tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50885051986212032682024-03-08T11:26:41.458-08:00PHANTASTES by GEORGE MACDONALDFortunehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835125471380719007noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5088505198621203268.post-66607552393348808532007-11-07T05:33:00.000-08:002007-11-07T05:36:02.885-08:00PHANTASTES A FAERIE ROMANCE FOR MEN AND WOMEN by GEORGE MACDONALDPHANTASTES<br />A FAERIE ROMANCE FOR MEN AND WOMEN<br />BY<br />GEORGE MACDONALD<br />A new Edition, with thirty-three new Illustrations by Arthur<br />Hughes; edited by Greville MacDonald<br />"In good sooth, my masters, this is no door.<br />Yet is it a little window, that looketh upon a great world."<br />PREFACE<br />For offering this new edition of my father's Phantastes, my<br />reasons are three. The first is to rescue the work from an<br />edition illustrated without the author's sanction, and so<br />unsuitably that all lovers of the book must have experienced some<br />real grief in turning its pages. With the copyright I secured<br />also the whole of that edition and turned it into pulp.<br />My second reason is to pay a small tribute to my father by<br />way of personal gratitude for this, his first prose work, which<br />was published nearly fifty years ago. Though unknown to many<br />lovers of his greater writings, none of these has exceeded it in<br />imaginative insight and power of expression. To me it rings with<br />the dominant chord of his life's purpose and work.<br />My third reason is that wider knowledge and love of the book<br />should be made possible. To this end I have been most happy in<br />the help of my father's old friend, who has illustrated the<br />book. I know of no other living artist who is capable of<br />portraying the spirit of Phantastes; and every reader of this<br />edition will, I believe, feel that the illustrations are a part<br />of the romance, and will gain through them some perception of the<br />brotherhood between George MacDonald and Arthur Hughes.<br />GREVILLE MACDONALD.<br />September 1905.<br />LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS<br />THE MEETING OF SIR GALAHAD AND SIX PERCIVALE<br />SUDDENLY THERE STOOD ON THE THRESHOLD A TINY WOMAN-FORM<br />THE BRANCHES AND LEAVES ON THE CURTAINS OF MY BED WERE IN<br />MOTION<br />I SAW A COUNTRY MAIDEN COMING TOWARDS ME<br />TAILPIECE TO CHAPTER III<br />HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER IV<br />TWO LARGE SOFT ARMS WERE THROWN AROUND ME FROM BEHIND<br />I GAZED AFTER HER IN A KIND OF DESPAIR<br />I FOUND MYSELF IN A LITTLE CAVE<br />THE ASH SHUDDERED AND GROANED<br />TAILPIECE TO CHAPTER VI<br />I COULD HARDLY BELIEVE THAT THERE WAS A FAIRY LAND<br />I DID NOT BELIEVE IN FAIRY LAND<br />A RUNNER WITH GHOSTLY FEET<br />THE MAIDEN CAME ALONG, SINGING AND DANCING,HAPPY AS A CHILD<br />THE GOBLINS PERFORMED THE MOST ANTIC HOMAGE<br />THE FAIRY PALACE IN THE MOONLIGHT<br />TOO DAZZLING FOR EARTHLY EYES<br />IN THE WOODS AND ALONG THE RIVER BANKS DO THE MAIDENS GO<br />LOOKING<br />FOR CHILDREN<br />SHE LAY WITH CLOSED EYES, WHENCE TWO TEARS WERE FAST WELLING<br />HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER XIV<br />I SPRANG TO HER, AND LAID MY HAND ON THE HARP<br />A WHITE FIGURE GLEAMED PAST ME, WRINGING HER HANDS<br />THEY ALL RUSHED UPON ME, AND HELD ME TIGHT<br />A WINTRY SEA, BARE, AND WASTE, AND GRAY<br />SHOW ME THE CHILD THOU CALLEST MINE<br />THE TIME PASSED AWAY IN WORK AND SONG<br />HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER XXI<br />WE REACHED THE PALACE OF THE KING<br />I SAW, LEANING AGAINST THE TREE, A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN<br />FASTENED TO THE SADDLE, WAS THE BODY OF A GREAT DRAGON<br />I WAS DEAD, AND RIGHT CONTENT<br />A VALLEY LAY BENEATH ME<br />PHANTASTES<br />A FAERIE ROMANCE<br />"Phantastes from `their fount all shapes deriving,<br />In new habiliments can quickly dight."<br />FLETCHER'S Purple Island<br />{Below is raw OCR it has not been proofed as i cannot read it!}<br />"Es lassen sich Erzahlungen ohne Zusammenhang, jedoch mit<br />Association, wie Traume dengkeennohgneedizhusamdimenhang; jedoeh<br />mit und voll schoner Worte sind, aber auch ohne allen Sinn und<br />Zusammenhang, hochstens einzelne Strophen verstandlich, wie<br />Bruchstucke aus den verjschledenartigsten Dingen, Diese svahre<br />Poesie kann Wlrkung, wie Musik haben. Darum ist die Natur so<br />rein poetisch wle die Stube eines Zauberers, eines Physikers,<br />eine Kinderstube elne Polterund Vorrathskammer<br />"Ein Mahrchen ist wie ein Traumbild ohne Zusammenhang. Ein<br />Ensemble wunderbarer Dinge und Begebenheiten, z. B. eine<br />dMusNkalische Pbantasie, die harmonischen Folgen einer<br />Aeolsharfe, die Natur slebst.<br />. . . . . . . . . .<br />"In einem echten Mahrchen muss ailes wunderbar, geheimnissvoll<br />undzusammenhangendsein; alles belebt, jeder auf eineandereArt Die<br />ganze Natur muss wunderlich mit der ganzen Geisterwelt gemiseht<br />sein; hier tritt die Zeit der Anarehie, der Gesetzlosigkeit<br />Frelheit, der Naturstand der Natur, die Zeit von der Welt ein<br />entgegengesetztes und eben daruel'ndiehr Weld der Wahrheit<br />durehaus Chaos der vollendeten Sehopfung ahnlich ist."--NOVALIS.<br />~~~<br />CHAPTER 1<br />"A spirit . . .<br />. . . . . .<br />The undulating and silent well,<br />And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom,<br />Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,<br />Held commune with him; as if he and it<br />Were all that was."<br />SHELLEY'S Alastor.<br />I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which<br />accompanies the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked<br />through the eastern window of my room, a faint streak of peachcolour,<br />dividing a cloud that just rose above the low swell of<br />the horizon, announced the approach of the sun. As my thoughts,<br />which a deep and apparently dreamless sleep had dissolved, began<br />again to assume crystalline forms, the strange events of the<br />foregoing night presented themselves anew to my wondering<br />consciousness. The day before had been my one-and-twentieth<br />birthday. Among other ceremonies investing me with my legal<br />rights, the keys of an old secretary, in which my father had kept<br />his private papers, had been delivered up to me. As soon as I<br />was left alone, I ordered lights in the chamber where the<br />secretary stood, the first lights that had been there for many a<br />year; for, since my father's death, the room had been left<br />undisturbed. But, as if the darkness had been too long an inmate<br />to be easily expelled, and had dyed with blackness the walls to<br />which, bat-like, it had clung, these tapers served but ill to<br />light up the gloomy hangings, and seemed to throw yet darker<br />shadows into the hollows of the deep-wrought cornice. All the<br />further portions of the room lay shrouded in a mystery whose<br />deepest folds were gathered around the dark oak cabinet which I<br />now approached with a strange mingling of reverence and<br />curiosity. Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up to<br />the light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its<br />fossil remains charred by passion and petrified by tears.<br />Perhaps I was to learn how my father, whose personal history was<br />unknown to me, had woven his web of story; how he had found the<br />world, and how the world had left him. Perhaps I was to find<br />only the records of lands and moneys, how gotten and how secured;<br />coming down from strange men, and through troublous times, to me,<br />who knew little or nothing of them all. To solve my<br />speculations, and to dispel the awe which was fast gathering<br />around me as if the dead were drawing near, I approached the<br />secretary; and having found the key that fitted the upper<br />portion, I opened it with some difficulty, drew near it a heavy<br />high-backed chair, and sat down before a multitude of little<br />drawers and slides and pigeon-holes. But the door of a little<br />cupboard in the centre especially attracted my interest, as if<br />there lay the secret of this long-hidden world. Its key I found.<br />One of the rusty hinges cracked and broke as I opened the door:<br />it revealed a number of small pigeon-holes. These, however,<br />being but shallow compared with the depth of those around the<br />little cupboard, the outer ones reaching to the back of the desk,<br />I concluded that there must be some accessible space behind; and<br />found, indeed, that they were formed in a separate framework,<br />which admitted of the whole being pulled out in one piece.<br />Behind, I found a sort of flexible portcullis of small bars of<br />wood laid close together horizontally. After long search, and<br />trying many ways to move it, I discovered at last a scarcely<br />projecting point of steel on one side. I pressed this repeatedly<br />and hard with the point of an old tool that was lying near, till<br />at length it yielded inwards; and the little slide, flying up<br />suddenly, disclosed a chamber--empty, except that in one corner<br />lay a little heap of withered rose-leaves, whose long- lived<br />scent had long since departed; and, in another, a small packet of<br />papers, tied with a bit of ribbon, whose colour had gone with the<br />rose-scent. Almost fearing to touch them, they witnessed so<br />mutely to the law of oblivion, I leaned back in my chair, and<br />regarded them for a moment; when suddenly there stood on the<br />threshold of the little chamber, as though she had just emerged<br />from its depth, a tiny woman-form, as perfect in shape as if she<br />had been a small Greek statuette roused to life and motion. Her<br />dress was of a kind that could never grow old- fashioned, because<br />it was simply natural: a robe plaited in a band around the neck,<br />and confined by a belt about the waist, descended to her feet.<br />It was only afterwards, however, that I took notice of her dress,<br />although my surprise was by no means of so overpowering a degree<br />as such an apparition might naturally be expected to excite.<br />Seeing, however, as I suppose, some astonishment in my<br />countenance, she came forward within a yard of me, and said, in a<br />voice that strangely recalled a sensation of twilight, and reedy<br />river banks, and a low wind, even in this deathly room:--<br />"Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?"<br />"No," said I; "and indeed I hardly believe I do now."<br />"Ah! that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the<br />first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition<br />convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable. I am<br />not going to argue with you, however, but to grant you a wish."<br />Here I could not help interrupting her with the foolish speech,<br />of which, however, I had no cause to repent--<br />"How can such a very little creature as you grant or<br />refuse anything?"<br />"Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one-and-twenty<br />years?" said she. "Form is much, but size is nothing. It is a<br />mere matter of relation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does<br />not feel altogether insignificant, though to others you do look<br />small beside your old Uncle Ralph, who rises above you a great<br />half-foot at least. But size is of so little consequence with<br />old me, that I may as well accommodate myself to your foolish<br />prejudices."<br />So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor, where she<br />stood a tall, gracious lady, with pale face and large blue eyes.<br />Her dark hair flowed behind, wavy but uncurled, down to her<br />waist, and against it her form stood clear in its robe of white.<br />"Now," said she, "you will believe me."<br />Overcome with the presence of a beauty which I could now<br />perceive, and drawn towards her by an attraction irresistible as<br />incomprehensible, I suppose I stretched out my arms towards her,<br />for she drew back a step or two, and said--<br />"Foolish boy, if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides,<br />I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve;<br />and a man must not fall in love with his grandmother, you know."<br />"But you are not my grandmother," said I.<br />"How do you know that?" she retorted. "I dare say you know<br />something of your great-grandfathers a good deal further back<br />than that; but you know very little about your great-grandmothers<br />on either side. Now, to the point. Your little sister was<br />reading a fairy-tale to you last night."<br />"She was."<br />"When she had finished, she said, as she closed the book, `Is<br />there a fairy-country, brother?' You replied with a sigh, `I<br />suppose there is, if one could find the way into it.'"<br />"I did; but I meant something quite different from what you seem<br />to think."<br />"Never mind what I seem to think. You shall find the way into<br />Fairy Land to-morrow. Now look in my eyes."<br />Eagerly I did so. They filled me with an unknown longing. I<br />remembered somehow that my mother died when I was a baby. I<br />looked deeper and deeper, till they spread around me like seas,<br />and I sank in their waters. I forgot all the rest, till I found<br />myself at the window, whose gloomy curtains were withdrawn, and<br />where I stood gazing on a whole heaven of stars, small and<br />sparkling in the moonlight. Below lay a sea, still as death and<br />hoary in the moon, sweeping into bays and around capes and<br />islands, away, away, I knew not whither. Alas! it was no sea,<br />but a low bog burnished by the moon. "Surely there is such a sea<br />somewhere!" said I to myself. A low sweet voice beside me<br />replied--<br />"In Fairy Land, Anodos."<br />I turned, but saw no one. I closed the secretary, and went to my<br />own room, and to bed.<br />All this I recalled as I lay with half-closed eyes. I was soon<br />to find the truth of the lady's promise, that this day I should<br />discover the road into Fairy Land.<br />CHAPTER II<br />"`Where is the stream?' cried he, with tears. `Seest thou its not<br />in blue waves above us?' He looked up, and lo! the blue stream<br />was flowing gently over their heads."<br />--NOVALIS, Heinrich von Ofterdingen.<br />While these strange events were passing through my mind, I<br />suddenly, as one awakes to the consciousness that the sea has<br />been moaning by him for hours, or that the storm has been howling<br />about his window all night, became aware of the sound of running<br />water near me; and, looking out of bed, I saw that a large green<br />marble basin, in which I was wont to wash, and which stood on a<br />low pedestal of the same material in a corner of my room, was<br />overflowing like a spring; and that a stream of clear water was<br />running over the carpet, all the length of the room, finding its<br />outlet I knew not where. And, stranger still, where this carpet,<br />which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and<br />daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grassblades<br />and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed<br />the water's flow; while under the rivulet they bent and swayed<br />with every motion of the changeful current, as if they were about<br />to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixed form, become<br />fluent as the waters.<br />My dressing-table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of<br />black oak, with drawers all down the front. These were<br />elaborately carved in foliage, of which ivy formed the chief<br />part. The nearer end of this table remained just as it had been,<br />but on the further end a singular change had commenced. I<br />happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of ivy-leaves. The<br />first of these was evidently the work of the carver; the next<br />looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy; and just beyond<br />it a tendril of clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle<br />of one of the drawers. Hearing next a slight motion above me, I<br />looked up, and saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the<br />curtains of my bed were slightly in motion. Not knowing what<br />change might follow next, I thought it high time to get up; and,<br />springing from the bed, my bare feet alighted upon a cool green<br />sward; and although I dressed in all haste, I found myself<br />completing my toilet under the boughs of a great tree, whose top<br />waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with many interchanging<br />lights, and with shadows of leaf and branch gliding over leaf and<br />branch, as the cool morning wind swung it to and fro, like a<br />sinking sea-wave.<br />After washing as well as I could in the clear stream, I rose and<br />looked around me. The tree under which I seemed to have lain all<br />night was one of the advanced guard of a dense forest, towards<br />which the rivulet ran. Faint traces of a footpath, much<br />overgrown with grass and moss, and with here and there a<br />pimpernel even, were discernible along the right bank.<br />"This," thought I, "must surely be the path into Fairy Land,<br />which the lady of last night promised I should so soon find." I<br />crossed the rivulet, and accompanied it, keeping the footpath on<br />its right bank, until it led me, as I expected, into the wood.<br />Here I left it, without any good reason: and with a vague feeling<br />that I ought to have followed its course, I took a more southerly<br />direction.<br />CHAPTER III<br />"Man doth usurp all space,<br />Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in<br />the face.<br />Never thine eyes behold a tree;<br />'Tis no sea thou seest in the sea,<br />'Tis but a disguised humanity.<br />To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;<br />All that interests a man, is man."<br />HENRY SUTTON.<br />The trees, which were far apart where I entered, giving free<br />passage to the level rays of the sun, closed rapidly as I<br />advanced, so that ere long their crowded stems barred the<br />sunlight out, forming as it were a thick grating between me and<br />the East. I seemed to be advancing towards a second midnight.<br />In the midst of the intervening twilight, however, before I<br />entered what appeared to be the darkest portion of the forest, I<br />saw a country maiden coming towards me from its very depths. She<br />did not seem to observe me, for she was apparently intent upon a<br />bunch of wild flowers which she carried in her hand. I could<br />hardly see her face; for, though she came direct towards me, she<br />never looked up. But when we met, instead of passing, she turned<br />and walked alongside of me for a few yards, still keeping her<br />face downwards, and busied with her flowers. She spoke rapidly,<br />however, all the time, in a low tone, as if talking to herself,<br />but evidently addressing the purport of her words to me.<br />She seemed afraid of being observed by some lurking foe. "Trust<br />the Oak," said she; "trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great<br />Beech. Take care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is<br />too young not to be changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder;<br />for the Ash is an ogre,--you will know him by his thick fingers;<br />and the Alder will smother you with her web of hair, if you let<br />her near you at night." All this was uttered without pause or<br />alteration of tone. Then she turned suddenly and left me,<br />walking still with the same unchanging gait. I could not<br />conjecture what she meant, but satisfied myself with thinking<br />that it would be time enough to find out her meaning when there<br />was need to make use of her warning, and that the occasion would<br />reveal the admonition. I concluded from the flowers that she<br />carried, that the forest could not be everywhere so dense as it<br />appeared from where I was now walking; and I was right in this<br />conclusion. For soon I came to a more open part, and by-and-by<br />crossed a wide grassy glade, on which were several circles of<br />brighter green. But even here I was struck with the utter<br />stillness. No bird sang. No insect hummed. Not a living<br />creature crossed my way. Yet somehow the whole environment<br />seemed only asleep, and to wear even in sleep an air of<br />expectation. The trees seemed all to have an expression of<br />conscious mystery, as if they said to themselves, "we could, an'<br />if we would." They had all a meaning look about them. Then I<br />remembered that night is the fairies' day, and the moon their<br />sun; and I thought--Everything sleeps and dreams now: when the<br />night comes, it will be different. At the same time I, being a<br />man and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should<br />fare among the elves and other children of the night who wake<br />when mortals dream, and find their common life in those wondrous<br />hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of<br />men and women and children, lying strewn and parted beneath the<br />weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat them<br />down, and hold them drowned and senseless, until the ebbtide<br />comes, and the waves sink away, back into the ocean of the dark.<br />But I took courage and went on. Soon, however, I became again<br />anxious, though from another cause. I had eaten nothing that<br />day, and for an hour past had been feeling the want of food. So<br />I grew afraid lest I should find nothing to meet my human<br />necessities in this strange place; but once more I comforted<br />myself with hope and went on.<br />Before noon, I fancied I saw a thin blue smoke rising amongst the<br />stems of larger trees in front of me; and soon I came to an open<br />spot of ground in which stood a little cottage, so built that the<br />stems of four great trees formed its corners, while their<br />branches met and intertwined over its roof, heaping a great cloud<br />of leaves over it, up towards the heavens. I wondered at finding<br />a human dwelling in this neighbourhood; and yet it did not look<br />altogether human, though sufficiently so to encourage me to<br />expect to find some sort of food. Seeing no door, I went round<br />to the other side, and there I found one, wide open. A woman sat<br />beside it, preparing some vegetables for dinner. This was homely<br />and comforting. As I came near, she looked up, and seeing me,<br />showed no surprise, but bent her head again over her work, and<br />said in a low tone:<br />"Did you see my daughter?"<br />"I believe I did," said I. "Can you give me something to eat,<br />for I am very hungry?"<br />"With pleasure," she replied, in the same tone; "but do not say<br />anything more, till you come into the house, for the Ash is<br />watching us."<br />Having said this, she rose and led the way into the cottage;<br />which, I now saw, was built of the stems of small trees set<br />closely together, and was furnished with rough chairs and tables,<br />from which even the bark had not been removed. As soon as she<br />had shut the door and set a chair--<br />"You have fairy blood in you," said she, looking hard at me.<br />"How do you know that?"<br />"You could not have got so far into this wood if it were not so;<br />and I am trying to find out some trace of it in your countenance.<br />I think I see it."<br />"What do you see?"<br />"Oh, never mind: I may be mistaken in that."<br />"But how then do you come to live here?"<br />"Because I too have fairy blood in me."<br />Here I, in my turn, looked hard at her, and thought I could<br />perceive, notwithstanding the coarseness of her features, and<br />especially the heaviness of her eyebrows, a something unusual--I<br />could hardly call it grace, and yet it was an expression that<br />strangely contrasted with the form of her features. I noticed<br />too that her hands were delicately formed, though brown with work<br />and exposure.<br />"I should be ill," she continued, "if I did not live on the<br />borders of the fairies' country, and now and then eat of their<br />food. And I see by your eyes that you are not quite free of the<br />same need; though, from your education and the activity of your<br />mind, you have felt it less than I. You may be further removed<br />too from the fairy race."<br />I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers.<br />Here she placed some bread and some milk before me, with a kindly<br />apology for the homeliness of the fare, with which, however, I<br />was in no humour to quarrel. I now thought it time to try to get<br />some explanation of the strange words both of her daughter and<br />herself.<br />"What did you mean by speaking so about the Ash?"<br />She rose and looked out of the little window. My eyes followed<br />her; but as the window was too small to allow anything to be seen<br />from where I was sitting, I rose and looked over her shoulder. I<br />had just time to see, across the open space, on the edge of the<br />denser forest, a single large ash-tree, whose foliage showed<br />bluish, amidst the truer green of the other trees around it; when<br />she pushed me back with an expression of impatience and terror,<br />and then almost shut out the light from the window by setting up<br />a large old book in it.<br />"In general," said she, recovering her composure, "there is no<br />danger in the daytime, for then he is sound asleep; but there is<br />something unusual going on in the woods; there must be some<br />solemnity among the fairies to-night, for all the trees are<br />restless, and although they cannot come awake, they see and hear<br />in their sleep."<br />"But what danger is to be dreaded from him?"<br />Instead of answering the question, she went again to the window<br />and looked out, saying she feared the fairies would be<br />interrupted by foul weather, for a storm was brewing in the west.<br />"And the sooner it grows dark, the sooner the Ash will be awake,"<br />added she.<br />I asked her how she knew that there was any unusual excitement in<br />the woods. She replied--<br />"Besides the look of the trees, the dog there is unhappy; and the<br />eyes and ears of the white rabbit are redder than usual, and he<br />frisks about as if he expected some fun. If the cat were at<br />home, she would have her back up; for the young fairies pull the<br />sparks out of her tail with bramble thorns, and she knows when<br />they are coming. So do I, in another way."<br />At this instant, a grey cat rushed in like a demon, and<br />disappeared in a hole in the wall.<br />"There, I told you!" said the woman.<br />"But what of the ash-tree?" said I, returning once more to the<br />subject. Here, however, the young woman, whom I had met in the<br />morning, entered. A smile passed between the mother and<br />daughter; and then the latter began to help her mother in little<br />household duties.<br />"I should like to stay here till the evening," I said; "and then<br />go on my journey, if you will allow me."<br />"You are welcome to do as you please; only it might be better to<br />stay all night, than risk the dangers of the wood then. Where<br />are you going?"<br />"Nay, that I do not know," I replied, "but I wish to see all that<br />is to be seen, and therefore I should like to start just at<br />sundown."<br />"You are a bold youth, if you have any idea of what you are<br />daring; but a rash one, if you know nothing about it; and, excuse<br />me, you do not seem very well informed about the country and its<br />manners. However, no one comes here but for some reason, either<br />known to himself or to those who have charge of him; so you shall<br />do just as you wish."<br />Accordingly I sat down, and feeling rather tired, and disinclined<br />for further talk, I asked leave to look at the old book which<br />still screened the window. The woman brought it to me directly,<br />but not before taking another look towards the forest, and then<br />drawing a white blind over the window. I sat down opposite to it<br />by the table, on which I laid the great old volume, and read. It<br />contained many wondrous tales of Fairy Land, and olden times, and<br />the Knights of King Arthur's table. I read on and on, till the<br />shades of the afternoon began to deepen; for in the midst of the<br />forest it gloomed earlier than in the open country. At length I<br />came to this passage--<br />"Here it chanced, that upon their quest, Sir Galahad and Sir<br />Percivale rencountered in the depths of a great forest. Now, Sir<br />Galahad was dight all in harness of silver, clear and shining;<br />the which is a delight to look upon, but full hasty to tarnish,<br />and withouten the labour of a ready squire, uneath to be kept<br />fair and clean. And yet withouten squire or page, Sir Galahad's<br />armour shone like the moon. And he rode a great white mare,<br />whose bases and other housings were black, but all besprent with<br />fair lilys of silver sheen. Whereas Sir Percivale bestrode a red<br />horse, with a tawny mane and tail; whose trappings were all tosmirched<br />with mud and mire; and his armour was wondrous rosty to<br />behold, ne could he by any art furbish it again; so that as the<br />sun in his going down shone twixt the bare trunks of the trees,<br />full upon the knights twain, the one did seem all shining with<br />light, and the other all to glow with ruddy fire. Now it came<br />about in this wise. For Sir Percivale, after his escape from the<br />demon lady, whenas the cross on the handle of his sword smote him<br />to the heart, and he rove himself through the thigh, and escaped<br />away, he came to a great wood; and, in nowise cured of his fault,<br />yet bemoaning the same, the damosel of the alder tree encountered<br />him, right fair to see; and with her fair words and false<br />countenance she comforted him and beguiled him, until he followed<br />her where she led him to a---"<br />Here a low hurried cry from my hostess caused me to look up from<br />the book, and I read no more.<br />"Look there!" she said; "look at his fingers!"<br />Just as I had been reading in the book, the setting sun was<br />shining through a cleft in the clouds piled up in the west; and a<br />shadow as of a large distorted hand, with thick knobs and humps<br />on the fingers, so that it was much wider across the fingers than<br />across the undivided part of the hand, passed slowly over the<br />little blind, and then as slowly returned in the opposite<br />direction.<br />"He is almost awake, mother; and greedier than usual to-night."<br />"Hush, child; you need not make him more angry with us than he<br />is; for you do not know how soon something may happen to oblige<br />us to be in the forest after nightfall."<br />"But you are in the forest," said I; "how is it that you are safe<br />here?"<br />"He dares not come nearer than he is now," she replied; "for any<br />of those four oaks, at the corners of our cottage, would tear him<br />to pieces; they are our friends. But he stands there and makes<br />awful faces at us sometimes, and stretches out his long arms and<br />fingers, and tries to kill us with fright; for, indeed, that is<br />his favourite way of doing. Pray, keep out of his way to-night."<br />"Shall I be able to see these things?" said I.<br />"That I cannot tell yet, not knowing how much of the fairy nature<br />there is in you. But we shall soon see whether you can discern<br />the fairies in my little garden, and that will be some guide to<br />us."<br />"Are the trees fairies too, as well as the flowers?" I asked.<br />"They are of the same race," she replied; "though those you call<br />fairies in your country are chiefly the young children of the<br />flower fairies. They are very fond of having fun with the thick<br />people, as they call you; for, like most children, they like fun<br />better than anything else."<br />"Why do you have flowers so near you then? Do they not annoy<br />you?"<br />"Oh, no, they are very amusing, with their mimicries of grown<br />people, and mock solemnities. Sometimes they will act a whole<br />play through before my eyes, with perfect composure and<br />assurance, for they are not afraid of me. Only, as soon as they<br />have done, they burst into peals of tiny laughter, as if it was<br />such a joke to have been serious over anything. These I speak<br />of, however, are the fairies of the garden. They are more staid<br />and educated than those of the fields and woods. Of course they<br />have near relations amongst the wild flowers, but they patronise<br />them, and treat them as country cousins, who know nothing of<br />life, and very little of manners. Now and then, however, they<br />are compelled to envy the grace and simplicity of the natural<br />flowers."<br />"Do they live IN the flowers?" I said.<br />"I cannot tell," she replied. "There is something in it I do not<br />understand. Sometimes they disappear altogether, even from me,<br />though I know they are near. They seem to die always with the<br />flowers they resemble, and by whose names they are called; but<br />whether they return to life with the fresh flowers, or, whether<br />it be new flowers, new fairies, I cannot tell. They have as many<br />sorts of dispositions as men and women, while their moods are yet<br />more variable; twenty different expressions will cross their<br />little faces in half a minute. I often amuse myself with<br />watching them, but I have never been able to make personal<br />acquaintance with any of them. If I speak to one, he or she<br />looks up in my face, as if I were not worth heeding, gives a<br />little laugh, and runs away." Here the woman started, as if<br />suddenly recollecting herself, and said in a low voice to her<br />daughter, "Make haste--go and watch him, and see in what<br />direction he goes."<br />I may as well mention here, that the conclusion I arrived at from<br />the observations I was afterwards able to make, was, that the<br />flowers die because the fairies go away; not that the fairies<br />disappear because the flowers die. The flowers seem a sort of<br />houses for them, or outer bodies, which they can put on or off<br />when they please. Just as you could form some idea of the nature<br />of a man from the kind of house he built, if he followed his own<br />taste, so you could, without seeing the fairies, tell what any<br />one of them is like, by looking at the flower till you feel that<br />you understand it. For just what the flower says to you, would<br />the face and form of the fairy say; only so much more plainly as<br />a face and human figure can express more than a flower. For the<br />house or the clothes, though like the inhabitant or the wearer,<br />cannot be wrought into an equal power of utterance. Yet you<br />would see a strange resemblance, almost oneness, between the<br />flower and the fairy, which you could not describe, but which<br />described itself to you. Whether all the flowers have fairies, I<br />cannot determine, any more than I can be sure whether all men and<br />women have souls.<br />The woman and I continued the conversation for a few minutes<br />longer. I was much interested by the information she gave me,<br />and astonished at the language in which she was able to convey<br />it. It seemed that intercourse with the fairies was no bad<br />education in itself. But now the daughter returned with the<br />news, that the Ash had just gone away in a south-westerly<br />direction; and, as my course seemed to lie eastward, she hoped I<br />should be in no danger of meeting him if I departed at once. I<br />looked out of the little window, and there stood the ash-tree, to<br />my eyes the same as before; but I believed that they knew better<br />than I did, and prepared to go. I pulled out my purse, but to my<br />dismay there was nothing in it. The woman with a smile begged me<br />not to trouble myself, for money was not of the slightest use<br />there; and as I might meet with people in my journeys whom I<br />could not recognise to be fairies, it was well I had no money to<br />offer, for nothing offended them so much.<br />"They would think," she added, "that you were making game of<br />them; and that is their peculiar privilege with regard to us."<br />So we went together into the little garden which sloped down<br />towards a lower part of the wood.<br />Here, to my great pleasure, all was life and bustle. There was<br />still light enough from the day to see a little; and the pale<br />half-moon, halfway to the zenith, was reviving every moment. The<br />whole garden was like a carnival, with tiny, gaily decorated<br />forms, in groups, assemblies, processions, pairs or trios, moving<br />stately on, running about wildly, or sauntering hither or<br />thither. From the cups or bells of tall flowers, as from<br />balconies, some looked down on the masses below, now bursting<br />with laughter, now grave as owls; but even in their deepest<br />solemnity, seeming only to be waiting for the arrival of the next<br />laugh. Some were launched on a little marshy stream at the<br />bottom, in boats chosen from the heaps of last year's leaves that<br />lay about, curled and withered. These soon sank with them;<br />whereupon they swam ashore and got others. Those who took fresh<br />rose-leaves for their boats floated the longest; but for these<br />they had to fight; for the fairy of the rose-tree complained<br />bitterly that they were stealing her clothes, and defended her<br />property bravely.<br />"You can't wear half you've got," said some.<br />"Never you mind; I don't choose you to have them: they are my<br />property."<br />"All for the good of the community!" said one, and ran off with a<br />great hollow leaf. But the rose-fairy sprang after him (what a<br />beauty she was! only too like a drawing-room young lady), knocked<br />him heels-over-head as he ran, and recovered her great red leaf.<br />But in the meantime twenty had hurried off in different<br />directions with others just as good; and the little creature sat<br />down and cried, and then, in a pet, sent a perfect pink snowstorm<br />of petals from her tree, leaping from branch to branch, and<br />stamping and shaking and pulling. At last, after another good<br />cry, she chose the biggest she could find, and ran away laughing,<br />to launch her boat amongst the rest.<br />But my attention was first and chiefly attracted by a group of<br />fairies near the cottage, who were talking together around what<br />seemed a last dying primrose. They talked singing, and their<br />talk made a song, something like this:<br />"Sister Snowdrop died<br />Before we were born."<br />"She came like a bride<br />In a snowy morn."<br />"What's a bride?"<br />"What is snow?<br />"Never tried."<br />"Do not know."<br />"Who told you about her?"<br />"Little Primrose there<br />Cannot do without her."<br />"Oh, so sweetly fair!"<br />"Never fear,<br />She will come,<br />Primrose dear."<br />"Is she dumb?"<br />"She'll come by-and-by."<br />"You will never see her."<br />"She went home to dies,<br />"Till the new year."<br />"Snowdrop!" "'Tis no good<br />To invite her."<br />"Primrose is very rude,<br />"I will bite her."<br />"Oh, you naughty Pocket!<br />"Look, she drops her head."<br />"She deserved it, Rocket,<br />"And she was nearly dead."<br />"To your hammock--off with you!"<br />"And swing alone."<br />"No one will laugh with you."<br />"No, not one."<br />"Now let us moan."<br />"And cover her o'er."<br />"Primrose is gone."<br />"All but the flower."<br />"Here is a leaf."<br />"Lay her upon it."<br />"Follow in grief."<br />"Pocket has done it."<br />"Deeper, poor creature!<br />Winter may come."<br />"He cannot reach her--<br />That is a hum."<br />"She is buried, the beauty!"<br />"Now she is done."<br />"That was the duty."<br />"Now for the fun."<br />And with a wild laugh they sprang away, most of them towards the<br />cottage. During the latter part of the song-talk, they had<br />formed themselves into a funeral procession, two of them bearing<br />poor Primrose, whose death Pocket had hastened by biting her<br />stalk, upon one of her own great leaves. They bore her solemnly<br />along some distance, and then buried her under a tree. Although<br />I say HER I saw nothing but the withered primrose-flower on its<br />long stalk. Pocket, who had been expelled from the company by<br />common consent, went sulkily away towards her hammock, for she<br />was the fairy of the calceolaria, and looked rather wicked. When<br />she reached its stem, she stopped and looked round. I could not<br />help speaking to her, for I stood near her. I said, "Pocket, how<br />could you be so naughty?"<br />"I am never naughty," she said, half-crossly, half-defiantly;<br />"only if you come near my hammock, I will bite you, and then you<br />will go away."<br />"Why did you bite poor Primrose?"<br />"Because she said we should never see Snowdrop; as if we were not<br />good enough to look at her, and she was, the proud thing!--served<br />her right!"<br />"Oh, Pocket, Pocket," said I; but by this time the party which<br />had gone towards the house, rushed out again, shouting and<br />screaming with laughter. Half of them were on the cat's back,<br />and half held on by her fur and tail, or ran beside her; till,<br />more coming to their help, the furious cat was held fast; and<br />they proceeded to pick the sparks out of her with thorns and<br />pins, which they handled like harpoons. Indeed, there were more<br />instruments at work about her than there could have been sparks<br />in her. One little fellow who held on hard by the tip of the<br />tail, with his feet planted on the ground at an angle of fortyfive<br />degrees, helping to keep her fast, administered a continuous<br />flow of admonitions to Pussy.<br />"Now, Pussy, be patient. You know quite well it is all for your<br />good. You cannot be comfortable with all those sparks in you;<br />and, indeed, I am charitably disposed to believe" (here he became<br />very pompous) "that they are the cause of all your bad temper; so<br />we must have them all out, every one; else we shall be reduced to<br />the painful necessity of cutting your claws, and pulling out your<br />eye-teeth. Quiet! Pussy, quiet!"<br />But with a perfect hurricane of feline curses, the poor animal<br />broke loose, and dashed across the garden and through the hedge,<br />faster than even the fairies could follow. "Never mind, never<br />mind, we shall find her again; and by that time she will have<br />laid in a fresh stock of sparks. Hooray!" And off they set,<br />after some new mischief.<br />But I will not linger to enlarge on the amusing display of these<br />frolicsome creatures. Their manners and habits are now so well<br />known to the world, having been so often described by<br />eyewitnesses, that it would be only indulging self-conceit, to<br />add my account in full to the rest. I cannot help wishing,<br />however, that my readers could see them for themselves.<br />Especially do I desire that they should see the fairy of the<br />daisy; a little, chubby, round-eyed child, with such innocent<br />trust in his look! Even the most mischievous of the fairies<br />would not tease him, although he did not belong to their set at<br />all, but was quite a little country bumpkin. He wandered about<br />alone, and looked at everything, with his hands in his little<br />pockets, and a white night-cap on, the darling! He was not so<br />beautiful as many other wild flowers I saw afterwards, but so<br />dear and loving in his looks and little confident ways.<br />CHAPTER IV<br />"When bale is att hyest, boote is nyest."<br />Ballad of Sir Aldingar.<br />By this time, my hostess was quite anxious that I should be gone.<br />So, with warm thanks for their hospitality, I took my leave, and<br />went my way through the little garden towards the forest. Some<br />of the garden flowers had wandered into the wood, and were<br />growing here and there along the path, but the trees soon became<br />too thick and shadowy for them. I particularly noticed some tall<br />lilies, which grew on both sides of the way, with large<br />dazzlingly white flowers, set off by the universal green. It was<br />now dark enough for me to see that every flower was shining with<br />a light of its own. Indeed it was by this light that I saw them,<br />an internal, peculiar light, proceeding from each, and not<br />reflected from a common source of light as in the daytime. This<br />light sufficed only for the plant itself, and was not strong<br />enough to cast any but the faintest shadows around it, or to<br />illuminate any of the neighbouring objects with other than the<br />faintest tinge of its own individual hue. From the lilies above<br />mentioned, from the campanulas, from the foxgloves, and every<br />bell-shaped flower, curious little figures shot up their heads,<br />peeped at me, and drew back. They seemed to inhabit them, as<br />snails their shells but I was sure some of them were intruders,<br />and belonged to the gnomes or goblin-fairies, who inhabit the<br />ground and earthy creeping plants. From the cups of Arum lilies,<br />creatures with great heads and grotesque faces shot up like Jackin-<br />the-box, and made grimaces at me; or rose slowly and slily<br />over the edge of the cup, and spouted water at me, slipping<br />suddenly back, like those little soldier-crabs that inhabit the<br />shells of sea-snails. Passing a row of tall thistles, I saw them<br />crowded with little faces, which peeped every one from behind its<br />flower, and drew back as quickly; and I heard them saying to each<br />other, evidently intending me to hear, but the speaker always<br />hiding behind his tuft, when I looked in his direction, "Look at<br />him! Look at him! He has begun a story without a beginning, and<br />it will never have any end. He! he! he! Look at him!"<br />But as I went further into the wood, these sights and sounds<br />became fewer, giving way to others of a different character. A<br />little forest of wild hyacinths was alive with exquisite<br />creatures, who stood nearly motionless, with drooping necks,<br />holding each by the stem of her flower, and swaying gently with<br />it, whenever a low breath of wind swung the crowded floral<br />belfry. In like manner, though differing of course in form and<br />meaning, stood a group of harebells, like little angels waiting,<br />ready, till they were wanted to go on some yet unknown message.<br />In darker nooks, by the mossy roots of the trees, or in little<br />tufts of grass, each dwelling in a globe of its own green light,<br />weaving a network of grass and its shadows, glowed the glowworms.<br />They were just like the glowworms of our own land, for they are<br />fairies everywhere; worms in the day, and glowworms at night,<br />when their own can appear, and they can be themselves to others<br />as well as themselves. But they had their enemies here. For I<br />saw great strong-armed beetles, hurrying about with most unwieldy<br />haste, awkward as elephant-calves, looking apparently for<br />glowworms; for the moment a beetle espied one, through what to it<br />was a forest of grass, or an underwood of moss, it pounced upon<br />it, and bore it away, in spite of its feeble resistance.<br />Wondering what their object could be, I watched one of the<br />beetles, and then I discovered a thing I could not account for.<br />But it is no use trying to account for things in Fairy Land; and<br />one who travels there soon learns to forget the very idea of<br />doing so, and takes everything as it comes; like a child, who,<br />being in a chronic condition of wonder, is surprised at nothing.<br />What I saw was this. Everywhere, here and there over the ground,<br />lay little, dark-looking lumps of something more like earth than<br />anything else, and about the size of a chestnut. The beetles<br />hunted in couples for these; and having found one, one of them<br />stayed to watch it, while the other hurried to find a glowworm.<br />By signals, I presume, between them, the latter soon found his<br />companion again: they then took the glowworm and held its<br />luminous tail to the dark earthly pellet; when lo, it shot up<br />into the air like a sky-rocket, seldom, however, reaching the<br />height of the highest tree. Just like a rocket too, it burst in<br />the air, and fell in a shower of the most gorgeously coloured<br />sparks of every variety of hue; golden and red, and purple and<br />green, and blue and rosy fires crossed and inter-crossed each<br />other, beneath the shadowy heads, and between the columnar stems<br />of the forest trees. They never used the same glowworm twice, I<br />observed; but let him go, apparently uninjured by the use they<br />had made of him.<br />In other parts, the whole of the immediately surrounding foliage<br />was illuminated by the interwoven dances in the air of splendidly<br />coloured fire-flies, which sped hither and thither, turned,<br />twisted, crossed, and recrossed, entwining every complexity of<br />intervolved motion. Here and there, whole mighty trees glowed<br />with an emitted phosphorescent light. You could trace the very<br />course of the great roots in the earth by the faint light that<br />came through; and every twig, and every vein on every leaf was a<br />streak of pale fire.<br />All this time, as I went through the wood, I was haunted with the<br />feeling that other shapes, more like my own size and mien, were<br />moving about at a little distance on all sides of me. But as yet<br />I could discern none of them, although the moon was high enough<br />to send a great many of her rays down between the trees, and<br />these rays were unusually bright, and sight-giving,<br />notwithstanding she was only a half-moon. I constantly imagined,<br />however, that forms were visible in all directions except that to<br />which my gaze was turned; and that they only became invisible, or<br />resolved themselves into other woodland shapes, the moment my<br />looks were directed towards them. However this may have been,<br />except for this feeling of presence, the woods seemed utterly<br />bare of anything like human companionship, although my glance<br />often fell on some object which I fancied to be a human form; for<br />I soon found that I was quite deceived; as, the moment I fixed my<br />regard on it, it showed plainly that it was a bush, or a tree, or<br />a rock.