not at all the thought of sleeping in this mansion of
+sleep. Yet it seemed politic to refrain from giving offence to fangs
+apparently so eager to take it. Accordingly I followed this Ennui to a
+loftier chamber yet that he suggested for me.
+
+Once there, however, and his soft footfall passed away, I looked about
+me, first to find a means for keeping trespassers from coming in, and
+next to find a means for getting myself out.
+
+It was a long and arduous, but not a perilous, descent from the window
+by the thick-grown greenery that cumbered the walls. But I determined
+to wait awhile before venturing,--wait, too, till I could see plainly
+where Rosinante had made her night-quarters. By good fortune I
+discovered her beneath the greenish moon that hung amid mist above the
+forest, stretching a disconsolate neck at the waterside as if in
+search of the Lorelei.
+
+When, as it seemed to me, it must be nearing dawn, though how the
+hours flitted so swiftly passed my comprehension, I very cautiously
+climbed out of my narrow window and descended slowly to the lawns
+beneath. My foot had scarcely touched ground when ringing and menacing
+from some dark gallery of the palace above me broke out a distant
+baying.
+
+Nothing shall persuade me to tell how fast I ran; how feverishly I
+haled poor Rosinante out of sleep, and pushed her down into the deeps
+of that coal-black stream; with what agility I clambered into the
+saddle.
+
+Yet I could not help commiserating the while the faithful soul who
+floated beneath me. The stream was swift but noiseless, the water
+rather rare than cold, yet, despite all the philosophy beaming out of
+her maidenly eyes across the smooth surface of the tide, Rosinante
+must have preferred from the bottom of her heart dry land.
+
+I, too, momentarily, when I discovered that we were speedily
+approaching the roaring fall whose reverberations I had heard long
+since.
+
+Out of the emerald twilight we floated from beneath the overarching
+thickets. Pale beams were striking from the risen sun upon the gliding
+surface, and dwelt in splendour where danger sat charioted beneath a
+palely gorgeous bow. Yet I doubt if ever mortal man swept on to defeat
+at last so rapturously as I.
+
+The gloomier trees had now withdrawn from the banks of the river. A
+pale morning sky over-canopied the shimmering forests. Here rose the
+solitary tower where Echo tarried for the Hornblower. And straight
+before us, across that level floor, beyond a tremulous cloud of foam
+and light and colour, lurked the unseen, the unimaginable, the
+ever-dreamed-of, Death.
+
+Heedless of Lorelei, heedless of all save the beauty and terror and
+glory in which they rode, down swept snorting ship and master to doom.
+
+The crystal water jargoned past my saddle. Sky, earth, and tower, like
+the panorama of a dream, wheeled around me. Light blinded me; clamour
+deafened me; foam and the pure wave and cold darkness whelmed over me.
+We surged, paused, gazed, nodded, crashed:--and so an end to Ennui.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+    _He loves to talk with marineres
+    That come from a far countree._
+
+    --SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
+
+
+How long my body was the sport of that foaming water I cannot tell.
+But when I again opened my eyes, I found, first, that the sun was
+shining dazzling clear high above me, and, next, that the delightful
+noise of running water babbled close against my ear. I lay upon a
+strip of warm sward by the river's brink. Near by me grew some
+rank-smelling waterside plant, and overhead the air seemed peopled
+with larks.
+
+I crawled, confused and aching, to the water, and dipped my head and
+hands into the cold rills. This soon refreshed me, for the sun had, it
+would seem, long been dwelling on that passive corse of mine by the
+waterside and had parched it to the skin.
+
+But it was some little while yet before my mind returned fully to
+what had passed, and so to my loss.
+
+I sat looking at the grey, noisy water, almost incredulous that
+Rosinante could be gone. It might be that the same hand as must have
+drawn myself from drowning had snatched her bridle also out of Fate's
+grasp. Perhaps even now she was seeking her master by the greener
+pasture of the wide plains around me. Perhaps the far-off sea was her
+green sepulchre. But many waters cannot quench love. I faced,
+friendless and discomfited, a region as strange to me as the farther
+side of the moon.
+
+Without more ado I rose, shook myself, and sadly began to go forward.
+But I had taken only a few steps along the banks of the stream--for
+here was fresh water, at least--when a sound like distant thunder
+rolled over these flat, green lands towards me, increasing steadily in
+volume.
+
+I stood, lost in wonder, and presently, at the distance, perhaps, of a
+little less than a mile, descried an innumerable herd of horses
+streaming across these level pastures, and at the extremity, it
+seemed, of a wide ellipse, that had brought them near, and now was
+galloping them away.
+
+My heart beat a little faster at this extraordinary spectacle. And
+while I stood in uncertainty gazing after the retreating concourse, I
+perceived a figure running towards me, lifting his hands and crying
+out in a voice sonorous and inhuman. He was of a stature much above my
+own, yet so gross in shape and immense of head he seemed at first
+almost dwarfish. He came to a stand twenty paces or so from me, on the
+ridge of a gentle inclination, and gazed down on me with wild, bright
+eyes. Even at this distance I could perceive the almost colourless
+lustre of his eyes beneath his thick locks of yellow hair. When he had
+taken his fill of me, he lifted his head again and cried out to me a
+few words of what certainly might be English, but was neither
+intelligible nor reassuring.
+
+I stood my ground and stared him in the face, till I could see nothing
+but wind-blown yellow, and strange, brutal eyes. Then he advanced a
+little nearer. Whereupon I also raised my hand with a gesture like
+his own, and demanded loudly where I was, what was this place, and who
+was he. His very ears pricked forward, he listened so intently. He
+came nearer yet, then stayed, tossed his head into the air, whirled
+the long leather thong he carried above his head, and, signing to me
+to follow, set off with so swift and easy a stride as would soon have
+carried him out of sight, had he not turned and perceived how slowly I
+could follow him.
+
+He slackened his pace then, and, thus running, we came in sight at
+length of what appeared to be a vast wooden shed, or barn, with one
+rude chimney, and surrounded by a thick fence, or stockade, many feet
+high and apparently of immense strength and stability.
+
+In the gateway of this fence stood the master of these solitudes, his
+eyes fixed strangely on my coming with an intense, I had almost said
+incredulous, interest. Nor did he cease so to regard me, while the
+creature that had conducted me thither, told, I suppose, where he had
+found me, and poured out with childish zeal his own amazement and
+delight. By this time, too, his voice had begun to lose its first
+strangeness, and to take a meaning for me. And I was presently fully
+persuaded he spoke a kind of English, and that not unpleasingly, with
+a liquid, shrill, voluminous ease. His master listened patiently
+awhile, but at last bade his servant be silent, and himself addressed
+me.
+
+"I am informed, Yahoo," he said with peculiar deliberation, "that you
+have been borne down into my meadows by the river, and fetched out
+thence by my servant. Be aware, then, that all these lands from
+horizon to horizon are mine and my people's. I desire no tidings of
+what follies may be beyond my boundaries, no aid, and no amity. I
+admit no trespasser here and will bear with none. It appears, however,
+that your life has passed beyond your own keeping: I may not,
+therefore, refuse you shelter and food, and to have you conducted in
+safety beyond my borders. Have the courtesy, then, to keep within
+shelter of these walls till the night be over. Else"--he gazed out
+across the verdant undulations--"else, Yahoo, I have no power to
+protect you."
+
+He turned once more, and regarded me with a lofty yet tender
+recognition, as if, little though his speech might profess it, he very
+keenly desired my safety.
+
+He then stepped aside and bade me rather sharply enter the gate before
+him. I tried to show none of the mistrust I felt at passing out of
+these open lands into this repellent yard. I glanced at the
+shock-haired creature, alert, half-human, beside me; across the
+limitless savannah around me, echoing yet, it seemed, with the rumour
+of innumerable hoofs; and bowing, as it were, to odds, I went in.
+
+On the other hand, I felt my host had been frank with me. If this was
+indeed the same Lemuel Gulliver whose repute my infancy had prized so
+well, I need have no fear of blood and treachery at his hands, however
+primitive and disgusting his household, or distorted his intellect
+might be. He who had proved no tyrant in Lilliput, nor quailed before
+the enormities of Brobdingnag, might abhor the sight of me; he would
+not play me false.
+
+His servant, or whatsoever else he might be, I considered not quite
+so calmly. Yet even in _his_ broad countenance dwelt a something like
+bright honesty, less malice than simplicity.
+
+Wherefore, I say, I ordered down my cowardice, and, looking both of
+them as squarely in the face as I knew how, passed out of the open
+into the appalling yard of this wooden house.
+
+I say "appalling," but without much reason. Perhaps it was the
+unseemly hugeness of its balks, the foul piles of skins, the mounds of
+refuse that lay about within; perhaps the all-pervading beastly
+stench, the bareness and filthiness under so glassy-clear and fierce a
+sun that revolted me. All man's seemliness and affection for the
+natural things of earth were absent. Here was only a brutal and bald
+order, as of an intelligence like that of the yellow-locked,
+swift-footed creature behind me. Perhaps also it was the mere
+unfamiliarity of much I saw there that estranged me. All lay in
+neglect, cracked and marred with rough usage,--coarse strands of a
+kind of rope, strips of hide, gaping tubs, a huge and rusty brazier,
+and in one corner a great cage, many feet square and surmounted with
+an iron ring.
+
+I know not. I almost desired Sallow at my side, and would to heaven
+Rosinante's nose lay in my palm.
+
+Within the house a wood-fire burned in the sun, its smoke ascending to
+the roof, and flowing thence through a rude chimney. A pot steamed
+over the fire, burdening the air with a savour at first somewhat faint
+and disgusting,--perhaps because it was merely strange to me. The
+walls of this lofty room were of rough, substantial timber, bare and
+weatherproof; the floor was of the colour of earth, seemingly earth
+itself. A few rude stools, a bench, and a four-legged table stood
+beside the unshuttered window. And from this stretched the beauteous
+green of the grass-land or prairie beyond the stockade.
+
+The house, then, was built on the summit of a gentle mound, and
+doubtless commanded from its upper window the extreme reaches of this
+sea of verdure.
+
+I sat down where Mr. Gulliver directed me, and was not displeased with
+the warmth of the fire, despite the sun. I was cold after that long,
+watery lullaby, and cold too with exhaustion after running so far at
+the heels of the creature who had found me. And I dwelt in a kind of
+dream on the transparent flames, and watched vacantly the seething
+pot, and smelt till slowly appetite returned the smoke of the stuff
+that bubbled beneath its lid.
+
+Mr. Gulliver himself brought me my platter of this pottage, and though
+it tasted of nothing in my experience--a kind of sweet, cloying
+meat--I was so tired of the fruits to which enterprise had as yet
+condemned me, I ate of it hungrily and heartily. Yet not so fast as
+that the young "Gulliver" had not finished his before me, and sat at
+length watching every mouthful I took from beneath his sun-enticing
+thatch of hair. Ever and again he would toss up his chin with a shrill
+guffaw, or stoop his head till his eyeballs were almost hidden
+beneath their thick lashes, so regarding me for minutes together with
+a delightful simulation of intelligence, yet with that peculiar
+wistful affection his master had himself exhibited at first sight of
+me.
+
+But when our meal was done, Mr. Gulliver ordered him about his
+business. Without a murmur, with one last, long, brotherly glance at
+me, he withdrew. And presently after I heard from afar his high,
+melancholy "cooee," and the crack of his thong in the afternoon air as
+he hastened out to his charges.
+
+My companion did not stir. Only the flames waved silently along the
+logs. The beam of sunlight drew across the floor. The crisp air of the
+pasture flowed through the window. What wonder, then, that, sitting on
+my stool, I fell asleep!
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+    _If I see all, ye're nine to ane!_
+
+    --OLD BALLAD.
+
+
+I was awoke by a sustained sound as of an orator speaking in an
+unknown tongue, and found myself in a sunny-shadowy loft, whither I
+suppose I must have been carried in my sleep. In a delicious languor
+between sleeping and waking I listened with imperturbable curiosity
+awhile to that voice of the unknown. Indeed, I was dozing again when a
+different sound, enormous, protracted, abruptly aroused me. I got up,
+hot and trembling, not yet quite my own master, to discover its cause.
+
+Through a narrow slit between the timbers I could view the country
+beneath me, far and wide. I saw near at hand the cumbrous gate of the
+stockade ajar, and at a little distance on the farther side Mr.
+Gulliver and his half-human servant standing. In front of them was an
+empty space--a narrow semicircle of which Gulliver was the centre. And
+beyond--wild-eyed, dishevelled, stretching their necks as if to see,
+inclining their heads as if to hearken, ranging in multitude almost to
+the sky's verge--stood assembled, it seemed to me, all the horses of
+the universe.
+
+Even in my first sensation of fear admiration irresistibly stirred.
+The superb freedom of their unbridled heads, the sun-nurtured
+arrogance of their eyes, the tumultuous, sea-like tossing of crest and
+tail, their keenness and ardour and might, and also in simple truth
+their numbers--how could one marvel if this solitary fanatic dreamed
+they heard him and understood?
+
+Unarmed, bareheaded, he faced the brutal discontent of his people.
+Words I could not distinguish; but there was little chance of
+misapprehending the haughty anguish with which he threatened, pleaded,
+cajoled. Clear and unfaltering his voice rose and fell. He dealt out
+fearlessly, foolishly, to that long-snouted, little-brained,
+wild-eyed multitude, reason beyond their instinct, persuasion beyond
+their savagery, love beyond their heed.
+
+But even while I listened, one thing I knew those sleek malcontents
+heard too--the Spirit of man in that small voice of his--perplexed,
+perhaps, and perverted, and out of tether; but none the less
+unconquerable and sublime.
+
+What less, thought I, than power unearthly could long maintain that
+stern, impassable barrier of green vacancy between their hoofs and
+him? And I suppose for the very reason that these were beasts of a
+long-sharpened sagacity, wild-hearted, rebellious, yet not the slaves
+of impulse, he yet kept himself their king who was, in fact, their
+captive.
+
+"Houyhnhnms?" I heard him cry; "pah--Yahoos!" His voice fell; he stood
+confronting in silence that vast circumference of restless beauty. And
+again broke out inhuman, inarticulate, immeasurable revolt. Far across
+over the tossing host, rearing, leaping, craning dishevelled heads,
+went pealing and eddying that hostile, brutal voice.
+
+Gulliver lifted his hand, and a tempestuous silence fell once more.
+"Yahoos! Yahoos!" he bawled again. Then he turned, and passed back
+into his hideous garden. The gate was barred and bolted behind him.
