Surely some hueless poppy blossomed in the darkness of those ruins, or the soulless ashes of the dead breathe out a drowsy influence. Never have I slept so heavily, yet never perhaps beneath so cold a tester. Sunbeams streaming between the crests of the cypresses awoke me. I leapt up as if a hundred sentinels had shouted—where none kept visible watch.
An odour of a languid sweetness pervaded the air. There was no wind to stir the dew-besprinkled trees. The old, scarred gravestones stood in a thick sunshine, afloat with bees. But Rosinante had preferred to survey sunshine out of shade. In lush grass I found her, the picture of age, foot crook'd, and head dejected.
Yet she followed me uncomplaining along these narrow avenues of silence, and without more ado turned her trivial tail on Death and his dim flocks, and well-nigh scampered me off into the vivid morning. Soon afterwards, with Hunger in the saddle, we began to climb a road almost precipitous, and stony in the extreme. Often enough we breathed ourselves as best we could in the still, sultry air, and rested on the sun-dappled slopes. But at length we came out upon the crest, and surveyed in the first splendour of day a region of extraordinary grandeur.
Beneath a clear sky to the east stood a range of mountains, cold and changeless beneath their snows. At my feet a great river flowed, broken here and there with isles in the bright flood. The dark champaign that flanked its shores was of an unusual verdure. Mystery and peril brooded on those distant ravines, the vapours of their far-descending cataracts. In such abysmal fastnesses as these the Hyrcan tiger might hide his surly generations. This was an air for the sun-disdaining eagle, a country of transcendent brightness, its flowers strangely pure and perfect, its waters more limpid, its grazing herds, its birds, its cedar trees, the masters of their kind.
Yet not on these nearer glories my eyes found rest. But, with a kind of heartache, I gazed, as it were towards home, upon the distant waters of the sea. Here, on the crest of this green hill, was silence. There, too, was profounder silence on the sea's untrampled floor. Whence comes that angel out of nought whispering into the ear strange syllables? I know not; but so seemed I to stand—a shattered instrument in the world, past all true music, o'er which none the less the invisible lute-master stooped. Could I but catch, could I but in words express the music his bent fingers intended, the mystery, the peace—well; then I should indeed journey solitary on the face of the earth, a changeling in its cities.
I half feared to descend into a country so diverse from any I had yet seen. Hitherto at least I had encountered little else than friendliness. But here—doves in eyries! I stood, twisting my fingers in Rosinante's mane, debating and debating. And she turned her face to me, and looked with age into my eyes: and I know not how woke courage in me again.
"On then?" I said, on the height. And the gentle beast leaned forward and coughed into the valley what might indeed be "Yea!"
So we began to descend. Down we went, alone, yet not unhappy, until in a while I discovered, about a hundred yards in advance of me, another traveller on the road, ambling easily along at an equal pace with mine. I know not how far I followed in his track debating whether to overtake and to accost him, or to follow on till a more favourable chance offered.
But Chance—avenger of all shilly-shally—settled the matter offhand. For my traveller, after casting one comprehensive glance towards the skies, suddenly whisked off at a canter that quickly carried him out of sight.
A chill wind had begun to blow, lifting in gusts dust into the air and whitening the tree-tops. As suddenly, calm succeeded. A cloud of flies droned fretfully about my ears. And I watched advancing, league-high, transfigured with sunbeams, the enormous gloom of storm. The sun smote from a silvery haze upon its peaks and gorges. Wind, far above the earth, moaned, and fell; only to sound once more in the distance in a mournful trumpeting. Lightnings played along the desolate hills. The sun was darkened. A vast flight of snowy, arrow-winged birds streamed voiceless beneath his place. And day withdrew its boundaries, spread to the nearer forests a bright amphitheatre, fitful with light, whereof it seemed to me Rosinante with her poor burden was the centre and the butt. I confess I began to dread lest even my mere surmise of danger should engage the piercing lightnings; as if in the mystery of life storm and a timorous thought might yet be of a kin.
We hastened on at the most pathetic of gallops. Nor seemed indeed the beauteous lightning to regard at all that restless mote upon the cirque of its entranced fairness. In an instantaneous silence I heard a tiny beat of hoofs; in instantaneous gloom recognised almost with astonishment my own shape bowed upon the saddle. It was a majestic entry into a kingdom so far-famed.
The storm showed no abatement when at last I found shelter. From far away I had espied in the immeasurable glare a country barn beneath trees. Arrived there, I almost fell off my horse into as incongruous and lighthearted a company as ever was seen.
In the midst of the floor of the barn, upon a heap of hay, sat a fool in motley blowing with all his wind into a pipe. It was a cunning tune he played too, rich and heady. And so seemed the company to find it, dancers—some thirty or more—capering round him with all the abandon heart can feel and heel can answer to. As for pose, he whose horse now stood smoking beside my own first drew my attention—a smooth, small-bearded, solemn man, a little beyond his prime. He lifted his toes with such inimitable agility, postured his fingers so daintily, conducted his melon-belly with so much elegance, and exhaled such a warm joy in the sport that I could look at nothing else at first for delight in him.
