 CHAPTER XXIII HIGH ERECTED THOUGHT SEEDED IN A HEART OF CURTISY Sir Philip Sidney A sweet attractive kind of grace, a full assurance given by looks, continual comfort in a face, the lineaments of gospel books. Matthew Roydon on Sir Philip Sidney I had not gone far, for I had but just lost sight of the hated tower, when a voice of another sort, sounding near or far, as the trees permitted or intercepted its passage, reached me. It was a full, deep manly voice, but withal clear and melodious. Now it burst on the ear with a sudden swell, and anon dying away as suddenly seemed to come to me across a great space. Nevertheless it drew nearer, till at last I could distinguish the words of the song, and get transient glimpses of the singer between the columns of the trees. He came nearer, dawning upon me like a growing thought. He was a knight, armed from head to heel, mounted upon a strange looking beast whose form I could not understand. The words which I heard him sing were like these. Heart be stout, and eye be true. Good blade out, and ill shall rue. Courage, horse, thou lacks no skill. Well, thy force hath matched my will. For the foe with fiery breath at a blow it still in death. Gently, horse, tread fearlessly, tis his course that burdens thee. The sun's eye is fierce at noon, thou and eye will rest full soon. And new strength, new work will meet, till at length long rest is sweet. And now horse and rider had arrived near enough for me to see, fastened by the long neck to the hindre part of the saddle, and trailing its hideous length on the ground behind, the body of a great dragon. It was no wonder that with such a drag at his heels the horse could make but slow progress, notwithstanding his evident dismay. The horrid serpent-like head with its black tongue forked with red, hanging out of its jaws, dangled against the horse's side. Its neck was covered with long blue hair, its sides with scales of green and gold, its back was of corrugated skin, of a purple hue. Its belly was similar in nature, but its color was leaden, dashed with blotches of livid blue. Its skinny, bat-like wings and its tail were of a dull gray. It was strange to see how so many gorgeous colors, so many curving lines, and such beautiful things as wings and hair and scales, combined to form the horrible creature, intense in ugliness. The night was passing me with a salutation, but as I walked towards him he reigned up, and I stood by his stirrup. When I came near him I saw to my surprise and pleasure likewise, although a sudden pain, like a birth of fire sprang up in my heart, that it was the night of the soiled armor, whom I knew before and whom I had seen in the vision with the Lady of the Marble. But I could have thrown my arms around him because she loved him. This discovery only strengthened the resolution I had formed before I recognized him of offering myself to the night to wait upon him as a squire, for he seemed to be unattended. I made my request in as few words as possible. He hesitated for a moment, and looked at me thoughtfully. I saw that he suspected who I was, but that he continued uncertain of his suspicion. No doubt he was soon convinced of its truth, but all the time I was with him not a word crossed his lips with reference to what he evidently concluded I wished to leave unnoticed, if not to keep concealed. Squire and Knight should be friends, said he. Can you take me by the hand? And he held out the great gauntleted right hand. I grasped it willingly and strongly. Not a word more was said. The Knight gave the sign to his horse, which again began his slow march, and I walked beside and a little behind. We had not gone very far before we arrived at a little cottage, from which, as we drew near, a woman rushed out with the cry, "'My child! My child! Have you found my child?' "'I have found her,' replied the Knight, but she is sorely hurt. I was forced to leave her with the hermit as I returned. You will find her there, and I think she will get better. You see I have brought you a present. This wretch will not hurt you again. And he undid the creature's neck and flung the frightful burden down by the cottage door. The woman was now almost out of sight in the wood, but the husband stood at the door with speechless thanks in his face. "'You must bury the monster,' said the Knight. If I had arrived a moment later I should have been too late. But now you need not fear, for such a creature as this very rarely appears, in the same part twice during a lifetime. "'Will you not dismount and rest you, Sir Knight?' said the peasant, who had, by this time, recovered himself a little. "'That I will, thankfully,' said he, and dismounting he gave the reins to me and told me to unbridle the horse and lead him into the shade. You need not tie him up,' he added. He will not run away. When I returned after obeying his orders and entered the cottage, I saw the Knight seated without his helmet and talking most familiarly with the simple host. I stood at the open door for a moment and, gazing at him, inwardly justified the white lady in preferring him to me. A nobler countenance I never saw. Loving kindness beamed from every line of his face. It seemed as if he would repay himself for the late arduous combat by indulging in all the gentleness of a womanly heart. But when the talk ceased for a moment he seemed to fall into a 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 night 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 center of the story. After we had partaken of the best they could give us, the night took his leave with a few parting instructions to the mother as to how she should treat the child. I brought the night 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 armor, and could hardly be restrained from galloping on. But the night made him time his powers to mine, and so we went on for an hour or two. Then the night dismounted, and compelled me to get into the saddle, saying, Night and squire must share the labor. Holden 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 fairy in which we are, there is much that is wrong in it. If there are great splendors, 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, rejoin the night 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 and 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 colors. 