After London; Or, Wild England

by Richard Jefferies

  CHAPTER IX

  SUPERSTITIONS

  Felix was now outside the town and alone in the meadow which borderedthe stream; he knelt, and drank from it with the hollow of his hand. Hewas going to ascend the hill beyond, and had already reached the barrierupon that side, when he recollected that etiquette demanded the presenceof the guests at meal-times, and it was now the hour for tea. Hehastened back, and found the courtyard of the castle crowded. Within,the staircase leading to the Baroness's chamber (where tea was served)could scarcely be ascended, what with the ladies and their courtiers,the long trains of the serving-women, the pages winding their way in andout, the servants endeavouring to pass, the slender pet greyhounds, theinseparable companions of their mistresses.

  By degrees, and exercising patience, he gained the upper floor andentered the drawing-room. The Baroness alone sat at the table, theguests wheresoever they chose, or chance carried them; for the most partthey stood, or leaned against the recess of the open window. Of teaitself there was none; there had been no tea to be had for love or moneythese fifty years past, and, indeed, its use would have been forgotten,and the name only survived, had not some small quantities been yetpreserved and brought out on rare occasions at the palaces. Instead,there was chicory prepared from the root of the plant, grown for thepurpose; fresh milk; fine ale and mead; and wine from Gloucester.Butter, honey, and cake were also on the table.

  The guests helped themselves, or waited till the servants came to themwith wooden carved trays. The particular characteristic of tea is thefreedom from restraint; it is not considered necessary to sit as atdinner or supper, nor to do as others do; each pleases himself, andthere is no ceremony. Yet, although so near Aurora, Felix did notsucceed in speaking to her; Durand still engaged her attention wheneverother ladies were not talking with her. Felix found himself, exactly asat dinner-time, quite outside the circle. There was a buzz ofconversation around, but not a word of it was addressed to him. Dressesbrushed against him, but the fair owners were not concerned even toacknowledge his existence.

  Pushed by the jostling crowd aside from the centre of the floor, Felixpresently sat down, glad to rest at last, behind the open door.Forgotten, he forgot; and, looking as it were out of the present in abitter reverie, scarcely knew where he was, except at moments when heheard the well-known and loved voice of Aurora. A servant after a whilecame to him with a tray; he took some honey and bread. Almostimmediately afterwards another servant came and presented him with aplate, on which was a cup of wine, saying, "With my lady's lovingwishes."

  As in duty bound, he rose and bowed to the Baroness; she smiled andnodded; the circle which had looked to see who was thus honoured, turnedaside again, not recognising him. To send a guest a plate with wine orfood is the highest mark of esteem, and this plate in especial was ofalmost priceless value, as Felix saw when his confusion had abated. Itwas of the ancient china, now not to be found in even the houses of thegreat.

  In all that kingdom but five perfect plates were known to exist, and twoof these were at the palace. They are treasured as heirlooms, and, ifever broken, can never be replaced. The very fragments are rare; theyare often set in panels, and highly prized. The Baroness, glancing roundher court, had noticed at last the young man sitting in the obscurecorner behind the door; she remembered, not without some twinge ofconscience, that his house was their ancient ally and swornhearth-friend.

  She knew, far better than the Baron, how deeply her daughter loved him;better, perhaps, even than Aurora herself. She, too, naturally hoped ahigher alliance for Aurora; yet she was a true woman, and her heart wasstronger than her ambition. The trifle of the wine was, of course,nothing; but it was open and marked recognition. She expected that Felix(after his wont in former times, before love or marriage was thought offor Aurora) would have come upon this distinct invitation, and taken hisstand behind her, after the custom. But as he did not come, fresh guestsand the duties of hospitality distracted her attention, and she againforgot him.

  He was, indeed, more hurt than pleased with the favour that had beenshown him; it seemed to him (though really prompted by the kindestfeeling) like a bone cast at a dog. He desired to be so regarded that nospecial mark of favour should be needed. It simply increased hisdiscontent. The evening wore on, the supper began; how weary it seemedto him, that long and jovial supper, with the ale that ran in acontinual stream, the wine that ceaselessly circled round, the jokes,and bustle, and laughter, the welcome to guests arriving; the cards, andchess, and games that succeeded it, the drinking, and drinking, anddrinking, till the ladies again left; then drinking yet more freely.

