Benighted

by Walter de la Mare

BENIGHTED

BY WALTER DE LA MARE.

WE looked at one another rather woefully in the shadowy lane, and then at the darker fields around us.

"I'm afraid it's quite hopeless," she said: "we're lost, aren't we—irretrievably? There's not a house or a living being in sight."

"Not one," I said: "not even Mrs. Grundy."

"Not even Mrs. Grundy," she said, and sighed. "Poor dear old thing—she has sipped her posset and gone to bed."

"I doubt if she ever heard the nightingale in her life," I said.

"We have—often, haven't we?" she answered; and we looked straight ahead once more and trudged on.

Nights near June are still warm with day, and never more than veiled with a great shadow, that is not darkness, but only the withdrawal of light. Evening still smouldered low in the West; and all the stars of summer shone pale in their constellations. Honeysuckle, privet, a hint of hay, and the faint, aromatic scent of summer lanes saturated the air. "I am afraid," said a rather tired, cheerful voice, "I shall really soon—have to sit down." The lane ran deeper and gloomier here, beneath great boughs thick with leaves. The vast, faint murmur of night haunted the ear; and little furtive, stirring sounds kept the eyes wide open. We stood still together. "Let's just go on up—a little way," I pleaded; "there might be a house."

We did go up, and presently, out from under the elms; and came to many houses, very old, very still, and restful with the soundest of all sleepers—the dead. We gazed slowly from stone to stone, from tiny belfry to distant evening. "An omen!" I said, "—of immortality. What can I say? You know—I am sorry."

"Sorry," she answered brightly,—"the immortality?"

"For being so unutterably stupid. Fancy,—to lead you to this! I really thought we were right."

"Of course," she said, "we are right. There is no other way than the way once taken. Besides, my dear friend, I don't mind a bit; I don't indeed. It's still, and lovely, and peaceful, and solitary; we have done our best: let's sit down and talk." So we entered the old graveyard by its tottering arch, and sat down on a great flat tombstone, ample enough for all the sons of Israel.

The wakefulness of long weariness had overtaken us. The air was clear as glass, sprinkling cold dew on all these stones and their overshadowing boughs. We ate ravenously our supper—a very stale bun, three sandwiches, and a piece of chocolate. And we talked and talked, our voices very strange and hollow to us in this heedful solitude. But at last we fell silent; for it began to be cold, and the hour late, when the heart sinks, and words lose their sure meaning of the day.

"I wonder," she said softly, with face averted, "when we—or just you—or I—come to a place like this: I wonder, shall we forget?—be forgotten, do you think? … These are."

"In time," I answered.

"You?"

"In time. Not 'forget'—but remember, as it were, with all the hopelessness, the helpless burning and longing gone. In time, don't you think?"

"I wonder," she said gravely. … "And what would you say about me, if you had to—on my stone, I mean?"

"Let's see what they did," I said, laughing.

So, no moon yet shining, I took out my matchbox and counted out its contents. "Twenty-one," I said dubiously.

"Riches!" she replied. "You see, even if we used two for a tombstone, that would be ten and a tiny one. And surely there would be six epitaphs among them. It's very, very old," she added, peering across the huddled graves.

"I'm afraid, not six," I said. "Mrs. Grundy hates the sight of them. They frighten her."

"I don't somehow think, you know," she answered, smiling faintly through the shadowiness at me, "I don't think anybody ever was here but you and I. It's just between real and dream—like all the best things."

So we began, stooping together over the great stone that had befriended us, and spelled out the one word only—"Mors."

The dark, flat surface was quite unbroken else our little flame scarcely illumined its margin; it languished and fell from my fingers.

"'Mors.' What does Mors mean? Was it his name, or his initials, or is it a charm?"

"It means—well, Sleep," I said, "or nightmare, or dawn, or nothing, or—it might mean anything."

It might indeed, even to us two, kneeling there under the silent, beautiful arch of night, solitary as on an island in a sea of fathomless peace.

"Well, that's one," she said. "'Mors'—how dull a word to have so many meanings!"

The next match flared in vain on mouldering illegibility. But the third lasted us out, stooping side by side, and reading together:—

 

Stranger, where I at peace do lie
Make less ado to press and pry!
Am I a scoff to be who did
Life like a stallion bestride?
Is all my history but what
A fool hath, soon as read, forgot?
Put back my weeds, and silent be:
Leave me to mine own company!

