Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
reverie. Then the exquisite curves of the upper lip vanished. The lip
was lengthened and compressed at the same moment. You could have told
that, within the lips, the teeth were firmly closed. The whole face
grew stern and determined, all but fierce; only the eyes burned on like
a holy sacrifice, uplift on a granite rock.
The woman entered, with her mangled child in her arms. She was pale as
her little burden. She gazed, with a wild love and despairing
tenderness, on the still, all but dead face, white and clear from loss
of blood and terror.
The knight rose. The light that had been confined to his eyes, now
shone from his whole countenance. He took the little thing in his arms,
and, with the mother’s help, undressed her, and looked to her wounds.
The tears flowed down his face as he did so. With tender hands he bound
them up, kissed the pale cheek, and gave her back to her mother. When
he went home, all his tale would be of the grief and joy of the
parents; while to me, who had looked on, the gracious countenance of
the armed man, beaming from the panoply of steel, over the seemingly
dead child, while the powerful hands turned it and shifted it, and
bound it, if possible even more gently than the mother’s, formed the
centre of the story.
After we had partaken of the best they could give us, the knight took
his leave, with a few parting instructions to the mother as to how she
should treat the child.
I brought the knight his steed, held the stirrup while he mounted, and
then followed him through the wood. The horse, delighted to be free of
his hideous load, bounded beneath the weight of man and armour, and
could hardly be restrained from galloping on. But the knight made him
time his powers to mine, and so we went on for an hour or two. Then the
knight dismounted, and compelled me to get into the saddle, saying:
“Knight and squire must share the labour.”
Holding by the stirrup, he walked along by my side, heavily clad as he
was, with apparent ease. As we went, he led a conversation, in which I
took what humble part my sense of my condition would permit me.
“Somehow or other,” said he, “notwithstanding the beauty of this
country of Faerie, in which we are, there is much that is wrong in it.
If there are great splendours, there are corresponding horrors; heights
and depths; beautiful women and awful fiends; noble men and weaklings.
All a man has to do, is to better what he can. And if he will settle it
with himself, that even renown and success are in themselves of no
great value, and be content to be defeated, if so be that the fault is
not his; and so go to his work with a cool brain and a strong will, he
will get it done; and fare none the worse in the end, that he was not
burdened with provision and precaution.”
“But he will not always come off well,” I ventured to say.
“Perhaps not,” rejoined the knight, “in the individual act; but the
result of his lifetime will content him.”
“So it will fare with you, doubtless,” thought I; “but for me—-”
Venturing to resume the conversation after a pause, I said,
hesitatingly:
“May I ask for what the little beggar-girl wanted your aid, when she
came to your castle to find you?”
He looked at me for a moment in silence, and then said—
“I cannot help wondering how you know of that; but there is something
about you quite strange enough to entitle you to the privilege of the
country; namely, to go unquestioned. I, however, being only a man, such
as you see me, am ready to tell you anything you like to ask me, as far
as I can. The little beggar-girl came into the hall where I was
sitting, and told me a very curious story, which I can only recollect
very vaguely, it was so peculiar. What I can recall is, that she was
sent to gather wings. As soon as she had gathered a pair of wings for
herself, she was to fly away, she said, to the country she came from;
but where that was, she could give no information.
“She said she had to beg her wings from the butterflies and moths; and
wherever she begged, no one refused her. But she needed a great many of
the wings of butterflies and moths to make a pair for her; and so she
had to wander about day after day, looking for butterflies, and night
after night, looking for moths; and then she begged for their wings.
But the day before, she had come into a part of the forest, she said,
where there were multitudes of splendid butterflies flitting about,
with wings which were just fit to make the eyes in the shoulders of
hers; and she knew she could have as many of them as she liked for the
asking; but as soon as she began to beg, there came a great creature
right up to her, and threw her down, and walked over her. When she got
up, she saw the wood was full of these beings stalking about, and
seeming to have nothing to do with each other. As soon as ever she
began to beg, one of them walked over her; till at last in dismay, and
in growing horror of the senseless creatures, she had run away to look
for somebody to help her. I asked her what they were like. She said,
like great men, made of wood, without knee-or elbow-joints, and without
any noses or mouths or eyes in their faces. I laughed at the little
maiden, thinking she was making child’s game of me; but, although she
burst out laughing too, she persisted in asserting the truth of her
story.”
“‘Only come, knight, come and see; I will lead you.’
“So I armed myself, to be ready for anything that might happen, and
followed the child; for, though I could make nothing of her story, I
could see she was a little human being in need of some help or other.