But there were slim maids too among the plumper and ruddier, like crocuses, like lilac, like whey, with all their fragrance and freshness and lightness. Such eyes adazzle dancing with mine, such nimble and discreet ankles, such gimp English middles, and such a gay delight in the mere grace of the lilting and tripping beneath rafters ringing loud with thunder, that Pan himself might skip across a hundred furrows for sheer envy to witness.
As for the jolly rustics that were jogging their wits away with such delightful gravity, but little time was given me to admire them ere I also was snatched into the ring, and found brown eyes dwelling with mine, and a hand like lettuces in the dog-days. Round and about we skipped in the golden straw, amidst treasuries of hay, puffing and spinning. And the quiet lightnings quivered between the beams, and the monstrous "Ah!" of the thunder submerged the pipe's sweetness. Till at last all began to gasp and blow indeed, and the nodding Fool to sip, and sip, as if in extremis over his mouthpiece. Then we rested awhile, with a medley of shrill laughter and guffaws, while the rain streamed lightning-lit upon the trees and tore the clouds to tatters.
With some little circumstance my traveller picked his way to me, and with a grave civility bowed me a sort of general welcome. Whereupon ensued such wit and banter as made me thankful when the opening impudence of a kind of jig set the heels and the petticoats of the company tossing once more. We danced the lightning out, and piped the thunder from the skies. And by then I was so faint with fasting, and so deep in love with at least five young country faces, that I scarcely knew head from heels; still less, when a long draught of a kind of thin, sweet ale had mounted to its sphere.
Away we all trooped over the flashing fields, noisy as jays in the fresh, sweet air, some to their mowing, some to their milking, but more, indeed, I truly suspect, to that exquisite Nirvana from which the tempest's travail had aroused them. I waved my hand, striving in vain to keep my eyes on one blest, beguiling face of all that glanced behind them. But, she gone, I turned into the rainy lane once more with my new acquaintance, discreeter, but not less giddy, it seemed, than I.
We had not far to go—past a meadow or two, a low green wall, a black fish-pool—and soon the tumbledown gables of a house came into view. My companion waved his open fingers at the crooked casements and peered into my face.
"Ah!" he said, "we will talk, we will talk, you and I: I view it in your eye, sir—clear and full and profound—such ever goes with eloquence. 'Tis my delight. What are we else than beasts?—beasts that perish? I never tire; I never weary;—give me to dance and to sing, but ever to talk: then am I at ease. Heaven is just. Enter, sir—enter!"
He led me by a shady alley into his orchard, and thence to a stable, where we left Rosinante at hob-a-nob with his mare over a friendly bottle of hay. And we ourselves passed into the house, and ascended a staircase into an upper chamber. This chamber was raftered, its walls hung with an obscure tapestry, its floor strewn with sand, and its lozenged casement partly shuttered against the blaze of sunshine that flowed across the forests far away to the west.
My friend eyed me brightly and busily as a starling. "You danced fine, sir," he said. "Oh! it is a pleasure to me. Ay, and now I come to consider it, methought I did hear hoofs behind me that might yet be echo. No, but I did not think: 'twas but my ear cried to his dreaming master. Ever dreaming; God help at last the awakening! But well met, well met, I say again. I am cheered. And you but just in time! Nay, I would not have missed him for a ransom. So—so—this leg, that leg; up now—hands over down we go! Lackaday, I am old bones for such freaks. Once!... 'Memento mori!' say I, and smell the shower the sweeter for it. Be seated, sir, bench or stool, wheresoever you'd be. You're looking peaked. That burden rings in my skull like a bagpipe. Toot-a-tootie, toot-a-toot! Och, sad days!"
We devoured our meal of cold meats and pickled fish, fruit and junket and a kind of harsh cheese, as if in contest for a wager. And copious was the thin spicy wine with which we swam it home. Ever and again my host would desist, to whistle, or croon (with a packed mouth) in the dismallest of tenors, a stave or two of the tune we had danced to, bobbing head and foot in sternest time. Then a great vacancy would overspread his face turned to the window, as suddenly to gather to a cheerful smile, and light, irradiated, once more on me. Then down would drop his chin over his plate, and away go finger and spoon among his victuals in a dance as brisk and whole-hearted as the other.
He took me out again into his garden after supper, and we walked beneath the trees.
"'Tis bliss to be a bachelor, sir," he said, gazing on the resinous trunk of an old damson tree. "I gorge, I guzzle; I am merry, am melancholy; studious, harmonical, drowsy,—and none to scold or deny me. For the rest, why, youth is vain: yet youth had pleasure—innocence and delight. I chew the cud of many a peaceful acre. Ay, I have nibbled roses in my time. But now, what now? I have lived so long far from courts and courtesy, grace and fashion, and am so much my own close and indifferent friend—Why! he is happy who has solitude for housemate, company for guest. I say it, I say it; I marry daily wives of memory's fashioning, and dream at peace."
It seemed an old bone he picked with Destiny.
"There's much to be said," I replied as profoundly as I could.
The air he now lulled youth asleep with was a very cheerless threnody, but he brightened once more at praise of his delightful orchard.
"You like it, sir? You speak kindly, sir. It is my all; root and branch: how many a summer's moons have I seen shine hereon! I know it—there is bliss to come;—miraculous Paradise for men even dull as I. Yet 'twill be strange to me—without my house and orchard. Age tends to earth, sir, till even an odour may awake the dead—a branch in the air call with its fluttering a face beyond Time to vanquish dear. 'Soul, soul,' I cry, 'forget thy dust, forget thy vaunting ashes!'—and speak in vain. So's life!"
