Darrell, the burst of rage over, had sunk upon a chair,
his face bowed over his hands, and his breast heaving
as if with suppressed sobs.
The musician forgot his fear; he sprang forward, almost
upsetting the tall desk; he flung himself on his knees
at Darrell’s feet, and exclaimed in broken words,
“Master, master, forgive me! Beast that
I was! Do look up—do smile or else
beat me—kick me.”
Darrell’s right hand slid gently from his face,
and fell into Fairthorn’s clasp.
“Hush, hush,” muttered the man of granite;
“one moment, and it will be over.”
One moment! That might be but a figure of speech;
yet before Lionel had finished half the canto that
was plunging him into fairyland, Darrell was standing
by him with his ordinary tranquil mien; and Fairthorn’s
flute from behind the boughs of a neighbouring lime-tree
was breathing out an air as dulcet as if careless
Fauns still piped in Arcady, and Grief were a far
dweller on the other side of the mountains, of whom
shepherds, reclining under summer leaves, speak as
we speak of hydras and unicorns, and things in fable.
On, on swelled the mellow, mellow, witching music;
and now the worn man with his secret sorrow, and the
boy with his frank glad laugh, are passing away, side
by side, over the turf, with its starry and golden
wild-flowers, under the boughs in yon Druid copse,
from which they start the ringdove,—farther
and farther, still side by side, now out of sight,
as if the dense green of the summer had closed around
them like waves. But still the flute sounds on,
and still they hear it, softer and softer as they
go. Hark! do you not hear it—you?
There are certain events which to each
man’s life are as comets to the earth,
seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from
the ordinary lights which guide our course and
mark our seasons, yet true to their own laws,
potent in their own influences. Philosophy speculates
on their effects, and disputes upon their uses; men
who do not philosophize regard them as special
messengers and bodes of evil.
They came out of the little park into a by-lane; a
vast tract of common land, yellow with furze and undulated
with swell and hollow, spreading in front; to their
right the dark beechwoods, still beneath the weight
of the July noon. Lionel had been talking about
the “Faerie Queene,” knight-errantry,
the sweet impossible dream-life that, safe from Time,
glides by bower and hall, through magic forests and
by witching eaves in the world of poet-books.
And Darrell listened, and the flute-notes mingled
with the atmosphere faint and far off, like voices
from that world itself.
Out then they came, this broad waste land before them;
and Lionel said merrily,—
“But this is the very scene! Here the
young knight, leaving his father’s hall, would
have checked his destrier, glancing wistfully now over
that green wild which seems so boundless, now to the
‘umbrageous horror’ of those breathless
woodlands, and questioned himself which way to take
for adventure.”
