CHAPTER XVI. A GRUESOME DANCE
I rose to resume my journey, and walked many a desert mile. How I longedfor a mountain, or even a tall rock, from whose summit I might seeacross the dismal plain or the dried-up channels to some bordering hope!Yet what could such foresight have availed me? That which is within aman, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in whatis about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event. Foreseeingis not understanding, else surely the prophecy latent in man would comeoftener to the surface!
The sun was half-way to the horizon when I saw before me a rugged rockyascent; but ere I reached it my desire to climb was over, and I longedto lie down. By that time the sun was almost set, and the air had begunto grow dark. At my feet lay a carpet of softest, greenest moss, couchfor a king: I threw myself upon it, and weariness at once began to ebb,for, the moment my head was down, the third time I heard below me manywaters, playing broken airs and ethereal harmonies with the stones oftheir buried channels. Loveliest chaos of music-stuff the harp aquariankept sending up to my ears! What might not a Haendel have done with thatever-recurring gurgle and bell-like drip, to the mingling and mutuallydestructive melodies their common refrain!
As I lay listening, my eyes went wandering up and down the rocky slopeabrupt above me, reading on its face the record that down there, agesago, rushed a cataract, filling the channels that had led me to itsfoot. My heart swelled at the thought of the splendid tumult, wherethe waves danced revelling in helpless fall, to mass their music in oneorgan-roar below. But soon the hidden brooks lulled me to sleep, andtheir lullabies mingled with my dreams.
I woke before the sun, and eagerly climbed to see what lay beyond. Alas,nothing but a desert of finest sand! Not a trace was left of the riverthat had plunged adown the rocks! The powdery drift had filled itscourse to the level of the dreary expanse! As I looked back I saw thatthe river had divided into two branches as it fell, that whose bank Ihad now followed to the foot of the rocky scaur, and that which first Icrossed to the Evil Wood. The wood I descried between the two on thefar horizon. Before me and to the left, the desert stretched beyond myvision, but far to the right I could see a lift in the sky-line, givinghope of the forest to which my hostess had directed me.
I sat down, and sought in my pocket the half-loaf I had brought withme--then first to understand what my hostess had meant concerning it.Verily the bread was not for the morrow: it had shrunk and hardened to astone! I threw it away, and set out again.
About noon I came to a few tamarisk and juniper trees, and then to a fewstunted firs. As I went on, closer thickets and larger firs met me, andat length I was in just such a forest of pines and other trees as thatin which the Little Ones found their babies, and believed I had returnedupon a farther portion of the same. But what mattered WHERE whileEVERYWHERE was the same as NOWHERE! I had not yet, by doing something init, made ANYWHERE into a place! I was not yet alive; I was only dreamingI lived! I was but a consciousness with an outlook! Truly I had beennothing else in the world I had left, but now I knew the fact! I saidto myself that if in this forest I should catch the faint gleam of themirror, I would turn far aside lest it should entrap me unawares, andgive me back to my old existence: here I might learn to be something bydoing something! I could not endure the thought of going back, with somany beginnings and not an end achieved. The Little Ones would meet whatfate was appointed them; the awful witch I should never meet; the deadwould ripen and arise without me; I should but wake to know that I haddreamed, and that all my going was nowhither! I would rather go on andon than come to such a close!
I went deeper into the wood: I was weary, and would rest in it.
The trees were now large, and stood in regular, almost geometric,fashion, with roomy spaces between. There was little undergrowth, andI could see a long way in every direction. The forest was like a greatchurch, solemn and silent and empty, for I met nothing on two feet orfour that day. Now and then, it is true, some swift thing, and againsome slow thing, would cross the space on which my eye happened thatmoment to settle; but it was always at some distance, and only enhancedthe sense of wideness and vacancy. I heard a few birds, and saw plentyof butterflies, some of marvellously gorgeous colouring and combinationsof colour, some of a pure and dazzling whiteness.
Coming to a spot where the pines stood farther apart and gave room forflowering shrubs, and hoping it a sign of some dwelling near, I took thedirection where yet more and more roses grew, for I was hungry after thevoice and face of my kind--after any live soul, indeed, human or not,which I might in some measure understand. What a hell of horror, Ithought, to wander alone, a bare existence never going out of itself,never widening its life in another life, but, bound with the cords ofits poor peculiarities, lying an eternal prisoner in the dungeon of itsown being! I began to learn that it was impossible to live for oneselfeven, save in the presence of others--then, alas, fearfully possible!evil was only through good! selfishness but a parasite on the treeof life! In my own world I had the habit of solitary song; here not acrooning murmur ever parted my lips! There I sang without thinking; hereI thought without singing! there I had never had a bosom-friend; herethe affection of an idiot would be divinely welcome! "If only I had adog to love!" I sighed--and regarded with wonder my past self, whichpreferred the company of book or pen to that of man or woman; which, ifthe author of a tale I was enjoying appeared, would wish him away that Imight return to his story. I had chosen the dead rather than the living,the thing thought rather than the thing thinking! "Any man," I saidnow, "is more than the greatest of books!" I had not cared for mylive brothers and sisters, and now I was left without even the dead tocomfort me!