And when we had gone in again, and candles had been lit in his fresh and narrow chamber, seeing a viol upon a chest, I begged a little music.
He quite eagerly, with a boyish peal of laughter, complied; and sat down with a very solemn face, his brows uplifted, and sang between the candles to a pathetic air this doggerel:—
"A dolesome thing," he said; "but my mother was wont to sing it to the virginals. 'Cold to bosom,'" he reiterated with a plangent cadence; "I remember them all, sir; from the cradle I had a gift for music." And then, with an ample flirt of his bow, he broke, all beams and smiles, into this ingenuous ditty:
And that finished with another burst of laughter, he set very adroitly to the mimicry of beasts and birds upon his frets. Never have I seen a face so consummately the action's. His every fibre answered to the call; his eyebrows twitched like an orator's; his very nose was plastic.
"Hst!" he cried softly; "hither struts chanticleer!" "Cock-a-diddle-doo!" crowed the wire. "Now, prithee, Dame Partlett!" and down bustled a hen from an egg like cinnamon. A cat with kittens mewed along the string, anxious and tender.
"A woodpecker," he cried, directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye on me. And lo, "inviolable quietness" and the smooth beech-boughs! "And thus," he said, sitting closer, "the martlets were wont to whimper about the walls of the castle of Inverness, the castle of Macbeth."
"Macbeth!" I repeated—"Macbeth!"
"Ay," he said, "it was his seat while yet a simple soldier—flocks and flocks of them, wheeling hither, thither, in the evening air, crying and calling."
I listened in a kind of confusion. "... And Duncan," I said....
He eyed me with immense pleasure, and nodded with brilliant eyes on mine.
"What looking man was he?" I said at last as carelessly as I dared. "... The King, you mean,—of Scotland."
He magnanimously ignored my confusion, and paused to build his sentence.
"'Duncan'?" he said. "The question calls him straight to mind. A lean-locked, womanish countenance; sickly, yet never sick; timid, yet most obdurate; more sly than politic. An ignis fatuus, sir, in a world of soldiers." His eye wandered.... "'Twas a marvellous sanative air, crisp and pure; but for him, one draught and outer darkness. I myself viewed his royal entry from the gallery—pacing urbane to slaughter; and I uttered a sigh to see him. 'Why, sir, do you sigh to see the king?' cried one softly that stood by. 'I sigh, my lord,' I answered to the instant, 'at sight of a monarch even Duncan's match!'"
He looked his wildest astonishment at me.
"Not, I'd have you remember—not that 'twas blood I did foresee.... To kill in blood a man, and he a king, so near to natural death ... foul, foul!"
"And Macbeth?" I said presently—"Macbeth...?"
He laid down his viol with prolonged care.
"His was a soul, sir, nobler than his fate. I followed him not without love from boyhood—a youth almost too fine of spirit; shrinking from all violence, over-nicely; eloquent, yet chary of speech, and of a dark profundity of thought. The questions he would patter!—unanswerable, searching earth and heaven through.... And who now was it told me the traitor Judas's hair was red?—yet not red his, but of a reddish chestnut, fine and bushy. Children have played their harmless hands at hide-and-seek therein. O sea of many winds!
"For come gloom on the hills, floods, discolouring mist; breathe but some grandam's tale of darkness and blood and doubleness in his hearing: all changed. Flame kindled; a fevered unrest drove him out; and Ambition, that spotted hound of hell, strained at the leash towards the Pit.
"So runs the world—the ardent and the lofty. We are beyond earth's story as 'tis told, sir. All's shallower than the heart of man.... Indeed, 'twas one more shattered altar to Hymen."
"'Hymen!'" I said.
He brooded long and silently, clipping his small beard. And while he was so brooding, a mouse, a moth, dust—I know not what, stirred the listening strings of his viol to sound, and woke him with a start.
"I vowed, sir, then, to dismiss all memory of such unhappy deeds from mind—never to speak again that broken lady's name. Oh! I have seen sad ends—pride abased, splendour dismantled, courage to terror come, guilt to a crying guilelessness."
"'Guilelessness?'" I said. "Lady Macbeth at least was past all changing."
The doctor stood up and cast a deep scrutiny on me, which yet, perhaps, was partly on himself.
"Perceive, sir," he said, "this table—broader, longer, splendidly burdened; and all adown both sides the board, thanes and their ladies, lords, and gentlemen, guests bidden to a royal banquet. 'Twas then in that bleak and dismal country—the Palace of Forres. Torches flared in the hall; to every man a servant or two: we sat in pomp."
He paused again, and gravely withdrew behind the tapestry.
"And presently," he cried therefrom, suiting his action to the word, "to the blast of hautboys enters the king in state thus, with his attendant lords. And with all that rich and familiar courtesy of which he was master in his easier moods he passed from one to another, greeting with supple dignity on his way, till he came at last softly to the place prepared for him at table. And suddenly—shall I ever forget, it, sir?—it seemed silence ran like a flame from mouth to mouth as there he stood, thus, marble-still, his eyes fixed in a leaden glare. And he raised his face and looked once round on us all with a forlorn astonishment and wrath, like one with a death-wound—I never saw the like of such a face.
