I went back home through the wood, with her eyes in my heart, and her words talking to-and-fro in my brain. Twice I lost my way, but the friends on whom I relied did not forsake me. Once it was a beautiful little snake that zig-zagged in front of me till we came to the right turning. And once it was a chipmunk that seemed to know everything. By the time I came to the home-end of the wood, the stars were rising, and the little creatures of the night were creaking and whirring about me. The windows of home were shining with lamps—welcome beacons, no doubt you will say—and yet, strange as it may sound, I was rather sorry to come upon them so easily. They seemed so safe and comfortable—bed at nine and oatmeal porridge in the morning. I knew that so soon as I lifted the latch all mystery was at an end. Even the punishment that would surely fall upon me for my truancy was quite unmysterious—almost as familiar as my porridge. Bed and porridge—and those voices in the wood! O anti-climax of a wonderful day. How truly had the Princess spoken. What was home to me—with its trimmed lamps, and its quiet carpets and its regular hours; what was home compared with those night-voices and the rising moon.
Still, being hungry, I chose the kitchen door, and by a friendly domestic was smuggled away to bed—with a stomach full of pleasant dreams.
Such was my first meeting with Once-Upon-a-Time.
Next time I met her my boyhood was gone by, and my fancy was no longer occupied with the nursery-stories of which the Blue-Bird had sung. Giants and dragons were receding from my imagination, and my fancy, I must confess, was beginning to take a more sentimental turn. The wood still remained my wonderland, but the wonders I sought there were of a different, if scarcely less dangerous, character. By this I had exchanged my nursery-books for the Mort D’Arthur and Spenser and Shakespeare and such like romantic literature; and my head was, therefore, full of the beautiful ladies and noble lovers of old time. I fear there is no denying that I had by this become quite bookish, and you could scarcely have encountered me in the wood or elsewhere, without some poet or some old playbook under my arm. Ah, how happy were those long summer mornings when I would lie upon a green bank, absorbed in some honeyed tale of lovers dead and gone, with the green boughs above sunnily silhouetted on the page. And, just as when a boy the wood had been the scene of all my old nursery-stories, so still it served me as the stage for all my romantic heroes and heroines. It was by turns every wood mentioned in my poets. Of course, it was, first and foremost the Forest of Arden; and one particular glade presided over by a giant oak was easily identified by me as the green courtroom of the banished Duke. As for Jacques, I felt myself his very brother, and replenished the woodland streams with sentimental tears, with no less enjoyment of my own melancholy than he. Rosalind, of course, I was expecting to meet with every moment, and did not fail to inscribe the tree-trunks with sundry rhymes which I hoped might catch her eye. Of these I may have a story to tell later. When the wood was in darker moods, when it wore its tragic mask of thunder and lightning, or put on some sinister witchery of twilight, I would say that Macbeth was on his way to meet the weird sisters. Sometimes, it was “a wood near Athens,” or at others, remembering my Keats, it was that “forest on the shores of Crete,” where Lycius met the snake-woman Lamia. The wood, indeed, was filled with memories of Keats, and if any one in the world knew where the lover of Isabella had been buried by her murderous brothers, surely it was I. I too had discovered the hollow oak where Merlin lay entranced; and many a night, hidden behind the bole of some gigantic beech, had watched Selene bend in a bright crescent above her sleeping shepherd lad.
But it is time I told you of my second meeting with Once-Upon-a-Time. I was lying in a bower of wild-roses which I had purposely trained to resemble the bower in which Nicolete slept the night when she fled from the castle of Beaucaire, as we have all read in the delectable history of the loves of Aucassin and Nicolete. It was the golden end of afternoon, and the shadows were still made half of gold. I was lying face down over my book, when suddenly I seemed aware of a new presence near me—as one is conscious that a bird had alighted on a bough close by, or a flower newly opened. Being accustomed to such companions, I did not look up. I was too deep in the loves of my book folk, and too anxious to finish the long euphuistic chapter before the setting sun should warn me of dinner-time. But presently a low laugh sounded behind me, and the sweetest of voices said:
“Young sir, you are very selfish with that great book there”—I may say that it was a folio Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney—“it is so big that I am sure that there is room for two pairs of eyes—”
“Come read with me,” said I, looking up and blushing.
“Nay, I am no Francesca,” she answered; “I would not interrupt your reading, young Paolo.”
“But I am tired of reading,” I said, closing the old book.
“The sun will soon be gone,” she answered. “Had you not better finish your chapter?”