  He slipped away at the first opportunity, and having first strolled toand fro on the bowling green, wet with dew, at the rear of the castle,asked for his bedroom. It was some time before he could get attended to;he stood alone at the foot of the staircase while others went first(their small coins bought them attention), till at last a lamp wasbrought to him, and his chamber named. This chamber, such as it was, wasthe only pleasure, and that a melancholy one, he had had that day.

  Though overflowing with guests, so that the most honoured visitors couldnot be accommodated within the castle, and only the ladies could findsleeping room there, yet the sacred law of honour, the pledge of thehearth-friend passed three generations ago, secured him this privilege.The hearth-friend must sleep within, if a king were sent without.Oliver, of course, would occupy the same room, but he was drinking andshouting a song below, so that for a while Felix had the chamber tohimself.

  It pleased him, because it was the room in which he had always sleptwhen he visited the place from a boy, when, half afraid and yetdetermined to venture, he had first come through the lonely forestalone. How well he remembered that first time! the autumn sunshine onthe stubble at Old House, and the red and brown leaves of the forest ashe entered; how he entered on foot, and twice turned back, and twiceadventured again, till he got so deep into the forest that it seemed asfar to return as to advance. How he started at the sudden bellow of twostags, and the clatter of their horns as they fought in the brake closeby, and how beautiful the castle looked when presently he emerged fromthe bushes and looked down upon it!

  This was the very room he slept in; the Baroness, mother-like, came tosee that he was comfortable. Here he had slept every time since; here hehad listened in the early morning for Aurora's footfall as she passedhis door, for the ladies rose earlier than did the men. He now sat downby the open window; it was a brilliant moonlight night, warm anddelicious, and the long-drawn note of the nightingale came across thegardens from the hawthorn bushes without the inner stockade. To the lefthe could see the line of the hills, to the right the forest; all wasquiet there, but every now and then the sound of a ballad came round thecastle, a sound without recognizable words, inarticulate merriment.

  If he started upon the hazardous voyage he contemplated, and for whichhe had been so long preparing, should he ever sleep there again, so nearthe one he loved? Was it not better to be poor and despised, but nearher, than to attempt such an expedition, especially as the chances (ashis common sense told him) were all against him? Yet he could not stay;he _must_ do it, and he tried to stifle the doubt which insisted uponarising in his mind. Then he recurred to Durand; he remembered that notonce on that day had he exchanged one single word, beyond the first andordinary salutation, with Aurora.

  Might she not, had she chosen, have arranged a moment's interview? Mightshe not easily have given him an opportunity? Was it not clear that shewas ashamed of her girlish fancy for a portionless and despised youth?If so, was it worth while to go upon so strange an enterprise for hersake? But if so, also, was life worth living, and might he not as wellgo and seek destruction?

  While this conflict of feeling was proceeding, he chanced to looktowards the table upon which he had carelessly placed his lamp, andobserved, what in his agitated state of mind he had previouslyoverlooked, a small roll of manuscript tied round with silk. Curious inbooks, he undid the fastening, and opened the volume.
There was not muchwriting, but many singular diagrams, and signs arranged in circles. Itwas, in fact, a book of magic, written at the dictation, as the prefacestated, of one who had been for seven years a slave among the Romany.

  He had been captured, and forced to work for the tent to which hisowners belonged. He had witnessed their worship and their sorceries; hehad seen the sacrifice to the full moon, their chief goddess, and thewild extravagances with which it was accompanied. He had learnt some fewof their signs, and, upon escaping, had reproduced them from memory.Some were engraved on the stones set in their rings; some were carved onwooden tablets, some drawn with ink on parchment; but, with all, theirprocedure seemed to be the repetition of certain verses, and then asteady gaze upon the picture. Presently they became filled with rapture,uttered what sounded as the wildest ravings, and (their womenespecially) prophesied of the future.

