The Piazza Tales | Page 5

the snail-monks founded
mossy priories there. The other slope was newly shingled. On the north
side, doorless and windowless, the clap-boards, innocent of paint, were
yet green as the north side of lichened pines or copperless hulls of
Japanese junks, becalmed. The whole base, like those of the
neighboring rocks, was rimmed about with shaded streaks of richest
sod; for, with hearth-stones in fairy land, the natural rock, though
housed, preserves to the last, just as in open fields, its fertilizing charm;
only, by necessity, working now at a remove, to the sward without. So,
at least, says Oberon, grave authority in fairy lore. Though setting
Oberon aside, certain it is, that, even in the common world, the soil,
close up to farm-houses, as close up to pasture rocks, is, even though
untended, ever richer than it is a few rods off--such gentle, nurturing
heat is radiated there.
But with this cottage, the shaded streaks were richest in its front and
about its entrance, where the ground-sill, and especially the doorsill had,
through long eld, quietly settled down.
No fence was seen, no inclosure. Near by--ferns, ferns, ferns;
further--woods, woods, woods; beyond--mountains, mountains,
mountains; then--sky, sky, sky. Turned out in aerial commons, pasture

for the mountain moon. Nature, and but nature, house and, all; even a
low cross-pile of silver birch, piled openly, to season; up among whose
silvery sticks, as through the fencing of some sequestered grave, sprang
vagrant raspberry bushes--willful assertors of their right of way.
The foot-track, so dainty narrow, just like a sheep-track, led through
long ferns that lodged. Fairy land at last, thought I; Una and her lamb
dwell here. Truly, a small abode--mere palanquin, set down on the
summit, in a pass between two worlds, participant of neither.
A sultry hour, and I wore a light hat, of yellow sinnet, with white duck
trowsers--both relics of my tropic sea-going. Clogged in the muffling
ferns, I softly stumbled, staining the knees a sea-green.
Pausing at the threshold, or rather where threshold once had been, I saw,
through the open door-way, a lonely girl, sewing at a lonely window. A
pale-cheeked girl, and fly-specked window, with wasps about the
mended upper panes. I spoke. She shyly started, like some Tahiti girl,
secreted for a sacrifice, first catching sight, through palms, of Captain
Cook. Recovering, she bade me enter; with her apron brushed off a
stool; then silently resumed her own. With thanks I took the stool; but
now, for a space, I, too, was mute. This, then, is the fairy-mountain
house, and here, the fairy queen sitting at her fairy window.
I went up to it. Downwards, directed by the tunneled pass, as through a
leveled telescope, I caught sight of a, far-off, soft, azure world. I hardly
knew it, though I came from it.
"You must find this view very pleasant," said I, at last.
"Oh, sir," tears starting in her eyes, "the first time I looked out of this
window, I said 'never, never shall I weary of this.'"
"And what wearies you of it now?"
"I don't know," while a tear fell; "but it is not the view, it is Marianna."
Some months back, her brother, only seventeen, had come hither, a
long way from the other side, to cut wood and burn coal, and she, elder
sister, had accompanied, him. Long had they been orphans, and now,
sole inhabitants of the sole house upon the mountain. No guest came,
no traveler passed. The zigzag, perilous road was only used at seasons
by the coal wagons. The brother was absent the entire day, sometimes
the entire night. When at evening, fagged out, he did come home, he
soon left his bench, poor fellow, for his bed; just as one, at last, wearily
quits that, too, for still deeper rest. The bench, the bed, the grave.

Silent I stood by the fairy window, while these things were being told.
"Do you know," said she at last, as stealing from her story, "do you
know who lives yonder?--I have never been down into that
country--away off there, I mean; that house, that marble one," pointing
far across the lower landscape; "have you not caught it? there, on the
long hill-side: the field before, the woods behind; the white shines out
against their blue; don't you mark it? the only house in sight."
I looked; and after a time, to my surprise, recognized, more by its
position than its aspect, or Marianna's description, my own abode,
glimmering much like this mountain one from the piazza. The mirage
haze made it appear less a farm-house than King Charming's palace.
"I have often wondered who lives there; but it must be some happy one;
again this morning was I thinking so."
"Some happy one," returned I, starting; "and why do