<br />Soon a vague sense of discomfort possessed me. With variations<br />of relief, this gradually increased; as if some evil thing were<br />wandering about in my neighbourhood, sometimes nearer and<br />sometimes further off, but still approaching. The<br />feelingcontinued and deepened, until all my pleasure in the shows<br />of various kinds that everywhere betokened the presence of the<br />merry fairies vanished by degrees, and left me full of anxiety<br />and fear, which I was unable to associate with any definite<br />object whatever. At length the thought crossed my mind with<br />horror: "Can it be possible that the Ash is looking for me? or<br />that, in his nightly wanderings, his path is gradually verging<br />towards mine?" I comforted myself, however, by remembering that<br />he had started quite in another direction; one that would lead<br />him, if he kept it, far apart from me; especially as, for the<br />last two or three hours, I had been diligently journeying<br />eastward. I kept on my way, therefore, striving by direct effort<br />of the will against the encroaching fear; and to this end<br />occupying my mind, as much as I could, with other thoughts. I<br />was so far successful that, although I was conscious, if I<br />yielded for a moment, I should be almost overwhelmed with horror,<br />I was yet able to walk right on for an hour or more. What I<br />feared I could not tell. Indeed, I was left in a state of the<br />vaguest uncertainty as regarded the nature of my enemy, and knew<br />not the mode or object of his attacks; for, somehow or other,<br />none of my questions had succeeded in drawing a definite answer<br />from the dame in the cottage. How then to defend myself I knew<br />not; nor even by what sign I might with certainty recognise the<br />presence of my foe; for as yet this vague though powerful fear<br />was all the indication of danger I had. To add to my distress,<br />the clouds in the west had risen nearly to the top of the skies,<br />and they and the moon were travelling slowly towards each other.<br />Indeed, some of their advanced guard had already met her, and she<br />had begun to wade through a filmy vapour that gradually deepened.<br />At length she was for a moment almost entirely obscured. When<br />she shone out again, with a brilliancy increased by the contrast,<br />I saw plainly on the path before me--from around which at this<br />spot the trees receded, leaving a small space of green sward--the<br />shadow of a large hand, with knotty joints and protuberances here<br />and there. Especially I remarked, even in the midst of my fear,<br />the bulbous points of the fingers. I looked hurriedly all<br />around, but could see nothing from which such a shadow should<br />fall. Now, however, that I had a direction, however<br />undetermined, in which to project my apprehension, the very sense<br />of danger and need of action overcame that stifling which is the<br />worst property of fear. I reflected in a moment, that if this<br />were indeed a shadow, it was useless to look for the object that<br />cast it in any other direction than between the shadow and the<br />moon. I looked, and peered, and intensified my vision, all to no<br />purpose. I could see nothing of that kind, not even an ash-tree<br />in the neighbourhood. Still the shadow remained; not steady, but<br />moving to and fro, and once I saw the fingers close, and grind<br />themselves close, like the claws of a wild animal, as if in<br />uncontrollable longing for some anticipated prey. There seemed<br />but one mode left of discovering the substance of this shadow. I<br />went forward boldly, though with an inward shudder which I would<br />not heed, to the spot where the shadow lay, threw myself on the<br />ground, laid my head within the form of the hand, and turned my<br />eyes towards the moon Good heavens! what did I see? I wonder<br />that ever I arose, and that the very shadow of the hand did not<br />hold me where I lay until fear had frozen my brain. I saw the<br />strangest figure; vague, shadowy, almost transparent, in the<br />central parts, and gradually deepening in substance towards the<br />outside, until it ended in extremities capable of casting such a<br />shadow as fell from the hand, through the awful fingers of which<br />I now saw the moon. The hand was uplifted in the attitude of a<br />paw about to strike its prey. But the face, which throbbed with<br />fluctuating and pulsatory visibility--not from changes in the<br />light it reflected, but from changes in its own conditions of<br />reflecting power, the alterations being from within, not from<br />without--it was horrible. I do not know how to describe it. It<br />caused a new sensation. Just as one cannot translate a horrible<br />odour, or a ghastly pain, or a fearful sound, into words, so I<br />cannot describe this new form of awful hideousness. I can only<br />try to describe something that is not it, but seems somewhat<br />parallel to it; or at least is suggested by it. It reminded me<br />of what I had heard of vampires; for the face resembled that of a<br />corpse more than anything else I can think of; especially when I<br />can conceive such a face in motion, but not suggesting any life<br />as the source of the motion. The features were rather handsome<br />than otherwise, except the mouth, which had scarcely a curve in<br />it. The lips were of equal thickness; but the thickness was not<br />at all remarkable, even although they looked slightly swollen.<br />They seemed fixedly open, but were not wide apart. Of course I<br />did not REMARK these lineaments at the time: I was too horrified<br />for that. I noted them afterwards, when the form returned on my<br />inward sight with a vividness too intense to admit of my doubting<br />the accuracy of the reflex. But the most awful of the features<br />were the eyes. These were alive, yet not with life.<br />They seemed lighted up with an infinite greed. A gnawing<br />voracity, which devoured the devourer, seemed to be the<br />indwelling and propelling power of the whole ghostly apparition.<br />I lay for a few moments simply imbruted with terror; when another<br />cloud, obscuring the moon, delivered me from the immediately<br />paralysing effects of the presence to the vision of the object of<br />horror, while it added the force of imagination to the power of<br />fear within me; inasmuch as, knowing far worse cause for<br />apprehension than before, I remained equally ignorant from what I<br />had to defend myself, or how to take any precautions: he might be<br />upon me in the darkness any moment. I sprang to my feet, and<br />sped I knew not whither, only away from the spectre. I thought<br />no longer of the path, and often narrowly escaped dashing myself<br />against a tree, in my headlong flight of fear.<br />Great drops of rain began to patter on the leaves. Thunder began<br />to mutter, then growl in the distance. I ran on. The rain fell<br />heavier. At length the thick leaves could hold it up no longer;<br />and, like a second firmament, they poured their torrents on the<br />earth. I was soon drenched, but that was nothing. I came to a<br />small swollen stream that rushed through the woods. I had a<br />vague hope that if I crossed this stream, I should be in safety<br />from my pursuer; but I soon found that my hope was as false as it<br />was vague. I dashed across the stream, ascended a rising ground,<br />and reached a more open space, where stood only great trees.<br />Through them I directed my way, holding eastward as nearly as I<br />could guess, but not at all certain that I was not moving in an<br />opposite direction. My mind was just reviving a little from its<br />extreme terror, when, suddenly, a flash of lightning, or rather a<br />cataract of successive flashes, behind me, seemed to throw on the<br />ground in front of me, but far more faintly than before, from the<br />extent of the source of the light, the shadow of the same<br />horrible hand. I sprang forward, stung to yet wilder speed; but<br />had not run many steps before my foot slipped, and, vainly<br />attempting to recover myself, I fell at the foot of one of the<br />large trees. Half-stunned, I yet raised myself, and almost<br />involuntarily looked back. All I saw was the hand within three<br />feet of my face. But, at the same moment, I felt two large soft<br />arms thrown round me from behind; and a voice like a woman's<br />said: "Do not fear the goblin; he dares not hurt you now." With<br />that, the hand was suddenly withdrawn as from a fire, and<br />disappeared in the darkness and the rain. Overcome with the<br />mingling of terror and joy, I lay for some time almost<br />insensible. The first thing I remember is the sound of a voice<br />above me, full and low, and strangely reminding me of the sound<br />of a gentle wind amidst the leaves of a great tree. It murmured<br />over and over again: "I may love him, I may love him; for he is<br />a man, and I am only a beech-tree." I found I was seated on the<br />ground, leaning against a human form, and supported still by the<br />arms around me, which I knew to be those of a woman who must be<br />rather above the human size, and largely proportioned. I turned<br />my head, but without moving otherwise, for I feared lest the arms<br />should untwine themselves; and clear, somewhat mournful eyes met<br />mine. At least that is how they impressed me; but I could see<br />very little of colour or outline as we sat in the dark and rainy<br />shadow of the tree. The face seemed very lovely, and solemn from<br />its stillness; with the aspect of one who is quite content, but<br />waiting for something. I saw my conjecture from her arms was<br />correct: she was above the human scale throughout, but not<br />greatly.<br />"Why do you call yourself a beech-tree?" I said.<br />"Because I am one," she replied, in the same low, musical,<br />murmuring voice.<br />"You are a woman," I returned.<br />"Do you think so? Am I very like a woman then?"<br />"You are a very beautiful woman. Is it possible you should not<br />know it?"<br />"I am very glad you think so. I fancy I feel like a woman<br />sometimes. I do so to-night--and always when the rain drips from<br />my hair. For there is an old prophecy in our woods that one day<br />we shall all be men and women like you. Do you know anything<br />about it in your region? Shall I be very happy when I am a<br />woman? I fear not, for it is always in nights like these that I<br />feel like one. But I long to be a woman for all that."<br />I had let her talk on, for her voice was like a solution of all<br />musical sounds. I now told her that I could hardly say whether<br />women were happy or not. I knew one who had not been happy; and<br />for my part, I had often longed for Fairy Land, as she now longed<br />for the world of men. But then neither of us had lived long, and<br />perhaps people grew happier as they grew older. Only I doubted<br />it.<br />I could not help sighing. She felt the sigh, for her arms were<br />still round me. She asked me how old I was.<br />"Twenty-one," said I.<br />"Why, you baby!" said she, and kissed me with the sweetest kiss<br />of winds and odours. There was a cool faithfulness in the kiss<br />that revived my heart wonderfully. I felt that I feared the<br />dreadful Ash no more.<br />"What did the horrible Ash want with me?" I said.<br />"I am not quite sure, but I think he wants to bury you at the<br />foot of his tree. But he shall not touch you, my child."<br />"Are all the ash-trees as dreadful as he?"<br />"Oh, no. They are all disagreeable selfish creatures--(what<br />horrid men they will make, if it be true!)--but this one has a<br />hole in his heart that nobody knows of but one or two; and he is<br />always trying to fill it up, but he cannot. That must be what he<br />wanted you for. I wonder if he will ever be a man. If he is, I<br />hope they will kill him."<br />"How kind of you to save me from him!"<br />"I will take care that he shall not come near you again. But<br />there are some in the wood more like me, from whom, alas! I<br />cannot protect you. Only if you see any of them very beautiful,<br />try to walk round them."<br />"What then?"<br />"I cannot tell you more. But now I must tie some of my hair<br />about you, and then the Ash will not touch you. Here, cut some<br />off. You men have strange cutting things about you."<br />She shook her long hair loose over me, never moving her arms.<br />"I cannot cut your beautiful hair. It would be a shame."<br />"Not cut my hair! It will have grown long enough before any is<br />wanted again in this wild forest. Perhaps it may never be of any<br />use again--not till I am a woman." And she sighed.<br />As gently as I could, I cut with a knife a long tress of flowing,<br />dark hair, she hanging her beautiful head over me. When I had<br />finished, she shuddered and breathed deep, as one does when an<br />acute pain, steadfastly endured without sign of suffering, is at<br />length relaxed. She then took the hair and tied it round me,<br />singing a strange, sweet song, which I could not understand, but<br />which left in me a feeling like this--<br />"I saw thee ne'er before;<br />I see thee never more;<br />But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one,<br />Have made thee mine, till all my years are done."<br />I cannot put more of it into words. She closed her arms about me<br />again, and went on singing. The rain in the leaves, and a light<br />wind that had arisen, kept her song company. I was wrapt in a<br />trance of still delight. It told me the secret of the woods, and<br />the flowers, and the birds. At one time I felt as if I was<br />wandering in childhood through sunny spring forests, over carpets<br />of primroses, anemones, and little white starry things--I had<br />almost said creatures, and finding new wonderful flowers at every<br />turn. At another, I lay half dreaming in the hot summer noon,<br />with a book of old tales beside me, beneath a great beech; or, in<br />autumn, grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had sheltered<br />me, and received their last blessing in the sweet odours of<br />decay; or, in a winter evening, frozen still, looked up, as I<br />went home to a warm fireside, through the netted boughs and twigs<br />to the cold, snowy moon, with her opal zone around her. At last<br />I had fallen asleep; for I know nothing more that passed till I<br />found myself lying under a superb beech-tree, in the clear light<br />of the morning, just before sunrise. Around me was a girdle of<br />fresh beech-leaves. Alas! I brought nothing with me out of<br />Fairy Land, but memories--memories. The great boughs of the<br />beech hung drooping around me. At my head rose its smooth stem,<br />with its great sweeps of curving surface that swelled like<br />undeveloped limbs. The leaves and branches above kept on the<br />song which had sung me asleep; only now, to my mind, it sounded<br />like a farewell and a speedwell. I sat a long time, unwilling to<br />go; but my unfinished story urged me on. I must act and wander.<br />With the sun well risen, I rose, and put my arms as far as they<br />would reach around the beech-tree, and kissed it, and said goodbye.<br />A trembling went through the leaves; a few of the last<br />drops of the night's rain fell from off them at my feet; and as I<br />walked slowly away, I seemed to hear in a whisper once more the<br />words: "I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I<br />am only a beech-tree."<br />CHAPTER V<br />"And she was smooth and full, as if one gush<br />Of life had washed her, or as if a sleep<br />Lay on her eyelid, easier to sweep<br />Than bee from daisy."<br />BEDDOIS' Pygmalion.<br />"Sche was as whyt as lylye yn May,<br />Or snow that sneweth yn wynterys day."<br />Romance of Sir Launfal.<br />I walked on, in the fresh morning air, as if new-born. The only<br />thing that damped my pleasure was a cloud of something between<br />sorrow and delight that crossed my mind with the frequently<br />returning thought of my last night's hostess. "But then,"<br />thought I, "if she is sorry, I could not help it; and she has all<br />the pleasures she ever had. Such a day as this is surely a joy<br />to her, as much at least as to me. And her life will perhaps be<br />the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came,<br />but could not stay. And if ever she is a woman, who knows but we<br />may meet somewhere? there is plenty of room for meeting in the<br />universe." Comforting myself thus, yet with a vague compunction,<br />as if I ought not to have left her, I went on. There was little<br />to distinguish the woods to-day from those of my own land; except<br />that all the wild things, rabbits, birds, squirrels, mice, and<br />the numberless other inhabitants, were very tame; that is, they<br />did not run away from me, but gazed at me as I passed, frequently<br />coming nearer, as if to examine me more closely. Whether this<br />came from utter ignorance, or from familiarity with the human<br />appearance of beings who never hurt them, I could not tell. As I<br />stood once, looking up to the splendid flower of a parasite,<br />which hung from the branch of a tree over my head, a large white<br />rabbit cantered slowly up, put one of its little feet on one of<br />mine, and looked up at me with its red eyes, just as I had been<br />looking up at the flower above me. I stooped and stroked it; but<br />when I attempted to lift it, it banged the ground with its hind<br />feet and scampered off at a great rate, turning, however, to look<br />at me several times before I lost sight of it. Now and then,<br />too, a dim human figure would appear and disappear, at some<br />distance, amongst the trees, moving like a sleep-walker. But no<br />one ever came near me.<br />This day I found plenty of food in the forest--strange nuts and<br />fruits I had never seen before. I hesitated to eat them; but<br />argued that, if I could live on the air of Fairy Land, I could<br />live on its food also. I found my reasoning correct, and the<br />result was better than I had hoped; for it not only satisfied my<br />hunger, but operated in such a way upon my senses that I was<br />brought into far more complete relationship with the things<br />around me. The human forms appeared much more dense and defined;<br />more tangibly visible, if I may say so. I seemed to know better<br />which direction to choose when any doubt arose. I began to feel<br />in some degree what the birds meant in their songs, though I<br />could not express it in words, any more than you can some<br />landscapes. At times, to my surprise, I found myself listening<br />attentively, and as if it were no unusual thing with me, to a<br />conversation between two squirrels or monkeys. The subjects were<br />not very interesting, except as associated with the individual<br />life and necessities of the little creatures: where the best nuts<br />were to be found in the neighbourhood, and who could crack them<br />best, or who had most laid up for the winter, and such like; only<br />they never said where the store was. There was no great<br />difference in kind between their talk and our ordinary human<br />conversation. Some of the creatures I never heard speak at all,<br />and believe they never do so, except under the impulse of some<br />great excitement. The mice talked; but the hedgehogs seemed very<br />phlegmatic; and though I met a couple of moles above ground<br />several times, they never said a word to each other in my<br />hearing. There were no wild beasts in the forest; at least, I<br />did not see one larger than a wild cat. There were plenty of<br />snakes, however, and I do not think they were all harmless; but<br />none ever bit me.<br />Soon after mid-day I arrived at a bare rocky hill, of no great<br />size, but very steep; and having no trees--scarcely even a bush--<br />upon it, entirely exposed to the heat of the sun. Over this my<br />way seemed to lie, and I immediately began the ascent. On<br />reaching the top, hot and weary, I looked around me, and saw that<br />the forest still stretched as far as the sight could reach on<br />every side of me. I observed that the trees, in the direction in<br />which I was about to descend, did not come so near the foot of<br />the hill as on the other side, and was especially regretting the<br />unexpected postponement of shelter, because this side of the hill<br />seemed more difficult to descend than the other had been to<br />climb, when my eye caught the appearance of a natural path,<br />winding down through broken rocks and along the course of a tiny<br />stream, which I hoped would lead me more easily to the foot. I<br />tried it, and found the descent not at all laborious;<br />nevertheless, when I reached the bottom, I was very tired and<br />exhausted with the heat. But just where the path seemed to end,<br />rose a great rock, quite overgrown with shrubs and creeping<br />plants, some of them in full and splendid blossom: these almost<br />concealed an opening in the rock, into which the path appeared to<br />lead. I entered, thirsting for the shade which it promised.<br />What was my delight to find a rocky cell, all the angles rounded<br />away with rich moss, and every ledge and projection crowded with<br />lovely ferns, the variety of whose forms, and groupings, and<br />shades wrought in me like a poem; for such a harmony could not<br />exist, except they all consented to some one end! A little well<br />of the clearest water filled a mossy hollow in one corner. I<br />drank, and felt as if I knew what the elixir of life must be;<br />then threw myself on a mossy mound that lay like a couch along<br />the inner end. Here I lay in a delicious reverie for some time;<br />during which all lovely forms, and colours, and sounds seemed to<br />use my brain as a common hall, where they could come and go,<br />unbidden and unexcused. I had never imagined that such capacity<br />for simple happiness lay in me, as was now awakened by this<br />assembly of forms and spiritual sensations, which yet were far<br />too vague to admit of being translated into any shape common to<br />my own and another mind. I had lain for an hour, I should<br />suppose, though it may have been far longer, when, the harmonious<br />tumult in my mind having somewhat relaxed, I became aware that my<br />eyes were fixed on a strange, time-worn bas-relief on the rock<br />opposite to me. This, after some pondering, I concluded to<br />represent Pygmalion, as he awaited the quickening of his statue.<br />The sculptor sat more rigid than the figure to which his eyes<br />were turned. That seemed about to step from its pedestal and<br />embrace the man, who waited rather than expected.<br />"A lovely story," I said to myself. "This cave, now, with the<br />bushes cut away from the entrance to let the light in, might be<br />such a place as he would choose, withdrawn from the notice of<br />men, to set up his block of marble, and mould into a visible body<br />the thought already clothed with form in the unseen hall of the<br />sculptor's brain. And, indeed, if I mistake not," I said,<br />starting up, as a sudden ray of light arrived at that moment<br />through a crevice in the roof, and lighted up a small portion of<br />the rock, bare of vegetation, "this very rock is marble, white<br />enough and delicate enough for any statue, even if destined to<br />become an ideal woman in the arms of the sculptor."<br />I took my knife and removed the moss from a part of the block on<br />which I had been lying; when, to my surprise, I found it more<br />like alabaster than ordinary marble, and soft to the edge of the<br />knife. In fact, it was alabaster. By an inexplicable, though by<br />no means unusual kind of impulse, I went on removing the moss<br />from the surface of the stone; and soon saw that it was polished,<br />or at least smooth, throughout. I continued my labour; and after<br />clearing a space of about a couple of square feet, I observed<br />what caused me to prosecute the work with more interest and care<br />than before. For the ray of sunlight had now reached the spot I<br />had cleared, and under its lustre the alabaster revealed its<br />usual slight transparency when polished, except where my knife<br />had scratched the surface; and I observed that the transparency<br />seemed to have a definite limit, and to end upon an opaque body<br />like the more solid, white marble. I was careful to scratch no<br />more. And first, a vague anticipation gave way to a startling<br />sense of possibility; then, as I proceeded, one revelation after<br />another produced the entrancing conviction, that under the crust<br />of alabaster lay a dimly visible form in marble, but whether of<br />man or woman I could not yet tell. I worked on as rapidly as the<br />necessary care would permit; and when I had uncovered the whole<br />mass, and rising from my knees, had retreated a little way, so<br />that the effect of the whole might fall on me, I saw before me<br />with sufficient plainness--though at the same time with<br />considerable indistinctness, arising from the limited amount of<br />light the place admitted, as well as from the nature of the<br />object itself--a block of pure alabaster enclosing the form,<br />apparently in marble, of a reposing woman. She lay on one side,<br />with her hand under her cheek, and her face towards me; but her<br />hair had fallen partly over her face, so that I could not see the<br />expression of the whole. What I did see appeared to me perfectly<br />lovely; more near the face that had been born with me in my soul,<br />than anything I had seen before in nature or art. The actual<br />outlines of the rest of the form were so indistinct, that the<br />more than semi-opacity of the alabaster seemed insufficient to<br />account for the fact; and I conjectured that a light robe added<br />its obscurity. Numberless histories passed through my mind of<br />change of substance from enchantment and other causes, and of<br />imprisonments such as this before me. I thought of the Prince of<br />the Enchanted City, half marble and half a man; of Ariel; of<br />Niobe; of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood; of the bleeding trees;<br />and many other histories. Even my adventure of the preceding<br />evening with the lady of the beech-tree contributed to arouse the<br />wild hope, that by some means life might be given to this form<br />also, and that, breaking from her alabaster tomb, she might<br />glorify my eyes with her presence. "For," I argued, "who can<br />tell but this cave may be the home of Marble, and this, essential<br />Marble--that spirit of marble which, present throughout, makes it<br />capable of being moulded into any form? Then if she should<br />awake! But how to awake her? A kiss awoke the Sleeping Beauty!<br />a kiss cannot reach her through the incrusting alabaster." I<br />kneeled, however, and kissed the pale coffin; but she slept on.<br />I bethought me of Orpheus, and the following stones--that trees<br />should follow his music seemed nothing surprising now. Might not<br />a song awake this form, that the glory of motion might for a time<br />displace the loveliness of rest? Sweet sounds can go where<br />kisses may not enter. I sat and thought. Now, although always<br />delighting in music, I had never been gifted with the power of<br />song, until I entered the fairy forest. I had a voice, and I had<br />a true sense of sound; but when I tried to sing, the one would<br />not content the other, and so I remained silent. This morning,<br />however, I had found myself, ere I was aware, rejoicing in a<br />song; but whether it was before or after I had eaten of the<br />fruits of the forest, I could not satisfy myself. I concluded it<br />was after, however; and that the increased impulse to sing I now<br />felt, was in part owing to having drunk of the little well, which<br />shone like a brilliant eye in a corner of the cave. It saw down<br />on the ground by the "antenatal tomb," leaned upon it with my<br />face towards the head of the figure within, and sang--the words<br />and tones coming together, and inseparably connected, as if word<br />and tone formed one thing; or, as if each word could be uttered<br />only in that tone, and was incapable of distinction from it,<br />except in idea, by an acute analysis. I sang something like<br />this: but the words are only a dull representation of a state<br />whose very elevation precluded the possibility of remembrance;<br />and in which I presume the words really employed were as far<br />above these, as that state transcended this wherein I recall it:<br />"Marble woman, vainly sleeping<br />In the very death of dreams!<br />Wilt thou--slumber from thee sweeping,<br />All but what with vision teems--<br />Hear my voice come through the golden<br />Mist of memory and hope;<br />And with shadowy smile embolden<br />Me with primal Death to cope?<br />"Thee the sculptors all pursuing,<br />Have embodied but their own;<br />Round their visions, form enduring,<br />Marble vestments thou hast thrown;<br />But thyself, in silence winding,<br />Thou hast kept eternally;<br />Thee they found not, many finding--<br />I have found thee: wake for me."<br />As I sang, I looked earnestly at the face so vaguely revealed<br />before me. I fancied, yet believed it to be but fancy, that<br />through the dim veil of the alabaster, I saw a motion of the head<br />as if caused by a sinking sigh. I gazed more earnestly, and<br />concluded that it was but fancy. Neverthless I could not help<br />singing again--<br />"Rest is now filled full of beauty,<br />And can give thee up, I ween;<br />Come thou forth, for other duty<br />Motion pineth for her queen.<br />"Or, if needing years to wake thee<br />From thy slumbrous solitudes,<br />Come, sleep-walking, and betake thee<br />To the friendly, sleeping woods.<br />Sweeter dreams are in the forest,<br />Round thee storms would never rave;<br />And when need of rest is sorest,<br />Glide thou then into thy cave.<br />"Or, if still thou choosest rather<br />Marble, be its spell on me;<br />Let thy slumber round me gather,<br />Let another dream with thee!"<br />Again I paused, and gazed through the stony shroud, as if, by<br />very force of penetrative sight, I would clear every lineament of<br />the lovely face. And now I thought the hand that had lain under<br />the cheek, had slipped a little downward. But then I could not<br />be sure that I had at first observed its position accurately. So<br />I sang again; for the longing had grown into a passionate need of<br />seeing her alive--<br />"Or art thou Death, O woman? for since I<br />Have set me singing by thy side,<br />Life hath forsook the upper sky,<br />And all the outer world hath died.<br />"Yea, I am dead; for thou hast drawn<br />My life all downward unto thee.<br />Dead moon of love! let twilight dawn:<br />Awake! and let the darkness flee.<br />"Cold lady of the lovely stone!<br />Awake! or I shall perish here;<br />And thou be never more alone,<br />My form and I for ages near.<br />"But words are vain; reject them all--<br />They utter but a feeble part:<br />Hear thou the depths from which they call,<br />The voiceless longing of my heart."<br />There arose a slightly crashing sound. Like a sudden apparition<br />that comes and is gone, a white form, veiled in a light robe of<br />whiteness, burst upwards from the stone, stood, glided forth, and<br />gleamed away towards the woods. For I followed to the mouth of<br />the cave, as soon as the amazement and concentration of delight<br />permitted the nerves of motion again to act; and saw the white<br />form amidst the trees, as it crossed a little glade on the edge<br />of the forest where the sunlight fell full, seeming to gather<br />with intenser radiance on the one object that floated rather than<br />flitted through its lake of beams. I gazed after her in a kind<br />of despair; found, freed, lost! It seemed useless to follow, yet<br />follow I must. I marked the direction she took; and without once<br />looking round to the forsaken cave, I hastened towards the<br />forest.<br />CHAPTER VI<br />"Ah, let a man beware, when his wishes, fulfilled, rain down<br />upon him, and his happiness is unbounded."<br />"Thy red lips, like worms,<br />Travel over my cheek."<br />MOTHERWELL.<br />But as I crossed the space between the foot of the hill and the<br />forest, a vision of another kind delayed my steps. Through an<br />opening to the westward flowed, like a stream, the rays of the<br />setting sun, and overflowed with a ruddy splendour the open space<br />where I was. And riding as it were down this stream towards me,<br />came a horseman in what appeared red armour. From frontlet to<br />tail, the horse likewise shone red in the sunset. I felt as if I<br />must have seen the knight before; but as he drew near, I could<br />recall no feature of his countenance. Ere he came up to me,<br />however, I remembered the legend of Sir Percival in the rusty<br />armour, which I had left unfinished in the old book in the<br />cottage: it was of Sir Percival that he reminded me. And no<br />wonder; for when he came close up to me, I saw that, from crest<br />to heel, the whole surface of his armour was covered with a light<br />rust. The golden spurs shone, but the iron greaves glowed in the<br />sunlight. The MORNING STAR, which hung from his wrist, glittered<br />and glowed with its silver and bronze. His whole appearance was<br />terrible; but his face did not answer to this appearance. It was<br />sad, even to gloominess; and something of shame seemed to cover<br />it. Yet it was noble and high, though thus beclouded; and the<br />form looked lofty, although the head drooped, and the whole frame<br />was bowed as with an inward grief. The horse seemed to share in<br />his master's dejection, and walked spiritless and slow. I<br />noticed, too, that the white plume on his helmet was discoloured<br />and drooping. "He has fallen in a joust with spears," I said to<br />myself; "yet it becomes not a noble knight to be conquered in<br />spirit because his body hath fallen." He appeared not to observe<br />me, for he was riding past without looking up, and started into a<br />warlike attitude the moment the first sound of my voice reached<br />him. Then a flush, as of shame, covered all of his face that the<br />lifted beaver disclosed. He returned my greeting with distant<br />courtesy, and passed on. But suddenly, he reined up, sat a<br />moment still, and then turning his horse, rode back to where I<br />stood looking after him.<br />"I am ashamed," he said, "to appear a knight, and in such a<br />guise; but it behoves me to tell you to take warning from me,<br />lest the same evil, in his kind, overtake the singer that has<br />befallen the knight. Hast thou ever read the story of Sir<br />Percival and the"--(here he shuddered, that his armour rang)--<br />"Maiden of the Alder-tree?"<br />"In part, I have," said I; "for yesterday, at the entrance of<br />this forest, I found in a cottage the volume wherein it is<br />recorded."<br />"Then take heed," he rejoined; "for, see my armour--I put it off;<br />and as it befell to him, so has it befallen to me. I that was<br />proud am humble now. Yet is she terribly beautiful--beware.<br />Never," he added, raising his head, "shall this armour be<br />furbished, but by the blows of knightly encounter, until the last<br />speck has disappeared from every spot where the battle-axe and<br />sword of evil-doers, or noble foes, might fall; when I shall<br />again lift my head, and say to my squire, `Do thy duty once more,<br />and make this armour shine.'"<br />Before I could inquire further, he had struck spurs into his<br />horse and galloped away, shrouded from my voice in the noise of<br />his armour. For I called after him, anxious to know more about<br />this fearful enchantress; but in vain--he heard me not. "Yet," I<br />said to myself, "I have now been often warned; surely I shall be<br />well on my guard; and I am fully resolved I shall not be ensnared<br />by any beauty, however beautiful. Doubtless, some one man may<br />escape, and I shall be he." So I went on into the wood, still<br />hoping to find, in some one of its mysterious recesses, my lost<br />lady of the marble. The sunny afternoon died into the loveliest<br />twilight. Great bats began to flit about with their own<br />noiseless flight, seemingly purposeless, because its objects are<br />unseen. The monotonous music of the owl issued from all<br />unexpected quarters in the half-darkness around me. The glowworm<br />was alight here and there, burning out into the great<br />universe. The night-hawk heightened all the harmony and<br />stillness with his oft-recurring, discordant jar. Numberless<br />unknown sounds came out of the unknown dusk; but all were of<br />twilight-kind, oppressing the heart as with a condensed<br />atmosphere of dreamy undefined love and longing. The odours of<br />night arose, and bathed me in that luxurious mournfulness<br />peculiar to them, as if the plants whence they floated had been<br />watered with bygone tears. Earth drew me towards her bosom; I<br />felt as if I could fall down and kiss her. I forgot I was in<br />Fairy Land, and seemed to be walking in a perfect night of our<br />own old nursing earth. Great stems rose about me, uplifting a<br />thick multitudinous roof above me of branches, and twigs, and<br />leaves--the bird and insect world uplifted over mine, with its<br />own landscapes, its own thickets, and paths, and glades, and<br />dwellings; its own bird-ways and insect-delights. Great boughs<br />crossed my path; great roots based the tree-columns, and mightily<br />clasped the earth, strong to lift and strong to uphold. It<br />seemed an old, old forest, perfect in forest ways and pleasures.<br />And when, in the midst of this ecstacy, I remembered that under<br />some close canopy of leaves, by some giant stem, or in some mossy<br />cave, or beside some leafy well, sat the lady of the marble, whom<br />my songs had called forth into the outer world, waiting (might it<br />not be?) to meet and thank her deliverer in a twilight which<br />would veil her confusion, the whole night became one dream-realm<br />of joy, the central form of which was everywhere present,<br />although unbeheld. Then, remembering how my songs seemed to have<br />called her from the marble, piercing through the pearly shroud of<br />alabaster--"Why," thought I, "should not my voice reach her now,<br />through the ebon night that inwraps her." My voice burst into<br />song so spontaneously that it seemed involuntarily.<br />"Not a sound<br />But, echoing in me,<br />Vibrates all around<br />With a blind delight,<br />Till it breaks on Thee,<br />Queen of Night!<br />Every tree,<br />O'ershadowing with gloom,<br />Seems to cover thee<br />Secret, dark, love-still'd,<br />In a holy room<br />Silence-filled.<br />"Let no moon<br />Creep up the heaven to-night;<br />I in darksome noon<br />Walking hopefully,<br />Seek my shrouded light--<br />Grope for thee!<br />"Darker grow<br />The borders of the dark!<br />Through the branches glow,<br />From the roof above,<br />Star and diamond-sparks<br />Light for love."<br />Scarcely had the last sounds floated away from the hearing of my<br />own ears, when I heard instead a low delicious laugh near me. It<br />was not the laugh of one who would not be heard, but the laugh of<br />one who has just received something long and patiently desired--a<br />laugh that ends in a low musical moan. I started, and, turning<br />sideways, saw a dim white figure seated beside an intertwining<br />thicket of smaller trees and underwood.<br />"It is my white lady!" I said, and flung myself on the ground<br />beside her; striving, through the gathering darkness, to get a<br />glimpse of the form which had broken its marble prison at my<br />call.<br />"It is your white lady!" said the sweetest voice, in reply,<br />sending a thrill of speechless delight through a heart which all<br />the love-charms of the preceding day and evening had been<br />tempering for this culminating hour. Yet, if I would have<br />confessed it, there was something either in the sound of the<br />voice, although it seemed sweetness itself, or else in this<br />yielding which awaited no gradation of gentle approaches, that<br />did not vibrate harmoniously with the beat of my inward music.<br />And likewise, when, taking her hand in mine, I drew closer to<br />her, looking for the beauty of her face, which, indeed, I found<br />too plenteously, a cold shiver ran through me; but "it is the<br />marble," I said to myself, and heeded it not.<br />She withdrew her hand from mine, and after that would scarce<br />allow me to touch her. It seemed strange, after the fulness of<br />her first greeting, that she could not trust me to come close to<br />her. Though her words were those of a lover, she kept herself<br />withdrawn as if a mile of space interposed between us.<br />"Why did you run away from me when you woke in the cave?" I said.<br />"Did I?" she returned. "That was very unkind of me; but I did<br />not know better."<br />"I wish I could see you. The night is very dark."<br />"So it is. Come to my grotto. There is light there."<br />"Have you another cave, then?"<br />"Come and see."<br />But she did not move until I rose first, and then she was on her<br />feet before I could offer my hand to help her. She came close to<br />my side, and conducted me through the wood. But once or twice,<br />when, involuntarily almost, I was about to put my arm around her<br />as we walked on through the warm gloom, she sprang away several<br />paces, always keeping her face full towards me, and then stood<br />looking at me, slightly stooping, in the attitude of one who<br />fears some half-seen enemy. It was too dark to discern the<br />expression of her face. Then she would return and walk close<br />beside me again, as if nothing had happened. I thought this<br />strange; but, besides that I had almost, as I said before, given<br />up the attempt to account for appearances in Fairy Land, I judged<br />that it would be very unfair to expect from one who had slept so<br />long and had been so suddenly awakened, a behaviour correspondent<br />to what I might unreflectingly look for. I knew not what she<br />might have been dreaming about. Besides, it was possible that,<br />while her words were free, her sense of touch might be<br />exquisitely delicate.<br />At length, after walking a long way in the woods, we arrived at<br />another thicket, through the intertexture of which was glimmering<br />a pale rosy light.<br />"Push aside the branches," she said, "and make room for us to<br />enter."<br />I did as she told me.<br />"Go in," she said; "I will follow you."<br />I did as she desired, and found myself in a little cave, not very<br />unlike the marble cave. It was festooned and draperied with all<br />kinds of green that cling to shady rocks. In the furthest<br />corner, half- hidden in leaves, through which it glowed, mingling<br />lovely shadows between them, burned a bright rosy flame on a<br />little earthen lamp. The lady glided round by the wall from<br />behind me, still keeping her face towards me, and seated herself<br />in the furthest corner, with her back to the lamp, which she hid<br />completely from my view. I then saw indeed a form of perfect<br />loveliness before me. Almost it seemed as if the light of the<br />rose-lamp shone through her (for it could not be reflected from<br />her); such a delicate shade of pink seemed to shadow what in<br />itself must be a marbly whiteness of hue. I discovered<br />afterwards, however, that there was one thing in it I did not<br />like; which was, that the white part of the eye was tinged with<br />the same slight roseate hue as the rest of the form. It is<br />strange that I cannot recall her features; but they, as well as<br />her somewhat girlish figure, left on me simply and only the<br />impression of intense loveliness. I lay down at her feet, and<br />gazed up into her face as I lay. She began, and told me a<br />strange tale, which, likewise, I cannot recollect; but which, at<br />every turn and every pause, somehow or other fixed my eyes and<br />thoughts upon her extreme beauty; seeming always to culminate in<br />something that had a relation, revealed or hidden, but always<br />operative, with her own loveliness. I lay entranced. It was a<br />tale which brings back a feeling as of snows and tempests;<br />torrents and water-sprites; lovers parted for long, and meeting<br />at last; with a gorgeous summer night to close up the whole. I<br />listened till she and I were blended with the tale; till she and<br />I were the whole history. And we had met at last in this same<br />cave of greenery, while the summer night hung round us heavy with<br />love, and the odours that crept through the silence from the<br />sleeping woods were the only signs of an outer world that invaded<br />our solitude. What followed I cannot clearly remember. The<br />succeeding horror almost obliterated it. I woke as a grey dawn<br />stole into the cave. The damsel had disappeared; but in the<br />shrubbery, at the mouth of the cave, stood a strange horrible<br />object. It looked like an open coffin set up on one end; only<br />that the part for the head and neck was defined from the<br />shoulder-part. In fact, it was a rough representation of the<br />human frame, only hollow, as if made of decaying bark torn from a<br />tree.<br />It had arms, which were only slightly seamed, down from the<br />shoulder- blade by the elbow, as if the bark had healed again<br />from the cut of a knife. But the arms moved, and the hand and<br />the fingers were tearing asunder a long silky tress of hair. The<br />thing turned round--it had for a face and front those of my<br />enchantress, but now of a pale greenish hue in the light of the<br />morning, and with dead lustreless eyes. In the horror of the<br />moment, another fear invaded me. I put my hand to my waist, and<br />found indeed that my girdle of beech-leaves was gone. Hair again<br />in her hands, she was tearing it fiercely. Once more, as she<br />turned, she laughed a low laugh, but now full of scorn and<br />derision; and then she said, as if to a companion with whom she<br />had been talking while I slept, "There he is; you can take him<br />now." I lay still, petrified with dismay and fear; for I now saw<br />another figure beside her, which, although vague and indistinct,<br />I yet recognised but too well. It was the Ash-tree. My beauty<br />was the Maid of the Alder! and she was giving me, spoiled of my<br />only availing defence, into the hands of bent his Gorgon-head,<br />and entered the cave. I could not stir. He drew near me. His<br />ghoul-eyes and his ghastly face fascinated me. He came stooping,<br />with the hideous hand outstretched, like a beast of prey. I had<br />given myself up to a death of unfathomable horror, when,<br />suddenly, and just as he was on the point of seizing me, the<br />dull, heavy blow of an axe echoed through the wood, followed by<br />others in quick repetition. The Ash shuddered and groaned,<br />withdrew the outstretched hand, retreated backwards to the mouth<br />of the cave, then turned and disappeared amongst the trees. The<br />other walking Death looked at me once, with a careless dislike on<br />her beautifully moulded features; then, heedless any more to<br />conceal her hollow deformity, turned her frightful back and<br />likewise vanished amid the green obscurity without. I lay and<br />wept. The Maid of the Alder-tree had befooled me--nearly slain<br />me--in spite of all the warnings I had received from those who<br />knew my danger.<br />CHAPTER VII<br />"Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew sayes,<br />A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine;<br />He but lye downe and bleede awhile,<br />And then Ile rise and fight againe."<br />Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton.<br />But I could not remain where I was any longer, though the<br />daylight was hateful to me, and the thought of the great,<br />innocent, bold sunrise unendurable. Here there was no well to<br />cool my face, smarting with the bitterness of my own tears. Nor<br />would I have washed in the well of that grotto, had it flowed<br />clear as the rivers of Paradise. I rose, and feebly left the<br />sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not whither, but still<br />towards the sunrise. The birds were singing; but not for me.<br />All the creatures spoke a language of their own, with which I had<br />nothing to do, and to which I cared not to find the key any more.<br />I walked listlessly along. What distressed me most--more even<br />than my own folly--was the perplexing question, How can beauty<br />and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and<br />her face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around<br />her; known for a living, walking sepulchre, faithless, deluding,<br />traitorous; I felt notwithstanding all this, that she was<br />beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity,<br />though not without some gain. Then I began to make surmises as<br />to the mode of my deliverance; and concluded that some hero,<br />wandering in search of adventure, had heard how the forest was<br />infested; and, knowing it was useless to attack the evil thing in<br />person, had assailed with his battle-axe the body in which he<br />dwelt, and on which he was dependent for his power of mischief in<br />the wood. "Very likely," I thought, "the repentant-knight, who<br />warned me of the evil which has befallen me, was busy retrieving<br />his lost honour, while I was sinking into the same sorrow with<br />himself; and, hearing of the dangerous and mysterious being,<br />arrived at his tree in time to save me from being dragged to its<br />roots, and buried like carrion, to nourish him for yet deeper<br />insatiableness." I found afterwards that my conjecture was<br />correct. I wondered how he had fared when his blows recalled the<br />Ash himself, and that too I learned afterwards.