OLIVE-PEBCIVAL- 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 DREAM ENGLISH
 
 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 A FANTASTICAL ROMANCE 
 
 BY 
 WILFRED ROWLAND CHILDE 
 
 LONDON : CONSTABLE fc? CO. LIMITED
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 First published 1917.
 
 TO GERALD H. CROW. 
 
 Beyond the blue and dreaming hills 
 In a field of blue that burns afar 
 
 With silver joy the waste she fills, 
 A lonely, white and royal Star. 
 
 A lonely, white and royal Star, 
 
 Beyond the last blue crest she burns ; 
 
 From distant deep and surges afar 
 
 The Soul's full flood toward her turns !
 
 ' There are two living countries, the one visible and the 
 one invisible ; and when it is winter with us it is summer 
 in that country, and when the November winds are up 
 among us it is lambing- time there.' W. B. YEATS. 
 
 The quiet evening kept her tryst : 
 
 Beneath an open sky we rode, 
 And passed into a wandering mist 
 
 Along the perfect Evenlode. 
 
 The tender Evenlode that makes 
 
 Her meadows hush to hear the sound 
 
 Of waters mingling in the brakes, 
 
 And binds my heart to English ground. 
 
 A lovely river, all alone, 
 
 She lingers in the hills and folds 
 
 A hundred little towns of stone, 
 Forgotten in the western wolds. 
 
 H. BELLOC.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The House Called Thessaly 
 
 II. Two at a Feast 
 
 III. Blue April 
 
 IV. The Spanish Lady 
 
 V. Seraphima and Carmina 
 
 VI. The Poems of Fabian Fayre 
 
 VII. Jealousy 
 
 VIII. Apparitions 
 
 IX. Crystal 
 
 X. Among the Lilies 
 
 XI. Hellenica 
 
 XII. The Court of the Rose 
 
 XIII. The Virgin of Sistoe 
 
 XIV. The Shadow of the Three Kings 
 XV. The Red Eagle 
 
 XVI. The Tower of Our Lady 
 
 XVII. Eternal Life
 
 I. THE HOUSE CALLED THESSALY 
 
 
 moon of autumn was rising 
 like a bright orange flower behind 
 the gables of the house called 
 Thessaly, in the High Street of 
 Moresby in the Marsh. The broad street was 
 empty and shining in the pallid light of the 
 moon. The lime trees before that house shiv- 
 ered with their few remaining leaves. The 
 windows of the houses shone with cheerful 
 lights, and one bell was ringing softly. The 
 window on the right of the door of Thessaly 
 showed luminous, but the other four win- 
 dows were in darkness. 
 
 Inside that little room the rose of a great 
 fire and the four primroses of white lighted 
 tapers in silver candlesticks united in one 
 mild blaze. Upon the walls of the room were 
 two pictures, finely painted, one of the Holy 
 House of Swilling brooding over the wolds, 
 and the other of Aurelia herself, her hands 
 full of daisies. There was a great bowl 
 on the table containing spices from Java, 
 brought home by the dead mariner Jacob
 
 2 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 Brown, and the heat caused the smell of them 
 to permeate the room pleasantly. Above the 
 fire was a copy of the Master of the Hills, 
 a noble picture by Sylvester of Burwood, 
 showing a genius like a crowned and robed 
 father with a gloriously spacious face. In the 
 mild luminous benediction of his ineffable 
 eyes reposed the sea-blue wolds, starry with 
 little towns. White flowers glimmered in a 
 pot beside Aurelia. 
 
 She, the origin of the picture and the mis- 
 tress of the room, sat beside the fire in an 
 ebony chair, combing her yellow hair with a 
 little comb and gazing at herself in a chased 
 mirror. She wore a white robe and a girdle 
 of turquoises, and her clear eyes were blue 
 as the stones. Her pale skin had a delicate 
 flush on it, and her lips were parted in a smile. 
 She was the loveliest woman in Moresby, 
 but her beauty had not made her proud. Her 
 soul was as white as the petals at her side. 
 
 In the other chair, wrinkled and withered, 
 slumbered Domina Phipps, once Aurelia's 
 nurse, a figure swathed in furs and heavy 
 black. A kettle made music on the fire. A 
 large gray cat was staring meditatively into 
 the red heart of the coals and purring. 
 
 This tale is the history of that queenly
 
 THE HOUSE CALLED THESSALY 
 woman Aurelia, of her loves and of her deeds 
 in Moresby, that little gray town upon the 
 marches, and in other towns. There then she 
 sits, now in perfect tranquillity, before she 
 enters upon the great days of her life, still 
 a girl, still untroubled by the arrows, still 
 white. The idol of the town, the star of the 
 wolds, she has moved like Atalanta in the 
 midst of the young men. She has been a 
 torch that kindled and did not burn. She has 
 had feet of silver and hands of snow. 
 
 Her father Jacob, the sea captain, was 
 dead, and her mother Sofima, a Briavel from 
 Marstake, had been laid in the earth hardly 
 a year ago. There were Browns and Briavels 
 and Wychecombs in Moresby and the places 
 round about, scores of them, akin to her, but 
 she scarcely knew them. She lived in this 
 house of her own, with the old woman 
 Domina and a maid or two. She was proud 
 and lonely : yet whenever she appeared at 
 the feasts or the assemblies there was visible 
 commotion among the people, and the young 
 men used to fight about her in the bare green 
 beyond the bridge, on the road to Swilling. 
 
 It was only two years since she had left 
 Sistoe and the college of nuns that clustered 
 under the towering church upon that naked
 
 4 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 hill, and the apple-trees and the brown river. 
 She came home from Sistoe to huddled 
 Moresby, to the gray roofs and the low smoke 
 of the wolds, the long horizons, the visible 
 silences and the quiet streams : to Moresby 
 of the crumbling spire and the wide street, 
 legendary, solemn and old. She had come 
 home and regretted the life upon the hill, 
 the kindly, wise face of the abbess, the airi- 
 ness, the white lives of the nuns and the 
 wide shining views. For from Sistoe, from 
 the windows of the nunnery, one could see 
 the great plain to the east, a wide river and 
 many spires, and beyond that peaked hills, 
 terribly high, fantastic, with clouds about 
 their summits. She had loved to walk on the 
 ramparts of Sistoe, between the glimmering 
 poplars, and look out upon that spaciousness, 
 shining perhaps in the morning after night- 
 long rains, a marvel of blue and white and 
 gold, light made visible over a great cham- 
 paign. She had loved the jagged blue of the 
 Eaglestone and the cold cloud upon those 
 bitter hills. 
 
 Now, as she sat smiling before the fire, she 
 remembered all those pleasures and sighed. 
 In little misty Moresby there were no vast 
 prospects, no chantings in a soaring choir, no
 
 THE HOUSE CALLED THESSALY 
 
 talk of great persons and high issues. The 
 town lay in an obscure valley of the wolds, 
 upon the little river Evenwater, thirty miles 
 west of aery Sistoe, unvisited, untroubled. 
 Here had lived all her ancestors, she loved 
 it in a way. But it was cramped, antique, full 
 of gossip, Aurelia often thought : there were 
 not enough people in it. Also, she was amused 
 in her heart at the rubicund burgesses, the 
 solemn merchants and the priests. The elder 
 women were often heavy and the younger 
 ones often entirely foolish. As yet, she had 
 not noticed the young men: she was indiffer- 
 ent. She had not heard of the fights beyond 
 the bridge. 
 
 She sighed, she smiled, she put away her 
 mirror. Well, here she was and Moresby was 
 her home. She must make the best of it. Also 
 she loved little Thessaly, its high ceilings, 
 its fine delicate windows, the street at its 
 front door and the orchard at its back, whence 
 through the mossy boughs could be seen the 
 low dim-coloured wold and the great road to 
 Cheeping, to Burwood and the other cities 
 of those hills. She was happy in a way, she 
 thought. As for love, she dismissed it and 
 the thought of it. She gloried in her scorn 
 for it. She was not meant to love. The white 
 B
 
 6 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 air of Sistoe and the voices of the nuns and 
 the spirit of those inhuman peaks was in her 
 blood, or so she thought, while under the 
 gray smoke of the town in which she was 
 many youths groaned and moaned because 
 of her. 
 
 Many thoughts troubled her vaguely, but 
 she put them aside. She must go more to 
 the feasts, she began to think, and see more 
 people. She knew she was worshipful, but 
 she hardly realised anyone worshipped her. 
 The people admired her. Well, it was her 
 duty to appear more among them. She must 
 have girls from Sistoe to stay with her: she 
 must rejoice more in the living world .... 
 
 Domina blinked, snorted, opened her eyes, 
 sat up, smiled. 
 
 ' I had peculiar dreams,' she said. ' I 
 dreamt I was young again and dancing in 
 a hall, and I had red flowers in my hair.' 
 
 Then she apologised for talking nonsense, 
 she laughed and straightened her venerable 
 back. 
 
 'And what have you been doing?' she 
 asked. She loved Aurelia, but she was a little 
 afraid of her. 
 
 ' I have been thinking about many things. 
 But none of them matter.'
 
 THE HOUSE CALLED THESSALY 
 Then they both laughed again. The kettle 
 was taken off the fire and the old woman 
 made a concoction for herself with hot water 
 and herbs which she had bought from Brab- 
 ler the chemist, and drank it off. She sup- 
 posed it, erroneously, to be good for rheu- 
 matism. Then they took up their candles, 
 kissed good-night and went up the creaking 
 stairs to bed. 
 
 In her white room Aurelia prayed for 
 power to live, to be in life as a living soul. 
 The full moon was now in the middle of 
 heaven. The orchard and the wold were 
 white in its radiance. The cold blue arch was 
 thick with stars. Not much smoke went up 
 from the silent town. A kind of peace came 
 into her out of the starlight, and she dreamed 
 of a wide river and of dim, pale trees nodding 
 against pearly air. 
 
 All night long utter silence covered 
 Moresby. It lay under the stars and the stars 
 watched it hour after hour. The winds alone 
 breathed in the bare boughs : also the voice 
 of the river rippled quietly between its banks, 
 hurrying alone to merge itself into a greater 
 stream, the virginal voice of Evenwater on 
 its perpetual pilgrimage to the sea. 
 
 B2
 
 II. TWO AT A FEAST 
 
 
 moon set and the stars were 
 quenched. A pale light shone up 
 through the mists, the cocks 
 wound their horns in all the yards, 
 the light broadened and became rosy. A few 
 birds began to twitter in the apple-trees, a 
 little smoke crept out of the chimneys, 
 gradually there were noises. Then the mists 
 dispersed, and the sun, very red and huge, 
 came up into the clearing blue, into a place 
 of dim clouds, pearl-coloured, orange and 
 gray. The colours came back into the world, 
 to the yellow trees of November, the wolds 
 coloured like dim gentians and the sodden 
 green of the fields. Evenwater shone in the 
 glittering morning : a great flight of rooks 
 moved in a cawing mass from the trees round 
 the churchyard to the plough-lands on Ship- 
 scar Hill. There was to be a banquet that 
 night in the market-hall, and visitors were 
 expected. The town awoke with alacrity and 
 was thrilled with expectation. In Moresby 
 banquets were always great events, memor-
 
 io DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 able and exciting, something that temporally 
 altered life. Almost everyone in the town 
 would attend them. 
 
 Aurelia, wrapped in a cloak of purple, went 
 down the street before noon to visit the 
 family of Briavels who lived in the house in 
 the market-place. The shopkeepers stood at 
 their doors, red and white geraniums were 
 in all the windows of the cottages, and the 
 market was packed with cattle, swine and 
 sweating farmers, riotous with loud voices 
 and the clamour of the sales. She passed 
 dom Anthony, the head of the monks in 
 Moresby, a dry, tall, old man, wearing large 
 spectacles, many of the wives of the burgesses 
 out marketing, and at the end of Lily Street 
 two of her cousins, Elizabeth and Robert 
 Briavel, whose company she joined ; and the 
 three went on together to the house. It was 
 high and dark, with a solemn heavy stone 
 porch, and stood where a narrow lane came 
 into the market-place : a corner-house, grim 
 and rather majestic. Behindit were rich lawns 
 sloping down to the river. 
 
 Young Robert was broad and fresh-faced, 
 and obviously found great delight in being 
 seen walking with his cousin. He thought he 
 loved her, but it was only the joyous
 
 TWO AT A FEAST n 
 
 enthusiasm of youth. Elizabeth laughed per- 
 petually and had masses of yellow hair. She 
 almost danced as she walked. In the corner- 
 house the family was collected for dinner in 
 a great panelled room, spread with crimson 
 carpets, whose three windows looked out 
 upon the yews and bright lawns of the garden. 
 There was Robert the elder, the black- 
 bearded lawyer, the scholar and the wit ; Anne 
 Briavel his wife, a tall woman from the far 
 south, pale and wise ; the sister of Robert, 
 J unia, who loved the nuns, and all the children, 
 Stephen, a soldier home on leave, Adela, 
 Mark, and little John, a bright-eyed, noisy, 
 ruddy boy of ten. They surrounded Aurelia 
 with expressions of delight. She must eat with 
 them. They were all very, very glad to see 
 her. She would stay. 
 
 ' Yes,' she laughed, ' I came for a meal. I 
 was lonely last night. I want company. You 
 are all always so very cheerful.' 
 
