Flattery is a darned subtle thing at any time. To see him standing over me in that superior way and talking down at my poor business mind—well, it just came over me that I was laying my cards on the table a bit too early. After so many years of city life——!
Anyway, I pulled myself together. “I was only kidding you, boy,” I laughed. “I feel this beauty just as much as you do. Only, I guess, you’re more accustomed to it than I am. Come on now,” I added with energy, getting upon my feet, “let’s push on and see the wood. I want to find that place again.”
He pulled me with a hand of iron, laughing as he did so. Gee! I wished I had his teeth, as well as the muscles in his arm. Yet I felt younger, somehow, too—youth flowed more and more into my veins. I had forgotten how sweet the winds and woods and flowers could be. Something melted in me. For it was Spring, and the whole world was singing like a dream. Beauty was creeping over me. I don’t know. I began to feel all big and tender and open to a thousand wonderful sensations. The thought of streets and houses seemed like death. ...
We went on again, not talking much; my breath got shorter and shorter, and he kept looking about him as though he expected something. But we passed no living soul, not even a peasant; there were no chalets, no cattle, no cattle shelters even. And then I realised that the valley lay at our feet in haze and that we had been climbing at least a couple of hours. “Why, last night I got home in twenty minutes at the outside,” I said. He shook his head, smiling. “It seemed like that,” he replied, “but you really took much longer. It was long after ten when I found you in the hall.” I reflected a moment. “Now I come to think of it, you’re right, Arthur. Seems curious, though, somehow.” He looked closely at me. “I followed you all the way,” he said.
“You followed me!”
“And you went at a good pace too. It was your feelings that made it seem so short—you were singing to yourself and happy as a dancing faun. We kept close behind you for a long way.”
I think it was “we” he said, but for some reason or other I didn’t care to ask.
“Maybe,” I answered shortly, trying uncomfortably to recall what particular capers I had cut. “I guess that’s right.” And then I added something about the loneliness, and how deserted all this slope of mountain was. And he explained that the peasants were afraid of it and called it No Man’s Land. From one year’s end to another no human foot went up or down it; the hay was never cut; no cattle grazed along the splendid pastures; no chalet had even been built within a mile of the wood we slowly made for. “They’re superstitious,” he told me. “It was just the same a hundred years ago when he discovered it—there was a little natural cave on the edge of the forest where he used to sleep sometimes—I’ll show it to you presently—but for generations this entire mountain-side has been undisturbed. You’ll never meet a living soul in any part of it.” He stopped and pointed above us to where the pine wood hung in mid-air, like a dim blue carpet. “It’s just the place for Them, you see.”
And a thrill of power went smashing through me. I can’t describe it. It drenched me like a waterfall. I thought of Greece—Mount Ida and a thousand songs! Something in me—it was like the click of a shutter—announced that the “change” was suddenly complete. I was another man; or rather a deeper part of me took command. My very language showed it.
The calm of halcyon weather lay over all. Overhead the peaks rose clear as crystal; below us the village lay in a bluish smudge of smoke and haze, as though a great finger had rubbed them softly into the earth. Absolute loneliness fell upon me like a clap. From the world of human beings we seemed quite shut off. And there began to steal over me again the strange elation of the night before. ... We found ourselves almost at once against the edge of the wood.