Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
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CHAPTER XIX
“In still rest, in changeless simplicity, I bear, uninterrupted, the consciousness of the whole of Humanity within me.”--SCHLEIERMACHERS, Monologen.
“... such a sweetness, such a grace, In all thy speech appear, That what to th’eye a beauteous face, That thy tongue is to the ear.” --COWLEY.
The water was deep to the very edge; and I sprang from the little boatupon a soft grassy turf. The island seemed rich with a profusion of allgrasses and low flowers. All delicate lowly things were most plentiful;but no trees rose skywards, not even a bush overtopped the tall grasses,except in one place near the cottage I am about to describe, where a fewplants of the gum-cistus, which drops every night all the blossoms thatthe day brings forth, formed a kind of natural arbour. The whole islandlay open to the sky and sea. It rose nowhere more than a few feet abovethe level of the waters, which flowed deep all around its border. Herethere seemed to be neither tide nor storm. A sense of persistent calmand fulness arose in the mind at the sight of the slow, pulse-like riseand fall of the deep, clear, unrippled waters against the bank of theisland, for shore it could hardly be called, being so much more likethe edge of a full, solemn river. As I walked over the grass towards thecottage, which stood at a little distance from the bank, all the flowersof childhood looked at me with perfect child-eyes out of the grass. Myheart, softened by the dreams through which it had passed, overflowedin a sad, tender love towards them. They looked to me like childrenimpregnably fortified in a helpless confidence. The sun stood half-waydown the western sky, shining very soft and golden; and there grew asecond world of shadows amidst the world of grasses and wild flowers.
The cottage was square, with low walls, and a high pyramidal roofthatched with long reeds, of which the withered blossoms hung over allthe eaves. It is noticeable that most of the buildings I saw in FairyLand were cottages. There was no path to a door, nor, indeed, was thereany track worn by footsteps in the island.
The cottage rose right out of the smooth turf. It had no windows that Icould see; but there was a door in the centre of the side facing me,up to which I went. I knocked, and the sweetest voice I had ever heardsaid, “Come in.” I entered. A bright fire was burning on a hearth inthe centre of the earthern floor, and the smoke found its way out at anopening in the centre of the pyramidal roof. Over the fire hung a littlepot, and over the pot bent a woman-face, the most wonderful, I thought,that I had ever beheld. For it was older than any countenance I had everlooked upon. There was not a spot in which a wrinkle could lie, where awrinkle lay not. And the skin was ancient and brown, like old parchment.The woman’s form was tall and spare: and when she stood up to welcomeme, I saw that she was straight as an arrow. Could that voice ofsweetness have issued from those lips of age? Mild as they were, couldthey be the portals whence flowed such melody? But the moment I sawher eyes, I no longer wondered at her voice: they were absolutelyyoung--those of a woman of five-and-twenty, large, and of a clear gray.Wrinkles had beset them all about; the eyelids themselves were old, andheavy, and worn; but the eyes were very incarnations of soft light. Sheheld out her hand to me, and the voice of sweetness again greeted me,with the single word, “Welcome.” She set an old wooden chair for me,near the fire, and went on with her cooking. A wondrous sense of refugeand repose came upon me. I felt like a boy who has got home from school,miles across the hills, through a heavy storm of wind and snow. Almost,as I gazed on her, I sprang from my seat to kiss those old lips. Andwhen, having finished her cooking, she brought some of the dish she hadprepared, and set it on a little table by me, covered with a snow-whitecloth, I could not help laying my head on her bosom, and burstinginto happy tears. She put her arms round me, saying, “Poor child; poorchild!”