 So she sat down on old Robert's right hand, 
 with young Robert opposite her, and kind, 
 godly Junia on her right, and enjoyed the 
 talk, the wit and the cheerful faces. They 
 treated her almost as though she were a 
 queen, but she scarcely noticed it. Sometimes 
 young Robert looked at her shyly across the
 
 12 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 table : he hardly dared speak at all. But Junia 
 talked, asked her many questions, as she 
 always did, about Sistoe, and nodded often, 
 sagely and solemnly. Stephen was full of his 
 promotion, and of some war going on in the 
 world somewhere, in some place the people 
 of Moresby had hardly even heard of, and 
 certainly did not care about at all. Adela was 
 pensive and shy, but Mark said clever things 
 about poets and laughed a good deal at his 
 own bad jokes. The mother of them all, calm 
 herself, presided like a humorous genius at 
 a riot of hunger, humour and youth. Old black 
 Robert ate hugely, said little and kept on 
 heaping up the plates, especially Aurelia's. 
 She loved them all, but she was scarcely 
 of them, she knew. She wished she had 
 Elizabeth's silvery joy : she wished she could 
 laugh like Mark and John. 
 
 Then they began to talk about the banquet 
 and the guests. One of the lords of the council 
 was expected, a man mighty with the king, 
 the Bishop of Sistoe in whose diocese Mores- 
 by was, and a poet called Mortimer. It was 
 to be a great occasion, the mayor and the 
 burgesses would attend in state, and all the 
 silver vessels of the town were to be on the 
 table.
 
 TWO AT A FEAST 13 
 
 Anne said : 'Will you be of our party, 
 Aurelia? we are all going, and we have other 
 guests for you to talk to. There is the daughter 
 of an old friend of mine coming, and a friend 
 of Mark's, a young man from Ottomore. I 
 hope you will come.' Aurelia said she would. 
 She was glad, for she had wanted to go, and 
 she had not wanted to go by herself. In the 
 midst of her cousins she would not mind the 
 open staring of some of the people. 
 
 After that the party broke up, and they all 
 scattered to their various labours. Aurelia 
 took Elizabeth back toThessaly with her, and 
 they spent the afternoon inspecting clothes. 
 It had begun to rain by now. Outside the 
 world was streaming and gray. In the little 
 blue room, firelit and shining, the two cousins 
 sat in the midst of a litter of coloured fabrics, 
 a pair of golden-haired virgins, proud and 
 mild. 
 
 Later, Elizabeth departed, and Aurelia, 
 with Domina's assistance, arrayed herself for 
 the feast, in a rich heavy robe of white. She 
 wore, too, a girdle of silver and in her hair a 
 silver chain, and her cloak was of crimson, 
 very deep and warm. Soon after she was 
 ready there came a thundering knock at the 
 door, and there were all the Briavels, with
 
 H DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 torches flaming, waiting for her. The rain had 
 stopped, but there was much mist, and the 
 street was full of people going to the feast. 
 All her cousins were muffled in cloaks, and 
 hooded, some of them, but she made out 
 through the firelit night a strange girl talking 
 to Junia, and among the men a face she did 
 not know, whose clear eyes pleased her. She 
 went splendidly between Elizabeth and Anne. 
 She felt exhilarated, she looked forward to 
 the crowds and the banquet with joy. 
 
 The hall was one blaze of light, and roaring. 
 When they got to their places, Aurelia found 
 herself between Anne and the young man 
 from Ottomore. At the high table, behind the 
 piled silver, were all the notables, the mayor, 
 ruddy and obese, in his scarlet and golden 
 chain, the glittering burgesses, and the guests. 
 Margrave, the great baron, towered on the 
 mayor's right, bearded and richly robed: she 
 saw, too, the keen rosy face of the bishop and 
 Mortimer in his cloak of purple, pale and 
 smiling across the table at some jest. There 
 were women there, too, in stately robes, their 
 hair gloriously ornamented. None of them 
 were as lovely as Aurelia, and the people 
 realised that. Still, they did not stare at her 
 much. There was such noise and riot at the
 
 TWO AT A FEAST 15 
 
 banquet and the hundreds of tapers made 
 such glittering light and the personality of 
 Margrave excited such attention that her 
 beauty shone observed only by some. At the 
 tables of the middle class, where the bur- 
 gesses' families were and the lawyers and 
 the merchants, the young men stared at her, 
 as always. 
 
 The young man from Ottomore had nice 
 eyes. It was his eyes she had noticed in the 
 mist. He talked well, too, and seemed very 
 charming, she thought. His name was Sigurd 
 Andersen. He had known Mark at the uni- 
 versity of Lilyminster, and was now attached 
 to the following of a noble in the regions 
 south of the capital, apparently a position of 
 some honour. He seemed fond of talking about 
 Ottomore, and had been staying there with 
 his family before coming on to Moresby. 
 
 'Do you know it?' he said. 'It is marsh- 
 land, you know, and in autumn it turns blue, 
 blue as the sea, and the sunsets are memor- 
 able. Later, too, it is all flooded, and the water 
 glitters in the distance. In June it is lovely; 
 the iris and the water-lily bloom in the dykes, 
 the little rivers ripple along and the air is 
 full of larks. My father lives almost under the 
 church of Charmington, the highest tower in
 
 16 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 the marsh. My lord, you should see the view 
 from it, wide blue plains and towers standing 
 up and to the south rich woods.' 
 
 She was amused at his excitement. His 
 hazel eyes were quite fiery and his calm face 
 a little flushed. Sigurd Andersen seemed a 
 strange fellow, she thought, to be so pleased 
 with a marsh. 
 
 Mark laughed across at them, over a tank- 
 ard of beer: ' Is Sigurd talking about his old 
 marsh? I never heard such a lad. It is Otto- 
 more, Ottomore, always. And when I went 
 there all I saw was water and trees and a 
 lot of cows.' 
 
 There was a shout of laughter and Sigurd 
 smiled, but Aurelia realised how he loved 
 the place and she liked him for it. It must be 
 beautiful in some strange way or other for 
 him to care for it so. She found herself in- 
 terested in Sigurd and talked to him most of 
 the time. She hardly noticed the splendour 
 of the high table : the flame of all the torches 
 and tapers and the riot of the cheerful hall 
 scarcely affected her. His ardent eyes and 
 his enthusiasm charmed her. She felt less 
 lonely than she had ever done since she left 
 Sistoe. 
 
 Sigurd Andersen was tall and not very
 
 TWO AT A FEAST 17 
 
 broad, big-boned, a little awkward, yet some- 
 how suggesting both splendour and delicacy. 
 He had a square chin, curling dark brown 
 hair, and a smiling mouth: his eyes were 
 bright now with pleasure. He had on a robe 
 of dark red and his sleeves were orange. 
 His voice was loud, not harsh, full of subtle 
 inflections, and he laughed often and joyfully. 
 In age, Aurelia thought, he must be about 
 five-and-twenty. She certainly found plea- 
 sure in his company. 
 
 Not till late in the feast did she learn the 
 name of the strange girl, the daughter of 
 Anne's friend. This person sat between 
 Stephen and Junia, and two people only 
 separated her from Aurelia. 'My friend, Lois 
 Fermor/ said Anne, ' wishes to know you.' 
 She looked across the two between, Anne 
 and Junia, and found a small pale girl speak- 
 ing to her. This Lois was, in an exquisite 
 way, beautiful : she was very polite and very 
 charming. In her jet-black hair were pearls 
 and her neck rose swan-like out of a robe of 
 shining blue. But Aurelia did not like the 
 look of her dark eyes. The fair beauty smiled 
 and was courteous to the dark one; yet, if 
 the two elder women between had been very 
 wise, they would have felt a veiled antago-
 
 i8 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 nism. There was in Lois' eyes a subtle in- 
 solence, something selfish and powerful, an 
 inexorable sense of her own power. 
 
 Aurelia did not like her. She who seemed 
 always to attract and to be attracted by others 
 now felt herself baffled. The dark girl in her 
 sapphire robe was brilliant, yet heartless as 
 crystal, a cold, serene, observant creature, 
 spiteful perhaps and selfish, above all 
 selfish. 
 
 Yet they conversed sweetly enough, mer- 
 rily and with calm faces. Lois thought Au- 
 relia beautiful. ' She is lovelier than I/ she 
 thought; but she rather despised the tranquil 
 soul of Aurelia and all her shining candour. 
 She herself admired secrecy. These two were 
 as they looked. The dark one was full of 
 guile, and the golden one was like the sun, 
 open and splendid in all her thoughts and 
 doings. 
 
 After this incident Aurelia turned to Sigurd 
 again, and they talked till the feast ended, 
 and Lois returned to her cheerful babble 
 with Mark and Stephen, who found her en- 
 trancing. After many healths had been drunk 
 and speeches had been made by the bishop 
 and Margrave and the mayor, the last broadly 
 humorous in the Moresby style, the feast
 
 TWO AT A FEAST 19 
 
 broke up in a clamour of confused shouting 
 and all the people dispersed. 
 
 The Briavels escorted Aurelia back to her 
 house, and she said good-bye at the door. 
 She said good-bye to Sigurd with a little 
 fluttering at her heart : yes, she was sorry to 
 leave him, she would have liked to know him 
 better. The heart of Sigurd also had been 
 stirred in a way unusual to him. He had lived 
 a life little troubled by thoughts of women, 
 and the golden vision of this girl meant 
 something: he felt as it were a tiny flame 
 just kindled within him, the beginning of a 
 rosy glow. The rain had left great pools in 
 the road, and through the clearing mist the 
 moon peered down tawny red. As he walked 
 back silent in the cheerful crowd his eyes 
 were filled with the vision of her as he saw 
 her last, waving her hand, outlined against 
 the lit yellow of her open door and on her 
 face a reflection from the moon. 
 
 All night long he dreamed of her in a great 
 dark chamber at the Briavels' house and 
 scarcely slept at all. His life had been stain- 
 less: all the fiercer in him would burn the 
 flame kindled by her strange beauty. He got 
 no rest till it began to be dawn: the cold, 
 white, pitiless light crept into the ornate
 
 20 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 room, a thrush began to sing in the yew-trees 
 outside the window, and here and there 
 through half-closed lids he could see the 
 glimmering casements and his festal clothes 
 scattered on the floor. He slept: in his dreams 
 he saw a great crimson rose grow up out of 
 his heart and extend its sanguine petals little 
 by little, gloriously unfolding its beauty. It 
 was the birth of his love.
 
 III. BLUE APRIL 
 
 WHEN April came, he came that 
 year like a prince. His showers 
 were many, but not harsh: his 
 flowers bloomed in thick and curi- 
 ous profusion: his birds never ceased their 
 jubilate. 
 
 When May was drawing near, there was 
 one day of glorious golden light when all the 
 wolds seemed floating in amber and the dis- 
 tances had upon them an intense blue like 
 the azure of the sea in the south. The sky 
 was rich and flowery, in colour like the dis- 
 tilled essence of all the tenderest blue petals, 
 and great clouds of silver floated in it, proud 
 as swans, casting long shadows over the 
 green and golden earth. The meadows were 
 thick all over with starry daisies, with crow- 
 foot and cuckoo-flower, so thick that the 
 grass was scarcely visible, cowslips kindled 
 in bright clusters and the hawthorn began to 
 glimmer along the hedges in pale, delicious 
 creamy sprays. The towers and spires of 
 churches stood up white as ivory against 
 c
 
 22 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 backgrounds of blue, in the sun young trees 
 had the appearance of delicate branches of 
 filigree, and from the crests of the wolds the 
 views had a beauty that seemed scarcely real, 
 so drenched they were in glorious colour. 
 
 Sigurd Andersen was once more in 
 Moresby, and he knew now all about the rose 
 in his heart. Aurelia just before he came back 
 had gone away to stay with the nuns at 
 Sistoe, and later she meant to go on to 
 Swilling, that little lofty hill-town at the 
 summit of the wolds, with its solitary tower, 
 its market opening out on a vast panorama, 
 and its encircling woods. Here lived one of 
 her friends, and she was going for advice. 
 
 Since the night in the hall she had not 
 seen Sigurd again, but during the winter she 
 began to know that a rose had opened in 
 her heart also, a rose of milk and silver. 
 She began to love Sigurd, and, though she 
 had only met him once, she knew his face 
 by heart, she would dream of meeting him 
 in the wolds, and she felt, too, in some 
 mysterious way that she had known him in 
 another country long before she had been 
 born. She knew somehow that they were 
 destined for each other, but she dared not 
 hope for what she desired. She had ceased
 
 BLUE APRIL 23 
 
 to think lightly of love : it began to be the 
 chief presence in her life, and when she heard 
 from Elizabeth that Sigurd was coming to 
 Moresby again she became suddenly afraid 
 of him, and went away to Sistoe. In the 
 white shadows of the virgins' church she 
 thought she would forget her love. But love 
 is not easy to forget. 
 
 So now she was at Sistoe, taking her old 
 walks among the poplars, along the crumb- 
 ling ramparts that faced the blue and jagged 
 Eaglestone, trying to quench her love in the 
 waters of prudence and the calm of that 
 monastic air. That Sigurd ever thought of 
 her she dared not believe, and so she never 
 supposed that her absence would cause him 
 the smallest pain. 
 
 But when Sigurd came to Moresby, weary 
 of the rather effete life of the court and the 
 riot of the detestable capital, only to hear 
 casually from Anne that 'my niece Aurelia' 
 had gone away to the nunnery at Sistoe, all 
 the light seemed to go out of the April sun, 
 and with a sudden pang he realised that for 
 her sake, and hers only, he had come to 
 Moresby. He knew then in a flash that for 
 him a life lacking Aurelia was not livable : 
 he knew that he loved her totally and com- 
 
 C2
 
 24 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 pletely and faithfully. He seemed to have 
 loved her from the beginning of the world, 
 and she whom he worshipped he had known 
 once, he thought, not in a little town of the 
 wolds only, but in some society of spirits 
 where love had been omnipresent as light. 
 Besides, the word 'nunnery' had an ominous 
 sound, and he was afraid she had gone there 
 with some idea of taking the vows. Anne 
 could not help marking the sudden change 
 of expression in his face and the ill-disguised 
 sorrow in his cheerful eyes when she let fall 
 that little piece of information. At once she 
 leapt to the obvious conclusion, and, though 
 she had hoped Sigurd would love Elizabeth, 
 she was glad; for she sincerely cared for 
 Aurelia and treated her as one of her own 
 children. 
 
