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Page 27
There had been nothing quite like this before, and I suddenly became
aware that Amroth was beside me, and that he had a look of anger in his
face. "You had better not look at this," he said to me; "it might not be
very helpful, as they say."
"Am I to come with you?" I said. "That is well--but I should like to say
a word to one or two of my friends here."
"No, not a word!" said Amroth quickly. He looked at me with a curious
look, in which he seemed to be measuring my strength and courage. "Yes,
that will do!" he added. "Come at once--don't be surprised--it will be
different from what you expect."
He took me by the arm, and we hurried from the place; one or two of the
people who stood by looked at us in lazy wonder. We walked in silence
down a long alley, to a great gate that I had often passed in my
strolls. It was a barred iron gate, of a very stately air, with high
stone gateposts. I had never been able to find my outward way to this,
and there was a view from it of enchanting beauty, blue distant woods
and rolling slopes. Amroth came quickly to the gate, seemed to unlock
it, and held it open for me to pass. "One word," he said with his most
beautiful smile, his eyes flashing and kindling with some secret
emotion, "whatever happens, do not be _afraid_! There is nothing
whatever to fear, only be prepared and wait." He motioned me through,
and I heard him close the gate behind me.
XVII
I was alone in an instant, and in terrible pain--pain not in any part of
me, but all around and within me. A cold wind of a piercing bitterness
seemed to blow upon me; but with it came a sense of immense energy and
strength, so that the pain became suddenly delightful, like the
stretching of a stiffened limb. I cannot put the pain into exact words.
It was not attended by any horror; it seemed a sense of infinite grief
and loss and loneliness, a deep yearning to be delivered and made free.
I felt suddenly as though everything I loved had gone from me,
irretrievably gone and lost. I looked round me, and I could discern
through a mist the bases of some black and sinister rocks, that towered
up intolerably above me; in between them were channels full of stones
and drifted snow. Anything more stupendous than those black-ribbed
crags, those toppling precipices, I had never seen. The wind howled
among them, and sometimes there was a noise of rocks cast down. I knew
in some obscure way that my path lay there, and my heart absolutely
failed me. Instead of going straight to the rocks, I began to creep
along the base to see whether I could find some easier track. Suddenly
the voice of Amroth said, rather sharply, in my ear, "Don't be silly!"
This homely direction, so peremptorily made, had an instantaneous
effect. If he had said, "Be not faithless," or anything in the copybook
manner, I should have sat down and resigned myself to solemn despair.
But now I felt a fool and a coward as well.
So I addressed myself, like a dog who hears the crack of a whip, to the
rocks.
It would be tedious to relate how I clambered and stumbled and agonised.
There did not seem to me the slightest use in making the attempt, or the
smallest hope of reaching the top, or the least expectation of finding
anything worth finding. I hated everything I had ever seen or known;
recollections of old lives and of the quiet garden I had left came upon
me with a sort of mental nausea. This was very different from the
amiable and easy-going treatment I had expected. Yet I did struggle on,
with a hideous faintness and weariness--but would it never stop? It
seemed like years to me, my hands frozen and wetted by snow and dripping
water, my feet bruised and wounded by sharp stones, my garments
strangely torn and rent, with stains of blood showing through in places.
Still the hideous business continued, but progress was never quite
impossible. At one place I found the rocks wholly impassable, and
choosing the broader of two ledges which ran left and right, I worked
out along the cliff, only to find that the ledge ran into the
precipices, and I had to retrace my steps, if the shuffling motions I
made could be so called. Then I took the harder of the two, which
zigzagged backwards and forwards across the rocks. At one place I saw a
thing which moved me very strangely. This was a heap of bones, green,
slimy, and ill-smelling, with some tattered rags of cloth about them,
which lay in a heap beneath a precipice. The thought that a man could
fall and be killed in such a place moved me with a fresh misery. What
that meant I could not tell. Were we not away from such things as
mouldering flesh and broken bones? It seemed not; and I climbed madly
away from them. Quite suddenly I came to the top, a bleak platform of
rock, where I fell prostrate on my face and groaned.
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