Henry Brocken by Walter J. de la Mare

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HENRY BROCKEN

With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander:
With a burning spear,
And a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander;

With a Knight of ghosts and shadows,
I summoned am to Tourney:
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world's end;
Methinks it is no journey.

--ANON. (_Tom o' Bedlam_).

HENRY BROCKEN

His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable
Regions of Romance

by

WALTER J. DE LA MARE

("WALTER RAMAL")

London
John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.

1904

CONTENTS

I. WHITHER?

Come hither, come hither, come hither!

--SHAKESPEARE.

II. LUCY GRAY

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray;
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.

--WORDSWORTH.

III. JANE EYRE

I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams ... where
amidst unusual scenes ... I still again and again met Mr.
Rochester;... and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his
voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving him,
being loved by him--the hope of passing a lifetime at his side,
would be renewed, with all its first force and fire.

--CHARLOTTE BRONTE (_Jane Eyre_, Ch. xxxii.).

IV. JULIA, ELECTRA, DIANEME

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

ANTHEA--

Now is the time when all the lights wax dim,
And thou, Anthea, must withdraw from him
Who was thy servant. Dearest, bury me
Under the holy-oak or gospel tree;...
Or, for mine honour, lay me in that tomb
In which thy sacred relics shall have room:
For my embalming, sweetest, there will be
No spices wanting when I'm laid by thee.

--HERRICK (_Hesperides_).

V. NICK BOTTOM 43

BOT. A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find out
moonshine, find out moonshine.

--_A Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act III., Sc. i.

VI. SLEEPING BEAUTY

VII. & VIII. LEMUEL GULLIVER

I must freely confess that since my last return some corruptions
of my Yahoo nature have revived in me, by conversing with a few of
your species, and particularly those of my own family, by an
unavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so
absurd a project as that of reforming the Yahoo race in this
kingdom: but I have done with all such visionary schemes for
ever.--_Gulliver's Letter to his Cousin._

The first money I laid out was to buy two young stone horses,
which I kept in a good stable, and next to them the groom is my
greatest favourite; for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he
contracts in the stable.

--SWIFT (_A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms_, Ch. xi.).

IX. & X. MISTRUST, OBSTINATE, LIAR, ETC.

And as he read he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to
contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, "What shall I
do?"...

The neighbours also came out to see him run; and as he ran, some
mocked, others threatened, and some cried after him to return.

ATHEIST--

Now, after awhile, they perceived afar off, one coming softly and
alone, all along the highway, to meet them.

--BUNYAN (_The Pilgrim's Progress_).

XI. LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

"O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

"O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done."

--KEATS.

XII. SLEEP AND DEATH

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon--
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night--
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

--SHELLEY.

XIII. & XIV. A DOCTOR OF PHYSIC

Well, well, well,--
... God, God forgive us all!

--_Macbeth_, Act V., Sc. i.

XV. ANNABEL LEE

I was a child, and she was a child
In this kingdom by the sea;
And we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

--EDGAR ALLAN POE.

XVI. CRISEYDE

... Love hadde his dwellinge
With-inne the subtile stremes of hir yen.

Book I., 304-5.

Y-wis, my dere herte, I am nought wrooth,
Have here my trouthe and many another ooth;
Now speek to me, for it am I, Criseyde!

Book III., 1110-2.

And fare now wel, myn owene swete herte!

Book V., 1421.

--CHAUCER (_Troilus and Criseyde_).

THE TRAVELLER
TO
THE READER

The traveller who presents himself in this little book feels how
tedious a person he may prove to be. Most travellers, that he ever
heard of, were the happy possessors of audacity and rigour, a zeal for
facts, a zeal for Science, a vivid faith in powder and gold. Who,
then, will bear for a moment with an ignorant, pacific adventurer,
without even a gun?

He may, however, seem even more than bold in one thing, and that is in
describing regions where the wise and the imaginative and the immortal
have been before him. For that he never can be contrite enough. And
yet, in spite of the renown of these regions, he can present neither
map nor chart of them, latitude nor longitude: can affirm only that
their frontier stretches just this side of Dream; that they border
Impossibility; lie parallel with Peace.

But since it is his, and only his, journey and experiences, his wonder
and delight in these lands that he tells of--a mere microcosm, as it
were--he entreats forgiveness of all who love them and their people as
much as he loves them--scarce "on this side idolatry."

H.B.

I

_Oh, what land is the Land of Dream?_

--WILLIAM BLAKE.