 Sigurd's heart was very heavy, yet he de- 
 cided to stay on in Moresby, for, after all, the 
 burg was redolent of her presence and she 
 might perhaps return before she was ex- 
 pected. It never occurred to him to connect 
 his arrival and her departure. How should 
 it ? He knew the renown of her for beauty 
 in all the wold-country: of course she had 
 many suitors, and he was not vain enough to 
 suppose that after one conversation he could
 
 BLUE APRIL 25 
 
 touch the heart of the Star of the Wolds. 
 Yet he was in her own town, and this at least 
 was comfort. 
 
 So he stayed on. One quiet afternoon, 
 when the High Street was very empty and 
 only a few gaily-clad children were shouting 
 in it under the glistering trees, he took his 
 courage in both hands and knocked at the 
 door of Thessaly. Old Domina, swathed in 
 black, answered his knock, and in as cool a 
 voice as he could command he asked her 
 when her mistress would return. She peered 
 at him sharply out of her old eyes, and in an 
 angry voice answered that she did not know, 
 then slammed the door in his face and left 
 him speechless on the step. He went away 
 disconsolate, yet glad in his heart that she 
 had so faithful a retainer. As a matter of fact 
 Domina had been much impressed by his 
 looks. She naturally supposed that here was 
 some suitor of her mistress, and as she went 
 back to her room she muttered to herself: 
 ' 'A looks a proper lad. Better than that lout 
 from Cheoping or that Swilling hog.' She 
 made a little joke to herself, for she knew 
 how Aurelia hated those two of her suitors, 
 a lord of Cheoping's son and the fat, wealthy 
 Adrian of Swilling, a very odious noble.
 
 26 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 In desperation he went along the High 
 Street out of the town and climbed to the top 
 of Shipscar Hill. There he found a bare field 
 rich in starred daisies exulting in the sun. It 
 was as it were thrust out on the wold's crest 
 into the sky, and he was all alone in a soli- 
 tude of April air, lost in the blue and silver 
 spaces of noon. He lay down and spread out 
 his arms, and the glory of the sun poured 
 down cleanly upon him out of the infinite, its 
 home. He heard with drowsy ears far away 
 drowsy noises of the town and far away 
 bleatings of lambs, borne up to him on the 
 sweet wind; he saw through half-closed lids 
 the shining distances and the faint smoke 
 rising up round the slender spire in the val- 
 ley and the clustered roofs of the little town, 
 and the dim mists of spring, and the pearly 
 haze above the course of the river. He looked 
 up into the fathomless azure with all its sil- 
 ver fleets of clouds, and for a moment felt as 
 if his spirit were fluttering at his lips, about 
 to escape. The intensity of his love and the 
 depths of that bright expanse seemed at that 
 moment to mean the same thing, a thing 
 inexpressible and transcendent, yet very real, 
 a thing of beauty and terror that almost 
 called his being across the imprisoning bars.
 
 BLUE APRIL 27 
 
 The strange emotion turned him quite white 
 for a moment, then the colour came back to 
 his face and he smiled happily, for he had 
 given him then a certainty that Aurelia was 
 his and he was hers for ever. He had seen 
 in the blue deep the nature of love and he 
 knew that his soul had won its beloved and 
 could die for her, even though she never 
 spoke to him again. 
 
 Sigurd was not a poet, but his nature had 
 in it great deeps, and there was in him a pro- 
 found capacity for love and an instinctive 
 knowledge of love's true nature, how all 
 must die into it and be born again, whether 
 it be love of Love or love for woman or man. 
 Aurelia had woken in him that personality 
 which love alone can call into being: he ex- 
 isted with all his forces, nay, more, he trans- 
 cended them. He was an ordinary man : he 
 was no visionary who loved the meanings 
 behind the visible, no artist capable of the 
 creation of mighty forms, nor a poet able to 
 change the lives of men by his words. He 
 had a deep and tender affection for his family 
 in the old house on the midland marsh and 
 for the horizons and the marsh itself, he re- 
 vered his master, the lord in the south, and 
 he had one friend whom he loved. Yet at
 
 28 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 this moment he felt his nature creative : he 
 was capable of things of grandeur and had 
 discovered the heritage of man and for what 
 nobleness he is destined. Love set free the 
 potencies of his soul, and he remembered the 
 words in the book called Genesis: 'In his 
 own image created he them.' 
 
 After that very joyful vision Sigurd was 
 comforted. He went down from Shipscar 
 cheerful of heart and entered into all the 
 gaiety of the tumultuous Briavels, confident 
 that Aurelia would soon return and possess- 
 ing his soul in happy patience. Anne would 
 look at him kindly at times, and he felt she 
 knew his secret. He went out hawking with 
 Mark and Robert along the tops of the wold, 
 and he took long rides on Mark's chestnut 
 horse to Burwood and rich Cheoping and 
 Swilling throned on its gray hills, and South- 
 leche, exquisite and lonely under its crumb- 
 ling tower, and all the burgs and hamlets 
 of those unvisited hills. Still all that country- 
 side was bright as gold under that persistent 
 sun, and smelt marvellously fresh under the 
 light showers, and was coloured all blue 
 and violet and green, dappled with cloud- 
 shadows, and on the uplands, where the 
 white roads breasted the hills, the air thrilled
 
 BLUE APRIL 29 
 
 with the voices of larks. On one bare down, 
 whence the great spire of Burwood could be 
 seen peeping above the edges of its secret 
 vale, the noise of their song was almost 
 unearthly. He waited for her return. 
 
 One night he dreamed that he was on a 
 bare road under an infinite night of stars, and 
 he met the Star of the Wolds, and she smiled 
 and gave him a silver rose. There was a red 
 rose in his hand, and as he placed it in hers 
 he awoke and found his eyes full of tears, 
 but they were tears of pure joy. Next day he 
 rode out from Moresby early, right out to 
 the limit of the wolds, and from the crest 
 over the little town of Masbery he saw far 
 away across the plains the cloud upon the 
 Eaglestone and below it the rock upon which 
 aery Sistoe stands. His heart leapt up; he 
 saluted the virgin in that house of virgins, 
 from the thrilling depths of his soul ; and 
 when he returned to Moresby Anne told 
 him quietly that Aurelia was returning to 
 her house on the following day. She had met 
 Domina at the market, who had told her. 
 She was secretly amused by the light that 
 flashed up suddenly in Sigurd's eyes and the 
 attempt he made to appear quite unaffected 
 by the news. He smiled and said he hoped
 
 3 o DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 to see her soon. The thoughts in his heart 
 when he woke up on the morning of the 
 return of the Star to Moresby were the 
 thoughts of triumph. The rising of the sun 
 seemed to him like her return, putting to 
 flight in his heart a darkness of loneliness 
 and apprehension.
 
 IV. THE SPANISH LADY 
 
 
 WO days after Aurelia's return the 
 Lady Carmina del Sol, who lived 
 in a kind of palazzo in a village 
 near Moresby called Benedicts, 
 invited a few of the Moresby notables to a 
 banquet, which she had prepared in honour 
 of the Countess Serafima of Cheeping, which 
 great widowed noblewoman, with her chil- 
 dren and her servants, was at that time staying 
 at her house in Benedicts.This Lady Carmina 
 was a Spaniard from Segovia; in her youth 
 she had arrived in England in the train of 
 the Empress Justina, when the Imperial Lord 
 and his blue-eyed lady had visited the English 
 Court in the great metropole of London. She 
 became betrothed to one of King Edward's 
 chamberlains, the Baron of Blychester, and 
 after the departure of the Porphyrogeniti 
 married her lover and stayed in the country. 
 Then certain obscure scandals gathered about 
 her beautiful person ; her husband died under 
 somewhat mysterious circumstances, and 
 her name began to be coupled with that of
 
 32 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 the blond and bright-haired King himself. 
 Ultimately, mainly because of the intriguing 
 activities of the Queen, Serena of Bologna, 
 she had been banished the capital city, and, 
 retiring into the wold country, had purchased 
 for some El Doradan sum the great house 
 and the very considerable estatesof the Placid 
 family in the parish of Benedicts. There she 
 lived magnificently, like a princess in exile, 
 receiving at long intervals elaborate visits 
 from great personages of the metropole, or 
 princes of Italy or Flanders or Poland. She 
 was, of course, the last of the baronesses of 
 Blychester; but she seemed to despise the 
 northern title, and was known over the wold 
 country, where she was always treated with 
 immense reverence, by the title of "The Lady 
 Carmina" and sometimes among the poor by 
 the almost legendary names of "The Spanish 
 Lady" and "The Golden Rose." She was now 
 about thirty-five years of age, at the very 
 zenith of her beauty, and she intended her 
 banquet for the lady Seraphima to be a very 
 important event indeed in the history of 
 her neighbourhood. Invitations from the 
 Spanish Lady were much sought after, even 
 by the very greatest potentates of that 
 country-side. Her feasts were few and far
 
 THE SPANISH LADY 33 
 
 between, but when they were given they 
 were memorable both for splendour and 
 for exquisiteness. From Moresby she had 
 invited Robert Briavel, his wife Anne and 
 his sister Junia, his children Robert and 
 Elizabeth, and Sigurd Andersen, who was 
 lodging in his house; the mayor, William 
 Williams, and his wife ; the Prior of Moresby, 
 Dom Anthony Bellinger, and one of the 
 parish priests, Sir John Duthitt, rector of 
 Saint Blaise; and last, but by no means 
 least, Aurelia herself, Aurelia of the white 
 hands, the spotless Star of the Wolds, with 
 Domina, her antique house-mate. In all she 
 had invited no fewer than thirty guests to be 
 present in her great hall in the palace of 
 Benedicts, most from the noblesse and great 
 lords of flock and furrow who had their proud 
 houses in the valleys and beside the rivers 
 of the fertile wolds. It was rumoured among 
 the poor in Moresby that the Lady Carmina 
 had already lavished prodigious sums upon 
 the victual, the furnishing and the music that 
 were to adorn her feast, desiring to leave no 
 stone unturned in the honours which she paid 
 to the old Countess of Cheoping, a personage 
 whom she was known to revere and cherish 
 above all the noblewomen in England. Money
 
 34 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 has flowed like buttermilk, the old women 
 muttered to each other over the stalls in 
 Moresby market, and it was reported also 
 that the Spanish Lady's seneschal had been 
 despatched to the metropole itself to secure 
 a particular kind of fruit which could only be 
 obtained in the King's own gardens. Be that 
 as it may, the feast was going to be very 
 remarkable, and all the guests felt pleasant 
 throbs of anticipation at the delights in store 
 for them. The men were discovered by their 
 wives musing as to whether the Cypriote wine 
 in the Spanish Lady's cellars was as exquisite 
 as certain connoisseurs reported it to be; the 
 wives by their husbands in tears and per- 
 turbations over some rose-red mantle or 
 purple petticoat that somehow failed to come 
 up to hopes long and lovingly and lingeringly 
 entertained.
 
 V. SERAPHIMA AND CARMINA 
 
 NOW before I pass to the banquet 
 of the Golden Rose and to how 
 our lovers fared at her orna- 
 mented tables, let us consider that 
 Countess of Cheoping whom I have already 
 mentioned as the cause of the banquet and 
 the object of the Lady Carmina's devoted 
 attention. Her ladyship Seraphima St. Just, 
 Countess of Cheoping and Baroness of Yab- 
 linton, was the widow of Sebastian the tenth 
 earl, the mother of Cyprianus the eleventh, 
 and the third daughter of Sir Ambrose Pater- 
 noster, a baronet of Menevia, of high line- 
 age and spotless integrity. Born in the castle 
 of Beausalone, in the county of Denbigh, she 
 had been betrothed, famous already for her 
 seraphic beauty, her scholarship and her in- 
 tolerant wit, at the age of seventeen, to Sebas- 
 tian Lord Yablinton, the black-eyed, black- 
 haired son and heir of that terrible soldier 
 and no less terrible Chancellor, Festus Cyp- 
 rianus, ninth Earl of Cheoping, prince of the 
 Empire and terror of evil-doers throughout
 
 3 6 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 the four Kingdoms. Married at Westminster 
 in her eighteenth year, she presented her 
 lord with eight children and was in her day 
 the most famous, witty and beautiful female 
 at King Stephen's court, and had been chosen 
 by Queen Maria of Cologne to be godmother 
 to the first-born Prince Edward, now seated 
 happily on the throne of his fathers. She had 
 seen her eldest daughter married to one of 
 the King of France's nephews and her son 
 Cyprianus to the Duchess Theodora of Kiev 
 before she was forty years of age. On her 
 fortieth birthday ten of the principal poets of 
 London, Paris and Cologne, with Octavian 
 of Yperen and Silvius of Modena, composed 
 a series of triumphal hymns which were sung 
 in honour of her and her genius on the ter- 
 race of her tall palace of Cheoping in the 
 presence of King Stephen, Queen Maria and 
 of the Dauphin Hugues of France. When she 
 was fifty years of age, her husband, that great 
 prince and counsellor Sebastian, died and 
 was buried in the abbey church of that fair 
 and Florentin little city; Cyprianus and 
 Theodora took possession of the majestic 
 palace and the Lady Seraphima, heart-broken 
 but always magnificent, retired like a solitary 
 eagle with her daughters Sara and Silvia and
 
 SERAPHIMA AND CARMINA 37 
 her son Sebastian the priest to her ancestral 
 castle of Beausalone among the crags of north- 
 ern Wales. There she spent in almost entire 
 confinement the first ten years of her soli- 
 tary widowhood, and when that period had 
 elapsed she descended to the world once 
 more and took a considerable part in affairs 
 of state. She had two houses, one the dower 
 house of the St. Justs between Moresby and 
 Cheoping, famous for its fountains and its 
 huge dovecot, the other a palace in the High 
 Street of exquisite Burwood, commanding 
 a very famous view of that remote and fan- 
 tastical city and its delicate tree-haunted 
 streams. The Lady Silvia had married one of 
 the barons of Menevia ; but the Countess was 
 still served with faithful assiduity by her 
 children Sara and Sebastian the learned 
 priest. She was besides customarily attended 
 by her niece, Olimpia Beausalone, and a lady 
 named Susanna de Layve, supposed in vul- 
 gar rumour to be a love-child of her hus- 
 band's, but in reality the daughter of an 
 exiled prince of Poland, confided to her care 
 on the death in banishment of .her father and 
 mother. 
 
