“Now, then, bestir yourself,” he bullied. “If you’re to come at all,
come before the world’s awake.”
He strode off, and I followed, through shuttered glooms, and along
silent corridors to a distant part of the building, emerging from a
door in which we found ourselves in a close shrubbery-walk going up
towards woods. Very soon the comforting screen of trees was about us,
and the peril of watchful enemies surpassed. We pushed on without rest
or pause. My spirit and my feet danced together. It was all so free
and fragrant, and the rapture of my new emancipation was like a second
sight. Fays and sweet things seemed to melt before me round green
corners, or overhead among the branches, leaving a scent of the
unknown world in their footsteps. I sang low, I laughed to the birds,
I seemed incapable of weariness. And, indeed, my late training served
me in good stead, for this clerical Caliban had no mercy on my tender
limbs. He desired only the least excuse to shake me off, and I would
not gratify him with one.
All day he led me south by wood and common, avoiding the living places
where men were like to be alert on the new Crusade. We hardly
exchanged a word, as he swung on with the gait of a camel; but in the
end it was he who succumbed first. The weight of his great folio
crushed him--that is the truth. He called a halt in an unfrequented
copse, and flung himself exhausted on the grass.
“Go, find yourself a lodging,” he said. “I will sleep here.”
I did not dare cross him. I crept away; but only so far as a low thorn
tree, mounting into which I could easily hold him in view. But I need
not have feared. The poor wretch was sunk in fatigue, and incapable of
further effort. He had an odious night, I am sure, while I, from my
late habits, slept as securely as in an arm-chair.
Early next morning we were afoot again. My companion, mouldy-cheeked
and limping, greeted me with a scowl.
“What have I not suffered of humiliation as a priest,” he said, “to
have thee breathing in the same wood!”
The world must have been an insufficient dormitory to this misogynist.
At noon, having wandered for hours through forest so green, so
profound, that its deer-haunted vistas seemed the very byways to the
infinite, we came out suddenly, when half faint with toil and hunger,
upon the foot of a low hill, on whose summit was a queer octagonal
stone tower, crowned with a dome like a pepper-box. My companion
sputtered anathema upon seeing it, and stood stock still.
“What is it, Father?” I whispered, creeping up to him.
“We’ve overshot the mark, that’s all,” he growled, conceding a point
to civility. “Here’s Shole beyond; and I aimed at no farther than
Wellcot-Herring. Well, we must go over as the shortest way,” and he
began to mount the slope.