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 color 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 which was quivering with emotions of multitudes of resplendent butterflies, as gorgeous in color as if the eyes of peacock's feathers had taken to flight, but of infinite variety of hue and form, only that the appearance of some kind of eye in 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 coloring, 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 to begin 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 has 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 armor 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 night, 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 night more and more. I believed 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 embodiment of what I would feign 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 in its line as the remaining roots evidenced. At some little distance, on both hands, we observed signs of similar avenues which appeared to converge with ours towards one spot. Along these we indistinctly saw several forms moving which seemed, with ourselves, to approach the common center. Our path brought us, at last, up to a wall of yew trees, growing close together and intertwining their branches so that nothing could be seen beyond it. An opening was cut in it like a door, and all the wall was trimmed smooth and perpendicular. The night dismounted and waited till I had provided for his horse's comfort upon which we entered the place together. It was a great space, bare of trees, and enclosed by four walls of yew similar to that through which we had entered. These trees grew to a very great height, and did not divide from each other till close to the top, where their summits formed a row of conical battlements all around the walls. The space contained was a parallelogram of great length. Along each of the two longer sides of the interior were ranged three ranks of men in white robes standing silent and solemn, each with a sword by his side, although the rest of his costume and bearing was more priestly than soldierly. For some distance inwards the space between these opposite rows was filled with a company of men and women and children in holiday attire. The looks of all were directed inwards towards the further end. Far beyond the crowd, in a long avenue, seeming to narrow in the distance, went the long rows of the white-robed men. On what the attention of the multitude was fixed we could not tell, for the sun had set before we arrived, and it was growing dark within. It grew darker and darker. The multitude waited in silence. The stars began to shine down into the enclosure, and they grew brighter and larger every moment. A wind arose and swayed the pinnacles of the treetops, and made a strange sound, half like music, half like moaning, through the close branches and leaves of the tree bells. A young girl, who stood beside me, clothed in the same dress as the priests, bowed her head and grew pale with awe. The night whispered to me, how solemn it is. Surely they wait to hear the voice of a prophet. There is something good near. But I, though somewhat shaken by the feeling expressed by my master, yet had an unaccountable conviction that here was something bad. So I resolved to be keenly on the watch for what should follow. Suddenly a great star like a sun appeared high in the air over the temple, illuminating it throughout, and a great song arose, from the men in white which went rolling round and round the building, now receding to the end, and now approaching, down the other side, the place where we stood. For some of the singers were regularly ceasing, and the next to them was regularly taking up the song, so that it crept onwards with gradations produced by changes which could not themselves be detected, for only a few of those who were singing ceased at the same moment. The song paused, and I saw a company of six of the white robed men walk up the center of the human avenue, surrounding a youth gorgeously attired beneath his robe of white, and wing a chaplet of flowers on his head. I followed them closely with my keenest observation, and by accompanying their slow progress with my eyes I was able to perceive more clearly what took place when they arrived at the other end. I knew that my sight was so much more keen than that of most people, that I had good reason to suppose I should see more than the rest could, at such a distance. At the farther end a throne stood upon a platform high above the heads of the surrounding priests. To this platform I saw the company begin to ascend, apparently by an inclined plane or gentle slope. The throne itself was elevated again on a kind of square pedestal to the top of which led a flight of steps. On the throne sat a majestic-looking figure whose posture seemed to indicate a mixture of pride and benignity as he looked down on the multitude below. The company ascended to the foot of the throne where they all kneeled for some minutes. Then they rose and passed round to the side of the pedestal upon which the throne stood. Here they crowded close behind the youth, putting him in the foremost place, and one of them opened a door in the pedestal for