thou’st gotten the cake, brother, I must e’en make shift with the
crumbs.’ When you are gone, and all whisht and quiet, and I left here
amid the waiting women, it shall go hard but I’ll teach ’em somewhat
afore good-night.”
Now opened the door of the inner chamber, and there stood before them
the Lady Mevrian armed and helmed. She said, “’Tis no light matter to
halt before a cripple. Think you this will pass i’ the dark, my lords?”
They answered, ’twas beyond all commendation excellent.
“I’ll thank thee now, Prince Cargo,” said she, stretching out her
hand. He bowed and kissed it in silence. “This harness,” she said,
“shall be a keepsake unto me of a noble enemy. Would someday I might
call thee friend, for suchwise hast thou borne thee this night.”
Therewith, bidding young Cargo adieu, she with his brother went forth
from the chamber and through the ante-chamber to that shadowy stairway
where Corinius’s soldiers stood sentinel. These (as many more be
drowned in the beaker than in the ocean), not over-heedful after their
tipplings, seeing two go by together with clanking armour and knowing
Heming’s voice when he answered the challenge, made no question but
here were Corund’s sons returning to the banquet.
So passed he and she lightly by the sentinels. But as they fared by
the lofty corridor without the Chamber of the Moon, the doors of that
chamber opening suddenly left and right there came forth torch-bearers
and minstrels two by two as in a progress, with cymbals clashing and
flutes and tambourines, so that the corridor was fulfilled with the
flare of flamboys and the din. In the midst walked the Lord Corinius.
The lusty blood within him burned scarlet in all his shining face, and
made stand the veins like cords on the strong neck and arms and hands
of him. The thick curls above his brow where they strayed below his
coronal of sleeping nightshade were a-drip with sweat. Plain it was he
was in no good trim, after that shrewd knock on the head Astar that day
had given him, to withstand deep quaffings. He went between Gro and
Laxus, swaying heavily now on the arm of this one now of the other, his
right hand beating time to the music of the bridal song.
Mevrian whispered to Heming, “Let us bear out a good face so long as we
be alive.”
They stood aside, hoping to be passed by unnoticed, for retreat nor
concealment was there none. But Corinius his eye lighting on them
stopped and hailed them, catching them each by an arm, and crying,
“Heming, thou’rt drunk! Cargo, thou’rt drunk, sweet youth! ’Tis a
damnable folly, drink as drunk as you be, and these bonny wenches
I’ve provided you. How shall I satisfy ’em, think ye, when they come
to me with their plaints to-morn, that each must sit with a snoring
drunkard’s head in her lap the night long?”
Mevrian, as if she had all her part by rote, was leaned this while
heavily upon Heming, hanging her head.
Heming could think on nought likelier to say, than, “Truly, O Corinius,
we be sober.”
“Thou liest,” said Corinius. “’Twas ever sign manifest of drunkenness
to deny it. Look you, my lords, I deny not I am drunk. Therefore is
sign manifest I am drunk, I mean, sign manifest I am sober. But the
hour calleth to other work than questioning of these high matters. Set
on!”
So speaking he reeled heavily against Gro, and (as if moved by some
airy influence that, whispering him of schemings afoot, yet conspired
with the wine that he had drunken to make him look all otherwhere for
treason than where it lay under his hand to discover it) gripped Gro by
the arm, saying, “Bide by me, Goblin, thou wert best. I do love thee
very discreetly, and will still hold thee by the ears, to see thou bite
me not, nor go no more a-gadding.”
Being by such happy fortune delivered out of this peril, Heming and
Mevrian with what prudent haste they might, and without mishap or
hindrance, got them their horses and fared forth of the main gate
between the marble hippogriffs, whose mighty forms shone above them
stark in the low beams of the rising moon. So they rode silently
through the gardens and the home-meads and thence to the wild woods
beyond, quickening now their pace to a gallop on the yielding turf. So
hard they rode, the air of the windless April night was lashed into
storm about their faces. The trample and thunder of hoof-beats and the
flying glimpses of the trees were to young Heming but an undertone to
the thunder of his blood which night and speed and that lady galloping
beside him knee to knee set a-gallop within him. But to Mevrian’s soul,
as she galloped along those woodland rides, those moonlight glades,
these things and night and the steadfast stars attuned a heavenlier
music; so that she waxed momently wondrous peaceful at heart, as with
the most firm assurance that not without the abiding glory of Demonland
must the great mutations of the world be acted, and but for a little
should their evil-willers usurp her dear brother’s seat in Krothering.
