Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
Here, however, the young woman, whom I had met in the morning, entered.
A smile passed between the mother and daughter; and then the latter
began to help her mother in little household duties.
“I should like to stay here till the evening,” I said; “and then go on
my journey, if you will allow me.”
“You are welcome to do as you please; only it might be better to stay
all night, than risk the dangers of the wood then. Where are you
going?”
“Nay, that I do not know,” I replied, “but I wish to see all that is to
be seen, and therefore I should like to start just at sundown.”
“You are a bold youth, if you have any idea of what you are daring; but
a rash one, if you know nothing about it; and, excuse me, you do not
seem very well informed about the country and its manners. However, no
one comes here but for some reason, either known to himself or to those
who have charge of him; so you shall do just as you wish.”
Accordingly I sat down, and feeling rather tired, and disinclined for
further talk, I asked leave to look at the old book which still
screened the window. The woman brought it to me directly, but not
before taking another look towards the forest, and then drawing a white
blind over the window. I sat down opposite to it by the table, on which
I laid the great old volume, and read. It contained many wondrous tales
of Fairy Land, and olden times, and the Knights of King Arthur’s table.
I read on and on, till the shades of the afternoon began to deepen; for
in the midst of the forest it gloomed earlier than in the open country.
At length I came to this passage—
“Here it chanced, that upon their quest, Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale
rencountered in the depths of a great forest. Now, Sir Galahad was
dight all in harness of silver, clear and shining; the which is a
delight to look upon, but full hasty to tarnish, and withouten the
labour of a ready squire, uneath to be kept fair and clean. And yet
withouten squire or page, Sir Galahad’s armour shone like the moon. And
he rode a great white mare, whose bases and other housings were black,
but all besprent with fair lilys of silver sheen. Whereas Sir Percivale
bestrode a red horse, with a tawny mane and tail; whose trappings were
all to-smirched with mud and mire; and his armour was wondrous rosty to
behold, ne could he by any art furbish it again; so that as the sun in
his going down shone twixt the bare trunks of the trees, full upon the
knights twain, the one did seem all shining with light, and the other
all to glow with ruddy fire. Now it came about in this wise. For Sir
Percivale, after his escape from the demon lady, whenas the cross on
the handle of his sword smote him to the heart, and he rove himself
through the thigh, and escaped away, he came to a great wood; and, in
nowise cured of his fault, yet bemoaning the same, the damosel of the
alder tree encountered him, right fair to see; and with her fair words
and false countenance she comforted him and beguiled him, until he
followed her where she led him to a—-”
Here a low hurried cry from my hostess caused me to look up from the
book, and I read no more.
“Look there!” she said; “look at his fingers!”
Just as I had been reading in the book, the setting sun was shining
through a cleft in the clouds piled up in the west; and a shadow as of
a large distorted hand, with thick knobs and humps on the fingers, so
that it was much wider across the fingers than across the undivided
part of the hand, passed slowly over the little blind, and then as
slowly returned in the opposite direction.
“He is almost awake, mother; and greedier than usual to-night.”
“Hush, child; you need not make him more angry with us than he is; for
you do not know how soon something may happen to oblige us to be in the
forest after nightfall.”
“But you are in the forest,” said I; “how is it that you are safe
here?”
“He dares not come nearer than he is now,” she replied; “for any of
those four oaks, at the corners of our cottage, would tear him to
pieces; they are our friends. But he stands there and makes awful faces
at us sometimes, and stretches out his long arms and fingers, and tries
to kill us with fright; for, indeed, that is his favourite way of
doing. Pray, keep out of his way to-night.”
“Shall I be able to see these things?” said I.
“That I cannot tell yet, not knowing how much of the fairy nature there
is in you. But we shall soon see whether you can discern the fairies in
my little garden, and that will be some guide to us.”
“Are the trees fairies too, as well as the flowers?” I asked.
“They are of the same race,” she replied; “though those you call
fairies in your country are chiefly the young children of the flower
fairies. They are very fond of having fun with the thick people, as
they call you; for, like most children, they like fun better than
anything else.”
“Why do you have flowers so near you then? Do they not annoy you?”
“Oh, no, they are very amusing, with their mimicries of grown people,
and mock solemnities. Sometimes they will act a whole play through
before my eyes, with perfect composure and assurance, for they are not
afraid of me. Only, as soon as they have done, they burst into peals of
tiny laughter, as if it was such a joke to have been serious over
anything. These I speak of, however, are the fairies of the garden.
They are more staid and educated than those of the fields and woods. Of
course they have near relations amongst the wild flowers, but they
patronise them, and treat them as country cousins, who know nothing of
life, and very little of manners. Now and then, however, they are
compelled to envy the grace and simplicity of the natural flowers.”
“Do they live _in_ the flowers?” I said.
