Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the
decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the
long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over
which it passed in motionless rivers of light. I turned hurriedly to
bid my hostess farewell without further delay. She smiled at my haste,
but with an anxious look.
“You had better not go near the house of the ogre, I think. My son will
show you into another path, which will join the first beyond it.”
Not wishing to be headstrong or too confident any more, I agreed; and
having taken leave of my kind entertainers, went into the wood,
accompanied by the youth. He scarcely spoke as we went along; but he
led me through the trees till we struck upon a path. He told me to
follow it, and, with a muttered “good morning” left me.
CHAPTER VIII
“I am a part of the part, which at first was the whole.”
GOETHE.—_Mephistopheles in Faust_.
My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not
regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like
life itself—not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned,
that the best way to manage some kinds of pain filled thoughts, is to
dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart
till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they
cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little
clearing in the forest. In the middle of this clearing stood a long,
low hut, built with one end against a single tall cypress, which rose
like a spire to the building. A vague misgiving crossed my mind when I
saw it; but I must needs go closer, and look through a little half-open
door, near the opposite end from the cypress. Window I saw none. On
peeping in, and looking towards the further end, I saw a lamp burning,
with a dim, reddish flame, and the head of a woman, bent downwards, as
if reading by its light. I could see nothing more for a few moments. At
length, as my eyes got used to the dimness of the place, I saw that the
part of the rude building near me was used for household purposes; for
several rough utensils lay here and there, and a bed stood in the
corner.
An irresistible attraction caused me to enter. The woman never raised
her face, the upper part of which alone I could see distinctly; but, as
soon as I stepped within the threshold, she began to read aloud, in a
low and not altogether unpleasing voice, from an ancient little volume
which she held open with one hand on the table upon which stood the
lamp. What she read was something like this:
“So, then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever have an
end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of aught else, is its
affirmation. Where the light cannot come, there abideth the darkness.
The light doth but hollow a mine out of the infinite extension of the
darkness. And ever upon the steps of the light treadeth the darkness;
yea, springeth in fountains and wells amidst it, from the secret
channels of its mighty sea. Truly, man is but a passing flame, moving
unquietly amid the surrounding rest of night; without which he yet
could not be, and whereof he is in part compounded.”
As I drew nearer, and she read on, she moved a little to turn a leaf of
the dark old volume, and I saw that her face was sallow and slightly
forbidding. Her forehead was high, and her black eyes repressedly
quiet. But she took no notice of me. This end of the cottage, if
cottage it could be called, was destitute of furniture, except the
table with the lamp, and the chair on which the woman sat. In one
corner was a door, apparently of a cupboard in the wall, but which
might lead to a room beyond. Still the irresistible desire which had
made me enter the building urged me: I must open that door, and see
what was beyond it. I approached, and laid my hand on the rude latch.
Then the woman spoke, but without lifting her head or looking at me:
“You had better not open that door.” This was uttered quite quietly;
and she went on with her reading, partly in silence, partly aloud; but
both modes seemed equally intended for herself alone. The prohibition,
however, only increased my desire to see; and as she took no further
notice, I gently opened the door to its full width, and looked in. At
first, I saw nothing worthy of attention. It seemed a common closet,
with shelves on each hand, on which stood various little necessaries
for the humble uses of a cottage. In one corner stood one or two
brooms, in another a hatchet and other common tools; showing that it
was in use every hour of the day for household purposes. But, as I
looked, I saw that there were no shelves at the back, and that an empty
space went in further; its termination appearing to be a faintly
glimmering wall or curtain, somewhat less, however, than the width and
height of the doorway where I stood. But, as I continued looking, for a
few seconds, towards this faintly luminous limit, my eyes came into
true relation with their object. All at once, with such a shiver as
when one is suddenly conscious of the presence of another in a room
where he has, for hours, considered himself alone, I saw that the
seemingly luminous extremity was a sky, as of night, beheld through the
long perspective of a narrow, dark passage, through what, or built of
what, I could not tell. As I gazed, I clearly discerned two or three
stars glimmering faintly in the distant blue. But, suddenly, and as if
it had been running fast from a far distance for this very point, and
had turned the corner without abating its swiftness, a dark figure sped
into and along the passage from the blue opening at the remote end. I
started back and shuddered, but kept looking, for I could not help it.
On and on it came, with a speedy approach but delayed arrival; till, at
last, through the many gradations of approach, it seemed to come within
the sphere of myself, rushed up to me, and passed me into the cottage.
