Henry Brocken by Walter J. de la Mare

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"Ay, ay, 'tis very well, you have a gift, you have a gift, Tittany's
for twisting words to sugarsticks. But la, there, what wots your
trickling whey of that coal-piffling Prince of Flies! I'm Bottom the
weaver, I am. He knows not his mother's ring-finger that knows not
Nick Bottom. Back, back, ye jigging dreams! 'Tis Puckling nods. Ha'
done, ha' done--there's no sweet sanity in an asshead more if I quaff
their elvish ... Out now ... Ha' done, I say!"

Then indeed he slumbered truly, this engarlanded weaver, his lids
concealing all bright speculation, his jowl of vanity (foe of the
Philistine) at peace: and I might gaze unperceived. The moon filled
his mossy cubicle with her untrembling beams, streamed upon blossoms
sweet and heavy as Absalom's hair, while tiny plumes wafted into the
night the scent of thyme and meadow-sweet.

I know not how long they would have kept me prisoner with their
illusive music. I dared not move, scarce wink; for much as immortality
may mollify hairiness, I had no wish to live too frank.

How, also, would this weaver who slumbered so cacophonously welcome a
rival to his realms. I say I sat still, like Echo in the woods when
none is calling; like too, I grant, one who ached not a little after
jolts and jars and the phantasmal mists of this engendering air. But
none stirred, nor went, nor came. So resting my hands cautiously on a
little witch's guild of toadstools that squatted cold in shade, I
lifted myself softly and stood alert.

And in a while out of that numerous company stepped one whom by his
primrose face and mien I took to be Mounsieur Mustardseed, and I
followed after him.

VI

_Care-charming Sleep ...
... sweetly thyself dispose
On this afflicted prince!_

--JOHN FLETCHER.

Away with a blink of his queer green eye over his shoulder he
sauntered by a devious path out of the dell. Forgetful of thorn and
brier, trickery and wantonness, we clambered down after him, out of
the moonlight, into a dark, clear alley, soundless and solitary amid
these enchanted woods.

As I have said already, another air than that of night was abroad in
the green-grey shadows of the woods. Yet between the lofty and
heavy-hooded pines scarce a beam of dawn pierced downward.

Wider swept the avenue, but ever dusky and utterly silent. Deeper moss
couched here; unfallen moondrops glistened; mistletoe palely sprouted
from the gnarled boughs. Nor could I discern, though I searched close
enough, elder or ash tree or bitter rue. We journeyed softly on till I
lost all count of time, lost, too, all guidance; for as a flower falls
had vanished Mustardseed.

Far away and ever increasing in volume I heard the trembling crash of
some great water falling. What narrow isles of sky were visible
between the branches lay sunless and still. Yet already, on a mantled
pool we journeyed softly by, the waterlily was unfolding, the swan
afloat in beauty.

In a dim, still light we at last slowly descended out of the darker
glade into a garden of grey terraces and flowerless walks. Even
Rosinante seemed perturbed by the stillness and solitude of this wild
garden. She trod with cautious foot and peering eye the green,
rainworn paths, that led us down presently to where beneath the vault
of its trees a river flowed.

Surely I could not be mistaken that here a voice was singing as if out
of the black water-deeps, so clear and hollow were the notes. I burst
through the knotted stalks of the ivy, and stooping like some poor
travesty of Narcissus, with shaded face pierced down deep--deep into
eyes not my own, but violet and unendurable and strange--eyes of the
living water-sprite drawing my wits from me, stilling my heart, till I
was very near plunging into that crystal oblivion, to be fishes
evermore.

But my fingers still grasped my friend's kind elf-locks, and her
goose-nose brooded beside mine upon that water of undivulged delight.
Out of the restless silence of the stream floated this long-drawn
singing:

Pilgrim forget; in this dark tide
Sinks the salt tear to peace at last;
Here undeluding dreams abide,
All sorrow past.

Nods the wild ivy on her stem;
The voiceless bird broods on the bough;
The silence and the song of them
Untroubled now.

Free that poor captive's flutterings,
That struggles in thy tired eyes,
Solace its discontented wings,
Quiet its cries!

Knells now the dewdrop to its fall,
The sad wind sleeps no more to rove;
Rest, for my arms ambrosial
Ache for thy love!

I cannot think how one so meekened with hunger as I, resisted that
water-troubled hair, eyes that yet haunt me, that heart-alluring
voice.

"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.

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."

I ate because I was ravenously hungry, but also because, while eating,
I was better at my ease.

Suddenly out of the stillness, like an arrow, Safte was gone; and far
away beneath the motionless leaves a faint voice rang dwindling into
silence. I shuddered at my probable fate.

Prince Ennui glanced lightly. "When the magic horn at last resounds,"
he said, "how strange a flight it will be! These thorny briers
encroach ever nearer on my palace walls. I am a captive ever less at
ease. Summer by summer the sun rises shorn yet closer of his beams,
and now the lingering transit of the moon is but from one wood by a
narrow crystal arch to another. They will have me yet, sir. How weary
will the sleepy ones be of my uneasy footfall!"