the youth to enter. I was sure I saw him shrink back, and those crowding behind pushed him in. Then again arose a burst of song from the multitude in white which lasted some time. When it ceased a new company of seven commenced its march up the center. As they advanced I looked up at my master. His noble countenance was full of reverence and awe. Incapable of evil himself, he could scarcely suspect it in another, much less in a multitude such as this, and surrounded with such appearances of solemnity. I was certain it was the really grand accompaniments that overcame him, that the stars overhead, the dark towering tops of the yew-trees, and the wind that, like an unseen spirit, sighed through their branches, bowed his spirit to the belief that in all these ceremonies lay some great mystical meaning which, his humility told him, his ignorance prevented him from understanding. More convinced than before that there was evil here, I could not endure that my master should be deceived, that one like him, so pure and noble, should respect what, if my suspicions were true, was worse than the ordinary deceptions of priestcraft. I could not tell how far he might be led to countenance, and otherwise support their doings, before he should find cause to repent bitterly of his error. I watched the new procession yet more keenly, if possible, than the former. This time the central figure was a girl, and, at the close, I observed, yet more indubitably, the shrinking back and the crowding push. What happened to the victims I never learned, but I had learned enough and I could bear it no longer. I stooped, and whispered to the young girl who stood by me, to lend me her white garment. I wanted it, that I might not be entirely out of keeping with the solemnity, but might have at least this help to passing unquestioned. She looked up, half amused and half bewildered, as if doubting whether I was an earnest or not. But in her perplexity she permitted me to unfasten it and slip it down from her shoulders. I easily got possession of it, and, sinking down on my knees in the crowd, I rose apparently in the habit of one of the worshippers. Giving my battle-axe to the girl, to hold and pledge for the return of her stole, for I wished to test the matter unarmed, and, if it was a man that sat upon the throne, to attack him with hands bare, as I supposed his must be, I made my way through the crowd to the front, while the singing, yet continued, desirous of reaching the platform while it was unoccupied by any of the priests. I was permitted to walk up the long avenue of white robes unmolested, though I saw questioning looks in many of the faces as I passed. I presumed my coolness aided my passage, for I felt quite indifferent as to my own fate, not feeling, after the late events of my history, that I was at all worth taking care of, and enjoying, perhaps, something of an evil satisfaction in the revenge I was thus taking upon the self, which had fooled me so long. When I had arrived at the platform, the song had just ceased, and I felt as if all were looking towards me. But, instead of kneeling at its foot, I walked right up the stairs to the throne, laid hold of a great wooden image that seemed to sit upon it, and tried to hurl it from its seat. In this I failed at first, for I found it firmly fixed. But in dread, lest, the first shock of amazement passing away, the guards would rush upon me before I had affected my purpose, I strained with all my might, and with the noise as of the cracking and breaking and tearing of rotten wood something gave way, and I hurled the image down the steps. Its displacement revealed a great hole in the throne, like the hollow of a decayed tree, going down, apparently, a great way. But I had no time to examine it, for, as I looked into it, up out of it rushed a great brute like a wolf, but twice the size, and tumbled me headlong with itself down the steps of the throne. As we fell, however, I caught it by the throat, and the moment we reached the platform a struggle commenced, in which I soon got uppermost, with my hand upon its throat and knee upon its heart. But now arose a wild cry of wrath and revenge and rescue. A universal hiss of steel, as every sword was swept from its scabbard, seemed to tear the very air and shreds. I heard the rush of hundreds towards the platform on which I knelt. I only tightened my grasp of the brute's throat. His eyes were already starting from his head, and his tongue was hanging out. My anxious hope was that, even after they had killed me, they would be unable to undo my grip of his throat, before the monster was past breathing. I, therefore, threw all my will and force and purpose into the grasping hand. I remembered no blow. A faintness came over me, and my consciousness departed. CHAPTER XXIII FANTASTIES by George MacDonald This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, nor to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Red by Brad Powers. CHAPTER XXIV We are narrow like angels till our passions die. DECKER This wretched inn, where we scarce stay to bait, we call our dwelling place, we call one step a race. But angels in their full enlightened state, angels who live and know what tis to be, who all the nonsense of our language see, who speak things and our words their ill-drawn pictures scorn, when we, by a foolish figure, say, Behold an old man dead, then they speak properly and cry, Behold a man child born. COWLEY I was dead and right content. I lay in my coffin, with my hands folded in peace. The night, and the lady I loved, wept over me. Her tears fell on my face. Ah! said the night. I rushed amongst them like a madman. I hewed them down like a brushwood. Their swords battered on me like hail, but hurt me not. I cut a lane through to my