Peregrines Progress | Page 9

the hour and, pausing to hearken, I thrilled as I counted eleven, for, according to the laws which had ordered my life hitherto, at this so late hour I should have been blissfully asleep between lavender-scented sheets. Indeed my loved aunt abhorred the night air for me, under the delusion that I suffered from a delicate chest; yet here was I out upon the open road and eleven o'clock chiming in my ears. Thus as I strode on into the unknown I experienced an exhilarating sense of high adventure unknown till now.
It was a night of brooding stillness and the moon, high-risen, touched the world about me with her magic, whereby things familiar became transformed into objects of wonder; tree and hedgerow took on shapes strange and fantastic; the road became a gleaming causeway whereon I walked, godlike, master of my destiny. Beyond meadow and cornfield to right and left gloomed woods, remote and full of mystery, in whose enchanted twilight elves and fairies might have danced or slender dryads peeped and sported. Thus walked I in an ecstasy, scanning with eager eyes the novel beauties around me, my mind full of the poetic imaginations conjured up by the magic of this midsummer night, so that I yearned to paint it, or set it to music, or write it into adequate words; and knowing this beyond me, I fell to repeating Milton's noble verses the while:
"I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wand'ring moon Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way."
After some while I espied a stile upon my right and climbing this, I crossed a broad meadow to a small, rustic bridge spanning a stream that flowed murmurous in the shade of alder and willow. Being upon this bridge, I paused to look down upon these rippling waters and to watch their flash and sparkle where the moon caught them.
And hearkening to the melodious voice of this streamlet, I began to understand how great poems were written and books happened. At last I turned and, crossing the bridge, went my way, pondering on Death, of which I knew nothing, and on Life, of which I knew little more, and so at last came to the woods.
On I went amid the trees, following a grassy ride; but as I advanced, this grew ever narrower and I walked in an ever-deepening gloom, wherefore I turned about, minded to go back, but found myself quite lost and shut in, what with the dense underbrush around me and the twisted, writhen branches above, whose myriad leaves obscured the moon's kindly beam. In this dim twilight I pushed on then, as well as I might, often running foul of unseen obstacles or pausing to loose my garments from clutching thorns. Sudden there met me a wind, dank and chill, that sighed fitfully near and far, very dismal to hear.
And now, as I traversed the gloom of these leafy solitudes, what must come into my head but murders, suicides and death in lonely places. I remembered that not so long ago the famous Buck and Corinthian Sir Maurice Vibart had been found shot to death in just such another desolate place as this. And there was my own long-dead father!
"They fought in a little wood not so far from here!"
These, my uncle George's words, seemed to ring in my ears and, shivering, I stopped to glance about me full of sick apprehension. For all I knew, this might be the very wood where my youthful father had staggered and fallen, to tear at the tender grass with dying fingers; these sombre, leafy aisles perhaps had echoed to the shot--his gasping moan that had borne his young spirit up to the Infinite! At this thought, Horror leapt upon me, wherefore I sought to flee these gloomy shades, only to trip and fall heavily, so that I lay breathless and half-stunned, and no will to rise.
It was at this moment, lying with my cheek against Mother Earth, that I heard it,--a strange, uncanny sound that brought me to my hands and knees, peering fearfully into the shadows that seemed to be deepening about me moment by moment.
With breath held in check I crouched there, straining my ears for a repetition of this unearthly sound that was like nothing I had ever heard before,--a quick, light, tapping chink, now in rhythm, now out, now ceasing, now recommencing, so that I almost doubted but that this wood must be haunted indeed.
Suddenly these foolish apprehensions were quelled somewhat by the sound of a human voice, a full, rich voice, very deep and sonorous, upraised in song; and this voice being so powerful and the night so still, I could hear every word.
"A tinker I am,