Part 6 (1/2)

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 c.o.c.kled 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 guardians.h.i.+p 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 cas.e.m.e.nt. The air smelled faintly-sour of brier, and was as still as boughs of snow. There the not-unhappy Princess reclined before a looking-gla.s.s, 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sed away, I looked about me, first to find a means for keeping trespa.s.sers 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 c.u.mbered 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+mmering 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 s.h.i.+p 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.