XI
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
—JOHN KEATS.
Even as we entered the gates of Mr. Reverie's house beneath embowering chestnuts, there advanced across the moonlit spaces to meet us a figure on foot like ourselves, leading his horse. He was in armour, yet unarmed. His steel glittered cold and blue; his fingers hung ungauntleted; and on his pale face dwelt a look never happy warrior wore yet. He seemed a man Mars lends to Venus out of war to unhappy idleness. The disillusionment of age was in his face: yet he was youthful, I suppose; scarce older than Mercutio, and once, perhaps, as light of wit.
He took my hand in a grasp cold and listless, and smiled from mirthless eyes.
Yet there was something strangely taking in this solitary knight-at-arms. She for whom he does not fight, I thought, must have somewhat of the immortals to grace her warrior with. And if it were only shadows that beset him and obscured his finer heart, shadows they were of myrtle and rhododendron, with voices shrill and small as the sparrows', and eyes of the next-to-morning stars.
Indeed, these gardens whispered, and the wind at play in the air seemed to bear far-away music, dying and falling.
We entered the house and sat down to supper in a low room open to the night. Reverie recounted our evening's talk. "I wish," he said, turning to his friend, "you would accompany Mr. Brocken and me one night to the 'World's End' to hear these fellows talk. Such arrogance, such assurance, such bigotry and blindness and foxiness!—yet, on my word, a kind of gravity with it all, as if the scarecrows had some real interest in the devil's tares they guard. Come now, let it be a bargain between us, and leave this endless search awhile."
But the solitary knight shook his head. "They would jeer me out of knowledge," he said. "Why, Reverie, the children cease their play when I pass, and draw their tops and marbles out of the dust, and gaze till I am hid from sight."
"It is fancy, only fancy," replied Reverie; "children stare at all things new to them in the world. How else could they recognise and learn again—how else forget? But as for this rabble's mockery, there is a she-bear left called Oblivion which is their mistress, and will some day silence every jeer."