Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
beech; or, in autumn, grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had
sheltered me, and received their last blessing in the sweet odours of
decay; or, in a winter evening, frozen still, looked up, as I went home
to a warm fireside, through the netted boughs and twigs to the cold,
snowy moon, with her opal zone around her. At last I had fallen asleep;
for I know nothing more that passed till I found myself lying under a
superb beech-tree, in the clear light of the morning, just before
sunrise. Around me was a girdle of fresh beech-leaves. Alas! I brought
nothing with me out of Fairy Land, but memories—memories. The great
boughs of the beech hung drooping around me. At my head rose its smooth
stem, with its great sweeps of curving surface that swelled like
undeveloped limbs. The leaves and branches above kept on the song which
had sung me asleep; only now, to my mind, it sounded like a farewell
and a speedwell. I sat a long time, unwilling to go; but my unfinished
story urged me on. I must act and wander. With the sun well risen, I
rose, and put my arms as far as they would reach around the beech-tree,
and kissed it, and said good-bye. A trembling went through the leaves;
a few of the last drops of the night’s rain fell from off them at my
feet; and as I walked slowly away, I seemed to hear in a whisper once
more the words: “I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I
am only a beech-tree.”
CHAPTER V
“And she was smooth and full, as if one gush
Of life had washed her, or as if a sleep
Lay on her eyelid, easier to sweep
Than bee from daisy.”
BEDDOES’ _Pygmalion_.
“Sche was as whyt as lylye yn May,
Or snow that sneweth yn wynterys day.”
_Romance of Sir Launfal_.
I walked on, in the fresh morning air, as if new-born. The only thing
that damped my pleasure was a cloud of something between sorrow and
delight that crossed my mind with the frequently returning thought of
my last night’s hostess. “But then,” thought I, “if she is sorry, I
could not help it; and she has all the pleasures she ever had. Such a
day as this is surely a joy to her, as much at least as to me. And her
life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory
of what came, but could not stay. And if ever she is a woman, who knows
but we may meet somewhere? there is plenty of room for meeting in the
universe.” Comforting myself thus, yet with a vague compunction, as if
I ought not to have left her, I went on. There was little to
distinguish the woods to-day from those of my own land; except that all
the wild things, rabbits, birds, squirrels, mice, and the numberless
other inhabitants, were very tame; that is, they did not run away from
me, but gazed at me as I passed, frequently coming nearer, as if to
examine me more closely. Whether this came from utter ignorance, or
from familiarity with the human appearance of beings who never hurt
them, I could not tell. As I stood once, looking up to the splendid
flower of a parasite, which hung from the branch of a tree over my
head, a large white rabbit cantered slowly up, put one of its little
feet on one of mine, and looked up at me with its red eyes, just as I
had been looking up at the flower above me. I stooped and stroked it;
but when I attempted to lift it, it banged the ground with its hind
feet and scampered off at a great rate, turning, however, to look at me
several times before I lost sight of it. Now and then, too, a dim human
figure would appear and disappear, at some distance, amongst the trees,
moving like a sleep-walker. But no one ever came near me.
This day I found plenty of food in the forest—strange nuts and fruits I
had never seen before. I hesitated to eat them; but argued that, if I
could live on the air of Fairy Land, I could live on its food also. I
found my reasoning correct, and the result was better than I had hoped;
for it not only satisfied my hunger, but operated in such a way upon my
senses that I was brought into far more complete relationship with the
things around me. The human forms appeared much more dense and defined;
more tangibly visible, if I may say so. I seemed to know better which
direction to choose when any doubt arose. I began to feel in some
degree what the birds meant in their songs, though I could not express
it in words, any more than you can some landscapes. At times, to my
surprise, I found myself listening attentively, and as if it were no
unusual thing with me, to a conversation between two squirrels or
monkeys. The subjects were not very interesting, except as associated
with the individual life and necessities of the little creatures: where
the best nuts were to be found in the neighbourhood, and who could
crack them best, or who had most laid up for the winter, and such like;
only they never said where the store was. There was no great difference
in kind between their talk and our ordinary human conversation. Some of
the creatures I never heard speak at all, and believe they never do so,
except under the impulse of some great excitement. The mice talked; but
the hedgehogs seemed very phlegmatic; and though I met a couple of
moles above ground several times, they never said a word to each other
in my hearing. There were no wild beasts in the forest; at least, I did
not see one larger than a wild cat. There were plenty of snakes,
however, and I do not think they were all harmless; but none ever bit
me.