friend. He was dead. But he had throttled the monster, and I had to cut the handful out of its throat before I could disengage and carry off his body. They dared not molest me as I brought him back. He has died well, said the lady. My spirit rejoiced. They left me to my repose. I felt as if a cool hand had been laid upon my heart, and had stilled it. My soul was like a summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yet glistening on the trees in the last rays of the down-going sun, and the wind of the twilight has begun to blow. The hot fever of life had gone by, and I breathed the clear mountain air of the land of death. I had never dreamed of such blessedness. It was not that I had in any way ceased to be what I had been. The very fact that anything can die implies the existence of something that cannot die, which must either take to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies and arises again, or in conscious existence may, perhaps, continue to lead a purely spiritual life. If my passions were dead, the souls of the passions, those essential mysteries of the spirit which had embodied themselves in the passions, and had given to them all their glory and wonderment, yet lived, yet glowed with a pure undying fire, they rose above their vanishing earthly garments, and disclosed themselves angels of light. But oh, how beautiful be on the old form! I lay thus for a time, and lived as if it were an unradiating existence. My soul, emotionless lake, that received all things and gave nothing back, satisfied in still contemplation and spiritual consciousness. Air long they bore me to my grave. Never tired child lay down in his white bed, and heard the sound of his play things being laid aside for the night with a more luxurious satisfaction of her pose than I knew, when I felt the coffins settle on the firm earth, and heard the sound of the falling mold upon its lid. It has not the same hollow rattle within the coffin that it sends up to the edge of the grave. They buried me in no graveyard. They loved me too much for that, I thank them. But they laid me in the grounds of their own castle, amid many trees, where, as it was springtime, were growing prim roses and bluebells and all the families of the woods. Now that I lay in her bosom, the whole earth, and each of her many births, was as a body to me at my will. I seemed to feel the great heart of the mother beating into mine, and feeding me with her own life, her own essential being and nature. I heard the footsteps of my friends above, and they sent a thrill through my heart. I knew that the helpers had gone, and that the night and the lady remained and spoke low, gentle, tearful words of him who lay beneath the yet wounded side. I rose into a single large prim rose that grew by the edge of the grave, and from the window of its humble, trusting face, looked full in the countenance of the lady. I felt that I could manifest myself in the prim rose, that it said a part of what I wanted to say, just as in the old time I had used to but take myself to a song for the same end. The flower caught her eye. She stooped and plucked it, saying, Oh, you beautiful creature, and lightly kissing it, put it in her bosom. It was the first kiss she had ever given me. But the flower soon began to wither, and I forsook it. It was evening. The sun was below the horizon, but his rosy beams yet illuminated a feathery cloud that floated high above the world. I arose. I reached the cloud, and throwing myself upon it, floated with it inside of the sinking sun. He sank, and the cloud grew gray, but the grayness touched not my heart. It carried its rose hue within, for now I could love without needing to be loved again. The moon came gliding up with all the past in her wand face. She changed my coach into a ghostly pallor, and through all the earth below is to the bottom of a pale sea of dreams. But she could not make me sad. I knew now that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another. Yea, that, were to love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit. A power that cannot be but for good. For in proportionous selfishness intrudes the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will one day meet with its return. All true love will one day behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in the realms of lofty death. Ah, my friends, thought I, how I will tend you and wait upon you and haunt you with my love. My floating chariot bore me over a great city. Its faint dull sound steamed up into the air, a sound, how opposed. How many helpless cries, thought I, and how many mad shouts go to make up the tumult, here so faint where I float in eternal peace, knowing that they will one day be stilled in the surrounding comb, and the despair dies into infinite hope, and the seeming impossible there is the law here. But, O pale-faced women, and gloomy-browed men, and forgotten children, how I will wait on you and minister to you, putting my arms about you in the dark, think hope into your hearts, when you fancy no one is near. Soon as my senses have all come back, and have grown accustomed to this new blessed life, I will be among you with the love that healeth. With this a paying and a terrible shudder went through me. Arriving as of death convulsed me, and I became once again conscious of a more limited, even a bodily and earthly life. CHAPTER 25 Our life is no dream, but it ought to become one, and perhaps will. NOVELIS And on the ground, which is my modrous gate, I knock with my staff, ear-lick and late, and say to hire, leave, mother, let me in. CHOSTER, the pardner's tale. Sinking from such a state of ideal bliss into the world of shadows, which again closed around and enfolded me, my first dread was, not unnaturally, that my own shadow