Part 4 (1/2)

Would that I could remember much else! But I confess it is the heart remembers, not the poor, pestered brain that has so many thoughts and but one troubled thinker. Indeed, were I now to be asked--Were the fingers cold of these bright ladies? Were their eyes blue, or hazel, or brown? or, haply, were Dianeme's that incomparable, dark, sparkling grey? Wore Julia azure, and Electra white? And was that our poet wrote our poet's only, or truly theirs, and so even more lovely?--I fear I could not tell.

I fell asleep; and when I awoke no lute was sounding. I was alone; and the arbour a little house of gloom on the borders of evening. I caught up yet one more handful of cherries, and stumbled out, heavy and dim, into a pale-green firmanent of buds and glow-worms, to seek the poor Rosinante I had so heedlessly deserted.

But I was gone but a little way when I was brought suddenly to a standstill by another sound that in the hush of the garden, in the bright languor after sleep, went to my heart: it was as if a child were crying.

I pushed through a thick and aromatic clump of myrtles, and peering between the narrow leaves, perceived the cold, bright face of a little marble G.o.d beneath willows; and, seated upon a starry bank near by, one whom by the serpentry of her hair and the shadow of her lips I knew to be Anthea.

”Why are you weeping?” I said.

”I was imitating a little brook,” she said.

”It is late; the bat is up; yet you are alone,” I said.

”Pan will protect me,” she said.

”And nought else?”

She turned her face away. ”None,” she said. ”I live among shadows.

There was a world, I dreamed, where autumn follows summer, and after autumn, winter. Here it is always June, despite us both.”

”What, then, would you have?” I said.

”Ask him,” she replied.

But the little G.o.d looking sidelong was mute in his grey regard.

”Why do you not run away? What keeps you here?”

”You ask many questions, stranger! Who can escape? To live is to remember. To die--oh, who would forget! Even had I been weeping, and not merely mocking time away, would my tears be of Lethe at my mouth's corners? No,” said Anthea, ”why feign and lie? All I am is but a memory lovely with regret.”

She rose, and the myrtles concealed her from me. And I, in the midst of the dusk where the tiny torches burned sadly--I turned to the sightless eyes of that smiling G.o.d.

What he knew, being blind, yet smiling, I seemed to know then. But that also I have forgotten.

I whistled softly and clearly into the air, and a querulous voice answered me from afar--the voice of a gra.s.shopper--Rosinante's.

V

_How should I your true love know From another one?_

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

But even then she was difficult finding, so cunningly had ivy and blackberry and bindweed woven snares for the trespa.s.ser's foot.

But at last--not far from where we had parted--I found her, a pillar of smoke in the first s.h.i.+ning of the moon. She turned large, smouldering eyes on me, her mane in elf locks, her flanks heaving and wet, her forelock frizzed like a colt's. Yet she showed only pleasure at seeing me, and so evident a desire to unburden the day's history, that I almost wished I might be Balaam awhile, and she--Dapple!

It would be idle to attempt to ride through these thick, glimmering brakes. The darkness was astir. And as the moon above the valley brightened, casting pale beams upon the folded roses and drooping branches, if populous dream did not deceive me, a tiny mult.i.tude was afoot in the undergrowth--small horns winding, wee tapers burning.