CHAPTER V.

The first impression of the dreaming woman is that she and her young son are in a cart, out for a day's holiday in the country. It is early morning, and they are in the heart of the country, with its fields, and hedges, and scent of sweet flowers and fresh-mown hay. The clouds are bright, and the mother's heart is filled with love and gratitude as the horse jogs steadily along.

Their pace is slow, but not so slow as that of this white-smocked carter, sitting on the shaft of his lumbering wagon, which, as it rumbles onwards, makes noise enough for a dozen. The wagon is in the middle of the road--as though it were made solely for them to creep over, and nothing else had any business there--and when at length it moves aside, it does so in an indolent, reluctant fashion most tantalising to men and cattle more briskly inclined. Behind them thunders the mail-coach, and the guard's horn sounds merrily on the air.

"There comes the mail-coach!" the driver of the cart exclaims, and the dreamer watches it grow, as it were, out of the distant sky and land, where Liliputia lies. And now it is upon them, with no suspicion of Liliputia about it. On it comes, with Hillo! hallo! hi! hi! hi! heralding and proclaiming itself blithely. Their manner is right and proper, for are they not--guard, coachman, and horses--kings of the road? Out of the way, then, everybody and everything, and make room for their excellencies! Out of the way, you lumbering, white-smocked carter, and open your sleepy eyes! Out of the way, you pair of young dreamers, you, who, arm-in-arm so closely, are surely asleep and dreaming also! She, the first awake, starts in sudden alarm, with bright blushes now in her pretty, pensive face, and he--glad of the chance--throws his arm around her, and hurries her to the roadside, but a yard or two away from the bounding cattle, whose ringing hoofs play a brisker air upon the roadway than ever Apollo's son played upon the lyre. Away goes the coach, and the mother holds her lovely lad aloft in her arms, and in silent wonder, listens to the fading horn, and watches the coach grow smaller and smaller, until it disappears entirely from the sight. Onward they go through the dreamy solitudes, and shadows of green leaves and branches wave about them in never-ending beauty and variety.

How lovely is the day! The birds are singing, the bees are busy, all nature is glad. What a morning for a holiday--what a morning for lovers to walk through shady paths and narrow lanes, over stiles, and under great spreading branches, whose arms bend down caressingly to shield them from the sun! What a morning to bring a long courtship to a sweet conclusion, and to whisper the words that make lads' and lasses' hearts happier than the thrush that pipes its tremulous notes above them as they sit!

And now the mother and her child are in a narrow lane, with hedges on either side, over which they see the ripe corn waving. The mother sings a song about the days when we went gipsying a long time ago, and her friend, the driver, joins in the chorus heartily. At its conclusion, he says, incidentally:

"How about that mole on Neddy's right temple that Jane was telling me of?" (Jane is his young wife.) "What does it really signify?"

"You ask any fortune-teller," says the mother. "It's the very luckiest thing that ever can happen. When a child is born with a mole on the right temple, it is certain sure to arrive at sudden wealth and honour."

"That's a real piece of good fortune," says the driver. "If our young un's born with a mole on the right temple, it'll be the luckiest day of our lives."

"I'm sure I hope it will be," says the mother, "and that it'll be in the right place."

While this conversation is proceeding, the horse has slackened his pace--and the driver jumps off the cart to pick some sweet honeysuckle, a piece of which he gives to the mother and the child--and the heavens are beautifully bright, and fairy ships are sailing in the clouds--and they go jogging, jogging, jogging on, until they arrive at their journey's end.

Pulling up at a pretty little cottage, with a pretty little green gate for its boundary, a pretty little woman runs hastily out, wiping her hands, which are all over flour, on her apron. This is his Jane, whose visitors have caught her in the act of making a pudding. The first embraces over, they go into the kitchen, where the pudding is tied up, and put into the pot, and is cooked by magic, for the next moment they are eating their dinner. They pass a happy time within the cottage, and then the scene fades, and she and her child are in a field, pelting each other with flowers.

The child grows tired, and the mother makes a nest of fern for her darling to rest in, at the foot of an old tree, whose branches presently fill all the landscape, and cover them with delicious shade. Not a variation of colour in the sky, not a bird's note, not a whisper of the leaves, that the fond mother does not convert into a symbol of happiness for her heart's treasure. And as he sleeps, she sits by his side, until the tree fades and becomes the cottage again, where they are all clustered round the tea-table, eating the sweetest bread-and-butter and the freshest radishes that love can produce.

Then the moon comes out and pierces the ceiling, which changes into night-clouds and solemnly-silent roads, through and over which they are riding peacefully home. A river, of which they had a glimpse when the sun's rays were playing on it, changes now into a white road, over which the cart is slowly passing; now into a field of waving corn, through which they are calmly wending their way without breaking a stalk; now into the stairs of her own cosy home-nest, up which she is walking, with her darling, very sleepy, in her arms. And when she has softly sung a few words of a familiar cradle-song, she points to the stars, not deeming it strange that they are shining all around her, and tells her child that heaven is there!

An amazing transformation takes place. She is alone, with blackness all around her. The rain pours down like a deluge, and a terrific explosion occurs, which shakes the earth to its foundations.

Aroused by the violent banging of the street door, Mrs. Chester starts from the bed. The rain is softly pattering in the street, and she hears the sound of uncertain footsteps groping up the stairs.

"It is the new lodger," she murmurs. "He might have made less noise with the door." Then, rubbing her eyes, she calls, "Sally, are you awake?"

Sally hears her mother's voice through a mist of softly falling rain, and murmuring some indistinct words in reply, cuddles closer to her treasure-baby, and the next moment is asleep again.

"The brute!" exclaims Mrs. Chester. "Waking the children with his row! I'll talk to him to-morrow."

Standing in the dark, she listens. The person who is ascending the stairs to the bedroom in the upper part of the house staggers and stumbles on his way. Thus much Mrs. Chester is conscious of, but she does not hear his low moans, nor see him shake and tremble, as he drags his feet along in fear and dread. When he reaches his room, he falls, dressed, upon the bed, and claws at the air, and picks at the bedclothes in ceaseless unrest, being beset by demons of every shape and form, presenting themselves in a thousand monstrously-grotesque disguises.

Mrs. Chester has heard sufficient to cause her to form a just conclusion.

"Drunk of course," she murmurs; "and Dick'll be as bad when he comes home."

Then she lights a candle, and patiently resumes her task of stitching and patching.