The Worm Ouroboros, Eric Rücker Eddison [epub ebook reader txt] 📗

turned towards him, sweet mouth half closed, clear eyes

uplifted toward the east, showed dim in the glamour of the moon, and

the lilt of her body was as a lily fallen a-dreaming beside some

enchanted lake at midnight. With a dry throat he said, “Lady, until

tonight I had not supposed there lived on earth a woman more

beautiful than she.”

 

Therewith the love that was in him went like a wind and like an

up-swooping darkness athwart his brain. As one who has too long, unbold,

unresolved, delayed to lift that door’s latch which must open on his

heart’s true home, he caught his arms about her. Her cheek was soft to

his kiss, but deadly cold: her eyes like a wild bird’s caught in a

purse-net. His brother’s armour that cased her body was not so dead

nor so hard under his hand, as to his love that yielding cheek, that

alien look. He said, as one a-stagger for his wits in the presence of

some unlooked-for chance, “Thou dost not love me?”

 

Mevrian shook her head, putting him gently away.

 

Like the passing of a fire on a dry heath in summer the flame of his

passion was passed by, leaving but a smouldering desolation of

scornful sullen wrath: wrath at himself and fate.

 

He said, in a low shamed voice, “I pray you forgive me, madam.”

 

Mevrian said, “Prince, the Gods give thee goodnight. Be kind to

Krothering. I have left there an evil steward.”

 

So saying, she reined up her horse’s head and turned down westward

towards the firth. Heming watched her an instant, his brain a-reel.

Then, striking spurs to his horse’s flanks so that the horse reared

and plunged, he rode away at a great pace east again through the woods

to Krothering.

XXV

LORD GRO AND THE LADY MEVRIAN

 

How the Lord Gro, conducted by a strange

enamourment with lost causes, fared with none

save this to be his guide into the regions of

Neverdale, and there beheld wonders, and tasted

again for a season the goodness of those things

he did most desire.

 

NINETY days and a day after these doings aforesaid, in the last hour

before the dawn, was the Lord Gro a-riding toward the paling east down

from the hills of Eastmark to the fords of Mardardale. At a walking

pace his horse came down to the waterside, and halted with fetlocks

awash: his flanks were wet and his wind gone, as from swift faring on

the open fell since midnight. He stretched down his neck, sniffed the

fresh river-water, and drank. Gro turned in the saddle, listening, his

left hand thrown forward to slack the reins, his right flat-planted on

the crupper. But nought there was to hear save the babble of waters in

the shallows, the sucking noise of the horse drinking, and the plash

and crunch of his hooves when he shifted feet among the pebbles.

Before and behind and on either hand the woods and strath and circling

hills showed dim in the obscure gray betwixt darkness and twilight. A

light mist hid the stars. Nought stirred save an owl that flitted like

a phantom out from a hollybush in a craggy bluff a bowshot or more

down stream, crossing Gro’s path and lighting on a branch of a dead

tree above him on the left, where she sat as if to observe the goings

of this man and horse that trespassed in this valley of quiet night.

 

Gro leaned forward to pat his horse’s neck. “Come, gossip, we must

on,” he said; “and marvel not if thou find no rest, going with me

which could never find any steadfast stay under the moon’s globe.” So

they forded that river, and fared through low rough grass-lands

beyond, and by the skirts of a wood up to an open heath, and so a mile

or two, still eastward, till they turned to the right down a broad

valley and crossed a river above a watersmeet, and so east again up

the bed of a stony stream and over this to a rough mountain track that

crossed some boggy ground and then climbed higher and higher above the

floor of the narrowing valley to a pass between the hills. At length

the slope slackened, and they passing, as through a gateway, between

two high mountains which impended sheer and stark on either hand, came

forth upon a moor of ling and bog-myrtle, strewn with lakelets and

abounding in streams and mosshags and outcrops of the living rock; and

the mountain peaks afar stood round that moorland waste like warrior

kings. Now was colour waking in the eastern heavens, the bright

shining morning beginning to clear the earth. Conies scurried to cover

before the horse’s feet: small birds flew up from the heather: some

red deer stood at gaze in the fern, then tripped away southward: a

moorcock called.

 

Gro said in himself, “How shall not common opinion account me mad, so

rash and presumptuous dangerously to put my life in hazard? Nay,

against all sound judgement; and this folly I enact in that very

season when by patience and courage and my politic wisdom I had won

that in despite of fortune’s teeth which obstinately hitherto she had

denied me: when after the brunts of divers tragical fortunes I had

marvellously gained the favour and grace of the King, who very

honourably placed me in his court, and tendereth me, I well think, so

dearly as he doth the balls of his two eyes.”

 

He put off his helm, baring his white forehead and smooth black

curling locks to the airs of morning, flinging back his head to drink

deep through his nostrils the sweet strong air and its peaty smell.

