“Then why don’t ’ee make for Cannebrake?” he asked.
“Cannebrake?” I exclaimed. “How on earth shall I make for a place of whose existence I am only this moment aware?”
“Never heard of Cannebrake o’ the Starlings?” he exclaimed. “Why, ’tis a famous place here around, and the old lord he might be proud to listen to a parcel o’ music. Come, I’ll show ’ee the road.”
A burst of gibberish from the idiot made up my mind, and I hurried after the landlord, who with much circumlocution described my route. I left him by the inn door, and when I turned once or twice to wave a farewell, saw him still standing there, a white patch in the fading light.
I passed, according to his directions, a dry tree, a slab of granite shaped like an elephant’s back, and a stretch of waste water stuck here and there with withered reeds like an old brush, until I reached a tall Celtic cross that leaned very forbiddingly towards the path. Here a side track dipped down from the main road to a valley whose ample vegetation contrasted strangely with the barren moors above. My path was soon overarched with trees. A smell of damp woodland pervaded its gloom, and my footsteps were muffled by the drift of wet leaves. Had it not been for the deep ruts into which from time to time I slipped, I should have concluded I had missed the path and was penetrating towards the heart of a forest.
I emerged from the avenue at last; though by now it was so dark that only the fresher air and the rasping of my feet on stones told me I was again in open country. But it was impossible to advance, and I was beginning to regret the inn and rail at myself for objecting to the idiot’s company, when I saw above a black hill-top the yellow rim of the full moon, whose light, increasing every moment, was presently strong enough to show me I was not fifty yards from the great gates of Cannebrake.
Yet I was half afraid to set them creaking in the silence, so menacing were they between their tall stone pillars, so complete was the absence of any welcome.
I have often had occasion to visit the seats of the nobility and gentry in more civilised corners of England, and the air of abandonment that surrounded the entrance of Cannebrake did not seem to consort with the traditions of any famous or honoured name.
The very moonlight in that hollow was tainted with a miasma, setting no clear contrasts of shadow and silver, robbing the pillars of all solidity and giving the landscape the tremulous outlines of a half-remembered dream.
I had never before experienced the sensation of absolute decay. I had been affected by the fall of autumn leaves from dripping branches, by the melting of ice on warm winter mornings; but here dissolution was silent, without a curlew’s cry or lisp of withered grass to mark its accomplishment.