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 water-side, 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 holly-bush in a craggy bluff a bow-shot 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 moss-hags 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 moor-cock 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 a-sparkle 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 water-courses, 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 cinquefoil 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 a-nights. But till this hour I did account it an idle tale of poets’ faining, that amid woods, forests, fertile fields, sea-coasts, 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 hath no essence to do me a hurt. If o’ the contrary these be very essential beings, needs must they joyfully welcome me and use me well, being themselves the true vital spirits of many-mountained Demonland; unto whose comfort and the restorement of her old renown and praise I have with such a strange determination bent all my painful thoughts and resolution.”
So on the motion he discovered himself and hailed them. The wild things bounded away and were lost among the flanks of the hill. The capripeds, leaving on the instant their piping or their dancing, crouched watching him with distrustful startled eyes. Only the Oreads still in a dazzling drift pursued their round: quiet maiden mouths, beautiful breasts, slender lithe limbs, hand joined to delicate hand, parting and closing and parting again, in rhythms of unstaled variety; here one that, with white arms clasped behind her head where her braided hair was as burnished gold, circled and swayed with a languorous motion; here another, that leaped and paused hovering a-tiptoe, like an arrow of the sun shot through the leafy roof of an old pine-forest when the warm hill-wind stirs the tree-tops and opens a tiny window to the sky.
Gro went toward them along the grassy hillside. When he was come a dozen paces the strength was gone from his limbs. He kneeled down crying out and saying, “Divinities of earth! deny me not, neither reject me, albeit cruelly have I till now oppressed your land, but will do so no more. The footsteps of mine overtrodden virtue lie still as bitter accusations unto me. Bring me of your mercy where I may find out them that possessed this land and offer them atonement, who were driven forth because of me and mine to be outlaws in the woods and mountains.”
So spake he, bowing his head in sorrow. And he heard, like the trembling of a silver lute-string, a voice in the air that cried:
North ’tis and north ’tis!
Why need we further?
He raised his eyes. The vision was gone. Only the noon and the woodland, silent, solitary, dazzling, were about and above him.
Lord Gro came now to his horse again, and mounted and rode northaway through the fells all that summer afternoon, full of cloudy fancies. When it was eventide his way was high up along the steep side of a mountain between the screes and the grass, following a little path made by the wild sheep. Far beneath in the valley was a small river tortuously flowing along a bouldery bed amid hillocks of old moraines which were like waves of a sea of grass-clad earth. The July sun wheeled low, flinging the shadows of the hills far up the westward-facing slopes where Gro was a-riding, but where he rode and above him the hillside was yet aglow with the warm low sunshine; and the distant peak that shut in the head of the valley, rearing his huge front like the gable of a house, with sweeping ribs of bare rock and scree and a crest of crag like a great breaker frozen to stone in mid career, bathed yet in a radiance of opalescent light.
Turning the shoulder of the hillside at a place where the hill was cut by a shallow gully, he saw before him a hollow or sheltered nook. There, protected by the great body Of the hill from the blasts of the east and north, two rowan trees and some hollies grew in the clefts of the rock above the watercourse. Under their shadow was a cave, not large but so big as a man might well abide in and be dry in wild weather, and beyond it on the right a little waterfall, so beautiful it was a wonder to behold. This was the fashion of it: a slab of rock, twice a man’s height, tilted a little forward from the hill, so that the water fell clear from its upper edge in a thin stream into a rocky basin. The water in the basin was clear and deep, but a-churn always with bubbles from the plunging jet from above; and over all the rocks about it grew mosses and lichens and little water-flowers, nourished by the stream at root and refreshed by the spray.
The Lord Gro said in his heart, “Here would I dwell for ever had I but the art to make myself little as an eft. And I would build me an house a span high beside yonder cushion of moss emerald-hued, with those pink foxgloves to shade my door which balance their bells above the foaming waters. This shy grass of Parnassus should be my drinking cup, with pure white chalice poised on a hair-thin stem; and the curtains of my bed that little thirsty sandwort which, like a green heaven sown with milk-whi............