Chương Chương 7 · Chapter VII

. Chapter VII

“Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew sayes,

A little I am hurt, but yett not slaine;

I’le but lye downe and bleede awhile,

And then I’le rise and fight againe.”

BALLAD _of Sir Andrew Barton_.

But I could not remain where I was any longer, though the daylight was

hateful to me, and the thought of the great, innocent, bold sunrise

unendurable. Here there was no well to cool my face, smarting with the

bitterness of my own tears. Nor would I have washed in the well of that

grotto, had it flowed clear as the rivers of Paradise. I rose, and

feebly left the sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not whither, but

still towards the sunrise. The birds were singing; but not for me. All

the creatures spoke a language of their own, with which I had nothing

to do, and to which I cared not to find the key any more.

I walked listlessly along. What distressed me most—more even than my

own folly—was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness

dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and her face of

dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a

living, walking sepulchre, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt

notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered

with undiminished perplexity, though not without some gain. Then I

began to make surmises as to the mode of my deliverance; and concluded

that some hero, wandering in search of adventure, had heard how the

forest was infested; and, knowing it was useless to attack the evil

thing in person, had assailed with his battle-axe the body in which he

dwelt, and on which he was dependent for his power of mischief in the

wood. “Very likely,” I thought, “the repentant-knight, who warned me of

the evil which has befallen me, was busy retrieving his lost honour,

while I was sinking into the same sorrow with himself; and, hearing of

the dangerous and mysterious being, arrived at his tree in time to save

me from being dragged to its roots, and buried like carrion, to nourish

him for yet deeper insatiableness.” I found afterwards that my

conjecture was correct. I wondered how he had fared when his blows

recalled the Ash himself, and that too I learned afterwards.

I walked on the whole day, with intervals of rest, but without food;

for I could not have eaten, had any been offered me; till, in the

afternoon, I seemed to approach the outskirts of the forest, and at

length arrived at a farm-house. An unspeakable joy arose in my heart at

beholding an abode of human beings once more, and I hastened up to the

door, and knocked. A kind-looking, matronly woman, still handsome, made

her appearance; who, as soon as she saw me, said kindly, “Ah, my poor

boy, you have come from the wood! Were you in it last night?”

I should have ill endured, the day before, to be called _boy_; but now

the motherly kindness of the word went to my heart; and, like a boy

indeed, I burst into tears. She soothed me right gently; and, leading

me into a room, made me lie down on a settle, while she went to find me

some refreshment. She soon returned with food, but I could not eat. She

almost compelled me to swallow some wine, when I revived sufficiently

to be able to answer some of her questions. I told her the whole story.

“It is just as I feared,” she said; “but you are now for the night

beyond the reach of any of these dreadful creatures. It is no wonder

they could delude a child like you. But I must beg you, when my husband

comes in, not to say a word about these things; for he thinks me even

half crazy for believing anything of the sort. But I must believe my

senses, as he cannot believe beyond his, which give him no intimations

of this kind. I think he could spend the whole of Midsummer-eve in the

wood and come back with the report that he saw nothing worse than

himself. Indeed, good man, he would hardly find anything better than

himself, if he had seven more senses given him.”

“But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart

at all—without any place even for a heart to live in.”

“I cannot quite tell,” she said; “but I am sure she would not look so

beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful

than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her

before you saw her beauty, mistaking her for the lady of the

marble—another kind altogether, I should think. But the chief thing

that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she

loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her

desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love

either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through

the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a

self-destructive beauty, though; for it is that which is constantly

wearing her away within, till, at last, the decay will reach her face,

and her whole front, when all the lovely mask of nothing will fall to

pieces, and she be vanished for ever. So a wise man, whom she met in

the wood some years ago, and who, I think, for all his wisdom, fared no

better than you, told me, when, like you, he spent the next night here,

and recounted to me his adventures.”

I thanked her very warmly for her solution, though it was but partial;

wondering much that in her, as in the woman I met on my first entering the

forest, there should be such superiority to her apparent condition.

Here she left me to take some rest; though, indeed, I was too much

agitated to rest in any other way than by simply ceasing to move.

In half an hour, I heard a heavy step approach and enter the house. A

jolly voice, whose slight huskiness appeared to proceed from overmuch

laughter, called out “Betsy, the pigs’ trough is quite empty, and that

is a pity. Let them swill, lass! They’re of no use but to get fat. Ha!

ha! ha! Gluttony is not forbidden in their commandments. Ha! ha! ha!”