<br />I walked on the whole day, with intervals of rest, but without<br />food; for I could not have eaten, had any been offered me; till,<br />in the afternoon, I seemed to approach the outskirts of the<br />forest, and at length arrived at a farm-house. An unspeakable<br />joy arose in my heart at beholding an abode of human beings once<br />more, and I hastened up to the door, and knocked. A<br />kind-looking, matronly woman, still handsome, made her<br />appearance; who, as soon as she saw me, said kindly, "Ah, my poor<br />boy, you have come from the wood! Were you in it last night?"<br />I should have ill endured, the day before, to be called BOY; but<br />now the motherly kindness of the word went to my heart; and, like<br />a boy indeed, I burst into tears. She soothed me right gently;<br />and, leading me into a room, made me lie down on a settle, while<br />she went to find me some refreshment. She soon returned with<br />food, but I could not eat. She almost compelled me to swallow<br />some wine, when I revived sufficiently to be able to answer some<br />of her questions. I told her the whole story.<br />"It is just as I feared," she said; "but you are now for the<br />night beyond the reach of any of these dreadful creatures. It is<br />no wonder they could delude a child like you. But I must beg<br />you, when my husband comes in, not to say a word about these<br />things; for he thinks me even half crazy for believing anything<br />of the sort. But I must believe my senses, as he cannot believe<br />beyond his, which give him no intimations of this kind. I think<br />he could spend the whole of Midsummer-eve in the wood and come<br />back with the report that he saw nothing worse than himself.<br />Indeed, good man, he would hardly find anything better than<br />himself, if he had seven more senses given him."<br />"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any<br />heart at all--without any place even for a heart to live in."<br />"I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not<br />look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look<br />more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by<br />being in love with her before you saw her beauty, mistaking her<br />for the lady of the marble--another kind altogether, I should<br />think. But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this:<br />that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man;<br />and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him<br />and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that<br />she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the<br />admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely--with a selfdestructive<br />beauty, though; for it is that which is constantly<br />wearing her away within, till, at last, the decay will reach her<br />face, and her whole front, when all the lovely mask of nothing<br />will fall to pieces, and she be vanished for ever. So a wise<br />man, whom she met in the wood some years ago, and who, I think,<br />for all his wisdom, fared no better than you, told me, when, like<br />you, he spent the next night here, and recounted to me his<br />adventures."<br />I thanked her very warmly for her solution, though it was but<br />partial; wondering much that in her, as in woman I met on my<br />first entering the forest, there should be such superiority to<br />her apparent condition. Here she left me to take some rest;<br />though, indeed, I was too much agitated to rest in any other way<br />than by simply ceasing to move.<br />In half an hour, I heard a heavy step approach and enter the<br />house. A jolly voice, whose slight huskiness appeared to proceed<br />from overmuch laughter, called out "Betsy, the pigs' trough is<br />quite empty, and that is a pity. Let them swill, lass! They're<br />of no use but to get fat. Ha! ha! ha! Gluttony is not forbidden<br />in their commandments. Ha! ha! ha!" The very voice, kind and<br />jovial, seemed to disrobe the room of the strange look which all<br />new places wear--to disenchant it out of the realm of the ideal<br />into that of the actual. It began to look as if I had known<br />every corner of it for twenty years; and when, soon after, the<br />dame came and fetched me to partake of their early supper, the<br />grasp of his great hand, and the harvest-moon of his benevolent<br />face, which was needed to light up the rotundity of the globe<br />beneath it, produced such a reaction in me, that, for a moment, I<br />could hardly believe that there was a Fairy Land; and that all I<br />had passed through since I left home, had not been the wandering<br />dream of a diseased imagination, operating on a too mobile frame,<br />not merely causing me indeed to travel, but peopling for me with<br />vague phantoms the regions through which my actual steps had led<br />me. But the next moment my eye fell upon a little girl who was<br />sitting in the chimney-corner, with a little book open on her<br />knee, from which she had apparently just looked up to fix great<br />inquiring eyes upon me. I believed in Fairy Land again. She<br />went on with her reading, as soon as she saw that I observed her<br />looking at me. I went near, and peeping over her shoulder, saw<br />that she was reading "The History of Graciosa and Percinet."<br />"Very improving book, sir," remarked the old farmer, with a goodhumoured<br />laugh. "We are in the very hottest corner of Fairy Land<br />here. Ha! ha! Stormy night, last night, sir."<br />"Was it, indeed?" I rejoined. "It was not so with me. A<br />lovelier night I never saw."<br />"Indeed! Where were you last night?"<br />"I spent it in the forest. I had lost my way."<br />"Ah! then, perhaps, you will be able to convince my good woman,<br />that there is nothing very remarkable about the forest; for, to<br />tell the truth, it bears but a bad name in these parts. I dare<br />say you saw nothing worse than yourself there?"<br />"I hope I did," was my inward reply; but, for an audible one, I<br />contented myself with saying, "Why, I certainly did see some<br />appearances I could hardly account for; but that is nothing to be<br />wondered at in an unknown wild forest, and with the uncertain<br />light of the moon alone to go by."<br />"Very true! you speak like a sensible man, sir. We have but few<br />sensible folks round about us. Now, you would hardly credit it,<br />but my wife believes every fairy-tale that ever was written. I<br />cannot account for it. She is a most sensible woman in<br />everything else."<br />"But should not that make you treat her belief with something of<br />respect, though you cannot share in it yourself?"<br />"Yes, that is all very well in theory; but when you come to live<br />every day in the midst of absurdity, it is far less easy to<br />behave respectfully to it. Why, my wife actually believes the<br />story of the `White Cat.' You know it, I dare say."<br />"I read all these tales when a child, and know that one<br />especially well."<br />"But, father," interposed the little girl in the chimney-corner,<br />"you know quite well that mother is descended from that very<br />princess who was changed by the wicked fairy into a white cat.<br />Mother has told me so a many times, and you ought to believe<br />everything she says."<br />"I can easily believe that," rejoined the farmer, with another<br />fit of laughter; "for, the other night, a mouse came gnawing and<br />scratching beneath the floor, and would not let us go to sleep.<br />Your mother sprang out of bed, and going as near it as she could,<br />mewed so infernally like a great cat, that the noise ceased<br />instantly. I believe the poor mouse died of the fright, for we<br />have never heard it again. Ha! ha! ha!"<br />The son, an ill-looking youth, who had entered during the<br />conversation, joined in his father's laugh; but his laugh was<br />very different from the old man's: it was polluted with a sneer.<br />I watched him, and saw that, as soon as it was over, he looked<br />scared, as if he dreaded some evil consequences to follow his<br />presumption. The woman stood near, waiting till we should seat<br />ourselves at the table, and listening to it all with an amused<br />air, which had something in it of the look with which one listens<br />to the sententious remarks of a pompous child. We sat down to<br />supper, and I ate heartily. My bygone distresses began already<br />to look far off.<br />"In what direction are you going?" asked the old man.<br />"Eastward," I replied; nor could I have given a more definite<br />answer. "Does the forest extend much further in that direction?"<br />"Oh! for miles and miles; I do not know how far. For although I<br />have lived on the borders of it all my life, I have been too busy<br />to make journeys of discovery into it. Nor do I see what I could<br />discover. It is only trees and trees, till one is sick of them.<br />By the way, if you follow the eastward track from here, you will<br />pass close to what the children say is the very house of the ogre<br />that Hop-o'-my-Thumb visited, and ate his little daughters with<br />the crowns of gold."<br />"Oh, father! ate his little daughters! No; he only changed their<br />gold crowns for nightcaps; and the great long-toothed ogre killed<br />them in mistake; but I do not think even he ate them, for you<br />know they were his own little ogresses."<br />"Well, well, child; you know all about it a great deal better<br />than I do. However, the house has, of course, in such a foolish<br />neighbourhood as this, a bad enough name; and I must confess<br />there is a woman living in it, with teeth long enough, and white<br />enough too, for the lineal descendant of the greatest ogre that<br />ever was made. I think you had better not go near her."<br />In such talk as this the night wore on. When supper was<br />finished, which lasted some time, my hostess conducted me to my<br />chamber.<br />"If you had not had enough of it already," she said, "I would<br />have put you in another room, which looks towards the forest; and<br />where you would most likely have seen something more of its<br />inhabitants. For they frequently pass the window, and even enter<br />the room sometimes. Strange creatures spend whole nights in it,<br />at certain seasons of the year. I am used to it, and do not mind<br />it. No more does my little girl, who sleeps in it always. But<br />this room looks southward towards the open country, and they<br />never show themselves here; at least I never saw any."<br />I was somewhat sorry not to gather any experience that I might<br />have, of the inhabitants of Fairy Land; but the effect of the<br />farmer's company, and of my own later adventures, was such, that<br />I chose rather an undisturbed night in my more human quarters;<br />which, with their clean white curtains and white linen, were very<br />inviting to my weariness.<br />In the morning I awoke refreshed, after a profound and dreamless<br />sleep. The sun was high, when I looked out of the window,<br />shining over a wide, undulating, cultivated country. Various<br />garden-vegetables were growing beneath my window. Everything was<br />radiant with clear sunlight. The dew-drops were sparkling their<br />busiest; the cows in a near-by field were eating as if they had<br />not been at it all day yesterday; the maids were singing at their<br />work as they passed to and fro between the out-houses: I did not<br />believe in Fairy Land. I went down, and found the family already<br />at breakfast. But before I entered the room where they sat, the<br />little girl came to me, and looked up in my face, as though she<br />wanted to say something to me. I stooped towards her; she put<br />her arms round my neck, and her mouth to my ear, and whispered--<br />"A white lady has been flitting about the house all night."<br />"No whispering behind doors!" cried the farmer; and we entered<br />together. "Well, how have you slept? No bogies, eh?"<br />"Not one, thank you; I slept uncommonly well."<br />"I am glad to hear it. Come and breakfast."<br />After breakfast, the farmer and his son went out; and I was left<br />alone with the mother and daughter.<br />"When I looked out of the window this morning," I said, "I felt<br />almost certain that Fairy Land was all a delusion of my brain;<br />but whenever I come near you or your little daughter, I feel<br />differently. Yet I could persuade myself, after my last<br />adventures, to go back, and have nothing more to do with such<br />strange beings."<br />"How will you go back?" said the woman.<br />"Nay, that I do not know."<br />"Because I have heard, that, for those who enter Fairy Land,<br />there is no way of going back. They must go on, and go through<br />it. How, I do not in the least know."<br />"That is quite the impression on my own mind. Something compels<br />me to go on, as if my only path was onward, but I feel less<br />inclined this morning to continue my adventures."<br />"Will you come and see my little child's room? She sleeps in the<br />one I told you of, looking towards the forest."<br />"Willingly," I said.<br />So we went together, the little girl running before to open the<br />door for us. It was a large room, full of old-fashioned<br />furniture, that seemed to have once belonged to some great house.<br />The window was built with a low arch, and filled with<br />lozenge-shaped panes. The wall was very thick, and built of<br />solid stone. I could see that part of the house had been erected<br />against the remains of some old castle or abbey, or other great<br />building; the fallen stones of which had probably served to<br />complete it. But as soon as I looked out of the window, a gush<br />of wonderment and longing flowed over my soul like the tide of a<br />great sea. Fairy Land lay before me, and drew me towards it with<br />an irresistible attraction. The trees bathed their great heads<br />in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep<br />in gloom; save where on the borders the sunshine broke against<br />their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues,<br />washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed;<br />revealing the rich brown of the decayed leaves and fallen<br />pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny<br />forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in<br />motionless rivers of light. I turned hurriedly to bid my hostess<br />farewell without further delay. She smiled at my haste, but with<br />an anxious look.<br />"You had better not go near the house of the ogre, I think. My<br />son will show you into another path, which will join the first<br />beyond it."<br />Not wishing to be headstrong or too confident any more, I agreed;<br />and having taken leave of my kind entertainers, went into the<br />wood, accompanied by the youth. He scarcely spoke as we went<br />along; but he led me through the trees till we struck upon a<br />path. He told me to follow it, and, with a muttered "good<br />morning" left me.<br />CHAPTER VIII<br />"I am a part of the part, which at first was the whole."<br />GOETHE.--Mephistopheles in Faust.<br />My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could<br />not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to<br />be like life itself--not to be created by any argument.<br />Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of<br />pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let<br />them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find<br />you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better<br />and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the<br />forest. In the middle of this clearing stood a long, low hut,<br />built with one end against a single tall cypress, which rose like<br />a spire to the building. A vague misgiving crossed my mind when<br />I saw it; but I must needs go closer, and look through a little<br />half-open door, near the opposite end from the cypress. Window I<br />saw none. On peeping in, and looking towards the further end, I<br />saw a lamp burning, with a dim, reddish flame, and the head of a<br />woman, bent downwards, as if reading by its light. I could see<br />nothing more for a few moments. At length, as my eyes got used<br />to the dimness of the place, I saw that the part of the rude<br />building near me was used for household purposes; for several<br />rough utensils lay here and there, and a bed stood in the corner.<br />An irresistible attraction caused me to enter. The woman never<br />raised her face, the upper part of which alone I could see<br />distinctly; but, as soon as I stepped within the threshold, she<br />began to read aloud, in a low and not altogether unpleasing<br />voice, from an ancient little volume which she held open with one<br />hand on the table upon which stood the lamp. What she read was<br />something like this:<br />"So, then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever<br />have an end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of aught<br />else, is its affirmation. Where the light cannot come, there<br />abideth the darkness. The light doth but hollow a mine out of<br />the infinite extension of the darkness. And ever upon the steps<br />of the light treadeth the darkness; yea, springeth in fountains<br />and wells amidst it, from the secret channels of its mighty sea.<br />Truly, man is but a passing flame, moving unquietly amid the<br />surrounding rest of night; without which he yet could not be, and<br />whereof he is in part compounded."<br />As I drew nearer, and she read on, she moved a little to turn a<br />leaf of the dark old volume, and I saw that her face was sallow<br />and slightly forbidding. Her forehead was high, and her black<br />eyes repressedly quiet. But she took no notice of me. This end<br />of the cottage, if cottage it could be called, was destitute of<br />furniture, except the table with the lamp, and the chair on which<br />the woman sat. In one corner was a door, apparently of a<br />cupboard in the wall, but which might lead to a room beyond.<br />Still the irresistible desire which had made me enter the<br />building urged me: I must open that door, and see what was<br />beyond it. I approached, and laid my hand on the rude latch.<br />Then the woman spoke, but without lifting her head or looking at<br />me: "You had better not open that door." This was uttered quite<br />quietly; and she went on with her reading, partly in silence,<br />partly aloud; but both modes seemed equally intended for herself<br />alone. The prohibition, however, only increased my desire to<br />see; and as she took no further notice, I gently opened the door<br />to its full width, and looked in. At first, I saw nothing worthy<br />of attention. It seemed a common closet, with shelves on each<br />hand, on which stood various little necessaries for the humble<br />uses of a cottage. In one corner stood one or two brooms, in<br />another a hatchet and other common tools; showing that it was in<br />use every hour of the day for household purposes. But, as I<br />looked, I saw that there were no shelves at the back, and that an<br />empty space went in further; its termination appearing to be a<br />faintly glimmering wall or curtain, somewhat less, however, than<br />the width and height of the doorway where I stood. But, as I<br />continued looking, for a few seconds, towards this faintly<br />luminous limit, my eyes came into true relation with their<br />object. All at once, with such a shiver as when one is suddenly<br />conscious of the presence of another in a room where he has, for<br />hours, considered himself alone, I saw that the seemingly<br />luminous extremity was a sky, as of night, beheld through the<br />long perspective of a narrow, dark passage, through what, or<br />built of what, I could not tell. As I gazed, I clearly discerned<br />two or three stars glimmering faintly in the distant blue. But,<br />suddenly, and as if it had been running fast from a far distance<br />for this very point, and had turned the corner without abating<br />its swiftness, a dark figure sped into and along the passage from<br />the blue opening at the remote end. I started back and<br />shuddered, but kept looking, for I could not help it. On and on<br />it came, with a speedy approach but delayed arrival; till, at<br />last, through the many gradations of approach, it seemed to come<br />within the sphere of myself, rushed up to me, and passed me into<br />the cottage. All I could tell of its appearance was, that it<br />seemed to be a dark human figure. Its motion was entirely<br />noiseless, and might be called a gliding, were it not that it<br />appeared that of a runner, but with ghostly feet. I had moved<br />back yet a little to let him pass me, and looked round after him<br />instantly. I could not see him.<br />"Where is he?" I said, in some alarm, to the woman, who still sat<br />reading.<br />"There, on the floor, behind you," she said, pointing with her<br />arm half-outstretched, but not lifting her eyes. I turned and<br />looked, but saw nothing. Then with a feeling that there was yet<br />something behind me, I looked round over my shoulder; and there,<br />on the ground, lay a black shadow, the size of a man. It was so<br />dark, that I could see it in the dim light of the lamp, which<br />shone full upon it, apparently without thinning at all the<br />intensity of its hue.<br />"I told you," said the woman, "you had better not look into that<br />closet."<br />"What is it?" I said, with a growing sense of horror.<br />"It is only your shadow that has found you," she replied.<br />Everybody's shadow is ranging up and down looking for him. I<br />believe you call it by a different name in your world: yours has<br />found you, as every person's is almost certain to do who looks<br />into that closet, especially after meeting one in the forest,<br />whom I dare say you have met."<br />Here, for the first time, she lifted her head, and looked full at<br />me: her mouth was full of long, white, shining teeth; and I knew<br />that I was in the house of the ogre. I could not speak, but<br />turned and left the house, with the shadow at my heels. "A nice<br />sort of valet to have," I said to myself bitterly, as I stepped<br />into the sunshine, and, looking over my shoulder, saw that it lay<br />yet blacker in the full blaze of the sunlight. Indeed, only when<br />I stood between it and the sun, was the blackness at all<br />diminished. I was so bewildered-- stunned--both by the event<br />itself and its suddenness, that I could not at all realise to<br />myself what it would be to have such a constant and strange<br />attendance; but with a dim conviction that my present dislike<br />would soon grow to loathing, I took my dreary way through the<br />wood.<br />CHAPTER IX<br />"O lady! we receive but what we give,<br />And in our life alone does nature live:<br />Ours is her wedding garments ours her shrorwd!<br />. . . . .<br />Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,<br />A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud,<br />Enveloping the Earth--<br />And from the soul itself must there be sent<br />A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,<br />Of all sweet sounds the life and element!"<br />COLERIDGE.<br />From this time, until I arrived at the palace of Fairy Land, I<br />can attempt no consecutive account of my wanderings and<br />adventures. Everything, henceforward, existed for me in its<br />relation to my attendant. What influence he exercised upon<br />everything into contact with which I was brought, may be<br />understood from a few detached instances. To begin with this<br />very day on which he first joined me: after I had walked<br />heartlessly along for two or three hours, I was very weary, and<br />lay down to rest in a most delightful part of the forest,<br />carpeted with wild flowers. I lay for half an hour in a dull<br />repose, and then got up to pursue my way. The flowers on the<br />spot where I had lain were crushed to the earth: but I saw that<br />they would soon lift their heads and rejoice again in the sun and<br />air. Not so those on which my shadow had lain. The very outline<br />of it could be traced in the withered lifeless grass, and the<br />scorched and shrivelled flowers which stood there, dead, and<br />hopeless of any resurrection. I shuddered, and hastened away<br />with sad forebodings.<br />In a few days, I had reason to dread an extension of its baleful<br />influences from the fact, that it was no longer confined to one<br />position in regard to myself. Hitherto, when seized with an<br />irresistible desire to look on my evil demon (which longing would<br />unaccountably seize me at any moment, returning at longer or<br />shorter intervals, sometimes every minute), I had to turn my head<br />backwards, and look over my shoulder; in which position, as long<br />as I could retain it, I was fascinated. But one day, having come<br />out on a clear grassy hill, which commanded a glorious prospect,<br />though of what I cannot now tell, my shadow moved round, and came<br />in front of me. And, presently, a new manifestation increased my<br />distress. For it began to coruscate, and shoot out on all sides<br />a radiation of dim shadow. These rays of gloom issued from the<br />central shadow as from a black sun, lengthening and shortening<br />with continual change. But wherever a ray struck, that part of<br />earth, or sea, or sky, became void, and desert, and sad to my<br />heart. On this, the first development of its new power, one ray<br />shot out beyond the rest, seeming to lengthen infinitely, until<br />it smote the great sun on the face, which withered and darkened<br />beneath the blow. I turned away and went on. The shadow<br />retreated to its former position; and when I looked again, it had<br />drawn in all its spears of darkness, and followed like a dog at<br />my heels.<br />Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy<br />child, with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the<br />tube through which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds<br />the same thing everywhere; the other that through which he looks<br />when he combines into new forms of loveliness those images of<br />beauty which his own choice has gathered from all regions wherein<br />he has travelled. Round the child's head was an aureole of<br />emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and delight, round<br />crept from behind me the something dark, and the child stood in<br />my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy, with a rough<br />broad-brimmed straw hat, through which brim the sun shone from<br />behind. The toys he carried were a multiplying-glass and a<br />kaleidoscope. I sighed and departed.<br />One evening, as a great silent flood of western gold flowed<br />through an avenue in the woods, down the stream, just as when I<br />saw him first, came the sad knight, riding on his chestnut steed.<br />But his armour did not shine half so red as when I saw him first.<br />Many a blow of mighty sword and axe, turned aside by the strength<br />of his mail, and glancing adown the surface, had swept from its<br />path the fretted rust, and the glorious steel had answered the<br />kindly blow with the thanks of returning light. These streaks<br />and spots made his armour look like the floor of a forest in the<br />sunlight. His forehead was higher than before, for the<br />contracting wrinkles were nearly gone; and the sadness that<br />remained on his face was the sadness of a dewy summer twilight,<br />not that of a frosty autumn morn. He, too, had met the<br />Alder-maiden as I, but he had plunged into the torrent of mighty<br />deeds, and the stain was nearly washed away. No shadow followed<br />him. He had not entered the dark house; he had not had time to<br />open the closet door. "Will he ever look in?" I said to myself.<br />"MUST his shadow find him some day?" But I could not answer my<br />own questions.<br />We travelled together for two days, and I began to love him. It<br />was plain that he suspected my story in some degree; and I saw<br />him once or twice looking curiously and anxiously at my attendant<br />gloom, which all this time had remained very obsequiously behind<br />me; but I offered no explanation, and he asked none. Shame at my<br />neglect of his warning, and a horror which shrunk from even<br />alluding to its cause, kept me silent; till, on the evening of<br />the second day, some noble words from my companion roused all my<br />heart; and I was at the point of falling on his neck, and telling<br />him the whole story; seeking, if not for helpful advice, for of<br />that I was hopeless, yet for the comfort of sympathy--when round<br />slid the shadow and inwrapt my friend; and I could not trust him.<br />The glory of his brow vanished; the light of his eye grew cold;<br />and I held my peace. The next morning we parted.<br />But the most dreadful thing of all was, that I now began to feel<br />something like satisfaction in the presence of the shadow. I<br />began to be rather vain of my attendant, saying to myself, "In a<br />land like this, with so many illusions everywhere, I need his aid<br />to disenchant the things around me. He does away with all<br />appearances, and shows me things in their true colour and form.<br />And I am not one to be fooled with the vanities of the common<br />crowd. I will not see beauty where there is none. I will dare<br />to behold things as they are. And if I live in a waste instead<br />of a paradise, I will live knowing where I live." But of this a<br />certain exercise of his power which soon followed quite cured me,<br />turning my feelings towards him once more into loathing and<br />distrust. It was thus:<br />One bright noon, a little maiden joined me, coming through the<br />wood in a direction at right angles to my path. She came along<br />singing and dancing, happy as a child, though she seemed almost a<br />woman. In her hands--now in one, now in another--she carried a<br />small globe, bright and clear as the purest crystal. This seemed<br />at once her plaything and her greatest treasure. At one moment,<br />you would have thought her utterly careless of it, and at<br />another, overwhelmed with anxiety for its safety. But I believe<br />she was taking care of it all the time, perhaps not least when<br />least occupied about it. She stopped by me with a smile, and<br />bade me good day with the sweetest voice. I felt a wonderful<br />liking to the child--for she produced on me more the impression<br />of a child, though my understanding told me differently. We<br />talked a little, and then walked on together in the direction I<br />had been pursuing. I asked her about the globe she carried, but<br />getting no definite answer, I held out my hand to take it. She<br />drew back, and said, but smiling almost invitingly the while,<br />"You must not touch it;"--then, after a moment's pause--"Or if<br />you do, it must be very gently." I touched it with a finger. A<br />slight vibratory motion arose in it, accompanied, or perhaps<br />manifested, by a faint sweet sound. I touched it again, and the<br />sound increased. I touched it the third time: a tiny torrent of<br />harmony rolled out of the little globe. She would not let me<br />touch it any more.<br />We travelled on together all that day. She left me when twilight<br />came on; but next day, at noon, she met me as before, and again<br />we travelled till evening. The third day she came once more at<br />noon, and we walked on together. Now, though we had talked about<br />a great many things connected with Fairy Land, and the life she<br />had led hitherto, I had never been able to learn anything about<br />the globe. This day, however, as we went on, the shadow glided<br />round and inwrapt the maiden. It could not change her. But my<br />desire to know about the globe, which in his gloom began to waver<br />as with an inward light, and to shoot out flashes of<br />many-coloured flame, grew irresistible. I put out both my hands<br />and laid hold of it. It began to sound as before. The sound<br />rapidly increased, till it grew a low tempest of harmony, and the<br />globe trembled, and quivered, and throbbed between my hands. I<br />had not the heart to pull it away from the maiden, though I held<br />it in spite of her attempts to take it from me; yes, I shame to<br />say, in spite of her prayers, and, at last, her tears. The music<br />went on growing in, intensity and complication of tones, and the<br />globe vibrated and heaved; till at last it burst in our hands,<br />and a black vapour broke upwards from out of it; then turned, as<br />if blown sideways, and enveloped the maiden, hiding even the<br />shadow in its blackness. She held fast the fragments, which I<br />abandoned, and fled from me into the forest in the direction<br />whence she had come, wailing like a child, and crying, "You have<br />broken my globe; my globe is broken--my globe is broken!" I<br />followed her, in the hope of comforting her; but had not pursued<br />her far, before a sudden cold gust of wind bowed the tree-tops<br />above us, and swept through their stems around us; a great cloud<br />overspread the day, and a fierce tempest came on, in which I lost<br />sight of her. It lies heavy on my heart to this hour. At night,<br />ere I fall asleep, often, whatever I may be thinking about, I<br />suddenly hear her voice, crying out, "You have broken my globe;<br />my globe is broken; ah, my globe!"<br />Here I will mention one more strange thing; but whether this<br />peculiarity was owing to my shadow at all, I am not able to<br />assure myself. I came to a village, the inhabitants of which<br />could not at first sight be distinguished from the dwellers in<br />our land. They rather avoided than sought my company, though<br />they were very pleasant when I addressed them. But at last I<br />observed, that whenever I came within a certain distance of any<br />one of them, which distance, however, varied with different<br />individuals, the whole appearance of the person began to change;<br />and this change increased in degree as I approached. When I<br />receded to the former distance, the former appearance was<br />restored. The nature of the change was grotesque, following no<br />fixed rule. The nearest resemblance to it that I know, is the<br />distortion produced in your countenance when you look at it as<br />reflected in a concave or convex surface--say, either side of a<br />bright spoon. Of this phenomenon I first became aware in rather<br />a ludicrous way. My host's daughter was a very pleasant pretty<br />girl, who made herself more agreeable to me than most of those<br />about me. For some days my companion-shadow had been less<br />obtrusive than usual; and such was the reaction of spirits<br />occasioned by the simple mitigation of torment, that, although I<br />had cause enough besides to be gloomy, I felt light and<br />comparatively happy. My impression is, that she was quite aware<br />of the law of appearances that existed between the people of the<br />place and myself, and had resolved to amuse herself at my<br />expense; for one evening, after some jesting and raillery, she,<br />somehow or other, provoked me to attempt to kiss her. But she<br />was well defended from any assault of the kind. Her countenance<br />became, of a sudden, absurdly hideous; the pretty mouth was<br />elongated and otherwise amplified sufficiently to have allowed of<br />six simultaneous kisses. I started back in bewildered dismay;<br />she burst into the merriest fit of laughter, and ran from the<br />room. I soon found that the same undefinable law of change<br />operated between me and all the other villagers; and that, to<br />feel I was in pleasant company, it was absolutely necessary for<br />me to discover and observe the right focal distance between<br />myself and each one with whom I had to do. This done, all went<br />pleasantly enough. Whether, when I happened to neglect this<br />precaution, I presented to them an equally ridiculous appearance,<br />I did not ascertain; but I presume that the alteration was common<br />to the approximating parties. I was likewise unable to determine<br />whether I was a necessary party to the production of this strange<br />transformation, or whether it took place as well, under the given<br />circumstances, between the inhabitants themselves.<br />CHAPTER X<br />"From Eden's bowers the full-fed rivers flow,<br />To guide the outcasts to the land of woe:<br />Our Earth one little toiling streamlet yields.<br />To guide the wanderers to the happy fields."<br />After leaving this village, where I had rested for nearly a<br />week, I travelled through a desert region of dry sand and<br />glittering rocks, peopled principally by goblin-fairies. When I<br />first entered their domains, and, indeed, whenever I fell in with<br />another tribe of them, they began mocking me with offered<br />handfuls of gold and jewels, making hideous grimaces at me, and<br />performing the most antic homage, as if they thought I expected<br />reverence, and meant to humour me like a maniac. But ever, as<br />soon as one cast his eyes on the shadow behind me, he made a wry<br />face, partly of pity, partly of contempt, and looked ashamed, as<br />if he had been caught doing something inhuman; then, throwing<br />down his handful of gold, and ceasing all his grimaces, he stood<br />aside to let me pass in peace, and made signs to his companions<br />to do the like. I had no inclination to observe them much, for<br />the shadow was in my heart as well as at my heels. I walked<br />listlessly and almost hopelessly along, till I arrived one day at<br />a small spring; which, bursting cool from the heart of a<br />sun-heated rock, flowed somewhat southwards from the direction I<br />had been taking. I drank of this spring, and found myself<br />wonderfully refreshed. A kind of love to the cheerful little<br />stream arose in my heart. It was born in a desert; but it seemed<br />to say to itself, "I will flow, and sing, and lave my banks, till<br />I make my desert a paradise." I thought I could not do better<br />than follow it, and see what it made of it. So down with the<br />stream I went, over rocky lands, burning with sunbeams. But the<br />rivulet flowed not far, before a few blades of grass appeared on<br />its banks, and then, here and there, a stunted bush. Sometimes<br />it disappeared altogether under ground; and after I had wandered<br />some distance, as near as I could guess, in the direction it<br />seemed to take, I would suddenly hear it again, singing,<br />sometimes far away to my right or left, amongst new rocks, over<br />which it made new cataracts of watery melodies. The verdure on<br />its banks increased as it flowed; other streams joined it; and at<br />last, after many days' travel, I found myself, one gorgeous<br />summer evening, resting by the side of a broad river, with a<br />glorious horse-chestnut tree towering above me, and dropping its<br />blossoms, milk-white and rosy-red, all about me. As I sat, a<br />gush of joy sprang forth in my heart, and over flowed at my eyes.<br />Through my tears, the whole landscape glimmered in such<br />bewildering loveliness, that I felt as if I were entering Fairy<br />Land for the first time, and some loving hand were waiting to<br />cool my head, and a loving word to warm my heart. Roses, wild<br />roses, everywhere! So plentiful were they, they not only<br />perfumed the air, they seemed to dye it a faint rose-hue. The<br />colour floated abroad with the scent, and clomb, and spread,<br />until the whole west blushed and glowed with the gathered incense<br />of roses. And my heart fainted with longing in my bosom.<br />Could I but see the Spirit of the Earth, as I saw once the in<br />dwelling woman of the beech-tree, and my beauty of the pale<br />marble, I should be content. Content!--Oh, how gladly would I<br />die of the light of her eyes! Yea, I would cease to be, if that<br />would bring me one word of love from the one mouth. The twilight<br />sank around, and infolded me with sleep. I slept as I had not<br />slept for months. I did not awake till late in the morning;<br />when, refreshed in body and mind, I rose as from the death that<br />wipes out the sadness of life, and then dies itself in the new<br />morrow. Again I followed the stream; now climbing a steep rocky<br />bank that hemmed it in; now wading through long grasses and wild<br />flowers in its path; now through meadows; and anon through woods<br />that crowded down to the very lip of the water.<br />At length, in a nook of the river, gloomy with the weight of<br />overhanging foliage, and still and deep as a soul in which the<br />torrent eddies of pain have hollowed a great gulf, and then,<br />subsiding in violence, have left it full of a motionless,<br />fathomless sorrow--I saw a little boat lying. So still was the<br />water here, that the boat needed no fastening. It lay as if some<br />one had just stepped ashore, and would in a moment return. But<br />as there were no signs of presence, and no track through the<br />thick bushes; and, moreover, as I was in Fairy Land where one<br />does very much as he pleases, I forced my way to the brink,<br />stepped into the boat, pushed it, with the help of the<br />tree-branches, out into the stream, lay down in the bottom, and<br />let my boat and me float whither the stream would carry us. I<br />seemed to lose myself in the great flow of sky above me unbroken<br />in its infinitude, except when now and then, coming nearer the<br />shore at a bend in the river, a tree would sweep its mighty head<br />silently above mine, and glide away back into the past, never<br />more to fling its shadow over me. I fell asleep in this cradle,<br />in which mother Nature was rocking her weary child; and while I<br />slept, the sun slept not, but went round his arched way. When I<br />awoke, he slept in the waters, and I went on my silent path<br />beneath a round silvery moon. And a pale moon looked up from the<br />floor of the great blue cave that lay in the abysmal silence<br />beneath.<br />Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the<br />reality?--not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always<br />lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the<br />wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still. Yea,<br />the reflecting ocean itself, reflected in the mirror, has a<br />wondrousness about its waters that somewhat vanishes when I turn<br />towards itself. All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest<br />room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass. (And this<br />reminds me, while I write, of a strange story which I read in the<br />fairy palace, and of which I will try to make a feeble memorial<br />in its place.) In whatever way it may be accounted for, of one<br />thing we may be sure, that this feeling is no cheat; for there is<br />no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the<br />soul. There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in<br />part lay hold of the meaning. Even the memories of past pain are<br />beautiful; and past delights, though beheld only through clefts<br />in the grey clouds of sorrow, are lovely as Fairy Land. But how<br />have I wandered into the deeper fairyland of the soul, while as<br />yet I only float towards the fairy palace of Fairy Land! The<br />moon, which is the lovelier memory or reflex of the down-gone<br />sun, the joyous day seen in the faint mirror of the brooding<br />night, had rapt me away.<br />I sat up in the boat. Gigantic forest trees were about me;<br />through which, like a silver snake, twisted and twined the great<br />river. The little waves, when I moved in the boat, heaved and<br />fell with a plash as of molten silver, breaking the image of the<br />moon into a thousand morsels, fusing again into one, as the<br />ripples of laughter die into the still face of joy. The sleeping<br />woods, in undefined massiveness; the water that flowed in its<br />sleep; and, above all, the enchantress moon, which had cast them<br />all, with her pale eye, into the charmed slumber, sank into my<br />soul, and I felt as if I had died in a dream, and should never<br />more awake.<br />From this I was partly aroused by a glimmering of white, that,<br />through the trees on the left, vaguely crossed my vision, as I<br />gazed upwards. But the trees again hid the object; and at the<br />moment, some strange melodious bird took up its song, and sang,<br />not an ordinary bird-song, with constant repetitions of the same<br />melody, but what sounded like a continuous strain, in which one<br />thought was expressed, deepening in intensity as evolved in<br />progress. It sounded like a welcome already overshadowed with<br />the coming farewell. As in all sweetest music, a tinge of<br />sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the<br />pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy<br />cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be<br />deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and<br />flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with<br />Sorrow for very love.<br />As the song concluded the stream bore my little boat with a<br />gentle sweep round a bend of the river; and lo! on a broad lawn,<br />which rose from the water's edge with a long green slope to a<br />clear elevation from which the trees receded on all sides, stood<br />a stately palace glimmering ghostly in the moonshine: it seemed<br />to be built throughout of the whitest marble. There was no<br />reflection of moonlight from windows--there seemed to be none; so<br />there was no cold glitter; only, as I said, a ghostly shimmer.<br />Numberless shadows tempered the shine, from column and balcony<br />and tower. For everywhere galleries ran along the face of the<br />buildings; wings were extended in many directions; and numberless<br />openings, through which the moonbeams vanished into the interior,<br />and which served both for doors and windows, had their separate<br />balconies in front, communicating with a common gallery that rose<br />on its own pillars. Of course, I did not discover all this from<br />the river, and in the moonlight. But, though I was there for<br />many days, I did not succeed in mastering the inner topography of<br />the building, so extensive and complicated was it.<br />Here I wished to land, but the boat had no oars on board.<br />However, I found that a plank, serving for a seat, was<br />unfastened, and with that I brought the boat to the bank and<br />scrambled on shore. Deep soft turf sank beneath my feet, as I<br />went up the ascent towards the palace.<br />When I reached it, I saw that it stood on a great platform of<br />marble, with an ascent, by broad stairs of the same, all round<br />it. Arrived on the platform, I found there was an extensive<br />outlook over the forest, which, however, was rather veiled than<br />revealed by the moonlight.<br />Entering by a wide gateway, but without gates, into an inner<br />court, surrounded on all sides by great marble pillars supporting<br />galleries above, I saw a large fountain of porphyry in the<br />middle, throwing up a lofty column of water, which fell, with a<br />noise as of the fusion of all sweet sounds, into a basin beneath;<br />overflowing which, it ran into a single channel towards the<br />interior of the building. Although the moon was by this time so<br />low in the west, that not a ray of her light fell into the court,<br />over the height of the surrounding buildings; yet was the court<br />lighted by a second reflex from the sun of other lands. For the<br />top of the column of water, just as it spread to fall, caught the<br />moonbeams, and like a great pale lamp, hung high in the night<br />air, threw a dim memory of light (as it were) over the court<br />below. This court was paved in diamonds of white and red marble.<br />According to my custom since I entered Fairy Land, of taking for<br />a guide whatever I first found moving in any direction, I<br />followed the stream from the basin of the fountain. It led me to<br />a great open door, beneath the ascending steps of which it ran<br />through a low arch and disappeared. Entering here, I found<br />myself in a great hall, surrounded with white pillars, and paved<br />with black and white. This I could see by the moonlight, which,<br />from the other side, streamed through open windows into the hall.<br />Its height I could not distinctly see. As soon as I entered, I<br />had the feeling so common to me in the woods, that there were<br />others there besides myself, though I could see no one, and heard<br />no sound to indicate a presence. Since my visit to the Church of<br />Darkness, my power of seeing the fairies of the higher orders had<br />gradually diminished, until it had almost ceased. But I could<br />frequently believe in their presence while unable to see them.<br />Still, although I had company, and doubtless of a safe kind, it<br />seemed rather dreary to spend the night in an empty marble hall,<br />however beautiful, especially as the moon was near the going<br />down, and it would soon be dark. So I began at the place where I<br />entered, and walked round the hall, looking for some door or<br />passage that might lead me to a more hospitable chamber. As I<br />walked, I was deliciously haunted with the feeling that behind<br />some one of the seemingly innumerable pillars, one who loved me<br />was waiting for me. Then I thought she was following me from<br />pillar to pillar as I went along; but no arms came out of the<br />faint moonlight, and no sigh assured me of her presence.<br />At length I came to an open corridor, into which I turned;<br />notwithstanding that, in doing so, I left the light behind.