As I continued to weep, she gently disengaged herself, and, taking aspoon, put some of the food (I did not know what it was) to my lips,entreating me most endearingly to swallow it. To please her, I made aneffort, and succeeded. She went on feeding me like a baby, with one armround me, till I looked up in her face and smiled: then she gave me thespoon and told me to eat, for it would do me good. I obeyed her, andfound myself wonderfully refreshed. Then she drew near the fire anold-fashioned couch that was in the cottage, and making me lie downupon it, sat at my feet, and began to sing. Amazing store of old balladsrippled from her lips, over the pebbles of ancient tunes; and the voicethat sang was sweet as the voice of a tuneful maiden that singeth everfrom very fulness of song. The songs were almost all sad, but with asound of comfort. One I can faintly recall. It was something like this:
Sir Aglovaile through the churchyard rode; SING, ALL ALONE I LIE: Little recked he where’er he yode, ALL ALONE, UP IN THE SKY.
Swerved his courser, and plunged with fear ALL ALONE I LIE: His cry might have wakened the dead men near, ALL ALONE, UP IN THE SKY.
The very dead that lay at his feet, Lapt in the mouldy winding-sheet.
But he curbed him and spurred him, until he stood Still in his place, like a horse of wood,
With nostrils uplift, and eyes wide and wan; But the sweat in streams from his fetlocks ran.
A ghost grew out of the shadowy air, And sat in the midst of her moony hair.
In her gleamy hair she sat and wept; In the dreamful moon they lay and slept;
The shadows above, and the bodies below, Lay and slept in the moonbeams slow.
And she sang, like the moan of an autumn wind Over the stubble left behind:
Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again.
Alas, how hardly things go right! ‘Tis hard to watch on a summer night, For the sigh will come and the kiss will stay, And the summer night is a winter day.
“Oh, lovely ghosts my heart is woes To see thee weeping and wailing so.
Oh, lovely ghost,” said the fearless knight, “Can the sword of a warrior set it right?
Or prayer of bedesman, praying mild, As a cup of water a feverish child,
Sooth thee at last, in dreamless mood To sleep the sleep a dead lady should?
Thine eyes they fill me with longing sore, As if I had known thee for evermore.
Oh, lovely ghost, I could leave the day To sit with thee in the moon away
If thou wouldst trust me, and lay thy head To rest on a bosom that is not dead.” The lady sprang up with a strange ghost-cry, And she flung her white ghost-arms on high:
And she laughed a laugh that was not gay, And it lengthened out till it died away;
And the dead beneath turned and moaned, And the yew-trees above they shuddered and groaned.
“Will he love me twice with a love that is vain? Will he kill the poor ghost yet again?
I thought thou wert good; but I said, and wept: ‘Can I have dreamed who have not slept?’
And I knew, alas! or ever I would, Whether I dreamed, or thou wert good.
When my baby died, my brain grew wild. I awoke, and found I was with my child.”
“If thou art the ghost of my Adelaide, How is it? Thou wert but a village maid,
And thou seemest an angel lady white, Though thin, and wan, and past delight.”
The lady s
miled a flickering smile, And she pressed her temples hard the while.
“Thou seest that Death for a woman can Do more than knighthood for a man.”
“But show me the child thou callest mine, Is she out to-night in the ghost’s sunshine?”
“In St. Peter’s Church she is playing on, At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.
When the moonbeams right through the window go, Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,
She says the rest of them do not stir, But one comes down to play with her.
Then I can go where I list, and weep, For good St. John my child will keep.”
“Thy beauty filleth the very air, Never saw I a woman so fair.”
“Come, if thou darest, and sit by my side; But do not touch me, or woe will betide.
Alas, I am weak: I might well know This gladness betokens some further woe.
Yet come. It will come. I will bear it. I can. For thou lovest me yet--though but as a man.”
The knight dismounted in earnest speed; Away through the tombstones thundered the steed,
And fell by the outer wall, and died. But the knight he kneeled by the lady’s side;
Kneeled beside her in wondrous bliss, Rapt in an everlasting kiss:
Though never his lips come the lady nigh, And his eyes alone on her beauty lie.
All the night long, till the cock crew loud, He kneeled by the lady, lapt in her shroud.
And what they said, I may not say: Dead night was sweeter than living day.
How she made him so blissful glad Who made her and found her so ghostly sad,
I may not tell; but it needs no touch To make them blessed who love so much.