"Whereat, beseeching us to be calm, and pay no heed, the queen laid her hand on his and called him. And his orbs rolled down once more upon the empty place, and stuck as if at grapple with some horror seen within. He muttered aloud in peevish altercation—once more to heave up his frame, to sigh and shake himself, and lo!—"
The viol-strings rang to his "lo!"
"Lo, sir, the Unseen had conquered. His lip sagged into his beard, he babbled with open mouth, and leaned on his lady with such an impotent and slavish regard as I hope never to see again man pay to woman.... We thought no more of supper after that....
"But what do I—?" The doctor laid a cautioning finger on his mouth.
"The company was dispersed, the palace gloomy with night (and they were black nights at Forres!), and on the walls I heard the sentinel's replying.... In the wood's last glow I entered and stood in his self-same station before the empty stool. And even as I stood thus, my hair creeping, my will concentred, gazing with every cord at stretch, fell a light, light footfall behind me." He glanced whitely over his shoulder.
"Sir, it was the queen come softly out of slumber on my own unquiet errand."
The doctor strode to the door, and peered out like a man suspicious or guilty of treachery. It was indeed a house of broken silences. And there, in the doorway, he seemed to be addressing his own saddened conscience.
"With all my skill, and all a leal man's gentleness, I solaced and persuaded, and made an oath, and conducted her back to her own chamber unperceived. How weak is sleep!... It was a habit, sir, contracted in childhood, long dormant, that Evil had woke again. The Past awaits us all. So run Time's sands, till mercy's globe is empty and ..."
He stooped and whispered it across to me: "... A child, a comparative child, shrunk to an anatomy, her beauty changed, ghostly of youth and all its sadness, baffled by a word, slave to a doctor's nod! None knew but I, and, at the last, one of her ladies—a gentle, faithful, and fearful creature. Nor she till far beyond all mischief....
"Wild deeds are done. But to have blood on the hands, a cry in the ears, and one same glassy face eye to eye, that nothing can dim, nor even slumber pacify—dreams, dreams, intangible, enorm! Forefend them, God, from me!"
He stood a moment as if he were listening; then turned, smiling irresolutely, and eyed me aimlessly. He seemed afraid of his own house, askance at his own furniture. Yet, though I scarce know why, I felt he had not told me the whole truth. Something fidelity had yet withheld from vanity. I longed to enquire further. I put aside how many burning questions awhile!
By and by less anxious talk soothed him. Indeed it was he who suggested one last bright draught of air beneath his trees before retiring. Down we went again with some unnecessary clatter. And here were stars between the fruited boughs, silvery Capella and the Twins, and low on the sky's moonlit border Venus excellently bright.
He asked me whither I proposed going, if I needs must go; besought there and then in the ambrosial night-air the history of my wanderings—a mere nine days' wonder; and told me how he himself much feared and hated the sea.
He questioned me also with not a little subtilty (and double-dealing too, I fancied,) regarding my own country, and of things present, and things real. In fact nothing, I think, so much flattered his vanity—unless it was my wonder at Dame Partlett's clucking on his viol-strings—as to learn himself was famous even so far as to ages yet unborn. He gazed on the simple moon with limpid, amiable eyes, and caught my fingers in his.
How, then, could I even so much as hint to enquire which century indeed was his, who had no need of any? How could I abash that kindly vanity of his by adding also that, however famous, he must needs be to all eternity—nameless?
We conversed long and earnestly in the coolness. He very frankly counselled me not to venture unconducted further into this country. The land of Tragedy was broad. And though on this side it lay adjacent to the naïve and civil people of Comedy; on the further, in the shadow of those bleak, unfooted mountains, lurked unnatural horror and desolation, and cruelty beyond all telling.
He very kindly offered me too, if I was indeed bent on seeking the sea, an old boat, still seaworthy, that lay in a creek in the river near by, from which he was wont to fish. As for Rosinante, he supposed a rest would be by no means unwelcome to so faithful a friend. He himself rode little, being indolent, and a happier host than guest; and when I returned here, she should be stuffed with dainties awaiting me.
To this I cordially and gratefully agreed; and also even more cordially to remain with him the next day; and the next night after that to take my watery departure.
So it was. And a courteous, versatile, and vivacious companion I found him. Rare tales he told me, too, of better days than these, and rarest of his own never-more-returning youth. He loved his childhood, talked on of it with an artless zeal, his eyes a nest of singing-birds. How contrite he was for spirit lost, and daring withheld, and hope discomfited! How simple and urbane concerning his present lowly demands on life, on love, and on futurity! All this, too, with such packed winks and mirth and mourning, that I truly said good-night for the second time to him with a rather melancholy warmth, since to-morrow ... who can face unmoved that viewless sphinx? Moreover, the sea is wide, has fishes in plenty, but never too many coraled grottoes once poor mariners.