 The Lady Seraphima and the LadyCarmina 
 were firm friends, and had become so at the 
 D
 
 38 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 time of the Spanish lady's banishment from 
 St. James', Seraphima at that time taking the 
 foreigner's part very strongly and declaring 
 to all and sundry that she had been very 
 grievously wronged by the somewhat vulgar 
 jealousy of the young Italian Queen, efforts 
 which cost her the friendship of the Queen 
 Serena and would have ended, but for Maria 
 of Cologne's considerable influence with her 
 son and unremitting vigilance on her friend's 
 behalf, in a similar decree being pronounced 
 against her, too, of banishment from the 
 presence of Majesty. These incidents had 
 welded the Welsh countess' indignation at 
 a wrong and the Spanish baroness' gratitude 
 for a Christian service into an indissoluble 
 love; and it was known everywhere that he 
 who spoke ever against Carmina spoke also 
 against Seraphima, and he who in any way 
 displeased the terrible old countess incurred 
 by the same act the perilous enmity of The 
 Golden Rose. 
 
 At the time of this feast the Countess 
 Dowager of Cheeping was sixty-six years of 
 age and her friend the Lady Carmina thirty- 
 six. It was in honour of the countess' sixty- 
 seventh birthday that the feast was planned 
 and given. The time coincided too with the
 
 SERAPHIMA AND CARMINA 39 
 
 LadyCarmina's banishment from the English 
 Court, and was thus designed by the two 
 great ladies to be a very plain hint to the 
 young Queen that the one had never ceased 
 to protest against a scandalous injustice and 
 the other to feel towards her benefactress 
 most cordial sentiments of gratitude and 
 love. 
 
 Another object of the Lady Carmina in 
 making her feast was to do honour to Au- 
 relia herself, who was a great favourite with 
 her splendid neighbour at great Benedicts. 
 The lady had heard some rumours about the 
 young gentleman from the metropole, and 
 knew besides that the Moresby beauty suf- 
 fered tedious importunities from various vul- 
 gar or otherwise impossible suitors. It is 
 time she took a husband, reflected the Lady 
 Carmina del Sol, as she stuck a crimson rose 
 into her bodice one blue infinite May morn- 
 ing before her mirror. She is too pale, too 
 lonely to my thinking, for so great a beauty. 
 Then, kneeling before an ivory and azure 
 image of the Divine Theotokos and her Son, 
 she recited devoutly her prayers and com- 
 mended to the mercy of the Great Mother 
 that motherless and spouseless girl. 
 
 D2
 
 VI. THE POEMS OF FABIAN FAYRE 
 
 "TL URELIA in her little room at 
 /\ Thessaly meditated on her stay at 
 
 f \ Sistoe. May, the month of the 
 J[ V World's Great Mother, went 
 proudly enough now and soft gusts of per- 
 fumed air announced not far off the splendid 
 chariot of June. This was that room where 
 we first discovered her in November. She 
 sat now by the window, wide opened, and 
 looked out upon the summer street. 
 
 Beautiful flowering trees, laburnum and 
 lilac and rosy chestnut and crimson may, 
 lifted their bright burning torches, half-lost in 
 the green gloom of their leaves, about the 
 drowsy amber-coloured commune. A few 
 cygnet-bosomed nebulae floated, silvery 
 naked, in the chasmy hyalines of the sky. All 
 the fields were silver and golden with sheets 
 of lacy arrased flowers. Faery cuckoos made 
 music in the white astonished dawns. Procne, 
 queen of the swallows, was flown back to the 
 northern folk with her children from Hellas 
 and Egypt ; or in another image, Hirundo, the
 
 42 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 enchanted swallow-maiden, born in Hans 
 Andersen's Danish garden and fed on am- 
 brosia by Prester John himself beneath the 
 golden Paradise tree in that immortal king- 
 dom, twittering her magical runes, flickered 
 about the sunlight-spattered High Street of 
 Moresby and made even more lovely the 
 long rosy evenings that cast the soft Hes- 
 perian benediction of sunset over the darken- 
 ing, faint-smoking, lamp-glimmering, bat- 
 haunted town, delicious now with bugles and 
 faint Ave-bells. 
 
 The world then at that time was almost 
 too fair to be calmly endured. Aurelia would 
 be all day wrapped in a tender and shining 
 sweetness, in breaths of dim hawthorn per- 
 fume and level quiet of the fainting sun. She 
 sat now by the sunny window, and before 
 her lay the almost empty street, with its stiff 
 trees, plots of quiet grass, noble great gables 
 and brightly painted doors. Her dress was 
 of a soft blue colour, and she wore too a scarf 
 of orange. She was reading poems by one of 
 the poets of the wolds, about spring waters 
 and the return of the swallows, about Charila, 
 the gracious spirit of the earth's resurrection, 
 about the folk soul and the long green grow- 
 ing hair of the God of the Corn and about
 
 THE POEMS OF FABIAN FAYRE 43 
 the body of the Corn God broken for the 
 folk to feed on and his blood that flowed in 
 the rippling waters and fresh winds of spring, 
 to cleanse the black impurities of winter. 'O 
 holy Sun/ said the rhymer Fabian Fayre, 
 from Swilling, in the little green-bound book 
 which she held: 
 
 O holy Sun, the swallow-choirs return, 
 The milky colts about the fresh close run, 
 Lovely and stark and golden, thy rays burn, 
 Behold my lover's heart, O holy Sun ! 
 
 In throbbing liquid gold above the green 
 Of springing wheat, glitter thy burning eyes ; 
 O bless me, Lord, and make my nature clean, 
 O pity me, coiled in Love's mysteries ! 
 
 She repeated the golden and faithful lines 
 over and over again. The poem was called 
 Dawn- Prayer, and Aurelia liked its clean 
 virile simpleness. Fabian had been a great, 
 almost miraculous, lover of one woman, and 
 Aurelia found herself deriving comfort from 
 his strong and quiet faith in the whiteness of 
 his god. When she had spent two days in 
 gray wold-cresting Swilling, burg of ghosts 
 and goblins, cawing rooks and Umbrian 
 horizons, with her friend Emilia de Vyelar, 
 she had been shown the house where he
 
 44 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 had lived and died a little exquisite silvery 
 Grecian house, with delicate pillars and an 
 air of serene dignity, which looked out from 
 its front windows on the bustle and mer- 
 chandise of the great urbane square of Swil- 
 ling, and from its back on the infinite lines, 
 rank upon rank, of the virginal and primaeval 
 hills. The great gray tower of Swilling rose 
 just above the dead poet's garden, where 
 little but violets grew, and the high winds 
 seemed to carry through those ragged great 
 elm-trees of the neighbouring graveyard, 
 mingled with the raucous clamour of the 
 rooks, all the elfins of Lapland and all the 
 ghosts of the wold-land towns. She had seen 
 the poet's few books, exquisite and brave 
 books, exposed for sale in one of the shops, 
 and she had bought two, of which one, 
 ' Praise of the Sun/ now in her hands, had a 
 green cover, and the other, 'The Stars are 
 Good,' was lying on the table beside her and 
 was bound in bright scarlet. In a white vase 
 at her side were great sprays of the five- 
 petalled blue periwinkle, the larger sort, with 
 its shining, baffling spiritual face and its faint 
 violet-tinted hues. Fabian, like the Germanic 
 dreamer before him, had spoken often of the 
 Azure Flower of the Ideal Life, and he had
 
 THE POEMS OF FABIAN FAYRE 45 
 chosen the periwinkle to be his flower to 
 stand for that. It was so angelically innocent 
 and yet mighty, he would say, and its Roman 
 name, Vinca, the Binder, should stand for 
 the bands of love which must unite man and 
 his Maker and man and his mate. Then one 
 of his books, all about the mysteries con- 
 cealed in flowers, called 'Shrines and Veils/ 
 had as its frontispiece one or two flowers 
 only of the blue vinca and a spray of its 
 shining leaves. It had, he would say, the 
 insane, terrifying, supersensual innocence 
 which we, with our coarse and detailed 
 absorption in matter, regard as mad; and 
 which, he would say also, I have found here, 
 God help us, in kittens and puppies only, in 
 a few idiots and a few week-old children. 
 God's eyes and God's face must be like the 
 blue vinca, he would say, and then he would 
 go away into one of his beautiful crystalline 
 trances which only Agnes Phayre could in- 
 terpret or understand. It is well, says one of 
 his confessions, that even a few of Adam's 
 children should be martyred in this world to 
 the beauty of the Divine Unity. He had had 
 blue eyes and rather long yellow hair. Au- 
 relia, then, who had caught in Swilling and 
 in that little house, lived in now by the grand-
 
 46 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 children, the atmosphere of a beautiful spirit 
 was now one of Fabian's spiritual daughters, 
 and she kept the mysterious blue flowers, 
 five-petalled like the five senses and the five 
 arrows of the Indian Eros and other sacred 
 fives, beside her among her best loved books, 
 to be a sign of the holy and spotless nature 
 of love.
 
 VII. JEALOUSY 
 
 SO she was reading Fabian's poems in 
 the little parlour with its three pictures, 
 and she heard from a distance the faint 
 music of fiddles and roundabouts, 
 from where on the common on the Sistoe 
 road one of the great midsummer folk-feasts 
 was going on, with sports and love-making 
 and feasting and the ribboned morris, ex- 
 ultant in the beautiful orange luminancy of 
 the sun. Domina had wandered off there and 
 all the Briavels and all the town; but this 
 time the Star of the Wolds had elected to 
 stay at home and read in loneliness. 
 
 Would brown-haired Sigurd of the tender 
 eyes be at the folk-feast, her heart whispered, 
 between the odorous sunlight and the music 
 of the master-dreamer's lines ? For that was 
 really the reason why the proud creature had 
 not gone off to the feast. In her deepest and 
 most secret virginal heart she looked on 
 Sigurd as her own and she even admitted it 
 sometimes. 
 To be at the feast without Sigurd, and to
 
 48 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 see the brown-fleshed folk-boys offering 
 bunches of daisies and hyacinths to their rosy 
 little beloveds and to see the betrothals going 
 on at the little secluded turf-altar, with the 
 salt and the silver ring and the yellow tapers 
 and the smiling kinsmen and the mild wrinkled 
 white-haired priest and the mysterious 
 Benediction of the ancestors simple sights 
 which she had loved and rejoiced in before 
 no, this was impossible now, when she, of a 
 proud family, the child of gentry, would 
 shamelessly and shamefully envy the sluttiest 
 little ruddy peasant maid to whom a brown 
 kneeling ploughboy, tamed, by God, at last, 
 offered his languishing animal eyes and a 
 moist knuckleful of drooping bluebells; and 
 she, the little slut, would stand blushing and 
 bewildered, tearful, yet proudly magnificent 
 as Semiramis, over her newly acquired and 
 eternally to be retained Man. The pathetic 
 and homely beauty of the folk-lovers had 
 often before moved the lovely Lady to delight, 
 and many were the marriages in Moresby 
 consummated and made possible by her 
 blessing and assistance. But to watch the 
 loves of the people when she was, as she 
 knew now, in love herself, was beyond the 
 endurance of the Lady Aurelia. For she was
 
 JEALOUSY 49 
 
 certainly now beginning to realise at last in 
 what fishing net from Cyprus she was en- 
 tangled. In those white earlier days, when 
 she had seemed to look upon herself, as in- 
 deed she was, as a consecrated virgin and 
 priestess of the Silver Huntress, she could go, 
 beneficent as the Ivory Tower, in patience and 
 compassion among the popular loves; but 
 now, what a great Rose was seen to have 
 enfolded her immaturity. Rosa Cardinalis it 
 was, the crimson perfumed beauty that lay 
 now among the softly moving laces on 
 Carmina's breast. 
 
