Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER XVIII

  “In the wind’s uproar, the sea’s raging grim, And the sighs that are born in him.” HEINE.

  “From dreams of bliss shall men awake One day, but not to weep: The dreams remain; they only break The mirror of the sleep.” JEAN PAUL, Hesperus.

  How I got through this dreary part of my travels, I do not know. I donot think I was upheld by the hope that any moment the light might breakin upon me; for I scarcely thought about that. I went on with a dullendurance, varied by moments of uncontrollable sadness; for more andmore the conviction grew upon me that I should never see the whitelady again. It may seem strange that one with whom I had held so littlecommunion should have so engrossed my thoughts; but benefits conferredawaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others.Besides being delighted and proud that my songs had called thebeautiful creature to life, the same fact caused me to feel a tendernessunspeakable for her, accompanied with a kind of feeling of property inher; for so the goblin Selfishness would reward the angel Love. Whento all this is added, an overpowering sense of her beauty, andan unquestioning conviction that this was a true index to inwardloveliness, it may be understood how it came to pass that my imaginationfilled my whole soul with the play of its own multitudinous colours andharmonies around the form which yet stood, a gracious marble radiance,in the midst of ITS white hall of phantasy. The time passed by unheeded;for my thoughts were busy. Perhaps this was also in part the cause of myneeding no food, and never thinking how I should find any, during thissubterraneous part of my travels. How long they endured I could nottell, for I had no means of measuring time; and when I looked back,there was such a discrepancy between the decisions of my imaginationand my judgment, as to the length of time that had passed, that I wasbewildered, and gave up all attempts to arrive at any conclusion on thepoint.

  A gray mist continually gathered behind me. When I looked back towardsthe past, this mist was the medium through which my eyes had to strainfor a vision of what had gone by; and the form of the white lady hadreceded into an unknown region. At length the country of rock beganto close again around me, gradually and slowly narrowing, till I foundmyself walking in a gallery of rock once more, both sides of which Icould touch with my outstretched hands. It narrowed yet, until Iwas forced to move carefully, in order to avoid striking against theprojecting pieces of rock. The roof sank lower and lower, until I wascompelled, first to stoop, and then to creep on my hands and knees.It recalled terrible dreams of childhood; but I was not much afraid,because I felt sure that this was my path, and my only hope of leavingFairy Land, of which I was now almost weary.

  At length, on getting past an abrupt turn in the passage, throughwhich I had to force myself, I saw, a few yards ahead of me, thelong-forgotten daylight shining through a small opening, to which thepath, if path it could now be called, led me. With great difficulty Iaccomplished these last few yards, and came forth to the day. I stood onthe shore of a wintry sea, with a wintry sun just a few feet above itshorizon-edge. It was bare, and waste, and gray. Hundreds of hopelesswaves rushed constantly shorewards, falling exhausted upon a beachof great loose stones, that seemed to stretch miles and miles in bothdirections. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades ofgray; nothing for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of thebreaking, and the moan of the retreating wave. No rock lifted up asheltering severity above the dreariness around; even that from which Ihad myself emerged rose scarcely a foot above the opening by which Ihad reached the dismal day, more dismal even than the tomb I had left.A cold, death-like wind swept across the shore, seeming to issue from apale mouth of cloud upon the horizon. Sign of life was nowhere visible.I wandered over the stones, up and down the beach, a human imbodiment ofthe nature around me. The wind increased; its keen waves flowed throughmy soul; the foam rushed higher up the stones; a few dead stars beganto gleam in the east; the sound of the waves grew louder and yet moredespairing. A dark curtain of cloud was lifted up, and a pale blue rentshone between its foot and the edge of the sea, out from which rushed anicy storm of frozen wind, that tore the waters into spray as it passed,and flung the billows in raving heaps upon the desolate shore. I couldbear it no longer.

  “I will not be tortured to death,” I cried; “I will meet it half-way.The life within me is yet enough to bear me up to the face of Death, andthen I die unconquered.”

  Before it had grown so dark, I had observed, though without anyparticular interest, that on one part of the shore a low platform ofrock seemed to run out far into the midst of the breaking waters.

  Towards this I now went, scrambling over smooth stones, to which scarceeven a particle of sea-weed clung; and having found it, I got on it, andfollowed its direction, as near as I could guess, out into the tumblingchaos. I could hardly keep my feet against the wind and sea. The wavesrepeatedly all but swept me off my path; but I kept on my way, till Ireached the end of the low promontory, which, in the fall of the waves,rose a good many feet above the surface, and, in their rise, was coveredwith their waters. I stood one moment and gazed into the heaving abyssbeneath me; then plunged headlong into the mounting wave below. Ablessing, like the kiss of a mother, seemed to alight on my soul; acalm, deeper than that which accompanies a hope deferred, bathed myspirit. I sank far into the waters, and sought not to return. I felt asif once more the great arms of the beech-tree were around me, soothingme after the miseries I had passed through, and telling me, like alittle sick child, that I should be better to-morrow. The waters ofthemselves lifted me, as with loving arms, to the surface. I breathedagain, but did not unclose my eyes. I would not look on the wintry sea,and the pitiless gray sky. Thus I floated, till something gently touchedme. It was a little boat floating beside me. How it came there I couldnot tell; but it rose and sank on the waters, and kept touching me inits fall, as if with a human will to let me know that help was by me. Itwas a little gay-coloured boat, seemingly covered with glistering scaleslike those of a fish, all of brilliant rainbow hues. I scrambled intoit, and lay down in the bottom, with a sense of exquisite repose.

  Then I drew over me a rich, heavy, purple cloth that was beside me; and,lying still, knew, by the sound of the waters, that my little bark wasfleeting rapidly onwards. Finding, however, none of that stormy motionwhich the sea had manifested when I beheld it from the shore, I openedmy eyes; and, looking first up, saw above me the deep violet sky of awarm southern night; and then, lifting my head, saw that I was sailingfast upon a summer sea, in the last border of a southern twilight. Theaureole of the sun yet shot the extreme faint tips of its longest raysabove the horizon-waves, and withdrew them not. It was a perpetualtwilight. The stars, great and earnest, like children’s eyes, bent downlovingly towards the waters; and the reflected stars within seemed tofloat up, as if longing to meet their embraces. But when I looked down,a new wonder met my view. For, vaguely revealed beneath the wave, Ifloated above my whole Past. The fields of my childhood flitted by; thehalls of my youthful labours; the streets of great cities where I haddwelt; and the assemblies of men and women wherein I had wearied myselfseeking for rest. But so indistinct were the visions, that sometimesI thought I was sailing on a shallow sea, and that strange rocks andforests of sea-plants beguiled my eye, sufficiently to be transformed,by the magic of the phantasy, into well-known objects and regions. Yet,at times, a beloved form seemed to lie close beneath me in sleep; andthe eyelids would tremble as if about to forsake the conscious eye;and the arms would heave upwards, as if in dreams they sought for asatisfying presence. But these motions might come only from the heavingof the waters between those forms and me. Soon I fell asleep, overcomewith fatigue and delight. In dreams of unspeakable joy--of restoredfriendships; of revived embraces; of love which said it had never died;of faces that had vanished long ago, yet said with smiling lips thatthey knew nothing of the grave; of pardons implored, and granted withsuch bursting floods of love, th
at I was almost glad I had sinned--thusI passed through this wondrous twilight. I awoke with the feeling that Ihad been kissed and loved to my heart’s content; and found that my boatwas floating motionless by the grassy shore of a little island.