<br />Along this I walked with outstretched hands, groping my way,<br />till, arriving at another corridor, which seemed to strike off at<br />right angles to that in which I was, I saw at the end a faintly<br />glimmering light, too pale even for moonshine, resembling rather<br />a stray phosphorescence. However, where everything was white, a<br />little light went a great way. So I walked on to the end, and a<br />long corridor it was. When I came up to the light, I found that<br />it proceeded from what looked like silver letters upon a door of<br />ebony; and, to my surprise even in the home of wonder itself, the<br />letters formed the words, THE CHAMBER OF SIR ANODOS. Although I<br />had as yet no right to the honours of a knight, I ventured to<br />conclude that the chamber was indeed intended for me; and,<br />opening the door without hesitation, I entered. Any doubt as to<br />whether I was right in so doing, was soon dispelled. What to my<br />dark eyes seemed a blaze of light, burst upon me. A fire of<br />large pieces of some sweet-scented wood, supported by dogs of<br />silver, was burning on the hearth, and a bright lamp stood on a<br />table, in the midst of a plentiful meal, apparently awaiting my<br />arrival. But what surprised me more than all, was, that the room<br />was in every respect a copy of my own room, the room whence the<br />little stream from my basin had led me into Fairy Land. There<br />was the very carpet of grass and moss and daisies, which I had<br />myself designed; the curtains of pale blue silk, that fell like a<br />cataract over the windows; the old- fashioned bed, with the<br />chintz furniture, on which I had slept from boyhood. "Now I<br />shall sleep," I said to myself. "My shadow dares not come here."<br />I sat down to the table, and began to help myself to the good<br />things before me with confidence. And now I found, as in many<br />instances before, how true the fairy tales are; for I was waited<br />on, all the time of my meal, by invisible hands. I had scarcely<br />to do more than look towards anything I wanted, when it was<br />brought me, just as if it had come to me of itself. My glass was<br />kept filled with the wine I had chosen, until I looked towards<br />another bottle or decanter; when a fresh glass was substituted,<br />and the other wine supplied. When I had eaten and drank more<br />heartily and joyfully than ever since I entered Fairy Land, the<br />whole was removed by several attendants, of whom some were male<br />and some female, as I thought I could distinguish from the way<br />the dishes were lifted from the table, and the motion with which<br />they were carried out of the room. As soon as they were all<br />taken away, I heard a sound as of the shutting of a door, and<br />knew that I was left alone. I sat long by the fire, meditating,<br />and wondering how it would all end; and when at length, wearied<br />with thinking, I betook myself to my own bed, it was half with a<br />hope that, when I awoke in the morning, I should awake not only<br />in my own room, but in my own castle also; and that I should<br />walk, out upon my own native soil, and find that Fairy Land was,<br />after all, only a vision of the night. The sound of the falling<br />waters of the fountain floated me into oblivion.<br />CHAPTER XI<br />"A wilderness of building, sinking far<br />And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,<br />Far sinking into splendour--without end:<br />Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,<br />With alabaster domes, and silver spires,<br />And blazing terrace upon terrace, high<br />Uplifted."<br />WORDSWORTH.<br />But when, after a sleep, which, although dreamless, yet left<br />behind it a sense of past blessedness, I awoke in the full<br />morning, I found, indeed, that the room was still my own; but<br />that it looked abroad upon an unknown landscape of forest and<br />hill and dale on the one side--and on the other, upon the marble<br />court, with the great fountain, the crest of which now flashed<br />glorious in the sun, and cast on the pavement beneath a shower of<br />faint shadows from the waters that fell from it into the marble<br />basin below.<br />Agreeably to all authentic accounts of the treatment of<br />travellers in Fairy Land, I found by my bedside a complete suit<br />of fresh clothing, just such as I was in the habit of wearing;<br />for, though varied sufficiently from the one removed, it was yet<br />in complete accordance with my tastes. I dressed myself in this,<br />and went out. The whole palace shone like silver in the sun.<br />The marble was partly dull and partly polished; and every<br />pinnacle, dome, and turret ended in a ball, or cone, or cusp of<br />silver. It was like frost-work, and too dazzling, in the sun,<br />for earthly eyes like mine.<br />I will not attempt to describe the environs, save by saying, that<br />all the pleasures to be found in the most varied and artistic<br />arrangement of wood and river, lawn and wild forest, garden and<br />shrubbery, rocky hill and luxurious vale; in living creatures<br />wild and tame, in gorgeous birds, scattered fountains, little<br />streams, and reedy lakes-- all were here. Some parts of the<br />palace itself I shall have occasion to describe more minutely.<br />For this whole morning I never thought of my demon shadow; and<br />not till the weariness which supervened on delight brought it<br />again to my memory, did I look round to see if it was behind me:<br />it was scarcely discernible. But its presence, however faintly<br />revealed, sent a pang to my heart, for the pain of which, not all<br />the beauties around me could compensate. It was followed,<br />however, by the comforting reflection that, peradventure, I might<br />here find the magic word of power to banish the demon and set me<br />free, so that I should no longer be a man beside myself. The<br />Queen of Fairy Land, thought I, must dwell here: surely she will<br />put forth her power to deliver me, and send me singing through<br />the further gates of her country back to my own land. "Shadow of<br />me!" I said; "which art not me, but which representest thyself to<br />me as me; here I may find a shadow of light which will devour<br />thee, the shadow of darkness! Here I may find a blessing which<br />will fall on thee as a curse, and damn thee to the blackness<br />whence thou hast emerged unbidden." I said this, stretched at<br />length on the slope of the lawn above the river; and as the hope<br />arose within me, the sun came forth from a light fleecy cloud<br />that swept across his face; and hill and dale, and the great<br />river winding on through the still mysterious forest, flashed<br />back his rays as with a silent shout of joy; all nature lived and<br />glowed; the very earth grew warm beneath me; a magnificent<br />dragon-fly went past me like an arrow from a bow, and a whole<br />concert of birds burst into choral song.<br />The heat of the sun soon became too intense even for passive<br />support. I therefore rose, and sought the shelter of one of the<br />arcades. Wandering along from one to another of these, wherever<br />my heedless steps led me, and wondering everywhere at the simple<br />magnificence of the building, I arrived at another hall, the roof<br />of which was of a pale blue, spangled with constellations of<br />silver stars, and supported by porphyry pillars of a paler red<br />than ordinary.--In this house (I may remark in passing), silver<br />seemed everywhere preferred to gold; and such was the purity of<br />the air, that it showed nowhere signs of tarnishing.--The whole<br />of the floor of this hall, except a narrow path behind the<br />pillars, paved with black, was hollowed into a huge basin, many<br />feet deep, and filled with the purest, most liquid and radiant<br />water. The sides of the basin were white marble, and the bottom<br />was paved with all kinds of refulgent stones, of every shape and<br />hue.<br />In their arrangement, you would have supposed, at first sight,<br />that there was no design, for they seemed to lie as if cast there<br />from careless and playful hands; but it was a most harmonious<br />confusion; and as I looked at the play of their colours,<br />especially when the waters were in motion, I came at last to feel<br />as if not one little pebble could be displaced, without injuring<br />the effect of the whole. Beneath this floor of the water, lay<br />the reflection of the blue inverted roof, fretted with its silver<br />stars, like a second deeper sea, clasping and upholding the<br />first. The fairy bath was probably fed from the fountain in the<br />court. Led by an irresistible desire, I undressed, and plunged<br />into the water. It clothed me as with a new sense and its object<br />both in one. The waters lay so close to me, they seemed to enter<br />and revive my heart. I rose to the surface, shook the water from<br />my hair, and swam as in a rainbow, amid the coruscations of the<br />gems below seen through the agitation caused by my motion. Then,<br />with open eyes, I dived, and swam beneath the surface. And here<br />was a new wonder. For the basin, thus beheld, appeared to extend<br />on all sides like a sea, with here and there groups as of ocean<br />rocks, hollowed by ceaseless billows into wondrous caves and<br />grotesque pinnacles. Around the caves grew sea-weeds of all<br />hues, and the corals glowed between; while far off, I saw the<br />glimmer of what seemed to be creatures of human form at home in<br />the waters. I thought I had been enchanted; and that when I rose<br />to the surface, I should find myself miles from land, swimming<br />alone upon a heaving sea; but when my eyes emerged from the<br />waters, I saw above me the blue spangled vault, and the red<br />pillars around. I dived again, and found myself once more in the<br />heart of a great sea. I then arose, and swam to the edge, where<br />I got out easily, for the water reached the very brim, and, as I<br />drew near washed in tiny waves over the black marble border. I<br />dressed, and went out, deeply refreshed.<br />And now I began to discern faint, gracious forms, here and there<br />throughout the building. Some walked together in earnest<br />conversation. Others strayed alone. Some stood in groups, as if<br />looking at and talking about a picture or a statue. None of them<br />heeded me. Nor were they plainly visible to my eyes. Sometimes<br />a group, or single individual, would fade entirely out of the<br />realm of my vision as I gazed. When evening came, and the moon<br />arose, clear as a round of a horizon-sea when the sun hangs over<br />it in the west, I began to see them all more plainly; especially<br />when they came between me and the moon; and yet more especially,<br />when I myself was in the shade. But, even then, I sometimes saw<br />only the passing wave of a white robe; or a lovely arm or neck<br />gleamed by in the moonshine; or white feet went walking alone<br />over the moony sward. Nor, I grieve to say, did I ever come much<br />nearer to these glorious beings, or ever look upon the Queen of<br />the Fairies herself. My destiny ordered otherwise.<br />In this palace of marble and silver, and fountains and moonshine,<br />I spent many days; waited upon constantly in my room with<br />everything desirable, and bathing daily in the fairy bath. All<br />this time I was little troubled with my demon shadow I had a<br />vague feeling that he was somewhere about the palace; but it<br />seemed as if the hope that I should in this place be finally<br />freed from his hated presence, had sufficed to banish him for a<br />time. How and where I found him, I shall soon have to relate.<br />The third day after my arrival, I found the library of the<br />palace; and here, all the time I remained, I spent most of the<br />middle of the day. For it was, not to mention far greater<br />attractions, a luxurious retreat from the noontide sun. During<br />the mornings and afternoons, I wandered about the lovely<br />neighbourhood, or lay, lost in delicious day-dreams, beneath some<br />mighty tree on the open lawn. My evenings were by-and-by spent<br />in a part of the palace, the account of which, and of my<br />adventures in connection with it, I must yet postpone for a<br />little.<br />The library was a mighty hall, lighted from the roof, which was<br />formed of something like glass, vaulted over in a single piece,<br />and stained throughout with a great mysterious picture in<br />gorgeous colouring.<br />The walls were lined from floor to roof with books and books:<br />most of them in ancient bindings, but some in strange new<br />fashions which I had never seen, and which, were I to make the<br />attempt, I could ill describe. All around the walls, in front of<br />the books, ran galleries in rows, communicating by stairs. These<br />galleries were built of all kinds of coloured stones; all sorts<br />of marble and granite, with porphyry, jasper, lapis lazuli,<br />agate, and various others, were ranged in wonderful melody of<br />successive colours. Although the material, then, of which these<br />galleries and stairs were built, rendered necessary a certain<br />degree of massiveness in the construction, yet such was the size<br />of the place, that they seemed to run along the walls like cords.<br />Over some parts of the library, descended curtains of silk of<br />various dyes, none of which I ever saw lifted while I was there;<br />and I felt somehow that it would be presumptuous in me to venture<br />to look within them. But the use of the other books seemed free;<br />and day after day I came to the library, threw myself on one of<br />the many sumptuous eastern carpets, which lay here and there on<br />the floor, and read, and read, until weary; if that can be<br />designated as weariness, which was rather the faintness of<br />rapturous delight; or until, sometimes, the failing of the light<br />invited me to go abroad, in the hope that a cool gentle breeze<br />might have arisen to bathe, with an airy invigorating bath, the<br />limbs which the glow of the burning spirit within had withered no<br />less than the glow of the blazing sun without.<br />One peculiarity of these books, or at least most of those I<br />looked into, I must make a somewhat vain attempt to describe.<br />If, for instance, it was a book of metaphysics I opened, I had<br />scarcely read two pages before I seemed to myself to be pondering<br />over discovered truth, and constructing the intellectual machine<br />whereby to communicate the discovery to my fellow men. With some<br />books, however, of this nature, it seemed rather as if the<br />process was removed yet a great way further back; and I was<br />trying to find the root of a manifestation, the spiritual truth<br />whence a material vision sprang; or to combine two propositions,<br />both apparently true, either at once or in different remembered<br />moods, and to find the point in which their invisibly converging<br />lines would unite in one, revealing a truth higher than either<br />and differing from both; though so far from being opposed to<br />either, that it was that whence each derived its life and power.<br />Or if the book was one of travels, I found myself the traveller.<br />New lands, fresh experiences, novel customs, rose around me. I<br />walked, I discovered, I fought, I suffered, I rejoiced in my<br />success. Was it a history? I was the chief actor therein. I<br />suffered my own blame; I was glad in my own praise. With a<br />fiction it was the same. Mine was the whole story. For I took<br />the place of the character who was most like myself, and his<br />story was mine; until, grown weary with the life of years<br />condensed in an hour, or arrived at my deathbed, or the end of<br />the volume, I would awake, with a sudden bewilderment, to the<br />consciousness of my present life, recognising the walls and roof<br />around me, and finding I joyed or sorrowed only in a book. If<br />the book was a poem, the words disappeared, or took the<br />subordinate position of an accompaniment to the succession of<br />forms and images that rose and vanished with a soundless rhythm,<br />and a hidden rime.<br />In one, with a mystical title, which I cannot recall, I read of a<br />world that is not like ours. The wondrous account, in such a<br />feeble, fragmentary way as is possible to me, I would willingly<br />impart. Whether or not it was all a poem, I cannot tell; but,<br />from the impulse I felt, when I first contemplated writing it, to<br />break into rime, to which impulse I shall give way if it comes<br />upon me again, I think it must have been, partly at least, in<br />verse.<br />CHAPTER XII<br />"Chained is the Spring. The night-wind bold<br />Blows over the hard earth;<br />Time is not more confused and cold,<br />Nor keeps more wintry mirth.<br />"Yet blow, and roll the world about;<br />Blow, Time--blow, winter's Wind!<br />Through chinks of Time, heaven peepeth out,<br />And Spring the frost behind."<br />G. E. M.<br />They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of<br />men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who<br />regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common<br />obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with<br />man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The<br />community of the centre of all creation suggests an<br />interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a<br />grander idea is conceivable than that which is already imbodied.<br />The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying behind the<br />consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped<br />life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of<br />other connexions with the worlds around us, than those of science<br />and poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green<br />glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the<br />hidden things of a man's soul, and, it may be, with the secret<br />history of his body as well. They are portions of the living<br />house wherein he abides.<br />Through the realms of the monarch Sun<br />Creeps a world, whose course had begun,<br />On a weary path with a weary pace,<br />Before the Earth sprang forth on her race:<br />But many a time the Earth had sped<br />Around the path she still must tread,<br />Ere the elder planet, on leaden wing,<br />Once circled the court of the planet's king.<br />There, in that lonely and distant star,<br />The seasons are not as our seasons are;<br />But many a year hath Autumn to dress<br />The trees in their matron loveliness;<br />As long hath old Winter in triumph to go<br />O'er beauties dead in his vaults below;<br />And many a year the Spring doth wear<br />Combing the icicles from her hair;<br />And Summer, dear Summer, hath years of June,<br />With large white clouds, and cool showers at noon:<br />And a beauty that grows to a weight like grief,<br />Till a burst of tears is the heart's relief.<br />Children, born when Winter is king,<br />May never rejoice in the hoping Spring;<br />Though their own heart-buds are bursting with joy,<br />And the child hath grown to the girl or boy;<br />But may die with cold and icy hours<br />Watching them ever in place of flowers.<br />And some who awake from their primal sleep,<br />When the sighs of Summer through forests creep,<br />Live, and love, and are loved again;<br />Seek for pleasure, and find its pain;<br />Sink to their last, their forsaken sleeping,<br />With the same sweet odours around them creeping.<br />Now the children, there, are not born as the children are born in<br />worlds nearer to the sun. For they arrive no one knows how. A<br />maiden, walking alone, hears a cry: for even there a cry is the<br />first utterance; and searching about, she findeth, under an<br />overhanging rock, or within a clump of bushes, or, it may be,<br />betwixt gray stones on the side of a hill, or in any other<br />sheltered and unexpected spot, a little child. This she taketh<br />tenderly, and beareth home with joy, calling out, "Mother,<br />mother"--if so be that her mother lives--"I have got a baby--I<br />have found a child!" All the household gathers round to<br />see;--"WHERE IS IT? WHAT IS IT LIKE? WHERE DID YOU FIND IT?"<br />and such-like questions, abounding. And thereupon she relates<br />the whole story of the discovery; for by the circumstances, such<br />as season of the year, time of the day, condition of the air, and<br />such like, and, especially, the peculiar and never-repeated<br />aspect of the heavens and earth at the time, and the nature of<br />the place of shelter wherein it is found, is determined, or at<br />least indicated, the nature of the child thus discovered.<br />Therefore, at certain seasons, and in certain states of the<br />weather, according, in part, to their own fancy, the young women<br />go out to look for children. They generally avoid seeking them,<br />though they cannot help sometimes finding them, in places and<br />with circumstances uncongenial to their peculiar likings. But no<br />sooner is a child found, than its claim for protection and<br />nurture obliterates all feeling of choice in the matter.<br />Chiefly, however, in the season of summer, which lasts so long,<br />coming as it does after such long intervals; and mostly in the<br />warm evenings, about the middle of twilight; and principally in<br />the woods and along the river banks, do the maidens go looking<br />for children just as children look for flowers. And ever as the<br />child grows, yea, more and more as he advances in years, will his<br />face indicate to those who understand the spirit of Nature, and<br />her utterances in the face of the world, the nature of the place<br />of his birth, and the other circumstances thereof; whether a<br />clear morning sun guided his mother to the nook whence issued the<br />boy's low cry; or at eve the lonely maiden (for the same woman<br />never finds a second, at least while the first lives) discovers<br />the girl by the glimmer of her white skin, lying in a nest like<br />that of the lark, amid long encircling grasses, and the<br />upward-gazing eyes of the lowly daisies; whether the storm bowed<br />the forest trees around, or the still frost fixed in silence the<br />else flowing and babbling stream.<br />After they grow up, the men and women are but little together.<br />There is this peculiar difference between them, which likewise<br />distinguishes the women from those of the earth. The men alone<br />have arms; the women have only wings. Resplendent wings are<br />they, wherein they can shroud themselves from head to foot in a<br />panoply of glistering glory. By these wings alone, it may<br />frequently be judged in what seasons, and under what aspects,<br />they were born. From those that came in winter, go great white<br />wings, white as snow; the edge of every feather shining like the<br />sheen of silver, so that they flash and glitter like frost in the<br />sun. But underneath, they are tinged with a faint pink or rosecolour.<br />Those born in spring have wings of a brilliant green,<br />green as grass; and towards the edges the feathers are enamelled<br />like the surface of the grass-blades. These again are white<br />within. Those that are born in summer have wings of a deep<br />rose-colour, lined with pale gold. And those born in autumn have<br />purple wings, with a rich brown on the inside. But these colours<br />are modified and altered in all varieties, corresponding to the<br />mood of the day and hour, as well as the season of the year; and<br />sometimes I found the various colours so intermingled, that I<br />could not determine even the season, though doubtless the<br />hieroglyphic could be deciphered by more experienced eyes. One<br />splendour, in particular, I remember--wings of deep carmine, with<br />an inner down of warm gray, around a form of brilliant whiteness.<br />She had been found as the sun went down through a low sea- fog,<br />casting crimson along a broad sea-path into a little cave on the<br />shore, where a bathing maiden saw her lying.<br />But though I speak of sun and fog, and sea and shore, the world<br />there is in some respects very different from the earth whereon<br />men live. For instance, the waters reflect no forms. To the<br />unaccustomed eye they appear, if undisturbed, like the surface of<br />a dark metal, only that the latter would reflect indistinctly,<br />whereas they reflect not at all, except light which falls<br />immediately upon them. This has a great effect in causing the<br />landscapes to differ from those on the earth. On the stillest<br />evening, no tall ship on the sea sends a long wavering reflection<br />almost to the feet of him on shore; the face of no maiden<br />brightens at its own beauty in a still forest-well. The sun and<br />moon alone make a glitter on the surface. The sea is like a sea<br />of death, ready to ingulf and never to reveal: a visible shadow<br />of oblivion. Yet the women sport in its waters like gorgeous<br />sea-birds. The men more rarely enter them. But, on the<br />contrary, the sky reflects everything beneath it, as if it were<br />built of water like ours. Of course, from its concavity there is<br />some distortion of the reflected objects; yet wondrous<br />combinations of form are often to be seen in the overhanging<br />depth. And then it is not shaped so much like a round dome as<br />the sky of the earth, but, more of an egg-shape, rises to a great<br />towering height in the middle, appearing far more lofty than the<br />other. When the stars come out at night, it shows a mighty<br />cupola, "fretted with golden fires," wherein there is room for<br />all tempests to rush and rave.<br />One evening in early summer, I stood with a group of men and<br />women on a steep rock that overhung the sea. They were all<br />questioning me about my world and the ways thereof. In making<br />reply to one of their questions, I was compelled to say that<br />children are not born in the Earth as with them. Upon this I was<br />assailed with a whole battery of inquiries, which at first I<br />tried to avoid; but, at last, I was compelled, in the vaguest<br />manner I could invent, to make some approach to the subject in<br />question. Immediately a dim notion of what I meant, seemed to<br />dawn in the minds of most of the women. Some of them folded<br />their great wings all around them, as they generally do when in<br />the least offended, and stood erect and motionless. One spread<br />out her rosy pinions, and flashed from the promontory into the<br />gulf at its foot. A great light shone in the eyes of one maiden,<br />who turned and walked slowly away, with her purple and white<br />wings half dispread behind her. She was found, the next morning,<br />dead beneath a withered tree on a bare hill-side, some miles<br />inland. They buried her where she lay, as is their custom; for,<br />before they die, they instinctively search for a spot like the<br />place of their birth, and having found one that satisfies them,<br />they lie down, fold their wings around them, if they be women, or<br />cross their arms over their breasts, if they are men, just as if<br />they were going to sleep; and so sleep indeed. The sign or cause<br />of coming death is an indescribable longing for something, they<br />know not what, which seizes them, and drives them into solitude,<br />consuming them within, till the body fails. When a youth and a<br />maiden look too deep into each other's eyes, this longing seizes<br />and possesses them; but instead of drawing nearer to each other,<br />they wander away, each alone, into solitary places, and die of<br />their desire. But it seems to me, that thereafter they are born<br />babes upon our earth: where, if, when grown, they find each<br />other, it goes well with them; if not, it will seem to go ill.<br />But of this I know nothing. When I told them that the women on<br />the Earth had not wings like them, but arms, they stared, and<br />said how bold and masculine they must look; not knowing that<br />their wings, glorious as they are, are but undeveloped arms.<br />But see the power of this book, that, while recounting what I can<br />recall of its contents, I write as if myself had visited the<br />far-off planet, learned its ways and appearances, and conversed<br />with its men and women. And so, while writing, it seemed to me<br />that I had.<br />The book goes on with the story of a maiden, who, born at the<br />close of autumn, and living in a long, to her endless winter, set<br />out at last to find the regions of spring; for, as in our earth,<br />the seasons are divided over the globe. It begins something like<br />this:<br />She watched them dying for many a day,<br />Dropping from off the old trees away,<br />One by one; or else in a shower<br />Crowding over the withered flower<br />For as if they had done some grievous wrong,<br />The sun, that had nursed them and loved them so long,<br />Grew weary of loving, and, turning back,<br />Hastened away on his southern track;<br />And helplessly hung each shrivelled leaf,<br />Faded away with an idle grief.<br />And the gusts of wind, sad Autumn's sighs,<br />Mournfully swept through their families;<br />Casting away with a helpless moan<br />All that he yet might call his own,<br />As the child, when his bird is gone for ever,<br />Flingeth the cage on the wandering river.<br />And the giant trees, as bare as Death,<br />Slowly bowed to the great Wind's breath;<br />And groaned with trying to keep from groaning<br />Amidst the young trees bending and moaning.<br />And the ancient planet's mighty sea<br />Was heaving and falling most restlessly,<br />And the tops of the waves were broken and white,<br />Tossing about to ease their might;<br />And the river was striving to reach the main,<br />And the ripple was hurrying back again.<br />Nature lived in sadness now;<br />Sadness lived on the maiden's brow,<br />As she watched, with a fixed, half-conscious eye,<br />One lonely leaf that trembled on high,<br />Till it dropped at last from the desolate bough--<br />Sorrow, oh, sorrow! 'tis winter now.<br />And her tears gushed forth, though it was but a leaf,<br />For little will loose the swollen fountain of grief:<br />When up to the lip the water goes,<br />It needs but a drop, and it overflows.<br />Oh! many and many a dreary year<br />Must pass away ere the buds appear:<br />Many a night of darksome sorrow<br />Yield to the light of a joyless morrow,<br />Ere birds again, on the clothed trees,<br />Shall fill the branches with melodies.<br />She will dream of meadows with wakeful streams;<br />Of wavy grass in the sunny beams;<br />Of hidden wells that soundless spring,<br />Hoarding their joy as a holy thing;<br />Of founts that tell it all day long<br />To the listening woods, with exultant song;<br />She will dream of evenings that die into nights,<br />Where each sense is filled with its own delights,<br />And the soul is still as the vaulted sky,<br />Lulled with an inner harmony;<br />And the flowers give out to the dewy night,<br />Changed into perfume, the gathered light;<br />And the darkness sinks upon all their host,<br />Till the sun sail up on the eastern coast--<br />She will wake and see the branches bare,<br />Weaving a net in the frozen air.<br />The story goes on to tell how, at last, weary with wintriness,<br />she travelled towards the southern regions of her globe, to meet<br />the spring on its slow way northwards; and how, after many sad<br />adventures, many disappointed hopes, and many tears, bitter and<br />fruitless, she found at last, one stormy afternoon, in a leafless<br />forest, a single snowdrop growing betwixt the borders of the<br />winter and spring. She lay down beside it and died. I almost<br />believe that a child, pale and peaceful as a snowdrop, was born<br />in the Earth within a fixed season from that stormy afternoon.<br />CHAPTER XIII<br />"I saw a ship sailing upon the sea<br />Deeply laden as ship could be;<br />But not so deep as in love I am<br />For I care not whether I sink or swim."<br />Old Ballad.<br />"But Love is such a Mystery<br />I cannot find it out:<br />For when I think I'm best resols'd,<br />I then am in most doubt."<br />SIR JOHN SUCKLING.<br />One story I will try to reproduce. But, alas! it is like trying<br />to reconstruct a forest out of broken branches and withered<br />leaves. In the fairy book, everything was just as it should be,<br />though whether in words or something else, I cannot tell. It<br />glowed and flashed the thoughts upon the soul, with such a power<br />that the medium disappeared from the consciousness, and it was<br />occupied only with the things themselves. My representation of<br />it must resemble a translation from a rich and powerful language,<br />capable of embodying the thoughts of a splendidly developed<br />people, into the meagre and half-articulate speech of a savage<br />tribe. Of course, while I read it, I was Cosmo, and his history<br />was mine. Yet, all the time, I seemed to have a kind of double<br />consciousness, and the story a double meaning. Sometimes it<br />seemed only to represent a simple story of ordinary life, perhaps<br />almost of universal life; wherein two souls, loving each other<br />and longing to come nearer, do, after all, but behold each other<br />as in a glass darkly.<br />As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into<br />the solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea;<br />as the lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently<br />through the earth's atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world<br />of men, and sometimes startle the common eye with an association<br />as of cause and effect, when between the two no connecting links<br />can be traced.<br />Cosmo von Wehrstahl was a student at the University of Prague.<br />Though of a noble family, he was poor, and prided himself upon<br />the independence that poverty gives; for what will not a man<br />pride himself upon, when he cannot get rid of it? A favourite<br />with his fellow students, he yet had no companions; and none of<br />them had ever crossed the threshold of his lodging in the top of<br />one of the highest houses in the old town. Indeed, the secret of<br />much of that complaisance which recommended him to his fellows,<br />was the thought of his unknown retreat, whither in the evening he<br />could betake himself and indulge undisturbed in his own studies<br />and reveries. These studies, besides those subjects necessary to<br />his course at the University, embraced some less commonly known<br />and approved; for in a secret drawer lay the works of Albertus<br />Magnus and Cornelius Agrippa, along with others less read and<br />more abstruse. As yet, however, he had followed these researches<br />only from curiosity, and had turned them to no practical purpose.<br />His lodging consisted of one large low-ceiled room, singularly<br />bare of furniture; for besides a couple of wooden chairs, a couch<br />which served for dreaming on both by day and night, and a great<br />press of black oak, there was very little in the room that could<br />be called furniture.<br />But curious instruments were heaped in the corners; and in one<br />stood a skeleton, half-leaning against the wall, half-supported<br />by a string about its neck. One of its hands, all of fingers,<br />rested on the heavy pommel of a great sword that stood beside it.<br />Various weapons were scattered about over the floor. The walls<br />were utterly bare of adornment; for the few strange things, such<br />as a large dried bat with wings dispread, the skin of a<br />porcupine, and a stuffed sea-mouse, could hardly be reckoned as<br />such. But although his fancy delighted in vagaries like these,<br />he indulged his imagination with far different fare. His mind<br />had never yet been filled with an absorbing passion; but it lay<br />like a still twilight open to any wind, whether the low breath<br />that wafts but odours, or the storm that bows the great trees<br />till they strain and creak. He saw everything as through a<br />rose-coloured glass. When he looked from his window on the<br />street below, not a maiden passed but she moved as in a story,<br />and drew his thoughts after her till she disappeared in the<br />vista. When he walked in the streets, he always felt as if<br />reading a tale, into which he sought to weave every face of<br />interest that went by; and every sweet voice swept his soul as<br />with the wing of a passing angel. He was in fact a poet without<br />words; the more absorbed and endangered, that the<br />springing-waters were dammed back into his soul, where, finding<br />no utterance, they grew, and swelled, and undermined. He used to<br />lie on his hard couch, and read a tale or a poem, till the book<br />dropped from his hand; but he dreamed on, he knew not whether<br />awake or asleep, until the opposite roof grew upon his sense, and<br />turned golden in the sunrise. Then he arose too; and the<br />impulses of vigorous youth kept him ever active, either in study<br />or in sport, until again the close of the day left him free; and<br />the world of night, which had lain drowned in the cataract of the<br />day, rose up in his soul, with all its stars, and dim-seen<br />phantom shapes. But this could hardly last long. Some one form<br />must sooner or later step within the charmed circle, enter the<br />house of life, and compel the bewildered magician to kneel and<br />worship.<br />One afternoon, towards dusk, he was wandering dreamily in one of<br />the principal streets, when a fellow student roused him by a slap<br />on the shoulder, and asked him to accompany him into a little<br />back alley to look at some old armour which he had taken a fancy<br />to possess. Cosmo was considered an authority in every matter<br />pertaining to arms, ancient or modern. In the use of weapons,<br />none of the students could come near him; and his practical<br />acquaintance with some had principally contributed to establish<br />his authority in reference to all. He accompanied him willingly.<br />They entered a narrow alley, and thence a dirty little court,<br />where a low arched door admitted them into a heterogeneous<br />assemblage of everything musty, and dusty, and old, that could<br />well be imagined. His verdict on the armour was satisfactory,<br />and his companion at once concluded the purchase. As they were<br />leaving the place, Cosmo's eye was attracted by an old mirror of<br />an elliptical shape, which leaned against the wall, covered with<br />dust. Around it was some curious carving, which he could see but<br />very indistinctly by the glimmering light which the owner of the<br />shop carried in his hand. It was this carving that attracted his<br />attention; at least so it appeared to him. He left the place,<br />however, with his friend, taking no further notice of it. They<br />walked together to the main street, where they parted and took<br />opposite directions.<br />No sooner was Cosmo left alone, than the thought of the curious<br />old mirror returned to him. A strong desire to see it more<br />plainly arose within him, and he directed his steps once more<br />towards the shop.The owner opened the door when he knocked, as if<br />he had expected him.He was a little, old, withered man, with a<br />hooked nose, and burning eyes constantly in a slow restless<br />motion, and looking here and there as if after something that<br />eluded them. Pretending to examine several other articles, Cosmo<br />at last approached the mirror, and requested to have it taken<br />down.<br />"Take it down yourself, master; I cannot reach it," said the old<br />man.<br />Cosmo took it down carefully, when he saw that the carving was<br />indeed delicate and costly, being both of admirable design and<br />execution; containing withal many devices which seemed to embody<br />some meaning to which he had no clue. This, naturally, in one of<br />his tastes and temperament, increased the interest he felt in the<br />old mirror; so much, indeed, that he now longed to possess it, in<br />order to study its frame at his leisure. He pretended, however,<br />to want it only for use; and saying he feared the plate could be<br />of little service, as it was rather old, he brushed away a little<br />of the dust from its face, expecting to see a dull reflection<br />within. His surprise was great when he found the reflection<br />brilliant, revealing a glass not only uninjured by age, but<br />wondrously clear and perfect (should the whole correspond to this<br />part) even for one newly from the hands of the maker. He asked<br />carelessly what the owner wanted for the thing. The old man<br />replied by mentioning a sum of money far beyond the reach of poor<br />Cosmo, who proceeded to replace the mirror where it had stood<br />before.<br />"You think the price too high?" said the old man.<br />"I do not know that it is too much for you to ask," replied<br />Cosmo; "but it is far too much for me to give."<br />The old man held up his light towards Cosmo's face. "I like your<br />look," said he.<br />Cosmo could not return the compliment. In fact, now he looked<br />closely at him for the first time, he felt a kind of repugnance<br />to him, mingled with a strange feeling of doubt whether a man or<br />a woman stood before him.<br />"What is your name?" he continued.<br />"Cosmo von Wehrstahl."<br />"Ah, ah! I thought as much. I see your father in you. I knew<br />your father very well, young sir. I dare say in some odd corners<br />of my house, you might find some old things with his crest and<br />cipher upon them still. Well, I like you: you shall have the<br />mirror at the fourth part of what I asked for it; but upon one<br />condition."<br />"What is that?" said Cosmo; for, although the price was still a<br />great deal for him to give, he could just manage it; and the<br />desire to possess the mirror had increased to an altogether<br />unaccountable degree, since it had seemed beyond his reach.<br />"That if you should ever want to get rid of it again, you will<br />let me have the first offer."<br />"Certainly," replied Cosmo, with a smile; adding, "a moderate<br />condition indeed."<br />"On your honour?" insisted the seller.<br />"On my honour," said the buyer; and the bargain was concluded.<br />"I will carry it home for you," said the old man, as Cosmo took<br />it in his hands.<br />"No, no; I will carry it myself," said he; for he had a peculiar<br />dislike to revealing his residence to any one, and more<br />especially to this person, to whom he felt every moment a greater<br />antipathy.<br />"Just as you please," said the old creature, and muttered to<br />himself as he held his light at the door to show him out of the<br />court: "Sold for the sixth time! I wonder what will be the<br />upshot of it this time. I should think my lady had enough of it<br />by now!"<br />Cosmo carried his prize carefully home. But all the way he had<br />an uncomfortable feeling that he was watched and dogged.<br />Repeatedly he looked about, but saw nothing to justify his<br />suspicions. Indeed, the streets were too crowded and too ill<br />lighted to expose very readily a careful spy, if such there<br />should be at his heels. He reached his lodging in safety, and<br />leaned his purchase against the wall, rather relieved, strong as<br />he was, to be rid of its weight; then, lighting his pipe, threw<br />himself on the couch, and was soon lapt in the folds of one of<br />his haunting dreams.<br />He returned home earlier than usual the next day, and fixed the<br />mirror to the wall, over the hearth, at one end of his long room.<br />He then carefully wiped away the dust from its face, and, clear<br />as the water of a sunny spring, the mirror shone out from beneath<br />the envious covering. But his interest was chiefly occupied with<br />the curious carving of the frame. This he cleaned as well as he<br />could with a brush; and then he proceeded to a minute examination<br />of its various parts, in the hope of discovering some index to<br />the intention of the carver. In this, however, he was<br />unsuccessful; and, at length, pausing with some weariness and<br />disappointment, he gazed vacantly for a few moments into the<br />depth of the reflected room. But ere long he said, half aloud:<br />"What a strange thing a mirror is! and what a wondrous affinity<br />exists between it and a man's imagination! For this room of mine,<br />as I behold it in the glass, is the same, and yet not the same.<br />It is not the mere representation of the room I live in, but it<br />looks just as if I were reading about it in a story I like. All<br />its commonness has disappeared. The mirror has lifted it out of<br />the region of fact into the realm of art; and the very<br />representing of it to me has clothed with interest that which was<br />otherwise hard and bare; just as one sees with delight upon the<br />stage the representation of a character from which one would<br />escape in life as from something unendurably wearisome. But is<br />it not rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated<br />regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious<br />everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells<br />apart, reveals Nature in some degree as she really is, and as she<br />represents herself to the eye of the child, whose every-day life,<br />fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the<br />wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without<br />questioning? That skeleton, now--I almost fear it, standing<br />there so still, with eyes only for the unseen, like a watch-tower<br />looking across all the waste of this busy world into the quiet<br />regions of rest beyond. And yet I know every bone and every<br />joint in it as well as my own fist. And that old battle-axe<br />looks as if any moment it might be caught up by a mailed hand,<br />and, borne forth by the mighty arm, go crashing through casque,<br />and skull, and brain, invading the Unknown with yet another<br />bewildered ghost. I should like to live in THAT room if I could<br />only get into it."<br />Scarcely had the half-moulded words floated from him, as he stood<br />gazing into the mirror, when, striking him as with a flash of<br />amazement that fixed him in his posture, noiseless and<br />unannounced, glided suddenly through the door into the reflected<br />room, with stately motion, yet reluctant and faltering step, the<br />graceful form of a woman, clothed all in white. Her back only<br />was visible as she walked slowly up to the couch in the further<br />end of the room, on which she laid herself wearily, turning<br />towards him a face of unutterable loveliness, in which suffering,<br />and dislike, and a sense of compulsion, strangely mingled with<br />the beauty. He stood without the power of motion for some<br />moments, with his eyes irrecoverably fixed upon her; and even<br />after he was conscious of the ability to move, he could not<br />summon up courage to turn and look on her, face to face, in the<br />veritable chamber in which he stood. At length, with a sudden<br />effort, in which the exercise of the will was so pure, that it<br />seemed involuntary, he turned his face to the couch. It was<br />vacant. In bewilderment, mingled with terror, he turned again to<br />the mirror: there, on the reflected couch, lay the exquisite<br />lady-form. She lay with closed eyes, whence two large tears were<br />just welling from beneath the veiling lids; still as death, save<br />for the convulsive motion of her bosom.<br />Cosmo himself could not have described what he felt. His<br />emotions were of a kind that destroyed consciousness, and could<br />never be clearly recalled. He could not help standing yet by the<br />mirror, and keeping his eyes fixed on the lady, though he was<br />painfully aware of his rudeness, and feared every moment that she<br />would open hers, and meet his fixed regard. But he was, ere<br />long, a little relieved; for, after a while, her eyelids slowly<br />rose, and her eyes remained uncovered, but unemployed for a time;<br />and when, at length, they began to wander about the room, as if<br />languidly seeking to make some acquaintance with her environment,<br />they were never directed towards him: it seemed nothing but what<br />was in the mirror could affect her vision; and, therefore, if she<br />saw him at all, it could only be his back, which, of necessity,<br />was turned towards her in the glass. The two figures in the<br />mirror could not meet face to face, except he turned and looked<br />at her, present in his room; and, as she was not there, he<br />concluded that if he were to turn towards the part in his room<br />corresponding to that in which she lay, his reflection would<br />either be invisible to her altogether, or at least it must appear<br />to her to gaze vacantly towards her, and no meeting of the eyes<br />would produce the impression of spiritual proximity. By-and-by<br />her eyes fell upon the skeleton, and he saw her shudder and close<br />them. She did not open them again, but signs of repugnance<br />continued evident on her countenance. Cosmo would have removed<br />the obnoxious thing at once, but he feared to discompose her yet<br />more by the assertion of his presence which the act would<br />involve. So he stood and watched her. The eyelids yet shrouded<br />the eyes, as a costly case the jewels within; the troubled<br />expression gradually faded from the countenance, leaving only a<br />faint sorrow behind; the features settled into an unchanging<br />expression of rest; and by these signs, and the slow regular<br />motion of her breathing, Cosmo knew that she slept. He could now<br />gaze on her without embarrassment. He saw that her figure,<br />dressed in the simplest robe of white, was worthy of her face;<br />and so harmonious, that either the delicately moulded foot, or<br />any finger of the equally delicate hand, was an index to the<br />whole. As she lay, her whole form manifested the relaxation of<br />perfect repose. He gazed till he was weary, and at last seated<br />himself near the new-found shrine, and mechanically took up a<br />book, like one who watches by a sick-bed. But his eyes gathered<br />no thoughts from the page before him. His intellect had been<br />stunned by the bold contradiction, to its face, of all its<br />experience, and now lay passive, without assertion, or<br />speculation, or even conscious astonishment; while his<br />imagination sent one wild dream of blessedness after another<br />coursing through his soul. How long he sat he knew not; but at<br />length he roused himself, rose, and, trembling in every portion<br />of his frame, looked again into the mirror. She was gone. The<br />mirror reflected faithfully what his room presented, and nothing<br />more. It stood there like a golden setting whence the central<br />jewel has been stolen away--like a night- sky without the glory<br />of its stars. She had carried with her all the strangeness of<br />the reflected room. It had sunk to the level of the one without.