On the stroke of two next morning the doctor conducted me down to the creek in the river-bank where he kept his boat. There was little light but of the stars in the sky; nothing stirring. She floated dim and monstrous on the softly-running water, a navy in germ, and could have sat without danger thirty men like me. We stood on the bank, side by side, eyeing her vacancy. And (I can answer for myself) night-thoughts rose up in us at sight of her. Was it indeed only wind in the reeds that sighed around us? only the restless water insistently whispering and calling? only of darkness were these forbidding shadows?
I looked up sharply at the doctor from such pensive embroidery, and found him as far away as I. He nodded and smiled, and we shook hands on the bank in the thick mist.
"There's biscuits and a little meat, wine, and fruit," he said in an undertone. "God be with you, sir! I sadly mistrust the future. ... 'Tis ever my way, at parting."
We said good-bye again, to the dream-cry of some little fluttering creature of the rushes. And well before dawn I was floating midstream, my friend a memory, Rosinante in clover, and my travels, so far as this brief narrative will tell, nearly ended.
I saw nothing but a few long-haired, grazing cattle on my voyage, that eyed me but cursorily. I passed unmolested among the waterfowl, between the never-silent rushes, beneath a sky refreshed and sweetened with storm. The boat was enormously heavy and made slow progress. When too the tide began to flow I must needs push close in to the bank and await the ebb. But towards evening of the third day I began to approach the sea.
I listened to the wailing of its long-winged gulls; snuffed with how broad-nostrilled a gusto that savour not even pinewoods can match, nor any wild flower disguise; and heard at last the sound that stirs beneath all music—the deep's loud-falling billow.
I pushed ashore, climbed the sandy bank, and moored my boat to an ash tree at the waterside. And after scrambling some little distance over dunes yet warm with the sun, I came out at length, and stood like a Greek before the sea.
Here my bright river disembogued in noise and foam. Far to either side of me stretched the faint gold horns of a bay; and beyond me, almost violet in the shadow of its waves, the shipless sea.
I looked on the breaking water with a divided heart. Its light, salt airs, its solitary beauty, its illimitable reaches seemed tidings of a region I could remember only as one who, remembering that he has dreamed, remembers nothing more. Larks rose, singing, behind me. In a calm, golden light my eager river quarrelled with its peace. Here indeed was solitude!
It was in searching sea and cliff for the least sign of life that I thought I descried on the furthest extremity of the nearer of the horns of the bay the spires and smouldering domes of a little city. If I gazed intently, they seemed to vanish away, yet still to shine above the azure if, raising my eyes, I looked again.
So, caring not how far I must go so long as my path lay beside these breaking waters, I set out on the firm, white sands to prove this city the mirage I deemed it.
What wonder, then, my senses fell asleep in that vast lullaby! And out of a daydream almost as deep as that in which I first set out, I was suddenly aroused by a light tapping sound, distinct and regular between the roaring breakers.
I lifted my eyes to find the city I was seeking evanished away indeed. But nearer at hand a child was playing upon the beach, whose spade among the pebbles had caused the birdlike noise I had heard.
So engrossed was she with her building in the sand that she had not heard me approaching. She laboured on at the margin of the cliff's shadow where the sea-birds cried, answering Echo in the rocks. So solitary and yet so intent, so sedate and yet so eager a little figure she seemed in the long motionlessness of the shore, by the dark heedlessness of the sea, I hesitated to disturb her.
Who of all Time's children could this be playing uncompanioned by the sea? And at a little distance betwixt me and her in the softly-mounded sand her spade had already scrawled in large, ungainly capitals, the answer—"Annabel Lee." The little flounced black frock, the tresses of black hair, the small, beautiful dark face—this then was Annabel Lee; and that bright, phantom city I had seen—that was the vanishing mockery of her kingdom.
I called her from where I stood—"Annabel Lee!" She lifted her head and shook back her hair, and gazed at me startled and intent. I went nearer.
"You are a very lonely little girl," I said.
"I am building in the sand," she answered.
"A castle?"
She shook her head.
"It was in dreams," she said, flushing darkly.
"What kind of dream was it in then?"
"Oh! I often dream it; and I build it in the sand. But there's never time: the sea comes back."
"Was the tide quite high when you began?" I asked; for now it was low.
"Just that much from the stones," she said; "I waited for it ever so long."
"It has a long way to come yet," I said; "you will finish it this time, I dare say."
She shook her head and lifted her spade.
"Oh no; it is much bigger, more than twice. And I haven't the seaweed, or the shells, and it comes back very, very quickly."
"But where is the little boy you play with down here by the sea?"
She glanced at me swiftly and surely; and shook her head again.
"He would help you."
"He didn't in my dream," she said doubtfully. She raised long, stealthy eyes to mine, and spoke softly and deliberately. "Besides, there isn't any little boy."
"None, Annabel Lee?" I said.
"Why," she answered, "I have played here years and years and years, and there are only the gulls and terns and cormorants, and that!" She pointed with her spade towards the broken water.
"You know all their names then?" I said.
"Some I know," she answered with a little frown, and looked far out to sea. Then, turning her eyes, she gazed long at me, searchingly, forlornly on a stranger. "I am going home now," she said.
I looked at the house of sand and smiled. But she shook her head once more.
"It never could be finished," she said firmly, "though I tried and tried, unless the sea would keep quite still just once all day, without going to and fro. And then," she added with a flash of anger—"then I would not build."