 

We made haste to do as we were bid, confronted by phantom eyes so dark and piercing, and groped our way on to "Susannah Fry, who, after a life sad and disjointed, fell asleep in a swoon":—

 

Here sleep I,
Susannah Fry,
No one near me,
No one nigh:
Alone, alone
Beneath a stone,
Dreaming on,
Dreaming on.
With grass for tester
And coverlid,
Dreaming on
As I always did.
"Weak in the head"
Maybe—who knows?
Susannah Fry
Under the rose.

 

Under the rose she lay indeed—a great canopy of leaves and sweetness looming palely in the night darkness. "Six," I said: it spluttered and hissed in the dewy grass.

But our seventh rewarded us:—

 

Here lie my husbands, One, Two, Three:
Still as men ever could wish to be.
As for my Fourth, well, praised be God
He bides for a little above the sod.
But his knees being weak and his eyeballs dim,
Heav'n speed at last I'll wear weeds for him.
Thomas, John, Henry, were these three's names
And to make things tidy, I adds his—James.

 

"I think I'll be Thomas," I said, "the unsuspecting."

She laughed out of the darkness. "Hope on!" she said; "but I promise you shall never be James. And yet, could one have too much of such a good thing?"

Our next two small tapers burned over a stone only the boughs of a great yew tree had for a little while saved from extinction.

The characters were very worn and lichenous upon its blackened surface:—

 

Here rest ye bones of John
Chrystopher Orcherdeson:
Lyf he lovede merrilie
Nowe he doth deathlie lie:
All ye joye from his brighte face
Quencht in this bitter place:
With gratefull voice then say,
Not oures but Goddes waye!

 

I counted out six of our little store left into a hand cold and small and very dim. And we took it in turn to choose from all the grassy mounds and stooping stones. Two were incontinently sacrificed: one to a little wind from over the countryside, smelling of honeysuckle; one to a bramble that sought to catch her whom I ever feared to be losing; but the next two sufficed for the "Shepherd."

 

A shepherd, Ned Vaughan,
'Neath this tombstone does bide,
His crook in his hand,
And his dog him beside:
Bleak and cold fell the snow
On Marchmallysdon steep,
And folded both sheepdog
And Shepherd in Sleep.

 

And not a step we moved till a little chaplet of fast-shut bindweed flowers had been woven for the faithful beast beneath.

Our next two gleamed on a tomb raised a little from the ground, with a green, eyeless head on each panel, that must once have been cherubim:—

 

Here rest in peace Eliza Drew and James Hanneway
Whom Death haplessly snatched from felicity.

Eliza and James in this sepulchre tarry
Till God with His trumpet shall call them to marry,
Then Angels for maids to the Bride shall be given,
And loud their responses shall echo in Heaven.
Though their troth 'twill be long, yet, Death's shadows once past.
They'll not laugh less sweetly who learn to laugh last.

 

And we spent two more on a little old worn stone couched all askew, and nearly hidden in moss:—

 

Poore Sam Lover,
Now turf do cover;
His wildness over.

 

And here we rested awhile to clear of weeds the grave of one loved once so well as he. "There! Sam Lover," she said, "nettles shall not sting this year." And at that moment the first green pallor of the moon showed above the yews. And, distant and companionable, cock answered cock across the drowsy acres. But even when she ascended into her brightness, the moon shone but wanly, and cast the tiny spire's dark shadow over the tombs of Frenchman and Virgin.

 

Here sleeps a Frenchman:—Would I could
Grave in his language on this wood
His many virtues, grace and wit!
But then who'd read what I had writ?
O, when the tongues of Babel cease,
One word were all sufficient—Peace!

 

Sweet English grasses waved softly over him beyond the faint moonlight: and covered as deeply the grave of the virgin:

 

"Blessed Mary, pity me,
Who was a Virgin too like thee.
But had, please God, no little son
To show'r a lifetime's sorrows on.

 

And it was perhaps for another spinster that the last of our twenty one battled feebly against moon and glimmering dawn—

 

Here's Jane Taylor,
Sweet Jane Taylor,
Dark,
Wild,
Dear Jane Taylor.

 

A bird began to sing, as from another country, in the thick leaves. The glowworms, like tiny lamplighters, to and fro, quenched their flames in the ways of the fairies. And very cold and cheerless we sat down once more to await the sun's rising. It was indeed its first clear beams, putting to shame all remembrance of night, that slanted in gold upon a little odd stone at our feet, almost hidden in bramble—

 

Be very quiet now:
A child's asleep
In this small cradle.
In this shadow deep!

 

Somehow or other in this very sunshine one seemed to see clearly, as if in memory, the little sleeping face in its white cap, so very still. But as for shadows—we took hands and laughed again rather forlornly amid so many awakening voices, and set out presently, as gaily as might be, for well-water, breakfast and—Mrs. Grundy.