And even as Safte slipped softly back to his watching mate, the patter
and shrill menace of voices behind him hinted not all was concord
between these hidden multitudes and their unseemly prince.

The master-stars shone earlier here; already sparkling above the tower
was a canopy of clearest darkness spread, while the leafy fringes of
the sky glowed yet with changing fires.

We returned to the lawns before the palace porch, and, with his
lantern in his hand, the Prince signed to me to go in. I was not a
little curious to view that enchanted household of which I had read so
often and with so much delight as a child.

In the banqueting-hall only the matted windows were visible in the
lofty walls. Prince Ennui held his lantern on high, and by its flame,
and the faint light that flowed in from above, I could presently see,
distinct in gloom, as many sleepers as even Night could desire.

Here they reclined just as sorcerous sleep had overtaken them. But how
dimmed, how fallen! For Time that could not change the sleeper had
changed with quiet skill all else. Tarnished, dusty, withered,
overtaken, yellowed, and confounded lay banquet and cloth-of-gold,
flagon, cup, fine linen, table, and stool. But in all the ruin, like
buds of springtime in a bare wood, or jewels in ashes, slumbered youth
and beauty and bravery and delight.

I lifted my eyes to the King. The gold of his divinity was fallen, his
splendour quenched; but life's dark scrutiny from his face was gone.
He made no stir at our light, slumbered untreasoned on. The lids of
his Queen were lightlier sealed, only withheld beauty as a cloud the
sky it hides. His courtiers flattered more elusively, being sincerely
mute, and only a little red dust was all the wine left.

I seemed to hear their laughter clearer now that the jest was
forgotten, and to admire better the pomp, and the mirth, and the
grace, and the vanity, now that time had so far travelled from this
little tumult once their triumph.

In a kind of furtive bravado, I paced the length of the long, thronged
tables. Here sat a little prince that captivated me, dipping his
fingers into his cup with a sidelong glance at his mother. There a
high officer, I know not how magnificent and urgent when awake,
slumbered with eyes wide open above his discouraged moustaches.

Simply for vanity of being awake in such a sleepy company, I strutted
conceitedly to and fro. I bent deftly and pilfered a little cockled
cherry from between the very fingertips of her whose heart was
doubtless like its--quite hard. And the bright lips never said a word.
I sat down, rather clownishly I felt, beside an aged and simpering
chancellor that once had seemed wise, but now seemed innocent,
nibbling a biscuit crisp as scandal. For after all the horn _would_
sound. Childhood had been quite sure of that--needed not even the
author's testimony. They were alert to rise, scattering all dust,
victors over Time and outrageous Fortune.

Almost with a cry of apprehension I perceived again the solitary
Prince. But he merely smiled faintly. "You see, sir," he said, "how
weary must a guardianship be of them who never tire. The snow falls,
and the bright light falls on all these faces; yet not even my Lady
Melancholy stirs a dark lid. And all these dog-days--" He glanced at
his motionless hounds. They raised languidly their narrow heads,
whimpering softly, as if beseeching of their master that long-delayed
supper--haplessly me. "No, no, sirs," said the Prince, as if he had
read their desire as easily as he whom it so much concerned. "Guard,
guard, and hearken. This gentleman is not the Prince we await, Sallow;
not the Prince, Safte! And now, sir,"--he turned again to me--"there
is yet one other sleeper--she who hath brought so much quietude on a
festive house."

We climbed the staircase where dim light lay so invitingly, and came
presently to a little darker chamber. Green, blunt things had pushed
and burst through the casement. The air smelled faintly-sour of brier,
and was as still as boughs of snow. There the not-unhappy Princess
reclined before a looking-glass, whither I suppose she had run to view
her own alarm when the sharp needle pierced her thumb. All alarm was
stilled now on her face. She, one might think, of all that company of
the sleepy, was the only one that dreamed. Her youthful lips lay a
little asunder; the heavy beauty of her hair was parted on her
forehead; her childish hands sidled together like leverets in her lap.
"Why!" I cried aloud, almost involuntarily, "she breathes!"

And at sound of my voice the hounds leapt back; and, on a traveller's
oath, I verily believe, once, and how swiftly, and how fearfully and
brightly, those childish lids unsealed their light as of lilac that
lay behind, glanced briefly, fleetingly, on one who had ventured so
far, and fell again to rest.

"And when," I cried harshly, "when will that laggard burst through
this agelong silence? Here's dust enough for all to see. And all this
ruin, this inhospitable peace!"

Prince Ennui glanced strangely at me.

"I assure you, O suddenly enkindled," he said in his suave, monotonous
voice, "it is not for _my_ indifference he does not come. I would
willingly sleep; these--my dear sister, all these old fineries and
love-jinglers would as fain wake." He turned away his treacherous eyes
from me. "Maybe the Lorelei hath snared him!..." he said, smiling.

I relished not at all the thought of sleeping in this mansion of
sleep. Yet it seemed politic to refrain from giving offence to fangs
apparently so eager to take it. Accordingly I followed this Ennui to a
loftier chamber yet that he suggested for me.

Once there, however, and his soft footfall passed away, I looked about
me, first to find a means for keeping trespassers from coming in, and
next to find a means for getting myself out.

