CHAPTER I
“A spirit . . . . . . . . . The undulating and silent well, And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom, Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming, Held commune with him; as if he and it Were all that was.” SHELLEY’S Alastor.
I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompaniesthe return of consciousness. As I lay and looked through the easternwindow of my room, a faint streak of peach-colour, dividing a cloud thatjust rose above the low swell of the horizon, announced the approach ofthe sun. As my thoughts, which a deep and apparently dreamless sleep haddissolved, began again to assume crystalline forms, the strange eventsof the foregoing night presented themselves anew to my wonderingconsciousness. The day before had been my one-and-twentieth birthday.Among other ceremonies investing me with my legal rights, the keys of anold secretary, in which my father had kept his private papers, had beendelivered up to me. As soon as I was left alone, I ordered lights in thechamber where the secretary stood, the first lights that had been therefor many a year; for, since my father’s death, the room had been leftundisturbed. But, as if the darkness had been too long an inmate tobe easily expelled, and had dyed with blackness the walls to which,bat-like, it had clung, these tapers served but ill to light up thegloomy hangings, and seemed to throw yet darker shadows into the hollowsof the deep-wrought cornice. All the further portions of the room layshrouded in a mystery whose deepest folds were gathered around the darkoak cabinet which I now approached with a strange mingling of reverenceand curiosity. Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up tothe light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its fossilremains charred by passion and petrified by tears. Perhaps I was tolearn how my father, whose personal history was unknown to me, had wovenhis web of story; how he had found the world, and how the world had lefthim. Perhaps I was to find only the records of lands and moneys, howgotten and how secured; coming down from strange men, and throughtroublous times, to me, who knew little or nothing of them all. To solvemy speculations, and to dispel the awe which was fast gathering aroundme as if the dead were drawing near, I approached the secretary; andhaving found the key that fitted the upper portion, I opened it withsome difficulty, drew near it a heavy high-backed chair, and sat downbefore a multitude of little drawers and slides and pigeon-holes. Butthe door of a little cupboard in the centre especially attracted myinterest, as if there lay the secret of this long-hidden world. Its keyI found.
One of the rusty hinges cracked and broke as I opened the door: itrevealed a number of small pigeon-holes. These, however, being butshallow compared with the depth of those around the little cupboard, theouter ones reaching to the back of the desk, I concluded that theremust be some accessible space behind; and found, indeed, that they wereformed in a separate framework, which admitted of the whole being pulledout in one piece. Behind, I found a sort of flexible portcullis of smallbars of wood laid close together horizontally. After long search, andtrying many ways to move it, I discovered at last a scarcely projectingpoint of steel on one side. I pressed this repeatedly and hard withthe point of an old tool that was lying near, till at length ityielded inwards; and the little slide, flying up suddenly, disclosed achamber--empty, except that in one corner lay a little heap of witheredrose-leaves, whose long-lived scent had long since departed; and, inanother, a small packet of papers, tied with a bit of ribbon, whosecolour had gone with the rose-scent. Almost fearing to touch them, theywitnessed so mutely to the law of oblivion, I leaned back in my chair,and regarded them for a moment; when suddenly there stood on thethreshold of the little chamber, as though she had just emerged from itsdepth, a tiny woman-form, as perfect in shape as if she had been a smallGreek statuette roused to life and motion. Her dress was of a kind thatcould never grow old-fashioned, because it was simply natural: a robeplaited in a band around the neck, and confined by a belt about thewaist, descended to her feet. It was only afterwards, however, that Itook notice of her dress, although my surprise was by no means of sooverpowering a degree as such an apparition might naturally be expectedto excite. Seeing, however, as I suppose, some astonishment in mycountenance, she came forward within a yard of me, and said, in a voicethat strangely recalled a sensation of twilight, and reedy river banks,and a low wind, even in this deathly room:--
“Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?”
“No,” said I; “and indeed I hardly believe I do now.”
“Ah! that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the firsttime; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you ofwhat you consider in itself unbelievable. I am not going to argue withyou, however, but to grant you a wish.”
Here I could not help interrupting her with the foolish speech,of which, however, I had no cause to repent--
“How can such a very little creature as you grant or refuse anything?”
“Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one-and-twenty years?” said she. “Form is much, but size is nothing. It is a mere matter ofrelation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does not feel altogetherinsignificant, though to others you do look small beside your old UncleRalph, who rises above you a great half-foot at least. But size is of solittle consequence with old me, that I may as well accommodate myself toyour foolish prejudices.”
So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor, where she stood atall, gracious lady, with pale face and large blue eyes. Her dark hairflowed behind, wavy but uncurled, down to her waist, and against it herform stood clear in its robe of white.
“Now,” said she, “you will believe me.”
Overcome with the presence of a beauty which I could now perceive, anddrawn towards her by an attraction irresistible as incomprehensible, Isuppose I stretched out my arms towards her, for she drew back a step ortwo, and said--
“Foolish boy, if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides, I wastwo hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve; and a manmust not fall in love with his grandmother, you know.”
“But you are not my grandmother,” said I.
“How do you know that?” she retorted. “I dare say you know something ofyour great-grandfathers a good deal further back than that; but you knowvery little about your great-grandmothers on either side. Now, to thepoint. Your little sister was reading a fairy-tale to you last night.”
“She was.”
“When she had finished, she said, as she closed the book, ‘Is there afairy-country, brother?’ You replied with a sigh, ‘I suppose there is,if one could find the way into it.’”
“I did; but I meant something quite different from what you seem tothink.”
“Never mind what I seem to think. You shall find the way into Fairy Landto-morrow. Now look in my eyes.”
Eagerly I did so. They filled me with an unknown longing. I rememberedsomehow that my mother died when I was a baby. I looked deeper anddeeper, till they spread around me like seas, and I sank in theirwaters. I forgot all the rest, till I found myself at the window, whosegloomy curtains were withdrawn, and where I stood gazing on a wholeheaven of stars, small and sparkling in the moonlight. Below lay a sea,still as death and hoary in the moon, sweeping into bays and aroundcapes and islands, away, away, I knew not whither. Alas! it was nosea, but a low bog burnished by the moon. “Surely there is such a seasomewhere!” said I to myself. A low sweet voice beside me replied--
“In Fairy Land, Anodos.”
I turned, but saw no one. I closed the secretary, and went to my ownroom, and to bed.
All this I recalled as I lay with half-closed eyes. I was soon to findthe truth of the lady’s promise, that this day I should discover theroad into Fairy Land.