The Wooden Shepherdess by Richard Hughes Page B

self to his side and “ Just you and me! ” she began, in a tense little voice which sounded rehearsed.
    Then she stopped abruptly—appalled: for were these those golden and faery halls she’d expected to find? The room where they stood was dark except where some broken shutter admitted a pallid influx of ivy with glimmers of daylight among it: dazzled eyes from outside only started to see again slowly, but now her sight was returning and never in all her life had she seen or imagined such dirt! The cobwebs hung in swags and festoons from the ceiling. Felted dust had shrouded the shelves and walls, leaving never an edge nor sharp carved cornice anywhere—only everywhere curves with a surface like heavy sheenless silk (till you touched it); and faint but horrible smells. Though the furniture mostly was gone, some pieces had proved too massive and ugly for moving.... The springs of a cozy-corner had burst through the covers, displaying the grinning and mummified corpse of a rat in the spirals of one of them.
    Dust on the floor was so soft and deep it accepted their footprints like snow. So Ree (like the page in the carol) imprinted her small ones inside his big ones; and thus they moved off, a procession of two—but only to find that the whole ground floor was shuttered and dark and silted like this with dust, while in places the smells were far worse.
    They came to the staircase. The elegant spidery handrail felt sticky under its dirt like toffee partially sucked; but it had to be clutched if you wanted to get up at all, for most of the stairs were rotten or missing.
    Above there was rather more daylight; but little to see by it, other than drifts of dirty dead flies as if someone had started to sweep them in heaps; and flies’ wings stuck to their sweat, like feathers to tar. It was not till high in an attic, at last, that they came on a relic of even the smallest romantic interest: a closet, stacked with Civil-War-Period journals (the Last of the Warrens was killed in that war Augustine was told, and the house shut up ever since). But even those newspapers crumbled to bits when you touched them.
    Almost in silence, and more depressed every moment, they wandered from garret to garret where giant fungi throve under shingles gone missing and hundreds of birds had flown in to add their droppings to those of the bats. Then all of a sudden they burst a door which was jammed, and ... found themselves high on the rickety brink of a wing which had burned: so below them, the whole way down to the ground, there wasn’t a floor.
    Dead-sick at her stomach and almost too giddy to stand, Ree cringed from the gulf in fear; but Augustine stood right on the edge, looking down. Ree reached out a wavering hand to grab him but couldn’t force herself near enough: hating herself for her cowardice, knowing she’d die if he fell, yet ... almost wanting to give him a shove. Augustine’s topsail yards had cured him for good of vertigo: now when he saw how she in her turn was green with the fear of heights the fool began showing-off on a charred and teetering beam—he balanced along on his sea-legs with nothing below him for three stories down.... Ree crammed her grimy fist in her mouth like a baby, and screamed.
    When Augustine got back safe-and-sound, he was laughing; and that was The End! It made her so mad that she kicked him—hard, on the shins—with her eyes full of tears: while her firm resolve not to cry in front of him gave her the hiccups. They started down. In silence except for her hiccups they both climbed out of the window they’d used to climb in—and now she wouldn’t be helped. In silence (except for the hiccups) they parted. But once he was well out of sight she let the tears flood.
    How horrible everything was, and how horrible he was!
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    There were times when Augustine was downright homesick for Alice May . In this limboish mark-time life he was leading, past