It was a long and arduous, but not a perilous, descent from the window
by the thick-grown greenery that cumbered the walls. But I determined
to wait awhile before venturing,--wait, too, till I could see plainly
where Rosinante had made her night-quarters. By good fortune I
discovered her beneath the greenish moon that hung amid mist above the
forest, stretching a disconsolate neck at the waterside as if in
search of the Lorelei.

When, as it seemed to me, it must be nearing dawn, though how the
hours flitted so swiftly passed my comprehension, I very cautiously
climbed out of my narrow window and descended slowly to the lawns
beneath. My foot had scarcely touched ground when ringing and menacing
from some dark gallery of the palace above me broke out a distant
baying.

Nothing shall persuade me to tell how fast I ran; how feverishly I
haled poor Rosinante out of sleep, and pushed her down into the deeps
of that coal-black stream; with what agility I clambered into the
saddle.

Yet I could not help commiserating the while the faithful soul who
floated beneath me. The stream was swift but noiseless, the water
rather rare than cold, yet, despite all the philosophy beaming out of
her maidenly eyes across the smooth surface of the tide, Rosinante
must have preferred from the bottom of her heart dry land.

I, too, momentarily, when I discovered that we were speedily
approaching the roaring fall whose reverberations I had heard long
since.

Out of the emerald twilight we floated from beneath the overarching
thickets. Pale beams were striking from the risen sun upon the gliding
surface, and dwelt in splendour where danger sat charioted beneath a
palely gorgeous bow. Yet I doubt if ever mortal man swept on to defeat
at last so rapturously as I.

The gloomier trees had now withdrawn from the banks of the river. A
pale morning sky over-canopied the shimmering forests. Here rose the
solitary tower where Echo tarried for the Hornblower. And straight
before us, across that level floor, beyond a tremulous cloud of foam
and light and colour, lurked the unseen, the unimaginable, the
ever-dreamed-of, Death.

Heedless of Lorelei, heedless of all save the beauty and terror and
glory in which they rode, down swept snorting ship and master to doom.

The crystal water jargoned past my saddle. Sky, earth, and tower, like
the panorama of a dream, wheeled around me. Light blinded me; clamour
deafened me; foam and the pure wave and cold darkness whelmed over me.
We surged, paused, gazed, nodded, crashed:--and so an end to Ennui.

VII

_He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree._

--SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

How long my body was the sport of that foaming water I cannot tell.
But when I again opened my eyes, I found, first, that the sun was
shining dazzling clear high above me, and, next, that the delightful
noise of running water babbled close against my ear. I lay upon a
strip of warm sward by the river's brink. Near by me grew some
rank-smelling waterside plant, and overhead the air seemed peopled
with larks.

I crawled, confused and aching, to the water, and dipped my head and
hands into the cold rills. This soon refreshed me, for the sun had, it
would seem, long been dwelling on that passive corse of mine by the
waterside and had parched it to the skin.

But it was some little while yet before my mind returned fully to
what had passed, and so to my loss.

I sat looking at the grey, noisy water, almost incredulous that
Rosinante could be gone. It might be that the same hand as must have
drawn myself from drowning had snatched her bridle also out of Fate's
grasp. Perhaps even now she was seeking her master by the greener
pasture of the wide plains around me. Perhaps the far-off sea was her
green sepulchre. But many waters cannot quench love. I faced,
friendless and discomfited, a region as strange to me as the farther
side of the moon.

Without more ado I rose, shook myself, and sadly began to go forward.
But I had taken only a few steps along the banks of the stream--for
here was fresh water, at least--when a sound like distant thunder
rolled over these flat, green lands towards me, increasing steadily in
volume.

I stood, lost in wonder, and presently, at the distance, perhaps, of a
little less than a mile, descried an innumerable herd of horses
streaming across these level pastures, and at the extremity, it
seemed, of a wide ellipse, that had brought them near, and now was
galloping them away.

My heart beat a little faster at this extraordinary spectacle. And
while I stood in uncertainty gazing after the retreating concourse, I
perceived a figure running towards me, lifting his hands and crying
out in a voice sonorous and inhuman. He was of a stature much above my
own, yet so gross in shape and immense of head he seemed at first
almost dwarfish. He came to a stand twenty paces or so from me, on the
ridge of a gentle inclination, and gazed down on me with wild, bright
eyes. Even at this distance I could perceive the almost colourless
lustre of his eyes beneath his thick locks of yellow hair. When he had
taken his fill of me, he lifted his head again and cried out to me a
few words of what certainly might be English, but was neither
intelligible nor reassuring.

I stood my ground and stared him in the face, till I could see nothing
but wind-blown yellow, and strange, brutal eyes. Then he advanced a
little nearer. Whereupon I also raised my hand with a gesture like
his own, and demanded loudly where I was, what was this place, and who
was he. His very ears pricked forward, he listened so intently. He
came nearer yet, then stayed, tossed his head into the air, whirled
the long leather thong he carried above his head, and, signing to me
to follow, set off with so swift and easy a stride as would soon have
carried him out of sight, had he not turned and perceived how slowly I
could follow him.

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