<br />But when the first pangs of his disappointment had passed, Cosmo<br />began to comfort himself with the hope that she might return,<br />perhaps the next evening, at the same hour. Resolving that if<br />she did, she should not at least be scared by the hateful<br />skeleton, he removed that and several other articles of<br />questionable appearance into a recess by the side of the hearth,<br />whence they could not possibly cast any reflection into the<br />mirror; and having made his poor room as tidy as he could, sought<br />the solace of the open sky and of a night wind that had begun to<br />blow, for he could not rest where he was. When he returned,<br />somewhat composed, he could hardly prevail with himself to lie<br />down on his bed; for he could not help feeling as if she had lain<br />upon it; and for him to lie there now would be something like<br />sacrilege. However, weariness prevailed; and laying himself on<br />the couch, dressed as he was, he slept till day.<br />With a beating heart, beating till he could hardly breathe, he<br />stood in dumb hope before the mirror, on the following evening.<br />Again the reflected room shone as through a purple vapour in the<br />gathering twilight. Everything seemed waiting like himself for a<br />coming splendour to glorify its poor earthliness with the<br />presence of a heavenly joy. And just as the room vibrated with<br />the strokes of the neighbouring church bell, announcing the hour<br />of six, in glided the pale beauty, and again laid herself on the<br />couch. Poor Cosmo nearly lost his senses with delight. She was<br />there once more! Her eyes sought the corner where the skeleton<br />had stood, and a faint gleam of satisfaction crossed her face,<br />apparently at seeing it empty. She looked suffering still, but<br />there was less of discomfort expressed in her countenance than<br />there had been the night before. She took more notice of the<br />things about her, and seemed to gaze with some curiosity on the<br />strange apparatus standing here and there in her room. At<br />length, however, drowsiness seemed to overtake her, and again she<br />fell asleep. Resolved not to lose sight of her this time, Cosmo<br />watched the sleeping form. Her slumber was so deep and absorbing<br />that a fascinating repose seemed to pass contagiously from her to<br />him as he gazed upon her; and he started as if from a dream, when<br />the lady moved, and, without opening her eyes, rose, and passed<br />from the room with the gait of a somnambulist.<br />Cosmo was now in a state of extravagant delight. Most men have a<br />secret treasure somewhere. The miser has his golden hoard; the<br />virtuoso his pet ring; the student his rare book; the poet his<br />favourite haunt; the lover his secret drawer; but Cosmo had a<br />mirror with a lovely lady in it. And now that he knew by the<br />skeleton, that she was affected by the things around her, he had<br />a new object in life: he would turn the bare chamber in the<br />mirror into a room such as no lady need disdain to call her own.<br />This he could effect only by furnishing and adorning his. And<br />Cosmo was poor. Yet he possessed accomplishments that could be<br />turned to account; although, hitherto, he had preferred living on<br />his slender allowance, to increasing his means by what his pride<br />considered unworthy of his rank. He was the best swordsman in<br />the University; and now he offered to give lessons in fencing and<br />similar exercises, to such as chose to pay him well for the<br />trouble. His proposal was heard with surprise by the students;<br />but it was eagerly accepted by many; and soon his instructions<br />were not confined to the richer students, but were anxiously<br />sought by many of the young nobility of Prague and its<br />neighbourhood. So that very soon he had a good deal of money at<br />his command. The first thing he did was to remove his apparatus<br />and oddities into a closet in the room. Then he placed his bed<br />and a few other necessaries on each side of the hearth, and<br />parted them from the rest of the room by two screens of Indian<br />fabric. Then he put an elegant couch for the lady to lie upon,<br />in the corner where his bed had formerly stood; and, by degrees,<br />every day adding some article of luxury, converted it, at length,<br />into a rich boudoir.<br />Every night, about the same time, the lady entered. The first<br />time she saw the new couch, she started with a half-smile; then<br />her face grew very sad, the tears came to her eyes, and she laid<br />herself upon the couch, and pressed her face into the silken<br />cushions, as if to hide from everything. She took notice of each<br />addition and each change as the work proceeded; and a look of<br />acknowledgment, as if she knew that some one was ministering to<br />her, and was grateful for it, mingled with the constant look of<br />suffering. At length, after she had lain down as usual one<br />evening, her eyes fell upon some paintings with which Cosmo had<br />just finished adorning the walls. She rose, and to his great<br />delight, walked across the room, and proceeded to examine them<br />carefully, testifying much pleasure in her looks as she did so.<br />But again the sorrowful, tearful expression returned, and again<br />she buried her face in the pillows of her couch. Gradually,<br />however, her countenance had grown more composed; much of the<br />suffering manifest on her first appearance had vanished, and a<br />kind of quiet, hopeful expression had taken its place; which,<br />however, frequently gave way to an anxious, troubled look,<br />mingled with something of sympathetic pity.<br />Meantime, how fared Cosmo? As might be expected in one of his<br />temperament, his interest had blossomed into love, and his<br />love--shall I call it RIPENED, or--WITHERED into passion. But,<br />alas! he loved a shadow. He could not come near her, could not<br />speak to her, could not hear a sound from those sweet lips, to<br />which his longing eyes would cling like bees to their<br />honey-founts. Ever and anon he sang to himself:<br />"I shall die for love of the maiden;"<br />and ever he looked again, and died not, though his heart seemed<br />ready to break with intensity of life and longing. And the more<br />he did for her, the more he loved her; and he hoped that,<br />although she never appeared to see him, yet she was pleased to<br />think that one unknown would give his life to her. He tried to<br />comfort himself over his separation from her, by thinking that<br />perhaps some day she would see him and make signs to him, and<br />that would satisfy him; "for," thought he, "is not this all that<br />a loving soul can do to enter into communion with another? Nay,<br />how many who love never come nearer than to behold each other as<br />in a mirror; seem to know and yet never know the inward life;<br />never enter the other soul; and part at last, with but the<br />vaguest notion of the universe on the borders of which they have<br />been hovering for years? If I could but speak to her, and knew<br />that she heard me, I should be satisfied." Once he contemplated<br />painting a picture on the wall, which should, of necessity,<br />convey to the lady a thought of himself; but, though he had some<br />skill with the pencil, he found his hand tremble so much when he<br />began the attempt, that he was forced to give it up. .<br />. . . .<br />"Who lives, he dies; who dies, he is alive."<br />One evening, as he stood gazing on his treasure, he thought he<br />saw a faint expression of self-consciousness on her countenance,<br />as if she surmised that passionate eyes were fixed upon her.<br />This grew; till at last the red blood rose over her neck, and<br />cheek, and brow. Cosmo's longing to approach her became almost<br />delirious. This night she was dressed in an evening costume,<br />resplendent with diamonds. This could add nothing to her beauty,<br />but it presented it in a new aspect; enabled her loveliness to<br />make a new manifestation of itself in a new embodiment. For<br />essential beauty is infinite; and, as the soul of Nature needs an<br />endless succession of varied forms to embody her loveliness,<br />countless faces of beauty springing forth, not any two the same,<br />at any one of her heart-throbs; so the individual form needs an<br />infinite change of its environments, to enable it to uncover all<br />the phases of its loveliness. Diamonds glittered from amidst her<br />hair, half hidden in its luxuriance, like stars through dark<br />rain-clouds; and the bracelets on her white arms flashed all the<br />colours of a rainbow of lightnings, as she lifted her snowy hands<br />to cover her burning face. But her beauty shone down all its<br />adornment. "If I might have but one of her feet to kiss,"<br />thought Cosmo, "I should be content." Alas! he deceived himself,<br />for passion is never content. Nor did he know that there are TWO<br />ways out of her enchanted house. But, suddenly, as if the pang<br />had been driven into his heart from without, revealing itself<br />first in pain, and afterwards in definite form, the thought<br />darted into his mind, "She has a lover somewhere. Remembered<br />words of his bring the colour on her face now. I am nowhere to<br />her. She lives in another world all day, and all night, after<br />she leaves me. Why does she come and make me love her, till I, a<br />strong man, am too faint to look upon her more?" He looked<br />again, and her face was pale as a lily. A sorrowful compassion<br />seemed to rebuke the glitter of the restless jewels, and the slow<br />tears rose in her eyes. She left her room sooner this evening<br />than was her wont. Cosmo remained alone, with a feeling as if<br />his bosom had been suddenly left empty and hollow, and the weight<br />of the whole world was crushing in its walls. The next evening,<br />for the first time since she began to come, she came not.<br />And now Cosmo was in wretched plight. Since the thought of a<br />rival had occurred to him, he could not rest for a moment. More<br />than ever he longed to see the lady face to face. He persuaded<br />himself that if he but knew the worst he would be satisfied; for<br />then he could abandon Prague, and find that relief in constant<br />motion, which is the hope of all active minds when invaded by<br />distress. Meantime he waited with unspeakable anxiety for the<br />next night, hoping she would return: but she did not appear. And<br />now he fell really ill. Rallied by his fellow students on his<br />wretched looks, he ceased to attend the lectures. His<br />engagements were neglected. He cared for nothing, The sky, with<br />the great sun in it, was to him a heartless, burning desert. The<br />men and women in the streets were mere puppets, without motives<br />in themselves, or interest to him. He saw them all as on the<br />ever- changing field of a camera obscura. She--she alone and<br />altogether--was his universe, his well of life, his incarnate<br />good. For six evenings she came not. Let his absorbing passion,<br />and the slow fever that was consuming his brain, be his excuse<br />for the resolution which he had taken and begun to execute,<br />before that time had expired.<br />Reasoning with himself, that it must be by some enchantment<br />connected with the mirror, that the form of the lady was to be<br />seen in it, he determined to attempt to turn to account what he<br />had hitherto studied principally from curiosity. "For," said he<br />to himself, "if a spell can force her presence in that glass (and<br />she came unwillingly at first), may not a stronger spell, such as<br />I know, especially with the aid of her half-presence in the<br />mirror, if ever she appears again, compel her living form to come<br />to me here? If I do her wrong, let love be my excuse. I want<br />only to know my doom from her own lips." He never doubted, all<br />the time, that she was a real earthly woman; or, rather, that<br />there was a woman, who, somehow or other, threw this reflection<br />of her form into the magic mirror.<br />He opened his secret drawer, took out his books of magic, lighted<br />his lamp, and read and made notes from midnight till three in the<br />morning, for three successive nights. Then he replaced his<br />books; and the next night went out in quest of the materials<br />necessary for the conjuration. These were not easy to find; for,<br />in love-charms and all incantations of this nature, ingredients<br />are employed scarcely fit to be mentioned, and for the thought<br />even of which, in connexion with her, he could only excuse<br />himself on the score of his bitter need. At length he succeeded<br />in procuring all he required; and on the seventh evening from<br />that on which she had last appeared, he found himself prepared<br />for the exercise of unlawful and tyrannical power.<br />He cleared the centre of the room; stooped and drew a circle of<br />red on the floor, around the spot where he stood; wrote in the<br />four quarters mystical signs, and numbers which were all powers<br />of seven or nine; examined the whole ring carefully, to see that<br />no smallest break had occurred in the circumference; and then<br />rose from his bending posture. As he rose, the church clock<br />struck seven; and, just as she had appeared the first time,<br />reluctant, slow, and stately, glided in the lady. Cosmo<br />trembled; and when, turning, she revealed a countenance worn and<br />wan, as with sickness or inward trouble, he grew faint, and felt<br />as if he dared not proceed. But as he gazed on the face and<br />form, which now possessed his whole soul, to the exclusion of all<br />other joys and griefs, the longing to speak to her, to know that<br />she heard him, to hear from her one word in return, became so<br />unendurable, that he suddenly and hastily resumed his<br />preparations. Stepping carefully from the circle, he put a small<br />brazier into its centre. He then set fire to its contents of<br />charcoal, and while it burned up, opened his window and seated<br />himself, waiting, beside it.<br />It was a sultry evening. The air was full of thunder. A sense<br />of luxurious depression filled the brain. The sky seemed to have<br />grown heavy, and to compress the air beneath it. A kind of<br />purplish tinge pervaded the atmosphere, and through the open<br />window came the scents of the distant fields, which all the<br />vapours of the city could not quench. Soon the charcoal glowed.<br />Cosmo sprinkled upon it the incense and other substances which he<br />had compounded, and, stepping within the circle, turned his face<br />from the brazier and towards the mirror. Then, fixing his eyes<br />upon the face of the lady, he began with a trembling voice to<br />repeat a powerful incantation. He had not gone far, before the<br />lady grew pale; and then, like a returning wave, the blood washed<br />all its banks with its crimson tide, and she hid her face in her<br />hands. Then he passed to a conjuration stronger yet.<br />The lady rose and walked uneasily to and fro in her room.<br />Another spell; and she seemed seeking with her eyes for some<br />object on which they wished to rest. At length it seemed as if<br />she suddenly espied him; for her eyes fixed themselves full and<br />wide upon his, and she drew gradually, and somewhat unwillingly,<br />close to her side of the mirror, just as if his eyes had<br />fascinated her. Cosmo had never seen her so near before. Now at<br />least, eyes met eyes; but he could not quite understand the<br />expression of hers. They were full of tender entreaty, but there<br />was something more that he could not interpret. Though his heart<br />seemed to labour in his throat, he would allow no delight or<br />agitation to turn him from his task. Looking still in her face,<br />he passed on to the mightiest charm he knew. Suddenly the lady<br />turned and walked out of the door of her reflected chamber. A<br />moment after she entered his room with veritable presence; and,<br />forgetting all his precautions, he sprang from the charmed<br />circle, and knelt before her. There she stood, the living lady<br />of his passionate visions, alone beside him, in a thundery<br />twilight, and the glow of a magic fire.<br />"Why," said the lady, with a trembling voice, "didst thou bring a<br />poor maiden through the rainy streets alone?"<br />"Because I am dying for love of thee; but I only brought thee<br />from the mirror there."<br />"Ah, the mirror!" and she looked up at it, and shuddered. "Alas!<br />I am but a slave, while that mirror exists. But do not think it<br />was the power of thy spells that drew me; it was thy longing<br />desire to see me, that beat at the door of my heart, till I was<br />forced to yield."<br />"Canst thou love me then?" said Cosmo, in a voice calm as death,<br />but almost inarticulate with emotion.<br />"I do not know," she replied sadly; "that I cannot tell, so long<br />as I am bewildered with enchantments. It were indeed a joy too<br />great, to lay my head on thy bosom and weep to death; for I think<br />thou lovest me, though I do not know;--but----"<br />Cosmo rose from his knees.<br />"I love thee as--nay, I know not what--for since I have loved<br />thee, there is nothing else."<br />He seized her hand: she withdrew it.<br />"No, better not; I am in thy power, and therefore I may not."<br />She burst into tears, and kneeling before him in her turn, said--<br />"Cosmo, if thou lovest me, set me free, even from thyself; break<br />the mirror."<br />"And shall I see thyself instead?"<br />"That I cannot tell, I will not deceive thee; we may never meet<br />again."<br />A fierce struggle arose in Cosmo's bosom. Now she was in his<br />power. She did not dislike him at least; and he could see her<br />when he would. To break the mirror would be to destroy his very<br />life to banish out of his universe the only glory it possessed.<br />The whole world would be but a prison, if he annihilated the one<br />window that looked into the paradise of love. Not yet pure in<br />love, he hesitated.<br />With a wail of sorrow the lady rose to her feet. "Ah! he loves<br />me not; he loves me not even as I love him; and alas! I care<br />more for his love than even for the freedom I ask."<br />"I will not wait to be willing," cried Cosmo; and sprang to the<br />corner where the great sword stood.<br />Meantime it had grown very dark; only the embers cast a red glow<br />through the room. He seized the sword by the steel scabbard, and<br />stood before the mirror; but as he heaved a great blow at it with<br />the heavy pommel, the blade slipped half-way out of the scabbard,<br />and the pommel struck the wall above the mirror. At that moment,<br />a terrible clap of thunder seemed to burst in the very room<br />beside them; and ere Cosmo could repeat the blow, he fell<br />senseless on the hearth. When he came to himself, he found that<br />the lady and the mirror had both disappeared. He was seized with<br />a brain fever, which kept him to his couch for weeks.<br />When he recovered his reason, he began to think what could have<br />become of the mirror. For the lady, he hoped she had found her<br />way back as she came; but as the mirror involved her fate with<br />its own, he was more immediately anxious about that. He could<br />not think she had carried it away. It was much too heavy, even<br />if it had not been too firmly fixed in the wall, for her to<br />remove it. Then again, he remembered the thunder; which made him<br />believe that it was not the lightning, but some other blow that<br />had struck him down. He concluded that, either by supernatural<br />agency, he having exposed himself to the vengeance of the demons<br />in leaving the circle of safety, or in some other mode, the<br />mirror had probably found its way back to its former owner; and,<br />horrible to think of, might have been by this time once more<br />disposed of, delivering up the lady into the power of another<br />man; who, if he used his power no worse than he himself had done,<br />might yet give Cosmo abundant cause to curse the selfish<br />indecision which prevented him from shattering the mirror at<br />once. Indeed, to think that she whom he loved, and who had<br />prayed to him for freedom, should be still at the mercy, in some<br />degree, of the possessor of the mirror, and was at least exposed<br />to his constant observation, was in itself enough to madden a<br />chary lover.<br />Anxiety to be well retarded his recovery; but at length he was<br />able to creep abroad. He first made his way to the old broker's,<br />pretending to be in search of something else. A laughing sneer<br />on the creature's face convinced him that he knew all about it;<br />but he could not see it amongst his furniture, or get any<br />information out of him as to what had become of it. He expressed<br />the utmost surprise at hearing it had been stolen, a surprise<br />which Cosmo saw at once to be counterfeited; while, at the same<br />time, he fancied that the old wretch was not at all anxious to<br />have it mistaken for genuine. Full of distress, which he<br />concealed as well as he could, he made many searches, but with no<br />avail. Of course he could ask no questions; but he kept his ears<br />awake for any remotest hint that might set him in a direction of<br />search. He never went out without a short heavy hammer of steel<br />about him, that he might shatter the mirror the moment he was<br />made happy by the sight of his lost treasure, if ever that<br />blessed moment should arrive. Whether he should see the lady<br />again, was now a thought altogether secondary, and postponed to<br />the achievement of her freedom. He wandered here and there, like<br />an anxious ghost, pale and haggard; gnawed ever at the heart, by<br />the thought of what she might be suffering--all from his fault.<br />One night, he mingled with a crowd that filled the rooms of one<br />of the most distinguished mansions in the city; for he accepted<br />every invitation, that he might lose no chance, however poor, of<br />obtaining some information that might expedite his discovery.<br />Here he wandered about, listening to every stray word that he<br />could catch, in the hope of a revelation. As he approached some<br />ladies who were talking quietly in a corner, one said to another:<br />"Have you heard of the strange illness of the Princess von<br />Hohenweiss?"<br />"Yes; she has been ill for more than a year now. It is very sad<br />for so fine a creature to have such a terrible malady. She was<br />better for some weeks lately, but within the last few days the<br />same attacks have returned, apparently accompanied with more<br />suffering than ever. It is altogether an inexplicable story."<br />"Is there a story connected with her illness?"<br />"I have only heard imperfect reports of it; but it is said that<br />she gave offence some eighteen months ago to an old woman who had<br />held an office of trust in the family, and who, after some<br />incoherent threats, disappeared. This peculiar affection<br />followed soon after. But the strangest part of the story is its<br />association with the loss of an antique mirror, which stood in<br />her dressing-room, and of which she constantly made use."<br />Here the speaker's voice sank to a whisper; and Cosmo, although<br />his very soul sat listening in his ears, could hear no more. He<br />trembled too much to dare to address the ladies, even if it had<br />been advisable to expose himself to their curiosity. The name of<br />the Princess was well known to him, but he had never seen her;<br />except indeed it was she, which now he hardly doubted, who had<br />knelt before him on that dreadful night. Fearful of attracting<br />attention, for, from the weak state of his health, he could not<br />recover an appearance of calmness, he made his way to the open<br />air, and reached his lodgings; glad in this, that he at least<br />knew where she lived, although he never dreamed of approaching<br />her openly, even if he should be happy enough to free her from<br />her hateful bondage. He hoped, too, that as he had unexpectedly<br />learned so much, the other and far more important part might be<br />revealed to him ere long.<br />. . . . .<br />"Have you seen Steinwald lately?"<br />"No, I have not seen him for some time. He is almost a match for<br />me at the rapier, and I suppose he thinks he needs no more<br />lessons."<br />"I wonder what has become of him. I want to see him very much.<br />Let me see; the last time I saw him he was coming out of that old<br />broker's den, to which, if you remember, you accompanied me once,<br />to look at some armour. That is fully three weeks ago."<br />This hint was enough for Cosmo. Von Steinwald was a man of<br />influence in the court, well known for his reckless habits and<br />fierce passions. The very possibility that the mirror should be<br />in his possession was hell itself to Cosmo. But violent or hasty<br />measures of any sort were most unlikely to succeed. All that he<br />wanted was an opportunity of breaking the fatal glass; and to<br />obtain this he must bide his time. He revolved many plans in his<br />mind, but without being able to fix upon any.<br />At length, one evening, as he was passing the house of Von<br />Steinwald, he saw the windows more than usually brilliant. He<br />watched for a while, and seeing that company began to arrive,<br />hastened home, and dressed as richly as he could, in the hope of<br />mingling with the guests unquestioned: in effecting which, there<br />could be no difficulty for a man of his carriage.<br />. . . . .<br />In a lofty, silent chamber, in another part of the city, lay a<br />form more like marble than a living woman. The loveliness of<br />death seemed frozen upon her face, for her lips were rigid, and<br />her eyelids closed. Her long white hands were crossed over her<br />breast, and no breathing disturbed their repose. Beside the<br />dead, men speak in whispers, as if the deepest rest of all could<br />be broken by the sound of a living voice. Just so, though the<br />soul was evidently beyond the reach of all intimations from the<br />senses, the two ladies, who sat beside her, spoke in the gentlest<br />tones of subdued sorrow.<br />"She has lain so for an hour."<br />"This cannot last long, I fear."<br />"How much thinner she has grown within the last few weeks! If<br />she would only speak, and explain what she suffers, it would be<br />better for her. I think she has visions in her trances, but<br />nothing can induce her to refer to them when she is awake."<br />"Does she ever speak in these trances?"<br />"I have never heard her; but they say she walks sometimes, and<br />once put the whole household in a terrible fright by disappearing<br />for a whole hour, and returning drenched with rain, and almost<br />dead with exhaustion and fright. But even then she would give no<br />account of what had happened."<br />A scarce audible murmur from the yet motionless lips of the lady<br />here startled her attendants. After several ineffectual attempts<br />at articulation, the word "COSMO!" burst from her. Then she lay<br />still as before; but only for a moment. With a wild cry, she<br />sprang from the couch erect on the floor, flung her arms above<br />her head, with clasped and straining hands, and, her wide eyes<br />flashing with light, called aloud, with a voice exultant as that<br />of a spirit bursting from a sepulchre, "I am free! I am free! I<br />thank thee!" Then she flung herself on the couch, and sobbed;<br />then rose, and paced wildly up and down the room, with gestures<br />of mingled delight and anxiety. Then turning to her motionless<br />attendants--"Quick, Lisa, my cloak and hood!" Then lower--"I<br />must go to him. Make haste, Lisa! You may come with me, if you<br />will."<br />In another moment they were in the street, hurrying along towards<br />one of the bridges over the Moldau. The moon was near the<br />zenith, and the streets were almost empty. The Princess soon<br />outstripped her attendant, and was half-way over the bridge,<br />before the other reached it.<br />"Are you free, lady? The mirror is broken: are you free?"<br />The words were spoken close beside her, as she hurried on. She<br />turned; and there, leaning on the parapet in a recess of the<br />bridge, stood Cosmo, in a splendid dress, but with a white and<br />quivering face.<br />"Cosmo!--I am free--and thy servant for ever. I was coming to<br />you now."<br />"And I to you, for Death made me bold; but I could get no<br />further. Have I atoned at all? Do I love you a little--truly?"<br />"Ah, I know now that you love me, my Cosmo; but what do you say<br />about death?"<br />He did not reply. His hand was pressed against his side. She<br />looked more closely: the blood was welling from between the<br />fingers. She flung her arms around him with a faint bitter wail.<br />When Lisa came up, she found her mistress kneeling above a wan<br />dead face, which smiled on in the spectral moonbeams.<br />And now I will say no more about these wondrous volumes; though<br />I could tell many a tale out of them, and could, perhaps, vaguely<br />represent some entrancing thoughts of a deeper kind which I found<br />within them. From many a sultry noon till twilight, did I sit in<br />that grand hall, buried and risen again in these old books. And<br />I trust I have carried away in my soul some of the exhalations of<br />their undying leaves. In after hours of deserved or needful<br />sorrow, portions of what I read there have often come to me<br />again, with an unexpected comforting; which was not fruitless,<br />even though the comfort might seem in itself groundless and vain.<br />CHAPTER XIV<br />"Your gallery<br />Ha we pass'd through, not without much content<br />In many singularities; but we saw not<br />That which my daughter came to look upon,<br />The state of her mother."<br />Winter's Tale.<br />It seemed to me strange, that all this time I had heard no music<br />in the fairy palace. I was convinced there must be music in it,<br />but that my sense was as yet too gross to receive the influence<br />of those mysterious motions that beget sound. Sometimes I felt<br />sure, from the way the few figures of which I got such transitory<br />glimpses passed me, or glided into vacancy before me, that they<br />were moving to the law of music; and, in fact, several times I<br />fancied for a moment that I heard a few wondrous tones coming I<br />knew not whence. But they did not last long enough to convince<br />me that I had heard them with the bodily sense. Such as they<br />were, however, they took strange liberties with me, causing me to<br />burst suddenly into tears, of which there was no presence to make<br />me ashamed, or casting me into a kind of trance of speechless<br />delight, which, passing as suddenly, left me faint and longing<br />for more.<br />Now, on an evening, before I had been a week in the palace, I was<br />wandering through one lighted arcade and corridor after another.<br />At length I arrived, through a door that closed behind me, in<br />another vast hall of the palace. It was filled with a subdued<br />crimson light; by which I saw that slender pillars of black,<br />built close to walls of white marble, rose to a great height, and<br />then, dividing into innumerable divergent arches, supported a<br />roof, like the walls, of white marble, upon which the arches<br />intersected intricately, forming a fretting of black upon the<br />white, like the network of a skeleton-leaf. The floor was black.<br />Between several pairs of the pillars upon every side, the place<br />of the wall behind was occupied by a crimson curtain of thick<br />silk, hanging in heavy and rich folds. Behind each of these<br />curtains burned a powerful light, and these were the sources of<br />the glow that filled the hall. A peculiar delicious odour<br />pervaded the place. As soon as I entered, the old inspiration<br />seemed to return to me, for I felt a strong impulse to sing; or<br />rather, it seemed as if some one else was singing a song in my<br />soul, which wanted to come forth at my lips, imbodied in my<br />breath. But I kept silence; and feeling somewhat overcome by the<br />red light and the perfume, as well as by the emotion within me,<br />and seeing at one end of the hall a great crimson chair, more<br />like a throne than a chair, beside a table of white marble, I<br />went to it, and, throwing myself in it, gave myself up to a<br />succession of images of bewildering beauty, which passed before<br />my inward eye, in a long and occasionally crowded train. Here I<br />sat for hours, I suppose; till, returning somewhat to myself, I<br />saw that the red light had paled away, and felt a cool gentle<br />breath gliding over my forehead. I rose and left the hall with<br />unsteady steps, finding my way with some difficulty to my own<br />chamber, and faintly remembering, as I went, that only in the<br />marble cave, before I found the sleeping statue, had I ever had a<br />similar experience.<br />After this, I repaired every morning to the same hall; where I<br />sometimes sat in the chair and dreamed deliciously, and sometimes<br />walked up and down over the black floor. Sometimes I acted<br />within myself a whole drama, during one of these perambulations;<br />sometimes walked deliberately through the whole epic of a tale;<br />sometimes ventured to sing a song, though with a shrinking fear<br />of I knew not what. I was astonished at the beauty of my own<br />voice as it rang through the place, or rather crept undulating,<br />like a serpent of sound, along the walls and roof of this superb<br />music-hall. Entrancing verses arose within me as of their own<br />accord, chanting themselves to their own melodies, and requiring<br />no addition of music to satisfy the inward sense. But, ever in<br />the pauses of these, when the singing mood was upon me, I seemed<br />to hear something like the distant sound of multitudes of<br />dancers, and felt as if it was the unheard music, moving their<br />rhythmic motion, that within me blossomed in verse and song. I<br />felt, too, that could I but see the dance, I should, from the<br />harmony of complicated movements, not of the dancers in relation<br />to each other merely, but of each dancer individually in the<br />manifested plastic power that moved the consenting harmonious<br />form, understand the whole of the music on the billows of which<br />they floated and swung.<br />At length, one night, suddenly, when this feeling of dancing came<br />upon me, I bethought me of lifting one of the crimson curtains,<br />and looking if, perchance, behind it there might not be hid some<br />other mystery, which might at least remove a step further the<br />bewilderment of the present one. Nor was I altogether<br />disappointed. I walked to one of the magnificent draperies,<br />lifted a corner, and peeped in. There, burned a great, crimson,<br />globe-shaped light, high in the cubical centre of another hall,<br />which might be larger or less than that in which I stood, for its<br />dimensions were not easily perceived, seeing that floor and roof<br />and walls were entirely of black marble.<br />The roof was supported by the same arrangement of pillars<br />radiating in arches, as that of the first hall; only, here, the<br />pillars and arches were of dark red. But what absorbed my<br />delighted gaze, was an innumerable assembly of white marble<br />statues, of every form, and in multitudinous posture, filling the<br />hall throughout. These stood, in the ruddy glow of the great<br />lamp, upon pedestals of jet black. Around the lamp shone in<br />golden letters, plainly legible from where I stood, the two<br />words--<br />TOUCH NOT!<br />There was in all this, however, no solution to the sound of<br />dancing; and now I was aware that the influence on my mind had<br />ceased. I did not go in that evening, for I was weary and faint,<br />but I hoarded up the expectation of entering, as of a great<br />coming joy.<br />Next night I walked, as on the preceding, through the hall. My<br />mind was filled with pictures and songs, and therewith so much<br />absorbed, that I did not for some time think of looking within<br />the curtain I had last night lifted. When the thought of doing<br />so occurred to me first, I happened to be within a few yards of<br />it. I became conscious, at the same moment, that the sound of<br />dancing had been for some time in my ears. I approached the<br />curtain quickly, and, lifting it, entered the black hall.<br />Everything was still as death. I should have concluded that the<br />sound must have proceeded from some other more distant quarter,<br />which conclusion its faintness would, in ordinary circumstances,<br />have necessitated from the first; but there was a something about<br />the statues that caused me still to remain in doubt. As I said,<br />each stood perfectly still upon its black pedestal: but there was<br />about every one a certain air, not of motion, but as if it had<br />just ceased from movement; as if the rest were not altogether of<br />the marbly stillness of thousands of years. It was as if the<br />peculiar atmosphere of each had yet a kind of invisible<br />tremulousness; as if its agitated wavelets had not yet subsided<br />into a perfect calm. I had the suspicion that they had<br />anticipated my appearance, and had sprung, each, from the living<br />joy of the dance, to the death-silence and blackness of its<br />isolated pedestal, just before I entered. I walked across the<br />central hall to the curtain opposite the one I had lifted, and,<br />entering there, found all the appearances similar; only that the<br />statues were different, and differently grouped. Neither did<br />they produce on my mind that impression--of motion just expired,<br />which I had experienced from the others. I found that behind<br />every one of the crimson curtains was a similar hall, similarly<br />lighted, and similarly occupied.<br />The next night, I did not allow my thoughts to be absorbed as<br />before with inward images, but crept stealthily along to the<br />furthest curtain in the hall, from behind which, likewise, I had<br />formerly seemed to hear the sound of dancing. I drew aside its<br />edge as suddenly as I could, and, looking in, saw that the utmost<br />stillness pervaded the vast place. I walked in, and passed<br />through it to the other end.<br />There I found that it communicated with a circular corridor,<br />divided from it only by two rows of red columns. This corridor,<br />which was black, with red niches holding statues, ran entirely<br />about the statue- halls, forming a communication between the<br />further ends of them all; further, that is, as regards the<br />central hall of white whence they all diverged like radii,<br />finding their circumference in the corridor.<br />Round this corridor I now went, entering all the halls, of which<br />there were twelve, and finding them all similarly constructed,<br />but filled with quite various statues, of what seemed both<br />ancient and modern sculpture. After I had simply walked through<br />them, I found myself sufficiently tired to long for rest, and<br />went to my own room.<br />In the night I dreamed that, walking close by one of the<br />curtains, I was suddenly seized with the desire to enter, and<br />darted in. This time I was too quick for them. All the statues<br />were in motion, statues no longer, but men and women--all shapes<br />of beauty that ever sprang from the brain of the sculptor,<br />mingled in the convolutions of a complicated dance. Passing<br />through them to the further end, I almost started from my sleep<br />on beholding, not taking part in the dance with the others, nor<br />seemingly endued with life like them, but standing in marble<br />coldness and rigidity upon a black pedestal in the extreme left<br />corner--my lady of the cave; the marble beauty who sprang from<br />her tomb or her cradle at the call of my songs. While I gazed in<br />speechless astonishment and admiration, a dark shadow, descending<br />from above like the curtain of a stage, gradually hid her<br />entirely from my view. I felt with a shudder that this shadow<br />was perchance my missing demon, whom I had not seen for days. I<br />awoke with a stifled cry.<br />Of course, the next evening I began my journey through the halls<br />(for I knew not to which my dream had carried me), in the hope of<br />proving the dream to be a true one, by discovering my marble<br />beauty upon her black pedestal. At length, on reaching the tenth<br />hall, I thought I recognised some of the forms I had seen dancing<br />in my dream; and to my bewilderment, when I arrived at the<br />extreme corner on the left, there stood, the only one I had yet<br />seen, a vacant pedestal. It was exactly in the position<br />occupied, in my dream, by the pedestal on which the white lady<br />stood. Hope beat violently in my heart.<br />"Now," said I to myself, "if yet another part of the dream would<br />but come true, and I should succeed in surprising these forms in<br />their nightly dance; it might be the rest would follow, and I<br />should see on the pedestal my marble queen. Then surely if my<br />songs sufficed to give her life before, when she lay in the bonds<br />of alabaster, much more would they be sufficient then to give her<br />volition and motion, when she alone of assembled crowds of marble<br />forms, would be standing rigid and cold."<br />But the difficulty was, to surprise the dancers. I had found<br />that a premeditated attempt at surprise, though executed with the<br />utmost care and rapidity, was of no avail. And, in my dream, it<br />was effected by a sudden thought suddenly executed. I saw,<br />therefore, that there was no plan of operation offering any<br />probability of success, but this: to allow my mind to be occupied<br />with other thoughts, as I wandered around the great centre-hall;<br />and so wait till the impulse to enter one of the others should<br />happen to arise in me just at the moment when I was close to one<br />of the crimson curtains. For I hoped that if I entered any one<br />of the twelve halls at the right moment, that would as it were<br />give me the right of entrance to all the others, seeing they all<br />had communication behind. I would not diminish the hope of the<br />right chance, by supposing it necessary that a desire to enter<br />should awake within me, precisely when I was close to the<br />curtains of the tenth hall.<br />At first the impulses to see recurred so continually, in spite of<br />the crowded imagery that kept passing through my mind, that they<br />formed too nearly a continuous chain, for the hope that any one<br />of them would succeed as a surprise. But as I persisted in<br />banishing them, they recurred less and less often; and after two<br />or three, at considerable intervals, had come when the spot where<br />I happened to be was unsuitable, the hope strengthened, that soon<br />one might arise just at the right moment; namely, when, in<br />walking round the hall, I should be close to one of the curtains.<br />At length the right moment and the impulse coincided. I darted<br />into the ninth hall. It was full of the most exquisite moving<br />forms. The whole space wavered and swam with the involutions of<br />an intricate dance. It seemed to break suddenly as I entered,<br />and all made one or two bounds towards their pedestals; but,<br />apparently on finding that they were thoroughly overtaken, they<br />returned to their employment (for it seemed with them earnest<br />enough to be called such) without further heeding me. Somewhat<br />impeded by the floating crowd, I made what haste I could towards<br />the bottom of the hall; whence, entering the corridor, I turned<br />towards the tenth. I soon arrived at the corner I wanted to<br />reach, for the corridor was comparatively empty; but, although<br />the dancers here, after a little confusion, altogether<br />disregarded my presence, I was dismayed at beholding, even yet, a<br />vacant pedestal. But I had a conviction that she was near me.<br />And as I looked at the pedestal, I thought I saw upon it, vaguely<br />revealed as if through overlapping folds of drapery, the<br />indistinct outlines of white feet. Yet there was no sign of<br />drapery or concealing shadow whatever. But I remembered the<br />descending shadow in my dream. And I hoped still in the power of<br />my songs; thinking that what could dispel alabaster, might<br />likewise be capable of dispelling what concealed my beauty now,<br />even if it were the demon whose darkness had overshadowed all my<br />life.<br />CHAPTER XV<br />"Alexander. 'When will you finish Campaspe?'<br />Apelles. 'Never finish: for always in absolute<br />beauty there is somewhat above art.'"<br />LYLY'S Campaspe.<br />And now, what song should I sing to unveil my Isis, if indeed she<br />was present unseen? I hurried away to the white hall of<br />Phantasy, heedless of the innumerable forms of beauty that<br />crowded my way: these might cross my eyes, but the unseen filled<br />my brain. I wandered long, up and down the silent space: no<br />songs came. My soul was not still enough for songs. Only in the<br />silence and darkness of the soul's night, do those stars of the<br />inward firmament sink to its lower surface from the singing<br />realms beyond, and shine upon the conscious spirit. Here all<br />effort was unavailing. If they came not, they could not be<br />found.<br />Next night, it was just the same. I walked through the red<br />glimmer of the silent hall; but lonely as there I walked, as<br />lonely trod my soul up and down the halls of the brain. At last<br />I entered one of the statue-halls. The dance had just commenced,<br />and I was delighted to find that I was free of their assembly. I<br />walked on till I came to the sacred corner. There I found the<br />pedestal just as I had left it, with the faint glimmer as of<br />white feet still resting on the dead black. As soon as I saw it,<br />I seemed to feel a presence which longed to become visible; and,<br />as it were, called to me to gift it with self- manifestation,<br />that it might shine on me. The power of song came to me. But<br />the moment my voice, though I sang low and soft, stirred the air<br />of the hall, the dancers started; the quick interweaving crowd<br />shook, lost its form, divided; each figure sprang to its<br />pedestal, and stood, a self-evolving life no more, but a rigid,<br />life-like, marble shape, with the whole form composed into the<br />expression of a single state or act. Silence rolled like a<br />spiritual thunder through the grand space. My song had ceased,<br />scared at its own influences. But I saw in the hand of one of<br />the statues close by me, a harp whose chords yet quivered. I<br />remembered that as she bounded past me, her harp had brushed<br />against my arm; so the spell of the marble had not infolded it.<br />I sprang to her, and with a gesture of entreaty, laid my hand on<br />the harp. The marble hand, probably from its contact with the<br />uncharmed harp, had strength enough to relax its hold, and yield<br />the harp to me. No other motion indicated life. Instinctively I<br />struck the chords and sang. And not to break upon the record of<br />my song, I mention here, that as I sang the first four lines, the<br />loveliest feet became clear upon the black pedestal; and ever as<br />I sang, it was as if a veil were being lifted up from before the<br />form, but an invisible veil, so that the statue appeared to grow<br />before me, not so much by evolution, as by infinitesimal degrees<br />of added height. And, while I sang, I did not feel that I stood<br />by a statue, as indeed it appeared to be, but that a real<br />woman-soul was revealing itself by successive stages of<br />imbodiment, and consequent manifestatlon and expression.<br />Feet of beauty, firmly planting<br />Arches white on rosy heel!<br />Whence the life-spring, throbbing, panting,<br />Pulses upward to reveal!<br />Fairest things know least despising;<br />Foot and earth meet tenderly:<br />'Tis the woman, resting, rising<br />Upward to sublimity,<br />Rise the limbs, sedately sloping,<br />Strong and gentle, full and free;<br />Soft and slow, like certain hoping,<br />Drawing nigh the broad firm knee.<br />Up to speech! As up to roses<br />Pants the life from leaf to flower,<br />So each blending change discloses,<br />Nearer still, expression's power.<br />Lo! fair sweeps, white surges, twining<br />Up and outward fearlessly!<br />Temple columns, close combining,<br />Lift a holy mystery.<br />Heart of mine! what strange surprises<br />Mount aloft on such a stair!<br />Some great vision upward rises,<br />Curving, bending, floating fair.<br />Bands and sweeps, and hill and hollow<br />Lead my fascinated eye;<br />Some apocalypse will follow,<br />Some new world of deity.<br />Zoned unseen, and outward swelling,<br />With new thoughts and wonders rife,<br />Queenly majesty foretelling,<br />See the expanding house of life!<br />Sudden heaving, unforbidden<br />Sighs eternal, still the same--<br />Mounts of snow have summits hidden<br />In the mists of uttered flame.<br />But the spirit, dawning nearly<br />Finds no speech for earnest pain;<br />Finds a soundless sighing merely--<br />Builds its stairs, and mounts again.