'All through the tour? Yes, I think every journey was a success. Of
course, I didn't go so far afield every day; I was too tired. Often I
rested all day long, and went out in the evening, after the lamps were
lit, and then only for a mile or two. I would roam about old, dim
squares, and hear the wind from the hills whispering in the trees; and
when I knew I was within call of some great glittering street, I was
sunk in the silence of ways where I was almost the only passenger, and
the lamps were so few and faint that they seemed to give out shadows
instead of light. And I would walk slowly, to and fro, perhaps for an
hour at a time, in such dark streets, and all the time I felt what I
told you about its being my secret--that the shadow, and the dim lights,
and the cool of the evening, and trees that were like dark low clouds
were all mine, and mine alone, that I was living in a world that nobody
else knew of, into which no one could enter.
'I remembered one night I had gone farther. It was somewhere in the far
west, where there are orchards and gardens, and great broad lawns that
slope down to trees by the river. A great red moon rose that night
through mists of sunset, and thin, filmy clouds, and I wandered by a
road that passed through the orchards, till I came to a little hill,
with the moon showing above it glowing like a great rose. Then I saw
figures pass between me and the moon, one by one, in a long line, each
bent double, with great packs upon their shoulders. One of them was
singing, and then in the middle of the song I heard a horrible shrill
laugh, in the thin cracked voice of a very old woman, and they
disappeared into the shadow of the trees. I suppose they were people
going to work, or coming from work in the gardens; but how like it was
to a nightmare!
'I can't tell you about Hampton; I should never finish talking. I was
there one evening, not long before they closed the gates, and there were
very few people about. But the grey-red, silent, echoing courts, and the
flowers falling into dreamland as the night came on, and the dark yews
and shadowy-looking statues, and the far, still stretches of water
beneath the avenues; and all melting into a blue mist, all being hidden
from one's eyes, slowly, surely, as if veils were dropped, one by one,
on a great ceremony! Oh! my dear, what could it mean? Far away, across
the river, I heard a soft bell ring three times, and three times, and
again three times, and I turned away, and my eyes were full of tears.
'I didn't know what it was when I came to it; I only found out
afterwards that it must have been Hampton Court. One of the men in the
office told me he had taken an A. B. C. girl there, and they had great
fun. They got into the maze and couldn't get out again, and then they
went on the river and were nearly drowned. He told me there were some
spicy pictures in the galleries; his girl shrieked with laughter, so he
said.'
Mary quite disregarded this interlude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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