Kabanata Kabanata 9 · Chapter IX

. Chapter IX

“O lady! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live:

Ours is her wedding garments ours her shroud!

. . . . .

Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud,

Enveloping the Earth—

And from the soul itself must there be sent

A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element!”

COLERIDGE.

From this time, until I arrived at the palace of Fairy Land, I can

attempt no consecutive account of my wanderings and adventures.

Everything, henceforward, existed for me in its relation to my

attendant. What influence he exercised upon everything into contact

with which I was brought, may be understood from a few detached

instances. To begin with this very day on which he first joined me:

after I had walked heartlessly along for two or three hours, I was very

weary, and lay down to rest in a most delightful part of the forest,

carpeted with wild flowers. I lay for half an hour in a dull repose,

and then got up to pursue my way. The flowers on the spot where I had

lain were crushed to the earth: but I saw that they would soon lift

their heads and rejoice again in the sun and air. Not so those on which

my shadow had lain. The very outline of it could be traced in the

withered lifeless grass, and the scorched and shrivelled flowers which

stood there, dead, and hopeless of any resurrection. I shuddered, and

hastened away with sad forebodings.

In a few days, I had reason to dread an extension of its baleful

influences from the fact, that it was no longer confined to one

position in regard to myself. Hitherto, when seized with an

irresistible desire to look on my evil demon (which longing would

unaccountably seize me at any moment, returning at longer or shorter

intervals, sometimes every minute), I had to turn my head backwards,

and look over my shoulder; in which position, as long as I could retain

it, I was fascinated. But one day, having come out on a clear grassy

hill, which commanded a glorious prospect, though of what I cannot now

tell, my shadow moved round, and came in front of me. And, presently, a

new manifestation increased my distress. For it began to coruscate, and

shoot out on all sides a radiation of dim shadow. These rays of gloom

issued from the central shadow as from a black sun, lengthening and

shortening with continual change. But wherever a ray struck, that part

of earth, or sea, or sky, became void, and desert, and sad to my heart.

On this, the first development of its new power, one ray shot out

beyond the rest, seeming to lengthen infinitely, until it smote the

great sun on the face, which withered and darkened beneath the blow. I

turned away and went on. The shadow retreated to its former position;

and when I looked again, it had drawn in all its spears of darkness,

and followed like a dog at my heels.

Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy child,

with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the tube through

which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds the same thing

everywhere; the other that through which he looks when he combines into

new forms of loveliness those images of beauty which his own choice has

gathered from all regions wherein he has travelled. Round the child’s

head was an aureole of emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and

delight, round crept from behind me the something dark, and the child

stood in my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy, with a rough

broad-brimmed straw hat, through which brim the sun shone from behind.

The toys he carried were a multiplying-glass and a kaleidoscope. I

sighed and departed.

One evening, as a great silent flood of western gold flowed through an

avenue in the woods, down the stream, just as when I saw him first,

came the sad knight, riding on his chestnut steed.

But his armour did not shine half so red as when I saw him first.

Many a blow of mighty sword and axe, turned aside by the strength of

his mail, and glancing adown the surface, had swept from its path the

fretted rust, and the glorious steel had answered the kindly blow with

the thanks of returning light. These streaks and spots made his armour

look like the floor of a forest in the sunlight. His forehead was

higher than before, for the contracting wrinkles were nearly gone; and

the sadness that remained on his face was the sadness of a dewy summer

twilight, not that of a frosty autumn morn. He, too, had met the

Alder-maiden as I, but he had plunged into the torrent of mighty deeds,

and the stain was nearly washed away. No shadow followed him. He had

not entered the dark house; he had not had time to open the closet

door. “Will he ever look in?” I said to myself. “_Must_ his shadow find

him some day?” But I could not answer my own questions.

We travelled together for two days, and I began to love him. It was

plain that he suspected my story in some degree; and I saw him once or

twice looking curiously and anxiously at my attendant gloom, which all

this time had remained very obsequiously behind me; but I offered no

explanation, and he asked none. Shame at my neglect of his warning, and

a horror which shrunk from even alluding to its cause, kept me silent;

till, on the evening of the second day, some noble words from my

companion roused all my heart; and I was at the point of falling on his

neck, and telling him the whole story; seeking, if not for helpful

advice, for of that I was hopeless, yet for the comfort of

sympathy—when round slid the shadow and inwrapt my friend; and I could

not trust him.

The glory of his brow vanished; the light of his eye grew cold; and I

held my peace. The next morning we parted.

But the most dreadful thing of all was, that I now began to feel

something like satisfaction in the presence of the shadow. I began to

be rather vain of my attendant, saying to myself, “In a land like this,

with so many illusions everywhere, I need his aid to disenchant the

things around me. He does away with all appearances, and shows me

things in their true colour and form. And I am not one to be fooled

with the vanities of the common crowd. I will not see beauty where

there is none. I will dare to behold things as they are. And if I live

in a waste instead of a paradise, I will live knowing where I live.”

