It stretched afar, the great wold. They were out upon it under the
moon. All wildness, all loneliness! If there were a track it was a
faint one. The ground rolled; all opened to the sky, a little lower
and a little higher; around and above was immensity sewn with points
of significance. They found bushes to shelter them from the murmuring
and seeking wind and slept deeply. The night turned toward day. Are you
awake?--Aye!
In the east shone the palest light. Huge lay the wold, and the sky was
night save for that far illuming. Cool hung the air and still, still,
still.
The wold began to colour. They ate of their loaf and took up their
bundle and trudged again. April in the world. They were well together,
with a great natural fitness. It did not matter if they talked or if
they walked a long way in silence. One was to the other; they accorded.
Once he said, “I have no knowledge how old we are. This wold is old,
our earliest forefathers trod it, but we were there!”
“Aye! They and ourselves and all.”
All lonely was the wold and yet it was filled. The noon sun turned it
gold. They felt a light warmth, a slight wind, a waving fragrance, a
multitudinous fine sounding. They rested; they went on again.
A dog came limping toward them, yelping, in trouble. His paw was hurt,
half crushed, apparently, by some rolling, falling mass. Just here
lay hollow land, with the smallest stream gliding through. Englefield
bathed the paw, set it right, and they tore cloth and bound it up. The
dog’s wagging tail and his eyes said, “Friends! I am glad you came!”
For a time he kept with them, but his home was over the wold, and
with a final wag of the tail and lick of the hand, he left them. They
watched him growing smaller and smaller till he disappeared behind a
wavelet of earth.
The wold hereabouts was wavy, ridged. They followed the thread of water
that had by it a faint path. Presently it ran beneath a high bank, a
steep, escarped hill. An uprooted tree caught their eye, then a great
heaped disorder of raw earth. “Look!” said Englefield. “The hillside
has caved and fallen. It was that that caught the dog.”
The path was covered. They must cross the streamlet and go around the
broken mass. They had almost cleared it when they saw over the thread
of water a human figure, half buried, unconscious.
They worked until he was free. A leg was broken, forehead bleeding from
a great cut. They dashed water upon him and he sighed and opened his
eyes, a young man roughly dressed, with the seeming of fisherman or
sailor. “The hill fell! I was thinking of gaffer and gammer that I was
going to see and the hill fell!”
“Was there any one else?”
“No. ’Tis a lonely place--a great wold. There was a dog running
about--not mine. I’m thankful to ye, but I think my leg’s broken, and
my head is singing, singing.”
“Do you know the wold? Where is the house you were going to?”
“It’s Gaffer Garrow, the shepherd. There’s the wold hostel, too--the
Good Man. But it’s not a good inn--they be robbers! My head is singing.”
“Let’s see if canst stand. Now arms about shoulders. So!”
Half carrying him, they followed the stream. When he failed, Englefield
carried him outright. So they went, very slowly, down the hollow land,
a long way, until they saw Gaffer Garrow’s furze heap and hut. An old
man and woman and a shepherd lad and a girl came forth to meet them.
“Alack and alack, and Jack, what’s happened?”
Diccon Dawn, it seemed, could set a bone. When it was done and the
sailor on his straw bed, with gaffer and gammer and younger brother and
sister to his hand, Diccon and Alice Dawn went on over the wold. The
young girl walked a little way with them to show the way, seeing that
they were going to the sea. “You will come to the Good Man, but I would
not lodge there. Then you will come to three trees, then will be wold a
long way, then you will smell the sea.”
At turning, she said. “Our Jack might have died there, earth over him!
Our Lady must have been walking before you. I see Her sometimes in the
even, walking the wold.”
They walked it, the girl returning to her hut, and they seemed to be
alone, except for Silver Cross rising.
The Good Man topped a low wave of the April earth. They saw it against
cool, blue sky, with an ash and an aspen pricked out above either end.
Men and women were in the doorway. Richard Englefield and Morgen Fay
went by, though the host called to them and an urchin came running
after. “Hey! This be the Good Man, the only hostel this half of wold!”
Diccon Dawn shook his head. “We are in haste.”
“I make guess that ye have not the reckoning!” The urchin grinned,
threw dry turf and pebble against them and ran away.
Silence came down around them and upon them and within them. The
sun was westering, the wold growing purple. The stillness became
both fine and vast, a permeating and encirling hush within the hush.
_Wait--wait--wait!_ Out of it or into it pushed shadowy sorrows,
ancient poignancies. The wold grew peopled with these.
The sun descended. The horizon rose up and took it; a chill and
mournful light spread evenly, then withdrew, evenly, slowly. It was
dusk. The wold was spectral; all was spectral.
They came to a ring of ancient stones, placed there long ago by
long-ago inhabitants of that island and now grown about with whin and
thorn and furze. They like the wold, seemed now eternal, now going
away, fading away. It was to rest here and sleep here; it was the best
place. They lay down. There was silence, and still--faint, faint, in
dark lines and pallid silver lines--rose Silver Cross!
Full night, and descending and climbing stars. Then the moon, silver,
great, mounting above the clean, sweeping wold-line, silvering the
wold, silvering all. Now the air was stillness wholly, and now there
came a sighing. Sleep, one must sleep, weary enough with travelling!
Yet sleep was not in the wold, with all else that was there.
From above--from above--oh, from above come help!
But it seemed there was only the wold and the air and the moon. Only
somehow sorrow.
Deep in the night he perceived that Morgen Fay had risen from where she
was lying by a great stone and had moved without the ring. Presently
he saw her at some distance, standing in the open wold, very still,
regarding the heavens, then moving slowly, walking beneath the moon.
A light wave of the wold hid her from his sight. A momentary dart of
fear and loneliness went through him, as though the wold had taken
her, as though she would go on forever that way and he this. But no;
nothing would come of that, nothing would come that way! No--no! They
were together, together in this sadness of the wold, strangely together
in this separateness, together in the very hauntings and hostilities
of the past; together on this wold, this present night--together
now--together to-morrow and the next day and the day after, together
though walls of the night and the moonlight, or of the day and the
sunlight were between their bodies.
The profound, the starry night. All the stars, all the moons and the
earths, aspects and moods of a Mighty One! Power, Wisdom, Goodness,
Beauty.--
Richard Englefield’s body sat still as a stone. Most is done, seen and
felt in a moment. The vastest takes no time, but the placing of that
moment took time. The wold changed, the night and day, the here and
there, the now and then, the you and I, all the opposites.
At last he rose and moved out upon the wold. He did not know which way
Morgen had gone, but she was here, as he was here. He stood with a deep
and quiet heart, looking forth over the lonely and happy wold. The
moon shone, a light and musical wind rose and fell. He was aware of an
immense tranquility with something of awe running through like a clean
fragrance, like myrrh. It was so still, it was so wide and deep and
high.
He turned slightly, as though a hand had drawn him. He saw on the wold
the great picture, the Blessed among women.
Eyes ceased in light. Other eyes opened.
Out of the quiet dark came Morgen Fay and kneeled beside him. “Let me
tell--for one instant--ah, the instant!--I saw us as the All. I saw
thee in light, and then I saw us as the All.”