The Hill of Dreams | Page 7

shadow, and the branches rustled and
murmured for a moment, perhaps at the wind's passage.
He stretched out his hands, and cried to his visitant to return; he
entreated the dark eyes that had shone over him, and the scarlet lips that
had kissed him. And then panic fear rushed into his heart, and he ran
blindly, dashing through the wood. He climbed the vallum, and looked
out, crouching, lest anybody should see him. Only the shadows were
changed, and a breath of cooler air mounted from the brook; the fields
were still and peaceful, the black figures moved, far away, amidst the
corn, and the faint echo of the high-pitched voices sang thin and distant
on the evening wind. Across the stream, in the cleft on the hill, opposite
to the fort, the blue wood smoke stole up a spiral pillar from the
chimney of old Mrs. Gibbon's cottage. He began to run full tilt down
the steep surge of the hill, and never stopped till he was over the gate
and in the lane again. As he looked back, down the valley to the south,
and saw the violent ascent, the green swelling bulwarks, and the dark
ring of oaks; the sunlight seemed to play about the fort with an aureole
of flame.
"Where on earth have you been all this time, Lucian?" said his cousin
when he got home. "Why, you look quite ill. It is really madness of you
to go walking in such weather as this. I wonder you haven't got a
sunstroke. And the tea must be nearly cold. I couldn't keep your father
waiting, you know."
He muttered something about being rather tired, and sat down to his tea.
It was not cold, for the "cozy" had been put over the pot, but it was
black and bitter strong, as his cousin expressed it. The draught was
unpalatable, but it did him good, and the thought came with great
consolation that he had only been asleep and dreaming queer,
nightmarish dreams. He shook off all his fancies with resolution, and
thought the loneliness of the camp, and the burning sunlight, and

possibly the nettle sting, which still tingled most abominably, must
have been the only factors in his farrago of impossible recollections. He
remembered that when he had felt the sting, he had seized a nettle with
thick folds of his handkerchief, and having twisted off a good length,
and put it in his pocket to show his father. Mr. Taylor was almost
interested when he came in from his evening stroll about the garden
and saw the specimen.
"Where did you manage to come across that, Lucian?" he said. "You
haven't been to Caermaen, have you?"
"No. I got it in the Roman fort by the common."
"Oh, the twyn. You must have been trespassing then. Do you know
what it is?"
"No. I thought it looked different from the common nettles."
"Yes; it's a Roman nettle--arctic pilulifera. It's a rare plant. Burrows
says it's to be found at Caermaen, but I was never able to come across it.
I must add it to the flora of the parish."
Mr. Taylor had begun to compile a flora accompanied by a hortus
siccus, but both stayed on high shelves dusty and fragmentary. He put
the specimen on his desk, intending to fasten it in the book, but the
maid swept it away, dry and withered, in a day or two.
Lucian tossed and cried out in his sleep that night, and the awakening
in the morning was, in a measure, a renewal of the awakening in the
fort. But the impression was not so strong, and in a plain room it
seemed all delirium, a phantasmagoria. He had to go down to
Caermaen in the afternoon, for Mrs. Dixon, the vicar's wife, had
"commanded" his presence at tea. Mr. Dixon, though fat and short and
clean shaven, ruddy of face, was a safe man, with no extreme views on
anything. He "deplored" all extreme party convictions, and thought the
great needs of our beloved Church were conciliation, moderation, and
above all "amolgamation"--so he pronounced the word. Mrs. Dixon
was tall, imposing, splendid, well fitted for the Episcopal order, with

gifts that would have shone at the palace. There were daughters, who
studied German Literature, and thought Miss Frances Ridley Havergal
wrote poetry, but Lucian had no fear of them; he dreaded the boys.
Everybody said they were such fine, manly fellows, such gentlemanly
boys, with such a good manner, sure to get on in the world. Lucian had
said "Bother!" in a very violent manner when the gracious invitation
was conveyed to him, but there was no getting out of it. Miss Deacon
did her best to make him look smart; his ties were all