Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
delight he took in contemplating it, and the consolation it appeared to
afford him in his sorrow, I could not ask for it; but, at his request,
left my own, weapons and all, to be joined with theirs in a trophy,
erected in the grand square of the palace. The king, with gorgeous
ceremony, dubbed me knight with his own old hand, in which trembled the
sword of his youth.
During the short time I remained, my company was, naturally, much
courted by the young nobles. I was in a constant round of gaiety and
diversion, notwithstanding that the court was in mourning. For the
country was so rejoiced at the death of the giants, and so many of
their lost friends had been restored to the nobility and men of wealth,
that the gladness surpassed the grief. “Ye have indeed left your lives
to your people, my great brothers!” I said.
But I was ever and ever haunted by the old shadow, which I had not seen
all the time that I was at work in the tower. Even in the society of
the ladies of the court, who seemed to think it only their duty to make
my stay there as pleasant to me as possible, I could not help being
conscious of its presence, although it might not be annoying me at the
time. At length, somewhat weary of uninterrupted pleasure, and nowise
strengthened thereby, either in body or mind, I put on a splendid suit
of armour of steel inlaid with silver, which the old king had given me,
and, mounting the horse on which it had been brought to me, took my
leave of the palace, to visit the distant city in which the lady dwelt,
whom the elder prince had loved. I anticipated a sore task, in
conveying to her the news of his glorious fate: but this trial was
spared me, in a manner as strange as anything that had happened to me
in Fairy Land.
CHAPTER XXII
“No one has my form but the _I_.”
_Schoppe_, in JEAN PAUL’S _Titan_.
“Joy’s a subtil elf.
I think man’s happiest when he forgets himself.”
CYRIL TOURNEUR, _The Revenger’s Tragedy_.
On the third day of my journey, I was riding gently along a road,
apparently little frequented, to judge from the grass that grew upon
it. I was approaching a forest. Everywhere in Fairy Land forests are
the places where one may most certainly expect adventures. As I drew
near, a youth, unarmed, gentle, and beautiful, who had just cut a
branch from a yew growing on the skirts of the wood, evidently to make
himself a bow, met me, and thus accosted me:
“Sir knight, be careful as thou ridest through this forest; for it is
said to be strangely enchanted, in a sort which even those who have
been witnesses of its enchantment can hardly describe.”
I thanked him for his advice, which I promised to follow, and rode on.
But the moment I entered the wood, it seemed to me that, if enchantment
there was, it must be of a good kind; for the Shadow, which had been
more than usually dark and distressing, since I had set out on this
journey, suddenly disappeared. I felt a wonderful elevation of spirits,
and began to reflect on my past life, and especially on my combat with
the giants, with such satisfaction, that I had actually to remind
myself, that I had only killed one of them; and that, but for the
brothers, I should never have had the idea of attacking them, not to
mention the smallest power of standing to it. Still I rejoiced, and
counted myself amongst the glorious knights of old; having even the
unspeakable presumption—my shame and self-condemnation at the memory of
it are such, that I write it as the only and sorest penance I can
perform—to think of myself (will the world believe it?) as side by side
with Sir Galahad! Scarcely had the thought been born in my mind, when,
approaching me from the left, through the trees, I espied a resplendent
knight, of mighty size, whose armour seemed to shine of itself, without
the sun. When he drew near, I was astonished to see that this armour
was like my own; nay, I could trace, line for line, the correspondence
of the inlaid silver to the device on my own. His horse, too, was like
mine in colour, form, and motion; save that, like his rider, he was
greater and fiercer than his counterpart. The knight rode with beaver
up. As he halted right opposite to me in the narrow path, barring my
way, I saw the reflection of my countenance in the centre plate of
shining steel on his breastplate. Above it rose the same face—his
face—only, as I have said, larger and fiercer. I was bewildered. I
could not help feeling some admiration of him, but it was mingled with
a dim conviction that he was evil, and that I ought to fight with him.
“Let me pass,” I said.
“When I will,” he replied.
Something within me said: “Spear in rest, and ride at him! else thou
art for ever a slave.”
I tried, but my arm trembled so much, that I could not couch my lance.
To tell the truth, I, who had overcome the giant, shook like a coward
before this knight. He gave a scornful laugh, that echoed through the
wood, turned his horse, and said, without looking round, “Follow me.”
I obeyed, abashed and stupefied. How long he led, and how long I
followed, I cannot tell. “I never knew misery before,” I said to
myself. “Would that I had at least struck him, and had had my
death-blow in return! Why, then, do I not call to him to wheel and
defend himself? Alas! I know not why, but I cannot. One look from him
would cow me like a beaten hound.” I followed, and was silent.
At length we came to a dreary square tower, in the middle of a dense
forest. It looked as if scarce a tree had been cut down to make room
for it. Across the very door, diagonally, grew the stem of a tree, so
large that there was just room to squeeze past it in order to enter.