“Come every night, my ghost, to me; And one night I will come to thee.
‘Tis good to have a ghostly wife: She will not tremble at clang of strife;
She will only hearken, amid the din, Behind the door, if he cometh in.”
And this is how Sir Aglovaile Often walked in the moonlight pale.
And oft when the crescent but thinned the gloom, Full orbed moonlight filled his room;
And through beneath his chamber door, Fell a ghostly gleam on the outer floor;
And they that passed, in fear averred That murmured words they often heard.
‘Twas then that the eastern crescent shone Through the chancel window, and good St. John
Played with the ghost-child all the night, And the mother was free till the morning light,
And sped through the dawning night, to stay With Aglovaile till the break of day.
And their love was a rapture, lone and high, And dumb as the moon in the topmost sky.
One night Sir Aglovaile, weary, slept And dreamed a dream wherein he wept.
A warrior he was, not often wept he, But this night he wept full bitterly.
He woke--beside him the ghost-girl shone Out of the dark: ‘twas the eve of St. John.
He had dreamed a dream of a still, dark wood, Where the maiden of old beside him stood;
But a mist came down, and caught her away, And he sought her in vain through the pathless day,
Till he wept with the grief that can do no more, And thought he had dreamt the dream before.
From bursting heart the weeping flowed on; And lo! beside him the ghost-girl shone;
Shone like the light on a harbour’s breast, Over the sea of his dream’s unrest;
Shone like the wondrous, nameless boon, That the heart seeks ever, night or noon:
Warnings forgotten, when needed most, He clasped to his bosom the radiant ghost.
She wailed aloud, and faded, and sank. With upturn’d white face, cold and blank,
In his arms lay the corpse of the maiden pale, And she came no more to Sir Aglovaile.
Only a voice, when winds were wild, Sobbed and wailed like a chidden child.
Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again.
This was one of the simplest of her songs, which, perhaps, is the causeof my being able to remember it better than most of the others. Whileshe sung, I was in Elysium, with the sense of a rich soul upholding,embracing, and overhanging mine, full of all plenty and bounty. I feltas if she could give me everything I wanted; as if I should never wishto leave her, but would be content to be sung to and fed by her, dayafter day, as years rolled by. At last I fell asleep while she sang.
When I awoke, I knew not whether it was night or day. The fire had sunkto a few red embers, which just gave light enough to show me the womanstanding a few feet from me, with her back towards me, facing thedoor by which I had entered. She was weeping, but very gently andplentifully. The tears seemed to come freely from her heart. Thus shestood for a few minutes; then, slowly turning at right angles to herformer position, she faced another of the four sides of the cottage.I now observed, for the first time, that here was a door likewise; andthat, indeed, there was one in the centre of every side of the cottage.
When she looked towards the second door, her tears ceased to flow, butsighs took their place. She often closed her eyes as she stood; andevery time she closed her eyes, a gentle sigh seemed to be born in herheart, and to escape at her lips. But when her eyes were open, hersighs were deep and very sad, and shook her whole frame. Then she turnedtowards the third door, and a cry as of fear or suppressed pain brokefrom her; but she seemed to hearten herself against the dismay, andto front it steadily; for, although I often heard a slight cry, andsometimes a moan, yet she never moved or bent her head, and I felt surethat her eyes never closed. Then she turned to the fourth door, andI saw her shudder, and then stand still as a statue; till at last sheturned towards me and approached the fire. I saw that her face was whiteas death. But she gave one look upwards, and smiled the sweetest, mostchild-innocent smile; then heaped fresh wood on the fire, and, sittingdown by the blaze, drew her wheel near her, and began to spin. Whileshe spun, she murmured a low strange song, to which the hum of the wheelmade a kind of infinite symphony. At length she paused in her spinningand singing, and glanced towards me, like a mother who looks whetheror not her child gives signs of waking. She smiled when she saw that myeyes were open. I asked her whether it was day yet. She answered, “It isalways day here, so long as I keep my fire burning.”
