Lillian Morris, and Other Stories. Генрик Сенкевич

up the slender stalks of yellow flowers, like our mullein; around these wound the silver threads of a plant called “tears,” whose clusters, composed of transparent little balls, are really like tears. My eyes, used to reading in the prairie, discovered repeatedly plants that I knew: now it was the large-leaved kalumna, which cures wounds; now the plant called “white and red stockings,” which closes its cups at the approach of man or beast; finally, “Indian hatchets,” the odor of which brings sleep and almost takes away consciousness. I taught Lillian at that time to read in this Divine book, saying, —

      “It will come to you to live in forests and on plains; it is well then to know them in season.” In places on the level prairie rose, as if they were oases, groups of cottonwood or alder, so wreathed with wild grapes and lianas that they could not be recognized under the tendrils and leaves. On the lianas in turn climbed ivy and the prickly, thorny “wachtia,” resembling wild roses. Flowers were just dropping at all points; inside, underneath that screen and beyond that wall, was a certain mysterious gloom; at the tree trunks were sleeping great pools of water of the spring-time, which the sun was unable to drink up; from the tree-tops and among the brocade of flowers came wonderful voices and the calling of birds. When for the first time I showed such trees to Lillian and such hanging cascades of flowers, she stood as if fixed to the earth, repeating with clasped hands, —

      “Oh, Ralph! is that real?”

      She said that she was a little afraid to enter such a depth; but one afternoon, when the heat was great, and over the prairie was flying, as it were, the hot breath of the Texan wind, we rode in, and Katty came after us.

      We stopped at a little pool, which reflected our two horses and our two forms; we remained in silence for a time. It was cool there, obscure, solemn as in a Gothic cathedral, and somewhat awe-inspiring. The light of day came in bedimmed, greenish from the leaves. Some bird, hidden under the cupola of lianas, cried, “No! no! no!” as if warning us not to go farther; Katty began to tremble and nestle up to the horses; Lillian and I looked at each other suddenly, and for the first time our lips met, and having met could not separate. She drank my soul, I drank her soul. Breath began to fail each of us, still lips were on lips. At last her eyes were covered with mist, and the hands which she had placed on my shoulders were trembling as in a fever: she was seized with a kind of oblivion of her own existence, so that she grew faint and placed her head on my bosom. We were drunk with each other, with bliss, and with ecstasy. I dared not move; but because I had a soul overfilled, because I loved a hundred times more than may be thought or expressed, I raised my eyes to discover if through the thick leaves I could see the sky.

      Recovering our senses, we came out at last from beneath the green density to the open prairie, where we were surrounded by the bright sunshine and warm breeze; before us was spread the broad and gladsome landscape. Prairie chickens were fluttering in the grass, and on slight elevations, which were perforated like a sieve by prairie dogs, stood, as it were, an army of those little creatures, which vanished under the earth at our coming; directly in front was the caravan, and horsemen careering around it.