Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER XIV

  “Your gallery Ha we pass’d through, not without much content In many singularities; but we saw not That which my daughter came to look upon, The state of her mother.” Winter’s Tale.

  It seemed to me strange, that all this time I had heard no music in thefairy palace. I was convinced there must be music in it, but that mysense was as yet too gross to receive the influence of those mysteriousmotions that beget sound. Sometimes I felt sure, from the way the fewfigures of which I got such transitory glimpses passed me, or glidedinto vacancy before me, that they were moving to the law of music;and, in fact, several times I fancied for a moment that I heard a fewwondrous tones coming I knew not whence. But they did not last longenough to convince me that I had heard them with the bodily sense. Suchas they were, however, they took strange liberties with me, causing meto burst suddenly into tears, of which there was no presence to makeme ashamed, or casting me into a kind of trance of speechless delight,which, passing as suddenly, left me faint and longing for more.

  Now, on an evening, before I had been a week in the palace, I waswandering through one lighted arcade and corridor after another. Atlength I arrived, through a door that closed behind me, in another vasthall of the palace. It was filled with a subdued crimson light; bywhich I saw that slender pillars of black, built close to walls of whitemarble, rose to a great height, and then, dividing into innumerabledivergent arches, supported a roof, like the walls, of white marble,upon which the arches intersected intricately, forming a fretting ofblack upon the white, like the network of a skeleton-leaf. The floor wasblack.

  Between several pairs of the pillars upon every side, the place of thewall behind was occupied by a crimson curtain of thick silk, hanging inheavy and rich folds. Behind each of these curtains burned a powerfullight, and these were the sources of the glow that filled the hall. Apeculiar delicious odour pervaded the place. As soon as I entered, theold inspiration seemed to return to me, for I felt a strong impulse tosing; or rather, it seemed as if some one else was singing a song in mysoul, which wanted to come forth at my lips, imbodied in my breath. ButI kept silence; and feeling somewhat overcome by the red light and theperfume, as well as by the emotion within me, and seeing at one end ofthe hall a great crimson chair, more like a throne than a chair, besidea table of white marble, I went to it, and, throwing myself in it, gavemyself up to a succession of images of bewildering beauty, which passedbefore my inward eye, in a long and occasionally crowded train. Here Isat for hours, I suppose; till, returning somewhat to myself, I saw thatthe red light had paled away, and felt a cool gentle breath gliding overmy forehead. I rose and left the hall with unsteady steps, finding myway with some difficulty to my own chamber, and faintly remembering,as I went, that only in the marble cave, before I found the sleepingstatue, had I ever had a similar experience.

  After this, I repaired every morning to the same hall; where I sometimessat in the chair and dreamed deliciously, and sometimes walked up anddown over the black floor. Sometimes I acted within myself a wholedrama, during one of these perambulations; sometimes walked deliberatelythrough the whole epic of a tale; sometimes ventured to sing a song,though with a shrinking fear of I knew not what. I was astonished atthe beauty of my own voice as it rang through the place, or rather creptundulating, like a serpent of sound, along the walls and roof of thissuperb music-hall. Entrancing verses arose within me as of their ownaccord, chanting themselves to their own melodies, and requiring noaddition of music to satisfy the inward sense. But, ever in the pausesof these, when the singing mood was upon me, I seemed to hear somethinglike the distant sound of multitudes of dancers, and felt as if itwas the unheard music, moving their rhythmic motion, that within meblossomed in verse and song. I felt, too, that could I but see thedance, I should, from the harmony of complicated movements, not ofthe dancers in relation to each other merely, but of each dancerindividually in the manifested plastic power that moved the consentingharmonious form, understand the whole of the music on the billows ofwhich they floated and swung.

  At length, one night, suddenly, when this feeling of dancing came uponme, I bethought me of lifting one of the crimson curtains, and lookingif, perchance, behind it there might not be hid some other mystery,which might at least remove a step further the bewilderment of thepresent one. Nor was I altogether disappointed. I walked to one of themagnificent draperies, lifted a corner, and peeped in. There, burneda great, crimson, globe-shaped light, high in the cubical centre ofanother hall, which might be larger or less than that in which I stood,for its dimensions were not easily perceived, seeing that floor and roofand walls were entirely of black marble.

  The roof was supported by the same arrangement of pillars radiating inarches, as that of the first hall; only, here, the pillars andarches were of dark red. But what absorbed my delighted gaze, was aninnumerable assembly of white marble statues, of every form, and inmultitudinous posture, filling the hall throughout. These stood, in theruddy glow of the great lamp, upon pedestals of jet black. Around thelamp shone in golden letters, plainly legible from where I stood, thetwo words--

  TOUCH NOT!

  There was in all this, however, no solution to the sound of dancing; andnow I was aware that the influence on my mind had ceased. I did notgo in that evening, for I was weary and faint, but I hoarded up theexpectation of entering, as of a great coming joy.

  Next night I walked, as on the preceding, through the hall. My mind wasfilled with pictures and songs, and therewith so much absorbed, thatI did not for some time think of looking within the curtain I had lastnight lifted. When the thought of doing so occurred to me first, Ihappened to be within a few yards of it. I became conscious, at the samemoment, that the sound of dancing had been for some time in my ears. Iapproached the curtain quickly, and, lifting it, entered the black hall.Everything was still as death. I should have concluded that thesound must have proceeded from some other more distant quarter,which conclusion its faintness would, in ordinary circumstances, havenecessitated from the first; but there was a something about the statuesthat caused me still to remain in doubt. As I said, each stood perfectlystill upon its black pedestal: but there was about every one a certainair, not of motion, but as if it had just ceased from movement; as ifthe rest were not altogether of the marbly stillness of thousands ofyears. It was as if the peculiar atmosphere of each had yet a kindof invisible tremulousness; as if its agitated wavelets had notyet subsided into a perfect calm. I had the suspicion that they hadanticipated my appearance, and had sprung, each, from the living joy ofthe dance, to the death-silence and blackness of its isolated pedestal,just before I entered. I walked across the central hall to the curtainopposite the one I had lifted, and, entering there, found all theappearances similar; only that the statues were different, anddifferently grouped. Neither did they produce on my mind thatimpression--of motion just expired, which I had experienced from theothers. I found that behind every one of the crimson curtains was asimilar hall, similarly lighted, and similarly occupied.

