The Hill of Dreams | Page 6

shuddered as he felt the horrible thing pulped beneath his feet.
Then there was a gleam of sunlight, and as he thrust the last boughs
apart, he stumbled into the open space in the heart of the camp. It was a
lawn of sweet close turf in the center of the matted brake, of clean firm
earth from which no shameful growth sprouted, and near the middle of
the glade was a stump of a felled yew-tree, left untrimmed by the
woodman. Lucian thought it must have been made for a seat; a crooked
bough through which a little sap still ran was a support for the back,
and he sat down and rested after his toil. It was not really so
comfortable a seat as one of the school forms, but the satisfaction was
to find anything at all that would serve for a chair. He sat there, still
panting after the climb and his struggle through the dank and
jungle-like thicket, and he felt as if he were growing hotter and hotter;
the sting of the nettle was burning his hand, and the tingling fire
seemed to spread all over his body.
Suddenly, he knew that he was alone. Not merely solitary; that he had
often been amongst the woods and deep in the lanes; but now it was a
wholly different and a very strange sensation. He thought of the valley
winding far below him, all its fields by the brook green and peaceful
and still, without path or track. Then he had climbed the abrupt surge of
the hill, and passing the green and swelling battlements, the ring of
oaks, and the matted thicket, had come to the central space. And behind
there were, he knew, many desolate fields, wild as common, untrodden,
unvisited. He was utterly alone. He still grew hotter as he sat on the
stump, and at last lay down at full length on the soft grass, and more at

his ease felt the waves of heat pass over his body.
And then he began to dream, to let his fancies stray over half-imagined,
delicious things, indulging a virgin mind in its wanderings. The hot air
seemed to beat upon him in palpable waves, and the nettle sting tingled
and itched intolerably; and he was alone upon the fairy hill, within the
great mounds, within the ring of oaks, deep in the heart of the matted
thicket. Slowly and timidly he began to untie his boots, fumbling with
the laces, and glancing all the while on every side at the ugly
misshapen trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch was straight, not
one was free, but all were interlaced and grew one about another; and
just above ground, where the cankered stems joined the protuberant
roots, there were forms that imitated the human shape, and faces and
twining limbs that amazed him. Green mosses were hair, and tresses
were stark in grey lichen; a twisted root swelled into a limb; in the
hollows of the rotted bark he saw the masks of men. His eyes were
fixed and fascinated by the simulacra of the wood, and could not see
his hands, and so at last, and suddenly, it seemed, he lay in the sunlight,
beautiful with his olive skin, dark haired, dark eyed, the gleaming
bodily vision of a strayed faun.
Quick flames now quivered in the substance of his nerves, hints of
mysteries, secrets of life passed trembling through his brain, unknown
desires stung him. As he gazed across the turf and into the thicket, the
sunshine seemed really to become green, and the contrast between the
bright glow poured on the lawn and the black shadow of the brake
made an odd flickering light, in which all the grotesque postures of
stem and root began to stir; the wood was alive. The turf beneath him
heaved and sank as with the deep swell of the sea. He fell asleep, and
lay still on the grass, in the midst of the thicket.
He found out afterwards that he must have slept for nearly an hour. The
shadows had changed when he awoke; his senses came to him with a
sudden shock, and he sat up and stared at his bare limbs in stupid
amazement. He huddled on his clothes and laced his boots, wondering
what folly had beset him. Then, while he stood indecisive, hesitating,
his brain a whirl of puzzled thought, his body trembling, his hands

shaking; as with electric heat, sudden remembrance possessed him. A
flaming blush shone red on his cheeks, and glowed and thrilled through
his limbs. As he awoke, a brief and slight breeze had stirred in a nook
of the matted boughs, and there was a glinting that might have been the
flash of sudden sunlight across