+
+Thus loosed and unrestrained, surged as if the wind drove them, that
+concourse upon the stockade. Heavy though its timbers were, they
+seemed to stoop at the impact. A kind of fury rose in me. I lusted to
+go down and face the mutiny of the brutes; bit, and saddle, and
+scourge into obedience man's serfs of the centuries. I watched, on
+fire, the flame of the declining sun upon those sleek, vehement
+creatures of the dust. And then, I know not by what subtle irony, my
+zeal turned back--turned back and faded away into simple longing for
+my lost friend, my peaceful beast-of-evening, Rosinante. I sat down
+again in the litter of my bed and earnestly wished myself home;
+wished, indeed, if I must confess it, for the familiar face of my Aunt
+Sophia, my books, my bed. If these were this land's horses, I thought,
+what men might here be met! The unsavouriness, the solitude, the
+neighing and tumult and prancing induced in me nothing but dulness at
+last and disgust.
+
+But at length, dismissing all such folly, at least from my face, I
+lifted the trap-door and descended the steep ladder into the room
+beneath.
+
+Mr. Gulliver sat where I had left him. Defeat stared from his eyes.
+Lines of insane thought disfigured his face. Yet he sat, stubborn and
+upright, heedless of the uproar, heedless even that the late beams of
+the sun had found him out in his last desolation. So I too sat down
+without speech, and waited till he should come up out of his gloom,
+and find a friend in a stranger.
+
+But day waned; the sunlight went out of the great wooden room; the
+tumult diminished; and finally silence and evening shadow descended on
+the beleaguered house. And I was looking out of the darkened window at
+a star that had risen and stood shining in the sky, when I was
+startled by a voice so low and so different from any I had yet heard
+that I turned to convince myself it was indeed Mr. Gulliver's.
+
+"And the people of the Yahoos, Traveller," he said, "do they still
+lie, and flatter, and bribe, and spill blood, and lust, and covet? Are
+there yet in the country whence you come the breadless bellies, the
+sores and rags and lamentations of the poor? Ay, Yahoo, and do vicious
+men rule, and attain riches; and impious women pomp and
+flattery?--hypocrites, pandars, envious, treacherous, proud?" He
+stared with desolate sorrow and wrath into my eyes.
+
+Words in disorder flocked to my tongue. I grew hot and eager, yet by
+some instinct held my peace. The fluttering of the dying flames, the
+starry darkness, silence itself; what were we who sat together?
+Transient shadows both, phantom, unfathomable, mysterious as these.
+
+I fancied he might speak again. Once he started, raised his arm, and
+cried out as if acting again in dream some frenzy of the past. And
+once he wheeled on me extraordinary eyes, as if he half-recognised
+some idol of the irrevocable in my face. These were momentary,
+however. Gloom returned to his forehead, vacancy to his eyes.
+
+I heard the outer gate flung open, and a light, strange footfall. So
+we seated ourselves, all three, for a while round the smouldering
+fire. Mr. Gulliver's servant scarcely took his eyes from my face. And,
+a little to my confusion, his first astonishment of me had now passed
+away, and in its stead had fallen such a gentleness and humour as I
+should not have supposed possible in his wild countenance. He busied
+himself over his strips of skin, but if he caught my eye upon his own
+he would smile out broadly, and nod his great, hairy head at me, till
+I fancied myself a child again and he some vast sweetheart of my
+nurse.
+
+When we had supped (sitting together in the great room), I climbed the
+ladder into the loft and was soon fast asleep. But from dreams
+distracted with confusion I awoke at the first shafts of dawn. I stood
+beside the narrow window in the wall of the loft and watched the
+distant river change to silver, the bright green of the grass appear.
+
+This seemed a place of few and timorous birds, and of fewer trees. But
+all across the dews of the grasses lay a tinge of powdered gold, as
+if yellow flowers were blooming in abundance there. I saw no horses,
+no sign of life; heard no sound but the cadent wail of the ash-grey
+birds in their flights. And when I turned my eyes nearer home, and
+compared the distant beauty of the forests and their radiant clouds
+with the nakedness and desolation here, I gave up looking from the
+window with a determination to be gone as soon as possible from a
+country so uncongenial.
+
+Moreover, Mr. Gulliver, it appeared, had returned during the night to
+his first mistrust of my company. He made no sign he saw me, and left
+his uncouth servant to attend on me. For him, indeed, I began to feel
+a kind of affection springing up; he seemed so eager to befriend me.
+And whose is the heart quite hardened against a simple admiration? I
+rose very gladly when, after having stuffed a wallet with food, he
+signed to me to follow him. I turned to Mr. Gulliver and held out my
+hand.
+
+"I wish, sir, I might induce you to accompany me," I said. "Some day
+we would win our way back to the country we have abandoned. I have
+known and loved your name, sir, since first I browsed on
+pictures--Being measured for your first coat in Lilliput by the little
+tailors:--Straddling the pinnacled city. Ay, sir, and when the farmers
+picked you up 'twixt finger and thumb from among their cornstalks...."
+
+I had talked on in hope to see his face relax; but he made no sign he
+saw or heard me. I very speedily dropped my hand and went out. But
+when my guide and I had advanced about thirty yards from the stockade,
+I cast a glance over my shoulder towards the house that had given me
+shelter. It rose, sad-coloured and solitary, between the green and
+blue. But, if it was not fancy, Mr. Gulliver stood looking down on me
+from the very window whence I had looked down on him. And there I do
+not doubt he stayed till his fellow-yahoo had passed across his
+inhospitable lands out of his sight for ever.
+
+I was glad to be gone, and did not, at first, realise that the least
+danger lay before us. But soon, observing the extraordinary vigilance
+and caution my companion showed, I began to watch and hearken, too.
+Evidently our departure had not passed unseen. Far away to left and to
+right of us I descried at whiles now a few, now many, swift-moving
+shapes. But whether they were advancing with us, or gathering behind
+us, in hope to catch their tyrant alone and unaware, I could not
+properly distinguish.
+
+Once, for a cause not apparent to me, my guide raised himself to his
+full height, and, thrusting back his head, uttered a most piercing
+cry. After that, however, we saw no more for a while of the beasts
+that haunted our journey.
+
+All morning, till the sun was high, and the air athrob with heat and
+stretched like a great fiddlestring to a continuous, shrill vibration,
+we went steadily forward. And when at last I was faint with heat and
+thirst, my companion lifted me up like a child on to his back and set
+off again at his great, easy stride. It was useless to protest. I
+merely buried my hands in his yellow hair to keep my balance in such a
+camel-like motion.
+
+A little after noon we stayed to rest by a shallow brook, beneath a
+cluster of trees scented, though not in blossom, like an English
+hawthorn. There we ate our meal, or rather I ate and my companion
+watched, running out ever and again for a wider survey, and returning
+to me like a faithful dog, to shout snatches of his inconceivable
+language at me.
+
+Sometimes I seemed to catch his meaning, bidding me take courage, have
+no fear, he would protect me. And once he shaded his eyes and pointed
+afar with extreme perturbation, whining or murmuring while he stared.
+
+Again we set off from beneath the sweet-scented shade, and now no
+doubt remained that I was the object of very hostile evolutions.
+Sometimes these smooth-hooved battalions would advance, cloudlike, to
+within fifty yards of us, and, snorting, ruffle their manes and wheel
+swiftly away; only once more in turn to advance, and stand, with heads
+exalted, gazing wildly on us till we were passed on a little. But my
+guide gave them very little heed. Did they pause a moment too long in
+our path, or gallop down on us but a stretch or two beyond the limit
+his instinct had set for my safety, he whirled his thong above his
+head, and his yell resounded, and like a shadow upon wheat the furious
+companies melted away.
+
+Evidently these were not the foes he looked for, but a subtler, a more
+indomitable. It was at last, I conjectured, at scent, or sight, or
+rumour of these that he suddenly swept me on to his shoulders again,
+and with a great sneeze or bellow leapt off at a speed he had, as yet,
+given me no hint of.
+
+Looking back as best I could, I began to discern somewhat to the left
+of us a numerous herd in pursuit, sorrel in colour, and of a more
+magnificent aspect than those forming the other bands. It was obvious,
+too, despite their plunging and rearing, that they were gaining on
+us--drew, indeed, so near at last that I could count the foremost of
+them, and mark (not quite callously) their power and fleetness and
+symmetry, even the sun's gold upon their reddish skins.
+
+Then in a flash my captor set me down, toppled me over (in plain
+words) into the thick herbage, and, turning, rushed bellowing,
+undeviating towards their leaders, till it seemed he must inevitably
+be borne down beneath their brute weight, and so--farewell to summer.
+But almost at the impact, the baffled creatures reared, neighing
+fearfully in consort, and at the gibberish hurled back on them by
+their flamed-eyed master, broke in rout, and fled.
+
+Whereupon, unpausing, he ran back to me, only just in time to rescue
+me from the nearer thunder yet of those who had seized the very acme
+of their opportunity to beat out my brains.
+
+It was a long and arduous and unequal contest. I wished very heartily
+I could bear a rather less passive part. But this fearless creature
+scarcely heeded me; used me like a helpless child, half tenderly, half
+roughly, displaying ever and again over his shoulder only a fleeting
+glance of the shallow glories of his eyes, as if to reassure me of his
+power and my safety.
+
+But the latter, those distant savannahs will bear witness, seemed
+forlorn enough. My eyes swam with weariness of these crested,
+earth-disdaining battalions. I sickened of the heat of the sun, the
+incessant sidelong jolting, the amazing green. But on we went, fleet
+and stubborn, into ever-thickening danger. How feeble a quarry amid so
+many hunters!
+
+Two things grew clearer to me each instant. First, that every movement
+and feint of our pursuers was of design. Not a beast that wheeled but
+wheeled to purpose; while the main body never swerved, thundered
+superbly on toward the inevitable end. And next I perceived with even
+keener assurance that my guide knew his country and his enemy and his
+own power and aim as perfectly and consummately; knew, too--this was
+the end.
+
+Far distant in front of us there appeared to be a break in the level
+green, a fringe of bushes, rougher ground. For this refuge he was
+making, and from this our mutinous Houyhnhnms meant to keep us.
+
+There was no pausing now, not a glance behind. His every effort was
+bent on speed. Speed indeed it was. The wind roared in my ears. Yet
+above its surge I heard the neighing and squealing, the
+ever-approaching shudder of hoofs. My eyes distorted all they looked
+on. I seemed now floating twenty feet in air; now skimming within
+touch of ground. Now that sorrel squadron behind me swelled and
+nodded; now dwindled to an extreme minuteness of motion.
+
+Then, of a sudden, a last, shrill paean rose high; the hosts of our
+pursuers paused, billow-like, reared, and scattered--my poor Yahoo
+leapt clear.
+
+For an instant once again in this wild journey I was poised, as it
+were, in space, then fell with a crash, still clutched, sure and
+whole, to the broad shoulders of my rescuer.
+
+When my first confusion had passed away, I found that I was lying in a
+dense green glen at the foot of a cliff. For some moments I could
+think of nothing but my extraordinary escape from destruction. Within
+reach of my hand lay the creature who had carried me, huddled and
+motionless; and to left and to right of me, and one a little nearer
+the base of the cliff, five of those sorrel horses that had been
+chief of our pursuers. One only of them was alive, and he, also,
+broken and unable to rise--unable to do else than watch with fierce,
+untamed, glazing eyes (a bloody froth at his muzzle,) every movement
+and sign of life I made.
+
+I myself, though bruised and bleeding, had received no serious injury.
+But my Yahoo would rise no more. His master was left alone amidst his
+people. I stooped over him and bathed his brow and cheeks with the
+water that trickled from the cliffs close at hand. I pushed back the
+thick strands of matted yellow hair from his eyes. He made no sign.
+Even while I watched him the life of the poor beast near at hand
+welled away: he whinnied softly, and dropped his head upon the
+bracken. I was alone in the unbroken silence.
+
+It seemed a graceless thing to leave the carcasses of these brave
+creatures uncovered there. So I stripped off branches of the trees,
+and gathered bundles of fern and bracken, with which to conceal awhile
+their bones from wolf and fowl. And him whom I had begun to love I
+covered last, desiring he might but return, if only for a moment, to
+bid me his strange farewell.
+
+This done, I pushed through the undergrowth from the foot of the sunny
+cliffs, and after wandering in the woods, came late in the afternoon,
+tired out, to a ruinous hut. Here I rested, refreshing myself with the
+unripe berries that grew near by.
+
+I remained quite still in this mouldering hut looking out on the glens
+where fell the sunlight. Some homely bird warbled endlessly on in her
+retreat, lifted her small voice till every hollow resounded with her
+content. Silvery butterflies wavered across the sun's pale beams,
+sipped, and flew in wreaths away. The infinite hordes of the dust
+raised their universal voice till, listening, it seemed to me their
+tiny Babel was after all my own old, far-off English, sweet of the
+husk.
+
+Fate leads a man through danger to his delight. Me she had led among
+woods. Nameless though many of the cups and stars and odours of the
+flowers were to me, unfamiliar the little shapes that gamboled in fur
+and feather before my face, here dwelt, mummy of all earth's summers,
+some old ghost of me, sipper of sap, coucher in moss, quieter than
+dust.
+
+So sitting, so rhapsodising, I began to hear presently another
+sound--the rich, juicy munch-munch of jaws, a little blunted maybe,
+which yet, it seemed, could never cry Enough! to these sweet,
+succulent grasses. I made no sign, waited with eyes towards the sound,
+and pulses beating as if for a sweetheart. And soon, placid,
+unsurprised, at her extreme ease, loomed into sight who but my
+ox-headed Rosinante in these dells, cropping her delightful way along
+in search of her drowned master.
+
+I could but whistle and receive the slow, soft scrutiny of her
+familiar eyes. I fancied even her bland face smiled, as might
+elderliness on youth. She climbed near with bridle broken and
+trailing, thrust out her nose to me, and so was mine again.
+
+Sunlight left the woods. Wind passed through the upper branches. So,
+with rain in the air, I went forward once more; not quite so headily,
+perhaps, yet, I hope, with undiminished courage, like all earth's
+travellers before me, who have deemed truth potent as modesty, and
+themselves worth scanning print after.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+    _A ... shop of rarities._
+
+    --GEORGE HERBERT.
+
+
+A little before darkness fell we struck into a narrow road traversing
+the wood. This, though apparently not much frequented, would at least
+lead me into lands inhabited, so turning my face to the West, that I
+might have light to survey as long as any gleamed in the sky, I
+trudged on. But I went slow enough: Rosinante was lame; I like a
+stranger to my body, it was so bruised and tumbled.
+
+The night was black, and a thin rain falling when at last I emerged
+from the interminable maze of lanes into which the wood-road had led
+me. And glad I was to descry what seemed by the many lights shining
+from its windows to be a populous village. A gay village also, for
+song came wafted on the night air, rustic and convivial.
+
+Hereabouts I overtook a figure on foot, who, when I addressed him,
+turned on me as sharply as if he supposed the elms above him were
+thick with robbers, or that mine was a voice out of the unearthly
+hailing him.
+
+I asked him the name of the village we were approaching. With small
+dark eyes searching my face in the black shadow of night, he answered
+in a voice so strange and guttural that I failed to understand a word.
