But presently comes the
master-weaver Reason to point out this or that fantastic pattern; to bid
the ear listen to the measured clacking of the day-loom, and the eye to
mark that the web of reality has grown never an inch for all the
shuttlings of the sleeping-time. Whereupon, full-blood consciousness
regains her sway, and you sigh, gladly or sorrowfully, and say, "Dear
God, 'twas but a dream I dreamed!"
Some such awakening came to me on a day whereof I knew not the name or
its number in the calendar.
I was lying in bed in my old room at Appleby Hundred. The armored
soldier was glowering down upon me from his frame over the chimney
piece; the great blackened clothes-press loomed darkly in its corner;
the show of curious china filled the shelves where my boyhood books had
rested; and there was the same faint smell of lavender in the bed linen
that once--was it yesterday or months ago?--had minded me of my mother.
When I sought to move me on the pillows the dream seemed more than ever
dream-sure. The pain of a sword wound was grinding at my shoulder, and I
was bandaged stiff as I had been that other day.
So I said, as you have said in like awakenings, "Dear God,'twas but a
dream!" and saying it, would turn my head to see if Mistress Margery
were sitting where I last remembered her.
She was there, in very deed and truth, deep in the hollow of the great
chair of Indian wickerwork; and as before, the soft graying of the
evening sky was mirrored in her eyes.
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