“I cannot tell,” she replied. “There is something in it I do not
understand. Sometimes they disappear altogether, even from me, though I
know they are near. They seem to die always with the flowers they
resemble, and by whose names they are called; but whether they return
to life with the fresh flowers, or, whether it be new flowers, new
fairies, I cannot tell. They have as many sorts of dispositions as men
and women, while their moods are yet more variable; twenty different
expressions will cross their little faces in half a minute. I often
amuse myself with watching them, but I have never been able to make
personal acquaintance with any of them. If I speak to one, he or she
looks up in my face, as if I were not worth heeding, gives a little
laugh, and runs away.” Here the woman started, as if suddenly
recollecting herself, and said in a low voice to her daughter, “Make
haste—go and watch him, and see in what direction he goes.”
I may as well mention here, that the conclusion I arrived at from the
observations I was afterwards able to make, was, that the flowers die
because the fairies go away; not that the fairies disappear because the
flowers die. The flowers seem a sort of houses for them, or outer
bodies, which they can put on or off when they please. Just as you
could form some idea of the nature of a man from the kind of house he
built, if he followed his own taste, so you could, without seeing the
fairies, tell what any one of them is like, by looking at the flower
till you feel that you understand it. For just what the flower says to
you, would the face and form of the fairy say; only so much more
plainly as a face and human figure can express more than a flower. For
the house or the clothes, though like the inhabitant or the wearer,
cannot be wrought into an equal power of utterance. Yet you would see a
strange resemblance, almost oneness, between the flower and the fairy,
which you could not describe, but which described itself to you.
Whether all the flowers have fairies, I cannot determine, any more than
I can be sure whether all men and women have souls.
The woman and I continued the conversation for a few minutes longer. I
was much interested by the information she gave me, and astonished at
the language in which she was able to convey it. It seemed that
intercourse with the fairies was no bad education in itself. But now
the daughter returned with the news, that the Ash had just gone away in
a south-westerly direction; and, as my course seemed to lie eastward,
she hoped I should be in no danger of meeting him if I departed at
once. I looked out of the little window, and there stood the ash-tree,
to my eyes the same as before; but I believed that they knew better
than I did, and prepared to go. I pulled out my purse, but to my dismay
there was nothing in it. The woman with a smile begged me not to
trouble myself, for money was not of the slightest use there; and as I
might meet with people in my journeys whom I could not recognise to be
fairies, it was well I had no money to offer, for nothing offended them
so much.
“They would think,” she added, “that you were making game of them; and
that is their peculiar privilege with regard to us.” So we went
together into the little garden which sloped down towards a lower part
of the wood.
Here, to my great pleasure, all was life and bustle. There was still
light enough from the day to see a little; and the pale half-moon,
halfway to the zenith, was reviving every moment. The whole garden was
like a carnival, with tiny, gaily decorated forms, in groups,
assemblies, processions, pairs or trios, moving stately on, running
about wildly, or sauntering hither or thither. From the cups or bells
of tall flowers, as from balconies, some looked down on the masses
below, now bursting with laughter, now grave as owls; but even in their
deepest solemnity, seeming only to be waiting for the arrival of the
next laugh. Some were launched on a little marshy stream at the bottom,
in boats chosen from the heaps of last year’s leaves that lay about,
curled and withered. These soon sank with them; whereupon they swam
ashore and got others. Those who took fresh rose-leaves for their boats
floated the longest; but for these they had to fight; for the fairy of
the rose-tree complained bitterly that they were stealing her clothes,
and defended her property bravely.
“You can’t wear half you’ve got,” said some.
“Never you mind; I don’t choose you to have them: they are my
property.”
“All for the good of the community!” said one, and ran off with a great
hollow leaf. But the rose-fairy sprang after him (what a beauty she
was! only too like a drawing-room young lady), knocked him
heels-over-head as he ran, and recovered her great red leaf. But in the
meantime twenty had hurried off in different directions with others
just as good; and the little creature sat down and cried, and then, in
a pet, sent a perfect pink snowstorm of petals from her tree, leaping
from branch to branch, and stamping and shaking and pulling. At last,
after another good cry, she chose the biggest she could find, and ran
away laughing, to launch her boat amongst the rest.
But my attention was first and chiefly attracted by a group of fairies
near the cottage, who were talking together around what seemed a last
dying primrose. They talked singing, and their talk made a song,
something like this:
“Sister Snowdrop died
Before we were born.”
“She came like a bride
In a snowy morn.”
“What’s a bride?”
“What is snow?
“Never tried.”
“Do not know.”
“Who told you about her?”
“Little Primrose there
Cannot do without her.”
“Oh, so sweetly fair!”
“Never fear,
She will come,
Primrose dear.”
“Is she dumb?”
“She’ll come by-and-by.”
“You will never see her.”
“She went home to die,
“Till the new year.”
“Snowdrop!” “‘Tis no good
To invite her.”
“Primrose is very rude,
“I will bite her.”
“Oh, you naughty Pocket!
“Look, she drops her head.”
“She deserved it, Rocket,