+He shook his fingers in the air; pointed with the cudgel he carried
+under his arm now to the gloom behind us, now to the homely galaxy
+before us, and gabbled on so fast and so earnestly that I began to
+suppose he was a little crazed.
+
+One word, however, I caught at last from all this jargon, and that
+often repeated with a little bow to me, and an uneasy smile on his
+white face--"Mishrush, Mishrush!" But whether by this he meant to
+convey to me his habitual mood, or his own name, I did not learn till
+afterwards. I stopped in the heavy road and raised my hand.
+
+"An inn," I cried in his ear, "I want lodging, supper--a tavern, an
+inn!" as if addressing a child or a natural.
+
+He began gesticulating again, evidently vain of having fully
+understood me. Indeed, he twisted his little head upon his shoulders
+to observe Rosinante gauntly labouring on. "'Ame!--'ame!" he cried
+with a great effort.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Ah!" he cried piteously.
+
+He led me, after a few minutes' journey, into the cobbled yard of a
+bright-painted inn, on whose signboard a rising sun glimmered faintly
+gold, and these letters standing close above it--"The World's End."
+
+Mr. "Mishrush" seemed not a little relieved at nearing company after
+his lonely walk; triumphant, too, at having guided me hither so
+cunningly. He lifted his nimble cudgel in the air and waved it
+conceitedly to and fro in time to the song that rose beyond the
+window. "Fau'ow er Wur'!--Fau'ow er Wur'!" he cried delightedly again
+and again in my ear, eager apparently for my approval. So we stood,
+then, beneath the starless sky, listening to the rich _choragium_ of
+the "World's End." They sang in unison, sang with a kind of forlorn
+heat and enthusiasm. And when the song was ended, and the roar of
+applause over, Night, like a darkened water whelmed silently in,
+engulfed it to the echo:
+
+    Follow the World--
+      She bursts the grape,
+    And dandles man
+      In her green lap;
+    She moulds her Creature
+      From the clay,
+    And crumbles him
+      To dust away:
+        Follow the World!
+
+    One Draught, one Feast,
+      One Wench, one Tomb;
+    And thou must straight
+      To ashes come:
+    Drink, eat, and sleep;
+      Why fret and pine?
+    Death can but snatch
+      What ne'er was thine:
+        Follow the World!
+
+It died away, I say, and an ostler softly appeared out of the shadow.
+Into his charge, then, I surrendered Rosinante, and followed my
+inarticulate acquaintance into the noise and heat and lustre of the
+Inn.
+
+It was a numerous company there assembled. But their voices fell to a
+man on the entry of a stranger. They scrutinised me, not uncivilly,
+but closely, seeking my badge, as it were by which to recognise and
+judge me ever after.
+
+Mr. Mistrust, as I presently discovered my guide's name indeed to be,
+was volubly explaining how I came into his company. They listened
+intently to what, so far as I could gather, might be Houyhnhnmish or
+Double-Dutch. And then, as if to show me to my place forthwith, a
+great fleshy fellow that sat close beside the hearth this summer
+evening continued in a loud voice the conversation I had interrupted.
+
+Whereupon Mr. Mistrust with no little confidence commended me in dumb
+show to the landlady of the Inn, a Mrs. Nature, if I understood him
+aright. This person was still comely, though of uncertain age, wore
+cherry ribbons, smiled rather vacantly from vague, wonderful,
+indescribable eyes that seemed to change colour, like the chameleon,
+according to that they dwelt on.
+
+I am afraid, as much to my amusement as wonder, I discovered that this
+landlady of so much apparent _bonhomie_ was a deaf-mute. If victuals,
+or drink, or bed were required, one must chalk it down on a little
+slate she carried at her girdle for the purpose. Indeed, the absence
+of two of her three chief senses had marvellously sharpened the
+remaining one. Her eyes were on all, vaguely dwelling, lightly gone,
+inscrutable, strangely fascinating. She moved easily and soundlessly
+(as fat women may), and I doubt if ever mug or pot of any of that
+talkative throng remained long empty, except at the tippler's
+reiterated request.
+
+She laid before me an excellent supper on a little table somewhat
+removed beside a curtained window. And while I ate I watched, and
+listened, not at all displeased with my entertainment.
+
+The room in which we sat was low-ceiled and cheerful, but rather
+close after the rainy night-air. Gay pictures beautified the walls.
+Here a bottle, a cheese, grapes, a hare, a goblet--in a clear brown
+light that made the guest's mouth water to admire. Here a fine
+gentleman toasting a simpering chambermaid. Above the chimney-piece a
+bloated old man in vineleaves that might be Silenus. And over against
+the door of the parlour what I took to be a picture of Potiphar's wife,
+she looked out of the paint so bold and beauteous and craftily. Birds
+and fishes in cases stared glassily,--owl and kestrel, jack and eel
+and gudgeon. All was clean and comfortable as a hospitable inn can be.
+
+But they who frequented it interested me much more--as various and
+animated a gathering as any I have seen. Yet in some peculiar manner
+they seemed one and all not to the last tittle quite of this world.
+They were, so to speak, more earthy, too definite, too true to the
+mould, like figures in a bleak, bright light viewed out of darkness.
+Certainly not one of them was at first blush prepossessing. Yet who
+finds much amiss with the fox at last, though all he seems to have be
+cunning?
+
+Near beside me, however, sat retired a man a little younger and more
+at his ease than most of the many there, and as busy with his eyes and
+ears as I. His name, I learned presently, was Reverie; and from him I
+gathered not a little information regarding the persons who talked and
+sipped around us.
+
+He told me at whiles that his house was not in the village, but in a
+valley some few miles distant across the meadows; that he sat out
+these bouts of argument and slander for the sheer delight he had in
+gathering the myriad strands of that strange rope Opinion; that he
+lived (heart, soul, and hope) well-nigh alone; that he deeply
+mistrusted this place, and the company we were in, yet not for its
+mistress's sake, who was at least faithful to her instincts, candid to
+the candid, made no favourites, and, eventually, compelled order. He
+told me also that if friends he had, he deemed it wiser not to name
+them, since the least sibilant of the sound of the voice incites to
+treachery; and in conclusion, that of all men he was acquainted with,
+one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder
+flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar to his coat, and the
+rings on his fingers, and the gold hair, named Pliable, who sat beside
+Mr. Stubborn on the settle by the fire.
+
+When, then, I had finished my supper, I drew in my chair a little
+closer to Mr. Reverie's and, having scribbled my wants on the
+Landlady's slate, turned my attention to the talk.
+
+At the moment when I first began to listen attentively they seemed to
+be in heated dispute concerning the personal property of a certain Mr.
+Christian, who was either dead or had inexplicably disappeared. Mr.
+Obstinate, I gathered, had taken as his right this Christian's
+"easy-chair"; a gentleman named Smoothman most of his other goods for
+a debt; while a Parson Decorum had appropriated as heretical his
+books and various peculiar MSS.
+
+But there now remained in question a trifling sum of money which a Mr.
+Liar loudly demanded in payment of an "affair of honour." This,
+however, he seemed little likely to obtain, seeing that an elderly
+uncle by marriage of Christian's, whose name was Office, was as eager
+and affable and frank about the sum as he was bent on keeping it; and
+rattled the contents of his breeches' pocket in sheer bravado of his
+means to go to law for it.
+
+"He left a bare pittance, the merest pittance," he said. "What could
+there be of any account? Christian despised money, professed to
+despise it. That alone would prove my wretched nephew queer in the
+head--despised _money_!
+
+"Tush, friend!" cried Obstinate from his corner. "Whether the money is
+yours, or neighbour Liar's--and it is as likely as not neither's--that
+talk about despising money's what but a silly lie? 'Twas all sour
+grapes--sour grapes. He had cunning enough for envy, and pride enough
+for shame; and at last there was naught but cunning left wherewith to
+patch up a clout for him and his shame to be gone in. I watched him
+set out on his pestilent pilgrimage, crazed and stubborn, and not a
+groat to call his own."
+
+"Yet I have heard say he came of a moneyed stock," said Pliable. "The
+Sects of Privy Opinion were rare wealthy people, and they, so 'tis
+said, were his kinsmen. Truth is, for aught I know, Christian must
+have been in some degree a very liberal rascal, with all his faults."
+He tittered.
+
+"Oh! he was liberal enough," said Mr. Malice suavely: "why, even on
+setting out, he emptied his wife's purse into a blind beggar's
+hat!--his that used to bleat, 'Cast thy bread--cast thy bread upon the
+waters!' whensoever he spied Christian stepping along the street. They
+say," he added, burying his clever face in his mug, "the Heavenly
+Jerusalem lieth down by the weir."
+
+"But we must not contemn a man for his poverty, neighbours," said
+Liar, gravely composing his hairless face. "Christian's was a
+character of beautiful simplicity--beautiful! _How_ many rickety
+children did he leave behind him?"
+
+A shrill voice called somewhat I could not quite distinguish, for at
+that moment a youth rose abruptly near by, and went hastily out.
+
+Obstinate stared roundly. "Thou hast a piercing voice, friend Liar!"
+
+"I did but seek the truth," said Liar.
+
+"But whether or no, Christian believed in it--verily he seemed to
+believe in it. Was it not so, neighbour Obstinate?" enquired Pliable,
+stroking his leg.
+
+"Believed in what, my friend?" said Obstinate, in a dull voice.
+
+"About Mount Zion, and the Crowns of Glory, and the Harps of Gold, and
+such like," said Pliable uneasily--"at least, it is said so; so 'tis said."
+
+"Believed!" retorted a smooth young man who seemed to feel the heat,
+and sat by the staircase door. "That's an easy task--to believe, sir.
+Ask any pretty minikin!"
+
+"And I'd make bold to enquire of yonder Liveloose," said a thick,
+monotonous voice (a Mr. Dull's, so Reverie informed me), "if mebbe he
+be referring to one of his own, or that fellow Sloth's devilish fairy
+tales? I know one yet he'll eat again some day."
+
+At which remark all laughed consumedly, save Dull.
+
+"Well, one thing Christian had, and none can deny it," said Pliable, a
+little hotly, "and that was Imagination? _I_ shan't forget the tales
+he was wont to tell: what say you, Superstition?"
+
+Mr. Superstition lifted dark, rather vacant eyes on Pliable. "Yes,
+yes," he said: "Flame, and sigh, and lamentation. My God, my God,
+gentlemen!"
+
+"Oo-ay, Oo-ay," yelped the voice of Mistrust, startled out of silence.
+
+"Oo-ay," whistled Malice, under his breath.
+
+"Tush, tush!" broke in Obstinate again, and snapped his fingers in the
+air. "And what is this precious Imagination? Whither doth it conduct a
+man, but to beggary, infamy, and the mad-house? Look ye to it, friend
+Pliable! 'Tis a devouring flame; give it but wind and leisure, the
+fairest house is ashes."
+
+"Ashes; ashes!" mocked one called Cruelty, who had more than once
+taken my attention with his peculiar contortions--"talking of ashes,
+what of Love-the-log Faithful, Master Tongue-stump? What of
+Love-the-log Faithful?"
+
+At which Liveloose was so extremely amused, the tears stood in his
+eyes for laughing.
+
+I looked round for Mistrust, and easily recognised my friend by his
+hare-like face, and the rage in his little active eyes. But
+unfortunately, as I turned to enquire somewhat of Reverie, Liveloose
+suddenly paused in his merriment with open mouth; and the whole
+company heard my question, "But who was Love-the-log Faithful?"
+
+I was at once again the centre of attention, and Mr. Obstinate rose
+very laboriously from his settle and held out a great hand to me.
+
+"I'm pleased to meet thee," he said, with a heavy bow. "There's a dear
+heart with my good neighbour Superstition yonder who will present a
+very fair account of that misguided young man. Madam Wanton, here's a
+young gentleman that never heard tell of our old friend Love-the-log."
+
+A shrill peal of laughter greeted this sally.
+
+"Why, Faithful was a young gentleman, sir," explained the woman
+civilly enough, "who preferred his supper hot."
+
+"Oh, Madam Wanton, my dear, my dear!" cried a long-nosed woman nearly
+helpless with amusement.
+
+I saw Superstition gazing darkly at me. He shook his head as I was
+about to reply, so I changed my retort. "Who, then, was Mr.
+Christian?" I enquired simply.
+
+At that the house shook with the roar of laughter that went up.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+    ... _Large draughts of intellectual day._
+
+    --RICHARD CRASHAW.
+
+
+"Believe me, neighbours," said Malice softly, when this uproar was a
+little abated, "there is nought so strange in the question. It meaneth
+only that this young gentleman hath not enjoyed the pleasure of your
+company before. Will it amaze you to learn, my friends, that Christian
+is like to be immortal only because you _talk_ him out of the grave?
+One brief epitaph, gentlemen, would let him rot."
+
+"Nay, but I'll tell the gentleman who Christian was, and with
+pleasure," cried a lucid, rather sallow little man that had sat
+quietly smiling and listening. "My name, let me tell you, is Atheist,
+sir; and Christian was formerly a very near neighbour of an old friend
+of my family's--Mr. Sceptic. They lived, sir--at least in those
+days--opposite to one another."
+
+"He is a great talker," whispered Reverie in my ear. But the company
+evidently found his talk to their taste. They sat as still and
+attentive around him, as though before an extemporary preacher.
+
+"Well, sir," continued Atheist, "being, in a sense, neighbours,
+Christian in his youth would often confide in my friend; though,
+assuredly, Sceptic never sought his confidences. And it seemeth he
+began to be perturbed and troubled over the discovery that it is
+impossible--at least in this plain world--to eat your cake, yet have
+it. And by some ill chance he happened at this time on a mouldy old
+folio in my friend's house that had been the property of his maternal
+grandmother--the subtlest old tome you ever set eyes on, though
+somewhat too dark and extravagant and heady for a sober man of the
+world like me. 'Twas called the Bible, sir--a collection of legends
+and fables of all times, tongues, and countries threaded together,
+mighty ingeniously I grant, and in as plausible a style as any I
+know, if a little lax and flowery in parts.
+
+"Well, Christian borroweth the book of my friend--never to return it.
+And being feeble and credulous, partly by reason of his simple wits,
+and partly by reason of the sad condition a froward youth had reduced
+him to, he accepts the whole book--from Apple to Vials--for truth. In
+fact, 'he ate the little book,' as one of the legendary kings it
+celebrates had done before him."
+
+"Ay," broke in Cruelty wildly, "and has ever since gotten the gripes."