  The next night, I did not allow my thoughts to be absorbed as beforewith inward images, but crept stealthily along to the furthest curtainin the hall, from behind which, likewise, I had formerly seemed to hearthe sound of dancing. I drew aside its edge as suddenly as I could, and,looking in, saw that the utmost stillness pervaded the vast place. Iwalked in, and passed through it to the other end.

  There I found that it communicated with a circular corridor, dividedfrom it only by two rows of red columns. This corridor, which was black,with red niches holding statues, ran entirely about the statue-halls,forming a communication between the further ends of them all; further,that is, as regards the central hall of white whence they all divergedlike radii, finding their circumference in the corridor.

  Round this corridor I now went, entering all the halls, of which therewere twelve, and finding them all similarly c
onstructed, but filled withquite various statues, of what seemed both ancient and modern sculpture.After I had simply walked through them, I found myself sufficientlytired to long for rest, and went to my own room.

  In the night I dreamed that, walking close by one of the curtains, I wassuddenly seized with the desire to enter, and darted in. This time I wastoo quick for them. All the statues were in motion, statues no longer,but men and women--all shapes of beauty that ever sprang from the brainof the sculptor, mingled in the convolutions of a complicated dance.Passing through them to the further end, I almost started from mysleep on beholding, not taking part in the dance with the others, norseemingly endued with life like them, but standing in marble coldnessand rigidity upon a black pedestal in the extreme left corner--my ladyof the cave; the marble beauty who sprang from her tomb or her cradleat the call of my songs. While I gazed in speechless astonishment andadmiration, a dark shadow, descending from above like the curtain of astage, gradually hid her entirely from my view. I felt with a shudderthat this shadow was perchance my missing demon, whom I had not seen fordays. I awoke with a stifled cry.

  Of course, the next evening I began my journey through the halls (for Iknew not to which my dream had carried me), in the hope of proving thedream to be a true one, by discovering my marble beauty upon her blackpedestal. At length, on reaching the tenth hall, I thought Irecognised some of the forms I had seen dancing in my dream; and to mybewilderment, when I arrived at the extreme corner on the left, therestood, the only one I had yet seen, a vacant pedestal. It was exactly inthe position occupied, in my dream, by the pedestal on which the whitelady stood. Hope beat violently in my heart.

  “Now,” said I to myself, “if yet another part of the dream would butcome true, and I should succeed in surprising these forms in theirnightly dance; it might be the rest would follow, and I should see onthe pedestal my marble queen. Then surely if my songs sufficed to giveher life before, when she lay in the bonds of alabaster, much more wouldthey be sufficient then to give her volition and motion, when she aloneof assembled crowds of marble forms, would be standing rigid and cold.”

  But the difficulty was, to surprise the dancers. I had found that apremeditated attempt at surprise, though executed with the utmost careand rapidity, was of no avail. And, in my dream, it was effected by asudden thought suddenly executed. I saw, therefore, that there was noplan of operation offering any probability of success, but this: toallow my mind to be occupied with other thoughts, as I wandered aroundthe great centre-hall; and so wait till the impulse to enter one of theothers should happen to arise in me just at the moment when I was closeto one of the crimson curtains. For I hoped that if I entered any one ofthe twelve halls at the right moment, that would as it were give me theright of entrance to all the others, seeing they all had communicationbehind. I would not diminish the hope of the right chance, by supposingit necessary that a desire to enter should awake within me, preciselywhen I was close to the curtains of the tenth hall.

  At first the impulses to see recurred so continually, in spite of thecrowded imagery that kept passing through my mind, that they formedtoo nearly a continuous chain, for the hope that any one of them wouldsucceed as a surprise. But as I persisted in banishing them, theyrecurred less and less often; and after two or three, at considerableintervals, had come when the spot where I happened to be was unsuitable,the hope strengthened, that soon one might arise just at the rightmoment; namely, when, in walking round the hall, I should be close toone of the curtains.

  At length the right moment and the impulse coincided. I darted into theninth hall. It was full of the most exquisite moving forms. The wholespace wavered and swam with the involutions of an intricate dance. Itseemed to break suddenly as I entered, and all made one or two boundstowards their pedestals; but, apparently on finding that they werethoroughly overtaken, they returned to their employment (for it seemedwith them earnest enough to be called such) without further heedingme. Somewhat impeded by the floating crowd, I made what haste I couldtowards the bottom of the hall; whence, entering the corridor, I turnedtowards the tenth. I soon arrived at the corner I wanted to reach, forthe corridor was comparatively empty; but, although the dancers here,after a little confusion, altogether disregarded my presence, Iwas dismayed at beholding, even yet, a vacant pedestal. But I had aconviction that she was near me. And as I looked at the pedestal, Ithought I saw upon it, vaguely revealed as if through overlapping foldsof drapery, the indistinct outlines of white feet. Yet there was nosign of drapery or concealing shadow whatever. But I remembered thedescending shadow in my dream. And I hoped still in the power of mysongs; thinking that what could dispel alabaster, might likewise becapable of dispelling what concealed my beauty now, even if it were thedemon whose darkness had overshadowed all my life.