Complete Works of Lewis Carroll

by Lewis Carroll

  ‘Not by this door!’ was the earnest protest of a knot of two or three gentlemen, who had been grouped round the door (one of them actually leaning against it) for the last half-hour, as they declared. ‘This door has not been opened since the song began!’

  An uncomfortable silence followed this announcement. Lady Muriel ventured no further conjectures, but quietly examined the fastenings of the windows, which opened as doors. They all proved to be well fastened, inside.

  Not yet at the end of her resources, Lady Muriel rang the bell. ‘Ask the housekeeper to step here,’ she said, ‘and to bring the children’s walking-things with her.’

  ‘I’ve brought them, my Lady,’ said the obsequious housekeeper, entering after another minute of silence. ‘I thought the young lady would have come to my room to put on her boots. Here’s your boots, my love!’ she added cheerfully, looking in all directions for the children. There was no answer, and she turned to Lady Muriel with a puzzled smile. ‘Have the little darlings hid themselves?’

  ‘I don’t see them, just now,’ Lady Muriel replied, rather evasively. ‘You can leave their things here, Wilson. I’ll dress them, when they’re ready to go.’

  The two little hats, and Sylvie’s walking-jacket, were handed round among the ladies, with many exclamations of delight. There certainly was a sort of witchery of beauty about them. Even the little boots did not miss their share of favourable criticism.

  ‘Such natty little things!’ the musical young lady exclaimed, almost fondling them as she spoke. ‘And what tiny tiny feet they must have!’

  Finally, the things were piled together on the centre-ottoman, and the guests, despairing of seeing the children again, began to wish good-night and leave the house.

  There were only some eight or nine left—to whom the Count was explaining, for the twentieth time, how he had had his eye on the children during the last verse of the song; how he had then glanced round the room, to see what effect ‘de great chest-note’

  had had upon his audience; and how, when he looked back again, they had both disappeared—when exclamations of dismay began to be heard on all sides, the Count hastily bringing his story to an end to join in the outcry.

  The walking-things had all disappeared!

  After the utter failure of the search for the children, there was a very halfhearted search made for their apparel. The remaining guests seemed only too glad to get away, leaving only the Count and our four selves.

  The Count sank into an easy-chair, and panted a little.

  ‘Who then are these dear children, I pray you?’ he said. ‘Why come they, why go they, in this so little ordinary a fashion? That the music should make itself vanish—that the hats, the boots, should make themselves to vanish—how is it, I pray you?’

  ‘I’ve no idea where they are!’ was all I could say, on finding myself appealed to, by general consent, for an explanation.

  The Count seemed about to ask further questions, but checked himself.

  ‘The hour makes himself to become late," he said. ‘I wish to you a very good night, my Lady. I betake myself to my bed—to dream—if that indeed I be not dreaming now!’ And he hastily left the room.

  ‘Stay awhile, stay awhile!’ said the Earl, as I was about to follow the Count. ‘You are not a guest, you know! Arthur’s friend is at home here!’

  ‘Thanks!’ I said, as with true English instincts, we drew our chairs together round the fire-place, though no fire was burning—Lady Muriel having taken the heap of music on her knee, to have one more search for the strangely-vanished song.

  ‘Don’t you sometimes feel a wild longing,’ she said, addressing herself to me, ‘to have something more to do with your hands, while you talk, than just holding a cigar, and now and then knocking off the ash? Oh, I know all that you’re going to say!’ (This was to Arthur, who appeared about to interrupt her.) ‘The Majesty of Thought supersedes the work of the fingers. A Man’s severe thinking, plus the shaking-off a cigar-ash, comes to the same total as a Woman’s trivial fancies, plus the most elaborate embroidery. That’s your sentiment, isn’t it, only better expressed?’

  Arthur looked into the radiant, mischievous face, with a grave and very tender smile. ‘Yes,’ he said resignedly: ‘that is my sentiment, exactly.’

  ‘Rest of body, and activity of mind,’ I put in. ‘Some writer tells us that is the acme of human happiness.’

  ‘Plenty of bodily rest, at any rate!’ Lady Muriel replied, glancing at the three recumbent figures around her. ‘But what you call activity of mind—’

  ‘—is the privilege of young Physicians only,’ said the Earl. ‘We old men have no claim to be active. What can an old man do but die?’