+
+Atheist inclined his head. "Putting it coarsely, gentlemen, such was
+the case," he said. "And away at his wit's end he hasteneth, waning
+and shivering, to a great bog or quagmire--that my friend Pliable will
+answer to--and plungeth in. 'Tis the same story repeated. He could be
+temperate in nought. _I_ knew the bog well; but I knew the
+stepping-stones better. Believe me, I have traversed the narrow way
+this same Christian took, seeking the harps and pearls and the _elixir
+vitae_, these many years past. The book inciteth ye to it. It sets a
+man's heart on fire--that's weak enough to read it--with its pomp, and
+rhetoric, and far-away promises, and lofty counsels. Oh, fine words,
+who is not their puppet! I climbed 'Difficulty.' I snapped my fingers
+at the grinning Lions. I passed cautiously through the 'Valley of the
+Shadow'--wild scenery, sir! I visited that prince of bubbles also,
+Giant Despair, in his draughty castle. And--though boasting be far
+from me!--fetched Liveloose's half-brother out of a certain
+charnel-house near by.
+
+"_Thus far_, sir, I went. But I have not yet found the world so barren
+of literature as to write a book about it. I have not yet found the
+world so barren of ingratitude as to seek happiness by stabbing in the
+back every friend I ever had. I have not yet forsaken wife and
+children; neighbours and kinsmen; home, ease, and tenderness, for a
+whim, a dream, a passing qualm. No, sir; 'tis this Christian's
+ignorant hardness-of-heart that is his bane. Knowing little, he
+prateth much. He would pinch and contract the Universe to his own
+fantastical pattern. He is tedious, he is pragmatical, and--I affirm
+it in all sympathy and sorrow--he is crazed. Malice, haply, is a
+little sharp at times. And neighbour Obstinate dealeth full weight
+with his opinions. But this Christian Flown-to-Glory, as the urchins
+say, pinks with a bludgeon. He cannot endure an honest doubt. He
+distorteth a mere difference of opinion into a roaring Tophet. And
+because he is helpless, solitary, despised in the world; because he is
+impotent to refute, and too stubborn to hear and suffer people a
+little higher and weightier, a leetle wiser than he--why, beyond the
+grave he must set his hope in vengeance. Beyond the grave--bliss for
+his own shade; fire and brimstone, eternal woe for theirs. Ay, and
+'tis not but for a season will he vex us, but for ever, and for ever,
+and for ever--if he knoweth in the least what he meaneth by the
+phrase. And this he calls 'Charity.'
+
+"Yes, sirs, beyond the grave he would condemn us, beyond the grave--a
+place of peace whereto I deem there are not many here but will be
+content at length to come; and I not least content, when my duty is
+done, my children provided for, and my last suspicion of fear and
+folly suppressed.
+
+"To conclude, sir--and beshrew me, gentlemen, how time doth fly in
+talk!--this Christian goeth his way. We, each in accord with his
+caprice and conscience, go ours. We envy him not his vapours, his
+terrors, or his shameless greed of reward. Why, then, doth he envy us
+our wealth, our success, our gaiety, our content? He raves. He is
+haunted. What is man but as grass, and the flower of grass? Come the
+sickle, he is clean gone. I can but repeat it, sir, our poor neighbour
+was crazed: 'tis Christian in a word."
+
+A sigh, a murmur of satisfaction and relief, rose from the company, as
+if one and all had escaped by Mr. Atheist's lucidity out of a very
+real peril.
+
+I thanked him for his courtesy, and in some confusion turned to
+Reverie with the remark that I thought I now recollected to have heard
+Christian's name, but understood he had indeed arrived, at last, at
+the Celestial City for which he had set out.
+
+"Celestial twaddle, sir!" cried Mr. Obstinate hoarsely. "He went
+stark, staring mad, and now is dust, as we shall soon all be, that's
+certain."
+
+Then Cruelty rose out of his chair and elbowed his way to the door. He
+opened it and looked out.
+
+"I would," he said, "I had known of this Christian before he started.
+Step you down to Vanity Fair, Sir Stranger, if the mood take you; and
+we'll show you as pretty a persuasion against pilgrimage as ever you
+saw." He opened his mouth where he stood between me and the stars.
+"... There's many more!" he added with difficulty, as if his rage was
+too much for him. He spat into the air and went out.
+
+Presently after Liveloose rose up, smiling softly, and groped after
+him.
+
+A little silence followed their departure.
+
+"You must tell your friend, Mr. Reverie," said Atheist
+good-humouredly, "that Mr. Cruelty says more than he means. To my mind
+he is mistaken--too energetic; but his intentions are good."
+
+"He's a staunch, dependable fellow," said Obstinate, patting down the
+wide cuffs he wore.
+
+But even at that moment a stranger softly entered the inn out of the
+night. His face was of the grey of ashes, and he looked once round on
+us all with a still, appalling glance that silenced the words on my
+lips.
+
+We sat without speech--Obstinate yawning, Atheist smiling lightly,
+Superstition nibbling his nails, Reverie with chin drawn a little
+back, Pliable bolt upright, like a green and white wand, Mistrust
+blinking his little thin lids; but all with eyes fixed on this
+stranger, who deemed himself, it seemed, among friends.
+
+He turned his back on us and sipped his drink under the heedless,
+deep, untroubled gaze of Mrs. Nature, and passed out softly and
+harmlessly as he had come in.
+
+Reverie stood up like a man surprised and ill at ease. He turned to
+me. "I know him only by repute, by hearsay," he said with an effort.
+"He is a stranger to us all, indeed, sir--to all."
+
+Obstinate, with a very flushed face, thrust his hand into his
+breeches' pocket. "Nay, sir," he said, "my purse is yet here. What
+more would you have?"
+
+At which Pliable laughed, turning to the women.
+
+I put on my hat and followed Reverie to the door.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," I said, "but I have no desire to stay in this house
+over-night. And if you would kindly direct me to the nearest way out
+of the village, I will have my horse saddled now and be off."
+
+And then I noticed that Superstition stood in the light of the doorway
+looking down on us.
+
+"There's Christian's way," he said, as if involuntarily....
+
+"Lodge with me to-night," Reverie answered, "and in the morning you
+shall choose which way to go you will."
+
+I thanked him heartily and turned in to find Rosinante.
+
+The night was now fine, but moist and sultry, and misty in the
+distance. It was late, too, for few candles gleamed beneath the
+moonlight from the windows round about the smooth village-green. Even
+as we set out, I leading Rosinante by her bridle, and Superstition on
+my left hand, out of heavenly Leo a bright star wheeled, fading as it
+fell. And soon high hedges hid utterly the "World's End" behind us,
+out of sight and sound.
+
+I observed when the trees had laid their burdened branches overhead,
+and the thick-flowered bushes begun to straiten our way, that this Mr.
+Superstition who had desired to accompany us was of a very different
+courage from that his manner at the inn seemed to profess.
+
+He walked with almost as much caution and ungainliness as Mistrust,
+his deep and shining eyes busily searching the gloom to left and right
+of him. Indeed, those same dark eyes of his reminded me not a little
+of Mrs. Nature's, they were so full of what they could not tell.
+
+He was on foot; my new friend Reverie, like myself, led his horse, a
+pale, lovely creature with delicate nostrils and deep-smouldering
+eyes.
+
+"You must think me very bold to force my company on you," said
+Superstition awkwardly, turning to Reverie, "but my house is never so
+mute with horror as in these moody summer nights when thunder is in
+the air. See there!" he cried.
+
+As if the distant sky had opened, the large, bright, harmless
+lightning quivered and was gone, revealing on the opposing hills
+forest above forest unutterably dark and still.
+
+"Surely," I said, "that is not the way Christian took?"
+
+"They say," Reverie answered, "the Valley of the Shadow of Death lies
+between those hills."
+
+"But Atheist," I said, "_that_ acid little man, did he indeed walk
+there alone?"
+
+"I have heard," muttered Superstition, putting out his hand, "'tis
+fear only that maketh afraid. Atheist has no fear."
+
+"But what of Cruelty," I said, "and Liveloose?"
+
+"Why," answered Superstition, "Cruelty works cunningest when he is
+afraid; and Liveloose never talks about himself. None the less there's
+not a tree but casts a shadow. I met once an earnest yet very popular
+young gentleman of the name of Science, who explained almost
+everything on earth to me so clearly, and patiently, and fatherly, I
+thought I should evermore sleep in peace. But we met at noon. Believe
+me, sir, I would have followed Christian and his friend Hopeful very
+willingly long since; for as for Cruelty and Obstinate and all that
+clumsy rabble, I heed them not. Indeed my cousin Mistrust _did_ go,
+and as you see returned with a caution; and a poor young school-fellow
+of mine, Jack Ignorance, came to an awful end. But it is because I owe
+partly to Christian and not all to myself this horrible solitude in
+which I walk that I dare not risk a deeper. It would be, I feel sure.
+And so I very willingly beheld Faithful burned; it restored my
+confidence. And here, sir," he added, almost with gaiety, "lives my
+friend Mrs. Simple, a widow. She enjoys my company and my old fables,
+and we keep the blinds down against these mountains, and candles
+burning against the brighter lightnings."
+
+So saying, Superstition bade us good-night and passed down a little
+by-lane on our left towards a country cottage, like a dreaming bower
+of roses beneath the moon.
+
+But Reverie and I continued on as if the moon herself as patiently
+pursued us. And by-and-by we came to a house called Gloom, whose
+gardens slope down with plashing fountains and glimmering banks of
+flowers into the shadow and stillness of a broad valley, named beneath
+the hills of Silence, Peace.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+    _His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
+    And be among her cloudy trophies hung._
+
+    --JOHN KEATS.
+
+
+Even as we entered the gates of Mr. Reverie's house beneath embowering
+chestnuts, there advanced across the moonlit spaces to meet us a
+figure on foot like ourselves, leading his horse. He was in armour,
+yet unarmed. His steel glittered cold and blue; his fingers hung
+ungauntleted; and on his pale face dwelt a look never happy warrior
+wore yet. He seemed a man Mars lends to Venus out of war to unhappy
+idleness. The disillusionment of age was in his face: yet he was
+youthful, I suppose; scarce older than Mercutio, and once, perhaps, as
+light of wit.
+
+He took my hand in a grasp cold and listless, and smiled from
+mirthless eyes.
+
+Yet there was something strangely taking in this solitary
+knight-at-arms. She for whom he does not fight, I thought, must have
+somewhat of the immortals to grace her warrior with. And if it were
+only shadows that beset him and obscured his finer heart, shadows they
+were of myrtle and rhododendron, with voices shrill and small as the
+sparrows', and eyes of the next-to-morning stars.
+
+Indeed, these gardens whispered, and the wind at play in the air
+seemed to bear far-away music, dying and falling.
+
+We entered the house and sat down to supper in a low room open to the
+night. Reverie recounted our evening's talk. "I wish," he said,
+turning to his friend, "you would accompany Mr. Brocken and me one
+night to the 'World's End' to hear these fellows talk. Such arrogance,
+such assurance, such bigotry and blindness and foxiness!--yet, on my
+word, a kind of gravity with it all, as if the scarecrows had some
+real interest in the devil's tares they guard. Come now, let it be a
+bargain between us, and leave this endless search awhile."
+
+But the solitary knight shook his head. "They would jeer me out of
+knowledge," he said. "Why, Reverie, the children cease their play
+when I pass, and draw their tops and marbles out of the dust, and gaze
+till I am hid from sight."
+
+"It is fancy, only fancy," replied Reverie; "children stare at all
+things new to them in the world. How else could they recognise and
+learn again--how else forget? But as for this rabble's mockery, there
+is a she-bear left called Oblivion which is their mistress, and will
+some day silence every jeer."
+
+The solitary knight shook his head again, eyeing me solemnly as if in
+hope to discern in my face the sorcery that held himself in thrall.
+
+The few wax tapers gave but light enough to find the way from goblet
+to mouth. As for Reverie's wine, I ask no other, for it had the
+poppy's scarlet, and overcame weariness so subtly I almost forgot
+these were the hours of sleep we spent in waking; forgot, too, as if
+of the lotus, all thought of effort and hope.
+
+After all, thought I as I sipped, effort is the flaw that proves men
+mortal; while as for hope, who would seek a seed that floats on every
+wind and smothers the world with weeds that bear no fruit? It was, in
+fact, fare very different from the ale and cheese of the "World's End."
+
+"But you yourself," I said to Mr. Reverie presently; "in all the talk
+at the inn you kept a very scrupulous silence--discreet enough, I own.
+But now, what truly _was_ this Christian of whom we heard so much? and
+why, may I ask, do his neighbours slander the dead? You yourselves,
+did you ever meet with him?" I turned from one to the other of my
+companions as they glanced uneasily each at each.
+
+"Well, sir," said Reverie rather deliberately, "I have met him and
+talked with him. I often think of him, in spite of myself. Yet he was
+a man of little charm. He certainly had a remarkable gift for
+estranging his friends. He was a foe to the most innocent compromise.
+For myself, I found not much humour in him, no eye for grace or art,
+and a limited imagination that was yet his absolute master.
+Nevertheless, as you hint, these fellows, no more than I, can forget
+him. Nor you?" He turned to the other.
+
+"Christian," he replied, "I remember him. We were friends a little
+while. Faithful I knew also. Faithful was to the last my friend. Ah!
+Reverie, then--how many years ago!--there was a child we loved, all
+three: do you remember? I see the low, green wall, cool from how many
+a summer's shadows, the clusters of green apples on the bough. And in
+the early morning we would go, carrying torn-off branches, and
+shouting our songs through the fields, till we came to the shadow and
+the hush of the woods. Ay, Reverie, and we would burst in on silence,
+each his heart beating, and play there. And perhaps it was Hopeful who
+would steal away from us, and the others play on; or perhaps you into
+the sunlight that maddened the sheltered bird to flit and sing in the
+orchard where the little child we loved played--not yet sad, but how
+much beloved; not yet weary of passing shadows, and simple creatures,
+and boy's rough gifts and cold hands. But I--with me it was ever
+evening, when the blackbird bursts harshly away. Then it was so still
+in the orchard, and in the curved bough so solitary, that the
+nightingale, cowering, would almost for fear begin to sing, and stoop
+to the bending of the bough, her sidelong eyes in shade; while the
+stars began to stand in the stations above us, ever bright, and all
+the night was peace. Then would I dream on--dream of the face I loved,
+Innocence, O Innocence!"
+
+It was a strange outburst. His voice rose almost to a chant, full of a
+forlorn music. But even as he ceased, we heard in the following
+silence, above the plashing of the restless fountains, beyond, far and
+faint, a wild and stranger music welling. And I saw from the porch
+that looks out from the house called Gloom, "La belle Dame sans Merci"
+pass riding with her train, who rides in beauty beneath the huntress,
+heedless of disguise. Across from far away, like leaves of autumn,
+skirred the dappled deer. The music grew, timbrel and pipe and tabor,
+as beneath the glances of the moon the little company sped, transient
+as a rainbow, elusive as a dream. I saw her maidens bound and
+sandalled, with all their everlasting flowers; and advancing
+soundless, unreal, the silver wheels of that unearthly chariot amid
+the Fauns. On, on they gamboled, hoof in yielding turf, blowing reed
+melodies, mocking water, their lips laid sidelong, their eyes aleer
+along the smoothness of their flutes.