 Or again, if she went to the feast and saw 
 Sigurd in holiday attire conducting some 
 other lady round the booths and the games, 
 well, she admitted to herself, she would not 
 be best pleased by that either; no, she would 
 be filled with jealous rage. Then she found 
 herself dwelling on some of the maidens in 
 M oresby most likely to attract the rosy fancies 
 of a nubile youth. There was little Elizabeth 
 Briavel, with her cloudy golden head and fits 
 of happy dreaminess and her dancing laugh- 
 ters, and dark Lois Fermor, whom she had 
 met and hated at the feast Anabella Williams, 
 the mayor's daughter, had a lustrous charm, 
 as of a purple heart's-ease on the breast of an
 
 50 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 Indian Queen. There were very famous 
 beauties indeed among the Spanish Lady's 
 train of maids, all of high birth, and the 
 Countess Seraphima was to bring to Bene- 
 dicts, as Anne Briavel had told her, her daugh- 
 ter Sara, queenly as some image in silver, 
 and golden Olimpia Beausalone, gorgeous 
 as a bare-bosomed rose, a woman, good 
 enough, who yet intoxicated some men like 
 wine from Rheims or a love-potion from 
 Cleopatra a very Cyprian and the mys- 
 terious Susanna with her everlasting black 
 dresses, her tragic story, and the Medean 
 bale-fires in her violet Slavonian eyes. There 
 were all these. Then she repeated the names 
 of the wonderful women at Benedicts, 
 Hesperia and Idalia and Dianeme, enchant- 
 ing and adorable as swans in a fairy tale or 
 as soft white shining clouds. Surely even 
 she, the Star herself, was not so beautiful as 
 some of these. How could she, a merchant's 
 daughter, none too rich, compete with the 
 children of earls and princes? Aurelia had 
 an unhappy quarter of an hour just then, 
 and she gave way to despondency and bitter 
 thoughts. 
 
 Then the Gods relented to their Brynhilda, 
 and the white courageous virgin awoke in
 
 JEALOUSY 51 
 
 her again. She found a little poem in Fabian 
 Fayre which declared that not even the 
 slightest sentiment of love could ever be 
 wasted, and that comforted her a little, though 
 she felt that after all dogmatism about the 
 Divine Unity must always sound a little 
 hollow while she needed her Sigurd so. She 
 caught the name 'Swilling' on the title-page 
 of the book, and then, though she knew by 
 experience how profitless exploring the 
 past must ever be, her mind dwelt upon 
 her two days' stay at the hill-town and the 
 kind burghers there and her long talks in 
 the little garden, full of peonies and clema- 
 tis, pansies and lilac, with dear mild-eyed 
 Emilia, who was so wise and experienced 
 and strong. One evening she could re- 
 member when the pure blue sky, immacu- 
 late as the Conception of the Theotokos, 
 was dotted all over with little fleecy sil- 
 ver nebules, quaint and sweet as cherubini 
 on pottery from Tuscany, and the round 
 white dewy moon smiled down on bushes of 
 rosy clematis and sanguine royal-hearted 
 peonies and branches burdened with lilac, 
 crimson and purple and the double white. 
 There too had been faint bells of valley-lilies, 
 terribly, terribly sweet among their fronds of
 
 52 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 emerald, and odorous starry woodruft and 
 staring child-eyed pansies, like emblemata 
 of the Trinity in Unity, purple and brown and 
 white and blue and yellow, marked and 
 streaked and spotted and variegated and 
 barred, and buds just appearing on the rose- 
 trees, faintly pink, and buds on many another 
 summer plant. She had told Emilia enough 
 to make that kind lady quite plainly under- 
 stand how things stood and exactly why the 
 feted Star had come to Sistoe and Swilling. 
 Indeed, it was on that particular blue and 
 white evening, when the souls of lilac and 
 peony swooned up almost as visible as smoke 
 of frankincense to the milk-white Hesperian 
 moon, that Aurelia had realised that she 
 really and truly loved Sigurd. 
 
 But Emilia in Swilling, in the hush just 
 after the Ave bells, when the whole pure sky 
 seemed blossoming with the Mother of God, 
 had wisely enough said little, beyond advising 
 her not to forget her prayers, and Aurelia 
 had gone in to the chicken and the amber 
 wine in the little taper-tremulous parlour 
 hung with faded tapestry, realising rather 
 plainly that Love, after all, needed suffering 
 to mature fully its essential joys. There are 
 Calvaries of separation, she told herself, ever
 
 JEALOUSY 53 
 
 before the theophanies of Pentecost; Cana, 
 after all, was only a foreshadowing, and the 
 upper room an earnest of the mysteries to 
 come. The Divine Bridegroom was to shed 
 His most pure blood like wine from a crushed 
 grape in the winepress of His agony and 
 die and sink into Hades and rise again and 
 return to His Father ere the Spirit of Love 
 could descend upon men; and not till the 
 consummation of this world would He drink 
 wine again in the Kingdom of Divine 
 Paternity. How she had prayed that night to 
 the Holy Mother for help and comfort and 
 strength and a worthy ending to her love and 
 to her hope! 
 
 It was strange, too, to remember, as she 
 cast about in her mind, her experiences at 
 the Abbey at Sistoe, and how changed the 
 divine and mountain-watched place seemed 
 to her, after homely Moresby and Sigurd's 
 kindly eyes. How white and high the church 
 was, and how cold and high the clouds on the 
 peaks of those forbidding hills! Then she put 
 behind her all that group of gloomy and 
 mistrustful thoughts which had been agitating 
 her, and she began to realise again that she 
 was a believing woman, in the Hand of God, 
 and one who had been fed on the Eternal
 
 54 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 Bread and made immortal. She put down 
 the poems, and, veiling her head, as was 
 the custom in that country, she went out into 
 the sunny and deserted street.
 
 VIII. APPARITIONS 
 
 ^"" "^ALL and white, serene and rather 
 
 terrible in her unrelenting beauty, 
 a very daughter of Him who 
 JL chastises most bitterly His best- 
 loved sons, she went along the sun-gold 
 of the ancient road, all ivory, the eternal idol, 
 the Christian Helen. Her eyes were blue as 
 the petals of larkspurs and her hair yellow 
 like pale corn. Her blue robes that showed 
 her slender waist and her virgin breasts 
 billowed away into stately skirts, and her 
 great veil was dark like a violet. A single 
 pearl shone on one of the fingers of her left 
 hand. Not even a little flower smiled in the 
 corsage of Aurelia Brown. She went all ivory, 
 tall and slim and lovely as a fawn. She was 
 the loveliest lady in all that western land, the 
 Star of the broad blue Wolds, that flung 
 round little Moresby their protecting arms 
 and all the solemnity of their serene tender- 
 ness. 
 
 Down the High Street she went, through 
 the market-place with its fountain, the halls 
 
 E2
 
 56 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 of the Moresby guilds, the town-hall with its 
 fretted tower, and the sight of the slim gray 
 spire of the Abbey over the high rather 
 princely roofs ruddy and brown and gray 
 the buildings of Moresby were more splendid 
 here than in her own humbler end of the high 
 street, where the town was beginning already 
 to thin away into meadows and orchards- 
 past the Briavels' house, through black 
 winding lanes and secret courts, over a 
 bridge that spanned a stagnant canal, till at 
 last she came to the little quay that bordered 
 on that side of the town the quick flowing 
 Evenwater, and to the western gate of 
 Moresby, whence the road set offto climb the 
 wolds and the beech-woods to Swilling a 
 good ten miles. The gate was very well pre- 
 serveda symbol of the restraint and quality 
 of the town, which was never allowed to swell 
 over in too urban a manner beyond the lines 
 of the gates and the green-turfed ramparts, 
 whence one could peep down into yards and 
 gardens though some houses were built, 
 discreetly among the trees, quite a distance 
 from the town. On the side that fronted the 
 hills was a shield and the arms of Moresby 
 in the March, seven lilies argent on azure, 
 below a crown or, and the legend, ' Lilium
 
 APPARITIONS 57 
 
 Domini/ the Lily of the Lord. The row of 
 sleepy red brick houses, some mills and 
 makings, and a few barges painted black and 
 red; ragged cats and half-naked babies wal- 
 lowing in the sun such was the little town 
 at its western gate. 
 
 Aurelia went through the gate, over the 
 gray mossy bridge with its slender arches, 
 and took the road to Swilling. She passed 
 the tiny suburb of Blasby and its white 
 jewelled chapel among the willow-trees, the 
 cottages and their coloured gardens, here 
 and there the house of some merchant or 
 lawyer among its lawns, solid, rich and 
 dignified. 
 
 The sun shone serenely in the cloudless 
 blue and the white road was dusty. She went 
 two miles, not very quickly, and picked a 
 great spray of hawthorn. The road was by 
 now among the wolds; dim lines of blue 
 hills extended away to her left and the 
 copses of beech and oak and hazel were thick 
 there. A stream of clear limestone water ran 
 down gurgling by the side of the road. She 
 came to a limestone trough, full of sweet 
 crystal and dark water-weeds; hypericum 
 and figwort budded beside it. The hills shone 
 blue and lovely, almost like glass ; not a soul
 
 5 8 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 seemed in sight. She heard the faint music 
 of the feast at times come up from the burg 
 below. 
 
 The air shivered, it seemed that the trees 
 and sky and water became liquid gold, and 
 she was aware of the Gods.The three of them 
 stood in a vesica of white light, thickening 
 to amber, then to orange, rose-red, to violet 
 and beryl. Her heart seemed almost to stop 
 beating ; but they were not angry. They were 
 come to the virgin in compassion. The Floral 
 Amor stood in the midst. His long ivory body, 
 rose-tinged, and his slender arms were naked 
 but for a cloak of pure scarlet. There was on 
 his curled golden hair a wreath of purple, 
 crimson and yellow flowers, and the finches 
 fluttered about his brows. The eyes were 
 blue and fathomless, the mouth scarlet, the 
 face rosy and white. In his left hand was the 
 golden bow. 
 
 On the left was the Singing Angel, with 
 his dreamy and shameless eyes, his cloud of 
 faint golden hair, his mantle of sapphire and 
 his violin. He smiled like a sleepy poet ; 
 his eyes gray and his flesh like the colour ot 
 apricots ; in his belt a green pipe, and on his 
 strong feet brown buskins. 
 
 The Blue Virgin, her eyes gray too like
 
 APPARITIONS 59 
 
 the sea in winter, her veil and robes of 
 the deepest blue and stars to crown her 
 yellow hair, was like the music of a summer 
 night. Majesty moulded the beauty of her 
 serene breast and in her hand she held an 
 apple of gold. The three Gods stood, lovelier 
 than the stars, and contemplated the most 
 pure heart of Aurelia. There was nought 
 there to offend their divinity. The visitation 
 seemed to her endless. No words escaped 
 those unimpassioned lips ; not an air shook 
 those awful robes, the colours of flax-blue 
 and peacocks, of blood and clear clear flame. 
 The Floral Love was the most beautiful of 
 the three ; his clear skin pellucid ivory and 
 his eyes abysms of contemplative blue. Au- 
 relia had been taught not to fear the Gods ; 
 she endured their terrible and relentless 
 scrutiny in a modest silence. The banner of 
 savage colours melted into amber, into white, 
 into the hues of the natural sunshine. The 
 green trees returned, the blue hills and the 
 noise of the homely water and the spears of 
 the created grass. With a pang of relief she 
 saw again sunshiny leaves and dusty road ; 
 with a pang of sorrow she lamented the 
 going away of her Lovers and her Judges. 
 Dedicating herself afresh in a quiet prayer,
 
 6o DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 she returned slowly down the hill. After half 
 a mile she saw suddenly Sigurd Andersen in 
 crimson clothes lying upon the grass by the 
 roadside asleep. Probably, then, he had fol- 
 lowed her, been afraid, turned back, and the 
 sun had put him to sleep among the long hair 
 of his mother. The Gods had used no words, 
 had moved not a lip ; but she knew very well 
 what the Appearance meant to her heart and 
 to her life. 
 
 Serene and smiling gently, she approached 
 her unconscious lover and seated herself in 
 the grass by his side. With her veil of violet 
 she shaded the burning sunlight from his 
 brown cheeks. He was breathing like a child, 
 his long hair straggling about his face and in 
 one hand a spray of hawthorn. She sat like 
 an image of blue marble by his sleeping form 
 and his long limbs in their sanguine cover- 
 ing. She began to dream. 
 
 Sigurd was lost in a ridiculous dream. He 
 was a baby in the yard at Charmington, and 
 all about went the faery fen. Bells were 
 thundering from the tall tower and on the 
 muddy pond floated seven snow-white ducks. 
 Suddenly they all dived, and he screamed in 
 dismay; but out of the heart of the pool there 
 appeared a little green farey, mischievous and
 
 APPARITIONS 61 
 
 quite naked, with wet hair and odd malicious 
 eyes. In his left hand he held a great golden 
 lily, and he advanced with a mocking bow to 
 the bewitched and terrified child. He dis- 
 played the flower ; it slowly opened, and in 
 its heart was another little faery, like Thum- 
 belisa, slim and fine and silvery. Just as she, 
 to the noise of booming bells and quacking 
 ducks, was swelling to the size of a giantess 
 and preparing to drag him down to her awful 
 haunts beneath the mud of the pool, he awoke 
 and found himself looking up into the blue 
 eyes of the far away princess. Incredible, but 
 true ; it was the veritable Aurelia.
 