All I could tell of its appearance was, that it seemed to be a dark
human figure. Its motion was entirely noiseless, and might be called a
gliding, were it not that it appeared that of a runner, but with
ghostly feet. I had moved back yet a little to let him pass me, and
looked round after him instantly. I could not see him.
“Where is he?” I said, in some alarm, to the woman, who still sat
reading.
“There, on the floor, behind you,” she said, pointing with her arm
half-outstretched, but not lifting her eyes. I turned and looked, but
saw nothing. Then with a feeling that there was yet something behind
me, I looked round over my shoulder; and there, on the ground, lay a
black shadow, the size of a man. It was so dark, that I could see it in
the dim light of the lamp, which shone full upon it, apparently without
thinning at all the intensity of its hue.
“I told you,” said the woman, “you had better not look into that
closet.”
“What is it?” I said, with a growing sense of horror.
“It is only your shadow that has found you,” she replied. “Everybody’s
shadow is ranging up and down looking for him. I believe you call it by
a different name in your world: yours has found you, as every person’s
is almost certain to do who looks into that closet, especially after
meeting one in the forest, whom I dare say you have met.”
Here, for the first time, she lifted her head, and looked full at me:
her mouth was full of long, white, shining teeth; and I knew that I was
in the house of the ogre. I could not speak, but turned and left the
house, with the shadow at my heels. “A nice sort of valet to have,” I
said to myself bitterly, as I stepped into the sunshine, and, looking
over my shoulder, saw that it lay yet blacker in the full blaze of the
sunlight. Indeed, only when I stood between it and the sun, was the
blackness at all diminished. I was so bewildered—stunned—both by the
event itself and its suddenness, that I could not at all realise to
myself what it would be to have such a constant and strange attendance;
but with a dim conviction that my present dislike would soon grow to
loathing, I took my dreary way through the wood.
CHAPTER IX
“O lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live:
Ours is her wedding garments ours her shroud!
. . . . .
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud,
Enveloping the Earth—
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!”
COLERIDGE.
From this time, until I arrived at the palace of Fairy Land, I can
attempt no consecutive account of my wanderings and adventures.
Everything, henceforward, existed for me in its relation to my
attendant. What influence he exercised upon everything into contact
with which I was brought, may be understood from a few detached
instances. To begin with this very day on which he first joined me:
after I had walked heartlessly along for two or three hours, I was very
weary, and lay down to rest in a most delightful part of the forest,
carpeted with wild flowers. I lay for half an hour in a dull repose,
and then got up to pursue my way. The flowers on the spot where I had
lain were crushed to the earth: but I saw that they would soon lift
their heads and rejoice again in the sun and air. Not so those on which
my shadow had lain. The very outline of it could be traced in the
withered lifeless grass, and the scorched and shrivelled flowers which
stood there, dead, and hopeless of any resurrection. I shuddered, and
hastened away with sad forebodings.
In a few days, I had reason to dread an extension of its baleful
influences from the fact, that it was no longer confined to one
position in regard to myself. Hitherto, when seized with an
irresistible desire to look on my evil demon (which longing would
unaccountably seize me at any moment, returning at longer or shorter
intervals, sometimes every minute), I had to turn my head backwards,
and look over my shoulder; in which position, as long as I could retain
it, I was fascinated. But one day, having come out on a clear grassy
hill, which commanded a glorious prospect, though of what I cannot now
tell, my shadow moved round, and came in front of me. And, presently, a
new manifestation increased my distress. For it began to coruscate, and
shoot out on all sides a radiation of dim shadow. These rays of gloom
issued from the central shadow as from a black sun, lengthening and
shortening with continual change. But wherever a ray struck, that part
of earth, or sea, or sky, became void, and desert, and sad to my heart.
On this, the first development of its new power, one ray shot out
beyond the rest, seeming to lengthen infinitely, until it smote the
great sun on the face, which withered and darkened beneath the blow. I
turned away and went on. The shadow retreated to its former position;
and when I looked again, it had drawn in all its spears of darkness,
and followed like a dog at my heels.
Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy child,
with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the tube through
which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds the same thing
everywhere; the other that through which he looks when he combines into
new forms of loveliness those images of beauty which his own choice has
gathered from all regions wherein he has travelled. Round the child’s
head was an aureole of emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and
delight, round crept from behind me the something dark, and the child
stood in my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy, with a rough
broad-brimmed straw hat, through which brim the sun shone from behind.