  ‘A good many other things, I should hope,’ Arthur said earnestly.

  ‘Well, maybe. Still you have the advantage of me in many ways, dear boy! Not only that your day is dawning while mine is setting, but your interest in Life—somehow I ca’n’t help envying you that. It will be many a year before you lose your hold of that.’

  ‘Yet surely many human interests survive human Life?’ I said.

  ‘Many do, no doubt. And some forms of Science; but only some, I think. Mathematics, for instance: that seems to possess an endless interest: one ca’n’t imagine any form of Life, or any race of intelligent beings, where Mathematical truth would lose its meaning. But I fear Medicine stands on a different footing. Suppose you discover a remedy for some disease hitherto supposed to be incurable. Well, it is delightful for the moment, no doubt—full of interest—perhaps it brings you fame and fortune. But what then? Look on, a few years, into a life where disease has no existence. What is your discovery worth, then? Milton makes Jove promise too much. "Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed." Poor comfort when one’s "fame" concerns matters that will have ceased to have a meaning!’

  ‘At any rate one wouldn’t care to make any fresh medical discoveries,’ said Arthur. ‘I see no help for that—though I shall be sorry to give up my favourite studies. Still, medicine, disease, pain, sorrow, sin—I fear they’re all linked together. Banish sin, and you banish them all!’

  ‘Military science is a yet stronger instance,’ said the Earl. ‘Without sin, war would surely be impossible. Still any mind, that has had in this life any keen interest, not in itself sinful, will surely find itself some congenial line of work hereafter. Wellington may have no more battles to fight—and yet—

  "We doubt not that, for one so true, There must be other, nobler work to do, Than when he fought at Waterloo, And Victor he must ever be!"‘

  He lingered over the beautiful words, as if he loved them: and his voice, like distant music, died away into silence.

  After a minute or two he began again. ‘If I’m not wearying you, I would like to tell you an idea of the future Life which has haunted me for years, like a sort of waking nightmare—I ca’n’t reason myself out of it.’

  ‘Pray do,’ Arthur and I replied, almost in a breath. Lady Muriel put aside the heap of music, and folded her hands together.

  ‘The one idea,’ the Earl resumed, ‘that has seemed to me to overshadow all the rest, is that of Eternity—involving, as it seems to do, the necessary exhaustion of all subjects of human interest. Take Pure Mathematics, for instance—a Science independent of our present surroundings. I have studied it, myself, a little. Take the subject of circles and ellipses—what we call "curves of the second degree". In a future Life, it would only be a question of so many years (or hundreds of years, if you like), for a man to work out all their properties. Then he might go to curves of the third degree. Say that took ten times as long (you see we have unlimited time to deal with). I can hardly imagine his interest in the subject holding out even for those; and, though there is no limit to the degree of the curves he might study, yet surely the time, needed to exhaust all the novelty and interest of the subject, would be absolutely finite? And so of all other branches of Science. And, when I transport myself, in thought, through some thousands or millions
of years, and fancy myself possessed of as much Science as one created reason can carry, I ask myself "What then? With nothing more to learn, can one rest content on knowledge, for the eternity yet to be lived through?" It has been a very wearying thought to me. I have sometimes fancied one might, in that event, say "It is better not to be", and pray for personal annihilation—the Nirvana of the Buddhists.’

  ‘But that is only half the picture,’ I said. ‘Besides working for oneself, may there not be the helping of others?’

  ‘Surely, surely!’ Lady Muriel exclaimed in a tone of relief, looking at her father with sparkling eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Earl, ‘so long as there were any others needing help. But, given ages and ages more, surely all created reasons would at length reach the same dead level of satiety. And then what is there to look forward to?’

