"Really?" I was fired by a sudden recklessness. "Then take me to South America!
"To America I cannot. It"s daylight there by now." "And we are night-birds.
Well, anywhere, where you can, only far, far away."
"Shut your eyes and hold your breath," answered Alice, and we flew along with the speed of a whirlwind. With a deafening noise the air rushed into my ears. We stopped, but the noise did not cease. On the contrary, it changed into a sort of menacing roar, the roll of thunder...
"Now you can open your eyes," said Alice.
IX
I obeyed ... Good G.o.d, where was I?
Overhead, ponderous, smoke-like storm-clouds; they huddled, they moved on like a herd of furious monsters ... and there below, another monster; a raging, yes, raging, sea ... The white foam gleamed with spasmodic fury, and surged up in hillocks upon it, and hurling up s.h.a.ggy billows, it beat with a sullen roar against a huge cliff, black as pitch. The howling of the tempest, the chilling gasp of the storm-rocked abyss, the weighty splash of the breakers, in which from time to time one fancied something like a wail, like distant cannon-shots, like a bell ringing--the tearing crunch and grind of the shingle on the beach, the sudden shriek of an unseen gull, on the murky horizon the disabled hulk of a ship--on every side death, death and horror.... Giddiness overcame me, and I shut my eyes again with a sinking heart....
"What is this? Where are we?"
"On the south coast of the Isle of Wight opposite the Blackgang cliff where ships are so often wrecked," said Alice, speaking this time with peculiar distinctness, and as it seemed to me with a certain malignant pleasure....
"Take me away, away from here ... home! home!" I shrank up, hid my face in my hands ... I felt that we were moving faster than before; the wind now was not roaring or moaning, it whistled in my hair, in my clothes ... I caught my breath ...
"Stand on your feet now," I heard Alice"s voice saying. I tried to master myself, to regain consciousness ... I felt the earth under the soles of my feet, and I heard nothing, as though everything had swooned away about me ... only in my temples the blood throbbed irregularly, and my head was still giddy with a faint ringing in my ears. I drew myself up and opened my eyes.
X
We were on the bank of my pond. Straight before me there were glimpses through the pointed leaves of the willows of its broad surface with threads of fluffy mist clinging here and there upon it. To the right a field of rye shone dimly; on the left stood up my orchard trees, tall, rigid, drenched it seemed in dew ... The breath of the morning was already upon them.
Across the pure grey sky stretched like streaks of smoke, two or three slanting clouds; they had a yellowish tinge, the first faint glow of dawn fell on them; one could not say whence it came; the eye could not detect on the horizon, which was gradually growing lighter, the spot where the sun was to rise. The stars had disappeared; nothing was astir yet, though everything was already on the point of awakening in the enchanted stillness of the morning twilight.
"Morning! see, it is morning!" cried Alice in my ear. "Farewell till to-morrow."
I turned round ... Lightly rising from the earth, she floated by, and suddenly she raised both hands above her head. The head and hands and shoulders glowed for an instant with warm, corporeal light; living sparks gleamed in the dark eyes; a smile of mysterious tenderness stirred the reddening lips.... A lovely woman had suddenly arisen before me.... But as though dropping into a swoon, she fell back instantly and melted away like vapour.
I remained pa.s.sive.
When I recovered myself and looked round me, it seemed to me that the corporeal, pale-rosy colour that had flitted over the figure of my phantom had not yet vanished, and was enfolding me, diffused in the air.... It was the flush of dawn. All at once I was conscious of extreme fatigue and turned homewards. As I pa.s.sed the poultry-yard, I heard the first morning cackling of the geese (no birds wake earlier than they do); along the roof at the end of each beam sat a rook, and they were all busily and silently pluming themselves, standing out in sharp outline against the milky sky.