 IX. CRYSTAL 
 
 WHAT to do? he started up and, 
 blushing, apologised for such dis- 
 courtesy in sleeping while a lady 
 no doubt needed his assistance. 
 Aurelia, smiling, said, ' You must thank me, 
 master Andersen, for warding away the sun. 
 Were you not afraid of a stroke ? ' He mut- 
 tered that he had thought the shade suffi- 
 cient to cover him for some time to come. He 
 was bewildered, but his silly heart sang. 
 How preposterous, how very incredible ! He 
 brushed the dust from his crimson suit 
 O very elegant and picked up his hat with its 
 long red feather. They sat on a shadier bank 
 and conversed in a speechless relief at each 
 other's presence. They were like famishing 
 children suddenly presented by a kindly 
 nurse with a huge plate of bread and butter. 
 All Sigurd's stupid romanticism was knocked 
 out of him by the shock. ' It is, after all/ his 
 silly soul shouted, ' an affair of bread, bread 
 and butter for the nursery, bread and wine 
 for the grown-ups!' His swoonings and
 
 64 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 amorous faintings were swamped in a flood 
 of common sense. It was a case of money 
 and parlours, thank God ; a case of cradles 
 and babies. What was it ? Did the girl say 
 anything? Were her eyes changed? If he had 
 but known, the gods had given him the box 
 of Pandora many ills and hope and a 
 woman. She became in that instant his ark 
 of the covenant. 
 
 They conversed then about indifferent 
 topics : the Briavels, the feast, his return, her 
 return. Their eyes were married a million 
 times; he knew it, she knew it. The blue 
 world melted away and they saw the Mar- 
 riage Bed. They remained outwardly cool, 
 courteous and indifferent. They could have 
 waited a million years ; they could have died 
 then gladly as a thankoffering for those mo- 
 ments. They had found a soul to share the 
 burden. 
 
 As for her thoughts, he was her son and 
 her master then forever. Veil her heart. She 
 is to keep covered henceforth the pearls of 
 her joy. Sigurd, being already married to 
 her in soul, wondered whether he desired 
 also the cool beauty of her body. Yes. He 
 knew they were inseparable. ' So must pure 
 lovers' souls descend, T' affections and to
 
 CRYSTAL 65 
 
 faculties, Which sense may reach and appre- 
 hend, Else a great prince in prison lies.' He 
 must descend and be incarnated in the gar- 
 den of her flesh. He escorted the lady back 
 to Thessaly through the deserted town.
 
 X. AMONG THE LILIES. 
 
 IT was lily-time in Moresby, the first week 
 in July, and the day before Carmina's 
 feast. Days of burning blue alternated 
 with black and gray thunderstorms. Yel- 
 low lilies, orange lilies, scarlet tiger lilies 
 blazed in shops and gardens. The great 
 Madonnas, silver chalices filled with symbols 
 of gold, pure white trumpets, fleshly beauty 
 drowned in soul, breathed forth the faint 
 spice of their adorable perfume to the swoon- 
 ing noon, or after rain-storms intoxicated as 
 with subtle music the black wetness of the 
 dreaming night. Aurelia crowded Thessaly 
 with them; her heart sang. She filled dark 
 blue bowls with the silver Madonnas, and 
 crammed the red lilies into pots of crystal. 
 They preached wordless sermons. ' Faith is 
 life; we never trouble. We weave the mantles 
 of our strange beauty, and our perfumes are 
 the incense of our souls. Let your flesh be 
 as adorable as a lily, and let your souls give 
 out the joy of praise in a perfume. We, we 
 are the lilies of the field. Mantles of Tyre
 
 68 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 and the Solomonian cedars are as nothing 
 to the lilies to the flesh of a six-month babe, 
 the glory of a perfect man ! ' 
 
 Aurelia was hanging up a curtain to mol- 
 lify the heat of the sun in her parlour a 
 curtain of blue arras spangled with silver 
 lilies while Domina was sewing sleepily in 
 a big red chair by the window when there 
 came a knock at the door. It was half-past 
 eleven on a superb July morning, and a row 
 of bright Madonnas shone in the little patch 
 of earth between ; her house and the pave- 
 ment. She ran to open the door, and hot 
 sunlight flooded the dark narrow hall. 
 
 She was expecting them at eleven, and 
 they were all rather late, but they apologised 
 violently, and apparently Anne Briavel's 
 cook had been giving trouble, so Aurelia 
 soon ceased to mind. Anne and Junia were 
 in a donkey-cart drawn by a remarkably 
 willing black donkey, with the provisions 
 and the younger children, Adela and baby 
 John. Mark was away at his university, but 
 Robert was there on his pony, jolly and 
 ruddy as usual, and laughing Elizabeth with 
 a big shady bonnet over her yellow hair. 
 Also Sigurd was there, serene and quiet, in 
 his suit of crimson, carrying more food and
 
 AMONG THE LILIES 69 
 
 looking rather more happy than the day. It 
 did not take Aurelia long to pick up a thin 
 cloak, give Domina a hasty kiss and join the 
 party of cheerful people. 
 
 They went out of Moresby by the eastern 
 gate, small and crumbled and dominated by 
 an immense lime-tree. They crossed the 
 weedy dyke, and after a mile of level coun- 
 try, between bean-fields and fields of oats, 
 silvery-green, with scarlet volcanic poppies 
 in their hair, they hit the narrow path to 
 Shipscar Hill, where there was a rookery 
 and rabbits and amazing views over the blue 
 midland shires and the long vales of the 
 wolds. It was a steep hill, very steep, and 
 everybody except Anne, who was feeble, got 
 out of the cart and attempted, with shrieks 
 of laughter, to push little black Belial up the 
 hill. Their efforts had small effect, except for 
 a perceptible slackening of the dogged little 
 creature's pace. Aurelia and Sigurd walked 
 together. To-day she had on a thin white 
 dress and looked more like ivory than ever. 
 
 The view from the top of Shipscar was a 
 miracle. Deep in the hollow of the wolds 
 glistened Moresby, gray and veiled in smoke, 
 its towers looking small and sunken from 
 that height. Evenwater shone like silver in 
 F
 
 70 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 the morning, and the town was hemmed 
 about with great dark masses of trees. Then 
 came the bulk of the hills, drawn into ex- 
 quisite rolling curves and fading into blue, 
 line upon line of lonely trees, like praying 
 women, and beyond more remote summits, 
 all white now with a far away marriage of 
 rain and sun. The lonely oak on One Tree 
 Hill, where there had once been human 
 sacrifice to the sun and later the hanging of 
 criminals, showed like a dark sentinel in the 
 blue. If ever there was a symbol of the Small 
 Town of Christendom, protected by the 
 divine and kindly hills, it was Moresby at 
 that moment. A shriek of pleasure broke 
 from the dancing children and the sweet 
 wind sang in all their ears. The tiny town 
 seemed something infinitely dear and pre- 
 cious, its venerable gables lost in shining 
 smoke; they felt like gods looking down on 
 the loved and little, little world. 
 
 It had rained all night, and the fresh rain- 
 dewed flowers and dripping grass gave out 
 great gusts of delicious odour. The pure blue 
 was mainly clear, save for a few wandering 
 and snow white Himalayas, and over One 
 Tree Hill the clouds were darker and thicker, 
 prophesying more rain, which indeed was
 
 AMONG THE LILIES 71 
 
 falling on high meadows a good shire away. 
 It did not seem likely to fall on them, they 
 all optimistically thought. What flowers, 
 you ask? The great violet-blue cranesbill 
 was there and the scarlet poppy, the golden 
 hypericum, flower of compelling magic, dot- 
 ted with lucent spots, the rosy rest-harrow 
 and the aromatic white wild rose with its 
 golden heart, the pale purple scabious and 
 the red campion an army of bright angelical 
 hues. The children plucked great armfuls, 
 plundering the treasuries of the opulent and 
 careless summer. 
 
 They lunched off fruit and eggs, cake and 
 honey, under a great hedge of wild roses, 
 the haunt of bees, above that wonderful pros- 
 pect of blue shire and curling wold. They 
 could see far below the faint creeping smoke 
 of the little town. No one seemed particu- 
 larly to notice that the lovers were vague 
 and listless and spent most of their time 
 looking at each other. 
 
 The day passed slowly and happily, with 
 books and sewing and the laughter of chil- 
 dren, above the blue world. A huge freshness 
 and freedom entered them all with that up- 
 land air; the petty cares and fidgets, scandals 
 and gossips of the little town peeled away 
 
 F2
 
 72 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 from them all. They felt like leaves stealing 
 out of their sheaths in spring; like swimmers 
 just made wonderfully naked and plunged 
 into the free and tingling azure of the sea. 
 
 They made tea up there with the aid of a 
 small black kettle, frequently refilled from a 
 little spring lost in spiraea and cranesbill ; they 
 supped, too, off the remains of the other 
 meals and some delicacies purposely saved 
 till the last. It was an exiguous but delicate 
 little banquet, served to the accompaniment 
 of bats and rapidly growing dove-gray nebu- 
 las, that reduced the lovingly expected sun- 
 set to a splash of pink in the shadowy west. 
 
 The clouds began to gather and a few drops 
 of rain to fall. Anne and Junia anxiously 
 spanned the growing gray with their kindly 
 eyes; the cups and plates were hastily packed, 
 the little donkey reharnessed, the children 
 wrapped in their capes and the procession 
 started for home. About a mile from Moresby 
 the rain fell in torrents, but very fortunately 
 they had all brought coats or cloaks of 
 some kind and no one got seriously wet. It 
 was dark in Moresby when they entered; 
 the black night dripped on the trickling trees, 
 the empty shining streets, the faint yellow 
 lamps. They were muffled in a thick ebony
 
 AMONG THE LILIES 73 
 
 embrace, a sweating African dream, shot 
 with the perfumes of flowers. The houses 
 were like castles of secret gramarye. There 
 was no moon. A piano throbbed and tinkled. 
 The Briavels hastened back to the market- 
 square and Sigurd was commissioned to see 
 Aurelia home. In the dark street under a 
 lime-tree he saw in a kind of ecstasy a frown- 
 ing graybeard in a garden and a woman 
 escaping like a mist out of the naked body 
 of a sleeping man. His pulses shook like 
 drums beaten, his heart leaped and he felt 
 about to swoon. He caught Aurelia to him, 
 and for an instant their patient mouths met 
 in a serene and burning kiss. Her breasts 
 heaved, she surrendered herself to him. He 
 strained her very tight and drank her like 
 wine. About him shone the crimson petals, 
 like walls of blood-colour, of the immense 
 and triumphant Rose. . . . Silence. The door 
 of Thessaly slammed behind the captured 
 goddess. Drip, drip, went the black lime. 
 One lamp glimmered, a bedraggled prim- 
 rose. He leaned against a wall and praised 
 God. The perfume of the great white lilies, 
 shameless, seductive, wonderful, thrilled to 
 his nostrils through the black and watery 
 mirk, and faint figures of silver, the souls of
 
 74 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 the lilies, seemed to his swooning and be- 
 dazzled mind to thread the blackness in 
 linked and wavy choirs, like the pale daugh- 
 ters of Ocean dancing in the glimmering and 
 tenebrous abysms of the sea.
 
 XL HELLENICA. 
 
 * I almost hear the passionate faint shouting 
 Of Doric boys at play along- the sand/ 
 
 C. WRIGHT. 
 
 IT was a dove-coloured evening of lovely 
 hues. In the pale blue sunset sky was 
 arched a gray curve of cloud, glimmering 
 with pale pearly fire on its frayed sum- 
 mits. The grass smelled lovely in the or- 
 chards, fresh and clean, and Moresby lay 
 warm and brown under a pinkish dome, its 
 stately towers lifting their glittering and 
 golden vanes. Aurelia in her white bed- 
 chamber arrayed herself for the expected 
 feast, while Domina thridded great pearls 
 through her yellow hair. 
 
 Sigurd among the pinks and valerian, 
 cyanus and heart's-ease, of Robert Briavel's 
 old untidy garden, sat reading, while Mark, 
 returned the night before from strict disci- 
 pline at his university, a discipline that in 
 those days was not innocent of the rod, was 
 turning Plato's Republic into execrable Eng- 
 lish prose. His black, coarse hair hung over
 
 76 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 the books, and he began to hum snatches of 
 'There is a Tavern.' . . . Sigurd, looking up 
 from a fantastic tale, saw the pink and trans- 
 lucent sky smiling between the green leaves 
 of the wrinkled apple-trees. The Angelus 
 came faint and serene from the strong towers. 
 There was a gray nebulous quiet over every- 
 thing, and a few birds made occasional chirps 
 and trills. Then Sigurd began for the mil- 
 lionth time to meditate on his adventures of 
 the day before, culminating in the magical 
 surrender of his white lady. But there had 
 been other adventures too on that memor- 
 able day, adventures leading him down gently 
 .without any bathos from that burning zenith 
 to the white Lethe of a dreamless sleep. He 
 arrived back, pale, he must have been, but 
 tranquil, to find the Briavel household in its 
 wet clothes almost dancing round the grin- 
 ning Mark, who had returned quite unexpec- 
 tedly from Lilyminster, owing to the out- 
 break of some fever in the poorer quarters 
 of that spired and Platonian city. 
 
 Then he had had other shocks, for it soon 
 appeared to him very plainly that the Mark 
 who had returned was not the Mark whom 
 he had seen many months before, not the 
 Mark whom he had known in those high,
 
 HELLENICA 77 
 
 dark rooms in Lilyminster in the slim-gabled 
 College of the Holy Blood, but a very much 
 more wonderful person altogether, with a 
 certain Dorian flame in his dark blue eyes 
 and a certain simple intensity in living which 
 made him extraordinarily attractive. 
 