The wood thinned yet more, and the pines grew yet larger, sending uphuge stems, like columns eager to support the heavens. More trees ofother kinds appeared; the forest was growing richer! The roses wore nowtrees, and their flowers of astonishing splendour.
Suddenly I spied what seemed a great house or castle; but its forms wereso strangely indistinct, that I could not be certain it was more than achance combination of tree-shapes. As I drew nearer, its lines yet heldtogether, but neither they nor the body of it grew at all more definite;and when at length I stood in front of it, I remained as doubtful of itsnature as before. House or castle habitable, it certainly was not; itmight be a ruin overgrown with ivy and roses! Yet of building hid in thefoliage, not the poorest wall-remnant could I discern. Again and againI seemed to descry what must be building, but it always vanished beforecloser inspection. Could it be, I pondered, that the ivy had embraced ahuge edifice and consumed it, and its interlaced branches retained theshapes of the walls it had assimilated?--I could be sure of nothingconcerning the appearance.
Before me was a rectangular vacancy--the ghost of a doorway without adoor: I stepped through it, and found myself in an open space like agreat hall, its floor covered with grass and flowers, its walls and roofof ivy and vine, mingled with roses.
There could be no better place in which to pass the night! I gathereda quantity of withered leaves, laid them in a corner, and threw myselfupon them. A red sunset filled the hall, the night was warm, and mycouch restful; I lay gazing up at the live ceiling, with its traceryof branches and twigs, its clouds of foliage, and peeping patches ofloftier roof. My eyes went wading about as if tangled in it, until thesun was down, and the sky beginning to grow dark. Then the red rosesturned black, and soon the yellow and white alone were visible. Whenthey vanished, the stars came instead, hanging in the leaves likelive topazes, throbbing and sparkling and flashing many colours: I wascanopied with a tree from Aladdin's cave!
Then I discovered that it was full of nests, whence tiny heads,nearly indistinguishable, kept popping out with a chirp or two, anddisappearing again. For a while there were rustlings and stirrings andlittle prayers; but as the darkness grew, the small heads became still,and at last every feathered mother had her brood quiet under her wings,the talk in the little beds was over, and God's bird-nursery at restbeneath the waves of s
leep. Once more a few flutterings made me lookup: an owl went sailing across. I had only a glimpse of him, but severaltimes felt the cool wafture of his silent wings. The mother birds didnot move again; they saw that he was looking for mice, not children.
About midnight I came wide awake, roused by a revelry, whose noiseswere yet not loud. Neither were they distant; they were close to me, butattenuate. My eyes were so dazzled, however, that for a while I couldsee nothing; at last they came to themselves.
I was lying on my withered leaves in the corner of a splendid hall.Before me was a crowd of gorgeously dressed men and gracefully robedwomen, none of whom seemed to see me. In dance after dance they vaguelyembodied the story of life, its meetings, its passions, its partings. Astudent of Shakspere, I had learned something of every dance alludedto in his plays, and hence partially understood several of those Inow saw--the minuet, the pavin, the hey, the coranto, the lavolta. Thedancers were attired in fashion as ancient as their dances.
A moon had risen while I slept, and was shining through thecountless-windowed roof; but her light was crossed by so many shadowsthat at first I could distinguish almost nothing of the faces ofthe multitude; I could not fail, however, to perceive that there wassomething odd about them: I sat up to see them better.--Heavens! couldI call them faces? They were skull fronts!--hard, gleaming bone, barejaws, truncated noses, lipless teeth which could no more take part inany smile! Of these, some flashed set and white and murderous; otherswere clouded with decay, broken and gapped, coloured of the earth inwhich they seemed so long to have lain! Fearfuller yet, the eye-socketswere not empty; in each was a lidless living eye! In those wrecks offaces, glowed or flashed or sparkled eyes of every colour, shape, andexpression. The beautiful, proud eye, dark and lustrous, condescendingto whatever it rested upon, was the more terrible; the lovely,languishing eye, the more repulsive; while the dim, sad eyes, less atvariance with their setting, were sad exceedingly, and drew the heart inspite of the horror out of which they gazed.