I lived, then, in the great world once, in an old, roomy house beside
a little wood of larches, with an aunt of the name of Sophia. My
father and mother died a few days before my fourth birthday, so that I
can conjure up only fleeting glimpses of their faces by which to
remember what love was then lost to me. Both were youthful at death,
but my Aunt Sophia was ever elderly. She was keen, and just, seldom
less than kind; but a child was to her something of a little animal,
and it was nothing more. In consequence, well fed, warmly clad, and in
freedom, I grew up almost in solitude between my angels, hearkening
with how simple a curiosity to that everlasting warfare of persuasion
and compulsion, terror and delight.

Which of them it was that guided me, before even I could read, to the
little room dark with holly trees that had been of old my uncle's
library, I know not. Perhaps at the instant it chanced there had
fallen a breathless truce between them, and I being solitary, my own
instinct took me. But having once found that pictured haven, I had
found somewhat of content.

I think half my youthful days passed in that low, book-walled chamber.
The candles I burned through those long years of evening would deck
Alps' hugest fir; the dust I disturbed would very easily fill again
the measure that some day shall contain my own; and the small studious
thumbmarks that paced, as if my footprints, leaf by leaf of that long
journey, might be the history of life's experience in little,--from
clearer, to clear, to faint--how very faint at last!

I do not remember ever to have been discovered in this retreat. I was
(by nature) prompt at meals, and wary to be in bed at my hour, however
transitory its occupation might be. Indeed, I very well recollect
dawn painting the page my eyes dwelt on, surprising me with its
mystery and stealth in a house as silent as the grave.

Thus entertained then by insubstantial society I grew up, and began to
be old, before I had yet learned age is disastrous. And it was there,
in that cold, bright chamber, one snowy twilight, first suddenly awoke
in me an imperative desire for distant lands.

Even while little else than a child I had begun to cast my mind to
travel. I doubt if ever Columbus suffered such vexation from an itch
to be gone.

But whither?

Now, it seemed clear to me after long brooding and musing that however
beautiful were these regions of which I never wearied to read, and
however wild and faithful and strange and lovely the people of the
books, somewhere the former must remain yet, somewhere, in immortality
serene, dwell they whom so many had spent life in dreaming of, and
writing about.

In fact, take it for all in all, what could these authors have been
at, if they laboured from dawn to midnight, from laborious midnight to
dawn, merely to tell of what never was, and never by any chance could
be? It was heaven-clear to me, solitary and a dreamer; let me but gain
the key, I would soon unlock that Eden garden-door. Somewhere yet, I
was sure, Imogen's mountains lift their chill summits into heaven;
over haunted sea-sands Ariel flits; at his webbed casement next the
stars Faust covets youth, till the last trump shall ring him out of
dream.

It was on a blue March morning, with all the trees of my aunt's woods
in a pale-green tumult of wind, that, quite unwittingly, I set out on
a journey that has not yet come to an end.

There was a hint in the air at my waking, I fancied, not quite of mere
earth, the perfume of the banners of Flora, of the mould where in
melting snow the crocus blows. I looked from my window, and the
western clouds drew gravely and loftily in the illimitable air towards
the whistling house. Strange trumpets pealed in the wind. Even my
poor, aged Aunt Sophia had changed with the universal change; her
great, solitary face reminded me of some long-forgotten April.

And a little before eleven I saddled my uncle's old mare Rosinante
(poor female jade to bear a name so glorious!), and rode out (as for
how many fruitless seasons I had ridden out!), down the stony,
nettle-narrowed path that led for a secret mile or more, beneath
lindens, towards the hills.

II

_Still thou art blest compared wi' me!_

--ROBERT BURNS.

It is to be wondered at that in so bleak a wind I could possibly fall
into reverie. But the habit was rooted deep in me; Rosinante was
prosaic and trustworthy; the country for miles around familiar to me
as the palm of my hand. Yet so deeply was I involved, and so steadily
had we journeyed on, that when at last I lifted my eyes with a great
sigh that was almost a sob, I found myself in a place utterly unknown
to me.

But more inexplicable yet, not only was the place strange, but, by
some incredible wizardry, Rosinante seemed to have carried me out of a
March morning, blue and tumultuous and bleak, into the grey, sweet
mist of a midsummer dawn.

