|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 18
I replied that I had read the ever-lovely story of Sleeping Beauty,
indeed knew it by heart, and assured him modestly that I had not the
least doubt of a happy ending--"that is, if the author be the least
authority."
He narrowed his lids. "It is a tradition," he replied; "meanwhile, the
thickets broaden."
Whereupon I begged him to explain how it chanced that among that
festive and animated company I had read of, he alone had resisted the
wicked godmother's spell.
He smiled distantly, and bowed me into the garden.
"That is a simple thing," he said.
Yet for the life of me I could not but doubt all he told me. He who
could pass spring on to spring, summer on to summer, in the company of
beasts so sly and silent, so alert and fleet as these hounds of his,
could not be quite the amiable prince he feigned to be. I began to
wish myself in homelier places.
It seems that on the morning of the fatal spindle, he had gone
coursing, with this Safte and Sallow and his horse named "Twilight,"
and after wearying and heating himself at the sport, a little after
noon, leaving his attendants, had set out to return to the palace
alone. But allured by the cool seclusion of a "lattice-arbour" in his
path, he had gone in, and then and there, "Twilight" beneath the
willows, his hounds at his feet, had fallen asleep.
Undisturbed, dreamless, "the unseemly hours sped light of foot." He
awoke again, between sunset and dark; the owl astir; "the silver gnats
yet netting the shadows," and so returned to the palace.
But the spell had fallen--king and courtier, queen and lady and page
and scullion, hawk and hound, slept a sleep past waking--"while I,
roamed and roam yet in a solitary watch beyond all sleeping.
Wherefore, sir, I only of the most hospitable house in these lands am
awake to bid you welcome. But as for that, a few dwindling and harsh
fruits in my orchards, and the cold river water that my dogs lap with
me, are all that is left to offer you. For I who never sleep am never
hungry, and they who never wake--I presume--never thirst. Would, sir,
it were otherwise! After such long silence, then, conceive how
strangely falls your voice on ears that have heard only wings
fluttering, dismal water-songs, and the yelp and quarrel and
night-voice of unseen hosts in the forests."
He glanced at me with a mild austerity and again lowered his eyes. I
cannot now but wonder how the rhythm of a voice so soft, so
monotonous, could give such pleasure to the ear. I almost doubted my
own eyes when I looked upon his yellow, on that unmoved, sad, mad,
pale face.
I had no doubt of his dogs, however, and walked scarcely at ease
beside him, while they, shadow-footed, closely followed us at heel.
"Prince Ennui" conducted me with shining lantern into a dense orchard
thickly under-grown, marvellously green, with a small, hard fruit upon
its branches, shaped like a medlar, of a crisp, sweet odour and,
despite its hardness, a delicious taste. The interwoven twigs of the
stooping trees were thickly nested; a veritable wilderness of moonlike
and starry flowers ran all to seed amid the nettles and nightshade of
this green silence. And while I ate--for I was hungry enough--Prince
Ennui stood, his hand on Sallow's muzzle, lightly thridding the dusky
labyrinths of the orchard with his faint green eyes.
Mine, too, were not less busy, but rather with its lord than with his
orchard. And the strange thought entered my mind, Was he in very deed
the incarnation of this solitude, this silence, this lawless
abundance? Somewhere, in the green heats of summer, had he come forth,
taken shape, exalted himself? What but vegetable ichor coursed through
veins transparent as his? What but the swarming mysteries of these
thick woods lurked in his brain? As for his hounds, theirs was the
same stealth, the same symmetry, the same cold, secret unhumanity as
his. Creatures begotten of moonlight on silence they seemed to me,
with instincts past my workaday wits to conceive.
And Rosinante! I laughed softly to think of her staid bones beside the
phantom creature this prince had called up to me at mention of
"Twilight."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|