They drew rein in a clearing beside a broad stretch of water.
Pine-woods rose from its further edge, shadowy in the moonshine.
Mevrian rode to a little eminence that stood above the water and turned
her eyes toward Krothering. Save by her instructed and loving eye
scarce might it be seen, many miles away be-east of them, dimmed in
the obscure soft radiance under the moon. So sat she awhile looking on
golden Krothering, while her horse grazed quietly, and Heming at her
elbow held his peace, only beholding her.
At last, looking back and meeting his gaze, “Prince Heming,” she said,
“from this place goeth a hidden path north-about beside the firth, and
a dry road over the marsh, and a ford and an upland horse-way leadeth
into Westmark. Here and all-wheres in Demonland I might fare blindfold.
And here I’ll say farewell. My tongue is a poor orator. But I mind me
of the words of the poet where he saith:
My mind is like to the asbeston stone,
Which if it once be heat in flames of fire,
Denieth to becomen cold again.
Be the latter issue of these wars in my great kinsmen’s victory, as I
most firmly trow it shall be, or in Gorice’s his, I shall not forget
this experiment of your nobility manifested unto me this night.”
But Heming, still beholding her, answered not a word.
She said, “How fares the Queen thy step-mother? Seven summers ago this
summer I was in Norvasp at Lord Corund’s wedding feast, and stood by
her at the bridal. Is she yet so fair?”
He answered, “Madam, as June bringeth the golden rose unto perfection,
so waxeth her beauty with the years.”
“She and I,” said Mevrian, “were playmates, she the elder by two
summers. Is she yet so masterful?”
“Madam, she is a Queen,” said Heming, nailing his very eyes on Mevrian.
Her face half turned towards him, sweet mouth half closed, clear eyes
uplifted toward the east, showed dim in the glamour of the moon, and
the lilt of her body was as a lily fallen a-dreaming beside some
enchanted lake at midnight. With a dry throat he said, “Lady, until
to-night I had not supposed there lived on earth a woman more beautiful
than she.”
Therewith the love that was in him went like a wind and like an
up-swooping darkness athwart his brain. As one who has too long,
unbold, unresolved, delayed to lift that door’s latch which must open
on his heart’s true home, he caught his arms about her. Her cheek was
soft to his kiss, but deadly cold: her eyes like a wild bird’s caught
in a purse-net. His brother’s armour that cased her body was not so
dead nor so hard under his hand, as to his love that yielding cheek,
that alien look. He said, as one a-stagger for his wits in the presence
of some unlooked-for chance, “Thou dost not love me?”
Mevrian shook her head, putting him gently away.
Like the passing of a fire on a dry heath in summer the flame of his
passion was passed by, leaving but a smouldering desolation of scornful
sullen wrath: wrath at himself and fate.
He said, in a low shamed voice, “I pray you forgive me, madam.”
Mevrian said, “Prince, the Gods give thee good-night. Be kind to
Krothering. I have left there an evil steward.”
So saying, she reined up her horse’s head and turned down westward
towards the firth. Heming watched her an instant, his brain a-reel.
Then, striking spurs to his horse’s flanks so that the horse reared and
plunged, he rode away at a great pace east again through the woods to
Krothering.
XXV: LORD GRO AND THE LADY MEVRIAN
HOW THE LORD GRO, CONDUCTED BY A STRANGE ENAMOURMENT WITH LOST
CAUSES, FARED WITH NONE SAVE THIS TO BE HIS GUIDE INTO THE
REGIONS OF NEVERDALE, AND THERE BEHELD WONDERS, AND TASTED
AGAIN FOR A SEASON THE GOODNESS OF THOSE THINGS HE DID MOST
DESIRE.
Ninety days and a day after these doings aforesaid, in the last hour
before the dawn, was the Lord Gro a-riding toward the paling east down
from the hills of Eastmark to the fords of Mardardale. At a walking
pace his horse came down to the water-side, and halted with fetlocks
awash: his flanks were wet and his wind gone, as from swift faring on
the open fell since midnight. He stretched down his neck, sniffed the
fresh river-water, and drank. Gro turned in the saddle, listening, his
left hand thrown forward to slack the reins, his right flat-planted on
the crupper. But nought there was to hear save the babble of waters in
the shallows, the sucking noise of the horse drinking, and the plash
and crunch of his hooves when he shifted feet among the pebbles. Before
and behind and on either hand the woods and strath and circling hills
showed dim in the obscure gray betwixt darkness and twilight. A light
mist hid the stars. Nought stirred save an owl that flitted like a
phantom out from a holly-bush in a craggy bluff a bow-shot or more down
stream, crossing Gro’s path and lighting on a branch of a dead tree
above him on the left, where she sat as if to observe the goings of
this man and horse that trespassed in this valley of quiet night.