<br />Heart, the queen, with secret hoping,<br />Sendeth out her waiting pair;<br />Hands, blind hands, half blindly groping,<br />Half inclasping visions rare;<br />And the great arms, heartways bending;<br />Might of Beauty, drawing home<br />There returning, and re-blending,<br />Where from roots of love they roam.<br />Build thy slopes of radiance beamy<br />Spirit, fair with womanhood!<br />Tower thy precipice, white-gleamy,<br />Climb unto the hour of good.<br />Dumb space will be rent asunder,<br />Now the shining column stands<br />Ready to be crowned with wonder<br />By the builder's joyous hands.<br />All the lines abroad are spreading,<br />Like a fountain's falling race.<br />Lo, the chin, first feature, treading,<br />Airy foot to rest the face!<br />Speech is nigh; oh, see the blushing,<br />Sweet approach of lip and breath!<br />Round the mouth dim silence, hushing,<br />Waits to die ecstatic death.<br />Span across in treble curving,<br />Bow of promise, upper lip!<br />Set them free, with gracious swerving;<br />Let the wing-words float and dip.<br />DUMB ART THOU? O Love immortal,<br />More than words thy speech must be;<br />Childless yet the tender portal<br />Of the home of melody.<br />Now the nostrils open fearless,<br />Proud in calm unconsciousness,<br />Sure it must be something peerless<br />That the great Pan would express!<br />Deepens, crowds some meaning tender,<br />In the pure, dear lady-face.<br />Lo, a blinding burst of splendour!--<br />'Tis the free soul's issuing grace.<br />Two calm lakes of molten glory<br />Circling round unfathomed deeps!<br />Lightning-flashes, transitory,<br />Cross the gulfs where darkness sleeps.<br />This the gate, at last, of gladness,<br />To the outward striving me:<br />In a rain of light and sadness,<br />Out its loves and longings flee!<br />With a presence I am smitten<br />Dumb, with a foreknown surprise;<br />Presence greater yet than written<br />Even in the glorious eyes.<br />Through the gulfs, with inward gazes,<br />I may look till I am lost;<br />Wandering deep in spirit-mazes,<br />In a sea without a coast.<br />Windows open to the glorious!<br />Time and space, oh, far beyond!<br />Woman, ah! thou art victorious,<br />And I perish, overfond.<br />Springs aloft the yet Unspoken<br />In the forehead's endless grace,<br />Full of silences unbroken;<br />Infinite, unfeatured face.<br />Domes above, the mount of wonder;<br />Height and hollow wrapt in night;<br />Hiding in its caverns under<br />Woman-nations in their might.<br />Passing forms, the highest Human<br />Faints away to the Divine<br />Features none, of man or woman,<br />Can unveil the holiest shine.<br />Sideways, grooved porches only<br />Visible to passing eye,<br />Stand the silent, doorless, lonely<br />Entrance-gates of melody.<br />But all sounds fly in as boldly,<br />Groan and song, and kiss and cry<br />At their galleries, lifted coldly,<br />Darkly, 'twixt the earth and sky.<br />Beauty, thou art spent, thou knowest<br />So, in faint, half-glad despair,<br />From the summit thou o'erflowest<br />In a fall of torrent hair;<br />Hiding what thou hast created<br />In a half-transparent shroud:<br />Thus, with glory soft-abated,<br />Shines the moon through vapoury cloud.<br />CHAPTER XVI<br />"Ev'n the Styx, which ninefold her infoldeth<br />Hems not Ceres' daughter in its flow;<br />But she grasps the apple--ever holdeth<br />Her, sad Orcus, down below."<br />SCHILLER, Das Ideal und das Leben.<br />Ever as I sang, the veil was uplifted; ever as I sang, the signs<br />of life grew; till, when the eyes dawned upon me, it was with<br />that sunrise of splendour which my feeble song attempted to<br />re-imbody.<br />The wonder is, that I was not altogether overcome, but was able<br />to complete my song as the unseen veil continued to rise. This<br />ability came solely from the state of mental elevation in which I<br />found myself. Only because uplifted in song, was I able to<br />endure the blaze of the dawn. But I cannot tell whether she<br />looked more of statue or more of woman; she seemed removed into<br />that region of phantasy where all is intensely vivid, but nothing<br />clearly defined. At last, as I sang of her descending hair, the<br />glow of soul faded away, like a dying sunset. A lamp within had<br />been extinguished, and the house of life shone blank in a winter<br />morn. She was a statue once more--but visible, and that was much<br />gained. Yet the revulsion from hope and fruition was such, that,<br />unable to restrain myself, I sprang to her, and, in defiance of<br />the law of the place, flung my arms around her, as if I would<br />tear her from the grasp of a visible Death, and lifted her from<br />the pedestal down to my heart. But no sooner had her feet ceased<br />to be in contact with the black pedestal, than she shuddered and<br />trembled all over; then, writhing from my arms, before I could<br />tighten their hold, she sprang into the corridor, with the<br />reproachful cry, "You should not have touched me!" darted behind<br />one of the exterior pillars of the circle, and disappeared. I<br />followed almost as fast; but ere I could reach the pillar, the<br />sound of a closing door, the saddest of all sounds sometimes,<br />fell on my ear; and, arriving at the spot where she had vanished,<br />I saw, lighted by a pale yellow lamp which hung above it, a<br />heavy, rough door, altogether unlike any others I had seen in the<br />palace; for they were all of ebony, or ivory, or covered with<br />silver-plates, or of some odorous wood, and very ornate; whereas<br />this seemed of old oak, with heavy nails and iron studs.<br />Notwithstanding the precipitation of my pursuit, I could not help<br />reading, in silver letters beneath the lamp: "NO ONE ENTERS HERE<br />WITHOUT THE LEAVE OF THE QUEEN." But what was the Queen to me,<br />when I followed my white lady? I dashed the door to the wall and<br />sprang through. Lo! I stood on a waste windy hill. Great stones<br />like tombstones stood all about me. No door, no palace was to be<br />seen. A white figure gleamed past me, wringing her hands, and<br />crying, "Ah! you should have sung to me; you should have sung to<br />me!" and disappeared behind one of the stones. I followed. A<br />cold gust of wind met me from behind the stone; and when I<br />looked, I saw nothing but a great hole in the earth, into which I<br />could find no way of entering. Had she fallen in? I could not<br />tell. I must wait for the daylight. I sat down and wept, for<br />there was no help.<br />CHAPTER XVII<br />"First, I thought, almost despairing,<br />This must crush my spirit now;<br />Yet I bore it, and am bearing--<br />Only do not ask me how."<br />HEINE.<br />When the daylight came, it brought the possibility of action, but<br />with it little of consolation. With the first visible increase<br />of light, I gazed into the chasm, but could not, for more than an<br />hour, see sufficiently well to discover its nature. At last I<br />saw it was almost a perpendicular opening, like a roughly<br />excavated well, only very large. I could perceive no bottom; and<br />it was not till the sun actually rose, that I discovered a sort<br />of natural staircase, in many parts little more than suggested,<br />which led round and round the gulf, descending spirally into its<br />abyss. I saw at once that this was my path; and without a<br />moment's hesitation, glad to quit the sunlight, which stared at<br />me most heartlessly, I commenced my tortuous descent. It was<br />very difficult. In some parts I had to cling to the rocks like a<br />bat. In one place, I dropped from the track down upon the next<br />returning spire of the stair; which being broad in this<br />particular portion, and standing out from the wall at right<br />angles, received me upon my feet safe, though somewhat stupefied<br />by the shock. After descending a great way, I found the stair<br />ended at a narrow opening which entered the rock horizontally.<br />Into this I crept, and, having entered, had just room to turn<br />round. I put my head out into the shaft by which I had come<br />down, and surveyed the course of my descent. Looking up, I saw<br />the stars; although the sun must by this time have been high in<br />the heavens. Looking below, I saw that the sides of the shaft<br />went sheer down, smooth as glass; and far beneath me, I saw the<br />reflection of the same stars I had seen in the heavens when I<br />looked up. I turned again, and crept inwards some distance, when<br />the passage widened, and I was at length able to stand and walk<br />upright. Wider and loftier grew the way; new paths branched off<br />on every side; great open halls appeared; till at last I found<br />myself wandering on through an underground country, in which the<br />sky was of rock, and instead of trees and flowers, there were<br />only fantastic rocks and stones. And ever as I went, darker grew<br />my thoughts, till at last I had no hope whatever of finding the<br />white lady: I no longer called her to myself MY white lady.<br />Whenever a choice was necessary, I always chose the path which<br />seemed to lead downwards.<br />At length I began to find that these regions were inhabited.<br />From behind a rock a peal of harsh grating laughter, full of evil<br />humour, rang through my ears, and, looking round, I saw a queer,<br />goblin creature, with a great head and ridiculous features, just<br />such as those described, in German histories and travels, as<br />Kobolds. "What do you want with me?" I said. He pointed at me<br />with a long forefinger, very thick at the root, and sharpened to<br />a point, and answered, "He! he! he! what do YOU want here?"<br />Then, changing his tone, he continued, with mock<br />humility--"Honoured sir, vouchsafe to withdraw from thy slaves<br />the lustre of thy august presence, for thy slaves cannot support<br />its brightness." A second appeared, and struck in: "You are so<br />big, you keep the sun from us. We can't see for you, and we're<br />so cold." Thereupon arose, on all sides, the most terrific<br />uproar of laughter, from voices like those of children in volume,<br />but scrannel and harsh as those of decrepit age, though,<br />unfortunately, without its weakness. The whole pandemonium of<br />fairy devils, of all varieties of fantastic ugliness, both in<br />form and feature, and of all sizes from one to four feet, seemed<br />to have suddenly assembled about me. At length, after a great<br />babble of talk among themselves, in a language unknown to me, and<br />after seemingly endless gesticulation, consultation,<br />elbow-nudging, and unmitigated peals of laughter, they formed<br />into a circle about one of their number, who scrambled upon a<br />stone, and, much to my surprise, and somewhat to my dismay, began<br />to sing, in a voice corresponding in its nature to his talking<br />one, from beginning to end, the song with which I had brought the<br />light into the eyes of the white lady. He sang the same air too;<br />and, all the time, maintained a face of mock entreaty and<br />worship; accompanying the song with the travestied gestures of<br />one playing on the lute. The whole assembly kept silence, except<br />at the close of every verse, when they roared, and danced, and<br />shouted with laughter, and flung themselves on the ground, in<br />real or pretended convulsions of delight. When he had finished,<br />the singer threw himself from the top of the stone, turning heels<br />over head several times in his descent; and when he did alight,<br />it was on the top of his head, on which he hopped about, making<br />the most grotesque gesticulations with his legs in the air.<br />Inexpressible laughter followed, which broke up in a shower of<br />tiny stones from innumerable hands. They could not materially<br />injure me, although they cut me on the head and face. I<br />attempted to run away, but they all rushed upon me, and, laying<br />hold of every part that afforded a grasp, held me tight.<br />Crowding about me like bees, they shouted an insect-swarm of<br />exasperating speeches up into my face, among which the most<br />frequently recurring were--"You shan't have her; you shan't have<br />her; he! he! he! She's for a better man; how he'll kiss her! how<br />he'll kiss her!"<br />The galvanic torrent of this battery of malevolence stung to life<br />within me a spark of nobleness, and I said aloud, "Well, if he is<br />a better man, let him have her."<br />They instantly let go their hold of me, and fell back a step or<br />two, with a whole broadside of grunts and humphs, as of<br />unexpected and disappointed approbation. I made a step or two<br />forward, and a lane was instantly opened for me through the midst<br />of the grinning little antics, who bowed most politely to me on<br />every side as I passed. After I had gone a few yards, I looked<br />back, and saw them all standing quite still, looking after me,<br />like a great school of boys; till suddenly one turned round, and<br />with a loud whoop, rushed into the midst of the others. In an<br />instant, the whole was one writhing and tumbling heap of<br />contortion, reminding me of the live pyramids of intertwined<br />snakes of which travellers make report. As soon as one was<br />worked out of the mass, he bounded off a few paces, and then,<br />with a somersault and a run, threw himself gyrating into the air,<br />and descended with all his weight on the summit of the heaving<br />and struggling chaos of fantastic figures. I left them still<br />busy at this fierce and apparently aimless amusement. And as I<br />went, I sang--<br />If a nobler waits for thee,<br />I will weep aside;<br />It is well that thou should'st be,<br />Of the nobler, bride.<br />For if love builds up the home,<br />Where the heart is free,<br />Homeless yet the heart must roam,<br />That has not found thee.<br />One must suffer: I, for her<br />Yield in her my part<br />Take her, thou art worthier--<br />Still I be still, my heart!<br />Gift ungotten! largess high<br />Of a frustrate will!<br />But to yield it lovingly<br />Is a something still.<br />Then a little song arose of itself in my soul; and I felt for the<br />moment, while it sank sadly within me, as if I was once more<br />walking up and down the white hall of Phantasy in the Fairy<br />Palace. But this lasted no longer than the song; as will be<br />seen.<br />Do not vex thy violet<br />Perfume to afford:<br />Else no odour thou wilt get<br />From its little hoard.<br />In thy lady's gracious eyes<br />Look not thou too long;<br />Else from them the glory flies,<br />And thou dost her wrong.<br />Come not thou too near the maid,<br />Clasp her not too wild;<br />Else the splendour is allayed,<br />And thy heart beguiled.<br />A crash of laughter, more discordant and deriding than any I had<br />yet heard, invaded my ears. Looking on in the direction of the<br />sound, I saw a little elderly woman, much taller, however, than<br />the goblins I had just left, seated upon a stone by the side of<br />the path. She rose, as I drew near, and came forward to meet me.<br />She was very plain and commonplace in appearance, without being<br />hideously ugly. Looking up in my face with a stupid sneer, she<br />said: "Isn't it a pity you haven't a pretty girl to walk all<br />alone with you through this sweet country? How different<br />everything would look? wouldn't it?<br />Strange that one can never have what one would like best! How<br />the roses would bloom and all that, even in this infernal hole!<br />wouldn't they, Anodos? Her eyes would light up the old cave,<br />wouldn't they?"<br />"That depends on who the pretty girl should be," replied I.<br />"Not so very much matter that," she answered; "look here."<br />I had turned to go away as I gave my reply, but now I stopped and<br />looked at her. As a rough unsightly bud might suddenly blossom<br />into the most lovely flower; or rather, as a sunbeam bursts<br />through a shapeless cloud, and transfigures the earth; so burst a<br />face of resplendent beauty, as it were THROUGH the unsightly<br />visage of the woman, destroying it with light as it dawned<br />through it. A summer sky rose above me, gray with heat; across a<br />shining slumberous landscape, looked from afar the peaks of<br />snow-capped mountains; and down from a great rock beside me fell<br />a sheet of water mad with its own delight.<br />"Stay with me," she said, lifting up her exquisite face, and<br />looking full in mine.<br />I drew back. Again the infernal laugh grated upon my ears; again<br />the rocks closed in around me, and the ugly woman looked at me<br />with wicked, mocking hazel eyes.<br />"You shall have your reward," said she. "You shall see your<br />white lady again."<br />"That lies not with you," I replied, and turned and left her.<br />She followed me with shriek upon shriek of laughter, as I went on<br />my way.<br />I may mention here, that although there was always light enough<br />to see my path and a few yards on every side of me, I never could<br />find out the source of this sad sepulchral illumination.<br />CHAPTER XVIII<br />"In the wind's uproar, the sea's raging grim,<br />And the sighs that are born in him."<br />HEINE.<br />"From dreams of bliss shall men awake<br />One day, but not to weep:<br />The dreams remain; they only break<br />The mirror of the sleep."<br />JEAN PAUL, Hesperus.<br />How I got through this dreary part of my travels, I do not know.<br />I do not think I was upheld by the hope that any moment the light<br />might break in upon me; for I scarcely thought about that. I<br />went on with a dull endurance, varied by moments of<br />uncontrollable sadness; for more and more the conviction grew<br />upon me that I should never see the white lady again. It may<br />seem strange that one with whom I had held so little communion<br />should have so engrossed my thoughts; but benefits conferred<br />awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in<br />others. Besides being delighted and proud that my songs had<br />called the beautiful creature to life, the same fact caused me to<br />feel a tenderness unspeakable for her, accompanied with a kind of<br />feeling of property in her; for so the goblin Selfishness would<br />reward the angel Love. When to all this is added, an<br />overpowering sense of her beauty, and an unquestioning conviction<br />that this was a true index to inward loveliness, it may be<br />understood how it came to pass that my imagination filled my<br />whole soul with the play of its own multitudinous colours and<br />harmonies around the form which yet stood, a gracious marble<br />radiance, in the midst of ITS white hall of phantasy. The time<br />passed by unheeded; for my thoughts were busy. Perhaps this was<br />also in part the cause of my needing no food, and never thinking<br />how I should find any, during this subterraneous part of my<br />travels. How long they endured I could not tell, for I had no<br />means of measuring time; and when I looked back, there was such a<br />discrepancy between the decisions of my imagination and my<br />judgment, as to the length of time that had passed, that I was<br />bewildered, and gave up all attempts to arrive at any conclusion<br />on the point.<br />A gray mist continually gathered behind me. When I looked back<br />towards the past, this mist was the medium through which my eyes<br />had to strain for a vision of what had gone by; and the form of<br />the white lady had receded into an unknown region. At length the<br />country of rock began to close again around me, gradually and<br />slowly narrowing, till I found myself walking in a gallery of<br />rock once more, both sides of which I could touch with my<br />outstretched hands. It narrowed yet, until I was forced to move<br />carefully, in order to avoid striking against the projecting<br />pieces of rock. The roof sank lower and lower, until I was<br />compelled, first to stoop, and then to creep on my hands and<br />knees. It recalled terrible dreams of childhood; but I was not<br />much afraid, because I felt sure that this was my path, and my<br />only hope of leaving Fairy Land, of which I was now almost weary.<br />At length, on getting past an abrupt turn in the passage, through<br />which I had to force myself, I saw, a few yards ahead of me, the<br />long- forgotten daylight shining through a small opening, to<br />which the path, if path it could now be called, led me. With<br />great difficulty I accomplished these last few yards, and came<br />forth to the day. I stood on the shore of a wintry sea, with a<br />wintry sun just a few feet above its horizon-edge. It was bare,<br />and waste, and gray. Hundreds of hopeless waves rushed<br />constantly shorewards, falling exhausted upon a beach of great<br />loose stones, that seemed to stretch miles and miles in both<br />directions. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades of<br />gray; nothing for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of<br />the breaking, and the moan of the retreating wave. No rock<br />lifted up a sheltering severity above the dreariness around; even<br />that from which I had myself emerged rose scarcely a foot above<br />the opening by which I had reached the dismal day, more dismal<br />even than the tomb I had left. A cold, death-like wind swept<br />across the shore, seeming to issue from a pale mouth of cloud<br />upon the horizon. Sign of life was nowhere visible. I wandered<br />over the stones, up and down the beach, a human imbodiment of the<br />nature around me. The wind increased; its keen waves flowed<br />through my soul; the foam rushed higher up the stones; a few dead<br />stars began to gleam in the east; the sound of the waves grew<br />louder and yet more despairing. A dark curtain of cloud was<br />lifted up, and a pale blue rent shone between its foot and the<br />edge of the sea, out from which rushed an icy storm of frozen<br />wind, that tore the waters into spray as it passed, and flung the<br />billows in raving heaps upon the desolate shore. I could bear it<br />no longer.<br />"I will not be tortured to death," I cried; "I will meet it<br />half-way. The life within me is yet enough to bear me up to the<br />face of Death, and then I die unconquered."<br />Before it had grown so dark, I had observed, though without any<br />particular interest, that on one part of the shore a low platform<br />of rock seemed to run out far into the midst of the breaking<br />waters.<br />Towards this I now went, scrambling over smooth stones, to which<br />scarce even a particle of sea-weed clung; and having found it, I<br />got on it, and followed its direction, as near as I could guess,<br />out into the tumbling chaos. I could hardly keep my feet against<br />the wind and sea. The waves repeatedly all but swept me off my<br />path; but I kept on my way, till I reached the end of the low<br />promontory, which, in the fall of the waves, rose a good many<br />feet above the surface, and, in their rise, was covered with<br />their waters. I stood one moment and gazed into the heaving<br />abyss beneath me; then plunged headlong into the mounting wave<br />below. A blessing, like the kiss of a mother, seemed to alight<br />on my soul; a calm, deeper than that which accompanies a hope<br />deferred, bathed my spirit. I sank far into the waters, and<br />sought not to return. I felt as if once more the great arms of<br />the beech-tree were around me, soothing me after the miseries I<br />had passed through, and telling me, like a little sick child,<br />that I should be better to-morrow. The waters of themselves<br />lifted me, as with loving arms, to the surface. I breathed<br />again, but did not unclose my eyes. I would not look on the<br />wintry sea, and the pitiless gray sky. Thus I floated, till<br />something gently touched me. It was a little boat floating<br />beside me. How it came there I could not tell; but it rose and<br />sank on the waters, and kept touching me in its fall, as if with<br />a human will to let me know that help was by me. It was a little<br />gay-coloured boat, seemingly covered with glistering scales like<br />those of a fish, all of brilliant rainbow hues. I scrambled into<br />it, and lay down in the bottom, with a sense of exquisite repose.<br />Then I drew over me a rich, heavy, purple cloth that was beside<br />me; and, lying still, knew, by the sound of the waters, that my<br />little bark was fleeting rapidly onwards. Finding, however, none<br />of that stormy motion which the sea had manifested when I beheld<br />it from the shore, I opened my eyes; and, looking first up, saw<br />above me the deep violet sky of a warm southern night; and then,<br />lifting my head, saw that I was sailing fast upon a summer sea,<br />in the last border of a southern twilight. The aureole of the<br />sun yet shot the extreme faint tips of its longest rays above the<br />horizon- waves, and withdrew them not. It was a perpetual<br />twilight. The stars, great and earnest, like children's eyes,<br />bent down lovingly towards the waters; and the reflected stars<br />within seemed to float up, as if longing to meet their embraces.<br />But when I looked down, a new wonder met my view. For, vaguely<br />revealed beneath the wave, I floated above my whole Past. The<br />fields of my childhood flitted by; the halls of my youthful<br />labours; the streets of great cities where I had dwelt; and the<br />assemblies of men and women wherein I had wearied myself seeking<br />for rest. But so indistinct were the visions, that sometimes I<br />thought I was sailing on a shallow sea, and that strange rocks<br />and forests of sea-plants beguiled my eye, sufficiently to be<br />transformed, by the magic of the phantasy, into well-known<br />objects and regions. Yet, at times, a beloved form seemed to lie<br />close beneath me in sleep; and the eyelids would tremble as if<br />about to forsake the conscious eye; and the arms would heave<br />upwards, as if in dreams they sought for a satisfying presence.<br />But these motions might come only from the heaving of the waters<br />between those forms and me. Soon I fell asleep, overcome with<br />fatigue and delight. In dreams of unspeakable joy--of restored<br />friendships; of revived embraces; of love which said it had never<br />died; of faces that had vanished long ago, yet said with smiling<br />lips that they knew nothing of the grave; of pardons implored,<br />and granted with such bursting floods of love, that I was almost<br />glad I had sinned--thus I passed through this wondrous twilight.<br />I awoke with the feeling that I had been kissed and loved to my<br />heart's content; and found that my boat was floating motionless<br />by the grassy shore of a little island.<br />CHAPTER XIX<br />"In still rest, in changeless simplicity, I bear, uninterrupted,<br />the consciousness of the whole of Humanity within me."<br />SCHLEIERMACHERS, Monologen.<br />". . . such a sweetness, such a grace,<br />In all thy speech appear,<br />That what to th'eye a beauteous face,<br />That thy tongue is to the ear."<br />COWLEY.<br />The water was deep to the very edge; and I sprang from the little<br />boat upon a soft grassy turf. The island seemed rich with a<br />profusion of all grasses and low flowers. All delicate lowly<br />things were most plentiful; but no trees rose skywards, not even<br />a bush overtopped the tall grasses, except in one place near the<br />cottage I am about to describe, where a few plants of the<br />gum-cistus, which drops every night all the blossoms that the day<br />brings forth, formed a kind of natural arbour. The whole island<br />lay open to the sky and sea. It rose nowhere more than a few<br />feet above the level of the waters, which flowed deep all around<br />its border. Here there seemed to be neither tide nor storm. A<br />sense of persistent calm and fulness arose in the mind at the<br />sight of the slow, pulse-like rise and fall of the deep, clear,<br />unrippled waters against the bank of the island, for shore it<br />could hardly be called, being so much more like the edge of a<br />full, solemn river. As I walked over the grass towards the<br />cottage, which stood at a little distance from the bank, all the<br />flowers of childhood looked at me with perfect child-eyes out of<br />the grass. My heart, softened by the dreams through which it had<br />passed, overflowed in a sad, tender love towards them. They<br />looked to me like children impregnably fortified in a helpless<br />confidence. The sun stood half- way down the western sky,<br />shining very soft and golden; and there grew a second world of<br />shadows amidst the world of grasses and wild flowers.<br />The cottage was square, with low walls, and a high pyramidal roof<br />thatched with long reeds, of which the withered blossoms hung<br />over all the eaves. It is noticeable that most of the buildings<br />I saw in Fairy Land were cottages. There was no path to a door,<br />nor, indeed, was there any track worn by footsteps in the island.<br />The cottage rose right out of the smooth turf. It had no windows<br />that I could see; but there was a door in the centre of the side<br />facing me, up to which I went. I knocked, and the sweetest voice<br />I had ever heard said, "Come in." I entered. A bright fire was<br />burning on a hearth in the centre of the earthern floor, and the<br />smoke found its way out at an opening in the centre of the<br />pyramidal roof. Over the fire hung a little pot, and over the<br />pot bent a woman-face, the most wonderful, I thought, that I had<br />ever beheld. For it was older than any countenance I had ever<br />looked upon. There was not a spot in which a wrinkle could lie,<br />where a wrinkle lay not. And the skin was ancient and brown,<br />like old parchment. The woman's form was tall and spare: and<br />when she stood up to welcome me, I saw that she was straight as<br />an arrow. Could that voice of sweetness have issued from those<br />lips of age? Mild as they were, could they be the portals whence<br />flowed such melody? But the moment I saw her eyes, I no longer<br />wondered at her voice: they were absolutely young--those of a<br />woman of five-and- twenty, large, and of a clear gray. Wrinkles<br />had beset them all about; the eyelids themselves were old, and<br />heavy, and worn; but the eyes were very incarnations of soft<br />light. She held out her hand to me, and the voice of sweetness<br />again greeted me, with the single word, "Welcome." She set an<br />old wooden chair for me, near the fire, and went on with her<br />cooking. A wondrous sense of refuge and repose came upon me. I<br />felt like a boy who has got home from school, miles across the<br />hills, through a heavy storm of wind and snow. Almost, as I<br />gazed on her, I sprang from my seat to kiss those old lips. And<br />when, having finished her cooking, she brought some of the dish<br />she had prepared, and set it on a little table by me, covered<br />with a snow- white cloth, I could not help laying my head on her<br />bosom, and bursting into happy tears. She put her arms round me,<br />saying, "Poor child; poor child!"<br />As I continued to weep, she gently disengaged herself, and,<br />taking a spoon, put some of the food (I did not know what it was)<br />to my lips, entreating me most endearingly to swallow it. To<br />please her, I made an effort, and succeeded. She went on feeding<br />me like a baby, with one arm round me, till I looked up in her<br />face and smiled: then she gave me the spoon and told me to eat,<br />for it would do me good. I obeyed her, and found myself<br />wonderfully refreshed. Then she drew near the fire an<br />old-fashioned couch that was in the cottage, and making me lie<br />down upon it, sat at my feet, and began to sing. Amazing store<br />of old ballads rippled from her lips, over the pebbles of ancient<br />tunes; and the voice that sang was sweet as the voice of a<br />tuneful maiden that singeth ever from very fulness of song. The<br />songs were almost all sad, but with a sound of comfort. One I<br />can faintly recall. It was something like this:<br />Sir Aglovaile through the churchyard rode;<br />SING, ALL ALONE I LIE:<br />Little recked he where'er he yode,<br />ALL ALONE, UP IN THE SKY.<br />Swerved his courser, and plunged with fear<br />ALL ALONE I LIE:<br />His cry might have wakened the dead men near,<br />ALL ALONE, UP IN THE SKY.<br />The very dead that lay at his feet,<br />Lapt in the mouldy winding-sheet.<br />But he curbed him and spurred him, until he stood<br />Still in his place, like a horse of wood,<br />With nostrils uplift, and eyes wide and wan;<br />But the sweat in streams from his fetlocks ran.<br />A ghost grew out of the shadowy air,<br />And sat in the midst of her moony hair.<br />In her gleamy hair she sat and wept;<br />In the dreamful moon they lay and slept;<br />The shadows above, and the bodies below,<br />Lay and slept in the moonbeams slow.<br />And she sang, like the moan of an autumn wind<br />Over the stubble left behind:<br />Alas, how easily things go wrong<br />! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,<br />And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,<br />And life is never the same again.<br />Alas, how hardly things go right!<br />'Tis hard to watch on a summer night,<br />For the sigh will come and the kiss will stay,<br />And the summer night is a winter day.<br />"Oh, lovely ghosts my heart is woes<br />To see thee weeping and wailing so.<br />Oh, lovely ghost," said the fearless knight,<br />"Can the sword of a warrior set it right?<br />Or prayer of bedesman, praying mild,<br />As a cup of water a feverish child,<br />Sooth thee at last, in dreamless mood<br />To sleep the sleep a dead lady should?<br />Thine eyes they fill me with longing sore,<br />As if I had known thee for evermore.<br />Oh, lovely ghost, I could leave the day<br />To sit with thee in the moon away<br />If thou wouldst trust me, and lay thy head<br />To rest on a bosom that is not dead."<br />The lady sprang up with a strange ghost-cry,<br />And she flung her white ghost-arms on high:<br />And she laughed a laugh that was not gay,<br />And it lengthened out till it died away;<br />And the dead beneath turned and moaned,<br />And the yew-trees above they shuddered and groaned.<br />"Will he love me twice with a love that is vain?<br />Will he kill the poor ghost yet again?<br />I thought thou wert good; but I said, and wept:<br />`Can I have dreamed who have not slept?'<br />And I knew, alas! or ever I would,<br />Whether I dreamed, or thou wert good.<br />When my baby died, my brain grew wild.<br />I awoke, and found I was with my child."<br />"If thou art the ghost of my Adelaide,<br />How is it? Thou wert but a village maid,<br />And thou seemest an angel lady white,<br />Though thin, and wan, and past delight."<br />The lady smiled a flickering smile,<br />And she pressed her temples hard the while.<br />"Thou seest that Death for a woman can<br />Do more than knighthood for a man."<br />"But show me the child thou callest mine,<br />Is she out to-night in the ghost's sunshine?"<br />"In St. Peter's Church she is playing on,<br />At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.<br />When the moonbeams right through the window go,<br />Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,<br />She says the rest of them do not stir,<br />But one comes down to play with her.<br />Then I can go where I list, and weep,<br />For good St. John my child will keep."<br />"Thy beauty filleth the very air,<br />Never saw I a woman so fair."<br />"Come, if thou darest, and sit by my side;<br />But do not touch me, or woe will betide.<br />Alas, I am weak: I might well know<br />This gladness betokens some further woe.<br />Yet come. It will come. I will bear it. I can.<br />For thou lovest me yet--though but as a man."<br />The knight dismounted in earnest speed;<br />Away through the tombstones thundered the steed,<br />And fell by the outer wall, and died.<br />But the knight he kneeled by the lady's side;<br />Kneeled beside her in wondrous bliss,<br />Rapt in an everlasting kiss:<br />Though never his lips come the lady nigh,<br />And his eyes alone on her beauty lie.<br />All the night long, till the cock crew loud,<br />He kneeled by the lady, lapt in her shroud.<br />And what they said, I may not say:<br />Dead night was sweeter than living day.<br />How she made him so blissful glad<br />Who made her and found her so ghostly sad,<br />I may not tell; but it needs no touch<br />To make them blessed who love so much.<br />"Come every night, my ghost, to me;<br />And one night I will come to thee.<br />'Tis good to have a ghostly wife:<br />She will not tremble at clang of strife;<br />She will only hearken, amid the din,<br />Behind the door, if he cometh in."<br />And this is how Sir Aglovaile<br />Often walked in the moonlight pale.<br />And oft when the crescent but thinned the gloom,<br />Full orbed moonlight filled his room;<br />And through beneath his chamber door,<br />Fell a ghostly gleam on the outer floor;<br />And they that passed, in fear averred<br />That murmured words they often heard.<br />'Twas then that the eastern crescent shone<br />Through the chancel window, and good St. John<br />Played with the ghost-child all the night,<br />And the mother was free till the morning light,<br />And sped through the dawning night, to stay<br />With Aglovaile till the break of day.<br />And their love was a rapture, lone and high,<br />And dumb as the moon in the topmost sky.<br />One night Sir Aglovaile, weary, slept<br />And dreamed a dream wherein he wept.<br />A warrior he was, not often wept he,<br />But this night he wept full bitterly.<br />He woke--beside him the ghost-girl shone<br />Out of the dark: 'twas the eve of St. John.<br />He had dreamed a dream of a still, dark wood,<br />Where the maiden of old beside him stood;<br />But a mist came down, and caught her away,<br />And he sought her in vain through the pathless day,<br />Till he wept with the grief that can do no more,<br />And thought he had dreamt the dream before.<br />From bursting heart the weeping flowed on;<br />And lo! beside him the ghost-girl shone;<br />Shone like the light on a harbour's breast,<br />Over the sea of his dream's unrest;<br />Shone like the wondrous, nameless boon,<br />That the heart seeks ever, night or noon:<br />Warnings forgotten, when needed most,<br />He clasped to his bosom the radiant ghost.<br />She wailed aloud, and faded, and sank.<br />With upturn'd white face, cold and blank,<br />In his arms lay the corpse of the maiden pale,<br />And she came no more to Sir Aglovaile.<br />Only a voice, when winds were wild,<br />Sobbed and wailed like a chidden child.<br />Alas, how easily things go wrong!<br />A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,<br />And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,<br />And life is never the same again.<br />This was one of the simplest of her songs, which, perhaps, is<br />the cause of my being able to remember it better than most of the<br />others. While she sung, I was in Elysium, with the sense of a<br />rich soul upholding, embracing, and overhanging mine, full of all<br />plenty and bounty. I felt as if she could give me everything I<br />wanted; as if I should never wish to leave her, but would be<br />content to be sung to and fed by her, day after day, as years<br />rolled by. At last I fell asleep while she sang.<br />When I awoke, I knew not whether it was night or day. The fire<br />had sunk to a few red embers, which just gave light enough to<br />show me the woman standing a few feet from me, with her back<br />towards me, facing the door by which I had entered. She was<br />weeping, but very gently and plentifully. The tears seemed to<br />come freely from her heart. Thus she stood for a few minutes;<br />then, slowly turning at right angles to her former position, she<br />faced another of the four sides of the cottage. I now observed,<br />for the first time, that here was a door likewise; and that,<br />indeed, there was one in the centre of every side of the cottage.<br />When she looked towards the second door, her tears ceased to<br />flow, but sighs took their place. She often closed her eyes as<br />she stood; and every time she closed her eyes, a gentle sigh<br />seemed to be born in her heart, and to escape at her lips. But<br />when her eyes were open, her sighs were deep and very sad, and<br />shook her whole frame. Then she turned towards the third door,<br />and a cry as of fear or suppressed pain broke from her; but she<br />seemed to hearten herself against the dismay, and to front it<br />steadily; for, although I often heard a slight cry, and sometimes<br />a moan, yet she never moved or bent her head, and I felt sure<br />that her eyes never closed. Then she turned to the fourth door,<br />and I saw her shudder, and then stand still as a statue; till at<br />last she turned towards me and approached the fire. I saw that<br />her face was white as death. But she gave one look upwards, and<br />smiled the sweetest, most child-innocent smile; then heaped fresh<br />wood on the fire, and, sitting down by the blaze, drew her wheel<br />near her, and began to spin. While she spun, she murmured a low<br />strange song, to which the hum of the wheel made a kind of<br />infinite symphony. At length she paused in her spinning and<br />singing, and glanced towards me, like a mother who looks whether<br />or not her child gives signs of waking. She smiled when she saw<br />that my eyes were open. I asked her whether it was day yet. She<br />answered, "It is always day here, so long as I keep my fire<br />burning."<br />I felt wonderfully refreshed; and a great desire to see more of<br />the island awoke within me. I rose, and saying that I wished to<br />look about me, went towards the door by which I had entered.<br />"Stay a moment," said my hostess, with some trepidation in her<br />voice. "Listen to me. You will not see what you expect when you<br />go out of that door. Only remember this: whenever you wish to<br />come back to me, enter wherever you see this mark."<br />She held up her left hand between me and the fire. Upon the<br />palm, which appeared almost transparent, I saw, in dark red, a<br />mark like this --> which I took care to fix in my mind.<br />She then kissed me, and bade me good-bye with a solemnity that<br />awed me; and bewildered me too, seeing I was only going out for a<br />little ramble in an island, which I did not believe larger than<br />could easily be compassed in a few hours' walk at most. As I<br />went she resumed her spinning.<br />I opened the door, and stepped out. The moment my foot touched<br />the smooth sward, I seemed to issue from the door of an old barn<br />on my father's estate, where, in the hot afternoons, I used to go<br />and lie amongst the straw, and read. It seemed to me now that I<br />had been asleep there. At a little distance in the field, I saw<br />two of my brothers at play. The moment they caught sight of me,<br />they called out to me to come and join them, which I did; and we<br />played together as we had done years ago, till the red sun went<br />down in the west, and the gray fog began to rise from the river.<br />Then we went home together with a strange happiness. As we went,<br />we heard the continually renewed larum of a landrail in the long<br />grass. One of my brothers and I separated to a little distance,<br />and each commenced running towards the part whence the sound<br />appeared to come, in the hope of approaching the spot where the<br />bird was, and so getting at least a sight of it, if we should not<br />be able to capture the little creature. My father's voice<br />recalled us from trampling down the rich long grass, soon to be<br />cut down and laid aside for the winter. I had quite forgotten<br />all about Fairy Land, and the wonderful old woman, and the<br />curious red mark.<br />My favourite brother and I shared the same bed. Some childish<br />dispute arose between us; and our last words, ere we fell asleep,<br />were not of kindness, notwithstanding the pleasures of the day.<br />When I woke in the morning, I missed him. He had risen early,<br />and had gone to bathe in the river. In another hour, he was<br />brought home drowned. Alas! alas! if we had only gone to sleep<br />as usual, the one with his arm about the other! Amidst the<br />horror of the moment, a strange conviction flashed across my<br />mind, that I had gone through the very same once before.<br />I rushed out of the house, I knew not why, sobbing and crying<br />bitterly. I ran through the fields in aimless distress, till,<br />passing the old barn, I caught sight of a red mark on the door.<br />The merest trifles sometimes rivet the attention in the deepest<br />misery; the intellect has so little to do with grief. I went up<br />to look at this mark, which I did not remember ever to have seen<br />before. As I looked at it, I thought I would go in and lie down<br />amongst the straw, for I was very weary with running about and<br />weeping. I opened the door; and there in the cottage sat the old<br />woman as I had left her, at her spinning-wheel.<br />"I did not expect you quite so soon," she said, as I shut the<br />door behind me. I went up to the couch, and threw myself on it<br />with that fatigue wherewith one awakes from a feverish dream of<br />hopeless grief.<br />The old woman sang:<br />The great sun, benighted,<br />May faint from the sky;<br />But love, once uplighted,<br />Will never more die.<br />Form, with its brightness,<br />From eyes will depart:<br />It walketh, in whiteness,<br />The halls of the heart.<br />Ere she had ceased singing, my courage had returned. I started<br />from the couch, and, without taking leave of the old woman,<br />opened the door of Sighs, and sprang into what should appear.<br />I stood in a lordly hall, where, by a blazing fire on the hearth,<br />sat a lady, waiting, I knew, for some one long desired. A mirror<br />was near me, but I saw that my form had no place within its<br />depths, so I feared not that I should be seen. The lady<br />wonderfully resembled my marble lady, but was altogether of the<br />daughters of men, and I could not tell whether or not it was she.<br />It was not for me she waited. The tramp of a great horse rang<br />through the court without. It ceased, and the clang of armour<br />told that his rider alighted, and the sound of his ringing heels<br />approached the hall. The door opened; but the lady waited, for<br />she would meet her lord alone. He strode in: she flew like a<br />home-bound dove into his arms, and nestled on the hard steel. It<br />was the knight of the soiled armour. But now the armour shone<br />like polished glass; and strange to tell, though the mirror<br />reflected not my form, I saw a dim shadow of myself in the<br />shining steel.<br />"O my beloved, thou art come, and I am blessed."<br />Her soft fingers speedily overcame the hard clasp of his helmet;<br />one by one she undid the buckles of his armour; and she toiled<br />under the weight of the mail, as she WOULD carry it aside. Then<br />she unclasped his greaves, and unbuckled his spurs; and once more<br />she sprang into his arms, and laid her head where she could now<br />feel the beating of his heart. Then she disengaged herself from<br />his embrace, and, moving back a step or two, gazed at him. He<br />stood there a mighty form, crowned with a noble head, where all<br />sadness had disappeared, or had been absorbed in solemn purpose.<br />Yet I suppose that he looked more thoughtful than the lady had<br />expected to see him, for she did not renew her caresses, although<br />his face glowed with love, and the few words he spoke were as<br />mighty deeds for strength; but she led him towards the hearth,<br />and seated him in an ancient chair, and set wine before him, and<br />sat at his feet.<br />"I am sad," he said, "when I think of the youth whom I met twice<br />in the forests of Fairy Land; and who, you say, twice, with his<br />songs, roused you from the death-sleep of an evil enchantment.<br />There was something noble in him, but it was a nobleness of<br />thought, and not of deed. He may yet perish of vile fear."<br />"Ah!" returned the lady, "you saved him once, and for that I<br />thank you; for may I not say that I somewhat loved him? But tell<br />me how you fared, when you struck your battle-axe into the<br />ash-tree, and he came and found you; for so much of the story you<br />had told me, when the beggar-child came and took you away."<br />"As soon as I saw him," rejoined the knight, "I knew that earthly<br />arms availed not against such as he; and that my soul must meet<br />him in its naked strength. So I unclasped my helm, and flung it<br />on the ground; and, holding my good axe yet in my hand, gazed at<br />him with steady eyes. On he came, a horror indeed, but I did not<br />flinch. Endurance must conquer, where force could not reach. He<br />came nearer and nearer, till the ghastly face was close to mine.<br />A shudder as of death ran through me; but I think I did not move,<br />for he seemed to quail, and retreated. As soon as he gave back,<br />I struck one more sturdy blow on the stem of his tree, that the<br />forest rang; and then looked at him again. He writhed and<br />grinned with rage and apparent pain, and again approached me, but<br />retreated sooner than before. I heeded him no more, but hewed<br />with a will at the tree, till the trunk creaked, and the head<br />bowed, and with a crash it fell to the earth. Then I looked up<br />from my labour, and lo! the spectre had vanished, and I saw him<br />no more; nor ever in my wanderings have I heard of him again."<br />"Well struck! well withstood! my hero," said the lady.<br />"But," said the knight, somewhat troubled, "dost thou love the<br />youth still?"<br />"Ah!" she replied, "how can I help it? He woke me from worse<br />than death; he loved me. I had never been for thee, if he had<br />not sought me first. But I love him not as I love thee. He was<br />but the moon of my night; thou art the sun of my clay, O<br />beloved."<br />"Thou art right," returned the noble man. "It were hard, indeed,<br />not to have some love in return for such a gift as he hath given<br />thee. I, too, owe him more than words can speak."