Up! Horsie! | Page 5

fabulous flock. Eager to pursue his discoveries still further, he went on fiddling as he came down the hillock towards the lady, when what was not his horror and surprise on perceiving that the face he had so much admired was hollow as a mask behind!
On hearing him playing in so unusual a manner, the lady turned round her head sharply, exhibiting her bewitching countenance to his gaze, and singing more sweetly than ever, as she offered him a goblet of wine. It was fortunate he could not hear her sing, or that voice would have melted all his resolutions, instead of which, he boldly dashed down the proffered cup, and on her offering to give him a kiss, he dealt her a box on the ear, which upset her like a card figure, when he became so horrified at the spectral unreality of the objects about him, that he ran off as fast as his legs would carry him, fiddling like mad as he went along. In his frantic flight he passed by streams of water that seemed to be nothing but tinfoil, and rocks that looked as if they were made of pasteboard, and hollow like the Elle-maid's face, nor did he stop to take breath till after all the objects in the landscape had resumed their natural consistence, and clouds were clouds, and sheep real woolly sheep, which shewed him to be beyond the limits of Elf-land.
Meantime evening had waned into night, and the moon was beginning to rise, when Gilbert flung himself down on a bank to rest after his headlong scamper. The cool air blew refreshingly over his fevered brow, and he felt like one restored to reason after a fit of madness, or awaking after a strange uneasy dream. "Now," thought he, "I need only gather some ragwort and go home." And he looked all about for some, but as it happened to be very rare in that neighbourhood, he walked on a good way, peering about in the moonlight before he could find any. When at last he hit upon the wished for herb, great was his joy, and he plucked it as triumphantly as if he held in his hand the bridle of the finest steed mortal ever looked upon, crying out: "Up! Horsie!" in a loud voice. But no horsie answered to the appeal, and the ragwort remained the simple herb it was before. Again and again he called out the magic formula in tones now commanding and now entreating, and lastly quite passionately, only there was no spur nor whip that could move the ragwort to serve as his horse. He now perceived old Sandy had tricked him after all, and sent him to Elf-land without giving him the means of coming back. So there was nothing for it but to trudge all the way back on foot,--and a long way it was I can tell you! It is true Gilbert retained a hope that kept up his spirits a good while, that he should still find some of the right sort of ragwort, and accordingly in each new district he came to, he industriously gathered some specimens to try the experiment, but with no better success. And after each fresh disappointment, he could not help saying to himself: "I wish I had given Sandy a lift, and then I should never have got into this scrape." The worst of it was that Gilbert had scarcely any money about him, and when that little was spent, he was at his wit's end to know how to pay his way home. Luckily he still had the fiddle, and though he could not play a single tune, its tones were so sweet that people liked to hear them, and village children enjoyed having a scrape upon it, so that he always managed to get a night's lodging and a supper as he journeyed along, and even to get carried across the sea, for the sailors said it was as good as listening to a mermaid.
When at last he reached home, he hung up the fiddle in his cottage, but that same night it cracked right through with a loud moan, and fell in shivers on the floor. Gilbert tried to mend it, but he never could manage to restore it to its right shape again. It was like a puzzle that baffles a child's attempts to put it together. However, he made a sort of box of it, something like an Eolian harp, across which he stretched the golden strings, and whenever the wind blew from Elf-land they would play sweet mournful tunes, as the instrument lay on the window-sill.
For years Gilbert had a hankering to return to Elf-land and see a little more of life amongst the Elle-maids and men, if