THE LAKE—THE RUIN.
Or vieni, Amore, e quà meco t’assetta.
ORLANDO INNAMORATO.
_Mr. Chainmail_.—Would it not be a fine thing, Captain, you being
picturesque, and I poetical; you being for the lights and shadows of the
present, and I for those of the past; if we were to go together over the
ground which was travelled in the twelfth century by Giraldus de Barri,
when he accompanied Archbishop Baldwin to preach the crusade?
_Captain Fitzchrome_.—Nothing, in my present frame of mind, could be more
agreeable to me.
_Mr. Chainmail_.—We would provide ourselves with his _Itinerarium_;
compare what has been, with what is; contemplate in their decay the
castles and abbeys, which he saw in their strength and splendour; and,
while you were sketching their remains, I would dispassionately inquire
what has been gained by the change.
_Captain Fitzchrome_.—Be it so.
But the scheme was no sooner arranged, than the Captain was summoned to
London by a letter on business, which he did not expect to detain him
long. Mr. Chainmail, who, like the Captain, was fascinated with the inn
and the scenery, determined to await his companion’s return; and, having
furnished him with a list of books, which he was to bring with him from
London, took leave of him, and began to pass his days like the heroes of
Ariosto, who
—tutto il giorno, al bel oprar intenti,
Saliron balze, e traversar torrenti.
One day Mr. Chainmail traced upwards the course of a mountain stream to a
spot where a small waterfall threw itself over a slab of perpendicular
rock, which seemed to bar his farther progress. On a nearer view, he
discovered a flight of steps, roughly hewn in the rock, on one side of
the fall. Ascending these steps, he entered a narrow winding pass,
between high and naked rocks, that afforded only space for a rough
footpath, carved on one side, at some height above the torrent.
The pass opened on a lake, from which the stream issued, and which lay
like a dark mirror, set in a gigantic frame of mountain precipices.
Fragments of rock lay scattered on the edge of the lake, some half-buried
in the water: Mr. Chainmail scrambled some way over these fragments, till
the base of a rock sinking abruptly in the water, effectually barred his
progress. He sat down on a large smooth stone; the faint murmur of the
stream he had quitted, the occasional flapping of the wings of the heron,
and at long intervals, the solitary springing of a trout, were the only
sounds that came to his ear. The sun shone brightly half-way down the
opposite rocks, presenting, on their irregular faces, strong masses of
light and shade. Suddenly he heard the dash of a paddle, and, turning
his eyes, saw a solitary and beautiful girl gliding over the lake in a
coracle: she was proceeding from the vicinity of the point he had
quitted, towards the upper end of the lake. Her apparel was rustic, but
there was in its style something more _recherchée_, in its arrangement
something more of elegance and precision, than was common to the mountain
peasant girl. It had more of the _contadina_ of the opera, than of the
genuine mountaineer; so at least thought Mr. Chainmail; but she passed so
rapidly, and took him so much by surprise, that he had little opportunity
for accurate observation. He saw her land, at the farther extremity, and
disappear among the rocks: he rose from his seat, returned to the mouth
of the pass, stepped from stone to stone across the stream, and attempted
to pass round by the other side of the lake; but there again the abruptly
sinking precipice closed his way.
Day after day he haunted the spot, but never saw again either the damsel
or the coracle. At length, marvelling at himself for being so solicitous
about the apparition of a peasant girl in a coracle, who could not, by
any possibility, be anything to him, he resumed his explorations in
another direction.
One day he wandered to the ruined castle, on the sea-shore, which was not
very distant from his inn; and sitting on the rock, near the base of the
ruin, was calling up the forms of past ages on the wall of an ivied
tower, when on its summit appeared a female figure, whom he recognised in
an instant for his nymph of the coracle. The folds of the blue gown
pressed by the sea-breeze against one of the most symmetrical of figures,
the black feather of the black hat, and the ringleted hair beneath it
fluttering in the wind; the apparent peril of her position, on the edge
of the mouldering wall, from whose immediate base the rock went down
perpendicularly to the sea, presented a singularly interesting
combination to the eye of the young antiquary.
Mr. Chainmail had to pass half round the castle, on the land side, before
he could reach the entrance: he coasted the dry and bramble-grown moat,
crossed the unguarded bridge, passed the unportcullised arch of the
gateway, entered the castle court, ascertained the tower, ascended the
broken stairs, and stood on the ivied wall. But the nymph of the place
was gone. He searched the ruins within and without, but he found not
what he sought: he haunted the castle day after day, as he had done the
lake, but the damsel appeared no more.