  ‘I know that weary feeling,’ said the young Doctor. ‘I have gone through it all, more than once. Now let me tell you how I have put it to myself. I have imagined a little child, playing with toys on his nursery-floor, and yet able to reason, and to look on, thirty years ahead. Might he not say to himself "By that time I shall have had enough of bricks and ninepins. How weary Life will be!" Yet, if we look forward through those thirty years, we find him a great statesman, full of interests and joys far more intense than his baby-life could give—joys wholly inconceivable to his baby-mind—joys such as no baby-language could in the faintest degree describe. Now, may not our life, a million years hence, have the same relation, to our life now, that the man’s life has to the child’s? And, just as one might try, all in vain, to express to that child, in the language of bricks and ninepins, the meaning of "politics", so perhaps all those descriptions of Heaven, with its music, and its feasts, and its streets of gold, may be only attempts to describe, in our words, things for which we really have no words at all. Don’t you think that, in your picture of another life, you are in fact transplanting that child into political life, without making any allowance for his growing up?’

  ‘I think I understand you,’ said the Earl. ‘The music of Heaven may be something beyond our powers of thought. Yet the music of Earth is sweet! Muriel, my child, sing us something before we go to bed!’

  ‘Do,’ said Arthur, as he rose and lit the candles on the cottage-piano, lately banished from the drawing-room to make room for a ‘semi-grand’. ‘There is a song here, that I have never heard you sing.

  "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

  Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it,Pourest thy full heart!"‘

  he read from the page he had spread open before her.

  ‘And our little life here,’ the Earl went on, ‘is, to that grand time, like a child’s summer-day! One gets tired as night draws on,’

  he added, with a touch of sadness in his voice, ‘and one gets to long for bed! For those welcome words "Come, child, ‘tis bed-time!"‘

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TO THE RESCUE!

  ‘IT isn’t bed-time!’ said a sleepy little voice. ‘The owls hasn’t gone to bed, and I s’a’n’t go to seep wizout oo sings to me!’

  ‘Oh, Bruno!’ cried Sylvie. ‘Don’t you know the owls have only just got up? But the frogs have gone to bed, ages ago."

  ‘Well, I aren’t a frog,’ said Bruno.

  ‘What shall I sing?’ said Sylvie, skilfully avoiding the argument.

  ‘Ask Mister Sir,’ Bruno lazily replied, clasping his hands behind his curly head, and lying back on his fern-leaf, till it almost bent over with his weight. ‘This aren’t a comfable leaf, Sylvie. Find me a comfabler—please!’ he added, as an after-thought, in obedience to a warning finger held up by Sylvie. ‘I doosn’t like being feet-upwards!’

  It was a pretty sight to see—the motherly way in which the fairy-child gathered up her little brother in her arms, and laid him on a stronger leaf. She gave it just a touch to set it rocking, and it went on vigorously by itself, as if it contained some hidden machinery. It certainly wasn’t the wind, for the evening-breeze had quite died away again, and not a leaf was stirring over our heads.

  ‘Why does that one leaf rock so, without the others?’ I asked Sylvie. She only smiled sweetly and shook her head. ‘I don’t know why,’ she said. ‘It always does, if it’s got a fairy-child on it. It has to, you know.’

  ‘And can people see the leaf rock, who ca’n’t see the Fairy on it?’

  ‘Why, of course!’ cried Sylvie. ‘A leaf’s a leaf, and everybody can see it; but Bruno’s Bruno, and they ca’n’t see him, unless they’re eerie, like you.’

  Then I understood how it was that one sometimes sees—going through the woods in a still evening—one fern-leaf rocking steadily on, all by itself. Haven’t you ever seen that? Try if you can see the fairy-sleeper on it, next time; but don’t pick the leaf, whatever you do; let the little one sleep on!

  But all this time Bruno was getting sleepier and sleepier. ‘Sing, sing!’ he murmured fretfully. Sylvie looked to me for instructions.

  ‘What shall it be?’ she said.

  ‘Could you sing him the nursery-song you once told me of?’ I suggested. ‘The one that had been put through the mind-mangle, you know. "The little man that had a little gun", I think it was.’

  ‘Why, that are one of the Professor’s songs!’ cried Bruno. ‘I likes the little man; and I likes the way they spinned him—like a teetle-totle-tum.’ And he turned a loving look on the gentle old man who was sitting at the other side of his leaf-bed, and who instantly began to sing, accompanying himself on his Outlandish guitar, while the snail, on which he sat, waved its horns in time to the music.