I felt wonderfully refreshed; and a great desire to see more of theisland awoke within me. I rose, and saying that I wished to look aboutme, went towards the door by which I had entered.
“Stay a moment,” said my hostess, with some trepidation in her voice.“Listen to me. You will not see what you expect when you go out of thatdoor. Only remember this: whenever you wish to come back to me, enterwherever you see this mark.”
She held up her left hand between me and the fire. Upon the palm, whichappeared almost transparent, I saw, in dark red, a mark like this -->which I took care to fix in my mind.
She then kissed me, and bade me good-bye with a solemnity that awed me;and bewildered me too, seeing I was only going out for a little ramblein an island
, which I did not believe larger than could easily becompassed in a few hours’ walk at most. As I went she resumed herspinning.
I opened the door, and stepped out. The moment my foot touched thesmooth sward, I seemed to issue from the door of an old barn on myfather’s estate, where, in the hot afternoons, I used to go and lieamongst the straw, and read. It seemed to me now that I had been asleepthere. At a little distance in the field, I saw two of my brothers atplay. The moment they caught sight of me, they called out to me to comeand join them, which I did; and we played together as we had done yearsago, till the red sun went down in the west, and the gray fog beganto rise from the river. Then we went home together with a strangehappiness. As we went, we heard the continually renewed larum of alandrail in the long grass. One of my brothers and I separated to alittle distance, and each commenced running towards the part whence thesound appeared to come, in the hope of approaching the spot where thebird was, and so getting at least a sight of it, if we should not beable to capture the little creature. My father’s voice recalled us fromtrampling down the rich long grass, soon to be cut down and laid asidefor the winter. I had quite forgotten all about Fairy Land, and thewonderful old woman, and the curious red mark.
My favourite brother and I shared the same bed. Some childish disputearose between us; and our last words, ere we fell asleep, were not ofkindness, notwithstanding the pleasures of the day. When I woke in themorning, I missed him. He had risen early, and had gone to bathe in theriver. In another hour, he was brought home drowned. Alas! alas! if wehad only gone to sleep as usual, the one with his arm about the other!Amidst the horror of the moment, a strange conviction flashed across mymind, that I had gone through the very same once before.
I rushed out of the house, I knew not why, sobbing and crying bitterly.I ran through the fields in aimless distress, till, passing the oldbarn, I caught sight of a red mark on the door. The merest triflessometimes rivet the attention in the deepest misery; the intellect hasso little to do with grief. I went up to look at this mark, which I didnot remember ever to have seen before. As I looked at it, I thought Iwould go in and lie down amongst the straw, for I was very weary withrunning about and weeping. I opened the door; and there in the cottagesat the old woman as I had left her, at her spinning-wheel.
“I did not expect you quite so soon,” she said, as I shut the doorbehind me. I went up to the couch, and threw myself on it with thatfatigue wherewith one awakes from a feverish dream of hopeless grief.
The old woman sang:
The great sun, benighted, May faint from the sky; But love, once uplighted, Will never more die.
Form, with its brightness, From eyes will depart: It walketh, in whiteness, The halls of the heart.
Ere she had ceased singing, my courage had returned. I started from thecouch, and, without taking leave of the old woman, opened the door ofSighs, and sprang into what should appear.
I stood in a lordly hall, where, by a blazing fire on the hearth, sat alady, waiting, I knew, for some one long desired. A mirror was near me,but I saw that my form had no place within its depths, so I feared notthat I should be seen. The lady wonderfully resembled my marble lady,but was altogether of the daughters of men, and I could not tell whetheror not it was she.
It was not for me she waited. The tramp of a great horse rang throughthe court without. It ceased, and the clang of armour told that hisrider alighted, and the sound of his ringing heels approached the hall.The door opened; but the lady waited, for she would meet her lord alone.He strode in: she flew like a home-bound dove into his arms, and nestledon the hard steel. It was the knight of the soiled armour. But now thearmour shone like polished glass; and strange to tell, though the mirrorreflected not my form, I saw a dim shadow of myself in the shiningsteel.