Gro leaned forward to pat his horse’s neck. “Come, gossip, we must on,”
he said; “and marvel not if thou find no rest, going with me which
could never find any steadfast stay under the moon’s globe.” So they
forded that river, and fared through low rough grass-lands beyond, and
by the skirts of a wood up to an open heath, and so a mile or two,
still eastward, till they turned to the right down a broad valley and
crossed a river above a watersmeet, and so east again up the bed of
a stony stream and over this to a rough mountain track that crossed
some boggy ground and then climbed higher and higher above the floor
of the narrowing valley to a pass between the hills. At length the
slope slackened, and they passing, as through a gateway, between two
high mountains which impended sheer and stark on either hand, came
forth upon a moor of ling and bog-myrtle, strewn with lakelets and
abounding in streams and moss-hags and outcrops of the living rock; and
the mountain peaks afar stood round that moorland waste like warrior
kings. Now was colour waking in the eastern heavens, the bright shining
morning beginning to clear the earth. Conies scurried to cover before
the horse’s feet: small birds flew up from the heather: some red deer
stood at gaze in the fern, then tripped away southward: a moorcock
called.
Gro said in himself, “How shall not common opinion account me mad,
so rash and presumptuous dangerously to put my life in hazard? Nay,
against all sound judgement; and this folly I enact in that very
season when by patience and courage and my politic wisdom I had won
that in despite of fortune’s teeth which obstinately hitherto she
had denied me: when after the brunts of divers tragical fortunes I
had marvellously gained the favour and grace of the King, who very
honourably placed me in his court, and tendereth me, I well think, so
dearly as he doth the balls of his two eyes.”
He put off his helm, baring his white forehead and smooth black curling
locks to the airs of morning, flinging back his head to drink deep
through his nostrils the sweet strong air and its peaty smell. “Yet
is common opinion the fool, not I,” he said. “He that imagineth after
his labours to attain unto lasting joy, as well may he beat water in
a mortar. Is there not in the wild benefit of nature instances enow
to laugh this folly out of fashion? A fable of great men that arise
and conquer the nations: Day goeth up against the tyrant night. How
delicate a spirit is she, how like a fawn she footeth it upon the
mountains: pale pitiful light matched with the primaeval dark. But
every sweet hovers in her battalions, and every heavenly influence:
coolth of the wayward little winds of morning, flowers awakening,
birds a-carol, dews a-sparkle on the fine-drawn webs the tiny spinners
hang from fern-frond to thorn, from thorn to wet dainty leaf of the
silver birch; the young day laughing in her strength, wild with her own
beauty; fire and life and every scent and colour born anew to triumph
over chaos and slow darkness and the kinless night.
“But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet
love her when glutted with triumph she settles to garish noon? Rather
turn as now I turn to Demonland, in the sad sunset of her pride. And
who dares call me turncoat, who do but follow now as I have followed
this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and
the morning and the evening star? since there only abideth the soul of
nobility, true love, and wonder, and the glory of hope and fear.”
So brooding he rode at an easy pace bearing east and a little north
across the moor, falling because of the strange harmony that was
between outward things and the inward thoughts of his heart into a deep
study. So came he to the moor’s end, and entered among the skirts of
the mountains beyond, crossing low passes, threading a way among woods
and water-courses, up and down, about and about. The horse led him
which way that he would, for no heed nor advice had he of aught about
him, for cause of the deep contemplation that he had within himself.
It was now high noon. The horse and his rider were come to a little
dell of green grass with a beck winding in the midst with cool water
flowing over a bed of shingle. About the dell grew many trees both tall
and straight. Above the trees high mountain crags a-bake in the sun
showed ethereal through the shimmering heat. A murmur of waters, a hum
of tiny wings flitting from flower to flower, the sound of the horse
grazing on the lush pasture: there was nought else to hear. Not a leaf
moved, not a bird. The hush of the summer noon-day, breathless, burnt
through with the sun, more awful than any shape of night, paused above
that lonely dell.