+
+And when I turned again to my companions, with I know not what old
+folly in my eyes, I know not what unanswerable cry in my heart,
+Reverie alone was at my side. I seemed to see the long fringes of the
+lake, the sedge withered, the grey waters restless in the bonds of the
+wind, tuneless and chill; all these happy gardens swept bare and
+flowerless; and the far hills silent in the unattainable dawn.
+
+"She pipes, he follows," said Reverie; "she sets the tune, he dances.
+Yet, sir, on my soul, I believe it is the childish face of that same
+Innocence we kept tryst with long ago he pursues on and on, through
+what sad labyrinths we, who dream not so wildly, cannot by taking
+thought come to guess."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next two days passed serenely and quietly at Reverie's. We read
+together, rode, walked, and talked together, and listened in the
+evening to music. For a sister of Reverie's lived not far distant, who
+visited him while I was there, and took supper with us, delighting us
+with her wit and spirit and her youthful voice.
+
+But though Reverie more than once suggested it, I could not bring
+myself to return to the "World's End" and its garrulous company.
+Whether it was the moist, grey face of Mr. Cruelty I most abhorred, or
+Stubborn's slug-like eye, or the tongue-stump of my afflicted guide, I
+cannot say.
+
+Moreover, I had begun to feel a very keen curiosity to see the way
+that had lured Christian on with such graceless obstinacy. They had
+spoken of remorse, poverty, pride, world-failure, even insanity, even
+vice: but these appeared to me only such things as might fret a man to
+set violently out on, not to persist in such a course; or likelier
+yet, to abandon hope, to turn back from heights that trouble or
+confusion set so far, and made seem dreams.
+
+How could I help, too, being amused to think how vastly strange these
+fellows considered a man's venturing whither his star beckoned; though
+that star were only power, only fame, only beauty, only peace? What
+wonder they were many?
+
+Not far from this place, Reverie informed me, were pitched the booths
+of Vanity Fair. This, by his account, was a place one ought to visit,
+if only for the satisfaction of leaving it behind. But I have heard
+more animated accounts of it elsewhere.
+
+As for Reverie himself, he seemed only desirous to contemplate; never
+to taste, to win, or to handle. He needed but refuse reality to what
+shocked or teased him, to find it harmless and entertaining. He was a
+dreamer whom the heat and shout of battle could not offend.
+
+Perhaps he perceived my restlessness to be gone, for he himself
+suggested that I should stay till the next morning, and then, if I so
+pleased, he would see me a mile or two on my way.
+
+"For the Pitiless Lady," he said, smiling, "takes many disguises,
+sometimes of the sun, sometimes of evening, sometimes of night; and I
+would at least save you from the fate that has made my poor friend a
+phantom before he is a shade."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+    _The many men, so beautiful!
+    And they all dead did lie._
+
+    --S.T. Coleridge.
+
+
+So Reverie, as he had promised, rode out with me a few miles to see me
+on my way. Above the gloom and stillness of the valley the scene began
+to change again. I was glad as I could be to view once more the
+tossing cornfields and the wind at play with shadow. Near and far,
+woods and pastures smoked beneath the sun. I know not through how many
+arches of the elms and green folds of the meadows I kept watch on the
+chimneys of a farmhouse above its trees.
+
+But Reverie, the further we journeyed, the less he said. I almost
+chafed to see his heedless eyes turned upon some inward dream, while
+here, like life itself, stood cloud and oak, warbled bird and brook
+beneath the burning sun. I saw again in memory the silver twilight of
+the moon, and the crazy face of Love's Warrior, haunter of shade. Let
+him but venture into the open, I thought, hear again the distant
+lowing of the oxen, the rooks cawing in the elms, see again the flocks
+upon the hillside!
+
+I suppose this was her home my heart had turned to. This was my dust;
+night's was his. For me the wild rose and the fields of harvest; for
+him closed petals, the chantry of the night wind, phantom lutes and
+voices. And, as if he had overheard my thoughts, Reverie turned at the
+cross-ways.
+
+"You will come back again," he said. "They tell me in distant lands
+men worship Time, set up a shrine to him in every street, and treasure
+his emblem next their hearts. There, they say, even the lover babbles
+of hours, and the dreamer measures sleep with a pendulum. Well, my
+house is secluded, and the world is far; and to me Time is naught.
+Return, sir, then, when it pleases you. Besides," he added, smiling
+faintly, "there is always company at the World's End."
+
+The crisp sunbeams rained upon his pale and delicate horse, its
+equal-plaited mane, on the darkness of his cloak, that dream-delighted
+face. Here smouldered gold, here flushed crimson, and here the curved
+damaskening of his bridle glistened and gleamed. He was a strange
+visitant to the open day, between the green hedges, beneath the
+enormous branching of the elms. And there I bade him farewell.
+
+Some day, perhaps, I shall return as he has foretold, for it is ever
+easy to find again the house of Reverie--to them who have learned the
+way.
+
+On I journeyed, then, following as I had been directed the main road
+to Vanity Fair. But whether it is that the Fair is more difficult to
+arrive at than to depart from, or is really a hard day's journey even
+from the gay parlour of the World's End, it already began to be
+evening, and yet no sign of bunting or booth or clamour or smoke.
+
+And it was at length to a noiseless Fair, far from all vanity, that I
+came at sunset--the cypresses of a solitary graveyard. I was tired out
+and desired only rest; so dismounting and leading Rosinante, I turned
+aside willingly into its peace.
+
+It seemed I had entered a new earth. The lane above had wandered on in
+the gloaming of its hedges and over-arching trees. Here, all the
+clouds of sunset stood, caught up in burning gold. Even as I paused,
+dazzled a moment by the sudden radiance, from height to height the
+wild bright rose of evening ran. Not a tottering stone, black,
+well-nigh shapeless with age, not a green bush, but seemed to dwell
+unconsumed in its own fire above this desolate ground. The trees that
+grew around me--willow and yew, thorn and poplar--were but flaming
+cages for the wild birds that perched in their branches.
+
+Above these sound-dulled mansions trod lightly, as if of thought,
+Rosinante's gilded shoes. I wandered on in a strange elation of mind,
+filled with a desperate desire ever to remember how flamed this rose
+between earth and sky, how throbbed this jargon of delight. And
+turning as if in hope to share my enthusiasm, a childish peal of
+laughter showed me I was not alone.
+
+Beneath a canopy of holly branches and yew two children sat playing.
+The nearer child's hair was golden, glistening round his face of
+roses, and he it was who had laughed, tumbling on the sward. But the
+face of the further child was white almost as crystal, and the dark
+hair that encircled his head with its curved lines seemed as it were
+the shadow of the gold it showed beside. These children, it was plain,
+had been running and playing across the tombs; but now they were
+stooping together at some earnest sport. To me, even if they had seen
+me, they as yet paid no heed.
+
+I passed slowly towards them, deeming them at first of solitude's
+creation, my eyes dazzled so with the sun. But as I approached, so the
+branches beneath which they played gradually disparted, and I saw not
+far distant from them one sitting who evidently had these jocund boys
+in charge.
+
+I could not but hesitate awhile as I surveyed them. These were no
+mortal children playing naked amid the rose of evening: nor she who
+sat veiled and beautiful beneath the ruinous tombs. I turned with
+sudden dismay to depart from their presence unobserved as I had
+entered; but the children had now espied me, and came running, filled
+with wonder of Rosinante and the stranger beside her.
+
+They stayed at a little distance from us with dwelling eyes and parted
+lips. Then the fairer and, as it seemed to me, elder of the brothers
+stooped and plucked a few blades of grass and proffered them, half
+fearfully, to the beast that amazed him. But the other gave less heed
+to Rosinante, fixed the filmy lustre of his eyes on me, his wonderful
+young face veiled with that wisdom which is in all children, and of an
+immutable gravity.
+
+But by this time, she who it seemed had the charge of these children
+had followed them with her eyes. To her then, leaving Rosinante in an
+ecstasy of timidity before such god-like boys, I addressed myself.
+
+So might a traveller lost beneath strange stars address unanswering
+Night. She, however, raised a compassionate face to me and listened
+with happy seriousness as to a child returned in safety at evening
+from some foolhardy venture. Yet there seemed only a deeper
+youthfulness in her face for all its eternity of brooding on her
+beauteous children. Narrow leaves of olive formed her chaplet. The
+darker wine-colours of the sea changed in her eyes. There was no sense
+of gloom or sorrowfulness in her company. I began to see how the same
+still breast might bear celestial children so diverse as these, whose
+names, she told me presently, were Sleep and Death.
+
+I looked at the two children at play, "Ah! now," I said, almost
+involuntarily "the golden boy who has caught my horse's bridle in his
+hand, is not he Sleep? and he who considers his brother's
+boldness--that one is Death?"
+
+She smiled with lovely vanity, and told me how strange of heart young
+children are. How they will alter and vary, never the same for long
+together, but led by indiscoverable caprices and obedient to some
+further will. She smiled and said how that sometimes, when the birds
+hush suddenly from song, Sleep would creep tenderly and sadly to her
+knees, and Death clasp her roguishly, as if in some secret with the
+beams of morning. So would they change, one to the likeness of the
+other. But Sleep was, perhaps, of the gentler disposition; a little
+obstinate and headstrong; at times, indeed, beyond all cajolery; yet
+very sweet of impulse and ardent to make amends. But Death's caprices
+baffled even her. He seemed now so pitiless and unlovely of heart; and
+now, as if possessed, passionate and swift; and now would break away
+burning from her arms in an infinite tenderness.
+
+But best she loved them when there came a transient peace to both; and
+looking upon them laid embraced in the shadow-casting moonbeam, not
+even she could undoubtingly touch the brow of each beneath their
+likened hair, and say this is the elder, and this the dreamless
+younger of the boys.
+
+Seeing, too, my eyes cast upon the undecipherable letters of the tomb
+by which we sat, she told me how that once, near before dawn, she had
+awoke in the twilight to find their places empty where the children
+had lain at her side, and had sought on, at last to find them even
+here, weeping and quarrelling, and red with anger. Little by little,
+and with many tears, she had gleaned the cause of their quarrel--how
+that, like very children, they had run a race at cockcrow, and all
+these stones and the slender bones and ashes beneath to be the prize;
+and how that, running, both had come together to the goal set, and
+both had claimed the victory.
+
+"Yet both seem happy now to share it," I said, "or how else were they
+comforted?" Nor did I consider before she told me that they will run
+again when they be grown men, Sleep and Death, in just such a thick
+darkness before dawn; and one called Love will then run with them, who
+is very vehement and fleet of foot, and never turns aside, nor
+falters. He who then shall win may ask a different prize. For truth to
+tell, she said, only children can find delight for long in dust and
+ruin.
+
+At that moment Death himself came hastening to his mother, and, taking
+her hand, turned to the enormous picture of the skies as if in some
+faint apprehension. But Sleep saw nothing amiss, lay at full length
+among the "cool-rooted flowers," while Rosinante grazed beside him.
+
+I told her also, in turn, of my journey; and that although transient,
+or everlasting, solace of all restlessness and sorrow and too-wild
+happiness may be found in them, yet men think not often on these
+divine children.
+
+"As for this one," I said, looking down into the pathless beauty of
+Death's grey eyes, "some fear, some mock, some despise him; some
+violently, some without complaint pursue; most men would altogether
+dismiss, and forget him. He is but a child, no older than the sea, no
+stranger than the mountains, pure and cold as the water-springs. Yet
+to the bolster of fever his vision flits; and pain drags a heavy net
+to snare him; and silence is his echoing gallery; and the gold of
+Sleep his final veil. They shall play on; and see, lady, flame has
+left the clouds; the birds are at rest. The earth breathes in, and it
+is day; and exhales her breath, and it is night. Let them then play
+secret and innocent between her breasts, comfort her with silence
+above the tempest of her heart.... But I!--what am I?--a traveller,
+footsore and far."
+
+And then it was that I became conscious of a warm, sly, youthful hand
+in mine, and turned, half in dread, to see only happy Sleep laughing
+under his glistening hair into my eyes. I strove in vain against his
+sorcery; rolled foolish orbs on that pure, starry face; and then I
+smelled as it were rain, and heard as it were tempestuous
+forest-trees--fell asleep among the tombs.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+    _I warmed both hands before the fire of life._
+
+    --WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+
+Surely some hueless poppy blossomed in the darkness of those ruins, or
+the soulless ashes of the dead breathe out a drowsy influence. Never
+have I slept so heavily, yet never perhaps beneath so cold a tester.
+Sunbeams streaming between the crests of the cypresses awoke me. I
+leapt up as if a hundred sentinels had shouted--where none kept
+visible watch.
+
+An odour of a languid sweetness pervaded the air. There was no wind to
+stir the dew-besprinkled trees. The old, scarred gravestones stood in
+a thick sunshine, afloat with bees. But Rosinante had preferred to
+survey sunshine out of shade. In lush grass I found her, the picture
+of age, foot crook'd, and head dejected.
+
+Yet she followed me uncomplaining along these narrow avenues of
+silence, and without more ado turned her trivial tail on Death and his
+dim flocks, and well-nigh scampered me off into the vivid morning.
+Soon afterwards, with Hunger in the saddle, we began to climb a road
+almost precipitous, and stony in the extreme. Often enough we breathed
+ourselves as best we could in the still, sultry air, and rested on the
+sun-dappled slopes. But at length we came out upon the crest, and
+surveyed in the first splendour of day a region of extraordinary
+grandeur.
+
+Beneath a clear sky to the east stood a range of mountains, cold and
+changeless beneath their snows. At my feet a great river flowed,
+broken here and there with isles in the bright flood. The dark
+champaign that flanked its shores was of an unusual verdure. Mystery
+and peril brooded on those distant ravines, the vapours of their
+far-descending cataracts. In such abysmal fastnesses as these the
+Hyrcan tiger might hide his surly generations. This was an air for the
+sun-disdaining eagle, a country of transcendent brightness, its
+flowers strangely pure and perfect, its waters more limpid, its
+grazing herds, its birds, its cedar trees, the masters of their kind.
+
+Yet not on these nearer glories my eyes found rest. But, with a kind
+of heartache, I gazed, as it were towards home, upon the distant
+waters of the sea. Here, on the crest of this green hill, was silence.
+There, too, was profounder silence on the sea's untrampled floor.
+Whence comes that angel out of nought whispering into the ear strange
+syllables? I know not; but so seemed I to stand--a shattered
+instrument in the world, past all true music, o'er which none the less
+the invisible lute-master stooped. Could I but catch, could I but in
+words express the music his bent fingers intended, the mystery, the
+peace--well; then I should indeed journey solitary on the face of the
+earth, a changeling in its cities.