“Yet is common opinion the fool, not I,” he said. “He that imagineth

after his labours to attain unto lasting joy, as well may he beat

water in a mortar. Is there not in the wild benefit of nature

instances enow to laugh this folly out of fashion? A fable of great

men that arise and conquer the nations: Day goeth up against the

tyrant night. How delicate a spirit is she, how like a fawn she

footeth it upon the mountains: pale pitiful light matched with the

primeval dark. But every sweet hovers in her battalions, and every

heavenly influence: coolth of the wayward little winds of morning,

flowers awakening, birds a-carol, dews asparkle on the fine-drawn

webs the tiny spinners hang from fern-frond to thorn, from thorn to

wet dainty leaf of the silver birch; the young day laughing in her

strength, wild with her own beauty; fire and life and every scent and

colour born anew to triumph over chaos and slow darkness and the

kinless night.

 

“But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet

love her when glutted with triumph she settles to garish noon? Rather

turn as now I turn to Demonland, in the sad sunset of her pride. And

who dares call me turncoat, who do but follow now as I have followed

this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and

the morning and the evening star? Since there only abideth the soul of

nobility, true love, and wonder, and the glory of hope and fear.”

 

So brooding he rode at an easy pace bearing east and a little north

across the moor, falling because of the strange harmony that was

between outward things and the inward thoughts of his heart into a

deep study. So came he to the moor’s end, and entered among the skirts

of the mountains beyond, crossing low passes, threading a way among

woods and watercourses, up and down, about and about. The horse led

him which way that he would, for no heed nor advice had he of aught

about him, for cause of the deep contemplation that he had within

himself.

 

It was now high noon. The horse and his rider were come to a little

dell of green grass with a beck winding in the midst with cool water

flowing over a bed of shingle. About the dell grew many trees both

tall and straight. Above the trees high mountain crags a-bake in the

sun showed ethereal through the shimmering heat. A murmur of waters, a

hum of tiny wings flitting from flower to flower, the sound of the

horse grazing on the lush pasture: there was nought else to hear. Not

a leaf moved, not a bird. The hush of the summer noon-day, breathless,

burnt through with the sun, more awful than any shape of night, paused

above that lonely dell.

 

Gro, as if waked by the very silence, looked quickly about him. The

horse felt belike in his bones his rider’s unease; he gave over his

feeding and stood alert with wild eye and quivering flanks. Gro patted

and made much of him; then, guided by some inward prompting the reason

whereof he knew not, turned west by a small tributary beck and rode

softly toward the wood. Here he was stopped with a number of trees so

thickly placed together that he was afraid he should with riding

through be swept from the saddle. So he lighted down, tied his horse

to an oak, and climbed the bed of the little stream till he was come

whence he might look north over the tree-tops to a green terrace about

at a level with him and some fifty paces distant along the hillside,

shielded from the north by three or four great rowan trees on the far

side of it, and on the terrace a little tarn or rock cistern of fair

water very cool and deep.

 

He paused, steadying himself with his left hand by a jutting rock

overgrown with rose-campion. Surely no children of men were these,

footing it on that secret lawn beside that fountain’s brink, nor no

creatures of mortal kind. Such it may be were the goats and kids and

soft-eyed does that on their hind-legs merrily danced among them; but

never such those others of manly shape and with pointed hairy ears,

shaggy legs, and cloven hooves, nor those maidens white of limb

beneath the tread of whose feet the blue gentian and the little golden

cinque-foil bent not their blossoms, so airy-light was their dancing.

To make them music, little goat-footed children with long pointed ears

sat on a hummock of turf-clad rock piping on pan-pipes, their bodies

burnt to the hue of red earth by the wind and the sun. But, whether

because their music was too fine for mortal ears, or for some other

reason, Gro might hear no sound of that piping. The heavy silence of

the waste white noon was lord of the scene, while the mountain nymphs

and the simple genii of sedge and stream and crag and moorland

solitude threaded the mazes of the dance.

 

The Lord Gro stood still in great admiration, saying in himself, “What

means my drowsy head to dream such fancies? Spirits of ill have I

heretofore beheld in their manifestations; I have seen fantasticoes

framed and presented by art magic; I have dreamed strange dreams

anights. But till this hour I did account it an idle tale of poets’

faming, that amid woods, forests, fertile fields, seacoasts, shores of

great rivers and fountain brinks, and also upon the tops of huge and

high mountains, do still appear unto certain favoured eyes the sundry-sorted nymphs and fieldish demigods. Which thing if I now verily

behold, ‘tis a great marvel, and sorteth well with the strange

allurements whereby this oppressed land hath so lately found a means

to govern mine affections.” And he thought awhile, reasoning thus in

his mind: “If this be but an apparition, it