 Now Sigurd and Mark had always been 
 friends in the vague and happy manner of 
 careless, happy young people. But he per- 
 ceived now that there had been more in that 
 friendship than the mere happiness of the 
 student's life, that no male at any time had 
 ever really meant to him what Mark meant, 
 and that he most enormously valued Mark's 
 good-will. It appeared also that Mark had 
 felt earlier and now felt also the same senti- 
 ment towards himself, that though, as was 
 natural, he had in Lilyminster friends and 
 comrades, yet Sigurd had still and would 
 have always the first place in his heart. He 
 had found with a strange suddenness not 
 only a bride who was as wonderful as a 
 Gothic queen carved in ivory; he had found 
 also his comrade, the Amis to his Amile, the 
 Harmodios to his Aristogeiton. In wedlock 
 he was to serve then the Queen Afar; he was 
 to be one of the knights who had sworn like 
 Geffray Rudel devotion to that far-off beauty,
 
 7 8 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 and he was not alone. When he sounded his 
 horn of Roland perchance amid the angry 
 hosts of Barbary, there would be not far 
 Oliver and in Oliver's grasp a great two- 
 handed sword; if he died from the spear- 
 thrust of the Macedonian, he would die as a 
 member of the Sacred Band, he would die in 
 defence of holy Thebes, and amid that band 
 would die one other warrior whose death 
 made life to be no longer livable, whose 
 death made his own death a triumph and a 
 victory. 
 
 Mark looked up to him now, reverenced 
 him as older and of more experience, needed 
 his love. And to him the black-haired cousin 
 of Aurelia was a beloved comrade, and one 
 for whose sake he must ever be noble and 
 seek to be a high lord. Together they were 
 to serve the Queen Afar. So now they sat 
 together under the pale dome of that flame- 
 fretted sky, and Sigurd was reading the tale 
 of the Seven Towns in Wessex, which was 
 a very queer but good romance, and Mark 
 was translating Plato; and there seemed to 
 be a third reader present, and he was reading 
 the book of their hearts and his mother was 
 Urania. 
 
 So Mark had come back, and after supper
 
 HELLENICA 79 
 
 he and Sigurd had gone out into the darkness 
 of the town, cool now and fresh after the 
 stopping of the storm beneath the few frail 
 stars, to talk over all their adventures since 
 they had last met in Moresby; it had been at 
 the feast where Sigurd had first seen Aurelia, 
 white and wonderful, and dark Lois Fermor 
 had stolen many hearts. They went arm in 
 arm through the almost empty streets, glim- 
 mering with an occasional lamp, and they 
 confided to each other that each had found 
 his lady, Sigurd, as Mark had often guessed, 
 his own starry cousin, and Mark, rather to 
 Sigurd's amazement, Lois herself, who lived 
 in Lilyminster, and was as lovable in reality 
 as she had seemed cruel, and a little 
 mysterious. 
 
 So the two fellows went through the 
 dripping burg till they came to a little gabled 
 and rather furtive inn called The Golden 
 Leopard, into which entering they found, 
 though it was summer still, a great fire, and 
 yokels and peasants over their beer, and a 
 noise of the folk-song to ancient viols and 
 much-used pipes. Even far off down the street 
 they had heard 'The Dark-eyed Sailor/ and 
 in the inn tune blossomed out of tune, music 
 grew out of the minds and the bodies of the
 
 8o DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 Saxon men like the carvings in a church, 
 flower upon flower of song. They heard ' The 
 Tavern in the Town,' and ' Green Broom,' and 
 ' Lord Rendel,' ' Little Sir William,' and ' Blow 
 away the Morning Dew,' and 'London Bridge/ 
 and ' The Briary Bush.' There were tunes for 
 the Morris and for children's games, and 
 great rolling sea-chanties, and shining carols 
 about the Rose without a thorn. There was 
 the White Paternoster, lovely with the faith 
 of the poor, and the carol which begins faint 
 as the far bels of Heaven 'he came al so stil, 
 there his mother was, like dew in Aperil, that 
 falleth on the gras.' Some men recited pieces, 
 as the poem called Quia Amore Langueo, red 
 as blood and \vhite as silver wool, and the 
 poem that was kept at Lilyminster, about the 
 King of England and the King of Souls, and 
 they would all sit musing, happy with good 
 drink and better music. 
 
 Then they swam into the glorious sea-surge 
 of the poem called ' Missouri ' and the two, who 
 loved very much that music, lifted their 
 tankards at the swelling chorus and drank to 
 each other's Honour and to eternal Love, 
 hazel eyes gazing triumphant into the eyes of 
 Dorian blue, as they seemed afloat in the fire- 
 lit tavern on a great sea of all the tears and
 
 HELLENICA 81 
 
 all the songs that ever swayed the faithful 
 heart ! 
 
 And all being over they went home to the 
 house of Mark, under what was now a clear 
 light of stars, in that remote and simple town, 
 only a few lights now showing in the still 
 houses, where the citizens were mostly asleep. 
 And found no one up in the house but Anne 
 only, sewing by a little lamp in the panelled 
 parlour, cheerful and holy almost as she ever 
 seemed to be. And so to bed and the long 
 dreamless quiet, till the cocks near and far 
 made their elvish clamour and dawn came 
 white and shining among the hills. 
 
 Sigurd and Mark spent that day in a happy 
 comradeship, looking forward to the feast 
 and the glamour of great Benedicts, and so 
 were, as they waited under the faint sunset 
 till it was time to put on fitting raiment for 
 the high banquet of that golden Lady,Carmina 
 of the Sun. Then as it darkened Sigurd laid 
 aside his tale and Mark his Republic, and they 
 went indoors to their chambers, where their 
 richest clothes were laid out splendid on 
 the lavendered beds.
 
 XII. THE COURT OF THE ROSE 
 
 THE Feast was the Feast. It was 
 rich, sumptuous and golden; it was 
 beautifully exhausting. The star- 
 light of the serene summer was 
 shining all night over the palace of the 
 Golden Rose. On her lakes dreamed the ivory 
 swans. 
 
 The amber and the ruby wines were cooled 
 with snow. Roses bled over the tables, or they 
 lolled with rich Corinthian breasts among 
 their blood-red veils. The feast-room was 
 hung with tapestry of the colour of sapphires 
 and rose-coloured pages, Ganymede and 
 Sebastian, Antinous and lanthon, poured out 
 the burning wine. 
 
 The Feast-Giver wore cloth-of-gold and a 
 mantilla of black and priceless lace. In her 
 bosom was a red rose; her jewels were pearls 
 and rubies. She received her guests in a 
 parlour of cedar-wood lit with hundreds of 
 tapers of Sicilian wax, white and pure. With 
 her were the three beauties that attended her, 
 in robes of oyster-colour and saffron, H esperia
 
 84 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 and Idalia and Dianeme, their blond hair 
 wreathed with carnations, ivy and parsley and 
 vine. She had there too priests and poets in 
 her court, and on a marble table by her side 
 a chalice of silver filled with violets, and in 
 a cage two cooing doves. She was like the 
 triumph of the Flesh. 
 
 With her in that chamber of cedar was 
 that other great lady who resembled rather 
 the inveterate Spirit almost contemptuously 
 resisting a naughty world. Seraphima St. Just, 
 tall and straight still for all her politic sixty 
 years, seemed kindled from within by some 
 white fire in the soul. Her gray eyes were 
 piercing but kindly, her nose severe as an old 
 eagle's, her ivory cheeks fretted with a lace 
 of wrinkles, and her snowy hair covered with 
 a dark blue veil. She wore voluminous robes 
 of black and silver, and was leaning on a 
 great stick of ebony, talking to the Prior of 
 Moresby, when the Briavels entered the cedar 
 chamber, Robert in black velvet, Anne in 
 crimson and Junia in figured lavender. With 
 them were Elizabeth in a dress the colour of 
 apple-leaves, and Aurelia a shining vision of 
 pearl-colour and gold, the pale flame of her 
 yellow hair wonderful with pearls and at 
 her breast a yellow rose. Carmina greeted
 
 THE COURT OF THE ROSE 85 
 
 all these very cordially, but she kissed Aurelia 
 and presented her in a very marked manner 
 to the Lady of Cheoping. 
 
 Most of the guests except certain of the 
 greatest lords passed on to the music and the 
 dance, but Carmina kept with her in that 
 chamber of enchantment the Briavels also, 
 because of Aurelia. Golden Olimpia, sitting 
 on a chair hung with scarlet, had about her 
 a court of sword-bearing gallants; Sara St. 
 Just and Junia Briavel were soon discussing 
 nuns and needlework. There were priests and 
 religious there, too, the Prior of Moresby, 
 Sebastian St. Just, pale and tense as the 
 flame of a taper, the rosy Rector of Saint 
 Blaise, Carmina's chaplain, the Dominican 
 Anomena. The old painter Cyril Silvester 
 was there, his red beard splashed with gray, 
 and the young poet master John Mortimer, 
 pale and lean, of whom we have heard before 
 at a feast in Moresby. Anabella Williams had 
 on a robe of plum-colour and Susanna de 
 Layve was pale as a tired lily in her close- 
 fitting robes of dull black. Aurelia saw then 
 here all those lovely women whom at a time 
 of despondency she had dreaded once as rivals 
 in Sigurd's heart. She did not dread them 
 now. Soon amid a fresh throng of guests came 
 G
 
 86 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 Sigurd, tall and calm, in clothes of burning 
 red, his sword by his side, and on his hand a 
 ring of gold. His brown hair came down upon 
 his shoulders and he had about it a wreath 
 of oak-leaves. With him was Mark in a coat 
 of violet, black-haired, blue-eyed, fresh as 
 the morning, and the young squire, Jacob 
 Bestwick, who was Sigurd's faithful body- 
 servant.They had ridden to Benedicts from the 
 Market House on great horses underanight of 
 stars, striking up the white dust of the roads 
 and hearing the corn-crakes crying in the 
 misty fields. 
 
 The appearance of the two young men was 
 so noble that all eyes were turned on them, 
 and Anne Briavel was fluttered with maternal 
 pride. Soon after that the banquet itself began. 
 The Prior of Moresby sat on the right hand 
 of Carmina, and on her left was the Lady of 
 Cheoping. Next to the prior came William 
 Williams, then Anne Briavel, then Master 
 Mortimer, then the Lord Ambard of Sistoe, 
 then Olimpia Beausalone, then Aurelia, then 
 sat Sigurd, and on his right the handmaid 
 Dianeme. But it is too long to tell how all the 
 guests sat at the feast. The countess had on 
 her left Robert Briavel, next to him came 
 Susanna de Layve, and then Sebastian St.
 
 THE COURT OF THE ROSE 87 
 Just, and then Silvester the painter, and then 
 Mark, and then a fair lady from Cheeping, 
 and then the maid of honour, Idalia de Cresci. 
 
 So went the feast with venison and fruit 
 and wine and all good things, and rose-leaves 
 to fall from a silver-coloured net, and the 
 glimmering of a thousand tapers, the sweet 
 smell of burning cedar-wood, the faint murmur 
 of viols from the musicians' gallery. In the 
 midst of it all sat that high lady, the Golden 
 Rose, like some great and sun-coloured 
 flower, and on her right the prior, and on 
 her left the aged and shining countess, who 
 had defended her against the anger of a 
 Queen. 
 
 If Mark had not had in his heart, very 
 firmly fixed, the image of that dark-haired girl 
 at Lilyminster, the beauty of Innocentia 
 Dacres, who lived in the manor of Cheoping, 
 would have gone far to hurt his repose. Her 
 great eyes were blue as hyacinths and her 
 hair red as a fox, and she was witty as a court- 
 lord, but more kind. She was dressed like 
 Aurelia in pearl-colour and in gold, and she 
 was as fresh as a bush of lavender when it 
 has rained all night in summer and at dawn 
 the rain ceases and there shines out the sun. 
 Yet, though he loved Lois Fermor now, he 
 
 G2
 
 88 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 found her witty enough and lovely enough to 
 make the feast pass pleasanter because of her. 
 Sigurd and Aurelia were in that other country 
 now; about them ebbed and flowed the colour 
 and the clamour of the banquet, but their calm 
 eyes, their calm spirits, like pools among the 
 rocks far from the swell of the sea, were 
 wedded in a great calm, as two tapers might 
 melt their maiden fires into one whiteness. 
 
 He held her hand, and the Golden Rose 
 marked them where she sat on her throne 
 above the feast and smiled in her deep heart. 
 After a time she unpinned from her glowing 
 bosom that great red rose that had lain there 
 so long, and calling her page, the slim and 
 rosy lanthon, with his head of amber, she 
 bade him bear it to the Lady Aurelia, saying 
 'Carmina sends you her own rose; she thinks 
 there is one who would take the one that you 
 wear.' Aurelia, a pillar of pearl and ivory and 
 snow, was scarce surprised to receive that 
 message. She knew that the Spanish Lady 
 had guessed her secret. 'Go, 1 she said to the 
 page, 'tell her ladyship that I accept her gift, 
 and know well on whom I shall bestow this 
 flower of mine own.' lanthon went back to 
 his mistress. 
 
 Aurelia took from her bosom that pale
 
 THE COURT OF THE ROSE 89 
 
 yellow rose, and before the eyes of the whole 
 feast, prelate and countess, poet and painter, 
 gallant and mayor, she gave it into the hand 
 of Sigurd Andersen. He pinned it to the breast 
 of his burning coat, as she the red rose into 
 her white bosom. There fell a sudden hush 
 about the table. The Lady Carmina, suddenly 
 standing up in her place with a goblet of wine 
 from Famagosta, commanded to drink the 
 health of these twain. So it was done, and the 
 Prior of Moresby, there at the feast, blessed 
 the betrothal.
 
 XIII. THE VIRGIN OF SISTOE. 
 
 
 Cardinal Bishop of Sistoe 
 married them in the Abbey of 
 St. Mary's at Moresby. Robert 
 Briavel gave his niece away and 
 Mark was groomsman. Domina was to live on 
 at Thessaly, for she was very old. The Countess 
 of Cheoping was present at the wedding, and 
 all the school-children had a holiday, for the 
 Briavels were among the chief in the town. 
 Aurelia wore a garland of white roses, and 
 her bride-robes were very simple and plain. 
 