The very voice, kind and jovial, seemed to disrobe the room of the

strange look which all new places wear—to disenchant it out of the

realm of the ideal into that of the actual. It began to look as if I

had known every corner of it for twenty years; and when, soon after,

the dame came and fetched me to partake of their early supper, the

grasp of his great hand, and the harvest-moon of his benevolent face,

which was needed to light up the rotundity of the globe beneath it,

produced such a reaction in me, that, for a moment, I could hardly

believe that there was a Fairy Land; and that all I had passed through

since I left home, had not been the wandering dream of a diseased

imagination, operating on a too mobile frame, not merely causing me

indeed to travel, but peopling for me with vague phantoms the regions

through which my actual steps had led me. But the next moment my eye

fell upon a little girl who was sitting in the chimney-corner, with a

little book open on her knee, from which she had apparently just looked

up to fix great inquiring eyes upon me. I believed in Fairy Land again.

She went on with her reading, as soon as she saw that I observed her

looking at me. I went near, and peeping over her shoulder, saw that she

was reading _The History of Graciosa and Percinet_.

“Very improving book, sir,” remarked the old farmer, with a

good-humoured laugh. “We are in the very hottest corner of Fairy Land

here. Ha! ha! Stormy night, last night, sir.”

“Was it, indeed?” I rejoined. “It was not so with me. A lovelier night

I never saw.”

“Indeed! Where were you last night?”

“I spent it in the forest. I had lost my way.”

“Ah! then, perhaps, you will be able to convince my good woman, that

there is nothing very remarkable about the forest; for, to tell the

truth, it bears but a bad name in these parts. I dare say you saw

nothing worse than yourself there?”

“I hope I did,” was my inward reply; but, for an audible one, I

contented myself with saying, “Why, I certainly did see some

appearances I could hardly account for; but that is nothing to be

wondered at in an unknown wild forest, and with the uncertain light of

the moon alone to go by.”

“Very true! you speak like a sensible man, sir. We have but few

sensible folks round about us. Now, you would hardly credit it, but my

wife believes every fairy-tale that ever was written. I cannot account

for it. She is a most sensible woman in everything else.”

“But should not that make you treat her belief with something of

respect, though you cannot share in it yourself?”

“Yes, that is all very well in theory; but when you come to live every

day in the midst of absurdity, it is far less easy to behave

respectfully to it. Why, my wife actually believes the story of the

‘White Cat.’ You know it, I dare say.”

“I read all these tales when a child, and know that one especially

well.”

“But, father,” interposed the little girl in the chimney-corner, “you

know quite well that mother is descended from that very princess who

was changed by the wicked fairy into a white cat. Mother has told me so

a many times, and you ought to believe everything she says.”

“I can easily believe that,” rejoined the farmer, with another fit of

laughter; “for, the other night, a mouse came gnawing and scratching

beneath the floor, and would not let us go to sleep. Your mother sprang

out of bed, and going as near it as she could, mewed so infernally like

a great cat, that the noise ceased instantly. I believe the poor mouse

died of the fright, for we have never heard it again. Ha! ha! ha!”

The son, an ill-looking youth, who had entered during the conversation,

joined in his father’s laugh; but his laugh was very different from the

old man’s: it was polluted with a sneer. I watched him, and saw that,

as soon as it was over, he looked scared, as if he dreaded some evil

consequences to follow his presumption. The woman stood near, waiting

till we should seat ourselves at the table, and listening to it all

with an amused air, which had something in it of the look with which

one listens to the sententious remarks of a pompous child. We sat down

to supper, and I ate heartily. My bygone distresses began already to

look far off.

“In what direction are you going?” asked the old man.

“Eastward,” I replied; nor could I have given a more definite answer.

“Does the forest extend much further in that direction?”

“Oh! for miles and miles; I do not know how far. For although I have

lived on the borders of it all my life, I have been too busy to make

journeys of discovery into it. Nor do I see what I could discover. It

is only trees and trees, till one is sick of them. By the way, if you

follow the eastward track from here, you will pass close to what the

children say is the very house of the ogre that Hop-o’-my-Thumb

visited, and ate his little daughters with the crowns of gold.”