"Well," said I, "when it is nearly finished, and the water washes up, and up, and washes it away, here is a flower that came from Fairyland. And that, dear heart, is none so far away."
She took the purple flower I had plucked in Ennui's garden in her slim, cold hand.
"It's amaranth," she said; and I have never seen so old a little look in a child's eyes.
"And all the flowers' names too?" I said.
She frowned again. "It's amaranth," she said, and ran off lightly and so deftly among the rocks and in the shadow that was advancing now even upon the foam of the sea, that she had vanished before I had time to deter, or to pursue her. I sought her awhile, until the dark rack of sunset obscured the light, and the sea's voice changed; then I desisted.
It was useless to remain longer beneath the looming caves, among the stones of so inhospitable a shore. I was a stranger to the tides. And it was clear high-water would submerge the narrow sands whereon I stood.
Yet I cannot describe how loth I was to leave to night's desolation the shapeless house of a child. What fate was this that had set her to such profitless labour on the uttermost shores of "Tragedy"? What history lay behind, past, or, as it were, never to come? What gladness too high for earth had nearly once been hers? Her sea-mound took strange shapes in the gloom—light foliage of stone, dark heaviness of granite, wherein rumour played of all that restless rustling; small cries, vast murmurings from those green meadows, old as night.
I turned, even ran away, at last. I found my boat in the gloaming where I had left her, safe and sound, except that all the doctor's good things had been nosed and tumbled by some hungry beast in my absence. I stood and thought vacantly of Crusoe, and pig, and guns. But what use to delay? I got in.
If it were true, as the excellent doctor had informed me, that seamen reported islands not far distant from these shores, chance might bear me blissfully to one of these. And if not true ... I turned a rather startled face to the water, and made haste not to think. Fortune pierces deep, and baits her hooks with sceptics. Away I went, bobbing mightily over the waves that leapt and wrestled where sea and river met. These safely navigated, I rowed the great creature straight forward across the sea, my face towards dwindling land, my prow to Scorpio.
The constellations of summer wheeled above me; and thus between water and starry sky I tossed solitary in my boat. The faint lustre of the sultry night hung like a mist from heaven to earth. Far away above the countries I had left perhaps for ever, the quiet lightnings played innocently in the heights.
I rowed steadily on, guiding myself by some much ruddier star on the horizon. The pale phosphorescence on the wave, the simple sounds as of fish stirring in the water—the beauty and wonder of Night's dwelling-place seemed beyond content of mortality.
I leaned on my oars in the midst of the deep sea, and seemed to hear, as it were, the mighty shout of Space. Faint and enormous beams of light trembled through the sky. And once I surprised a shadow as of wings sweeping darkly across, star on to glittering star, shaking the air, stilling the sea with the cold dews of night.
So rowing, so resting, I passed the mark of midnight. Weariness began to steal over me. Between sleep and wake I heard strange cries across the deep. The thin silver of the old moon ebbed into the east. A chill mist welled out of the water and shrouded me in faintest gloom. Wherefore, battling no more against such influences, I shipped my oars, made my prayer in the midst of this dark womb of Life, and screening myself as best I could from the airs that soon would be moving before dawn, I lay down in the bottom of the boat and fell asleep.
I slept apparently without dream, and woke as it seemed to the sound of voices singing some old music of the sea. A scent of a fragrance unknown to me was eddying in the wind. I raised my head, and saw with eyes half-dazed with light an island of cypress and poplar, green and still above the pure glass of its encircling waters. Straight before me, beyond green-bearded rocks dripping with foam, a little stone house, or temple, with columns and balconies of marble, stood hushed upon the cliff by the waterside.
All now was soundless. They that sang, whether Nereids or Sirens, had descended to dimmer courts. The seamews floated on the water; the white dove strutted on the ledge; only the nightingales sang on in the thick arbours.
I pushed my boat between the rocks towards the island. Bright and burning though the beams of the sun were, here seemed everlasting shadow. And though at my gradual intrusion, at splash or grating of keel, the startled cormorant cried in the air, and with one cry woke many, yet here too seemed perpetual stillness.
How could I know what eyes might not be regarding me from bowers as thick and secluded as these? Yet this seemed an isle in some vague fashion familiar to me. To these same watery steps of stone, to this same mooring-ring surely I had voyaged before in dream or other life? I glanced into the water and saw my own fantastic image beneath the reflected gloom of cypresses, and knew at least, though I a shadow might be, this also was an island in a sea of shadows. Far from all land its marbles might be reared, yet they were warm to my touch, and these were nightingales, and those strutting doves beneath the little arches.
So very gradually, and glancing to and fro into these unstirring groves, I came presently to the entrance court of the solitary villa on the cliff-side. Here a thread-like fountain plashed in its basin, the one thing astir in this cool retreat. Here, too, grew orange trees, with their unripe fruit upon them.
But I continued, and venturing out upon the terrace overlooking the sea, saw again with a kind of astonishment the doctor's green, unwieldy boat beneath me and the emerald of the nearer waters tossing above the yellow sands.
Here I had sat awhile lost in ease when I heard a footstep approaching and the rhythmical rustling of drapery, and knew eyes were now regarding me that I feared, yet much desired to meet.
"Oh me!" said a clear yet almost languid voice. "How comes any man so softly?"
