Then suddenly I remembered the right word. It was an enchanted place.
It had been put to sleep. In a flash I remembered all the fairy-tales
about princes turned to marble and princesses changed to snow. We were in
a land where none could strive or cry out; a white nightmare. The moon
looked at me across the valley like the enormous eye of a hypnotist; the
one white eye of the world.
There was never a better play than POT LUCK; for it tells a tale with a
point and a tale that might happen any day among English peasants. There
were never better actors than the local Buckinghamshire Players: for they
were acting their own life with just that rise into exaggeration which is
the transition from life to art. But all the time I was mesmerised by the
moon; I saw all these men and women as enchanted things. The poacher shot
pheasants; the policeman tracked pheasants; the wife hid pheasants; they
were all (especially the policeman) as true as death. But there was
something more true to death than true to life about it all: the figures
were frozen with a magic frost of sleep or fear or custom such as does not
cramp the movements of the poor men of other lands. I looked at the
poacher and the policeman and the gun; then at the gun and the policeman
and the poacher; and I could find no name for the fancy that haunted and
escaped me.
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