+
+I half feared to descend into a country so diverse from any I had yet
+seen. Hitherto at least I had encountered little else than
+friendliness. But here--doves in eyries! I stood, twisting my fingers
+in Rosinante's mane, debating and debating. And she turned her face to
+me, and looked with age into my eyes: and I know not how woke courage
+in me again.
+
+"On then?" I said, on the height. And the gentle beast leaned forward
+and coughed into the valley what might indeed be "Yea!"
+
+So we began to descend. Down we went, alone, yet not unhappy, until in
+a while I discovered, about a hundred yards in advance of me, another
+traveller on the road, ambling easily along at an equal pace with
+mine. I know not how far I followed in his track debating whether to
+overtake and to accost him, or to follow on till a more favourable
+chance offered.
+
+But Chance--avenger of all shilly-shally--settled the matter offhand.
+For my traveller, after casting one comprehensive glance towards the
+skies, suddenly whisked off at a canter that quickly carried him out
+of sight.
+
+A chill wind had begun to blow, lifting in gusts dust into the air and
+whitening the tree-tops. As suddenly, calm succeeded. A cloud of
+flies droned fretfully about my ears. And I watched advancing,
+league-high, transfigured with sunbeams, the enormous gloom of storm.
+The sun smote from a silvery haze upon its peaks and gorges. Wind, far
+above the earth, moaned, and fell; only to sound once more in the
+distance in a mournful trumpeting. Lightnings played along the
+desolate hills. The sun was darkened. A vast flight of snowy,
+arrow-winged birds streamed voiceless beneath his place. And day
+withdrew its boundaries, spread to the nearer forests a bright
+amphitheatre, fitful with light, whereof it seemed to me Rosinante
+with her poor burden was the centre and the butt. I confess I began to
+dread lest even my mere surmise of danger should engage the piercing
+lightnings; as if in the mystery of life storm and a timorous thought
+might yet be of a kin.
+
+We hastened on at the most pathetic of gallops. Nor seemed indeed the
+beauteous lightning to regard at all that restless mote upon the
+cirque of its entranced fairness. In an instantaneous silence I heard
+a tiny beat of hoofs; in instantaneous gloom recognised almost with
+astonishment my own shape bowed upon the saddle. It was a majestic
+entry into a kingdom so far-famed.
+
+The storm showed no abatement when at last I found shelter. From far
+away I had espied in the immeasurable glare a country barn beneath
+trees. Arrived there, I almost fell off my horse into as incongruous
+and lighthearted a company as ever was seen.
+
+In the midst of the floor of the barn, upon a heap of hay, sat a fool
+in motley blowing with all his wind into a pipe. It was a cunning tune
+he played too, rich and heady. And so seemed the company to find it,
+dancers--some thirty or more--capering round him with all the abandon
+heart can feel and heel can answer to. As for pose, he whose horse now
+stood smoking beside my own first drew my attention--a smooth,
+small-bearded, solemn man, a little beyond his prime. He lifted his
+toes with such inimitable agility, postured his fingers so daintily,
+conducted his melon-belly with so much elegance, and exhaled such a
+warm joy in the sport that I could look at nothing else at first for
+delight in him.
+
+But there were slim maids too among the plumper and ruddier, like
+crocuses, like lilac, like whey, with all their fragrance and
+freshness and lightness. Such eyes adazzle dancing with mine, such
+nimble and discreet ankles, such gimp English middles, and such a gay
+delight in the mere grace of the lilting and tripping beneath rafters
+ringing loud with thunder, that Pan himself might skip across a
+hundred furrows for sheer envy to witness.
+
+As for the jolly rustics that were jogging their wits away with such
+delightful gravity, but little time was given me to admire them ere I
+also was snatched into the ring, and found brown eyes dwelling with
+mine, and a hand like lettuces in the dog-days. Round and about we
+skipped in the golden straw, amidst treasuries of hay, puffing and
+spinning. And the quiet lightnings quivered between the beams, and
+the monstrous "Ah!" of the thunder submerged the pipe's sweetness.
+Till at last all began to gasp and blow indeed, and the nodding Fool
+to sip, and sip, as if _in extremis_ over his mouthpiece. Then we
+rested awhile, with a medley of shrill laughter and guffaws, while the
+rain streamed lightning-lit upon the trees and tore the clouds to
+tatters.
+
+With some little circumstance my traveller picked his way to me, and
+with a grave civility bowed me a sort of general welcome. Whereupon
+ensued such wit and banter as made me thankful when the opening
+impudence of a kind of jig set the heels and the petticoats of the
+company tossing once more. We danced the lightning out, and piped the
+thunder from the skies. And by then I was so faint with fasting, and
+so deep in love with at least five young country faces, that I
+scarcely knew head from heels; still less, when a long draught of a
+kind of thin, sweet ale had mounted to its sphere.
+
+Away we all trooped over the flashing fields, noisy as jays in the
+fresh, sweet air, some to their mowing, some to their milking, but
+more, indeed, I truly suspect, to that exquisite _Nirvana_ from which
+the tempest's travail had aroused them. I waved my hand, striving in
+vain to keep my eyes on one blest, beguiling face of all that glanced
+behind them. But, she gone, I turned into the rainy lane once more
+with my new acquaintance, discreeter, but not less giddy, it seemed,
+than I.
+
+We had not far to go--past a meadow or two, a low green wall, a black
+fish-pool--and soon the tumbledown gables of a house came into view.
+My companion waved his open fingers at the crooked casements and
+peered into my face.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "we will talk, we will talk, you and I: I view it in
+your eye, sir--clear and full and profound--such ever goes with
+eloquence. 'Tis my delight. What are we else than beasts?--beasts that
+perish? I never tire; I never weary;--give me to dance and to sing,
+but ever to talk: then am I at ease. Heaven is just. Enter,
+sir--enter!"
+
+He led me by a shady alley into his orchard, and thence to a stable,
+where we left Rosinante at hob-a-nob with his mare over a friendly
+bottle of hay. And we ourselves passed into the house, and ascended a
+staircase into an upper chamber. This chamber was raftered, its walls
+hung with an obscure tapestry, its floor strewn with sand, and its
+lozenged casement partly shuttered against the blaze of sunshine that
+flowed across the forests far away to the west.
+
+My friend eyed me brightly and busily as a starling. "You danced fine,
+sir," he said. "Oh! it is a _pleasure_ to me. Ay, and now I come to
+consider it, methought I did hear hoofs behind me that might yet be
+echo. No, but I did _not_ think: 'twas but my ear cried to his
+dreaming master. Ever dreaming; God help at last the awakening! But
+well met, well met, I say again. I am cheered. And you but just in
+time! Nay, I would not have missed him for a ransom. So--so--this leg,
+that leg; up now--hands over down we go! Lackaday, I am old bones for
+such freaks. Once!... '_Memento mori_!' say I, and smell the shower
+the sweeter for it. Be seated, sir, bench or stool, wheresoever you'd
+be. You're looking peaked. That burden rings in my skull like a
+bagpipe. Toot-a-tootie, toot-a-toot! Och, sad days!"
+
+We devoured our meal of cold meats and pickled fish, fruit and junket
+and a kind of harsh cheese, as if in contest for a wager. And copious
+was the thin spicy wine with which we swam it home. Ever and again my
+host would desist, to whistle, or croon (with a packed mouth) in the
+dismallest of tenors, a stave or two of the tune we had danced to,
+bobbing head and foot in sternest time. Then a great vacancy would
+overspread his face turned to the window, as suddenly to gather to a
+cheerful smile, and light, irradiated, once more on me. Then down
+would drop his chin over his plate, and away go finger and spoon among
+his victuals in a dance as brisk and whole-hearted as the other.
+
+He took me out again into his garden after supper, and we walked
+beneath the trees.
+
+"'Tis bliss to be a bachelor, sir," he said, gazing on the resinous
+trunk of an old damson tree. "I gorge, I guzzle; I am merry, am
+melancholy; studious, harmonical, drowsy,--and none to scold
+or deny me. For the rest, why, youth is vain: yet youth had
+pleasure--innocence and delight. I chew the cud of many a peaceful
+acre. Ay, I have nibbled roses in my time. But now, what now? I have
+lived so long far from courts and courtesy, grace and fashion, and am
+so much my own close and indifferent friend--Why! he is happy who has
+solitude for housemate, company for guest. I say it, I say it; I marry
+daily wives of memory's fashioning, and dream at peace."
+
+It seemed an old bone he picked with Destiny.
+
+"There's much to be said," I replied as profoundly as I could.
+
+The air he now lulled youth asleep with was a very cheerless
+threnody, but he brightened once more at praise of his delightful
+orchard.
+
+"You like it, sir? You speak kindly, sir. It is my all; root and
+branch: how many a summer's moons have I seen shine hereon! I know
+it--there is bliss to come;--miraculous Paradise for men even dull as
+I. Yet 'twill be strange to me--without my house and orchard. Age
+tends to earth, sir, till even an odour may awake the dead--a branch
+in the air call with its fluttering a face beyond Time to vanquish
+dear. 'Soul, soul,' I cry, 'forget thy dust, forget thy vaunting
+ashes!'--and speak in vain. So's life!"
+
+And when we had gone in again, and candles had been lit in his fresh
+and narrow chamber, seeing a viol upon a chest, I begged a little
+music.
+
+He quite eagerly, with a boyish peal of laughter, complied; and sat
+down with a very solemn face, his brows uplifted, and sang between the
+candles to a pathetic air this doggerel:--
+
+    There's a dark tree and a sad tree,
+    Where sweet Alice waits, unheeded,
+    For her lover long-time absent,
+    Plucking rushes by the river.
+
+    Let the bird sing, let the buck sport,
+    Let the sun sink to his setting;
+    Not one star that stands in darkness
+    Shines upon her absent lover.
+
+    But his stone lies 'neath the dark tree,
+    Cold to bosom, deaf to weeping;
+    And 'tis gathering moss she touches,
+    Where the locks lay of her lover.
+
+"A dolesome thing," he said; "but my mother was wont to sing it to the
+virginals. 'Cold to bosom,'" he reiterated with a plangent cadence; "I
+remember them all, sir; from the cradle I had a gift for music." And
+then, with an ample flirt of his bow, he broke, all beams and smiles,
+into this ingenuous ditty:
+
+        The goodman said,
+        "'Tis time for bed,
+    Come, mistress, get us quick to pray;
+        Call in the maids
+        From out the glades
+      Where they with lovers stray,
+      With love, and love do stray."
+
+        "Nay, master mine,
+        The night is fine,
+    And time's enough all dark to pray;
+        'Tis April buds
+        Bedeck the woods
+      Where simple maids away
+      With love, and love do stray.
+
+        "Now we are old,
+        And nigh the mould,
+    'Tis meet on feeble knees to pray;
+        When once we'd roam,
+        'Twas else cried, 'Come,
+      And sigh the dusk away,
+      With love, and love to stray.'"
+
+        So they gat in
+        To pray till nine;
+    Then called, "Come maids, true maids, away!
+        Kiss and begone,
+        Ha' done, ha' done,
+      Until another day
+      With love, and love to stray!"
+
+        Oh, it were best
+        If so to rest
+    Went man and maid in peace away!
+        The throes a heart
+        May make to smart
+      Unless love have his way,
+      In April woods to stray!--
+
+      In April woods to stray!
+
+And that finished with another burst of laughter, he set very adroitly
+to the mimicry of beasts and birds upon his frets. Never have I seen
+a face so consummately the action's. His every fibre answered to the
+call; his eyebrows twitched like an orator's; his very nose was
+plastic.
+
+"Hst!" he cried softly; "hither struts chanticleer!"
+"Cock-a-diddle-doo!" crowed the wire. "Now, prithee, Dame Partlett!"
+and down bustled a hen from an egg like cinnamon. A cat with kittens
+mewed along the string, anxious and tender.
+
+"A woodpecker," he cried, directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye
+on me. And lo, "inviolable quietness" and the smooth beech-boughs!
+"And thus," he said, sitting closer, "the martlets were wont to
+whimper about the walls of the castle of Inverness, the castle of
+Macbeth."
+
+"Macbeth!" I repeated--"Macbeth!"
+
+"Ay," he said, "it was his seat while yet a simple soldier--flocks and
+flocks of them, wheeling hither, thither, in the evening air, crying
+and calling."
+
+I listened in a kind of confusion. "... And Duncan," I said....
+
+He eyed me with immense pleasure, and nodded with brilliant eyes on
+mine.
+
+"What looking man was he?" I said at last as carelessly as I dared.
+"... The King, you mean,--of Scotland."
+
+He magnanimously ignored my confusion, and paused to build his
+sentence.
+
+"'Duncan'?" he said. "The question calls him straight to mind. A
+lean-locked, womanish countenance; sickly, yet never sick; timid, yet
+most obdurate; more sly than politic. An _ignis fatuus_, sir, in a
+world of soldiers." His eye wandered.... "'Twas a marvellous sanative
+air, crisp and pure; but for him, one draught and outer darkness. I
+myself viewed his royal entry from the gallery--pacing urbane to
+slaughter; and I uttered a sigh to see him. 'Why, sir, do you sigh to
+see the king?' cried one softly that stood by. 'I sigh, my lord,' I
+answered to the instant, 'at sight of a monarch even Duncan's match!'"
+
+He looked his wildest astonishment at me.
+
+"Not, I'd have you remember--not that 'twas blood I did foresee.... To
+kill in blood a man, and he a king, so near to natural death ...
+foul, foul!"
+
+"And Macbeth?" I said presently--"Macbeth...?"
+
+He laid down his viol with prolonged care.
+
+"His was a soul, sir, nobler than his fate. I followed him not without
+love from boyhood--a youth almost too fine of spirit; shrinking
+from all violence, over-nicely; eloquent, yet chary of speech,
+and of a dark profundity of thought. The questions he would
+patter!--unanswerable, searching earth and heaven through.... And who
+now was it told me the traitor Judas's hair was red?--yet not red his,
+but of a reddish chestnut, fine and bushy. Children have played their
+harmless hands at hide-and-seek therein. O sea of many winds!
+
+"For come gloom on the hills, floods, discolouring mist; breathe but
+some grandam's tale of darkness and blood and doubleness in his
+hearing: all changed. Flame kindled; a fevered unrest drove him out;
+and Ambition, that spotted hound of hell, strained at the leash
+towards the Pit.
+
+"So runs the world--the ardent and the lofty. We are beyond earth's
+story as 'tis told, sir. All's shallower than the heart of man....
+Indeed, 'twas one more shattered altar to Hymen."
+
+"'Hymen!'" I said.
+
+He brooded long and silently, clipping his small beard. And while he
+was so brooding, a mouse, a moth, dust--I know not what, stirred the
+listening strings of his viol to sound, and woke him with a start.
+
+"I vowed, sir, then, to dismiss all memory of such unhappy deeds from
+mind--never to speak again that broken lady's name. Oh! I have seen
+sad ends--pride abased, splendour dismantled, courage to terror come,
+guilt to a crying guilelessness."
