The Hill of Dreams | Page 9

Union."
Mr. Taylor was a man of very wide and irregular reading and a
tenacious memory; he often used to wonder why he had not risen in the
Church. He had once told Mr. Dixon a singular and drolatique
anecdote concerning the bishop's college days, and he never discovered
why the prelate did not bow according to his custom when the name of
Taylor was called at the next visitation. Some people said the reason
was lighted candles, but that was impossible, as the Reverend and
Honorable Smallwood Stafford, Lord Beamys's son, who had a cure of
souls in the cathedral city, was well known to burn no end of candles,
and with him the bishop was on the best of terms. Indeed the bishop
often stayed at Coplesey (pronounced "Copsey") Hall, Lord Beamys's
place in the west.
Lucian had mentioned the name of De Carti with intention, and had
perhaps exaggerated a little Mrs. Dixon's respectful manner. He knew
such incidents cheered his father, who could never look at these
subjects from a proper point of view, and, as people said, sometimes
made the strangest remarks for a clergyman. This irreverent way of
treating serious things was one of the great bonds between father and
son, but it tended to increase their isolation. People said they would
often have liked to asked Mr. Taylor to garden-parties, and tea-parties,
and other cheap entertainments, if only he had not been such an
extreme man and so queer. Indeed, a year before, Mr. Taylor had gone
to a garden-party at the Castle, Caermaen, and had made such fun of
the bishop's recent address on missions to the Portuguese, that the
Gervases and Dixons and all who heard him were quite shocked and
annoyed. And, as Mrs. Meyrick of Lanyravon observed, his black coat
was perfectly green with age; so on the whole the Gervases did not like
to invite Mr. Taylor again. As for the son, nobody cared to have him;
Mrs. Dixon, as she said to her husband, really asked him out of charity.

"I am afraid he seldom gets a real meal at home," she remarked, "so I
thought he would enjoy a good wholesome tea for once in a way. But
he is such an unsatisfactory boy, he would only have one slice of that
nice plain cake, and I couldn't get him to take more than two plums.
They were really quite ripe too, and boys are usually so fond of fruit."
Thus Lucian was forced to spend his holidays chiefly in his own
company, and make the best he could of the ripe peaches on the south
wall of the rectory garden. There was a certain corner where the heat of
that hot August seemed concentrated, reverberated from one wall to the
other, and here he liked to linger of mornings, when the mists were still
thick in the valleys, "mooning," meditating, extending his walk from
the quince to the medlar and back again, beside the moldering walls of
mellowed brick. He was full of a certain wonder and awe, not unmixed
with a swell of strange exultation, and wished more and more to be
alone, to think over that wonderful afternoon within the fort. In spite of
himself the impression was fading; he could not understand that feeling
of mad panic terror that drove him through the thicket and down the
steep hillside; yet, he had experienced so clearly the physical shame
and reluctance of the flesh; he recollected that for a few seconds after
his awakening the sight of his own body had made him shudder and
writhe as if it had suffered some profoundest degradation. He saw
before him a vision of two forms; a faun with tingling and prickling
flesh lay expectant in the sunlight, and there was also the likeness of a
miserable shamed boy, standing with trembling body and shaking,
unsteady hands. It was all confused, a procession of blurred images,
now of rapture and ecstasy, and now of terror and shame, floating in a
light that was altogether phantasmal and unreal. He dared not approach
the fort again; he lingered in the road to Caermaen that passed behind it,
but a mile away, and separated by the wild land and a strip of wood
from the towering battlements. Here he was looking over a gate one
day, doubtful and wondering, when he heard a heavy step behind him,
and glancing round quickly saw it was old Morgan of the White House.
"Good afternoon, Master Lucian," he began. "Mr. Taylor pretty well, I
suppose? I be goin' to the house a minute; the men in the fields are
wantin' some more cider. Would you come and taste a drop of cider,

Master Lucian? It's very good, sir, indeed."
Lucian did not want any