I rose and went among the apparitions, eager to understand somethingof their being and belongings. Were they souls, or were they and theirrhythmic motions but phantasms of what had been? By look nor by gesture,not by slightest break in the measure, did they show themselves awareof me; I was not present to them: how much were they in relation to eachother? Surely they saw their companions as I saw them! Or was each onlydreaming itself and the rest? Did they know each how they appeared tothe others--a death with living eyes? Had they used their faces, not forcommunication, not to utter thought and feeling, not to share existencewith their neighbours, but to appear what they wished to appear, andconceal what they were? and, having made their faces masks, were theytherefore deprived of those masks, and condemned to go without facesuntil they repented?
"How long must they flaunt their facelessness in faceless eyes?" Iwondered. "How long will the frightful punition endure? Have they atlength begun to love and be wise? Have they yet yielded to the shamethat has found them?"
I heard not a word, saw not a movement of one naked mouth. Were theybecause of lying bereft of speech? With their eyes they spoke as iflonging to be understood: was it truth or was it falsehood that spokein their eyes? They seemed to know one another: did they see one skullbeautiful, and another plain? Difference must be there, and they had hadlong study of skulls!
My body was to theirs no obstacle: was I a body, and were they butforms? or was I but a form, and were they bodies? The moment one of thedancers came close against me, that moment he or she was on the otherside of me, and I could tell, without seeing, which, whether man orwoman, had passed through my house.
On many of the skulls the hair held its place, and however dressed, orin itself however beautiful, to my eyes looked frightful on the bonesof the forehead and temples. In such case, the outer ear often remainedalso, and at its tip, the jewel of the ear as Sidney calls it,would hang, glimmering, gleaming, or sparkling, pearl or opal ordiamond--under the night of brown or of raven locks, the sunriseof golden ripples, or the moonshine of pale, interclouded, fluffycirri--lichenous all on the ivory-white or damp-yellow naked bone. Ilooked down and saw the daintily domed instep; I looked up and saw theplump shoulders basing the spring of the round full neck--which witheredat half-height to the fluted shaft of a gibbose cranium.
The music became wilder, the dance faster and faster; eyes flared andflashed, jewels twinkled and glittered, casting colour and fire on thepallid grins that glode through the hall, weaving a ghastly rhythmicwoof in intricate maze of multitudinous motion, when sudden came apause, and every eye turned to the same spot:--in the doorway stood awoman, perfect in form, in holding, and in hue, regarding the companyas from the pedestal of a goddess, while the dancers stood "like oneforbid," frozen to a new death by the vision of a life that killed."Dead things, I live!" said her scornful glance. Then, at once, likeleaves in which an instant wind awakes, they turned each to another, andbroke afresh into melodious consorted motion, a new expression intheir eyes, late solitary, now filled with the interchange of a commontriumph. "Thou also," they seemed to say, "wilt soon become weak aswe! thou wilt soon become like unto us!" I turned mine again to thewoman--and saw upon her side a small dark shadow.
She had seen the change in the dead stare; she looked down; sheunderstood the talking eyes; she pressed both her lovely hands on theshadow, gave a smothered cry, and fled. The birds moved rustling intheir nests, and a flash of joy lit up the eyes of the dancers, whensuddenly a warm wind, growing in strength as it swept through the place,blew out every light. But the low moon yet glimmered on the horizon with"sick assay" to shine, and a turbid radiance yet gleamed from so manyeyes, that I saw well enough what followed. As if each shape had beenbut a snow-image, it began to fall to pieces, ruining in the warm wind.In papery flakes the flesh peeled from its bones, dropping like soiledsnow from under its garments; these fell fluttering in rags and strips,and the whole white skeleton, emerging from garment and flesh together,stood bare and lank amid the decay that littered the floor. A faintrattling shiver went through the naked company; pair after pairthe lamping eyes went out; and the darkness grew round me with theloneliness. For a moment the leaves were still swept fluttering all oneway; then the wind ceased, and the owl floated silent through the silentnight.
Not for a moment had I been afraid. It is true that whoever would crossthe threshold of any world, must leave fear behind him; but, for myself,I could claim no part in its absence. No conscious courage was operantin me; simply, I was not afraid. I neither knew why I was not afraid,nor wherefore I might have been afraid. I feared not even fear--which ofall dangers is the most dangerous.
I went out into the wood, at once to resume my journey. Another moon wasrising, and I turned my face toward it.
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