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 Adèle.

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 naïve 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 exórcised 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.