The White People | Page 8

through climbing up,
but I didn't mind this one, because I was so glad I had seen those
singular dances and could imitate them. I went down, creeping through
the bushes, and a tall nettle stung me on my leg, and made me burn, but

I didn't mind it, and I tingled with the boughs and the thorns, but I only
laughed and sang. Then I got out of the thicket into a close valley, a
little secret place like a dark passage that nobody ever knows of,
because it was so narrow and deep and the woods were so thick round
it. There is a steep bank with trees hanging over it, and there the ferns
keep green all through the winter, when they are dead and brown upon
the hill, and the ferns there have a sweet, rich smell like what oozes out
of fir trees. There was a little stream of water running down this valley,
so small that I could easily step across it. I drank the water with my
hand, and it tasted like bright, yellow wine, and it sparkled and bubbled
as it ran down over beautiful red and yellow and green stones, so that it
seemed alive and all colours at once. I drank it, and I drank more with
my hand, but I couldn't drink enough, so I lay down and bent my head
and sucked the water up with my lips. It tasted much better, drinking it
that way, and a ripple would come up to my mouth and give me a kiss,
and I laughed, and drank again, and pretended there was a nymph, like
the one in the old picture at home, who lived in the water and was
kissing me. So I bent low down to the water, and put my lips softly to it,
and whispered to the nymph that I would come again. I felt sure it
could not be common water, I was so glad when I got up and went on;
and I danced again and went up and up the valley, under hanging hills.
And when I came to the top, the ground rose up in front of me, tall and
steep as a wall, and there was nothing but the green wall and the sky. I
thought of "for ever and for ever, world without end, Amen"; and I
thought I must have really found the end of the world, because it was
like the end of everything, as if there could be nothing at all beyond,
except the kingdom of Voor, where the light goes when it is put out,
and the water goes when the sun takes it away. I began to think of all
the long, long way I had journeyed, how I had found a brook and
followed it, and followed it on, and gone through bushes and thorny
thickets, and dark woods full of creeping thorns. Then I had crept up a
tunnel under trees, and climbed a thicket, and seen all the grey rocks,
and sat in the middle of them when they turned round, and then I had
gone on through the grey rocks and come down the hill through the
stinging thicket and up the dark valley, all a long, long way. I wondered
how I should get home again, if I could ever find the way, and if my
home was there any more, or if it were turned and everybody in it into

grey rocks, as in the "Arabian Nights." So I sat down on the grass and
thought what I should do next. I was tired, and my feet were hot with
walking, and as I looked about I saw there was a wonderful well just
under the high, steep wall of grass. All the ground round it was covered
with bright, green, dripping moss; there was every kind of moss there,
moss like beautiful little ferns, and like palms and fir trees, and it was
all green as jewellery, and drops of water hung on it like diamonds.
And in the middle was the great well, deep and shining and beautiful,
so clear that it looked as if I could touch the red sand at the bottom, but
it was far below. I stood by it and looked in, as if I were looking in a
glass. At the bottom of the well, in the middle of it, the red grains of
sand were moving and stirring all the time, and I saw how the water
bubbled up, but at the top it was quite smooth, and full and brimming.
It was a great well, large like a bath, and with the shining, glittering
green moss about it, it looked like a great white jewel, with green
jewels all round. My feet