Soon after mid-day I arrived at a bare rocky hill, of no great size,
but very steep; and having no trees—scarcely even a bush—upon it,
entirely exposed to the heat of the sun. Over this my way seemed to
lie, and I immediately began the ascent. On reaching the top, hot and
weary, I looked around me, and saw that the forest still stretched as
far as the sight could reach on every side of me. I observed that the
trees, in the direction in which I was about to descend, did not come
so near the foot of the hill as on the other side, and was especially
regretting the unexpected postponement of shelter, because this side of
the hill seemed more difficult to descend than the other had been to
climb, when my eye caught the appearance of a natural path, winding
down through broken rocks and along the course of a tiny stream, which
I hoped would lead me more easily to the foot. I tried it, and found
the descent not at all laborious; nevertheless, when I reached the
bottom, I was very tired and exhausted with the heat. But just where
the path seemed to end, rose a great rock, quite overgrown with shrubs
and creeping plants, some of them in full and splendid blossom: these
almost concealed an opening in the rock, into which the path appeared
to lead. I entered, thirsting for the shade which it promised. What was
my delight to find a rocky cell, all the angles rounded away with rich
moss, and every ledge and projection crowded with lovely ferns, the
variety of whose forms, and groupings, and shades wrought in me like a
poem; for such a harmony could not exist, except they all consented to
some one end! A little well of the clearest water filled a mossy hollow
in one corner. I drank, and felt as if I knew what the elixir of life
must be; then threw myself on a mossy mound that lay like a couch along
the inner end. Here I lay in a delicious reverie for some time; during
which all lovely forms, and colours, and sounds seemed to use my brain
as a common hall, where they could come and go, unbidden and unexcused.
I had never imagined that such capacity for simple happiness lay in me,
as was now awakened by this assembly of forms and spiritual sensations,
which yet were far too vague to admit of being translated into any
shape common to my own and another mind. I had lain for an hour, I
should suppose, though it may have been far longer, when, the
harmonious tumult in my mind having somewhat relaxed, I became aware
that my eyes were fixed on a strange, time-worn bas-relief on the rock
opposite to me. This, after some pondering, I concluded to represent
Pygmalion, as he awaited the quickening of his statue. The sculptor sat
more rigid than the figure to which his eyes were turned. That seemed
about to step from its pedestal and embrace the man, who waited rather
than expected.
“A lovely story,” I said to myself. “This cave, now, with the bushes
cut away from the entrance to let the light in, might be such a place
as he would choose, withdrawn from the notice of men, to set up his
block of marble, and mould into a visible body the thought already
clothed with form in the unseen hall of the sculptor’s brain. And,
indeed, if I mistake not,” I said, starting up, as a sudden ray of
light arrived at that moment through a crevice in the roof, and lighted
up a small portion of the rock, bare of vegetation, “this very rock is
marble, white enough and delicate enough for any statue, even if
destined to become an ideal woman in the arms of the sculptor.”
I took my knife and removed the moss from a part of the block on which
I had been lying; when, to my surprise, I found it more like alabaster
than ordinary marble, and soft to the edge of the knife. In fact, it
was alabaster. By an inexplicable, though by no means unusual kind of
impulse, I went on removing the moss from the surface of the stone; and
soon saw that it was polished, or at least smooth, throughout. I
continued my labour; and after clearing a space of about a couple of
square feet, I observed what caused me to prosecute the work with more
interest and care than before. For the ray of sunlight had now reached
the spot I had cleared, and under its lustre the alabaster revealed its
usual slight transparency when polished, except where my knife had
scratched the surface; and I observed that the transparency seemed to
have a definite limit, and to end upon an opaque body like the more
solid, white marble. I was careful to scratch no more. And first, a
vague anticipation gave way to a startling sense of possibility; then,
as I proceeded, one revelation after another produced the entrancing
conviction, that under the crust of alabaster lay a dimly visible form
in marble, but whether of man or woman I could not yet tell. I worked
on as rapidly as the necessary care would permit; and when I had
uncovered the whole mass, and rising from my knees, had retreated a
little way, so that the effect of the whole might fall on me, I saw
before me with sufficient plainness—though at the same time with
considerable indistinctness, arising from the limited amount of light
the place admitted, as well as from the nature of the object itself—a
block of pure alabaster enclosing the form, apparently in marble, of a
reposing woman. She lay on one side, with her hand under her cheek, and
her face towards me; but her hair had fallen partly over her face, so
that I could not see the expression of the whole. What I did see
appeared to me perfectly lovely; more near the face that had been born
with me in my soul, than anything I had seen before in nature or art.
The actual outlines of the rest of the form were so indistinct, that
the more than semi-opacity of the alabaster seemed insufficient to
account for the fact; and I conjectured that a light robe added its
obscurity. Numberless histories passed through my mind of change of
substance from enchantment and other causes, and of imprisonments such
as this before me. I thought of the Prince of the Enchanted City, half
marble and half a man; of Ariel; of Niobe; of the Sleeping Beauty in
the Wood; of the bleeding trees; and many other histories. Even my
adventure of the preceding evening with the lady of the beech-tree
contributed to arouse the wild hope, that by some means life might be
given to this form also, and that, breaking from her alabaster tomb,