A Prisoner in Fairyland (The Book That 'Uncle Paul' Wrote)Blackwood, Algernon
Science
A Prisoner in Fairyland (The Book That 'Uncle Paul' Wrote)
Blackwood, Algernon
Magic -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
'No,' she answered with decision, 'out here, I think. In the woods or
somewhere.' She seemed vague. But her very vagueness helped him to
believe. She was not inventing; he was sure of that.
The _conducteur_ at that moment passed away along the train, and
Cousin Henry looked straight at the pair of them. Through the open
window dusk fluttered down the sky with spots of gold already on its
wings.
'What jolly stars you've got here,' he said, pointing. 'They're like
diamonds. Look, it's a perfect network far above the Alps. By gum--
what beauties!'
And as he said it he smiled. Monkey gave her brother a nudge that
nearly made him cry out. He wondered what she meant, but all the same
he returned the nudge significantly. For Cousin Henry, when he smiled,
had plainly shown--two teeth of gold.
The children had never seen gold-capped teeth.
'I'd like one for my collection,' thought Jimbo, meaning a drawer that
included all his loose possessions of small size. But another thing
stirred in him too, vague, indefinite, far away, something he had, as
it were, forgotten.
CHAPTER XII
O star benignant and serene,
I take the good to-morrow,
That fills from verge to verge my dream,
With all its joy and sorrow!
The old sweet spell is unforgot
That turns to June December;
And, though the world remember not,
Love, we would remember.
_Life and Death_, W. E. HENLEY.
And Rogers went over to unpack. It was soon done. He sat at his window
in the carpenter's house and enjoyed the peace. The spell of evening
stole down from the woods. London and all his strenuous life seemed
very far away. Bourcelles drew up beside him, opened her robe, let
down her forest hair, and whispered to him with her voice of many
fountains....
She lies just now within the fringe of an enormous shadow, for the sun
has dipped behind the blue-domed mountains that keep back France.
Small hands of scattered mist creep from the forest, fingering the
vineyards that troop down towards the lake. A dog barks. Gygi, the
gendarme, leaves the fields and goes home to take his uniform from its
peg. Pere Langel walks among his beehives. There is a distant tinkling
of cow-bells from the heights, where isolated pastures gleam like a
patchwork quilt between the spread of forest; and farther down a train
from Paris or Geneva, booming softly, leaves a trail of smoke against
the background of the Alps where still the sunshine lingers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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