“Oh, father! ate his little daughters! No; he only changed their gold

crowns for nightcaps; and the great long-toothed ogre killed them in

mistake; but I do not think even he ate them, for you know they were

his own little ogresses.”

“Well, well, child; you know all about it a great deal better than I

do. However, the house has, of course, in such a foolish neighbourhood

as this, a bad enough name; and I must confess there is a woman living

in it, with teeth long enough, and white enough too, for the lineal

descendant of the greatest ogre that ever was made. I think you had

better not go near her.”

In such talk as this the night wore on. When supper was finished, which

lasted some time, my hostess conducted me to my chamber.

“If you had not had enough of it already,” she said, “I would have put

you in another room, which looks towards the forest; and where you

would most likely have seen something more of its inhabitants. For they

frequently pass the window, and even enter the room sometimes. Strange

creatures spend whole nights in it, at certain seasons of the year. I

am used to it, and do not mind it. No more does my little girl, who

sleeps in it always. But this room looks southward towards the open

country, and they never show themselves here; at least I never saw

any.”

I was somewhat sorry not to gather any experience that I might have, of

the inhabitants of Fairy Land; but the effect of the farmer’s company,

and of my own later adventures, was such, that I chose rather an

undisturbed night in my more human quarters; which, with their clean

white curtains and white linen, were very inviting to my weariness.

In the morning I awoke refreshed, after a profound and dreamless sleep.

The sun was high, when I looked out of the window, shining over a wide,

undulating, cultivated country. Various garden-vegetables were growing

beneath my window. Everything was radiant with clear sunlight. The

dew-drops were sparkling their busiest; the cows in a near-by field

were eating as if they had not been at it all day yesterday; the maids

were singing at their work as they passed to and fro between the

out-houses: I did not believe in Fairy Land. I went down, and found the

family already at breakfast. But before I entered the room where they

sat, the little girl came to me, and looked up in my face, as though

she wanted to say something to me. I stooped towards her; she put her

arms round my neck, and her mouth to my ear, and whispered—

“A white lady has been flitting about the house all night.”

“No whispering behind doors!” cried the farmer; and we entered

together. “Well, how have you slept? No bogies, eh?”

“Not one, thank you; I slept uncommonly well.”

“I am glad to hear it. Come and breakfast.”

After breakfast, the farmer and his son went out; and I was left alone

with the mother and daughter.

“When I looked out of the window this morning,” I said, “I felt almost

certain that Fairy Land was all a delusion of my brain; but whenever I

come near you or your little daughter, I feel differently. Yet I could

persuade myself, after my last adventures, to go back, and have nothing

more to do with such strange beings.”

“How will you go back?” said the woman.

“Nay, that I do not know.”

“Because I have heard, that, for those who enter Fairy Land, there is

no way of going back. They must go on, and go through it. How, I do not

in the least know.”

“That is quite the impression on my own mind. Something compels me to

go on, as if my only path was onward, but I feel less inclined this

morning to continue my adventures.”

“Will you come and see my little child’s room? She sleeps in the one I

told you of, looking towards the forest.”

“Willingly,” I said.

So we went together, the little girl running before to open the door

for us. It was a large room, full of old-fashioned furniture, that

seemed to have once belonged to some great house.

The window was built with a low arch, and filled with lozenge-shaped

panes. The wall was very thick, and built of solid stone. I could see

that part of the house had been erected against the remains of some old

castle or abbey, or other great building; the fallen stones of which

had probably served to complete it. But as soon as I looked out of the

window, a gush of wonderment and longing flowed over my soul like the

tide of a great sea. Fairy Land lay before me, and drew me towards it

with an irresistible attraction. The trees bathed their great heads in

the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom;

save where on the borders the sunshine broke against their stems, or

swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue

all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the

decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the

long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over

which it passed in motionless rivers of light. I turned hurriedly to

bid my hostess farewell without further delay. She smiled at my haste,

but with an anxious look.

“You had better not go near the house of the ogre, I think. My son will

show you into another path, which will join the first beyond it.”

Not wishing to be headstrong or too confident any more, I agreed; and

having taken leave of my kind entertainers, went into the wood,

accompanied by the youth. He scarcely spoke as we went along; but he

led me through the trees till we struck upon a path. He told me to

follow it, and, with a muttered “good morning” left me.