+
+"'Guilelessness?'" I said. "Lady Macbeth at least was past all
+changing."
+
+The doctor stood up and cast a deep scrutiny on me, which yet,
+perhaps, was partly on himself.
+
+"Perceive, sir," he said, "this table--broader, longer, splendidly
+burdened; and all adown both sides the board, thanes and their
+ladies, lords, and gentlemen, guests bidden to a royal banquet. 'Twas
+then in that bleak and dismal country--the Palace of Forres. Torches
+flared in the hall; to every man a servant or two: we sat in pomp."
+
+He paused again, and gravely withdrew behind the tapestry.
+
+"And presently," he cried therefrom, suiting his action to the word,
+"to the blast of hautboys enters the king in state thus, with his
+attendant lords. And with all that rich and familiar courtesy of which
+he was master in his easier moods he passed from one to another,
+greeting with supple dignity on his way, till he came at last softly
+to the place prepared for him at table. And suddenly--shall I ever
+forget, it, sir?--it seemed silence ran like a flame from mouth to
+mouth as there he stood, thus, marble-still, his eyes fixed in a
+leaden glare. And he raised his face and looked once round on us all
+with a forlorn astonishment and wrath, like one with a death-wound--I
+never saw the like of such a face.
+
+"Whereat, beseeching us to be calm, and pay no heed, the queen laid
+her hand on his and called him. And his orbs rolled down once more
+upon the empty place, and stuck as if at grapple with some horror seen
+within. He muttered aloud in peevish altercation--once more to heave
+up his frame, to sigh and shake himself, and lo!--"
+
+The viol-strings rang to his "lo!"
+
+"Lo, sir, the Unseen had conquered. His lip sagged into his beard, he
+babbled with open mouth, and leaned on his lady with such an impotent
+and slavish regard as I hope never to see again man pay to woman....
+We thought no more of supper after that....
+
+"But what do I--?" The doctor laid a cautioning finger on his mouth.
+
+"The company was dispersed, the palace gloomy with night (and they
+were black nights at Forres!), and on the walls I heard the sentinel's
+replying.... In the wood's last glow I entered and stood in his
+self-same station before the empty stool. And even as I stood thus, my
+hair creeping, my will concentred, gazing with every cord at stretch,
+fell a light, light footfall behind me." He glanced whitely over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Sir, it was the queen come softly out of slumber on my own unquiet
+errand."
+
+The doctor strode to the door, and peered out like a man suspicious or
+guilty of treachery. It was indeed a house of broken silences. And
+there, in the doorway, he seemed to be addressing his own saddened
+conscience.
+
+"With all my skill, and all a leal man's gentleness, I solaced and
+persuaded, and made an oath, and conducted her back to her own chamber
+unperceived. How weak is sleep!... It was a habit, sir, contracted in
+childhood, long dormant, that Evil had woke again. The Past awaits us
+all. So run Time's sands, till mercy's globe is empty and ..."
+
+He stooped and whispered it across to me: "... A child, a comparative
+child, shrunk to an anatomy, her beauty changed, ghostly of youth and
+all its sadness, baffled by a word, slave to a doctor's nod! None
+knew but I, and, at the last, one of her ladies--a gentle, faithful,
+and fearful creature. Nor she till far beyond all mischief....
+
+"Wild deeds are done. But to have blood on the hands, a cry in the
+ears, and one same glassy face eye to eye, that nothing can dim, nor
+even slumber pacify--dreams, dreams, intangible, enorm! Forefend them,
+God, from me!"
+
+He stood a moment as if he were listening; then turned, smiling
+irresolutely, and eyed me aimlessly. He seemed afraid of his own
+house, askance at his own furniture. Yet, though I scarce know why, I
+felt he had not told me the whole truth. Something fidelity had yet
+withheld from vanity. I longed to enquire further. I put aside how
+many burning questions awhile!
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+    _And if we gang to sea, master,
+    I fear we'll come to harm._
+
+    --OLD BALLAD.
+
+
+By and by less anxious talk soothed him. Indeed it was he who
+suggested one last bright draught of air beneath his trees before
+retiring. Down we went again with some unnecessary clatter. And here
+were stars between the fruited boughs, silvery Capella and the Twins,
+and low on the sky's moonlit border Venus excellently bright.
+
+He asked me whither I proposed going, if I needs must go; besought
+there and then in the ambrosial night-air the history of my
+wanderings--a mere nine days' wonder; and told me how he himself much
+feared and hated the sea.
+
+He questioned me also with not a little subtilty (and double-dealing
+too, I fancied,) regarding my own country, and of things present, and
+things real. In fact nothing, I think, so much flattered his
+vanity--unless it was my wonder at Dame Partlett's clucking on his
+viol-strings--as to learn himself was famous even so far as to ages
+yet unborn. He gazed on the simple moon with limpid, amiable eyes, and
+caught my fingers in his.
+
+How, then, could I even so much as hint to enquire which century
+indeed was his, who had no need of any? How could I abash that kindly
+vanity of his by adding also that, however famous, he must needs be to
+all eternity--nameless?
+
+We conversed long and earnestly in the coolness. He very frankly
+counselled me not to venture unconducted further into this country.
+The land of Tragedy was broad. And though on this side it lay adjacent
+to the naive and civil people of Comedy; on the further, in the shadow
+of those bleak, unfooted mountains, lurked unnatural horror and
+desolation, and cruelty beyond all telling.
+
+He very kindly offered me too, if I was indeed bent on seeking the
+sea, an old boat, still seaworthy, that lay in a creek in the river
+near by, from which he was wont to fish. As for Rosinante, he supposed
+a rest would be by no means unwelcome to so faithful a friend. He
+himself rode little, being indolent, and a happier host than guest;
+and when I returned here, she should be stuffed with dainties awaiting
+me.
+
+To this I cordially and gratefully agreed; and also even more
+cordially to remain with him the next day; and the next night after
+that to take my watery departure.
+
+So it was. And a courteous, versatile, and vivacious companion I found
+him. Rare tales he told me, too, of better days than these, and rarest
+of his own never-more-returning youth. He loved his childhood, talked
+on of it with an artless zeal, his eyes a nest of singing-birds. How
+contrite he was for spirit lost, and daring withheld, and hope
+discomfited! How simple and urbane concerning his present lowly
+demands on life, on love, and on futurity! All this, too, with such
+packed winks and mirth and mourning, that I truly said good-night for
+the second time to him with a rather melancholy warmth, since
+to-morrow ... who can face unmoved that viewless sphinx? Moreover, the
+sea is wide, has fishes in plenty, but never too many coraled grottoes
+once poor mariners.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+    _'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day._
+
+    --JOHN WEBSTER.
+
+
+On the stroke of two next morning the doctor conducted me down to the
+creek in the river-bank where he kept his boat. There was little light
+but of the stars in the sky; nothing stirring. She floated dim and
+monstrous on the softly-running water, a navy in germ, and could have
+sat without danger thirty men like me. We stood on the bank, side by
+side, eyeing her vacancy. And (I can answer for myself) night-thoughts
+rose up in us at sight of her. Was it indeed only wind in the reeds
+that sighed around us? only the restless water insistently whispering
+and calling? only of darkness were these forbidding shadows?
+
+I looked up sharply at the doctor from such pensive embroidery, and
+found him as far away as I. He nodded and smiled, and we shook hands
+on the bank in the thick mist.
+
+"There's biscuits and a little meat, wine, and fruit," he said in an
+undertone. "God be with you, sir! I sadly mistrust the future. ...
+'Tis ever my way, at parting."
+
+We said good-bye again, to the dream-cry of some little fluttering
+creature of the rushes. And well before dawn I was floating midstream,
+my friend a memory, Rosinante in clover, and my travels, so far as
+this brief narrative will tell, nearly ended.
+
+I saw nothing but a few long-haired, grazing cattle on my voyage, that
+eyed me but cursorily. I passed unmolested among the waterfowl,
+between the never-silent rushes, beneath a sky refreshed and sweetened
+with storm. The boat was enormously heavy and made slow progress. When
+too the tide began to flow I must needs push close in to the bank and
+await the ebb. But towards evening of the third day I began to
+approach the sea.
+
+I listened to the wailing of its long-winged gulls; snuffed with how
+broad-nostrilled a gusto that savour not even pinewoods can match,
+nor any wild flower disguise; and heard at last the sound that stirs
+beneath all music--the deep's loud-falling billow.
+
+I pushed ashore, climbed the sandy bank, and moored my boat to an ash
+tree at the waterside. And after scrambling some little distance over
+dunes yet warm with the sun, I came out at length, and stood like a
+Greek before the sea.
+
+Here my bright river disembogued in noise and foam. Far to either side
+of me stretched the faint gold horns of a bay; and beyond me, almost
+violet in the shadow of its waves, the shipless sea.
+
+I looked on the breaking water with a divided heart. Its light, salt
+airs, its solitary beauty, its illimitable reaches seemed tidings of a
+region I could remember only as one who, remembering that he has
+dreamed, remembers nothing more. Larks rose, singing, behind me. In a
+calm, golden light my eager river quarrelled with its peace. Here
+indeed was solitude!
+
+It was in searching sea and cliff for the least sign of life that I
+thought I descried on the furthest extremity of the nearer of the
+horns of the bay the spires and smouldering domes of a little city. If
+I gazed intently, they seemed to vanish away, yet still to shine above
+the azure if, raising my eyes, I looked again.
+
+So, caring not how far I must go so long as my path lay beside these
+breaking waters, I set out on the firm, white sands to prove this city
+the mirage I deemed it.
+
+What wonder, then, my senses fell asleep in that vast lullaby! And out
+of a daydream almost as deep as that in which I first set out, I was
+suddenly aroused by a light tapping sound, distinct and regular
+between the roaring breakers.
+
+I lifted my eyes to find the city I was seeking evanished away indeed.
+But nearer at hand a child was playing upon the beach, whose spade
+among the pebbles had caused the birdlike noise I had heard.
+
+So engrossed was she with her building in the sand that she had not
+heard me approaching. She laboured on at the margin of the cliff's
+shadow where the sea-birds cried, answering Echo in the rocks. So
+solitary and yet so intent, so sedate and yet so eager a little figure
+she seemed in the long motionlessness of the shore, by the dark
+heedlessness of the sea, I hesitated to disturb her.
+
+Who of all Time's children could this be playing uncompanioned by the
+sea? And at a little distance betwixt me and her in the softly-mounded
+sand her spade had already scrawled in large, ungainly capitals, the
+answer--"Annabel Lee." The little flounced black frock, the tresses of
+black hair, the small, beautiful dark face--this then was Annabel Lee;
+and that bright, phantom city I had seen--that was the vanishing
+mockery of her kingdom.
+
+I called her from where I stood--"Annabel Lee!" She lifted her head
+and shook back her hair, and gazed at me startled and intent. I went
+nearer.
+
+"You are a very lonely little girl," I said.
+
+"I am building in the sand," she answered.
+
+"A castle?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"It was in dreams," she said, flushing darkly.
+
+"What kind of dream was it in then?"
+
+"Oh! I often dream it; and I build it in the sand. But there's never
+time: the sea comes back."
+
+"Was the tide quite high when you began?" I asked; for now it was low.
+
+"Just that much from the stones," she said; "I waited for it ever so
+long."
+
+"It has a long way to come yet," I said; "you will finish it _this_
+time, I dare say."
+
+She shook her head and lifted her spade.
+
+"Oh no; it is much bigger, more than twice. And I haven't the seaweed,
+or the shells, and it comes back very, very quickly."
+
+"But where is the little boy you play with down here by the sea?"
+
+She glanced at me swiftly and surely; and shook her head again.
+
+"He would help you."
+
+"He didn't in my dream," she said doubtfully. She raised long,
+stealthy eyes to mine, and spoke softly and deliberately. "Besides,
+there isn't any little boy."
+
+"None, Annabel Lee?" I said.
+
+"Why," she answered, "I have played here years and years and years,
+and there are only the gulls and terns and cormorants, and that!" She
+pointed with her spade towards the broken water.
+
+"You know all their names then?" I said.
+
+"Some I know," she answered with a little frown, and looked far out to
+sea. Then, turning her eyes, she gazed long at me, searchingly,
+forlornly on a stranger. "I am going home now," she said.
+
+I looked at the house of sand and smiled. But she shook her head once
+more.
+
+"It never _could_ be finished," she said firmly, "though I tried and
+tried, unless the sea would keep quite still just once all day,
+without going to and fro. And then," she added with a flash of
+anger--"then I would not build."
+
+"Well," said I, "when it is nearly finished, and the water washes up,
+and up, and washes it away, here is a flower that came from
+Fairyland. And that, dear heart, is none so far away."
+
+She took the purple flower I had plucked in Ennui's garden in her
+slim, cold hand.
+
+"It's amaranth," she said; and I have never seen so old a little look
+in a child's eyes.
+
+"And all the flowers' names too?" I said.
+
+She frowned again. "It's amaranth," she said, and ran off lightly and
+so deftly among the rocks and in the shadow that was advancing now
+even upon the foam of the sea, that she had vanished before I had time
+to deter, or to pursue her. I sought her awhile, until the dark rack
+of sunset obscured the light, and the sea's voice changed; then I
+desisted.
+
+It was useless to remain longer beneath the looming caves, among the
+stones of so inhospitable a shore. I was a stranger to the tides. And
+it was clear high-water would submerge the narrow sands whereon I
+stood.
+
+Yet I cannot describe how loth I was to leave to night's desolation
+the shapeless house of a child. What fate was this that had set her
+to such profitless labour on the uttermost shores of "Tragedy"? What
+history lay behind, past, or, as it were, never to come? What gladness
+too high for earth had nearly once been hers? Her sea-mound took
+strange shapes in the gloom--light foliage of stone, dark heaviness of
+granite, wherein rumour played of all that restless rustling; small
+cries, vast murmurings from those green meadows, old as night.
+
+I turned, even ran away, at last. I found my boat in the gloaming
+where I had left her, safe and sound, except that all the doctor's
+good things had been nosed and tumbled by some hungry beast in my
+absence. I stood and thought vacantly of Crusoe, and pig, and guns.
+But what use to delay? I got in.
+
+If it were true, as the excellent doctor had informed me, that seamen
+reported islands not far distant from these shores, chance might bear
+me blissfully to one of these. And if not true ... I turned a rather
+startled face to the water, and made haste not to think. Fortune
+pierces deep, and baits her hooks with sceptics. Away I went, bobbing
+mightily over the waves that leapt and wrestled where sea and river
+met. These safely navigated, I rowed the great creature straight
+forward across the sea, my face towards dwindling land, my prow to
+Scorpio.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+    _Art thou pale for weariness._
+
+    --PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+
+The constellations of summer wheeled above me; and thus between water
+and starry sky I tossed solitary in my boat. The faint lustre of the
+sultry night hung like a mist from heaven to earth. Far away above the
+countries I had left perhaps for ever, the quiet lightnings played
+innocently in the heights.