“O my beloved, thou art come, and I am blessed.”
Her soft fingers speedily overcame the hard clasp of his helmet; one byone she undid the buckles of his armour; and she toiled under theweight of the mail, as she WOULD carry it aside. Then she unclaspedhis greaves, and unbuckled his spurs; and once more she sprang intohis arms, and laid her head where she could now feel the beating of hisheart. Then she disengaged herself from his embrace, and, moving back astep or two, gazed at him. He stood there a mighty form, crowned with anoble head, where all sadness had disappeared, or had been absorbed insolemn purpose. Yet I suppose that he looked more thoughtful thanthe lady had expected to see him, for she did not renew her caresses,although his face glowed with love, and the few words he spoke wereas mighty deeds for strength; but she led him towards the hearth, andseated him in an ancient chair, and set wine before him, and sat at hisfeet.
“I am sad,” he said, “when I think of the youth whom I met twice in theforests of Fairy Land; and who, you say, twice, with his songs, rousedyou from the death-sleep of an evil enchantment. There was somethingnoble in him, but it was a nobleness of thought, and not of deed. He mayyet perish of vile fear.”
“Ah!” returned the lady, “you saved him once, and for that I thank you;for may I not say that I somewhat loved him? But tell me how you fared,when you struck your battle-axe into the ash-tree, and he came and foundyou; for so much of the story you had told me, when the beggar-childcame and took you away.”
“As soon as I saw him,” rejoined the knight, “I knew that earthly armsavailed not against such as he; and that my soul must meet him in itsnaked strength. So I unclasped my helm, and flung it on the ground; and,holding my good axe yet in my hand, gazed at him with steady eyes. Onhe came, a horror indeed, but I did not flinch. Endurance must conquer,where force could not reach. He came nearer and nearer, till the ghastlyface was close to mine. A shudder as of death ran through me; but Ithink I did not move, for he seemed to quail, and retreated. As soonas he gave back, I struck one more sturdy blow on the stem of his tree,that the forest rang; and then looked at him again. He writhed andgrinned with rage and apparent pain, and again approached me, butretreated sooner than before. I heeded him no more, but hewed with awill at the tree, till the trunk creaked, and the head bowed, and with acrash it fell to the earth. Then I looked up from my labour, and lo! thespectre had vanished, and I saw him no more; nor ever in my wanderingshave I heard of him again.”
“Well struck! well withstood! my hero,” said the lady.
“But,” said the knight, somewhat troubled, “dost thou love the youthstill?”
“Ah!” she replied, “how can I help it? He woke me from worse than death;he loved me. I had never been for thee, if he had not sought me first.But I love him not as I love thee. He was but the moon of my night; thouart the sun of my day, O beloved.”
“Thou art right,” returned the noble man. “It were hard, indeed, not tohave some love in return for such a gift as he hath given thee. I, too,owe him more than words can speak.”
Humbled before them, with an aching and desolate heart, I yet could notrestrain my words:
“Let me, then, be the moon of thy night still, O woman! And when thy dayis beclouded, as the fairest days will be, let some song of mine comfortthee, as an old, withered, half-forgotten thing, that belongs to anancient mournful hour of uncompleted birth, which yet was beautiful inits time.”
They sat silent, and I almost thought they were listening. The colour ofthe lady’s eyes grew deeper and deeper; the slow tears grew, and filledthem, and overflowed. They rose, and passed, hand in hand, closeto where I stood; and each looked towards me in passing. Then theydisappeared through a door which closed behind them; but, ere it closed,I saw that the room into which it opened was a rich chamber, hung withgorgeous arras. I stood with an ocean of sighs frozen in my bosom. Icould remain no longer. She was near me, and I could not see her; nearme in the arms of one loved better than I, and I would not see her, andI would not be by her. But how to escape from the nearness of the bestbeloved? I had not this time forgotten the mark; for the fact that Icould not enter the sphere of these living beings kept me
aware that,for me, I moved in a vision, while they moved in life. I looked allabout for the mark, but could see it nowhere; for I avoided lookingjust where it was. There the dull red cipher glowed, on the very door oftheir secret chamber. Struck with agony, I dashed it open, and fell atthe feet of the ancient woman, who still spun on, the whole dissolvedocean of my sighs bursting from me in a storm of tearless sobs. WhetherI fainted or slept, I do not know; but, as I returned to consciousness,before I seemed to have power to move, I heard the woman singing, andcould distinguish the words:
O light of dead and of dying days! O Love! in thy glory go, In a rosy mist and a moony maze, O’er the pathless peaks of snow.