<br />Humbled before them, with an aching and desolate heart, I yet<br />could not restrain my words:<br />"Let me, then, be the moon of thy night still, O woman! And when<br />thy day is beclouded, as the fairest days will be, let some song<br />of mine comfort thee, as an old, withered, half-forgotten thing,<br />that belongs to an ancient mournful hour of uncompleted birth,<br />which yet was beautiful in its time."<br />They sat silent, and I almost thought they were listening. The<br />colour of the lady's eyes grew deeper and deeper; the slow tears<br />grew, and filled them, and overflowed. They rose, and passed,<br />hand in hand, close to where I stood; and each looked towards me<br />in passing. Then they disappeared through a door which closed<br />behind them; but, ere it closed, I saw that the room into which<br />it opened was a rich chamber, hung with gorgeous arras. I stood<br />with an ocean of sighs frozen in my bosom. I could remain no<br />longer. She was near me, and I could not see her; near me in the<br />arms of one loved better than I, and I would not see her, and I<br />would not be by her. But how to escape from the nearness of the<br />best beloved? I had not this time forgotten the mark; for the<br />fact that I could not enter the sphere of these living beings<br />kept me aware that, for me, I moved in a vision, while they moved<br />in life. I looked all about for the mark, but could see it<br />nowhere; for I avoided looking just where it was. There the dull<br />red cipher glowed, on the very door of their secret chamber.<br />Struck with agony, I dashed it open, and fell at the feet of the<br />ancient woman, who still spun on, the whole dissolved ocean of my<br />sighs bursting from me in a storm of tearless sobs. Whether I<br />fainted or slept, I do not know; but, as I returned to<br />consciousness, before I seemed to have power to move, I heard the<br />woman singing, and could distinguish the words:<br />O light of dead and of dying days!<br />O Love! in thy glory go,<br />In a rosy mist and a moony maze,<br />O'er the pathless peaks of snow.<br />But what is left for the cold gray soul,<br />That moans like a wounded dove?<br />One wine is left in the broken bowl!--<br />'Tis-- TO LOVE, AND LOVE AND LOVE.<br />Now I could weep. When she saw me weeping, she sang:<br />Better to sit at the waters' birth,<br />Than a sea of waves to win;<br />To live in the love that floweth forth,<br />Than the love that cometh in.<br />Be thy heart a well of love, my child,<br />Flowing, and free, and sure;<br />For a cistern of love, though undefiled,<br />Keeps not the spirit pure.<br />I rose from the earth, loving the white lady as I had never loved<br />her before.<br />Then I walked up to the door of Dismay, and opened it, and went<br />out. And lo! I came forth upon a crowded street, where men and<br />women went to and fro in multitudes. I knew it well; and,<br />turning to one hand, walked sadly along the pavement. Suddenly I<br />saw approaching me, a little way off, a form well known to me<br />(WELL-KNOWN!--alas, how weak the word!) in the years when I<br />thought my boyhood was left behind, and shortly before I entered<br />the realm of Fairy Land. Wrong and Sorrow had gone together,<br />hand-in-hand as it is well they do.<br />Unchangeably dear was that face. It lay in my heart as a child<br />lies in its own white bed; but I could not meet her.<br />"Anything but that," I said, and, turning aside, sprang up the<br />steps to a door, on which I fancied I saw the mystic sign. I<br />entered--not the mysterious cottage, but her home. I rushed<br />wildly on, and stood by the door of her room.<br />"She is out," I said, "I will see the old room once more."<br />I opened the door gently, and stood in a great solemn church. A<br />deep- toned bell, whose sounds throbbed and echoed and swam<br />through the empty building, struck the hour of midnight. The<br />moon shone through the windows of the clerestory, and enough of<br />the ghostly radiance was diffused through the church to let me<br />see, walking with a stately, yet somewhat trailing and stumbling<br />step, down the opposite aisle, for I stood in one of the<br />transepts, a figure dressed in a white robe, whether for the<br />night, or for that longer night which lies too deep for the day,<br />I could not tell. Was it she? and was this her chamber? I<br />crossed the church, and followed. The figure stopped, seemed to<br />ascend as it were a high bed, and lay down. I reached the place<br />where it lay, glimmering white. The bed was a tomb. The light<br />was too ghostly to see clearly, but I passed my hand over the<br />face and the hands and the feet, which were all bare. They were<br />cold--they were marble, but I knew them. It grew dark. I turned<br />to retrace my steps, but found, ere long, that I had wandered<br />into what seemed a little chapel. I groped about, seeking the<br />door. Everything I touched belonged to the dead. My hands fell<br />on the cold effigy of a knight who lay with his legs crossed and<br />his sword broken beside him. He lay in his noble rest, and I<br />lived on in ignoble strife. I felt for the left hand and a<br />certain finger; I found there the ring I knew: he was one of my<br />own ancestors. I was in the chapel over the burial-vault of my<br />race. I called aloud: "If any of the dead are moving here, let<br />them take pity upon me, for I, alas! am still alive; and let some<br />dead woman comfort me, for I am a stranger in the land of the<br />dead, and see no light." A warm kiss alighted on my lips through<br />the dark. And I said, "The dead kiss well; I will not be<br />afraid." And a great hand was reached out of the dark, and<br />grasped mine for a moment, mightily and tenderly. I said to<br />myself: "The veil between, though very dark, is very thin."<br />Groping my way further, I stumbled over the heavy stone that<br />covered the entrance of the vault: and, in stumbling, descried<br />upon the stone the mark, glowing in red fire. I caught the great<br />ring. All my effort could not have moved the huge slab; but it<br />opened the door of the cottage, and I threw myself once more,<br />pale and speechless, on the couch beside the ancient dame. She<br />sang once more:<br />Thou dreamest: on a rock thou art,<br />High o'er the broken wave;<br />Thou fallest with a fearful start<br />But not into thy grave;<br />For, waking in the morning's light,<br />Thou smilest at the vanished night<br />So wilt thou sink, all pale and dumb,<br />Into the fainting gloom;<br />But ere the coming terrors come,<br />Thou wak'st--where is the tomb?<br />Thou wak'st--the dead ones smile above,<br />With hovering arms of sleepless love.<br />She paused; then sang again:<br />We weep for gladness, weep for grief;<br />The tears they are the same;<br />We sigh for longing, and relief;<br />The sighs have but one name,<br />And mingled in the dying strife,<br />Are moans that are not sad<br />The pangs of death are throbs of life,<br />Its sighs are sometimes glad.<br />The face is very strange and white:<br />It is Earth's only spot<br />That feebly flickers back the light<br />The living seeth not.<br />I fell asleep, and slept a dreamless sleep, for I know not how<br />long. When I awoke, I found that my hostess had moved from where<br />she had been sitting, and now sat between me and the fourth door.<br />I guessed that her design was to prevent my entering there. I<br />sprang from the couch, and darted past her to the door. I opened<br />it at once and went out. All I remember is a cry of distress<br />from the woman: "Don't go there, my child! Don't go there!"<br />But I was gone.<br />I knew nothing more; or, if I did, I had forgot it all when I<br />awoke to consciousness, lying on the floor of the cottage, with<br />my head in the lap of the woman, who was weeping over me, and<br />stroking my hair with both hands, talking to me as a mother might<br />talk to a sick and sleeping, or a dead child. As soon as I<br />looked up and saw her, she smiled through her tears; smiled with<br />withered face and young eyes, till her countenance was irradiated<br />with the light of the smile. Then she bathed my head and face<br />and hands in an icy cold, colourless liquid, which smelt a little<br />of damp earth. Immediately I was able to sit up. She rose and<br />put some food before me. When I had eaten, she said:<br />"Listen to me, my child. You must leave me directly!"<br />"Leave you!" I said. "I am so happy with you. I never was so<br />happy in my life."<br />"But you must go," she rejoined sadly. "Listen! What do you<br />hear?"<br />"I hear the sound as of a great throbbing of water."<br />"Ah! you do hear it? Well, I had to go through that door--the<br />door of the Timeless" (and she shuddered as she pointed to the<br />fourth door)-- "to find you; for if I had not gone, you would<br />never have entered again; and because I went, the waters around<br />my cottage will rise and rise, and flow and come, till they build<br />a great firmament of waters over my dwelling. But as long as I<br />keep my fire burning, they cannot enter. I have fuel enough for<br />years; and after one year they will sink away again, and be just<br />as they were before you came. I have not been buried for a<br />hundred years now." And she smiled and wept.<br />"Alas! alas!" I cried. "I have brought this evil on the best and<br />kindest of friends, who has filled my heart with great gifts."<br />"Do not think of that," she rejoined. "I can bear it very well.<br />You will come back to me some day, I know. But I beg you, for my<br />sake, my dear child, to do one thing. In whatever sorrow you may<br />be, however inconsolable and irremediable it may appear, believe<br />me that the old woman in the cottage, with the young eyes" (and<br />she smiled), "knows something, though she must not always tell<br />it, that would quite satisfy you about it, even in the worst<br />moments of your distress.<br />Now you must go."<br />"But how can I go, if the waters are all about, and if the doors<br />all lead into other regions and other worlds?"<br />"This is not an island," she replied; "but is joined to the land<br />by a narrow neck; and for the door, I will lead you myself<br />through the right one."<br />She took my hand, and led me through the third door; whereupon I<br />found myself standing in the deep grassy turf on which I had<br />landed from the little boat, but upon the opposite side of the<br />cottage. She pointed out the direction I must take, to find the<br />isthmus and escape the rising waters.<br />Then putting her arms around me, she held me to her bosom; and as<br />I kissed her, I felt as if I were leaving my mother for the first<br />time, and could not help weeping bitterly. At length she gently<br />pushed me away, and with the words, "Go, my son, and do something<br />worth doing," turned back, and, entering the cottage, closed the<br />door behind her.<br />I felt very desolate as I went.<br />CHAPTER XX<br />"Thou hadst no fame; that which thou didst like good<br />Was but thy appetite that swayed thy blood<br />For that time to the best; for as a blast<br />That through a house comes, usually doth cast<br />Things out of order, yet by chance may come<br />And blow some one thing to his proper room,<br />So did thy appetite, and not thy zeal,<br />Sway thee by chance to do some one thing well."<br />FLETCHER'S Faithful Shepherdess.<br />"The noble hart that harbours vertuous thought<br />And is with childe of glorious great intent,<br />Can never rest, until it forth have brought<br />Th' eternall brood of glorie excellent."<br />SPENSER, The Faerie Queene.<br />I had not gone very far before I felt that the turf beneath my<br />feet was soaked with the rising waters. But I reached the<br />isthmus in safety. It was rocky, and so much higher than the<br />level of the peninsula, that I had plenty of time to cross. I<br />saw on each side of me the water rising rapidly, altogether<br />without wind, or violent motion, or broken waves, but as if a<br />slow strong fire were glowing beneath it. Ascending a steep<br />acclivity, I found myself at last in an open, rocky country.<br />After travelling for some hours, as nearly in a straight line as<br />I could, I arrived at a lonely tower, built on the top of a<br />little hill, which overlooked the whole neighbouring country. As<br />I approached, I heard the clang of an anvil; and so rapid were<br />the blows, that I despaired of making myself heard till a pause<br />in the work should ensue. It was some minutes before a cessation<br />took place; but when it did, I knocked loudly, and had not long<br />to wait; for, a moment after, the door was partly opened by a<br />noble-looking youth, half-undressed, glowing with heat, and<br />begrimed with the blackness of the forge. In one hand he held a<br />sword, so lately from the furnace that it yet shone with a dull<br />fire. As soon as he saw me, he threw the door wide open, and<br />standing aside, invited me very cordially to enter. I did so;<br />when he shut and bolted the door most carefully, and then led the<br />way inwards. He brought me into a rude hall, which seemed to<br />occupy almost the whole of the ground floor of the little tower,<br />and which I saw was now being used as a workshop. A huge fire<br />roared on the hearth, beside which was an anvil. By the anvil<br />stood, in similar undress, and in a waiting attitude, hammer in<br />hand, a second youth, tall as the former, but far more slightly<br />built. Reversing the usual course of perception in such<br />meetings, I thought them, at first sight, very unlike; and at the<br />second glance, knew that they were brothers. The former, and<br />apparently the elder, was muscular and dark, with curling hair,<br />and large hazel eyes, which sometimes grew wondrously soft. The<br />second was slender and fair, yet with a countenance like an<br />eagle, and an eye which, though pale blue, shone with an almost<br />fierce expression. He stood erect, as if looking from a lofty<br />mountain crag, over a vast plain outstretched below. As soon as<br />we entered the hall, the elder turned to me, and I saw that a<br />glow of satisfaction shone on both their faces. To my surprise<br />and great pleasure, he addressed me thus:<br />"Brother, will you sit by the fire and rest, till we finish this<br />part of our work?"<br />I signified my assent; and, resolved to await any disclosure they<br />might be inclined to make, seated myself in silence near the<br />hearth.<br />The elder brother then laid the sword in the fire, covered it<br />well over, and when it had attained a sufficient degree of heat,<br />drew it out and laid it on the anvil, moving it carefully about,<br />while the younger, with a succession of quick smart blows,<br />appeared either to be welding it, or hammering one part of it to<br />a consenting shape with the rest. Having finished, they laid it<br />carefully in the fire; and, when it was very hot indeed, plunged<br />it into a vessel full of some liquid, whence a blue flame sprang<br />upwards, as the glowing steel entered.<br />There they left it; and drawing two stools to the fire, sat down,<br />one on each side of me.<br />"We are very glad to see you, brother. We have been expecting<br />you for some days," said the dark-haired youth.<br />"I am proud to be called your brother," I rejoined; "and you will<br />not think I refuse the name, if I desire to know why you honour<br />me with it?"<br />"Ah! then he does not know about it," said the younger. "We<br />thought you had known of the bond betwixt us, and the work we<br />have to do together. You must tell him, brother, from the<br />first."<br />So the elder began:<br />"Our father is king of this country. Before we were born, three<br />giant brothers had appeared in the land. No one knew exactly<br />when, and no one had the least idea whence they came. They took<br />possession of a ruined castle that had stood unchanged and<br />unoccupied within the memory of any of the country people. The<br />vaults of this castle had remained uninjured by time, and these,<br />I presume, they made use of at first. They were rarely seen, and<br />never offered the least injury to any one; so that they were<br />regarded in the neighbourhood as at least perfectly harmless, if<br />not rather benevolent beings. But it began to be observed, that<br />the old castle had assumed somehow or other, no one knew when or<br />how, a somewhat different look from what it used to have. Not<br />only were several breaches in the lower part of the walls built<br />up, but actually some of the battlements which yet stood, had<br />been repaired, apparently to prevent them from falling into worse<br />decay, while the more important parts were being restored. Of<br />course, every one supposed the giants must have a hand in the<br />work, but no one ever saw them engaged in it. The peasants<br />became yet more uneasy, after one, who had concealed himself, and<br />watched all night, in the neighbourhood of the castle, reported<br />that he had seen, in full moonlight, the three huge giants<br />working with might and main, all night long, restoring to their<br />former position some massive stones, formerly steps of a grand<br />turnpike stair, a great portion of which had long since fallen,<br />along with part of the wall of the round tower in which it had<br />been built. This wall they were completing, foot by foot, along<br />with the stair. But the people said they had no just pretext for<br />interfering: although the real reason for letting the giants<br />alone was, that everybody was far too much afraid of them to<br />interrupt them.<br />"At length, with the help of a neighbouring quarry, the whole of<br />the external wall of the castle was finished. And now the<br />country folks were in greater fear than before. But for several<br />years the giants remained very peaceful. The reason of this was<br />afterwards supposed to be the fact, that they were distantly<br />related to several good people in the country; for, as long as<br />these lived, they remained quiet; but as soon as they were all<br />dead the real nature of the giants broke out. Having completed<br />the outside of their castle, they proceeded, by spoiling the<br />country houses around them, to make a quiet luxurious provision<br />for their comfort within. Affairs reached such a pass, that the<br />news of their robberies came to my father's ears; but he, alas!<br />was so crippled in his resources, by a war he was carrying on<br />with a neighbouring prince, that he could only spare a very few<br />men, to attempt the capture of their stronghold. Upon these the<br />giants issued in the night, and slew every man of them. And now,<br />grown bolder by success and impunity, they no longer confined<br />their depredations to property, but began to seize the persons of<br />their distinguished neighbours, knights and ladies, and hold them<br />in durance, the misery of which was heightened by all manner of<br />indignity, until they were redeemed by their friends, at an<br />exorbitant ransom. Many knights have adventured their overthrow,<br />but to their own instead; for they have all been slain, or<br />captured, or forced to make a hasty retreat. To crown their<br />enormities, if any man now attempts their destruction, they,<br />immediately upon his defeat, put one or more of their captives to<br />a shameful death, on a turret in sight of all passers-by; so that<br />they have been much less molested of late; and we, although we<br />have burned, for years, to attack these demons and destroy them,<br />dared not, for the sake of their captives, risk the adventure,<br />before we should have reached at least our earliest manhood.<br />Now, however, we are preparing for the attempt; and the grounds<br />of this preparation are these. Having only the resolution, and<br />not the experience necessary for the undertaking, we went and<br />consulted a lonely woman of wisdom, who lives not very far from<br />here, in the direction of the quarter from which you have come.<br />She received us most kindly, and gave us what seems to us the<br />best of advice. She first inquired what experience we had had in<br />arms. We told her we had been well exercised from our boyhood,<br />and for some years had kept ourselves in constant practice, with<br />a view to this necessity.<br />"`But you have not actually fought for life and death?' said she.<br />"We were forced to confess we had not.<br />"`So much the better in some respects,' she replied. `Now listen<br />to me. Go first and work with an armourer, for as long time as<br />you find needful to obtain a knowledge of his craft; which will<br />not be long, seeing your hearts will be all in the work. Then go<br />to some lonely tower, you two alone. Receive no visits from man<br />or woman. There forge for yourselves every piece of armour that<br />you wish to wear, or to use, in your coming encounter. And keep<br />up your exercises.<br />As, however, two of you can be no match for the three giants, I<br />will find you, if I can, a third brother, who will take on<br />himself the third share of the fight, and the preparation.<br />Indeed, I have already seen one who will, I think, be the very<br />man for your fellowship, but it will be some time before he comes<br />to me. He is wandering now without an aim. I will show him to<br />you in a glass, and, when he comes, you will know him at once.<br />If he will share your endeavours, you must teach him all you<br />know, and he will repay you well, in present song, and in future<br />deeds.'<br />"She opened the door of a curious old cabinet that stood in the<br />room. On the inside of this door was an oval convex mirror.<br />Looking in it for some time, we at length saw reflected the place<br />where we stood, and the old dame seated in her chair. Our forms<br />were not reflected. But at the feet of the dame lay a young man,<br />yourself, weeping.<br />"`Surely this youth will not serve our ends,' said I, `for he<br />weeps.'<br />"The old woman smiled. `Past tears are present strength,' said<br />she.<br />"`Oh!' said my brother, `I saw you weep once over an eagle you<br />shot.'<br />"`That was because it was so like you, brother,' I replied; `but<br />indeed, this youth may have better cause for tears than that--I<br />was wrong.'<br />"`Wait a while,' said the woman; `if I mistake not, he will make<br />you weep till your tears are dry for ever. Tears are the only<br />cure for weeping. And you may have need of the cure, before you<br />go forth to fight the giants. You must wait for him, in your<br />tower, till he comes.'<br />"Now if you will join us, we will soon teach you to make your<br />armour; and we will fight together, and work together, and love<br />each other as never three loved before. And you will sing to us,<br />will you not?"<br />"That I will, when I can," I answered; "but it is only at times<br />that the power of song comes upon me. For that I must wait; but<br />I have a feeling that if I work well, song will not be far off to<br />enliven the labour."<br />This was all the compact made: the brothers required nothing<br />more, and I did not think of giving anything more. I rose, and<br />threw off my upper garments.<br />"I know the uses of the sword," I said. "I am ashamed of my<br />white hands beside yours so nobly soiled and hard; but that shame<br />will soon be wiped away."<br />"No, no; we will not work to-day. Rest is as needful as toil.<br />Bring the wine, brother; it is your turn to serve to-day."<br />The younger brother soon covered a table with rough viands, but<br />good wine; and we ate and drank heartily, beside our work.<br />Before the meal was over, I had learned all their story. Each<br />had something in his heart which made the conviction, that he<br />would victoriously perish in the coming conflict, a real sorrow<br />to him. Otherwise they thought they would have lived enough.<br />The causes of their trouble were respectively these:<br />While they wrought with an armourer, in a city famed for<br />workmanship in steel and silver, the elder had fallen in love<br />with a lady as far beneath him in real rank, as she was above the<br />station he had as apprentice to an armourer. Nor did he seek to<br />further his suit by discovering himself; but there was simply so<br />much manhood about him, that no one ever thought of rank when in<br />his company. This is what his brother said about it. The lady<br />could not help loving him in return. He told her when he left<br />her, that he had a perilous adventure before him, and that when<br />it was achieved, she would either see him return to claim her, or<br />hear that he had died with honour. The younger brother's grief<br />arose from the fact, that, if they were both slain, his old<br />father, the king, would be childless. His love for his father<br />was so exceeding, that to one unable to sympathise with it, it<br />would have appeared extravagant. Both loved him equally at<br />heart; but the love of the younger had been more developed,<br />because his thoughts and anxieties had not been otherwise<br />occupied. When at home, he had been his constant companion; and,<br />of late, had ministered to the infirmities of his growing age.<br />The youth was never weary of listening to the tales of his sire's<br />youthful adventures; and had not yet in the smallest degree lost<br />the conviction, that his father was the greatest man in the<br />world. The grandest triumph possible to his conception was, to<br />return to his father, laden with the spoils of one of the hated<br />giants. But they both were in some dread, lest the thought of<br />the loneliness of these two might occur to them, in the moment<br />when decision was most necessary, and disturb, in some degree,<br />the self-possession requisite for the success of their attempt.<br />For, as I have said, they were yet untried in actual conflict.<br />"Now," thought I, "I see to what the powers of my gift must<br />minister." For my own part, I did not dread death, for I had<br />nothing to care to live for; but I dreaded the encounter because<br />of the responsibility connected with it. I resolved however to<br />work hard, and thus grow cool, and quick, and forceful.<br />The time passed away in work and song, in talk and ramble, in<br />friendly fight and brotherly aid. I would not forge for myself<br />armour of heavy mail like theirs, for I was not so powerful as<br />they, and depended more for any success I might secure, upon<br />nimbleness of motion, certainty of eye, and ready response of<br />hand. Therefore I began to make for myself a shirt of steel<br />plates and rings; which work, while more troublesome, was better<br />suited to me than the heavier labour. Much assistance did the<br />brothers give me, even after, by their instructions, I was able<br />to make some progress alone. Their work was in a moment<br />abandoned, to render any required aid to mine. As the old woman<br />had promised, I tried to repay them with song; and many were the<br />tears they both shed over my ballads and dirges. The songs they<br />liked best to hear were two which I made for them. They were not<br />half so good as many others I knew, especially some I had learned<br />from the wise woman in the cottage; but what comes nearest to our<br />needs we like the best.<br />I The king sat on his throne<br />Glowing in gold and red;<br />The crown in his right hand shone,<br />And the gray hairs crowned his head.<br />His only son walks in,<br />And in walls of steel he stands:<br />Make me, O father, strong to win,<br />With the blessing of holy hands."<br />He knelt before his sire,<br />Who blessed him with feeble smile<br />His eyes shone out with a kingly fire,<br />But his old lips quivered the while.<br />"Go to the fight, my son,<br />Bring back the giant's head;<br />And the crown with which my brows have done,<br />Shall glitter on thine instead."<br />"My father, I seek no crowns,<br />But unspoken praise from thee;<br />For thy people's good, and thy renown,<br />I will die to set them free."<br />The king sat down and waited there,<br />And rose not, night nor day;<br />Till a sound of shouting filled the air,<br />And cries of a sore dismay.<br />Then like a king he sat once more,<br />With the crown upon his head;<br />And up to the throne the people bore<br />A mighty giant dead.<br />And up to the throne the people bore<br />A pale and lifeless boy.<br />The king rose up like a prophet of yore,<br />In a lofty, deathlike joy.<br />He put the crown on the chilly brow:<br />"Thou should'st have reigned with me<br />But Death is the king of both, and now<br />I go to obey with thee.<br />"Surely some good in me there lay,<br />To beget the noble one."<br />The old man smiled like a winter day,<br />And fell beside his son.<br />II "O lady, thy lover is dead," they cried;<br />"He is dead, but hath slain the foe;<br />He hath left his name to be magnified<br />In a song of wonder and woe."<br />"Alas! I am well repaid," said she,<br />"With a pain that stings like joy:<br />For I feared, from his tenderness to me,<br />That he was but a feeble boy.<br />"Now I shall hold my head on high,<br />The queen among my kind;<br />If ye hear a sound, 'tis only a sigh<br />For a glory left behind."<br />The first three times I sang these songs they both wept<br />passionately. But after the third time, they wept no more.<br />Their eyes shone, and their faces grew pale, but they never wept<br />at any of my songs again.<br />CHAPTER XXI<br />"I put my life in my hands."--The Book of Judges.<br />At length, with much toil and equal delight, our armour was<br />finished. We armed each other, and tested the strength of the<br />defence, with many blows of loving force. I was inferior in<br />strength to both my brothers, but a little more agile than<br />either; and upon this agility, joined to precision in hitting<br />with the point of my weapon, I grounded my hopes of success in<br />the ensuing combat. I likewise laboured to develop yet more the<br />keenness of sight with which I was naturally gifted; and, from<br />the remarks of my companions, I soon learned that my endeavours<br />were not in vain.<br />The morning arrived on which we had determined to make the<br />attempt, and succeed or perish--perhaps both. We had resolved to<br />fight on foot; knowing that the mishap of many of the knights who<br />had made the attempt, had resulted from the fright of their<br />horses at the appearance of the giants; and believing with Sir<br />Gawain, that, though mare's sons might be false to us, the earth<br />would never prove a traitor. But most of our preparations were,<br />in their immediate aim at least, frustrated.<br />We rose, that fatal morning, by daybreak. We had rested from all<br />labour the day before, and now were fresh as the lark. We bathed<br />in cold spring water, and dressed ourselves in clean garments,<br />with a sense of preparation, as for a solemn festivity. When we<br />had broken our fast, I took an old lyre, which I had found in the<br />tower and had myself repaired, and sung for the last time the two<br />ballads of which I have said so much already. I followed them<br />with this, for a closing song:<br />Oh, well for him who breaks his dream<br />With the blow that ends the strife<br />And, waking, knows the peace that flows<br />Around the pain of life!<br />We are dead, my brothers! Our bodies clasp,<br />As an armour, our souls about;<br />This hand is the battle-axe I grasp,<br />And this my hammer stout.<br />Fear not, my brothers, for we are dead;<br />No noise can break our rest;<br />The calm of the grave is about the head,<br />And the heart heaves not the breast.<br />And our life we throw to our people back,<br />To live with, a further store;<br />We leave it them, that there be no lack<br />In the land where we live no more.<br />Oh, well for him who breaks his dream<br />With the blow that ends the strife<br />And, waking, knows the peace that flows<br />Around the noise of life!<br />As the last few tones of the instrument were following, like a<br />dirge, the death of the song, we all sprang to our feet. For,<br />through one of the little windows of the tower, towards which I<br />had looked as I sang, I saw, suddenly rising over the edge of the<br />slope on which our tower stood, three enormous heads. The<br />brothers knew at once, by my looks, what caused my sudden<br />movement. We were utterly unarmed, and there was no time to arm.<br />But we seemed to adopt the same resolution simultaneously; for<br />each caught up his favourite weapon, and, leaving his defence<br />behind, sprang to the door. I snatched up a long rapier,<br />abruptly, but very finely pointed, in my sword-hand, and in the<br />other a sabre; the elder brother seized his heavy battle-axe; and<br />the younger, a great, two-handed sword, which he wielded in one<br />hand like a feather. We had just time to get clear of the tower,<br />embrace and say good-bye, and part to some little distance, that<br />we might not encumber each other's motions, ere the triple<br />giant-brotherhood drew near to attack us. They were about twice<br />our height, and armed to the teeth. Through the visors of their<br />helmets their monstrous eyes shone with a horrible ferocity. I<br />was in the middle position, and the middle giant approached me.<br />My eyes were busy with his armour, and I was not a moment in<br />settling my mode of attack. I saw that his body- armour was<br />somewhat clumsily made, and that the overlappings in the lower<br />part had more play than necessary; and I hoped that, in a<br />fortunate moment, some joint would open a little, in a visible<br />and accessible part. I stood till he came near enough to aim a<br />blow at me with the mace, which has been, in all ages, the<br />favourite weapon of giants, when, of course, I leaped aside, and<br />let the blow fall upon the spot where I had been standing. I<br />expected this would strain the joints of his armour yet more.<br />Full of fury, he made at me again; but I kept him busy,<br />constantly eluding his blows, and hoping thus to fatigue him. He<br />did not seem to fear any assault from me, and I attempted none as<br />yet; but while I watched his motions in order to avoid his blows,<br />I, at the same time, kept equal watch upon those joints of his<br />armour, through some one of which I hoped to reach his life. At<br />length, as if somewhat fatigued, he paused a moment, and drew<br />himself slightly up; I bounded forward, foot and hand, ran my<br />rapier right through to the armour of his back, let go the hilt,<br />and passing under his right arm, turned as he fell, and flew at<br />him with my sabre. At one happy blow I divided the band of his<br />helmet, which fell off, and allowed me, with a second cut across<br />the eyes, to blind him quite; after which I clove his head, and<br />turned, uninjured, to see how my brothers had fared. Both the<br />giants were down, but so were my brothers. I flew first to the<br />one and then to the other couple. Both pairs of combatants were<br />dead, and yet locked together, as in the death-struggle. The<br />elder had buried his battle-axe in the body of his foe, and had<br />fallen beneath him as he fell. The giant had strangled him in<br />his own death-agonies. The younger had nearly hewn off the left<br />leg of his enemy; and, grappled with in the act, had, while they<br />rolled together on the earth, found for his dagger a passage<br />betwixt the gorget and cuirass of the giant, and stabbed him<br />mortally in the throat. The blood from the giant's throat was<br />yet pouring over the hand of his foe, which still grasped the<br />hilt of the dagger sheathed in the wound. They lay silent. I,<br />the least worthy, remained the sole survivor in the lists.<br />As I stood exhausted amidst the dead, after the first worthy deed<br />of my life, I suddenly looked behind me, and there lay the<br />Shadow, black in the sunshine. I went into the lonely tower, and<br />there lay the useless armour of the noble youths--supine as they.<br />Ah, how sad it looked! It was a glorious death, but it was<br />death. My songs could not comfort me now. I was almost ashamed<br />that I was alive, when they, the true-hearted, were no more. And<br />yet I breathed freer to think that I had gone through the trial,<br />and had not failed. And perhaps I may be forgiven, if some<br />feelings of pride arose in my bosom, when I looked down on the<br />mighty form that lay dead by my hand.<br />"After all, however," I said to myself, and my heart sank, "it<br />was only skill. Your giant was but a blunderer."<br />I left the bodies of friends and foes, peaceful enough when the<br />death- fight was over, and, hastening to the country below,<br />roused the peasants. They came with shouting and gladness,<br />bringing waggons to carry the bodies. I resolved to take the<br />princes home to their father, each as he lay, in the arms of his<br />country's foe. But first I searched the giants, and found the<br />keys of their castle, to which I repaired, followed by a great<br />company of the people. It was a place of wonderful strength. I<br />released the prisoners, knights and ladies, all in a sad<br />condition, from the cruelties and neglects of the giants. It<br />humbled me to see them crowding round me with thanks, when in<br />truth the glorious brothers, lying dead by their lonely tower,<br />were those to whom the thanks belonged. I had but aided in<br />carrying out the thought born in their brain, and uttered in<br />visible form before ever I laid hold thereupon. Yet I did count<br />myself happy to have been chosen for their brother in this great<br />dead.<br />After a few hours spent in refreshing and clothing the prisoners,<br />we all commenced our journey towards the capital. This was slow<br />at first; but, as the strength and spirits of the prisoners<br />returned, it became more rapid; and in three days we reached the<br />palace of the king. As we entered the city gates, with the huge<br />bulks lying each on a waggon drawn by horses, and two of them<br />inextricably intertwined with the dead bodies of their princes,<br />the people raised a shout and then a cry, and followed in<br />multitudes the solemn procession.<br />I will not attempt to describe the behaviour of the grand old<br />king. Joy and pride in his sons overcame his sorrow at their<br />loss. On me he heaped every kindness that heart could devise or<br />hand execute. He used to sit and question me, night after night,<br />about everything that was in any way connected with them and<br />their preparations. Our mode of life, and relation to each<br />other, during the time we spent together, was a constant theme.<br />He entered into the minutest details of the construction of the<br />armour, even to a peculiar mode of riveting some of the plates,<br />with unwearying interest. This armour I had intended to beg of<br />the king, as my sole memorials of the contest; but, when I saw<br />the delight he took in contemplating it, and the consolation it<br />appeared to afford him in his sorrow, I could not ask for it;<br />but, at his request, left my own, weapons and all, to be joined<br />with theirs in a trophy, erected in the grand square of the<br />palace. The king, with gorgeous ceremony, dubbed me knight with<br />his own old hand, in which trembled the sword of his youth.<br />During the short time I remained, my company was, naturally, much<br />courted by the young nobles. I was in a constant round of gaiety<br />and diversion, notwithstanding that the court was in mourning.<br />For the country was so rejoiced at the death of the giants, and<br />so many of their lost friends had been restored to the nobility<br />and men of wealth, that the gladness surpassed the grief. "Ye<br />have indeed left your lives to your people, my great brothers!" I<br />said.<br />But I was ever and ever haunted by the old shadow, which I had<br />not seen all the time that I was at work in the tower. Even in<br />the society of the ladies of the court, who seemed to think it<br />only their duty to make my stay there as pleasant to me as<br />possible, I could not help being conscious of its presence,<br />although it might not be annoying me at the time. At length,<br />somewhat weary of uninterrupted pleasure, and nowise strengthened<br />thereby, either in body or mind, I put on a splendid suit of<br />armour of steel inlaid with silver, which the old king had given<br />me, and, mounting the horse on which it had been brought to me,<br />took my leave of the palace, to visit the distant city in which<br />the lady dwelt, whom the elder prince had loved. I anticipated a<br />sore task, in conveying to her the news of his glorious fate: but<br />this trial was spared me, in a manner as strange as anything that<br />had happened to me in Fairy Land.<br />CHAPTER XXII<br />"No one has my form but the I."<br />Schoppe, in JEAN PAUL'S Titan.<br />"Joy's a subtil elf.<br />I think man's happiest when he forgets himself."<br />CYRIL TOURNEUR, The Revenger's Tragedy.<br />On the third day of my journey, I was riding gently along a road,<br />apparently little frequented, to judge from the grass that grew<br />upon it. I was approaching a forest. Everywhere in Fairy Land<br />forests are the places where one may most certainly expect<br />adventures. As I drew near, a youth, unarmed, gentle, and<br />beautiful, who had just cut a branch from a yew growing on the<br />skirts of the wood, evidently to make himself a bow, met me, and<br />thus accosted me:<br />"Sir knight, be careful as thou ridest through this forest; for<br />it is said to be strangely enchanted, in a sort which even those<br />who have been witnesses of its enchantment can hardly describe."<br />I thanked him for his advice, which I promised to follow, and<br />rode on. But the moment I entered the wood, it seemed to me<br />that, if enchantment there was, it must be of a good kind; for<br />the Shadow, which had been more than usually dark and<br />distressing, since I had set out on this journey, suddenly<br />disappeared. I felt a wonderful elevation of spirits, and began<br />to reflect on my past life, and especially on my combat with the<br />giants, with such satisfaction, that I had actually to remind<br />myself, that I had only killed one of them; and that, but for the<br />brothers, I should never have had the idea of attacking them, not<br />to mention the smallest power of standing to it. Still I<br />rejoiced, and counted myself amongst the glorious knights of old;<br />having even the unspeakable presumption--my shame and selfcondemnation<br />at the memory of it are such, that I write it as the<br />only and sorest penance I can perform--to think of myself (will<br />the world believe it?) as side by side with Sir Galahad!<br />Scarcely had the thought been born in my mind, when, approaching<br />me from the left, through the trees, I espied a resplendent<br />knight, of mighty size, whose armour seemed to shine of itself,<br />without the sun. When he drew near, I was astonished to see that<br />this armour was like my own; nay, I could trace, line for line,<br />the correspondence of the inlaid silver to the device on my own.<br />His horse, too, was like mine in colour, form, and motion; save<br />that, like his rider, he was greater and fiercer than his<br />counterpart. The knight rode with beaver up. As he halted right<br />opposite to me in the narrow path, barring my way, I saw the<br />reflection of my countenance in the centre plate of shining steel<br />on his breastplate. Above it rose the same face--his face--only,<br />as I have said, larger and fiercer. I was bewildered. I could<br />not help feeling some admiration of him, but it was mingled with<br />a dim conviction that he was evil, and that I ought to fight with<br />him.<br />"Let me pass," I said.<br />"When I will," he replied.<br />Something within me said: "Spear in rest, and ride at him! else<br />thou art for ever a slave."<br />I tried, but my arm trembled so much, that I could not couch my<br />lance. To tell the truth, I, who had overcome the giant, shook<br />like a coward before this knight. He gave a scornful laugh, that<br />echoed through the wood, turned his horse, and said, without<br />looking round, "Follow me."<br />I obeyed, abashed and stupefied. How long he led, and how long I<br />followed, I cannot tell. "I never knew misery before," I said to<br />myself. "Would that I had at least struck him, and had had my<br />death- blow in return! Why, then, do I not call to him to wheel<br />and defend himself? Alas! I know not why, but I cannot. One<br />look from him would cow me like a beaten hound." I followed, and<br />was silent.<br />At length we came to a dreary square tower, in the middle of a<br />dense forest. It looked as if scarce a tree had been cut down to<br />make room for it. Across the very door, diagonally, grew the<br />stem of a tree, so large that there was just room to squeeze past<br />it in order to enter. One miserable square hole in the roof was<br />the only visible suggestion of a window. Turret or battlement,<br />or projecting masonry of any kind, it had none. Clear and smooth<br />and massy, it rose from its base, and ended with a line straight<br />and unbroken. The roof, carried to a centre from each of the<br />four walls, rose slightly to the point where the rafters met.<br />Round the base lay several little heaps of either bits of broken<br />branches, withered and peeled, or half- whitened bones; I could<br />not distinguish which. As I approached, the ground sounded<br />hollow beneath my horse's hoofs. The knight took a great key<br />from his pocket, and reaching past the stem of the tree, with<br />some difficulty opened the door. "Dismount," he commanded. I<br />obeyed. He turned my horse's head away from the tower, gave him<br />a terrible blow with the flat side of his sword, and sent him<br />madly tearing through the forest.<br />"Now," said he, "enter, and take your companion with you."<br />I looked round: knight and horse had vanished, and behind me lay<br />the horrible shadow. I entered, for I could not help myself; and<br />the shadow followed me. I had a terrible conviction that the<br />knight and he were one. The door closed behind me.<br />Now I was indeed in pitiful plight. There was literally nothing<br />in the tower but my shadow and me. The walls rose right up to<br />the roof; in which, as I had seen from without, there was one<br />little square opening. This I now knew to be the only window the<br />tower possessed. I sat down on the floor, in listless<br />wretchedness. I think I must have fallen asleep, and have slept<br />for hours; for I suddenly became aware of existence, in observing<br />that the moon was shining through the hole in the roof. As she<br />rose higher and higher, her light crept down the wall over me,<br />till at last it shone right upon my head. Instantaneously the<br />walls of the tower seemed to vanish away like a mist. I sat<br />beneath a beech, on the edge of a forest, and the open country<br />lay, in the moonlight, for miles and miles around me, spotted<br />with glimmering houses and spires and towers. I thought with<br />myself, "Oh, joy! it was only a dream; the horrible narrow waste<br />is gone, and I wake beneath a beech-tree, perhaps one that loves<br />me, and I can go where I will." I rose, as I thought, and walked<br />about, and did what I would, but ever kept near the tree; for<br />always, and, of course, since my meeting with the woman of the<br />beech-tree far more than ever, I loved that tree. So the night<br />wore on. I waited for the sun to rise, before I could venture to<br />renew my journey. But as soon as the first faint light of the<br />dawn appeared, instead of shining upon me from the eye of the<br />morning, it stole like a fainting ghost through the little square<br />hole above my head; and the walls came out as the light grew, and<br />the glorious night was swallowed up of the hateful day. The long<br />dreary day passed. My shadow lay black on the floor. I felt no<br />hunger, no need of food. The night came. The moon shone. I<br />watched her light slowly descending the wall, as I might have<br />watched, adown the sky, the long, swift approach of a helping<br />angel. Her rays touched me, and I was free. Thus night after<br />night passed away. I should have died but for this. Every night<br />the conviction returned, that I was free. Every morning I sat<br />wretchedly disconsolate. At length, when the course of the moon<br />no longer permitted her beams to touch me, the night was dreary<br />as the day.<br />When I slept, I was somewhat consoled by my dreams; but all the<br />time I dreamed, I knew that I was only dreaming. But one night,<br />at length, the moon, a mere shred of pallor, scattered a few thin<br />ghostly rays upon me; and I think I fell asleep and dreamed. I<br />sat in an autumn night before the vintage, on a hill overlooking<br />my own castle. My heart sprang with joy. Oh, to be a child<br />again, innocent, fearless, without shame or desire! I walked<br />down to the castle. All were in consternation at my absence. My<br />sisters were weeping for my loss. They sprang up and clung to<br />me, with incoherent cries, as I entered. My old friends came<br />flocking round me. A gray light shone on the roof of the hall.<br />It was the light of the dawn shining through the square window of<br />my tower. More earnestly than ever, I longed for freedom after<br />this dream; more drearily than ever, crept on the next wretched<br />day. I measured by the sunbeams, caught through the little<br />window in the trap of my tower, how it went by, waiting only for<br />the dreams of the night.