Gro, as if waked by the very silence, looked quickly about him. The
horse felt belike in his bones his rider’s unease; he gave over his
feeding and stood alert with wild eye and quivering flanks. Gro patted
and made much of him; then, guided by some inward prompting the reason
whereof he knew not, turned west by a small tributary beck and rode
softly toward the wood. Here he was stopped with a number of trees
so thickly placed together that he was afraid he should with riding
through be swept from the saddle. So he lighted down, tied his horse
to an oak, and climbed the bed of the little stream till he was come
whence he might look north over the tree-tops to a green terrace about
at a level with him and some fifty paces distant along the hillside,
shielded from the north by three or four great rowan trees on the far
side of it, and on the terrace a little tarn or rock cistern of fair
water very cool and deep.
He paused, steadying himself with his left hand by a jutting rock
overgrown with rose-campion. Surely no children of men were these,
footing it on that secret lawn beside that fountain’s brink, nor no
creatures of mortal kind. Such it may be were the goats and kids and
soft-eyed does that on their hind-legs merrily danced among them;
but never such those others of manly shape and with pointed hairy
ears, shaggy legs, and cloven hooves, nor those maidens white of limb
beneath the tread of whose feet the blue gentian and the little golden
cinquefoil bent not their blossoms, so airy-light was their dancing.
To make them music, little goat-footed children with long pointed ears
sat on a hummock of turf-clad rock piping on pan-pipes, their bodies
burnt to the hue of red earth by the wind and the sun. But, whether
because their music was too fine for mortal ears, or for some other
reason, Gro might hear no sound of that piping. The heavy silence of
the waste white noon was lord of the scene, while the mountain nymphs
and the simple genii of sedge and stream and crag and moorland solitude
threaded the mazes of the dance.
The Lord Gro stood still in great admiration, saying in himself, “What
means my drowsy head to dream such fancies? Spirits of ill have I
heretofore beheld in their manifestations; I have seen fantasticoes
framed and presented by art magic; I have dreamed strange dreams
a-nights. But till this hour I did account it an idle tale of poets’
faining, that amid woods, forests, fertile fields, sea-coasts, shores
of great rivers and fountain brinks, and also upon the tops of huge
and high mountains, do still appear unto certain favoured eyes the
sundry-sorted nymphs and fieldish demigods. Which thing if I now
verily behold, ’tis a great marvel, and sorteth well with the strange
allurements whereby this oppressed land hath so lately found a means
to govern mine affections.” And he thought awhile, reasoning thus in
his mind: “If this be but an apparition, it hath no essence to do me
a hurt. If o’ the contrary these be very essential beings, needs must
they joyfully welcome me and use me well, being themselves the true
vital spirits of many-mountained Demonland; unto whose comfort and the
restorement of her old renown and praise I have with such a strange
determination bent all my painful thoughts and resolution.”
So on the motion he discovered himself and hailed them. The wild things
bounded away and were lost among the flanks of the hill. The capripeds,
leaving on the instant their piping or their dancing, crouched watching
him with distrustful startled eyes. Only the Oreads still in a dazzling
drift pursued their round: quiet maiden mouths, beautiful breasts,
slender lithe limbs, hand joined to delicate hand, parting and closing
and parting again, in rhythms of unstaled variety; here one that,
with white arms clasped behind her head where her braided hair was
as burnished gold, circled and swayed with a languorous motion; here
another, that leaped and paused hovering a-tiptoe, like an arrow of the
sun shot through the leafy roof of an old pine-forest when the warm
hill-wind stirs the tree-tops and opens a tiny window to the sky.
Gro went toward them along the grassy hillside. When he was come a
dozen paces the strength was gone from his limbs. He kneeled down
crying out and saying, “Divinities of earth! deny me not, neither
reject me, albeit cruelly have I till now oppressed your land, but will
do so no more. The footsteps of mine overtrodden virtue lie still as
bitter accusations unto me. Bring me of your mercy where I may find out
them that possessed this land and offer them atonement, who were driven
forth because of me and mine to be outlaws in the woods and mountains.”
So spake he, bowing his head in sorrow. And he heard, like the
trembling of a silver lute-string, a voice in the air that cried:
North ’tis and north ’tis!
Why need we further?
He raised his eyes. The vision was gone. Only the noon and the
woodland, silent, solitary, dazzling, were about and above him.
