The Wooden Horse

by Hugh Walpole

And of Mary, too, he was sure. He knew that she loved him; he had seen her face in the mirror as her lips had said "No," and he saw that her heart had said "Yes." With the new strength that had come to him he vowed to force her defences and carry her away.... Oh! he could be any knight and fight for any lady.

But as he sat by the bed, watching the dawn struggle through the blinds and listening to the faint, clear twittering of birds in the grey, dew-swept garden—he wished that he could tell his father of his engagement. He wondered if there would be time. That it would please the old man he knew, and it would seal the compact, and place a secret blessing on their married life together. Yes, he would like to tell him.

The clocks struck five—he heard their voices echo through the house; and, at the last, the tiny voice of the cuckoo clock sounded and the little wild flap of his wings came quite clearly through the silence; his voice was answered by a chorus from the garden, the voices of the birds seemed to grow ever louder and louder; in that strange dark room, with its shaded lights and heavy airs, it was clear and fresh like the falling of water on cold, shining stone.

Harry went softly to the window and drew back a corner of the blind. The dawn was gradually revealing the forms and colours of the garden, and in the grey, misty light things were mysterious and uncertain; like white lights in a dusky room the two white statues shone through the mist. At that strange hour they seemed in their right atmosphere; they seemed to move and turn and bend—he could have fancied that they sailed on the mist—that, for a moment, they had vanished and then that they had grown enormous, monstrous. He watched them eagerly, and as the light grew clearer he made them out more plainly—the straight, eager beauty of the man, the dim, mysterious grace of the woman. Perhaps they talked in those early hours when they were alone in the garden; perhaps they might speak to him if he were to join them then. Then he fancied that the mist formed into figures of men and women; to his excited fancy the garden seemed peopled with shapes that increased and dwindled and vanished. Round the statues many shapes gathered; one in especial seemed to walk to and fro with its face turned to the house. It was a woman—her grey dress floated in the air, and he saw her form outlined against the statue. Then the mist seemed to sweep down again and catch the statues in its eddies and hide them from his gaze. The dawn was breaking very slowly. From the window the sweep of the sea was, in daylight, perfectly visible: now in the dim grey of the sky it was hidden—but Harry knew where it must be and watched for its appearance. The first lights were creeping over the sky, breaking in delicate tints and ripples of silver and curving, arc-shaped, from the west to the east.

Where sky and sea divided a faint pale line of grey hovered and broke, turning into other paler lights of the most delicate blue. The dawn had come.

He turned back again to the garden and started with surprise: in the more certain light there was no doubt that it was a woman who stood there by the statues, guarding the first early beauties of the garden. Everything was pearl-grey, save where, high above the water of the fountain that stood in the centre of the lawn, the sky had broken into a little lake of the palest blue and this was reflected in the still mirror of the fountain—but it was a woman. He could see the outline of her form—the bend of her neck as she turned with her face to the house, the straight line of her arms as they tell at her sides. And, as he looked, his heart began to beat thickly. He seemed to recognise that carriage of the body from the hips, the fling-back of the head as she stared towards the windows.

The light of the dawn was breaking over the garden, the chorus of the birds was loud in the trees, and he knew that it was no dream.

He glanced for a moment at his father, and then crept softly from the room. He found one of the nurses making tea over a spirit-lamp in the dressing-room and asked her to take his place.

The house was perfectly silent as he opened the French window of the drawing-room and stepped on to the lawn. The grass was heavy with dew and the fresh air beat about his face; he had never known anything quite so fresh—the air, the grass, the trees, the birds' song like the sound of hidden waters tumbling on to some unseen rock.

Her face was turned away from him and his feet made no sound on the grass. He came perfectly silently towards her, and then when he saw that it had indeed been no imagination but that it was reality, and when he knew all that her coming there meant and what it implied, for moment his limbs shook so that he could scarcely stand. Then he laughed a little and said "Mary!"