The first impression of the dreaming woman is that she and her young
son are in a cart, out for a day's holiday in the country. It is early
morning, and they are in the heart of the country, with its fields,
and hedges, and scent of sweet flowers and fresh-mown hay. The clouds
are bright, and the mother's heart is filled with love and gratitude
as the horse jogs steadily along.
Their pace is slow, but not so slow as that of this white-smocked
carter, sitting on the shaft of his lumbering wagon, which, as it
rumbles onwards, makes noise enough for a dozen. The wagon is in the
middle of the road--as though it were made solely for them to creep
over, and nothing else had any business there--and when at length it
moves aside, it does so in an indolent, reluctant fashion most
tantalising to men and cattle more briskly inclined. Behind them
thunders the mail-coach, and the guard's horn sounds merrily on the
air.
"There comes the mail-coach!" the driver of the cart exclaims, and the
dreamer watches it grow, as it were, out of the distant sky and land,
where Liliputia lies. And now it is upon them, with no suspicion of
Liliputia about it. On it comes, with Hillo! hallo! hi! hi! hi!
heralding and proclaiming itself blithely. Their manner is right and
proper, for are they not--guard, coachman, and horses--kings of the
road? Out of the way, then, everybody and everything, and make room
for their excellencies! Out of the way, you lumbering, white-smocked
carter, and open your sleepy eyes! Out of the way, you pair of young
dreamers, you, who, arm-in-arm so closely, are surely asleep and
dreaming also! She, the first awake, starts in sudden alarm, with
bright blushes now in her pretty, pensive face, and he--glad of the
chance--throws his arm around her, and hurries her to the roadside,
but a yard or two away from the bounding cattle, whose ringing hoofs
play a brisker air upon the roadway than ever Apollo's son played upon
the lyre. Away goes the coach, and the mother holds her lovely lad
aloft in her arms, and in silent wonder, listens to the fading horn,
and watches the coach grow smaller and smaller, until it disappears
entirely from the sight. Onward they go through the dreamy solitudes,
and shadows of green leaves and branches wave about them in
never-ending beauty and variety.
How lovely is the day! The birds are singing, the bees are busy, all
nature is glad. What a morning for a holiday--what a morning for
lovers to walk through shady paths and narrow lanes, over stiles, and
under great spreading branches, whose arms bend down caressingly to
shield them from the sun! What a morning to bring a long courtship to
a sweet conclusion, and to whisper the words that make lads' and
lasses' hearts happier than the thrush that pipes its tremulous notes
above them as they sit!
And now the mother and her child are in a narrow lane, with hedges on
either side, over which they see the ripe corn waving. The mother
sings a song about the days when we went gipsying a long time ago, and
her friend, the driver, joins in the chorus heartily. At its
conclusion, he says, incidentally:
"How about that mole on Neddy's right temple that Jane was telling me
of?" (Jane is his young wife.) "What does it really signify?"
"You ask any fortune-teller," says the mother. "It's the very luckiest
thing that ever can happen. When a child is born with a mole on the
right temple, it is certain sure to arrive at sudden wealth and
honour."
"That's a real piece of good fortune," says the driver. "If _our_
young un's born with a mole on the right temple, it'll be the luckiest
day of our lives."
"I'm sure I hope it will be," says the mother, "and that it'll be in
the right place."
While this conversation is proceeding, the horse has slackened his
pace--and the driver jumps off the cart to pick some sweet
honeysuckle, a piece of which he gives to the mother and the
child--and the heavens are beautifully bright, and fairy ships are
sailing in the clouds--and they go jogging, jogging, jogging on, until
they arrive at their journey's end.
Pulling up at a pretty little cottage, with a pretty little green gate
for its boundary, a pretty little woman runs hastily out, wiping her
hands, which are all over flour, on her apron. This is his Jane, whose
visitors have caught her in the act of making a pudding. The first
embraces over, they go into the kitchen, where the pudding is tied up,
and put into the pot, and is cooked by magic, for the next moment they
are eating their dinner. They pass a happy time within the cottage,
and then the scene fades, and she and her child are in a field,
pelting each other with flowers.
The child grows tired, and the mother makes a nest of fern for her
darling to rest in, at the foot of an old tree, whose branches
presently fill all the landscape, and cover them with delicious shade.
Not a variation of colour in the sky, not a bird's note, not a whisper
of the leaves, that the fond mother does not convert into a symbol of
happiness for her heart's treasure. And as he sleeps, she sits by his
side, until the tree fades and becomes the cottage again, where they
are all clustered round the tea-table, eating the sweetest
bread-and-butter and the freshest radishes that love can produce.
Then the moon comes out and pierces the ceiling, which changes into
night-clouds and solemnly-silent roads, through and over which they
are riding peacefully home. A river, of which they had a glimpse when
the sun's rays were playing on it, changes now into a white road, over
which the cart is slowly passing; now into a field of waving corn,
through which they are calmly wending their way without breaking a
stalk; now into the stairs of her own cosy home-nest, up which she is
walking, with her darling, very sleepy, in her arms. And when she has
softly sung a few words of a familiar cradle-song, she points to the
stars, not deeming it strange that they are shining all around her,
and tells her child that heaven is there!
An amazing transformation takes place. She is alone, with blackness
all around her. The rain pours down like a deluge, and a terrific
explosion occurs, which shakes the earth to its foundations.
Aroused by the violent banging of the street door, Mrs. Chester starts
from the bed. The rain is softly pattering in the street, and she
hears the sound of uncertain footsteps groping up the stairs.
"It is the new lodger," she murmurs. "He might have made less noise
with the door." Then, rubbing her eyes, she calls, "Sally, are you
awake?"
Sally hears her mother's voice through a mist of softly falling rain,
and murmuring some indistinct words in reply, cuddles closer to her
treasure-baby, and the next moment is asleep again.
"The brute!" exclaims Mrs. Chester. "Waking the children with his row!
I'll talk to him to-morrow."
Standing in the dark, she listens. The person who is ascending the
stairs to the bedroom in the upper part of the house staggers and
stumbles on his way. Thus much Mrs. Chester is conscious of, but she
does not hear his low moans, nor see him shake and tremble, as he
drags his feet along in fear and dread. When he reaches his room, he
falls, dressed, upon the bed, and claws at the air, and picks at the
bedclothes in ceaseless unrest, being beset by demons of every shape
and form, presenting themselves in a thousand monstrously-grotesque
disguises.
Mrs. Chester has heard sufficient to cause her to form a just
conclusion.
"Drunk of course," she murmurs; "and Dick'll be as bad when he comes
home."
Then she lights a candle, and patiently resumes her task of stitching
and patching.