Turning, I looked in the face of one how long a shade!
I strove in vain to hide my confusion. This lady only smiled the deeper out of her baffling eyes.
"If you could guess," she said presently, "how my heart leapt in me, as if, poor creature, any oars of earth could bring it ease, you would think me indeed as desolate as I am. To hear the bird scream, Traveller! I hastened from the gardens as if the black ships of the Greeks were come to take me. But such is long ago. Tell me, now, is the world yet harsh with men and sad with women? Burns yet that madness mirth calls Life? or truly does the puny, busy-tongued race sleep at last, nodding no more at me?"
I told as best I could how chance had fetched me; told, too, that earth was yet pestered with men, and heavenly with women. "And the madness mirth calls Life flickers yet," I said; "and the little race tosses on in nightmare."
"Ah!" she replied, "so ever run travellers' tales. I too once trusted to seem indifferent. But you, if shadow deceives me not, may yet return: I, only to the shades whence earth draws me. Meanwhile," she said, looking softly at the fountain playing in the clear gloom beyond, "rest and grow weary again, for there flock more questions to my tongue than spines on the blackthorn. The gardens are green with flowers, Traveller; let us talk where rosemary blows."
Following her, I thought of the mysterious beauty of her eyes, her pallor, her slimness, and that faint smile which hovered between ecstasy and indifference, and away went my mind to one whom the shrewdest and tenderest of my own countrymen called once Criseyde.
She led me into a garden all of faint-hued flowers. There bloomed no scarlet here, nor blue, nor yellow; but white and lavender and purest purple. Here, also, like torches of the sun, stood poplars each by each in the windless air, and the impenetrable darkness of cypresses beneath them.
Here too was a fountain whose waters leapt no more, mossy and time-worn. I could not but think of those other gardens of my journey—Jane's, Ennui's, Dianeme's; and yet none like this for the shingley murmur of the sea, and the calmness of morning.
"But, surely," I said, "this must be very far from Troy."
"Far indeed," she said.
"Far also from the hollow ships."
"Far also from the hollow ships," she replied.
"Yet," said I, "in the country whence I come is a saying: Where the treasure is—"
"Alack! there gloats the miser!" said Criseyde; "but I, Traveller, have no treasure, only a patchwork memory, and that's a great grief."
"Well, then, forget! Why try in vain?" I said.
She smiled and seated herself, leaning a little forward, looking upon the ground.
"Soothfastness must,"' she said very gravely, raising her long black eyebrows; "yet truly it must be a forlorn thing to be remembered by one who so lightly forgets. So then I say, to teach myself to be true—'Look now, Criseyde, yonder fine, many-hearted poplar—that is Paris; and all that bank of marriage-ivy—that is marriageable Helen, green and cold; and the waterless fountain—that truly is Diomed; and the faded flower that nods in shadow, why, that must be me, even me, Criseyde!'"
"And this thick rosemary-bush that smells of exile, who, then, is that?" I said.
She looked deep into the shadow of the cypresses. "That," she said, "I think I have forgot again."
"But," I said, "Diomed, now, was he quite so silent—not one trickle of persuasion?"
"Why," she said, "I think 'twas the fountain was Diomed: I know not. And as for persuasion; he was a man forked, vain, and absolute as all. Let the waterless stone be sudden Diomed—you will confuse my wits, Mariner; where, then, were I?" She smiled, stooping lower. "You have voyaged far?" she said.
"From childhood to this side regret," I answered rather sadly.
"'Tis a sad end to a sweet tale," she said, "were it but truly told. But yet, and yet, and yet—you may return, and life heals every, every wound. I must look on the ground and make amends. 'Tis this same making amends men now call 'Purgatory,' they tell me."
"'Amends,'" I said; "to whom? for what?"
"Welaway," said she, with a narrow fork between her brows; "to most men and to all women, for being that Criseyde." She gazed half solemnly at some picture of reverie.
"But which Criseyde?" I said. "She who was every wind's, or but one perfect summer's?"
She glanced strangely at me. "Ask of the night that burns so many stars," she said. "All's done; all passes. Yet my poor busy Uncle Pandar had no such changes, nor Hector, nor ... Men change not: they love and love again—one same tune of a myriad verses."
"All?" I said.
She tossed lightly a little dust from her hand.
"Nay—all," she replied; "but what is that to me? Mine only to see Charon on the wave pass light over and return. Man of the green world, prithee die not yet awhile! 'Tis dull being a shade. See these cold palms! Yet my heart beats on."
"For what?" I said.
Criseyde folded her hands and leaned her cheek sidelong upon the stone.
"For what?" I repeated.
"For what but idle questions?" she said; "for a traveller's vanity that deems looking love-boys into a woman's eyes her sweeter entertainment than all the heroes of Troy. Oh, for a house of nought to be at peace in! Oh, gooseish swan! Oh, brittle vows! Tell me, Voyager, is it not so?—that men are merely angry boys with beards; and women—repeat not, ye who know! Never yet set I these steadfast eyes on a man that would not steal the moon for taper—would she but come down." She turned an arch face to me: "And what is to be faithful?"
"I?" said I—"'to be faithful?'"