But what is left for the cold gray soul, That moans like a wounded dove? One wine is left in the broken bowl!-- ‘Tis--TO LOVE, AND LOVE AND LOVE.
Now I could weep. When she saw me weeping, she sang:
Better to sit at the waters’ birth, Than a sea of waves to win; To live in the love that floweth forth, Than the love that cometh in.
Be thy heart a well of love, my child, Flowing, and free, and sure; For a cistern of love, though undefiled, Keeps not the spirit pure.
I rose from the earth, loving the white lady as I had never loved herbefore.
Then I walked up to the door of Dismay, and opened it, and went out. Andlo! I came forth upon a crowded street, where men and women went toand fro in multitudes. I knew it well; and, turning to one hand, walkedsadly along the pavement. Suddenly I saw approaching me, a little wayoff, a form well known to me (WELL-KNOWN!--alas, how weak the word!) inthe years when I thought my boyhood was left behind, and shortly beforeI entered the realm of Fairy Land. Wrong and Sorrow had gone together,hand-in-hand as it is well they do.
Unchangeably dear was that face. It lay in my heart as a child lies inits own white bed; but I could not meet her.
“Anything but that,” I said, and, turning aside, sprang up the stepsto a door, on which I fancied I saw the mystic sign. I entered--not themysterious cottage, but her home. I rushed wildly on, and stood by thedoor of her room.
“She is out,” I said, “I will see the old room once more.”
I opened the door gently, and stood in a great solemn church. Adeep-toned bell, whose sounds throbbed and echoed and swam through theempty building, struck the hour of midnight. The moon shone throughthe windows of the clerestory, and enough of the ghostly radiance wasdiffused through the church to let me see, walking with a stately, yetsomewhat trailing and stumbling step, down the opposite aisle, for Istood in one of the transepts, a figure dressed in a white robe, whetherfor the night, or for that longer night which lies too deep for the day,I could not tell. Was it she? and was this her chamber? I crossed thechurch, and followed. The figure stopped, seemed to ascend as it werea high bed, and lay down. I reached the place where it lay, glimmeringwhite. The bed was a tomb. The light was too ghostly to see clearly, butI passed my hand over the face and the hands and the feet, which wereall bare. They were cold--they were marble, but I knew them. It grewdark. I turned to retrace my steps, but found, ere long, that I hadwandered into what seemed a little chapel. I groped about, seeking thedoor. Everything I touched belonged to the dead. My hands fell on thecold effigy of a knight who lay with his legs crossed and his swordbroken beside him. He lay in his noble rest, and I lived on in ignoblestrife. I felt for the left hand and a certain finger; I found there thering I knew: he was one of my own ancestors. I was in the chapel overthe burial-vault of my race. I called aloud: “If any of the dead aremoving here, let them take pity upon me, for I, alas! am still alive;and let some dead woman comfort me, for I am a stranger in the land ofthe dead, and see no light.” A warm kiss alighted on my lips throughthe dark. And I said, “The dead kiss well; I will not be afraid.” And agreat hand was reached out of the dark, and grasped mine for a moment,mightily and tenderly. I said to myself: “The veil between, though verydark, is very thin.”