I found that we were ambling languidly on across a green and level
moor. Far away, whether of clouds or hills I could not yet tell, rose
cold towers and pinnacles into the last darkness of night. Above us in
the twilight invisible larks climbed among the daybeams, singing as
they flew. A thick dew lay in beads on stick and stalk. We were alone
with the fresh wind of morning and the clear pillars of the East.

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.

Yet why should I be distracted by these things, thought I. I
remembered Maundeville and Hithlodaye, Sindbad and Gulliver, and many
another citizen of Thule, and was reassured. A man must either believe
what he sees, or see what he believes; I know no other course. Why,
too, should I mistrust the bounty of the present merely for the
scarcity of the past? Not I!

I rode on, and it seemed had advanced but a few miles before the sun
stood overhead, and it was noon. We were growing weary, I think, of
sheer delight: Rosinante, with her mild face beneath its dark forelock
gazing this side, that side, at the uncustomary landscape; and I ever
peering forward beneath my hat in eagerness to descry some living
creature a little bigger than these conies and squirrels, to prove me
yet in lands inhabited. But the sun was wheeling headlong, and the
stillness of late afternoon on the woods, when, dusty and parched and
heavy, we came to a break in the thick foliage, and presently to a
green gate embowered in box.

III

_Thou art so true, that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truth, and fables histories._

--JOHN DONNE.

I dismounted and, with the nose of my beast in my bosom, stood awhile
gazing, in the half-dream weariness brings, across the valley at the
dense forests that covered the hills. And while thus standing,
doubtful whether to knock at the little gate or to ride on, it began
to open, and a great particoloured dog looked out on us. There was
certainly something unusual in the aspect of this animal, for though
he lifted on us grave and sagacious eyes, he scarcely seemed to see
us, manifested neither pleasure nor disapproval, neither wagged his
tail to give us welcome nor yawned to display his armament. He seemed
a kind of dream-dog, a dog one sees without zeal, and sees again
partly with the eye, but most in recollection.

Thus however we stood, stranger, horse, and dog, till a morose voice
called somewhere from beyond, "Pilot, sir, come here, Pilot." Semi-dog
or no, he knew his master. Whereupon, tying up my dejected Rosinante
to a ring in the gateway, I followed boldly after "Pilot" into that
sequestered garden.

Meanwhile, however, he had disappeared--down a thick green alley to
the left, I supposed. So I went forward by a clearer path, and when I
had advanced a few paces, met face to face a lady whose dark eyes
seemed strangely familiar to me.

She was evidently a little disquieted at meeting a stranger so
unceremoniously, but stood her ground like a small, black, fearless
note of interrogation.

I explained at once, therefore, as best I could, how I came to be
there: described my journey, my bewilderment, and how that I knew not
into what country nor company fate had beguiled me, except that the
one was beautiful, and the other in some delightful way familiar, and
I begged her to tell me where I really was, and how far from home,
and of whom I was now beseeching forgiveness.

Her thoughts followed my every word, passing upon her face like
shadows on the sea. I have never seen a listener so completely still
and so completely engrossed in listening. And when I had finished, she
looked aside with a transient, half-sly smile, and glanced at me again
covertly, so that I could not see herself for seeing her eyes; and she
laughed lightly.

"It is indeed a strange journey," she replied. "But I fear I cannot in
the least direct you. I have never ventured my own self beyond the
woods, lest--I should penetrate too far. But you are tired and hungry.
Will you please walk on a few steps till you come to a stone seat? My
name is Rochester--Jane Rochester"--she glanced up between the hollies
with a sigh that was all but laughter--"Jane Eyre, you know."

I went on as she had bidden, and seated myself before an old, white,
many-windowed house, squatting, like an owl at noon, beneath its green
covert. In a few minutes the great dog with dripping jowl passed
almost like reality, and after him his mistress, and on her arm her
master, Mr. Rochester.

There seemed a night of darkness in that scarred face, and stars
unearthly bright. He peered dimly at me, leaning heavily on Jane's
arm, his left hand plunged into the bosom of his coat. And when he was
come near, he lifted his hat to me with a kind of Spanish gravity.

"Is this the gentleman, Jane?" he enquired.

"Yes, sir."

"He's young!" he muttered.

"For otherwise he would not be here," she replied.

"Was the gate bolted, then?" he asked.

"Mr. Rochester desires to know if you had the audacity, sir, to scale
his garden wall," Jane said, turning sharply on me. "Shall I count the
strawberries, sir?" she added over her shoulder."

