Читать книгу Stinging Nettles - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 9

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§ I

THERE were always dreams.

Lucie, whose reading was as great as her experience was little, was an adept in dreams; her mind stored with a thousand images could entertain her with many-coloured fantasies.

Nothing remarkable or romantic had ever happened to Lucie Uden; she had known no early love-affairs, no lover had ever kissed her save her husband, she remembered no men as friends, she knew very little about men; her world had always been overwhelmingly feminine.

But she had her dreams of heroes and giants, austere and stately males, gravely intent on noble works, haughty and cold save to one woman's kiss, unresponsive save to one woman's embrace. Between sleeping and waking, or wholly asleep, did not much magnificence hover round Lucie Uden's dreams as if the triple Hecate, mysterious, awful, had risen from the moonbeam of some silent pool to shake her inverted torches over this lonely woman's solitary pillow?

To-night, drugged by fatigue, she lay very still while the common images of the day were effaced from her memory and reality faded into the magic realms of sleep over which so many strange gods preside.

In this kingdom how many riches may one possess!—how many glorious sights behold!

A procession of white camels wearing scarlet laced with gold, marching across burning silver sand to some vast, wonderful, monstrous city where kings feasted and slaves toiled, Susa, Persepolis, Samarkand, Delhi, Memphis or Babylon.

A vase of white alabaster, warm-coloured, traced with the gold lines of a faint pattern, filled with vivid oranges, and long hard pink grapes, and thick twisted vine tendrils, and cloven peaches soft with silver bloom, and over all trails of jasmine with tiny dark foliage and white roses, perfectly curling perfect petals about the secret heart.

And now a jungle where the great grasses grow high, high above the head, their spear-like points starred with angry flowers, purple scarlet, aware, agape, and overhead in the torrid blue, unknown birds swirling while you press on, twisting between the grave stones until you find IT, the great idol, mountain high, squatting in the depths of silence, staring down with inhuman eyes, lit by the rays of the million jewels IT wears. And then orchards blossoming to the verge of the sea, casting a chift of petals on the quiver of the summer wavelets and a boat moored to one of the dipping boughs where you might sleep—so long!—and never wake to sorrow.

And again, an old, old monk smiling in a cell and all the walls dreamed away and thousands of stars sailing in to hear him play on two reed pipes.

With horse and man the armies gather, shaking the earth from Asia into Greece, denting the plains of Africa by weight of armaments, staining the waters of the Hellespont with reflections of their glory, hordes, hordes swarming round their kings, robed and crowned and eager for their prey!

Oh, windy moors and storm-blown skies, and rocky cities circled by ancient walls, and open seas unflecked by foam, and little islands like lily-buds, close as if one stem bore them all, and wide roads leading to imperial gates, and sunny chambers inhabited by peace and overlooking fields clouded by innumerable flowers, may I not in my dreams visit you all and be content?