Henry Brocken. Walter de la Mare

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СКАЧАТЬ 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

       Table of Contents

       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 СКАЧАТЬ