  In stature the Manlet was dwarfish—

  No burly big Blunderbore he:

  And he wearily gazed on the crawfish

  His Wifelet had dressed for his tea.

  ‘Now reach me, sweet Atom, my gunlet,

  And hurl the old shoelet for luck:

  Let me hie to the bank of the runlet,

  And shoot thee a Duck!’

  She has reached him his minikin gunlet:

  She has hurled the old shoelet for luck:

  She is busily baking a bunlet,

  To welcome him home with his Duck.

  On he speeds, never wasting a wordlet,

  Though thoughtlets cling, closely as wax,

  To the spot where the beautiful birdlet

  So quietly quacks.

  Where the Lobsterlet lurks, and the Crablet

  So slowly and sleepily crawls:

  Where the Dolphin’s at home, and the Dablet

  Pays long ceremonious calls:

  Where the Grublet is sought by the Froglet:

  Where the Frog is pursued by the Duck:

  Where the Ducklet is chased by the Doglet—

  So runs the world’s luck!

  He has loaded with bullet and powder:

  His footfall is noiseless as air:

  But the Voices grow louder and louder,

  And bellow, and bluster, and blare.

  They bristle before him and after,

  They flutter above and below,

  Shrill shriekings of lubberly laughter,

  Weird wailings of woe!

  They echo without him, within him:

  They thrill through his whiskers and beard:

  Like a teetotum seeming to spin him,

  With sneers never hitherto sneered.

  ‘Avengement,’ they cry, ‘on our Foelet!

  Let the Manikin weep for our wrongs!

  Let us drench him, from toplet to toelet,

  With Nursery-Songs!

  ‘He shall muse upon "Hey! Diddle! Diddle!"

  On the Cow that surmounted the Moon:

  He shall rave of the Cat and the Fiddle,

  And the Dish that eloped with the Spoon:

  And his soul shall be sad for the Spider,

  When Miss Muffet was sipping her whey,

  That so tenderly sat down beside her,

  And scared her away!

  ‘Th
e music of Midsummer-madness

  Shall sting him with many a bite,

  Till, in rapture of rollicking sadness,

  He shall groan with a gloomy delight:

  He shall swathe him, like mists of the morning,

  In platitudes luscious and limp,

  Such as deck, with a deathless adorning,

  The Song of the Shrimp!

  ‘When the Ducklet’s dark doom is decided,

  We will trundle him home in a trice:

  And the banquet, so plainly provided,

  Shall round into rose-buds and rice:

  In a blaze of pragmatic invention

  He shall wrestle with Fate, and shall reign:

  But he has not a friend fit to mention,

  So hit him again!’

  He has shot it, the delicate darling!

  And the Voices have ceased from their strife:

  Not a whisper of sneering or snarling,

  As he carries it home to his wife:

  Then, cheerily champing the bunlet

  His spouse was so skilful to bake, He hies him once more to the runlet,

  To fetch her the Drake!

  ‘He’s sound asleep now,’ said Sylvie, carefully tucking in the edge of a violet-leaf, which she had been spreading over him as a sort of blanket: ‘good night!’

  ‘Good night!’ I echoed.

  ‘You may well say "good night"!’ laughed Lady Muriel, rising and shutting up the piano as she spoke. ‘When you’ve been nid—nid—nodding all the time I’ve been singing for your benefit! What was it all about, now?’ she demanded imperiously.

  ‘Something about a duck?’ I hazarded. ‘Well, a bird of some kind?’ I corrected myself, perceiving at once that that guess was wrong, at any rate.

  ‘Something about a bird of some kind!’ Lady Muriel repeated, with as much withering scorn as her sweet face was capable of conveying. ‘And that’s the way he speaks of Shelley’s Sky-Lark, is it? When the Poet particularly says "Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert!"‘

  She led the way to the smoking-room, where, ignoring all the usages of Society and all the instincts of Chivalry, the three Lords of the Creation reposed at their ease in low rocking-chairs, and permitted the one lady who was present to glide gracefully about among us, supplying our wants in the form of cooling drinks, cigarettes, and lights. Nay, it was only one of the three who had the chivalry to go beyond the common-place ‘thank you’, and to quote the Poet’s exquisite description of how Geraint, when waited on by Enid, was moved