'You are right,'said I,'to be afraid of me;I have taught you to decline master in Armenian.'
'You almost tempt me,'said Belle,'to make you decline mistress in English.'
'To make matters short,'said I,'I decline a mistress.'
'What do you mean?'said Belle,angrily.
'I have merely done what you wished me,'said I,'and in your own style;there is no other way of declining anything in English,for in English there are no declensions.'
'The rain is increasing,'said Belle.
'It is so,'said I;'I shall go to my tent;you may come if you please;I do assure you I am not afraid of you.'
'Nor I of you,'said Belle;'so I will come.Why should I be afraid?I can take my own part;that is-'
We went into the tent and sat down,and now the rain began to pour with vehemence.'I hope we shall not be flooded in this hollow,'
said I to Belle.'There is no fear of that,'said Belle;'the wandering people,amongst other names,call it the dry hollow.Ibelieve there is a passage somewhere or other by which the wet is carried off.There must be a cloud right above us,it is so dark.
Oh!what a flash!'
'And what a peal!'said I;'that is what the Hebrews call Koul Adonai-the voice of the Lord.Are you afraid?'
'No,'said Belle,'I rather like to hear it.'
'You are right,'said I,'I am fond of the sound of thunder myself.
There is nothing like it;Koul Adonai behadar:the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice,as the prayer-book version hath it.'
'There is something awful in it,'said Belle;'and then the lightning-the whole dingle is now in a blaze.'
'"The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve,and discovereth the thick bushes."As you say,there is something awful in thunder.'
'There are all kinds of noises above us,'said Belle;'surely I heard the crashing of a tree?'
'"The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedar trees,"'said I,'but what you hear is caused by a convulsion of the air;during a thunder-storm there are occasionally all kinds of aerial noises.
Ab Gwilym,who,next to King David,has best described a thunderstorm,speaks of these aerial noises in the following manner:-'Astonied now I stand at strains,As of ten thousand clanking chains;And once,methought that,overthrown,The welkin's oaks came whelming down;Upon my head up starts my hair:
Why hunt abroad the hounds of air?
What cursed hag is screeching high,Whilst crash goes all her crockery?'
You would hardly believe,Belle,that though I offered at least ten thousand lines nearly as good as those to the booksellers in London,the simpletons were so blind to their interest,as to refuse purchasing them!'
'I don't wonder at it,'said Belle,'especially if such dreadful expressions frequently occur as that towards the end;-surely that was the crash of a tree?'
'Ah!'said I,'there falls the cedar tree-I mean the sallow;one of the tall trees on the outside of the dingle has been snapped short.'
'What a pity,'said Belle,'that the fine old oak,which you saw the peasants cutting up,gave way the other night,when scarcely a breath of air was stirring;how much better to have fallen in a storm like this,the fiercest I remember.'
'I don't think so,'said I;'after braving a thousand tempests,it was meeter for it to fall of itself than to be vanquished at last.
But to return to Ab Gwilym's poetry:he was above culling dainty words,and spoke boldly his mind on all subjects.Enraged with the thunder for parting him and Morfydd,he says,at the conclusion of his ode,'My curse,O Thunder,cling to thee,For parting my dear pearl and me!'
'You and I shall part,that is,I shall go to my tent,if you persist in repeating from him.The man must have been a savage.Apoor wood-pigeon has fallen dead.'
'Yes,'said I,'there he lies,just outside the tent;often have I listened to his note when alone in this wilderness.So you do not like Ab Gwilym;what say you to old Gothe?-'Mist shrouds the night,and rack;
Hear,in the woods,what an awful crack!
Wildly the owls are flitting,Hark to the pillars splitting Of palaces verdant ever,The branches quiver and sever,The mighty stems are creaking,The poor roots breaking and shrieking,In wild mixt ruin down dashing,O'er one another they're crashing;Whilst 'midst the rocks so hoary Whirlwinds hurry and worry.
Hear'st not,sister-'
'Hark!'said Belle,'hark!'
'Hear'st not,sister,a chorus Of voices-?'
'No,'said Belle,'but I hear a voice.'