"Jane, Jane!" he exclaimed testily. "I have no wish to be uncivil,
sir. We are not of the world--a mere dark satellite. I am dim; and
suspicious of strangers, as this one treacherous eye should manifest.
I'll but ask your name, sir,--there are yet a few names left, once
pleasing to my ear."

"My name is Brocken, sir--Henry Brocken," I answered.

"And--did you walk? Pah! there's the mystery! God knows how else you
could have come, unless you are a modern Ganymede. Where then's your
aquiline steed, sir? We have no neighbours here--none to stare, and
pry, and prate, and slander."

I informed him that I was as ignorant as he what power had spirited me
to his house, but that so far as obvious means went, my old horse was
probably by this time fast asleep beside the green gate at which I had
entered. Jane stood on tip-toe and whispered in his ear, and, nodding
imperiously at him, withdrew into the house.

Complete silence fell between us after her departure. The woods stood
dark and motionless in the yellow evening light. There was no sound of
wind or water, no sound of voices or footsteps; only far away the
clear, scarce-audible warbling of a sleepy bird.

"Well, sir," Mr. Rochester said suddenly, "I am bidden invite you to
pass the night here. There are stranger inhabitants than Mr. and Mrs.
Rochester in these regions you have by some means strayed into--wilder
denizens, by much; for youth's seraphic finding. Not for mine, sir, I
vow. Depart again in the morning, if you will: we shall neither of us
be displeased by then to say farewell, I dare say. I do not seek
company. My obscure shell is enough." I rose. "Sit down--sit down
again, my dear sir; there's no mischief in the truth between two men
of any world, I suppose, assuredly not of this. My wife will see to
your comfort. There! hushie now, here he floats; sit still, sit
still--I hear his wings. It is my 'Four Evangels,' sir!"

It was a sleek blackbird that had alighted and now set to singing on
the topmost twig of a lofty pear-tree near by; and with his first note
Jane reappeared. And while we listened, unstirring, to that rich,
undaunted voice, I had good opportunity to observe her, and not, I
think, without her knowledge, not even without her approval.

This, then, was the face that had returned wrath for wrath, remorse
for remorse, passion for passion to that dark egotist Jane in the
looking-glass. Yet who, thought I, could be else than beautiful with
eyes that seemed to hide in fleeting cloud a flame as pure as amber?
The arch simplicity of her gown, her small, narrow hands, the
exquisite cleverness of mouth and chin, the lovely courage and
sincerity of that yet-childish brow--it seemed even Mr. Rochester's
"Four Evangels" out of his urgent rhetoric was summoning with
reiterated persuasions, "Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre, Ja ... ne!"

Light faded from the woods; a faint wind blew cold upon our faces.
Jane took Mr. Rochester's hand and looked into his face.

She turned to me. "Will you come in, Mr. Brocken? I have seen that
your horse is made quite easy. He was fast asleep, poor fellow, as
you surmised; and, I think, dreaming; for when I proffered him a lump
of sugar, he thrust his nose into my face and breathed as if I were a
peck of corn. The candles are lit, sir; supper is ready."

We went in slowly, and Jane bolted the door. "But who it is that can
be bolted out," she said, "I know not; though there's much to bolt in.
I have stood here, Mr. Brocken, on darker nights as still as this, and
have heard what seemed to be the sea breaking, far away, leagues upon
leagues beyond the forests--the gush forward, the protracted, heavy
retreat,--listened till I could have wept to think that it was only my
own poor furious heart beating. You may imagine, then, I push the
bolts home."

"But why, Jane--why?" cried Mr. Rochester incredulously. "Violent
fancies, child!"

"Why, sir, it was, I say, not the sea I heard, but a trickling tide
one icy tap might stay, if it found but entry there."

"You talk wildly, Jane--wildly, wildly; the air's afloat with
listeners; so it seems, so it seems. Had I but one clear lamp in this
dark face!"

We sat down in the candle-lit twilight to supper. It was to me like
the supper of a child, taken at peace in the clear beams, ere he
descend into the shadow of sleep.

They sat, try as I would not to observe them, hand touching hand
throughout the meal. But to me it was as if one might sit to eat
before a great mountain ruffled with pines, and perpetually clamorous
with torrents. All that Mr. Rochester said, every gesture, these were
but the ghosts of words and movements. Behind them, gloomy,
imperturbable, withdrawn, slumbered a strange, smouldering power. I
began to see how very hotly Jane must love him, she who loved above
all things storm, the winds of the equinox, the illimitable night-sky.

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