Chapter 77

The House Of The Afternoon

For the most part, the House of the Afternoon was but a wing built
against a mansion wrought by the hand of Nature herself; a grotto
running into the side of the mountain. From high over the mouth of
this grotto, sloped a long arbor, supported by great blocks of stone,
rudely chiseled into the likeness of idols, each bearing a carved
lizard on its chest: a sergeant's guard of the gods condescendingly
doing duty as posts.

From the grotto thus vestibuled, issued hilariously forth the most
considerable stream of the glen; which, seemingly overjoyed to find
daylight in Willamilla, sprang into the arbor with a cheery, white
bound. But its youthful enthusiasm was soon repressed; its waters
being caught in a large stone basin, scooped out of the natural rock;
whence, staid and decorous, they traversed sundry moats; at last
meandering away, to join floods with the streams trained to do
service at the other end of the vale.

Truant streams: the livelong day wending their loitering path to the
subterraneous outlet, flowing into which, they disappeared. But no
wonder they loitered; passing such ravishing landscapes. Thus with
life: man bounds out of night; runs and babbles in the sun; then
returns to his darkness again; though, peradventure, once more to
emerge.

But the grotto was not a mere outlet to the stream. Flowing through a
dark flume in the rock, on both sides it left a dry, elevated shelf,
to which you ascend from the arbor by three artificially-wrought
steps, sideways disposed, to avoid the spray of the rejoicing
cataract. Mounting these, and pursuing the edge of the flume, the
grotto gradually expands and heightens; your way lighted by rays in
the inner distance. At last you come to a lofty subterraneous dome,
lit from above by a cleft in the mountain; while full before you, in
the opposite wall, from a low, black arch, midway up, and
inaccessible, the stream, with a hollow ring and a dash, falls in a
long, snowy column into a bottomless pool, whence, after many an eddy
and whirl, it entered the flume, and away with a rush. Half hidden
from view by an overhanging brow of the rock, the white fall looked
like the sheeted ghost of the grotto.

Yet gallantly bedecked was the cave, as any old armorial hall hung
round with banners and arras. Streaming from the cleft, vines swung
in the air; or crawled along the rocks, wherever a tendril could be
fixed. High up, their leaves were green; but lower down, they were
shriveled; and dyed of many colors; and tattered and torn with much
rustling; as old banners again; sore raveled with much triumphing.

In the middle of this hall in the hill was incarcerated the stone
image of one Demi, the tutelar deity