Lord Gro came now to his horse again, and mounted and rode northaway
through the fells all that summer afternoon, full of cloudy fancies.
When it was eventide his way was high up along the steep side of
a mountain between the screes and the grass, following a little
path made by the wild sheep. Far beneath in the valley was a small
river tortuously flowing along a bouldery bed amid hillocks of old
moraines which were like waves of a sea of grass-clad earth. The
July sun wheeled low, flinging the shadows of the hills far up the
westward-facing slopes where Gro was a-riding, but where he rode and
above him the hillside was yet aglow with the warm low sunshine; and
the distant peak that shut in the head of the valley, rearing his huge
front like the gable of a house, with sweeping ribs of bare rock and
scree and a crest of crag like a great breaker frozen to stone in mid
career, bathed yet in a radiance of opalescent light.
Turning the shoulder of the hillside at a place where the hill was
cut by a shallow gully, he saw before him a hollow or sheltered nook.
There, protected by the great body of the hill from the blasts of the
east and north, two rowan trees and some hollies grew in the clefts
of the rock above the watercourse. Under their shadow was a cave,
not large but so big as a man might well abide in and be dry in wild
weather, and beyond it on the right a little waterfall, so beautiful
it was a wonder to behold. This was the fashion of it: a slab of rock,
twice a man’s height, tilted a little forward from the hill, so that
the water fell clear from its upper edge in a thin stream into a rocky
basin. The water in the basin was clear and deep, but a-churn always
with bubbles from the plunging jet from above; and over all the rocks
about it grew mosses and lichens and little water-flowers, nourished by
the stream at root and refreshed by the spray.
The Lord Gro said in his heart, “Here would I dwell for ever had I but
the art to make myself little as an eft. And I would build me an house
a span high beside yonder cushion of moss emerald-hued, with those pink
foxgloves to shade my door which balance their bells above the foaming
waters. This shy grass of Parnassus should be my drinking cup, with
pure white chalice poised on a hair-thin stem; and the curtains of my
bed that little thirsty sandwort which, like a green heaven sown with
milk-white stars, curtains the shady sides of these rocks.”
Resting in this imagination he abode long time looking on that fairy
place, so secretly bestowed in the fold of the naked mountain. Then,
unwilling to depart from so fair a spot, and bethinking him, besides,
that after so many hours his horse was weary, he dismounted and lay
down beside the stream. And in a short while, having his spirits
sublimed with the sweet imagination of those wonders he had beheld, he
was fain to suffer the long dark lashes to droop over his large and
liquid eyes. And deep sleep overcame him.
• • • • •
When he awoke, all the sky was afire with the red of sunset. A shadow
was betwixt him and the western light: the shape of one bending over
him and saying in masterful wise, yet in accents wherein the echoes
and memories of all sweet sounds seemed mingled and laid up at rest
for ever, “Lie still, my lord, nor cry not a rescue. Behold, thine own
sword; and I took it from thee sleeping.” And he was ware of a sharp
sword pointed against his throat where the big veins lie beneath the
tongue.
He stirred not at all, neither spake aught, only looking up at her as
at some vision of delight strayed from the fugitive flock of dreams.
The lady said, “Where be thy company? And how many? Answer me swiftly.”
He answered her like a dreamer, “How shall I answer thee? How shall I
number them that be beyond all count? Or how name unto your grace their
habitation which are even very now closer to me than hand or feet, yet
o’ the next instant are able to transcend a main wider belike than even
a starbeam hath journeyed o’er?”
She said, “Riddle me no riddles. Answer me, thou wert best.”
“Madam,” said Gro, “these that I told thee of be the company of mine
own silent thoughts. And, but for mine horse, this is all the company
that came hither with me.”
“Alone?” said she. “And sleep so securely in thine enemies’ country?
That showed a strange confidence.”
“Not enemies, if I may,” said he.
But she cried, “And thou Lord Gro of Witchland?”
“That one sickened long since,” he answered, “of a mortal sickness; and
’tis now a day and a night since he is dead thereof.”
“What art thou, then?” said she.
He answered, “If your grace would so receive me, Lord Gro of Demonland.”
“A very practised turncoat,” said she. “Belike they also are wearied
of thee and thy ways. Alas,” she said in an altered voice, “thy gentle
pardon! when doubtless it was for thy generous deeds to me-ward they
fell out with thee, when thou didst so nobly befriend me.”