There were muslins that a Lashcairn
had brought when he adventured to India with Clive. Rose often wept over
them. Several times Marcella's dreams nearly cost her her life, for,
living them so utterly, she became detached from the physical world. One
time, when a stormy golden sun went down behind black clouds, shining on
an ancient pile of grey stones that stood on a little spit of land near
the bar of the river, she was reminded of Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur."
She heard the ripples lapping on the reeds and, with an imaginary Sir
Bedivere at her elbow, hurried back to the farm to dress herself as a
Scottish edition of King Arthur in kilts that had belonged to her
grandfather. She worshipped the shine of the moon on the great jewel at
her breast as she stepped into the little frail boat, very tired after a
long day's wandering on Ben Grief without food. To a Kelt death is a
thing so interpenetrating life that thought of it brought no fear;
there was a sort of adventurous anticipation about it. She cast a
stick--her sword Excalibur--into midstream and waited for the arm "clad
in white samite, mystic, wonderful." That it did not appear meant very
little to her. It certainly did not mean that it was not there. Rather
it meant that she could not see it. So she lay in the little boat and
quite certainly she saw the grave Queens at the head, leading her to the
Island Valley of Avilion.
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