Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts | Page 4

winter
better than usual--to be sure, there had been as yet no cold weather to
speak of; but she and Ethel intended, I believed, to start for the south of
France early in February. He inquired about you. His comments were
such as a man makes on hearing just what he expects to hear, or knows
beforehand. And for some time it seemed to be tacitly taken for granted
between us that I should ask him no questions.
"As for me--" I began, after a while.
He checked the mare's pace a little. "I know," he said, looking straight
ahead between her ears; then, after a pause, "it has been a bad time for
you, You are in a bad way altogether. That is why I came."

"But it was for you!" I blurted out. "Harry, if only I had known why
you were taken--and what it was to you!"
He turned his face to me with the old confident comforting smile.
"Don't you trouble about that. That's nothing to make a fuss about.
Death?" he went on musing--our horses had fallen to a walk again-- "It
looks you in the face a moment: you put out your hands: you touch--
and so it is gone. My dear boy, it isn't for us that you need worry."
"For whom, then?"
"Come," said he, and he shook Vivandiere into a canter.

III
I cannot remember precisely at what point in our ride the country had
ceased to be familiar. But by-and-by we were climbing the lower slopes
of a great down which bore no resemblance to the pastoral country
around Sevenhays. We had left the beaten road for short
turf--apparently of a copper-brown hue, but this may have been the
effect of the moonlight. The ground rose steadily, but with an easy
inclination, and we climbed with the wind at our backs; climbed, as it
seemed, for an hour, or maybe two, at a footpace, keeping silence. The
happiness of having Harry beside me took away all desire for speech.
This at least was my state of mind as we mounted the long lower slopes
of the down. But in time the air, hitherto so exhilarating, began to
oppress my lungs, and the tranquil happiness to give way to a vague
discomfort and apprehension.
"What is this noise of water running?"
I reined up Grey Sultan as I put the question. At the same moment it
occurred to me that this sound of water, distant and continuous, had
been running in my ear for a long while.

Harry, too, came to a halt. With a sweep of the arm that embraced the
dim landscape around and ahead, he quoted softly--
en detithei potamoio mega spenos Okeanoio antyga par pymaten
sakeos pyka poietoio . . . .
and was silent again.
I recalled at once and distinctly the hot summer morning ten years back,
when we had prepared that passage of the Eighteenth Book together in
our study at Clifton; I at the table, Harry lolling in the cane-seated
armchair with the Liddell and Scott open on his knees; outside, the
sunny close and the fresh green of the lime-trees.
Now that I looked more attentively the bare down, on which we
climbed like flies, did indeed resemble a vast round shield, about the
rim of which this unseen water echoed. And the resemblance grew
more startling when, a mile or so farther on our way, as the grey dawn
overtook us, Harry pointed upwards and ahead to a small boss or
excrescence now lifting itself above the long curve of the horizon.
At first I took it for a hummock or tumulus. Then, as the day whitened
about us, I saw it to be a building--a tall, circular barrack not unlike the
Colosseum. A question shaped itself on my lips, but something in
Harry's manner forbade it. His gaze was bent steadily forward, and I
kept my wonder to myself, and also the oppression of spirit which had
now grown to something like physical torture.
When first the great barrack broke into sight we must have been at least
two miles distant. I kept my eyes fastened on it as we approached, and
little by little made out the details of its architecture. From base to
summit--which appeared to be roofless--six courses of many hundred
arches ran around the building, one above the other; and between each
pair a course, as it seemed, of plain worked stone, though I afterwards
found it to be sculptured in low relief. The arches were cut in deep
relief and backed with undressed stone. The lowest course of all,
however, was quite plain, having neither arches nor frieze; but at
intervals corresponding to the eight major points of the compass--so far

as I who saw but one