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Page 5
On I went, heedless, curious, marvelling; my only desire to press
forward to the goal whereto destiny was directing me. I suppose after
this we had journeyed about an hour, and the risen sun was on the
extreme verge of the gilded horizon, when I espied betwixt me and the
deep woods that lay in the distance a little child walking.
She, at any rate, was not a stranger to this moorland. Indeed,
something in her carriage, in the grey cloak she wore, in her light,
insistent step, in the old lantern she carried, in the shrill little
song she or the wind seemed singing, for a moment half impelled me to
turn aside. Even Rosinante pricked forward her ears, and stooped her
gentle face to view more closely this light traveller. And she pawed
the ground with her great shoe, and gnawed her bit when I drew rein
and leaned forward in the saddle to speak to the child.
"Is there any path here, little girl, that I may follow?" I said.
"No path at all," she answered.
"But how then do strangers find their way across the moor?" I said.
She debated with herself a moment. "Some by the stars, and some by the
moon," she answered.
"By the moon!" I cried. "But at day, what then?"
"Oh, then, sir," she said, "they can see."
I could not help laughing at her demure little answers. "Why!" I
exclaimed, "what a worldly little woman! And what is your name?"
"They call me Lucy Gray," she said, looking up into my face. I think
my heart almost ceased to beat.
"Lucy Gray!" I repeated.
"Yes," she said most seriously, as if to herself, "in all this snow."
"'Snow,'" I said--"this is dewdrops shining, not snow."
She looked at me without flinching. "How else can mother see how I am
lost?" she said.
"Why!" said I, "how else?" not knowing how to reach her bright belief.
"And what are those thick woods called over there?"
She shook her head. "There is no name," she said.
"But you have a name--Lucy Gray; and you started out--do you
remember?--one winter's day at dusk, and wandered on and on, on and
on, the snow falling in the dark, till--Do you remember?"
She stood quite still, her small, serious face full to the east,
striving with far-off dreams. And a merry little smile passed over her
lips. "That will be a long time since," she said, "and I must be off
home." And as if it had been but an apparition of my eyes that had
beset and deluded me, she was gone; and I found myself sitting astride
in the full brightness of the sun's first beams, alone.
What omen was this, then, that I should meet first a phantom on my
journey? One thing only was clear: Rosinante could trust to her five
wits better than I to mine. So leaving her to take what way she
pleased, I rode on, till at length we approached the woods I had
descried. Presently we were jogging gently down into a deep and misty
valley flanked by bracken and pines, from which issued into the crisp
air of morning a most delicious aromatic smell, that seemed at least
to prove this valley not far remote from Araby.
I do not think I was disturbed, though I confess to having been a
little amazed to see how profound this valley was into which we were
descending, yet how swiftly climbed the sun, as if to pace with us so
that we should not be in shadow, howsoever fast we journeyed. I was
astonished to see flowers of other seasons than summer by the wayside,
and to hear in June, for no other month could bear such green
abundance, the thrush sing with a February voice. Here too, almost at
my right hand, perched a score or more of robins, bright-dyed,
warbling elvishly in chorus as if the may-boughs whereon they sat were
white with hoarfrost and not buds. Birds also unknown to me in voice
and feather I saw, and little creatures in fur, timid yet not wild;
fruits, even, dangled from the trees, as if, like the bramble, blossom
and seed could live here together and prosper.
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