 They went away in a great black coach to 
 the house of Sigurd's father at Charmington. 
 The little gray town and the mist among the 
 hills faded away, the noise of the priory bells 
 passed on the wind, Moresby was left behind; 
 her hand lay fast in his. 
 
 They came to Midlips, where the inn was 
 The Green Island; then to Masbery, where 
 the sunset lay on the green fields and the 
 chequered hill-sides about that old, uncanny 
 and folded town. Limestone streams full of 
 trout came singing down from the haunted
 
 92 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 hazel woods. More than one woman had the 
 face of a witch. The blunt tower of the church 
 stood up like a pillar of pure gold. 
 
 Then over more level country till the hills 
 began again, and they crossed a great stone 
 bridge over the river of Sistoe, and came at 
 last to the hill-set monastic town. Huge it 
 towered into the night, the houses thrusting 
 up gaunt and dark gables as if to seek pro- 
 tection in the shadow of the high roof and the 
 pointing choir of the Virgin of Sistoe. The 
 streets were gray with moonlight. Autumn 
 had come again, and the mists were rising 
 over the river and the leaves falling from the 
 trees. So Aurelia was coming back to Sistoe, 
 after all, but coming as a bride. Her face 
 shone like a star, like the star of all the wolds. 
 She was in his arms as Jacob Bestwick urged 
 the weary horses up the narrow and cobbled 
 streets to the inn called The Rose and Crown, 
 that stood in the market square almost in the 
 very shadow of the abbey. The huge clock 
 boomed down the hour of seven over the 
 town as they descended from the coach.
 
 XIV. THE SHADOW OF THE THREE 
 KINGS 
 
 SO they came on by slow stages at last 
 to Lilyminster, rich-coronalled with 
 princely towers, the crowds shouting 
 in her streets, where lamp-gold fought 
 with the blue mists of an autumn evening, 
 and lay that night at The Blue Bear, a little 
 tavern in Six Bishops Lane, a dark, a deep 
 and old and narrow lane, where as it were 
 some secret vein of the exquisite feminine 
 city lay open to a night of stars in the 
 shadow of the black blistered church of the 
 Three Kings in a quarter of the city where 
 canal-water would be seen shining by star- 
 light, a quarter of furtive and small gardens, 
 and lamps few and pale like primroses. 
 
 At The Blue Bear was dreamy ale and rosy 
 firelight, and they heard from the other rooms 
 the noises of cracked viols and the songs of 
 wandering singers coming hoarse and faint, 
 beautiful bawdy songs of the poor, with here 
 an echo of the ploughlands of the shire, and 
 here a note of the sea, and here the petal of
 
 94 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 some vague lily to perfume the tavern with 
 imaginative love, with a golden and remote 
 odour; and now one would be singing of the 
 branches of Paradise, that cover away with 
 coloured cloths the world. Sigurd and Aure- 
 lia sat listening to them before the quiet 
 flame after supper, and often their eyes were 
 wedded, his brown eyes drowned in those 
 speedwell-coloured pools.
 
 XV. THE RED EAGLE 
 
 i 
 
 *HEY went next day out to the 
 great hills, in whose bosom the 
 lilied city lies, down the long 
 gray street where Wisdom dwells 
 in her elaborate palaces, and the moist air 
 was full of a sweet noise of bells, that passed 
 behind them as the coach rolled on. 
 
 They left behind the teeming faubourgs, 
 they crested the great hill, and were at last 
 in the open country of those hills, on their 
 way to far-away Charmington and Sigurd's 
 ancestral fens. The autumn pools were still 
 as faint blue glass in the opalescent noon, 
 and the woods were like smoke, flicked 
 with golden fire on their ragged and tawny 
 crests. Miles upon miles of brown upland 
 and parti-coloured woods and misty spaces 
 of hill stretched languidly lovely on every 
 side. 
 
 Then they came to Beavilton, crouched 
 under a wooded hill. The houses, painted 
 blue and pink and yellow, roofed with aged
 
 96 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 and mossy tiles, stood in a square round the 
 gray and crumbling church of Saint Dorothy, 
 and a pale fine rain was falling. To Lily- 
 minster, said the sign-post to Lilyminster, 
 to Ottomore, to Maxbury and to Duscott 
 Agatha's. 
 
 The Angelus stole from the tower as they 
 entered that antique and lonely village, re- 
 motely warded from the world, with its 
 yellowing elm-trees and huge gabled barns, 
 and the amber sun shone faintly through the 
 mists of the day and kindled the leaden 
 puddles. Moist silence, a kind of cloud, im- 
 palpably gilt, was over the place, and in the 
 graveyard the vague faces of cherubs peeped 
 forth from the time-worn tombstones. 
 Pigeons were fluttering about the square 
 and a few patches of blue winked almost 
 tearfully out of the gray sky. 
 
 This was Beavilton, famous for the beauty 
 of its women and the skill of its dancers, 
 Beavilton where sometimes were seen, in 
 dark lanes and in the summer woods, appari- 
 tions of the fairies; Beavilton of the many 
 and the excellent taverns. They spent the 
 rest of the day there, lodging at The Red 
 Eagle, an inn of dark chambers and carven 
 fireplaces, where all the rooms smelt of
 
 THE RED EAGLE 97 
 
 lavender and the maids wore red roses at 
 their breasts. They dined with pride of white 
 linen and slender waxen tapers, black oak 
 and well-worn silver, off a partridge and 
 apricots and Burgundy wine.
 
 XVI. THE TOWER OF OUR LADY 
 
 
 'HERE was quietude the next 
 noon over Ottomore, and a faint 
 noise of sheep-bells. The long 
 white fen roads wound slowly 
 among the level fields and brimming ditches, 
 the rich brown tilth and the thinned hedges 
 of thorn, and distant lines of trees were 
 tipped with flame and gold. Wherever the eye 
 turned it was conscious of thin-skeined blue 
 horizons, the colour of peacocks' breasts, 
 and to the south the low smoke-soft wooded 
 hills were also vaguely blue. In some places 
 the River Clarwater and the little thread-like 
 streams of the Lillis, that went in and out of 
 the marsh like a silver rosary, had over- 
 flowed and the flooded fields would glitter 
 glassily in the autumnal sun. 
 
 The coach had come on over the roundly- 
 moulded desolate hill-country from Beavil- 
 ton, past Saint Jovans, clustered about its 
 tall church tower, where the gray-brown 
 cottages sent up delicate skeins of smoke in 
 that hollow of the hills, through the fading
 
 TOO DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 woods of Maxbury, till after a time the trees 
 began to thin and the road to go downward ; 
 and the village of Maxbury itself appeared, 
 on a steep thickly-wooded knoll on the very 
 edge of the plateau in which Beavilton and 
 Saint J ovans stood. Beyond and below lay in a 
 vast openness the long-expected fen country. 
 Aurelia had hardly suppressed a cry of sur- 
 prise at that expanse of dreaming blue, the 
 sheets of shining flood-water, the distant 
 knolls, the vague shapes of towers marking 
 the scattered villages, Charmington, Duscott, 
 Ambersbury. It was so sudden, so fresh, like 
 the opening of a great window, this boundless 
 and sea-coloured fen. Sigurd was full of joy 
 to be here again; his eyes sparkled, he leaned 
 out of the coach to look at the fields so well 
 known. She was conscious of a certain 
 primeval simplicity, an ancestral innocence, 
 and remembered vaguely, for no reason that 
 she understood, a poem called 'The Tavern 
 of Children.' The world seemed to have 
 become a serene and kindly inn, full of dancing 
 children; she saw souls like little and naked 
 babies dancing for sheer joy. It was to some 
 tower at the end of the world that her husband 
 was bringing her; to some inn beside whose 
 companionable hearth the doubts of time
 
 THE TOWER OF OUR LADY 101 
 became the blossoming certainties of Eternity. 
 It was to a place of explanation and assuaging, 
 of contentment and finality, to a place that 
 was old before government and laws began, 
 and would be younger than the dayspring 
 long, long after they were gone, a place to 
 which innocence and experience were alike 
 words, for it had lived ever in an exuberance 
 of most serene joy. 
 
 The sky was blue now and young, calm- 
 smiling, and the slim bridal delicate trees by 
 the roadside, like virgins in a picture of 
 Memmeling, fluttered a few golden leaves. 
 She was conscious of a sweetness of super- 
 natural maternity, and the beauty of the blue 
 horizons brought tears to her eyes. Sigurd 
 held her hand and sat happy and silent. There 
 was an old stone left standing in a field, and 
 Sigurd told her that the old road of the Roman 
 Emperor had gone over the marsh by that 
 way; but the peasants called it Mathear stone 
 and asserted that Saint Joseph had left it as 
 a memorial when he passed westward down 
 into the orchards of Avalon, carrying the 
 Grail, God's most wonderful gift to Britain. 
 
 Then suddenly, at a turn of the road, she 
 saw the impossible thing, the Bride, the 
 Dream City. There was a bare and large 
 H
 
 ro2 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 meadow, and the elms made as it were a 
 frame to the view, like courtiers round some 
 delicatest Queen. There beyond the grass 
 stood Charmington on her little hill, the tall 
 white tower of the church of the Virgin, the 
 delicately tinted roofs, the dark wands of 
 the very tall poplars standing about the 
 church like swords, the cloud tinged with 
 rose toppled beyond the tower, the flash of 
 gold on the high vanes. 
 
 Aurelia was to see her new home from 
 many different points, in many different 
 weathers, and Charmington was always 
 heavenly, always beautiful, often more beau- 
 tiful than now, in the water-azure and glassy 
 gold of April, or in the dreamy time of wild 
 rose and water-lily, when summer brooded 
 like an enchantment over the closes and the 
 sky-embracing pools; but she never saw it 
 with so sudden a catch of joy as now made 
 her heart leap. It was perfect, some lily 
 guarded and nourished away from the world, 
 some symbol of simple Happiness stitched 
 into frail-coloured tapestry with living thread 
 by the very immaculate fingers of that Lady 
 whose church warmed those old roofs under 
 its wings. 
 
 But it darkened soon, and she remembered
 
 THE TOWER OF OUR LADY 103 
 
 little more that night. A blood-red sunset 
 dripped down over the fen as they came into 
 a long, bare street, and she saw how ancient 
 the houses were and the darkness of the 
 tower above her among the few stars; and 
 saw through the gaps at the lane-ends how 
 the bare blue marsh-lands surrounded the 
 village on every side, how she sent out her 
 roads everywhere on pilgrimage into that 
 infinity, to seek for western gold and to 
 staunch the bleeding wounds of the dying 
 sun. She felt somewhere the heart of pity 
 beating in that place. And she felt too the 
 swift impulses of beauty as she heard the 
 poor children crying out with young shrill 
 joyful voices like birds in that desolate street, 
 beneath the crimson tides that were emptying 
 so slowly the veins of the day; and on her 
 face and among the boughs of the poplars 
 blew the wild, fresh kisses of the wind out of 
 the fen, like the messaging voice of some 
 Angelus nuntians come from before the face 
 of a high presence, of a good and very an- 
 cient Father-King sitting on his throne of 
 ivory beyond the world. And she heard, too, 
 the Ave of the bell. 
 
 Then the coach drew up before a great 
 gray ancient house, and Aurelia was soon in
 
 io 4 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 the arms of Sigurd's mother, knowing an 
 unmixed happiness she had not known since 
 she was a little child. And the young stars 
 looked down on sleeping Charmington, the 
 milky tears glistening in their tender eyes.
 
 XVII. ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 
 ^HERE is little more to tell. The 
 Angelus woke Aurelia, and she 
 heard the cocks crowing over the 
 plain, shrill and clear, as the 
 morning began to brighten across Ottomore 
 like some great white flower. Sigurd was 
 still asleep, and she rose and went to the 
 window, where rosemary and lavender stood 
 on the sill in blue Delft pots, and leaned out 
 to drink in the morning air. 
 
 The mist and the dew still veiled the garden 
 in a shining smoke, and like gray smoke were 
 the great bushes of lad's-love and among 
 their gray leaves the blue-purple Michaelmas 
 daisies winked their yellow eyes. White 
 fantail pigeons were tumbling in the soft blue 
 air, and the autumn skies were cloudless. 
 She raised her eyes and saw over the roofs 
 the pale stone of that angelus-tower of Our 
 Lady's Church, delicately outlined against 
 the blue, and the clear gold on its arrowy 
 vanes. She saw, too, the blue sign of one of 
 the inns, and a scarlet geranium in a garret
 
 io6 DREAM ENGLISH 
 
 window, which reminded her of Moresby. 
 Swift and lean and lovely went up that tower 
 at the end of the world, above the human 
 colours and the decent domestic smoke. So 
 she was come then to World's End, after all, 
 she pondered, and she found there a church 
 of Our Lady and an inn, a bride-bed and a 
 new mother. 
 
 Sigurd woke to find her seated at the mirror, 
 combing her long yellow hair. The sunlight 
 outside was strengthening and warming the 
 gray stones of Charmington into gold. From 
 where he lay he could see the curves of the 
 brown ploughland and a far blue arm of hill. 
 The new life was begun.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE LITTLE CITY : 
 POEMS. 1912 
 
 THE ESCAPED 
 PRINCESS: POEMS. 1916 
 
 BLACKWELL OXFORD
 
 PRINTED BY W. H. SMITH AND SON, THE ARDBN PRESS, 
 STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.
 
 A 000495176
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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