+
+I rowed steadily on, guiding myself by some much ruddier star on the
+horizon. The pale phosphorescence on the wave, the simple sounds as of
+fish stirring in the water--the beauty and wonder of Night's
+dwelling-place seemed beyond content of mortality.
+
+I leaned on my oars in the midst of the deep sea, and seemed to hear,
+as it were, the mighty shout of Space. Faint and enormous beams of
+light trembled through the sky. And once I surprised a shadow as of
+wings sweeping darkly across, star on to glittering star, shaking the
+air, stilling the sea with the cold dews of night.
+
+So rowing, so resting, I passed the mark of midnight. Weariness began
+to steal over me. Between sleep and wake I heard strange cries across
+the deep. The thin silver of the old moon ebbed into the east. A chill
+mist welled out of the water and shrouded me in faintest gloom.
+Wherefore, battling no more against such influences, I shipped my
+oars, made my prayer in the midst of this dark womb of Life, and
+screening myself as best I could from the airs that soon would be
+moving before dawn, I lay down in the bottom of the boat and fell
+asleep.
+
+I slept apparently without dream, and woke as it seemed to the sound
+of voices singing some old music of the sea. A scent of a fragrance
+unknown to me was eddying in the wind. I raised my head, and saw with
+eyes half-dazed with light an island of cypress and poplar, green and
+still above the pure glass of its encircling waters. Straight before
+me, beyond green-bearded rocks dripping with foam, a little stone
+house, or temple, with columns and balconies of marble, stood hushed
+upon the cliff by the waterside.
+
+All now was soundless. They that sang, whether Nereids or Sirens, had
+descended to dimmer courts. The seamews floated on the water; the
+white dove strutted on the ledge; only the nightingales sang on in the
+thick arbours.
+
+I pushed my boat between the rocks towards the island. Bright and
+burning though the beams of the sun were, here seemed everlasting
+shadow. And though at my gradual intrusion, at splash or grating of
+keel, the startled cormorant cried in the air, and with one cry woke
+many, yet here too seemed perpetual stillness.
+
+How could I know what eyes might not be regarding me from bowers as
+thick and secluded as these? Yet this seemed an isle in some vague
+fashion familiar to me. To these same watery steps of stone, to this
+same mooring-ring surely I had voyaged before in dream or other life?
+I glanced into the water and saw my own fantastic image beneath the
+reflected gloom of cypresses, and knew at least, though I a shadow
+might be, this also was an island in a sea of shadows. Far from all
+land its marbles might be reared, yet they were warm to my touch, and
+these were nightingales, and those strutting doves beneath the little
+arches.
+
+So very gradually, and glancing to and fro into these unstirring
+groves, I came presently to the entrance court of the solitary villa
+on the cliff-side. Here a thread-like fountain plashed in its basin,
+the one thing astir in this cool retreat. Here, too, grew orange
+trees, with their unripe fruit upon them.
+
+But I continued, and venturing out upon the terrace overlooking the
+sea, saw again with a kind of astonishment the doctor's green,
+unwieldy boat beneath me and the emerald of the nearer waters tossing
+above the yellow sands.
+
+Here I had sat awhile lost in ease when I heard a footstep approaching
+and the rhythmical rustling of drapery, and knew eyes were now
+regarding me that I feared, yet much desired to meet.
+
+"Oh me!" said a clear yet almost languid voice. "How comes any man so
+softly?"
+
+Turning, I looked in the face of one how long a shade!
+
+I strove in vain to hide my confusion. This lady only smiled the
+deeper out of her baffling eyes.
+
+"If you could guess," she said presently, "how my heart leapt in me,
+as if, poor creature, any oars of earth could bring it ease, you would
+think me indeed as desolate as I am. To hear the bird scream,
+Traveller! I hastened from the gardens as if the black ships of the
+Greeks were come to take me. But such is long ago. Tell me, now, is
+the world yet harsh with men and sad with women? Burns yet that
+madness mirth calls Life? or truly does the puny, busy-tongued race
+sleep at last, nodding no more at me?"
+
+I told as best I could how chance had fetched me; told, too, that
+earth was yet pestered with men, and heavenly with women. "And the
+madness mirth calls Life flickers yet," I said; "and the little race
+tosses on in nightmare."
+
+"Ah!" she replied, "so ever run travellers' tales. I too once trusted
+to seem indifferent. But you, if shadow deceives me not, may yet
+return: I, only to the shades whence earth draws me. Meanwhile," she
+said, looking softly at the fountain playing in the clear gloom
+beyond, "rest and grow weary again, for there flock more questions to
+my tongue than spines on the blackthorn. The gardens are green with
+flowers, Traveller; let us talk where rosemary blows."
+
+Following her, I thought of the mysterious beauty of her eyes, her
+pallor, her slimness, and that faint smile which hovered between
+ecstasy and indifference, and away went my mind to one whom the
+shrewdest and tenderest of my own countrymen called once Criseyde.
+
+She led me into a garden all of faint-hued flowers. There bloomed no
+scarlet here, nor blue, nor yellow; but white and lavender and purest
+purple. Here, also, like torches of the sun, stood poplars each by
+each in the windless air, and the impenetrable darkness of cypresses
+beneath them.
+
+Here too was a fountain whose waters leapt no more, mossy and
+time-worn. I could not but think of those other gardens of my
+journey--Jane's, Ennui's, Dianeme's; and yet none like this for the
+shingley murmur of the sea, and the calmness of morning.
+
+"But, surely," I said, "this must be very far from Troy."
+
+"Far indeed," she said.
+
+"Far also from the hollow ships."
+
+"Far also from the hollow ships," she replied.
+
+"Yet," said I, "in the country whence I come is a saying: Where the
+treasure is--"
+
+"Alack! _there_ gloats the miser!" said Criseyde; "but I, Traveller,
+have no treasure, only a patchwork memory, and that's a great grief."
+
+"Well, then, forget! Why try in vain?" I said.
+
+She smiled and seated herself, leaning a little forward, looking upon
+the ground.
+
+"Soothfastness _must_,"' she said very gravely, raising her long black
+eyebrows; "yet truly it must be a forlorn thing to be remembered by
+one who so lightly forgets. So then I say, to teach myself to be
+true--'Look now, Criseyde, yonder fine, many-hearted poplar--that is
+Paris; and all that bank of marriage-ivy--that is marriageable Helen,
+green and cold; and the waterless fountain--that truly is Diomed; and
+the faded flower that nods in shadow, why, that must be me, even me,
+Criseyde!'"
+
+"And this thick rosemary-bush that smells of exile, who, then, is
+that?" I said.
+
+She looked deep into the shadow of the cypresses. "That," she said, "I
+think I have forgot again."
+
+"But," I said, "Diomed, now, was he quite so silent--not one trickle
+of persuasion?"
+
+"Why," she said, "I think 'twas the fountain was Diomed: I know not.
+And as for persuasion; he was a man forked, vain, and absolute as all.
+Let the waterless stone be sudden Diomed--you will confuse my wits,
+Mariner; where, then, were I?" She smiled, stooping lower. "You have
+voyaged far?" she said.
+
+"From childhood to this side regret," I answered rather sadly.
+
+"'Tis a sad end to a sweet tale," she said, "were it but truly told.
+But yet, and yet, and yet--you may return, and life heals every, every
+wound. _I_ must look on the ground and make amends. 'Tis this same
+making amends men now call 'Purgatory,' they tell me."
+
+"'Amends,'" I said; "to whom? for what?"
+
+"Welaway," said she, with a narrow fork between her brows; "to most
+men and to all women, for being that Criseyde." She gazed half
+solemnly at some picture of reverie.
+
+"But which Criseyde?" I said. "She who was every wind's, or but one
+perfect summer's?"
+
+She glanced strangely at me. "Ask of the night that burns so many
+stars," she said. "All's done; all passes. Yet my poor busy Uncle
+Pandar had no such changes, nor Hector, nor ... Men change not: they
+love and love again--one same tune of a myriad verses."
+
+"All?" I said.
+
+She tossed lightly a little dust from her hand.
+
+"Nay--all," she replied; "but what is that to me? Mine only to see
+Charon on the wave pass light over and return. Man of the green world,
+prithee die not yet awhile! 'Tis dull being a shade. See these cold
+palms! Yet my heart beats on."
+
+"For what?" I said.
+
+Criseyde folded her hands and leaned her cheek sidelong upon the
+stone.
+
+"For what?" I repeated.
+
+"For what but idle questions?" she said; "for a traveller's vanity
+that deems looking love-boys into a woman's eyes her sweeter
+entertainment than all the heroes of Troy. Oh, for a house of nought
+to be at peace in! Oh, gooseish swan! Oh, brittle vows! Tell me,
+Voyager, is it not so?--that men are merely angry boys with beards;
+and women--repeat not, ye who know! Never yet set I these steadfast
+eyes on a man that would not steal the moon for taper--would she but
+come down." She turned an arch face to me: "And what is to be
+faithful?"
+
+"I?" said I--"'to be faithful?'"
+
+"It is," she said, "to rise and never set, O sun of utter weariness!
+It is to kindle and never be quenched, O fretting fire of midsummer!
+It is to be snared and always sing, O shrilling bird of dulness! It is
+to come, not go; smile, not sigh; wake, never sleep. Couldst _thou_
+love so many nots to a silk string?"
+
+"What, then, is to change,... to be fickle?" I said.
+
+"Ah! to be fickle," she said, "is showers after drought, seas after
+sand; to cry, unechoed; to be thirsty, the pitcher broken. And--ask
+now this pitiless darkness of the eyes!--to be remembered though
+Lethe flows between. Nay, you shall watch even hope away ere another
+comes like me to mope and sigh, and play at swords with Memory."
+
+She rose to her feet and drew her hands across her face, and smiling,
+sighed deeply. And I saw how inscrutable and lovely she must ever seem
+to eyes scornful of mean men's idolatries.
+
+"And you will embark again," she said softly; "and in how small a ship
+on seas so mighty! And whither next will fate entice you, to what new
+sorrows?"
+
+"Who knows?" I said. "And to what further peace?"
+
+She laughed lightly. "Speak not of mockeries," she said, and fell
+silent.
+
+She seemed to be thinking quickly and deeply; for even though I did
+not turn to her, I could see in imagination the restless sparkling of
+her eyes, the stillness of her ringless hands. Then suddenly she
+turned.
+
+"Stranger," she said, drawing her finger softly along the cold stone
+of the bench, "there yet remain a few bright hours to morning. Who
+knows, seeing that felicity is with the bold, did I cast off into the
+sea--who knows whereto I'd come! 'Tis but a little way to being
+happy--a touch of the hand, a lifting of the brows, a shuddering
+silence. Had I but man's courage! Yet this is a solitary place, and
+the gods are revengeful."
+
+I cannot say how artlessly ran that voice in this still garden, by
+some strange power persuading me on, turning all doubt aside, calming
+all suspicion.
+
+"There is honeycomb here, and the fruit is plenteous. Yes," she said,
+"and all travellers are violent men--catch and kill meat--that I know,
+however doleful. 'Tis but a little sigh from day to day in these cool
+gardens; and rest is welcome when the heart pines not. Listen, now; I
+will go down and you shall show me--did one have the wit to learn, and
+courage to remember--show me how sails your wonderful little ship;
+tell me, too, where on the sea's horizon to one in exile earth lies,
+with all its pleasant things--yet thinks so bitterly of a woman!"
+
+"Tell me," I said; "tell me but one thing of a thousand. Whom would
+_you_ seek, did a traveller direct you, and a boat were at your need?"
+
+She looked at me, pondering, weaving her webs about me, lulling doubt,
+and banishing fear.
+
+"One could not miss--a hero!" she said, flaming.
+
+"That, then, shall be our bargain," I replied with wrath at my own
+folly. "Tell me this precious hero's name, and though all the dogs of
+the underworld come to course me, you shall take my boat, and leave me
+here--only this hero's name, a pedlar's bargain!"
+
+She lowered her lids. "It must be Diomed," she said with the least
+sigh.
+
+"It must be," I said.
+
+"Nay, then, Antenor, or truly Thersites," she said happily, "the
+silver-tongued!"
+
+"Good-bye, then," I said.
+
+"Good-bye," she replied very gently. "Why, how could there be a vow
+between us? I go, and return. You await me--me, Criseyde, Traveller,
+the lonely-hearted. That is the little all, O much-surrendering
+Stranger! Would that long-ago were now--before all chaffering!"
+
+Again a thousand questions rose to my tongue. She looked sidelong at
+the dry fountain, and one and all fell silent.
+
+"It is harsh, endless labour beneath the burning sun; storms and
+whirlwinds go about the sea, and the deep heaves with monsters."
+
+"Oh, sweet danger!" she said, mocking me.
+
+I turned from her without a word, like an angry child, and made my way
+to the steps into the sea, pulled round my boat into a little haven
+beside them, and shewed her oars and tackle and tiller; all the toil,
+and peril, the wild chances."
+
+"Why," she cried, while I was yet full of the theme, "I will go then
+at once, and to-morrow Troy will come."
+
+I looked long at her in silence; her slim beauty, the answerless
+riddle of her eyes, the age-long subtilty of her mouth, and gave no
+more thought to all life else.
+
+Day was already waning. I filled the water-keg with fresh water, put
+fruit and honeycomb and a pillow of leaves into the boat, proffered a
+trembling hand, and led her down.
+
+The sun's beams slanted on the foamless sea, glowed in a flame of
+crimson on marble and rock and cypress. The birds sang endlessly on of
+evening, endlessly, too, it seemed to me, of dangers my heart had no
+surmise of.
+
+Criseyde turned from the dark green waves. "Truly, it is a solitary
+country; pathless," she said, "to one unpiloted;" and stood listening
+to the hollow voices of the water. And suddenly, as if at the
+consummation of her thoughts, she lifted her eyes on me, darkly, with
+unimaginable entreaty.
+
+"What do you seek else?" I cried in a voice I scarcely recognised.
+"Oh, you speak in riddles!"
+
+I sprang into the boat and seized the heavy oars. Something like
+laughter, or, as it were, the clapper of a scarer of birds, echoed
+among the rocks at the rattling of the rowlocks. As if invisible hands
+withdrew it from me, the island floated back.
+
+I turned my prow towards the last splendour of the sun. A chill breeze
+played over the sea: a shadow crossed my eyes.
+
+Buoyant was my boat; how light her cargo!--an oozing honeycomb, ashy
+fruits, a few branches of drooping leaves, closing flowers; and
+solitary on the thwart the wraith of life's unquiet dream.
+
+So fell night once more, and made all dim. And only the cold light of
+the firmament lit thoughts in me restless as the sea on which I
+tossed, whose moon was dark, yet walked in heaven beneath the distant
+stars.
+
+
+
+Printed and bound by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and
+Aylesbury
+
+
+
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