Groping my way further, I stumbled over the heavy stone that covered theentrance of the vault: and, in stumbling, descried upon the stone themark, glowing in red fire. I caught the great ring. All my effort couldnot have moved the huge slab; but it opened the door of the cottage, andI threw myself once more, pale and speechless, on the couch beside theancient dame. She sang once more:
Thou dreamest: on a rock thou art, High o’er the broken wave; Thou fallest with a fearful start But not into thy grave; For, waking in the morning’s light, Thou smilest at the vanished night
So wilt thou sink, all pale and dumb, Into the fainting gloom; But ere the coming terrors come, Thou wak’st--where is the tomb? Thou wak’st--the dead ones smile above, With hovering arms of sleepless love.
She paused; then sang again:
We weep for gladness, weep for grief; The tears they are the same; We sigh for longing, and relief; The sighs have but one name,
And mingled in the dying strife, Are moans that are not sad The pangs of death are throbs of life, Its sighs are sometimes glad.
The face is very strange and white: It is Earth’s only spot That feebly flickers back the light The living seeth not.
I fell asleep, and slept a dreamless sleep, for I know not howlong. When I awoke, I found that my hostess had moved from where she hadbeen sitting, and now sat between me and the fourth door.
I guessed that her design was to prevent my entering there. I sprangfrom the couch, and darted past her to the door. I opened it at once andwent out. All I remember is a cry of distress from the woman: “Don’t gothere, my child! Don’t go there!” But I was gone.
I knew nothing more; or, if I did, I had forgot it all when I awoke toconsciousness, lying on the floor of the cottage, with my head in thelap of the woman, who was weeping over me, and stroking my hair withboth hands, talking to me as a mother might talk to a sick and sleeping,or a dead child. As soon as I looked up and saw her, she smiledthrough her tears; smiled with withered face and young eyes, till hercountenance was irradiated with the light of the smile. Then she bathedmy head and face and hands in an icy cold, colourless liquid, whichsmelt a little of damp earth. Immediately I was able to sit up. She roseand put some food before me. When I had eaten, she said: “Listen to me,my child. You must leave me directly!”
“Leave you!” I said. “I am so happy with you. I never was so happy in mylife.”
“But you must go,” she rejoined sadly. “Listen! What do you hear?”
“I hear the sound as of a great throbbing of water.”
“Ah! you do hear it? Well, I had to go through that door--the door ofthe Timeless” (and she shuddered as she pointed to the fourth door)--“tofind you; for if I had not gone, you would never have entered again;and because I went, the waters around my cottage will rise and rise,and flow and come, till they build a great firmament of waters over mydwelling. But as long as I keep my fire burning, they cannot enter.I have fuel enough for years; and after one year they will sink awayagain, and be just as they were before you came. I have not been buriedfor a hundred years now.” And she smiled and wept.
“Alas! alas!” I cried. “I have brought this evil on the best and kindestof friends, who has filled my heart with great gifts.”
“Do not think of that,” she rejoined. “I can bear it very well. You willcome back to me some day, I know. But I beg you, for my sake, mydear child, to do one thing. In whatever sorrow you may be, howeverinconsolable and irremediable it may appear, believe me that the oldwoman in the cottage, with the young eyes” (and she smiled), “knowssomething, though she must not always tell it, that would quite satisfyyou about it, even in the worst moments of your distress. Now you mustgo.”
“But how can I go, if t
he waters are all about, and if the doors alllead into other regions and other worlds?”
“This is not an island,” she replied; “but is joined to the land by anarrow neck; and for the door, I will lead you myself through the rightone.”
She took my hand, and led me through the third door; whereupon I foundmyself standing in the deep grassy turf on which I had landed from thelittle boat, but upon the opposite side of the cottage. She pointed outthe direction I must take, to find the isthmus and escape the risingwaters.
Then putting her arms around me, she held me to her bosom; and as Ikissed her, I felt as if I were leaving my mother for the first time,and could not help weeping bitterly. At length she gently pushed meaway, and with the words, “Go, my son, and do something worth doing,” turned back, and, entering the cottage, closed the door behind her. Ifelt very desolate as I went.