But of this a certain exercise of his power which soon followed quite

cured me, turning my feelings towards him once more into loathing and

distrust. It was thus:

One bright noon, a little maiden joined me, coming through the wood in

a direction at right angles to my path. She came along singing and

dancing, happy as a child, though she seemed almost a woman. In her

hands—now in one, now in another—she carried a small globe, bright and

clear as the purest crystal. This seemed at once her plaything and her

greatest treasure. At one moment, you would have thought her utterly

careless of it, and at another, overwhelmed with anxiety for its

safety. But I believe she was taking care of it all the time, perhaps

not least when least occupied about it. She stopped by me with a smile,

and bade me good day with the sweetest voice. I felt a wonderful liking

to the child—for she produced on me more the impression of a child,

though my understanding told me differently. We talked a little, and

then walked on together in the direction I had been pursuing. I asked

her about the globe she carried, but getting no definite answer, I held

out my hand to take it. She drew back, and said, but smiling almost

invitingly the while, “You must not touch it;”—then, after a moment’s

pause—“Or if you do, it must be very gently.” I touched it with a

finger. A slight vibratory motion arose in it, accompanied, or perhaps

manifested, by a faint sweet sound. I touched it again, and the sound

increased. I touched it the third time: a tiny torrent of harmony

rolled out of the little globe. She would not let me touch it any more.

We travelled on together all that day. She left me when twilight came

on; but next day, at noon, she met me as before, and again we travelled

till evening. The third day she came once more at noon, and we walked

on together. Now, though we had talked about a great many things

connected with Fairy Land, and the life she had led hitherto, I had

never been able to learn anything about the globe. This day, however,

as we went on, the shadow glided round and inwrapt the maiden. It could

not change her. But my desire to know about the globe, which in his

gloom began to waver as with an inward light, and to shoot out flashes

of many-coloured flame, grew irresistible. I put out both my hands and

laid hold of it. It began to sound as before. The sound rapidly

increased, till it grew a low tempest of harmony, and the globe

trembled, and quivered, and throbbed between my hands. I had not the

heart to pull it away from the maiden, though I held it in spite of her

attempts to take it from me; yes, I shame to say, in spite of her

prayers, and, at last, her tears. The music went on growing in,

intensity and complication of tones, and the globe vibrated and heaved;

till at last it burst in our hands, and a black vapour broke upwards

from out of it; then turned, as if blown sideways, and enveloped the

maiden, hiding even the shadow in its blackness. She held fast the

fragments, which I abandoned, and fled from me into the forest in the

direction whence she had come, wailing like a child, and crying, “You

have broken my globe; my globe is broken—my globe is broken!” I

followed her, in the hope of comforting her; but had not pursued her

far, before a sudden cold gust of wind bowed the tree-tops above us,

and swept through their stems around us; a great cloud overspread the

day, and a fierce tempest came on, in which I lost sight of her. It

lies heavy on my heart to this hour. At night, ere I fall asleep,

often, whatever I may be thinking about, I suddenly hear her voice,

crying out, “You have broken my globe; my globe is broken; ah, my

globe!”

Here I will mention one more strange thing; but whether this

peculiarity was owing to my shadow at all, I am not able to assure

myself. I came to a village, the inhabitants of which could not at

first sight be distinguished from the dwellers in our land. They rather

avoided than sought my company, though they were very pleasant when I

addressed them. But at last I observed, that whenever I came within a

certain distance of any one of them, which distance, however, varied

with different individuals, the whole appearance of the person began to

change; and this change increased in degree as I approached. When I

receded to the former distance, the former appearance was restored. The

nature of the change was grotesque, following no fixed rule. The

nearest resemblance to it that I know, is the distortion produced in

your countenance when you look at it as reflected in a concave or

convex surface—say, either side of a bright spoon. Of this phenomenon I

first became aware in rather a ludicrous way. My host’s daughter was a

very pleasant pretty girl, who made herself more agreeable to me than

most of those about me. For some days my companion-shadow had been less

obtrusive than usual; and such was the reaction of spirits occasioned

by the simple mitigation of torment, that, although I had cause enough

besides to be gloomy, I felt light and comparatively happy. My

impression is, that she was quite aware of the law of appearances that

existed between the people of the place and myself, and had resolved to

amuse herself at my expense; for one evening, after some jesting and

raillery, she, somehow or other, provoked me to attempt to kiss her.

But she was well defended from any assault of the kind. Her countenance

became, of a sudden, absurdly hideous; the pretty mouth was elongated

and otherwise amplified sufficiently to have allowed of six

simultaneous kisses. I started back in bewildered dismay; she burst

into the merriest fit of laughter, and ran from the room. I soon found

that the same undefinable law of change operated between me and all the

other villagers; and that, to feel I was in pleasant company, it was

absolutely necessary for me to discover and observe the right focal

distance between myself and each one with whom I had to do. This done,

all went pleasantly enough. Whether, when I happened to neglect this

precaution, I presented to them an equally ridiculous appearance, I did

not ascertain; but I presume that the alteration was common to the

approximating parties. I was likewise unable to determine whether I was

a necessary party to the production of this strange transformation, or

whether it took place as well, under the given circumstances, between

the inhabitants themselves.