As she walked before me, I looked attentively at her. Whether or not it
was from being so often knocked down and walked over, I could not tell,
but her clothes were very much torn, and in several places her white
skin was peeping through. I thought she was hump-backed; but on looking
more closely, I saw, through the tatters of her frock—do not laugh at
me—a bunch on each shoulder, of the most gorgeous colours. Looking yet
more closely, I saw that they were of the shape of folded wings, and
were made of all kinds of butterfly-wings and moth-wings, crowded
together like the feathers on the individual butterfly pinion; but,
like them, most beautifully arranged, and producing a perfect harmony
of colour and shade. I could now more easily believe the rest of her
story; especially as I saw, every now and then, a certain heaving
motion in the wings, as if they longed to be uplifted and outspread.
But beneath her scanty garments complete wings could not be concealed,
and indeed, from her own story, they were yet unfinished.
“After walking for two or three hours (how the little girl found her
way, I could not imagine), we came to a part of the forest, the very
air of which was quivering with the motions of multitudes of
resplendent butterflies; as gorgeous in colour, as if the eyes of
peacocks’ feathers had taken to flight, but of infinite variety of hue
and form, only that the appearance of some kind of eye on each wing
predominated. ‘There they are, there they are!’ cried the child, in a
tone of victory mingled with terror. Except for this tone, I should
have thought she referred to the butterflies, for I could see nothing
else. But at that moment an enormous butterfly, whose wings had great
eyes of blue surrounded by confused cloudy heaps of more dingy
colouring, just like a break in the clouds on a stormy day towards
evening, settled near us. The child instantly began murmuring:
‘Butterfly, butterfly, give me your wings’; when, the moment after, she
fell to the ground, and began crying as if hurt. I drew my sword and
heaved a great blow in the direction in which the child had fallen. It
struck something, and instantly the most grotesque imitation of a man
became visible. You see this Fairy Land is full of oddities and all
sorts of incredibly ridiculous things, which a man is compelled to meet
and treat as real existences, although all the time he feels foolish
for doing so. This being, if being it could be called, was like a block
of wood roughly hewn into the mere outlines of a man; and hardly so,
for it had but head, body, legs, and arms—the head without a face, and
the limbs utterly formless. I had hewn off one of its legs, but the two
portions moved on as best they could, quite independent of each other;
so that I had done no good. I ran after it, and clove it in twain from
the head downwards; but it could not be convinced that its vocation was
not to walk over people; for, as soon as the little girl began her
begging again, all three parts came bustling up; and if I had not
interposed my weight between her and them, she would have been trampled
again under them. I saw that something else must be done. If the wood
was full of the creatures, it would be an endless work to chop them so
small that they could do no injury; and then, besides, the parts would
be so numerous, that the butterflies would be in danger from the drift
of flying chips. I served this one so, however; and then told the girl
to beg again, and point out the direction in which one was coming. I
was glad to find, however, that I could now see him myself, and
wondered how they could have been invisible before. I would not allow
him to walk over the child; but while I kept him off, and she began
begging again, another appeared; and it was all I could do, from the
weight of my armour, to protect her from the stupid, persevering
efforts of the two. But suddenly the right plan occurred to me. I
tripped one of them up, and, taking him by the legs, set him up on his
head, with his heels against a tree. I was delighted to find he could
not move. Meantime the poor child was walked over by the other, but it
was for the last time. Whenever one appeared, I followed the same
plan—tripped him up and set him on his head; and so the little beggar
was able to gather her wings without any trouble, which occupation she
continued for several hours in my company.”
“What became of her?” I asked.
“I took her home with me to my castle, and she told me all her story;
but it seemed to me, all the time, as if I were hearing a child talk in
its sleep. I could not arrange her story in my mind at all, although it
seemed to leave hers in some certain order of its own. My wife—-”
Here the knight checked himself, and said no more. Neither did I urge
the conversation farther.
Thus we journeyed for several days, resting at night in such shelter as
we could get; and when no better was to be had, lying in the forest
under some tree, on a couch of old leaves.
I loved the knight more and more. I believe never squire served his
master with more care and joyfulness than I. I tended his horse; I
cleaned his armour; my skill in the craft enabled me to repair it when
necessary; I watched his needs; and was well repaid for all by the love
itself which I bore him.
“This,” I said to myself, “is a true man. I will serve him, and give
him all worship, seeing in him the imbodiment of what I would fain
become. If I cannot be noble myself, I will yet be servant to his
nobleness.” He, in return, soon showed me such signs of friendship and
respect, as made my heart glad; and I felt that, after all, mine would
be no lost life, if I might wait on him to the world’s end, although no
smile but his should greet me, and no one but him should say, “Well
done! he was a good servant!” at last. But I burned to do something
more for him than the ordinary routine of a squire’s duty permitted.
One afternoon, we began to observe an appearance of roads in the wood.
Branches had been cut down, and openings made, where footsteps had worn
no path below. These indications increased as we passed on, till, at
length, we came into a long, narrow avenue, formed by felling the trees