One miserable square hole in the roof was the only visible suggestion
of a window. Turret or battlement, or projecting masonry of any kind,
it had none. Clear and smooth and massy, it rose from its base, and
ended with a line straight and unbroken. The roof, carried to a centre
from each of the four walls, rose slightly to the point where the
rafters met. Round the base lay several little heaps of either bits of
broken branches, withered and peeled, or half-whitened bones; I could
not distinguish which. As I approached, the ground sounded hollow
beneath my horse’s hoofs. The knight took a great key from his pocket,
and reaching past the stem of the tree, with some difficulty opened the
door. “Dismount,” he commanded. I obeyed. He turned my horse’s head
away from the tower, gave him a terrible blow with the flat side of his
sword, and sent him madly tearing through the forest.
“Now,” said he, “enter, and take your companion with you.”
I looked round: knight and horse had vanished, and behind me lay the
horrible shadow. I entered, for I could not help myself; and the shadow
followed me. I had a terrible conviction that the knight and he were
one. The door closed behind me.
Now I was indeed in pitiful plight. There was literally nothing in the
tower but my shadow and me. The walls rose right up to the roof; in
which, as I had seen from without, there was one little square opening.
This I now knew to be the only window the tower possessed. I sat down
on the floor, in listless wretchedness. I think I must have fallen
asleep, and have slept for hours; for I suddenly became aware of
existence, in observing that the moon was shining through the hole in
the roof. As she rose higher and higher, her light crept down the wall
over me, till at last it shone right upon my head. Instantaneously the
walls of the tower seemed to vanish away like a mist. I sat beneath a
beech, on the edge of a forest, and the open country lay, in the
moonlight, for miles and miles around me, spotted with glimmering
houses and spires and towers. I thought with myself, “Oh, joy! it was
only a dream; the horrible narrow waste is gone, and I wake beneath a
beech-tree, perhaps one that loves me, and I can go where I will.” I
rose, as I thought, and walked about, and did what I would, but ever
kept near the tree; for always, and, of course, since my meeting with
the woman of the beech-tree far more than ever, I loved that tree. So
the night wore on. I waited for the sun to rise, before I could venture
to renew my journey. But as soon as the first faint light of the dawn
appeared, instead of shining upon me from the eye of the morning, it
stole like a fainting ghost through the little square hole above my
head; and the walls came out as the light grew, and the glorious night
was swallowed up of the hateful day. The long dreary day passed. My
shadow lay black on the floor. I felt no hunger, no need of food. The
night came. The moon shone. I watched her light slowly descending the
wall, as I might have watched, adown the sky, the long, swift approach
of a helping angel. Her rays touched me, and I was free. Thus night
after night passed away. I should have died but for this. Every night
the conviction returned, that I was free. Every morning I sat
wretchedly disconsolate. At length, when the course of the moon no
longer permitted her beams to touch me, the night was dreary as the
day.
When I slept, I was somewhat consoled by my dreams; but all the time I
dreamed, I knew that I was only dreaming. But one night, at length, the
moon, a mere shred of pallor, scattered a few thin ghostly rays upon
me; and I think I fell asleep and dreamed. I sat in an autumn night
before the vintage, on a hill overlooking my own castle. My heart
sprang with joy. Oh, to be a child again, innocent, fearless, without
shame or desire! I walked down to the castle. All were in consternation
at my absence. My sisters were weeping for my loss. They sprang up and
clung to me, with incoherent cries, as I entered. My old friends came
flocking round me. A gray light shone on the roof of the hall. It was
the light of the dawn shining through the square window of my tower.
More earnestly than ever, I longed for freedom after this dream; more
drearily than ever, crept on the next wretched day. I measured by the
sunbeams, caught through the little window in the trap of my tower, how
it went by, waiting only for the dreams of the night.
About noon, I started as if something foreign to all my senses and all
my experience, had suddenly invaded me; yet it was only the voice of a
woman singing. My whole frame quivered with joy, surprise, and the
sensation of the unforeseen. Like a living soul, like an incarnation of
Nature, the song entered my prison-house. Each tone folded its wings,
and laid itself, like a caressing bird, upon my heart. It bathed me
like a sea; inwrapt me like an odorous vapour; entered my soul like a
long draught of clear spring-water; shone upon me like essential
sunlight; soothed me like a mother’s voice and hand. Yet, as the
clearest forest-well tastes sometimes of the bitterness of decayed
leaves, so to my weary, prisoned heart, its cheerfulness had a sting of
cold, and its tenderness unmanned me with the faintness of
long-departed joys. I wept half-bitterly, half-luxuriously; but not
long. I dashed away the tears, ashamed of a weakness which I thought I
had abandoned. Ere I knew, I had walked to the door, and seated myself
with my ears against it, in order to catch every syllable of the
revelation from the unseen outer world. And now I heard each word
distinctly. The singer seemed to be standing or sitting near the tower,
for the sounds indicated no change of place. The song was something
like this:
The sun, like a golden knot on high,
Gathers the glories of the sky,
And binds them into a shining tent,
Roofing the world with the firmament.
And through the pavilion the rich winds blow,
And through the pavilion the waters go.
And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer,
Bowing their heads in the sunny air,
And for thoughts, the gently talking springs,