<br />About noon, I started as if something foreign to all my senses<br />and all my experience, had suddenly invaded me; yet it was only<br />the voice of a woman singing. My whole frame quivered with joy,<br />surprise, and the sensation of the unforeseen. Like a living<br />soul, like an incarnation of Nature, the song entered my<br />prison-house. Each tone folded its wings, and laid itself, like<br />a caressing bird, upon my heart. It bathed me like a sea;<br />inwrapt me like an odorous vapour; entered my soul like a long<br />draught of clear spring-water; shone upon me like essential<br />sunlight; soothed me like a mother's voice and hand. Yet, as the<br />clearest forest-well tastes sometimes of the bitterness of<br />decayed leaves, so to my weary, prisoned heart, its cheerfulness<br />had a sting of cold, and its tenderness unmanned me with the<br />faintness of long-departed joys. I wept half-bitterly,<br />half-luxuriously; but not long. I dashed away the tears, ashamed<br />of a weakness which I thought I had abandoned. Ere I knew, I had<br />walked to the door, and seated myself with my ears against it, in<br />order to catch every syllable of the revelation from the unseen<br />outer world. And now I heard each word distinctly. The singer<br />seemed to be standing or sitting near the tower, for the sounds<br />indicated no change of place. The song was something like this:<br />The sun, like a golden knot on high,<br />Gathers the glories of the sky,<br />And binds them into a shining tent,<br />Roofing the world with the firmament.<br />And through the pavilion the rich winds blow,<br />And through the pavilion the waters go.<br />And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer,<br />Bowing their heads in the sunny air,<br />And for thoughts, the gently talking springs,<br />That come from the centre with secret things--<br />All make a music, gentle and strong,<br />Bound by the heart into one sweet song.<br />And amidst them all, the mother Earth<br />Sits with the children of her birth;<br />She tendeth them all, as a mother hen<br />Her little ones round her, twelve or ten:<br />Oft she sitteth, with hands on knee,<br />Idle with love for her family.<br />Go forth to her from the dark and the dust,<br />And weep beside her, if weep thou must;<br />If she may not hold thee to her breast,<br />Like a weary infant, that cries for rest<br />At least she will press thee to her knee,<br />And tell a low, sweet tale to thee,<br />Till the hue to thy cheeky and the light to thine eye,<br />Strength to thy limbs, and courage high<br />To thy fainting heart, return amain,<br />And away to work thou goest again.<br />From the narrow desert, O man of pride,<br />Come into the house, so high and wide.<br />Hardly knowing what I did, I opened the door. Why had I not done<br />so before? I do not know.<br />At first I could see no one; but when I had forced myself past<br />the tree which grew across the entrance, I saw, seated on the<br />ground, and leaning against the tree, with her back to my prison,<br />a beautiful woman. Her countenance seemed known to me, and yet<br />unknown. She looked at me and smiled, when I made my appearance.<br />"Ah! were you the prisoner there? I am very glad I have wiled<br />you out."<br />"Do you know me then?"<br />"Do you not know me? But you hurt me, and that, I suppose, makes<br />it easy for a man to forget. You broke my globe. Yet I thank<br />you. Perhaps I owe you many thanks for breaking it. I took the<br />pieces, all black, and wet with crying over them, to the Fairy<br />Queen. There was no music and no light in them now. But she<br />took them from me, and laid them aside; and made me go to sleep<br />in a great hall of white, with black pillars, and many red<br />curtains. When I woke in the morning, I went to her, hoping to<br />have my globe again, whole and sound; but she sent me away<br />without it, and I have not seen it since. Nor do I care for it<br />now. I have something so much better. I do not need the globe<br />to play to me; for I can sing. I could not sing at all before.<br />Now I go about everywhere through Fairy Land, singing till my<br />heart is like to break, just like my globe, for very joy at my<br />own songs. And wherever I go, my songs do good, and deliver<br />people. And now I have delivered you, and I am so happy."<br />She ceased, and the tears came into her eyes.<br />All this time, I had been gazing at her; and now fully recognised<br />the face of the child, glorified in the countenance of the woman.<br />I was ashamed and humbled before her; but a great weight was<br />lifted from my thoughts. I knelt before her, and thanked her,<br />and begged her to forgive me.<br />"Rise, rise," she said; "I have nothing to forgive; I thank you.<br />But now I must be gone, for I do not know how many may be waiting<br />for me, here and there, through the dark forests; and they cannot<br />come out till I come."<br />She rose, and with a smile and a farewell, turned and left me. I<br />dared not ask her to stay; in fact, I could hardly speak to her.<br />Between her and me, there was a great gulf. She was uplifted, by<br />sorrow and well-doing, into a region I could hardly hope ever to<br />enter. I watched her departure, as one watches a sunset. She<br />went like a radiance through the dark wood, which was henceforth<br />bright to me, from simply knowing that such a creature was in it.<br />She was bearing the sun to the unsunned spots. The light and the<br />music of her broken globe were now in her heart and her brain.<br />As she went, she sang; and I caught these few words of her song;<br />and the tones seemed to linger and wind about the trees after she<br />had disappeared:<br />Thou goest thine, and I go mine--<br />Many ways we wend;<br />Many days, and many ways,<br />Ending in one end.<br />Many a wrong, and its curing song;<br />Many a road, and many an inn;<br />Room to roam, but only one home<br />For all the world to win.<br />And so she vanished. With a sad heart, soothed by humility, and<br />the knowledge of her peace and gladness, I bethought me what now<br />I should do. First, I must leave the tower far behind me, lest,<br />in some evil moment, I might be once more caged within its<br />horrible walls. But it was ill walking in my heavy armour; and<br />besides I had now no right to the golden spurs and the<br />resplendent mail, fitly dulled with long neglect. I might do for<br />a squire; but I honoured knighthood too highly, to call myself<br />any longer one of the noble brotherhood. I stripped off all my<br />armour, piled it under the tree, just where the lady had been<br />seated, and took my unknown way, eastward through the woods. Of<br />all my weapons, I carried only a short axe in my hand.<br />Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to<br />myself, "I am what I am, nothing more." "I have failed," I said,<br />"I have lost myself--would it had been my shadow." I looked<br />round: the shadow was nowhere to be seen. Ere long, I learned<br />that it was not myself, but only my shadow, that I had lost. I<br />learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to<br />fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and<br />fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will<br />barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his<br />work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered,<br />or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to<br />set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became<br />my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain<br />attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in<br />my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a<br />mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another<br />self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from<br />the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self<br />must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a<br />winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record.<br />Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is<br />ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at<br />last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn<br />gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a<br />smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?<br />CHAPTER XXIII<br />"High erected thought, seated in a heart of courtesy."<br />SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.<br />"A sweet attractive kinde of grace,<br />A full assurance given by lookes,<br />Continuall comfort in a face,<br />The lineaments of Gospel bookes."<br />MATTHEW ROYDON, on Sir Philip Sidney.<br />I had not gone far, for I had but just lost sight of the hated<br />tower, when a voice of another sort, sounding near or far, as the<br />trees permitted or intercepted its passage, reached me. It was a<br />full, deep, manly voice, but withal clear and melodious. Now it<br />burst on the ear with a sudden swell, and anon, dying away as<br />suddenly, seemed to come to me across a great space.<br />Nevertheless, it drew nearer; till, at last, I could distinguish<br />the words of the song, and get transient glimpses of the singer,<br />between the columns of the trees. He came nearer, dawning upon<br />me like a growing thought. He was a knight, armed from head to<br />heel, mounted upon a strange-looking beast, whose form I could<br />not understand. The words which I heard him sing were like<br />these:<br />Heart be stout,<br />And eye be true;<br />Good blade out!<br />And ill shall rue.<br />Courage, horse!<br />Thou lackst no skill;<br />Well thy force<br />Hath matched my will.<br />For the foe<br />With fiery breath,<br />At a blow,<br />It still in death.<br />Gently, horse!<br />Tread fearlessly;<br />'Tis his corse<br />That burdens thee.<br />The sun's eye<br />Is fierce at noon;<br />Thou and I<br />Will rest full soon.<br />And new strength<br />New work will meet;<br />Till, at length,<br />Long rest is sweet.<br />And now horse and rider had arrived near enough for me to see,<br />fastened by the long neck to the hinder part of the saddle, and<br />trailing its hideous length on the ground behind, the body of a<br />great dragon. It was no wonder that, with such a drag at his<br />heels, the horse could make but slow progress, notwithstanding<br />his evident dismay. The horrid, serpent-like head, with its<br />black tongue, forked with red, hanging out of its jaws, dangled<br />against the horse's side. Its neck was covered with long blue<br />hair, its sides with scales of green and gold. Its back was of<br />corrugated skin, of a purple hue. Its belly was similar in<br />nature, but its colour was leaden, dashed with blotches of livid<br />blue. Its skinny, bat-like wings and its tail were of a dull<br />gray. It was strange to see how so many gorgeous colours, so<br />many curving lines, and such beautiful things as wings and hair<br />and scales, combined to form the horrible creature, intense in<br />ugliness.<br />The knight was passing me with a salutation; but, as I walked<br />towards him, he reined up, and I stood by his stirrup. When I<br />came near him, I saw to my surprise and pleasure likewise,<br />although a sudden pain, like a birth of fire, sprang up in my<br />heart, that it was the knight of the soiled armour, whom I knew<br />before, and whom I had seen in the vision, with the lady of the<br />marble. But I could have thrown my arms around him, because she<br />loved him. This discovery only strengthened the resolution I had<br />formed, before I recognised him, of offering myself to the<br />knight, to wait upon him as a squire, for he seemed to be<br />unattended. I made my request in as few words as possible. He<br />hesitated for a moment, and looked at me thoughtfully. I saw<br />that he suspected who I was, but that he continued uncertain of<br />his suspicion. No doubt he was soon convinced of its truth; but<br />all the time I was with him, not a word crossed his lips with<br />reference to what he evidently concluded I wished to leave<br />unnoticed, if not to keep concealed.<br />"Squire and knight should be friends,"said he: "can you take me<br />by the hand?" And he held out the great gauntleted right hand.<br />I grasped it willingly and strongly. Not a word more was said.<br />The knight gave the sign to his horse, which again began his slow<br />march, and I walked beside and a little behind.<br />We had not gone very far before we arrived at a little cottage;<br />from which, as we drew near, a woman rushed out with the cry:<br />"My child! my child! have you found my child?"<br />"I have found her," replied the knight, "but she is sorely hurt.<br />I was forced to leave her with the hermit, as I returned. You<br />will find her there, and I think she will get better. You see I<br />have brought you a present. This wretch will not hurt you<br />again." And he undid the creature's neck, and flung the<br />frightful burden down by the cottage door.<br />The woman was now almost out of sight in the wood; but the<br />husband stood at the door, with speechless thanks in his face.<br />"You must bury the monster," said the knight. "If I had arrived<br />a moment later, I should have been too late. But now you need<br />not fear, for such a creature as this very rarely appears, in the<br />same part, twice during a lifetime."<br />"Will you not dismount and rest you, Sir Knight?" said the<br />peasant, who had, by this time, recovered himself a little.<br />"That I will, thankfully," said he; and, dismounting, he gave the<br />reins to me, and told me to unbridle the horse, and lead him into<br />the shade. "You need not tie him up," he added; "he will not run<br />away."<br />When I returned, after obeying his orders, and entered the<br />cottage, I saw the knight seated, without his helmet, and talking<br />most familiarly with the simple host. I stood at the open door<br />for a moment, and, gazing at him, inwardly justified the white<br />lady in preferring him to me. A nobler countenance I never saw.<br />Loving-kindness beamed from every line of his face. It seemed as<br />if he would repay himself for the late arduous combat, by<br />indulging in all the gentleness of a womanly heart. But when the<br />talk ceased for a moment, he seemed to fall into a reverie. Then<br />the exquisite curves of the upper lip vanished. The lip was<br />lengthened and compressed at the same moment. You could have<br />told that, within the lips, the teeth were firmly closed. The<br />whole face grew stern and determined, all but fierce; only the<br />eyes burned on like a holy sacrifice, uplift on a granite rock.<br />The woman entered, with her mangled child in her arms. She was<br />pale as her little burden. She gazed, with a wild love and<br />despairing tenderness, on the still, all but dead face, white and<br />clear from loss of blood and terror.<br />The knight rose. The light that had been confined to his eyes,<br />now shone from his whole countenance. He took the little thing<br />in his arms, and, with the mother's help, undressed her, and<br />looked to her wounds. The tears flowed down his face as he did<br />so. With tender hands he bound them up, kissed the pale cheek,<br />and gave her back to her mother. When he went home, all his tale<br />would be of the grief and joy of the parents; while to me, who<br />had looked on, the gracious countenance of the armed man, beaming<br />from the panoply of steel, over the seemingly dead child, while<br />the powerful hands turned it and shifted it, and bound it, if<br />possible even more gently than the mother's, formed the centre of<br />the story.<br />After we had partaken of the best they could give us, the knight<br />took his leave, with a few parting instructions to the mother as<br />to how she should treat the child.<br />I brought the knight his steed, held the stirrup while he<br />mounted, and then followed him through the wood. The horse,<br />delighted to be free of his hideous load, bounded beneath the<br />weight of man and armour, and could hardly be restrained from<br />galloping on. But the knight made him time his powers to mine,<br />and so we went on for an hour or two. Then the knight<br />dismounted, and compelled me to get into the saddle, saying:<br />"Knight and squire must share the labour."<br />Holding by the stirrup, he walked along by my side, heavily clad<br />as he was, with apparent ease. As we went, he led a<br />conversation, in which I took what humble part my sense of my<br />condition would permit me.<br />"Somehow or other," said he, "notwithstanding the beauty of this<br />country of Faerie, in which we are, there is much that is wrong<br />in it. If there are great splendours, there are corresponding<br />horrors; heights and depths; beautiful women and awful fiends;<br />noble men and weaklings. All a man has to do, is to better what<br />he can. And if he will settle it with himself, that even renown<br />and success are in themselves of no great value, and be content<br />to be defeated, if so be that the fault is not his; and so go to<br />his work with a cool brain and a strong will, he will get it<br />done; and fare none the worse in the end, that he was not<br />burdened with provision and precaution."<br />"But he will not always come off well," I ventured to say.<br />"Perhaps not," rejoined the knight, "in the individual act; but<br />the result of his lifetime will content him."<br />"So it will fare with you, doubtless," thought I; "but for<br />me---"<br />Venturing to resume the conversation after a pause, I said,<br />hesitatingly:<br />"May I ask for what the little beggar-girl wanted your aid, when<br />she came to your castle to find you?"<br />He looked at me for a moment in silence, and then said--<br />"I cannot help wondering how you know of that; but there is<br />something about you quite strange enough to entitle you to the<br />privilege of the country; namely, to go unquestioned. I,<br />however, being only a man, such as you see me, am ready to tell<br />you anything you like to ask me, as far as I can. The little<br />beggar-girl came into the hall where I was sitting, and told me a<br />very curious story, which I can only recollect very vaguely, it<br />was so peculiar. What I can recall is, that she was sent to<br />gather wings. As soon as she had gathered a pair of wings for<br />herself, she was to fly away, she said, to the country she came<br />from; but where that was, she could give no information.<br />She said she had to beg her wings from the butterflies and moths;<br />and wherever she begged, no one refused her. But she needed a<br />great many of the wings of butterflies and moths to make a pair<br />for her; and so she had to wander about day after day, looking<br />for butterflies, and night after night, looking for moths; and<br />then she begged for their wings. But the day before, she had<br />come into a part of the forest, she said, where there were<br />multitudes of splendid butterflies flitting about, with wings<br />which were just fit to make the eyes in the shoulders of hers;<br />and she knew she could have as many of them as she liked for the<br />asking; but as soon as she began to beg, there came a great<br />creature right up to her, and threw her down, and walked over<br />her. When she got up, she saw the wood was full of these beings<br />stalking about, and seeming to have nothing to do with each<br />other. As soon as ever she began to beg, one of them walked over<br />her; till at last in dismay, and in growing horror of the<br />senseless creatures, she had run away to look for somebody to<br />help her. I asked her what they were like. She said, like great<br />men, made of wood, without knee- or elbow-joints, and without any<br />noses or mouths or eyes in their faces. I laughed at the little<br />maiden, thinking she was making child's game of me; but, although<br />she burst out laughing too, she persisted in asserting the truth<br />of her story.<br />"`Only come, knight, come and see; I will lead you.'<br />"So I armed myself, to be ready for anything that might happen,<br />and followed the child; for, though I could make nothing of her<br />story, I could see she was a little human being in need of some<br />help or other. As she walked before me, I looked attentively at<br />her. Whether or not it was from being so often knocked down and<br />walked over, I could not tell, but her clothes were very much<br />torn, and in several places her white skin was peeping through.<br />I thought she was hump-backed; but on looking more closely, I<br />saw, through the tatters of her frock--do not laugh at me--a<br />bunch on each shoulder, of the most gorgeous colours. Looking<br />yet more closely, I saw that they were of the shape of folded<br />wings, and were made of all kinds of butterfly-wings and<br />moth-wings, crowded together like the feathers on the individual<br />butterfly pinion; but, like them, most beautifully arranged, and<br />producing a perfect harmony of colour and shade. I could now<br />more easily believe the rest of her story; especially as I saw,<br />every now and then, a certain heaving motion in the wings, as if<br />they longed to be uplifted and outspread. But beneath her scanty<br />garments complete wings could not be concealed, and indeed, from<br />her own story, they were yet unfinished.<br />"After walking for two or three hours (how the little girl found<br />her way, I could not imagine), we came to a part of the forest,<br />the very air of which was quivering with the motions of<br />multitudes of resplendent butterflies; as gorgeous in colour, as<br />if the eyes of peacocks' feathers had taken to flight, but of<br />infinite variety of hue and form, only that the appearance of<br />some kind of eye on each wing predominated. `There they are,<br />there they are!' cried the child, in a tone of victory mingled<br />with terror. Except for this tone, I should have thought she<br />referred to the butterflies, for I could see nothing else. But<br />at that moment an enormous butterfly, whose wings had great eyes<br />of blue surrounded by confused cloudy heaps of more dingy<br />colouring, just like a break in the clouds on a stormy day<br />towards evening, settled near us. The child instantly began<br />murmuring: `Butterfly, butterfly, give me your wings'; when, the<br />moment after, she fell to the ground, and began crying as if<br />hurt. I drew my sword and heaved a great blow in the direction<br />in which the child had fallen. It struck something, and<br />instantly the most grotesque imitation of a man became visible.<br />You see this Fairy Land is full of oddities and all sorts of<br />incredibly ridiculous things, which a man is compelled to meet<br />and treat as real existences, although all the time he feels<br />foolish for doing so. This being, if being it could be called,<br />was like a block of wood roughly hewn into the mere outlines of a<br />man; and hardly so, for it had but head, body, legs, and arms--<br />the head without a face, and the limbs utterly formless. I had<br />hewn off one of its legs, but the two portions moved on as best<br />they could, quite independent of each other; so that I had done<br />no good. I ran after it, and clove it in twain from the head<br />downwards; but it could not be convinced that its vocation was<br />not to walk over people; for, as soon as the little girl began<br />her begging again, all three parts came bustling up; and if I had<br />not interposed my weight between her and them, she would have<br />been trampled again under them. I saw that something else must<br />be done. If the wood was full of the creatures, it would be an<br />endless work to chop them so small that they could do no injury;<br />and then, besides, the parts would be so numerous, that the<br />butterflies would be in danger from the drift of flying chips. I<br />served this one so, however; and then told the girl to beg again,<br />and point out the direction in which one was coming. I was glad<br />to find, however, that I could now see him myself, and wondered<br />how they could have been invisible before. I would not allow him<br />to walk over the child; but while I kept him off, and she began<br />begging again, another appeared; and it was all I could do, from<br />the weight of my armour, to protect her from the stupid,<br />persevering efforts of the two. But suddenly the right plan<br />occurred to me. I tripped one of them up, and, taking him by the<br />legs, set him up on his head, with his heels against a tree. I<br />was delighted to find he could not move.<br />Meantime the poor child was walked over by the other, but it was<br />for the last time. Whenever one appeared, I followed the same<br />plan-- tripped him up and set him on his head; and so the little<br />beggar was able to gather her wings without any trouble, which<br />occupation she continued for several hours in my company."<br />"What became of her?" I asked.<br />"I took her home with me to my castle, and she told me all her<br />story; but it seemed to me, all the time, as if I were hearing a<br />child talk in its sleep. I could not arrange her story in my<br />mind at all, although it seemed to leave hers in some certain<br />order of its own. My wife---"<br />Here the knight checked himself, and said no more. Neither did I<br />urge the conversation farther.<br />Thus we journeyed for several days, resting at night in such<br />shelter as we could get; and when no better was to be had, lying<br />in the forest under some tree, on a couch of old leaves.<br />I loved the knight more and more. I believe never squire served<br />his master with more care and joyfulness than I. I tended his<br />horse; I cleaned his armour; my skill in the craft enabled me to<br />repair it when necessary; I watched his needs; and was well<br />repaid for all by the love itself which I bore him.<br />"This," I said to myself, "is a true man. I will serve him, and<br />give him all worship, seeing in him the imbodiment of what I<br />would fain become. If I cannot be noble myself, I will yet be<br />servant to his nobleness." He, in return, soon showed me such<br />signs of friendship and respect, as made my heart glad; and I<br />felt that, after all, mine would be no lost life, if I might wait<br />on him to the world's end, although no smile but his should greet<br />me, and no one but him should say, "Well done! he was a good<br />servant!" at last. But I burned to do something more for him<br />than the ordinary routine of a squire's duty permitted.<br />One afternoon, we began to observe an appearance of roads in the<br />wood. Branches had been cut down, and openings made, where<br />footsteps had worn no path below. These indications increased as<br />we passed on, till, at length, we came into a long, narrow<br />avenue, formed by felling the trees in its line, as the remaining<br />roots evidenced. At some little distance, on both hands, we<br />observed signs of similar avenues, which appeared to converge<br />with ours, towards one spot. Along these we indistinctly saw<br />several forms moving, which seemed, with ourselves, to approach<br />the common centre. Our path brought us, at last, up to a wall of<br />yew-trees, growing close together, and intertwining their<br />branches so, that nothing could be seen beyond it. An opening<br />was cut in it like a door, and all the wall was trimmed smooth<br />and perpendicular. The knight dismounted, and waited till I had<br />provided for his horse's comfort; upon which we entered the place<br />together.<br />It was a great space, bare of trees, and enclosed by four walls<br />of yew, similar to that through which we had entered. These<br />trees grew to a very great height, and did not divide from each<br />other till close to the top, where their summits formed a row of<br />conical battlements all around the walls. The space contained<br />was a parallelogram of great length. Along each of the two<br />longer sides of the interior, were ranged three ranks of men, in<br />white robes, standing silent and solemn, each with a sword by his<br />side, although the rest of his costume and bearing was more<br />priestly than soldierly. For some distance inwards, the space<br />between these opposite rows was filled with a company of men and<br />women and children, in holiday attire. The looks of all were<br />directed inwards, towards the further end. Far beyond the crowd,<br />in a long avenue, seeming to narrow in the distance, went the<br />long rows of the white-robed men. On what the attention of the<br />multitude was fixed, we could not tell, for the sun had set<br />before we arrived, and it was growing dark within. It grew<br />darker and darker. The multitude waited in silence. The stars<br />began to shine down into the enclosure, and they grew brighter<br />and larger every moment. A wind arose, and swayed the pinnacles<br />of the tree-tops; and made a strange sound, half like music, half<br />like moaning, through the close branches and leaves of the<br />tree-walls. A young girl who stood beside me, clothed in the<br />same dress as the priests, bowed her head, and grew pale with<br />awe.<br />The knight whispered to me, "How solemn it is! Surely they wait<br />to hear the voice of a prophet. There is something good near!"<br />But I, though somewhat shaken by the feeling expressed by my<br />master, yet had an unaccountable conviction that here was<br />something bad. So I resolved to be keenly on the watch for what<br />should follow.<br />Suddenly a great star, like a sun, appeared high in the air over<br />the temple, illuminating it throughout; and a great song arose<br />from the men in white, which went rolling round and round the<br />building, now receding to the end, and now approaching, down the<br />other side, the place where we stood. For some of the singers<br />were regularly ceasing, and the next to them as regularly taking<br />up the song, so that it crept onwards with gradations produced by<br />changes which could not themselves be detected, for only a few of<br />those who were singing ceased at the same moment. The song<br />paused; and I saw a company of six of the white-robed men walk up<br />the centre of the human avenue, surrounding a youth gorgeously<br />attired beneath his robe of white, and wearing a chaplet of<br />flowers on his head. I followed them closely, with my keenest<br />observation; and, by accompanying their slow progress with my<br />eyes, I was able to perceive more clearly what took place when<br />they arrived at the other end. I knew that my sight was so much<br />more keen than that of most people, that I had good reason to<br />suppose I should see more than the rest could, at such a<br />distance. At the farther end a throne stood upon a platform,<br />high above the heads of the surrounding priests. To this<br />platform I saw the company begin to ascend, apparently by an<br />inclined plane or gentle slope. The throne itself was elevated<br />again, on a kind of square pedestal, to the top of which led a<br />flight of steps. On the throne sat a majestic- looking figure,<br />whose posture seemed to indicate a mixture of pride and<br />benignity, as he looked down on the multitude below. The company<br />ascended to the foot of the throne, where they all kneeled for<br />some minutes; then they rose and passed round to the side of the<br />pedestal upon which the throne stood. Here they crowded close<br />behind the youth, putting him in the foremost place, and one of<br />them opened a door in the pedestal, for the youth to enter. I<br />was sure I saw him shrink back, and those crowding behind pushed<br />him in. Then, again, arose a burst of song from the multitude in<br />white, which lasted some time. When it ceased, a new company of<br />seven commenced its march up the centre. As they advanced, I<br />looked up at my master: his noble countenance was full of<br />reverence and awe. Incapable of evil himself, he could scarcely<br />suspect it in another, much less in a multitude such as this, and<br />surrounded with such appearances of solemnity. I was certain it<br />was the really grand accompaniments that overcame him; that the<br />stars overhead, the dark towering tops of the yew-trees, and the<br />wind that, like an unseen spirit, sighed through their branches,<br />bowed his spirit to the belief, that in all these ceremonies lay<br />some great mystical meaning which, his humility told him, his<br />ignorance prevented him from understanding.<br />More convinced than before, that there was evil here, I could not<br />endure that my master should be deceived; that one like him, so<br />pure and noble, should respect what, if my suspicions were true,<br />was worse than the ordinary deceptions of priestcraft. I could<br />not tell how far he might be led to countenance, and otherwise<br />support their doings, before he should find cause to repent<br />bitterly of his error. I watched the new procession yet more<br />keenly, if possible, than the former. This time, the central<br />figure was a girl; and, at the close, I observed, yet more<br />indubitably, the shrinking back, and the crowding push. What<br />happened to the victims, I never learned; but I had learned<br />enough, and I could bear it no longer. I stooped, and whispered<br />to the young girl who stood by me, to lend me her white garment.<br />I wanted it, that I might not be entirely out of keeping with the<br />solemnity, but might have at least this help to passing<br />unquestioned. She looked up, half-amused and half-bewildered, as<br />if doubting whether I was in earnest or not. But in her<br />perplexity, she permitted me to unfasten it, and slip it down<br />from her shoulders.<br />I easily got possession of it; and, sinking down on my knees in<br />the crowd, I rose apparently in the habit of one of the<br />worshippers.<br />Giving my battle-axe to the girl, to hold in pledge for the<br />return of her stole, for I wished to test the matter unarmed,<br />and, if it was a man that sat upon the throne, to attack him with<br />hands bare, as I supposed his must be, I made my way through the<br />crowd to the front, while the singing yet continued, desirous of<br />reaching the platform while it was unoccupied by any of the<br />priests. I was permitted to walk up the long avenue of white<br />robes unmolested, though I saw questioning looks in many of the<br />faces as I passed. I presume my coolness aided my passage; for I<br />felt quite indifferent as to my own fate; not feeling, after the<br />late events of my history, that I was at all worth taking care<br />of; and enjoying, perhaps, something of an evil satisfaction, in<br />the revenge I was thus taking upon the self which had fooled me<br />so long. When I arrived on the platform, the song had just<br />ceased, and I felt as if all were looking towards me. But<br />instead of kneeling at its foot, I walked right up the stairs to<br />the throne, laid hold of a great wooden image that seemed to sit<br />upon it, and tried to hurl it from its seat. In this I failed at<br />first, for I found it firmly fixed. But in dread lest, the first<br />shock of amazement passing away, the guards would rush upon me<br />before I had effected my purpose, I strained with all my might;<br />and, with a noise as of the cracking, and breaking, and tearing<br />of rotten wood, something gave way, and I hurled the image down<br />the steps. Its displacement revealed a great hole in the throne,<br />like the hollow of a decayed tree, going down apparently a great<br />way. But I had no time to examine it, for, as I looked into it,<br />up out of it rushed a great brute, like a wolf, but twice the<br />size, and tumbled me headlong with itself, down the steps of the<br />throne. As we fell, however, I caught it by the throat, and the<br />moment we reached the platform, a struggle commenced, in which I<br />soon got uppermost, with my hand upon its throat, and knee upon<br />its heart. But now arose a wild cry of wrath and revenge and<br />rescue. A universal hiss of steel, as every sword was swept from<br />its scabbard, seemed to tear the very air in shreds. I heard the<br />rush of hundreds towards the platform on which I knelt. I only<br />tightened my grasp of the brute's throat. His eyes were already<br />starting from his head, and his tongue was hanging out. My<br />anxious hope was, that, even after they had killed me, they would<br />be unable to undo my gripe of his throat, before the monster was<br />past breathing. I therefore threw all my will, and force, and<br />purpose, into the grasping hand. I remember no blow. A<br />faintness came over me, and my consciousness departed.<br />CHAPTER XXIV<br />"We are ne'er like angels till our passions die."<br />DEKKER.<br />"This wretched INN, where we scarce stay to bait,<br />We call our DWELLING-PLACE:<br />We call one STEP A RACE:<br />But angels in their full enlightened state,<br />Angels, who LIVE, and know what 'tis to BE,<br />Who all the nonsense of our language see,<br />Who speak THINGS, and our WORDS,their ill-drawn<br />PICTURES, scorn,<br />When we, by a foolish figure, say,<br />BEHOLD AN OLD MAN DEAD! then they<br />Speak properly, and cry, BEHOLD A MAN-CHILD BORN!"<br />COWLEY.<br />I was dead, and right content. I lay in my coffin, with my<br />hands folded in peace. The knight, and the lady I loved, wept<br />over me.<br />Her tears fell on my face.<br />"Ah!" said the knight, "I rushed amongst them like a madman. I<br />hewed them down like brushwood. Their swords battered on me like<br />hail, but hurt me not. I cut a lane through to my friend. He<br />was dead. But he had throttled the monster, and I had to cut the<br />handful out of its throat, before I could disengage and carry off<br />his body. They dared not molest me as I brought him back."<br />"He has died well," said the lady.<br />My spirit rejoiced. They left me to my repose. I felt as if a<br />cool hand had been laid upon my heart, and had stilled it. My<br />soul was like a summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when<br />the drops are yet glistening on the trees in the last rays of the<br />down-going sun, and the wind of the twilight has begun to blow.<br />The hot fever of life had gone by, and I breathed the clear<br />mountain-air of the land of Death. I had never dreamed of such<br />blessedness. It was not that I had in any way ceased to be what<br />I had been. The very fact that anything can die, implies the<br />existence of something that cannot die; which must either take to<br />itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and<br />arises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue<br />to lead a purely spiritual life. If my passions were dead, the<br />souls of the passions, those essential mysteries of the spirit<br />which had imbodied themselves in the passions, and had given to<br />them all their glory and wonderment, yet lived, yet glowed, with<br />a pure, undying fire. They rose above their vanishing earthly<br />garments, and disclosed themselves angels of light. But oh, how<br />beautiful beyond the old form! I lay thus for a time, and lived<br />as it were an unradiating existence; my soul a motionless lake,<br />that received all things and gave nothing back; satisfied in<br />still contemplation, and spiritual consciousness.<br />Ere long, they bore me to my grave. Never tired child lay down<br />in his white bed, and heard the sound of his playthings being<br />laid aside for the night, with a more luxurious satisfaction of<br />repose than I knew, when I felt the coffin settle on the firm<br />earth, and heard the sound of the falling mould upon its lid. It<br />has not the same hollow rattle within the coffin, that it sends<br />up to the edge of the grave. They buried me in no graveyard.<br />They loved me too much for that, I thank them; but they laid me<br />in the grounds of their own castle, amid many trees; where, as it<br />was spring-time, were growing primroses, and blue-bells, and all<br />the families of the woods<br />Now that I lay in her bosom, the whole earth, and each of her<br />many births, was as a body to me, at my will. I seemed to feel<br />the great heart of the mother beating into mine, and feeding me<br />with her own life, her own essential being and nature. I heard<br />the footsteps of my friends above, and they sent a thrill through<br />my heart. I knew that the helpers had gone, and that the knight<br />and the lady remained, and spoke low, gentle, tearful words of<br />him who lay beneath the yet wounded sod. I rose into a single<br />large primrose that grew by the edge of the grave, and from the<br />window of its humble, trusting face, looked full in the<br />countenance of the lady. I felt that I could manifest myself in<br />the primrose; that it said a part of what I wanted to say; just<br />as in the old time, I had used to betake myself to a song for the<br />same end. The flower caught her eye. She stooped and plucked<br />it, saying, "Oh, you beautiful creature!" and, lightly kissing<br />it, put it in her bosom. It was the first kiss she had ever<br />given me. But the flower soon began to wither, and I forsook it.<br />It was evening. The sun was below the horizon; but his rosy<br />beams yet illuminated a feathery cloud, that floated high above<br />the world. I arose, I reached the cloud; and, throwing myself<br />upon it, floated with it in sight of the sinking sun. He sank,<br />and the cloud grew gray; but the grayness touched not my heart.<br />It carried its rose-hue within; for now I could love without<br />needing to be loved again. The moon came gliding up with all the<br />past in her wan face. She changed my couch into a ghostly<br />pallor, and threw all the earth below as to the bottom of a pale<br />sea of dreams. But she could not make me sad. I knew now, that<br />it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come<br />nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the<br />loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that<br />originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew<br />that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved,<br />even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to<br />that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in<br />proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the<br />power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day,<br />meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its<br />own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This<br />is possible in the realms of lofty Death. "Ah! my friends,"<br />thought I, "how I will tend you, and wait upon you, and haunt you<br />with my love."<br />My floating chariot bore me over a great city. Its faint dull<br />sound steamed up into the air--a sound--how composed?" How many<br />hopeless cries," thought I, "and how many mad shouts go to make<br />up the tumult, here so faint where I float in eternal peace,<br />knowing that they will one day be stilled in the surrounding<br />calm, and that despair dies into infinite hope, and the seeming<br />impossible there, is the law here!<br />But, O pale-faced women, and gloomy-browed men, and forgotten<br />children, how I will wait on you, and minister to you, and,<br />putting my arms about you in the dark, think hope into your<br />hearts, when you fancy no one is near! Soon as my senses have<br />all come back, and have grown accustomed to this new blessed<br />life, I will be among you with the love that healeth."<br />With this, a pang and a terrible shudder went through me; a<br />writhing as of death convulsed me; and I became once again<br />conscious of a more limited, even a bodily and earthly life.<br />CHAPTER XXV<br />"Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one,<br />and perhaps will."--NOVALIS.<br />"And on the ground, which is my modres gate,<br />I knocke with my staf; erlich and late,<br />And say to hire, Leve mother, let me in."<br />CHAUCER, The Pardoneres Tale.<br />Sinking from such a state of ideal bliss, into the world of<br />shadows which again closed around and infolded me, my first dread<br />was, not unnaturally, that my own shadow had found me again, and<br />that my torture had commenced anew. It was a sad revulsion of<br />feeling. This, indeed, seemed to correspond to what we think<br />death is, before we die. Yet I felt within me a power of calm<br />endurance to which I had hitherto been a stranger. For, in<br />truth, that I should be able if only to think such things as I<br />had been thinking, was an unspeakable delight. An hour of such<br />peace made the turmoil of a lifetime worth striving through.<br />I found myself lying in the open air, in the early morning,<br />before sunrise. Over me rose the summer heaven, expectant of the<br />sun. The clouds already saw him, coming from afar; and soon<br />every dewdrop would rejoice in his individual presence within it.<br />I lay motionless for a few minutes; and then slowly rose and<br />looked about me. I was on the summit of a little hill; a valley<br />lay beneath, and a range of mountains closed up the view upon<br />that side. But, to my horror, across the valley, and up the<br />height of the opposing mountains, stretched, from my very feet, a<br />hugely expanding shade. There it lay, long and large, dark and<br />mighty. I turned away with a sick despair; when lo! I beheld<br />the sun just lifting his head above the eastern hill, and the<br />shadow that fell from me, lay only where his beams fell not. I<br />danced for joy. It was only the natural shadow, that goes with<br />every man who walks in the sun. As he arose, higher and higher,<br />the shadow-head sank down the side of the opposite hill, and<br />crept in across the valley towards my feet.<br />Now that I was so joyously delivered from this fear, I saw and<br />recognised the country around me. In the valley below, lay my<br />own castle, and the haunts of my childhood were all about me<br />hastened home. My sisters received me with unspeakable joy; but<br />I suppose they observed some change in me, for a kind of respect,<br />with a slight touch of awe in it, mingled with their joy, and<br />made me ashamed. They had been in great distress about me. On<br />the morning of my disappearance, they had found the floor of my<br />room flooded; and, all that day, a wondrous and nearly impervious<br />mist had hung about the castle and grounds. I had been gone,<br />they told me, twenty- one days. To me it seemed twenty-one<br />years. Nor could I yet feel quite secure in my new experiences.<br />When, at night, I lay down once more in my own bed, I did not<br />feel at all sure that when I awoke, I should not find myself in<br />some mysterious region of Fairy Land. My dreams were incessant<br />and perturbed; but when I did awake, I saw clearly that I was in<br />my own home.<br />My mind soon grew calm; and I began the duties of my new<br />position, somewhat instructed, I hoped, by the adventures that<br />had befallen me in Fairy Land. Could I translate the experience<br />of my travels there, into common life? This was the question.<br />Or must I live it all over again, and learn it all over again, in<br />the other forms that belong to the world of men, whose experience<br />yet runs parallel to that of Fairy Land? These questions I<br />cannot answer yet. But I fear.<br />Even yet, I find myself looking round sometimes with anxiety, to<br />see whether my shadow falls right away from the sun or no. I<br />have never yet discovered any inclination to either side. And if<br />I am not unfrequently sad, I yet cast no more of a shade on the<br />earth, than most men who have lived in it as long as I. I have a<br />strange feeling sometimes, that I am a ghost, sent into the world<br />to minister to my fellow men, or, rather, to repair the wrongs I<br />have already done.<br />May the world be brighter for me, at least in those portions of<br />it, where my darkness falls not.<br />Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I<br />had lost my Shadow.<br />When the thought of the blessedness I experienced, after my death<br />in Fairy Land, is too high for me to lay hold upon it and hope in<br />it, I often think of the wise woman in the cottage, and of her<br />solemn assurance that she knew something too good to be told.<br />When I am oppressed by any sorrow or real perplexity, I often<br />feel as if I had only left her cottage for a time, and would soon<br />return out of the vision, into it again. Sometimes, on such<br />occasions, I find myself, unconsciously almost, looking about for<br />the mystic mark of red, with the vague hope of entering her door,<br />and being comforted by her wise tenderness. I then console<br />myself by saying: "I have come through the door of Dismay; and<br />the way back from the world into which that has led me, is<br />through my tomb. Upon that the red sign lies, and I shall find<br />it one day, and be glad."<br />I will end my story with the relation of an incident which befell<br />me a few days ago. I had been with my reapers, and, when they<br />ceased their work at noon, I had lain down under the shadow of a<br />great, ancient beech-tree, that stood on the edge of the field.<br />As I lay, with my eyes closed, I began to listen to the sound of<br />the leaves overhead. At first, they made sweet inarticulate<br />music alone; but, by-and-by, the sound seemed to begin to take<br />shape, and to be gradually moulding itself into words; till, at<br />last, I seemed able to distinguish these, half-dissolved in a<br />little ocean of circumfluent tones: "A great good is coming--is<br />coming--is coming to thee, Anodos"; and so over and over again.<br />I fancied that the sound reminded me of the voice of the ancient<br />woman, in the cottage that was four-square. I opened my eyes,<br />and, for a moment, almost believed that I saw her face, with its<br />many wrinkles and its young eyes, looking at me from between two<br />hoary branches of the beech overhead. But when I looked more<br />keenly, I saw only twigs and leaves, and the infinite sky, in<br />tiny spots, gazing through between. Yet I know that good is<br />coming to me--that good is always coming; though few have at all<br />times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we call<br />evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his<br />condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good. And<br />so, FAREWELL.Fortunehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835125471380719007noreply@blogger.com0