Death the Knight and the Lady/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
THE BLACK HORSE AND THE WHITE
I had such a strange dream. I dreamt that I was in man's clothes, and that I was astride of a coal black horse: how I knew that the horse was black I scarcely can tell, for the night around me was dark as death, Geraldine was on the pommel before me, grasping me round the loins with her arms; her head was on my breast, the horse was galloping mad, mad he seemed; behind me galloped a man on a white horse, a man in the dress of a cavalier. I turned my head now and then to look at him. He was myself, and he was dead. He swayed and he reeled in the saddle. His spurs were plunged and stuck in the white horse's sides, and great flakes of bloody foam fell from them through the darkness like red flowers; we tore through archways that seemed to roar at us, down white roads, and through tiny hamlets with lights that winked at us, and then we were in the darkness again, on a moor. A ghastly moon broke through the clouds overhead. I looked back, he was still following, swaying and reeling, now falling flat back on the back of his horse, so that his long black hair mixed with the horse's tail, now falling straight forward, his hair all thrown and mixing with the horse's mane. I saw the nostrils of the white horse blown out thin as paper, its staring, straining eyes. Then the darkness fell again and I found Geraldine gone; and the moon broke through again, and I saw that the white horse had overtaken me and passed me, and was far ahead, and the cavalier, reeling and swaying in the saddle, held Geraldine in his arms, and they were both dead. Then my horse faltered and stumbled and fell. And I woke. All around me was in black darkness. I felt the pillows to make sure I was in bed, then I felt for a match-box on the little table by the bed-side, and I struck a light. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to quarter past five. I rose and lit a candle, and put on a wrapper. I felt frightened. I wanted to go to Geraldine to see if she were all right. You never love a person so much as just when you wake from a dream of them, at least I quote from my own experience. I opened my bedroom door, the passage was utterly dark, and the house seemed strangely still. I came along the passage like a ghost—only I had a candle in my hand, and you never hear of ghosts carrying candles. I reached the top of the great hall stairs, and I saw the hall below, with the men in armour standing round the oak-panelled walls and the grey dawn glimmering down at them through the stained glass windows. I came down the stairs, crossed the hall. My feet were bare, but I did not feel the cold of the parquet. I pushed the curtain aside that led to the corridor with its flower-pictured walls and fan-shaped windows. The heavy curtain at the end concealed a bedroom, that I knew. I blew out the candle and raised the curtain. A door half open; I pushed it and entered. On a bed, white as snow, lay a little figure curled up under the sheets. The window-blinds had not been drawn and the grey, still light fell on a small face. Never seemed anything so fast asleep as this form. As I stood watching it, it seemed to me that I could still hear the galloping of the dream horses, I felt like a thief. Geraldine was safe then; she knew nothing of that furious ride through the night, heard none of the galloping of those horses.
As I turned from taking a last look at the sleeping face I felt awed, not exactly awed, but frightened. Do you know that perfect and absolute purity frightens one to look at, as if it were a ghost? You may laugh, but it does, though it is more rarely seen than any ghost. I have only seen it once, and that was when I saw this child asleep with the dawn on her face.
When I had found my room again I drew up the window-blind and opened the window. The trees in the garden stood all dripping with dew in the grey light that came from the slate-coloured sky, and the chrysanthemums looked like the ghosts of chrysanthemums. Not a breath of wind. I looked up at the sky. Two crows were flying lazily in the distance, their black wings winking dreamily as they flew. Not a sound.