"It is," she said, "to rise and never set, O sun of utter weariness! It is to kindle and never be quenched, O fretting fire of midsummer! It is to be snared and always sing, O shrilling bird of dulness! It is to come, not go; smile, not sigh; wake, never sleep. Couldst thou love so many nots to a silk string?"
"What, then, is to change,... to be fickle?" I said.
"Ah! to be fickle," she said, "is showers after drought, seas after sand; to cry, unechoed; to be thirsty, the pitcher broken. And—ask now this pitiless darkness of the eyes!—to be remembered though Lethe flows between. Nay, you shall watch even hope away ere another comes like me to mope and sigh, and play at swords with Memory."
She rose to her feet and drew her hands across her face, and smiling, sighed deeply. And I saw how inscrutable and lovely she must ever seem to eyes scornful of mean men's idolatries.
"And you will embark again," she said softly; "and in how small a ship on seas so mighty! And whither next will fate entice you, to what new sorrows?"
"Who knows?" I said. "And to what further peace?"
She laughed lightly. "Speak not of mockeries," she said, and fell silent.
She seemed to be thinking quickly and deeply; for even though I did not turn to her, I could see in imagination the restless sparkling of her eyes, the stillness of her ringless hands. Then suddenly she turned.
"Stranger," she said, drawing her finger softly along the cold stone of the bench, "there yet remain a few bright hours to morning. Who knows, seeing that felicity is with the bold, did I cast off into the sea—who knows whereto I'd come! 'Tis but a little way to being happy—a touch of the hand, a lifting of the brows, a shuddering silence. Had I but man's courage! Yet this is a solitary place, and the gods are revengeful."
I cannot say how artlessly ran that voice in this still garden, by some strange power persuading me on, turning all doubt aside, calming all suspicion.
"There is honeycomb here, and the fruit is plenteous. Yes," she said, "and all travellers are violent men—catch and kill meat—that I know, however doleful. 'Tis but a little sigh from day to day in these cool gardens; and rest is welcome when the heart pines not. Listen, now; I will go down and you shall show me—did one have the wit to learn, and courage to remember—show me how sails your wonderful little ship; tell me, too, where on the sea's horizon to one in exile earth lies, with all its pleasant things—yet thinks so bitterly of a woman!"
"Tell me," I said; "tell me but one thing of a thousand. Whom would you seek, did a traveller direct you, and a boat were at your need?"
She looked at me, pondering, weaving her webs about me, lulling doubt, and banishing fear.
"One could not miss—a hero!" she said, flaming.
"That, then, shall be our bargain," I replied with wrath at my own folly. "Tell me this precious hero's name, and though all the dogs of the underworld come to course me, you shall take my boat, and leave me here—only this hero's name, a pedlar's bargain!"
She lowered her lids. "It must be Diomed," she said with the least sigh.
"It must be," I said.
"Nay, then, Antenor, or truly Thersites," she said happily, "the silver-tongued!"
"Good-bye, then," I said.
"Good-bye," she replied very gently. "Why, how could there be a vow between us? I go, and return. You await me—me, Criseyde, Traveller, the lonely-hearted. That is the little all, O much-surrendering Stranger! Would that long-ago were now—before all chaffering!"
Again a thousand questions rose to my tongue. She looked sidelong at the dry fountain, and one and all fell silent.
"It is harsh, endless labour beneath the burning sun; storms and whirlwinds go about the sea, and the deep heaves with monsters."
"Oh, sweet danger!" she said, mocking me.
I turned from her without a word, like an angry child, and made my way to the steps into the sea, pulled round my boat into a little haven beside them, and shewed her oars and tackle and tiller; all the toil, and peril, the wild chances."
"Why," she cried, while I was yet full of the theme, "I will go then at once, and to-morrow Troy will come."
I looked long at her in silence; her slim beauty, the answerless riddle of her eyes, the age-long subtilty of her mouth, and gave no more thought to all life else.
Day was already waning. I filled the water-keg with fresh water, put fruit and honeycomb and a pillow of leaves into the boat, proffered a trembling hand, and led her down.
The sun's beams slanted on the foamless sea, glowed in a flame of crimson on marble and rock and cypress. The birds sang endlessly on of evening, endlessly, too, it seemed to me, of dangers my heart had no surmise of.
Criseyde turned from the dark green waves. "Truly, it is a solitary country; pathless," she said, "to one unpiloted;" and stood listening to the hollow voices of the water. And suddenly, as if at the consummation of her thoughts, she lifted her eyes on me, darkly, with unimaginable entreaty.
"What do you seek else?" I cried in a voice I scarcely recognised. "Oh, you speak in riddles!"
I sprang into the boat and seized the heavy oars. Something like laughter, or, as it were, the clapper of a scarer of birds, echoed among the rocks at the rattling of the rowlocks. As if invisible hands withdrew it from me, the island floated back.
I turned my prow towards the last splendour of the sun. A chill breeze played over the sea: a shadow crossed my eyes.
Buoyant was my boat; how light her cargo!—an oozing honeycomb, ashy fruits, a few branches of drooping leaves, closing flowers; and solitary on the thwart the wraith of life's unquiet dream.
So fell night once more, and made all dim. And only the cold light of the firmament lit thoughts in me restless as the sea on which I tossed, whose moon was dark, yet walked in heaven beneath the distant stars.