  A few of the signs he understood the meaning of, but the others he ownedwere unknown to him. At the end of the book were several pages ofcommentary, describing the demons believed in and worshipped by theRomany, demons which haunted the woods and hills, and against which itwas best to be provided with amulets blessed by the holy fathers of St.Augustine. Such demons stole on the hunter at noonday, and, alarmed atthe sudden appearance, upon turning his head (for demons invariablyapproach from behind, and their presence is indicated by a shudder inthe back), he toppled into pits hidden by fern, and was killed.

  Or, in the shape of a dog, they ran between the traveller's legs; or aswoman, with tempting caresses, lured him from the way at nightfall intothe leafy recesses, and then instantaneously changing into vast bat-likeforms, fastened on his throat and sucked his blood. The terrible screamsof such victims had often been heard by the warders at the outposts.Some were invisible, and yet slew the unwary by descending unseen uponhim, and choking him with a pressure as if the air had suddenly becomeheavy.

  But none of these were, perhaps, so much to be dreaded as thesweetly-formed and graceful ladies of the fern. These were creatures,not of flesh and blood, and yet not incorporeal like the demons, norwere they dangerous to the physical man, doing no bodily injury. Theharm they did was by fascinating the soul so that it revolted from allreligion and all the rites of the Church. Once resigned to the caress ofthe fern-woman, the unfortunate was lured farther and farther from thehaunts of men, until at last he wandered into the unknown forest, andwas never seen again. These creatures were usually found among the brakefern, nude, but the lower limbs and body hidden by the green fronds,their white arms and shoulders alone visible, and their golden hairaglow with the summer sunshine.

  Demons there were, too, of the streams, and demons dwelling in the midstof the hills; demons that could travel only in the moonbeams, and othersthat floated before the stormy winds and hurled the wretched wanderer todestruction, or crushed him with the overthrown trees. In proof of thisthe monk asked the reader if he had not heard of huge boughs fallingfrom trees without visible cause, suddenly and without warning, and evenof trees themselves in full foliage, in calm weather, toppling with acrash, to the imminent danger or the death of those who happened to bepassing. Let all these purchase the amulets of St. Augustine, concludedthe writer, who it appeared was a monk in whose monastery the escapedprisoner had taken refuge, and who had written down his relation andcopied his rude sketches.

  Felix pored over the strange diagrams, striving to understand the hiddenmeaning; some of them he thought were alchemical signs, and related tothe making of gold, especially as the prisoner stated the Romanypossessed much more of that metal in the tents than he had seen in thepalaces of our kings. Whether they had a gold mine from whence they drewit, or whether they had the art of transmutation, he knew not, but hehad heard allusions to the wealth in the mountain of the apple trees,which he supposed to be a mystical phrase.

  When Felix at last looked up, the lamp was low, the moonbeams hadentered and fell upon the polished floor, and from the window he couldsee a long white ghostly line of mist where a streamlet ran at the baseof the slope by the forest. The songs were silent; there was no soundsave the distant neigh of a horse and the heavy tramp of a guest comingalong the gallery. Half bewildered by poring over the magic scroll, fullof the signs and the demons, and still with a sense of injury andjealousy cankering his heart, Felix retired to his couch, and, wearybeyond measure, instantly fell asleep.

  In his unsettled state of mind it did not once occur to him to askhimself how the manuscript came to be upon his table. Rare as they were,books were not usually put upon the tables of guests, and at an ordinarytime he would certainly have thought it peculiar. The fact was, thatAurora, whom all day he had inwardly accused of forgetting him, hadplaced it there for him with her own hands. She, too, was curious inbooks and fond of study. She had very recently bought the volume from amerchant who had come thus far, and who valued it the least of all hiswares.

  She knew that Felix had read and re-read every other scrap of writingthere was in the castle, and thought that this strange book mightinterest him, giving, as it did, details of those powers of the air inwhich almost all fully believed. Unconscious of this attention, Felixfell asleep, angry and bitter against her. When, half an hourafterwards, Oliver blundered into the room, a little unsteady on hislegs, notwithstanding his mighty strength, he picked up the roll,glanced at it, flung it down with contempt, and without a minute's delaysought and obtained slumber.