had found me again and that my torture had commenced anew. It was a sad revulsion of feelings. This, indeed, seemed to correspond to what we think death is before we die. Yet I felt within me a power of calm endurance to which I had hitherto been a stranger, for, in truth, that I should be able, if only to think such things as I had been thinking, was an unspeakable delight. An hour of such peace made the turmoil of a lifetime worth striving through. I found myself lying in the open air, in the early morning, before sunrise. Over me rose the summer heaven, expectant of the sun. The clouds already saw him coming from afar, and soon every dew-drop would rejoice in his individual presence within it. I lay motionless for a few minutes, and then slowly rose and looked about me. I was on the summit of a little hill, a valley lay beneath, and a range of mountains closed up to view upon that side. But to my horror across the valley, and up the height of the opposing mountains, stretched, from my very feet, a hugely expanding shade, there it lay, long and large, dark and mighty. I turned away with a sick despair. When low, I beheld the sun just lifting his head above the eastern hill, and the shadow that fell from me lay only where his beams fell not. I danced for joy. It was only the natural shadow that goes with every man who walks in the sun. As he arose, higher and higher, the shadow heads sank down the side of the opposite hill, and crept in across the valley towards my feet. Now that I was so joyously delivered from this fear, I saw and recognized the country around me. In the valley below lay my own castle, and the haunts of my childhood were all about me hastened home. My sisters received me with unspeakable joy, but I suppose they observed some change in me, for a kind of respect, with a slight touch of awe in it, mingled with their joy, and made me ashamed. They had been in great distress about me. On the morning of my disappearance they had found the floor of my room flooded, and all that day a wondrous and nearly impervious mist had hung about the castle and grounds. I had been gone, they told me, twenty-one days. To me it seemed twenty-one years, nor could I yet feel quite secure in my new experiences. When at night I lay down once more in my own bed, I did not feel at all sure that when I awoke I should not find myself in some mysterious region of fairy-land. My dreams were incessant and perturbed, but when I did awake I saw clearly that I was in my own home. My mind soon grew calm and I began the duties of my new position, somewhat instructed, I hoped, by the adventures that had befallen me in fairy-land. Could I translate the experience of my travels there into common life? This was the question. Or must I live it all over again, and learn it all over again in the other forms that belong to the world of men whose experience yet runs parallel to that of fairy-land? These questions I cannot answer yet, but I fear. Even yet I find myself looking round sometimes with anxiety to see whether my shadow falls right away from the sun or no. I have never yet discovered any inclination to either side, and if I am not unfrequently sad I yet cast no more of a shade on the earth than most men who have lived in it as long as I. I have a strange feeling sometimes, that I am a ghost, sent into the world to minister to my fellow men, or, rather, to repair the wrongs I have already done. May the world be brighter for me, at least in those portions of it where my darkness falls not. Thus I, who set out to find my ideal, came back rejoicing that I had lost my shadow. When the thought of the blessedness I experienced after my death in fairy-land is too high for me to lay to hold upon it and hope in it, I often think of the wise woman in the cottage and of her solemn assurance that she knew something too good to be told. When I am oppressed by any sorrow or real perplexity, I often feel as if I had only left her cottage for a time and would soon return out of the vision into it again. Sometimes, on such occasions, I find myself unconsciously, almost, looking about for the mystic mark of red with the vague hope of entering her door and being comforted by her wise tenderness. I then console myself by saying, I have come through the door of dismay and the way back from the world into which that has led me is through my tomb. Upon that the red sign lies and I shall find it one day and be glad. I will end my story with a relation of an incident which befell me a few days ago. I had been with my reapers, and when they ceased their work at noon I had lain down under the shadow of a great ancient beech tree that stood on the edge of the field. As I lay, with my eyes closed, I began to listen to the sound of the leaves overhead. At first they made sweet inarticulate music alone. But, by and by, the sound seemed to begin to take shape and to be gradually molding itself into words, till at last I seemed able to distinguish these half dissolved in a little ocean of circumfluent tones. A great good is coming, is coming, is coming to thee, Anadas. And so over and over again I fancied that the sound reminded me of the voice of the ancient woman in the cottage that was Foursquare. I opened my eyes and, for a moment, almost believed that I saw her face with its many wrinkles and its young eyes looking at me from between two hoary branches of the beech overhead. But when I looked more keenly I saw only twigs and leaves and the infinite sky in tiny spots gazing through between. Yet I know that good is coming to me. The good is always coming, though few have at all times the simplicity in the courage to believe it. What we call evil is the only and best shape which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good. And so, farewell.