'For,' said the commentator, 'we
are not called to sit as the spectators in a theatre, there to watch the
play performed before us, but we are rather summoned to stand in the
very scene itself, and there fervently to enact our parts in a great and
wonderful mystery.' Darnell could quite understand the temptation that was thus indicated. Though he had gone but a little way on the path, and had barely tested
the over-runnings of that mystic well, he was already aware of the
enchantment that was transmuting all the world about him, informing his
life with a strange significance and romance. London seemed a city of
the Arabian Nights, and its labyrinths of streets an enchanted maze; its
long avenues of lighted lamps were as starry systems, and its immensity
became for him an image of the endless universe. He could well imagine
how pleasant it might be to linger in such a world as this, to sit apart
and dream, beholding the strange pageant played before him; but the
Sacred Well was not for common use, it was for the cleansing of the
soul, and the healing of the grievous wounds of the spirit. There must
be yet another transformation: London had become Bagdad; it must at
last be transmuted to Syon, or in the phrase of one of his old
documents, the City of the Cup. And there were yet darker perils which the Iolo MSS. (as his father had
named the collection) hinted at more or less obscurely. There were
suggestions of an awful region which the soul might enter, of a
transmutation that was unto death, of evocations which could summon the
utmost forces of evil from their dark places--in a word, of that sphere
which is represented to most of us under the crude and somewhat childish
symbolism of Black Magic. And here again he was not altogether without a
dim comprehension of what was meant. He found himself recalling an odd
incident that had happened long ago, which had remained all the years in
his mind unheeded, amongst the many insignificant recollections of his
childhood, and now rose before him, clear and distinct and full of
meaning. It was on that memorable visit to the old house in the west,
and the whole scene returned, with its smallest events, and the voices
seemed to sound in his ears. It was a grey, still day of heavy heat that
he remembered: he had stood on the lawn after breakfast, and wondered at
the great peace and silence of the world. Not a leaf stirred in the
trees on the lawn, not a whisper came from the myriad leaves of the
wood; the flowers gave out sweet and heavy odours as if they breathed
the dreams of the summer night; and far down the valley, the winding
river was like dim silver under that dim and silvery sky, and the far
hills and woods and fields vanished in the mist. The stillness of the
air held him as with a charm; he leant all the morning against the rails
that parted the lawn from the meadow, breathing the mystic breath of
summer, and watching the fields brighten as with a sudden blossoming of
shining flowers as the high mist grew thin for a moment before the
hidden sun. As he watched thus, a man weary with heat, with some glance
of horror in his eyes, passed him on his way to the house; but he stayed
at his post till the old bell in the turret rang, and they dined all
together, masters and servants, in the dark cool room that looked
towards the still leaves of the wood. He could see that his uncle was
upset about something, and when they had finished dinner he heard him
tell his father that there was trouble at a farm; and it was settled
that they should all drive over in the afternoon to some place with a
strange name. But when the time came Mr. Darnell was too deep in old
books and tobacco smoke to be stirred from his corner, and Edward and
his uncle went alone in the dog-cart. They drove swiftly down the narrow
lane, into the road that followed the winding river, and crossed the
bridge at Caermaen by the mouldering Roman walls, and then, skirting the
deserted, echoing village, they came out on a broad white turnpike road,
and the limestone dust followed them like a cloud. Then, suddenly, they
turned to the north by such a road as Edward had never seen before. It
was so narrow that there was barely room for the cart to pass, and the
footway was of rock, and the banks rose high above them as they slowly
climbed the long, steep way, and the untrimmed hedges on either side
shut out the light. And the ferns grew thick and green upon the banks,
and hidden wells dripped down upon them; and the old man told him how
the lane in winter was a torrent of swirling water, so that no one
could pass by it. On they went, ascending and then again descending,
always in that deep hollow under the wild woven boughs, and the boy
wondered vainly what the country was like on either side. And now the
air grew darker, and the hedge on one bank was but the verge of a dark
and rustling wood, and the grey limestone rocks had changed to dark-red
earth flecked with green patches and veins of marl, and suddenly in the
stillness from the depths of the wood a bird began to sing a melody that
charmed the heart into another world, that sang to the child's soul of
the blessed faery realm beyond the woods of the earth, where the wounds
of man are healed. And so at last, after many turnings and windings,
they came to a high bare land where the lane broadened out into a kind
of common, and along the edge of this place there were scattered three
or four old cottages, and one of them was a little tavern. Here they
stopped, and a man came out and tethered the tired horse to a post and
gave him water; and old Mr. Darnell took the child's hand and led him by
a path across the fields. The boy could see the country now, but it was
all a strange, undiscovered land; they were in the heart of a wilderness
of hills and valleys that he had never looked upon, and they were going
down a wild, steep hillside, where the narrow path wound in and out
amidst gorse and towering bracken, and the sun gleaming out for a
moment, there was a gleam of white water far below in a narrow valley,
where a little brook poured and rippled from stone to stone. They went
down the hill, and through a brake, and then, hidden in dark-green
orchards, they came upon a long, low whitewashed house, with a stone
roof strangely coloured by the growth of moss and lichens. Mr. Darnell
knocked at a heavy oaken door, and they came into a dim room where but
little light entered through the thick glass in the deep-set window. There were heavy beams in the ceiling, and a great fireplace sent out an
odour of burning wood that Darnell never forgot, and the room seemed to
him full of women who talked all together in frightened tones. Mr.
Darnell beckoned to a tall, grey old man, who wore corduroy
knee-breeches, and the boy, sitting on a high straight-backed chair,
could see the old man and his uncle passing to and fro across the
window-panes, as they walked together on the garden path.