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Page 17
"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.
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