From time to time they all rose at once, and after a short flight, settled again in a row, without uttering a caw.... From the wood close by came twice repeated the drowsy, fresh chuck-chuck of the black-c.o.c.k, beginning to fly into the dewy gra.s.s, overgrown by brambles.... With a faint tremor all over me I made my way to my bed, and soon fell into a sound sleep.
XI
The next night, as I was approaching the old oak, Alice moved to meet me, as if I were an old friend. I was not afraid of her as I had been the day before, I was almost rejoiced at seeing her; I did not even attempt to comprehend what was happening to me; I was simply longing to fly farther to interesting places.
Alice"s arm again twined about me, and we took flight again.
"Let us go to Italy," I whispered in her ear.
"Wherever you wish, my dear one," she answered solemnly and slowly, and slowly and solemnly she turned her face towards me. It struck me as less transparent than on the eve; more woman-like and more imposing; it recalled to me the being I had had a glimpse of in the early dawn at parting.
"This night is a great night," Alice went on. "It comes rarely--when seven times thirteen ..."
At this point I could not catch a few words.
"To-night we can see what is hidden at other times."
"Alice!" I implored, "but who are you, tell me at last?"
Silently she lifted her long white hand. In the dark sky, where her finger was pointing, a comet flashed, a reddish streak among the tiny stars.
"How am I to understand you?" I began, "Or, as that comet floats between the planets and the sun, do you float among men ... or what?"
But Alice"s hand was suddenly pa.s.sed before my eyes.... It was as though a white mist from the damp valley had fallen on me....
"To Italy! to Italy!" I heard her whisper. "This night is a great night!"
XII
The mist cleared away from before my eyes, and I saw below me an immense plain. But already, by the mere breath of the warm soft air upon my cheeks, I could tell I was not in Russia; and the plain, too, was not like our Russian plains. It was a vast dark expanse, apparently desert and not overgrown with gra.s.s; here and there over its whole extent gleamed pools of water, like broken pieces of looking-gla.s.s; in the distance could be dimly descried a noiseless motionless sea. Great stars shone bright in the s.p.a.ces between the big beautiful clouds; the murmur of thousands, subdued but never-ceasing, rose on all sides, and very strange was this shrill but drowsy chorus, this voice of the darkness and the desert....
"The Pontine marshes," said Alice. "Do you hear the frogs? do you smell the sulphur?"
"The Pontine marshes...." I repeated, and a sense of grandeur and of desolation came upon me. "But why have you brought me here, to this gloomy forsaken place? Let us fly to Rome instead."
"Rome is near," answered Alice.... "Prepare yourself!"
We sank lower, and flew along an ancient Roman road. A bullock slowly lifted from the slimy mud its s.h.a.ggy monstrous head, with short tufts of bristles between its crooked backward-bent horns. It turned the whites of its dull malignant eyes askance, and sniffed a heavy snorting breath into its wet nostrils, as though scenting us.
"Rome, Rome is near..." whispered Alice. "Look, look in front...."
I raised my eyes.
What was the blur of black on the edge of the night sky? Were these the lofty arches of an immense bridge? What river did it span? Why was it broken down in parts? No, it was not a bridge, it was an ancient aqueduct.
All around was the holy ground of the Campagna, and there, in the distance, the Albanian hills, and their peaks and the grey ridge of the old aqueduct gleamed dimly in the beams of the rising moon....
We suddenly darted upwards, and floated in the air before a deserted ruin.
No one could have said what it had been: sepulchre, palace, or castle....
Dark ivy encircled it all over in its deadly clasp, and below gaped yawning a half-ruined vault. A heavy underground smell rose in my face from this heap of tiny closely-fitted stones, whence the granite facing of the wall had long crumbled away.
"Here," Alice p.r.o.nounced, and she raised her hand: "Here! call aloud three times running the name of the mighty Roman!"
"What will happen?"
"You will see."
I wondered. "_Divus Caius Julius Caesar!_" I cried suddenly; "_Divus Caius Julius Caesar!_" I repeated deliberately; "_Caesar!_"
XIII