Lucian the dreamer

sed that he was falling asleep he was wide awake again and it was morning. Broad rays of sunlight flooded the room; he heard the notes of many birds singing outside the window;

hat the woods smelled like the pine forests of Ravenna, and Mr. Pepperdine had answered that there was a deal of pine thereabouts and likewise fir. Out of the woods they had not emerged until they drove into the lights of a village, c

le motto or legend, of which he could only make out a few letters, and the initials ‘S. P.’ over the date 1594. The house, then, was of a respectable{37} antiquity, and he was pleased because of it. He was pleased, too, to find the greater part of its exterior half obscured by ivy, jessamine, climbing rose-trees, honeysuckle, and wistaria,

s and orchards. He now saw the bridge over which Mr. Pepperdine’s mare had clattered the night before—a high, single arch spanning a winding river thickly fenced in from the meadows by alder and willow. Near it on rising ground stood the church, square-towered, high of roof and gable, in the midst of a green churchyard which in one corner contained the fallen masonry of some old a

cloud of blue smoke, which gradually mingled with the spirals rising from the village chimneys and with the shadowy mists that curled about the pine-clad uplands. And over everything—village, church, river, castle, meadow, and hill, man and beast—shone the spring sun, life-giving and generous. Lucian looked and saw and understood, and made haste to dress in order that he might go out and possess all these things. He had a quick eye for beauty and an unerring taste, and he recognised that in this village of the grey North there was a charm and a romance which nothing could exhaust. His father had recognised its beauty before him and had immortalised it on

, inside the inn, where he had chatted with the landlord and the landlady, he had looked inside the infants’ school and praised the red clo

ainted—it is hanging in the great hall.’ Lucian’s relatives betrayed various emotions. Mr. Pepperdine’s mouth slowly opened

le and saw the earl?’

him and the picture, and other things too. He was very kind—he made his

is sisters and cut Lucian

e mighty Earl of Simonstower?’ he inquired. ‘He’s a very nice, affable ol

d the footman my name, and he went away, and then came back and told me to follow him, and he took me into a big study whe

rupted Mr. Pepperdi

rder than ever, and he said, “Are you Cyprian Damerel’s son?” and I said “Yes.” He{40} pointed to a chair and told me to sit down, and he talked about my father and his work, and then he took me out to look at the pictures. He wanted to know if I, too, was goin

’s very evident there’s a soft spot so

who had sufficiently recovered from her surprise to resume her dinner.

cy, he hasn’t been in Italy for twenty years!—and he asked me a lot of questions about several things, and he got me to tra

do it?’ asked M

at her with

h, much more Italian than English. Sometimes I cannot find t

was vastly gratifying and amusing: it was also pleasing to find Lucian treated with such politeness. As the Earl of Simonstower’s tenant Mr. Pepperdine had much respect but little affection for his titled neig

ties at all?’ he said, puffing at his pi

d Lucian, ‘he

? Something sweet, no dou

Miss Judith and

lad!’ said M

h,’ answered Lucian. ‘He said

or twice and noting their fervour, retired to the parlour or the kitchen with a remark to his elder sister that they were as throng as Throp’s wife. Judith, indeed, had some taste in the way of literature—in her own room she treasured a collection of volumes which she had read over and over again. Her taste was chiefly for Lord Byron, Moore, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Landon, and the sentimentalists; she treasured a steel-plate engraving of Byron as if it had been a sacred picture, and gazed with awe upon her nephew when he told her that he had seen the palazzo in which Byron lived during his residence in Pisa, and the house which he had occupied in Venice. H