Castle Dor by Du Maurier Daphne

Author:Du Maurier Daphne [Maurier, Daphne du]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Classics, Fiction / Historical, Fiction / Romance / Historical / General, Fiction / Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
ISBN: 9780748114610
Google: zZTv0UELVisC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 18869983
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2015-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

18

Duet of passion

Thou art the grave where buried love doth liv,

Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone.

“Tell me; tell me the first moment when—”

“When…?”

“When it first happened to you—the very first.”

Asked the inevitable question, old as love itself, or but a few minutes younger, Amyot lay back, his shoulders crushing the bracken, his eyes half closed, watching the spirals of a lark that sang in the dazzle above. The bird dropped.

“There was no first—oh yes, there was! But a thrill only, when you touched me, that day, sponging my hurt back.”

“Yes, yes.” Linnet leaned over him and nodded. She took the hand he was passing over his forehead and drew it to her: but he pulled it away.

“Let me think… and then afterwards, when Monsieur Ledru pointed from the ridge, something seemed to break here.” He touched his forehead again. “It was just—how shall I say?—just as if someone had broken a bottle of essences: but the scent was all of the thyme our feet had been treading, and there was music with it, and a touch on my face and hair just as if fingers were playing the music. And with that the word sprang out of me.”

“What word?”

“A name. I had never heard it before.”

“Mine?”

“No, not yours. The name of a place: of the very woods above us. Lantyan.”

Linnet was silent for a while. “That was a wonder,” she mused, scarcely aloud: and then quite aloud she said: “But I can beat it. Before ever I saw you, a minute or so before, I heard a name spoken; and it was yours—Amyot. It floated in by an old window I had just opened. No: now that I come to think it did not float—it twanged rather, it throbbed, just like one of those chords you used to pluck from your fiddle. My heart throbbed to it, and sooner than you—yes, sooner than you—I awoke and was alive; yes, sooner than my fingers ever touched you, over the sponge—sooner than ever I saw you. But tell me what happened next.”

“What happened was that the moment the word sprang out of me I saw a carriage coming down the road at speed; and I was running and screaming. Such a scream too! I did not know it for my own voice.”

“No! That is because in that moment you were born again: born from a boy into a man. Of a sudden, eh?—you could master horses.”

“I never shall know how that happened. You see, I was bred up on a tiny island where there was never a horse: and across the traject—how do you call it?—the ferry over from Loctudy—but a few poor beasts that brought down our fish carts.”

“Yet in that instant you knew yourself a master of horses!”

“I did not know it—I just screamed. But I will tell you that since then I have had a command over horses—I who had never bestridden one. I doubt if even now I could ride well a horse of any mettle. But I could command one, I know.

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