He reached down his hand to find out what it was, and in doing so discovered, in a vague, indefinite way, what he had not known before—that he had a hand, something, that is to say, with which he could reach and touch outwardness. He let down the hollow of his palm till it came in contact with the stream; but when he raised it, all the contents were spilled again: it brought nothing back to him. This happened many times, and still he remained interested; though his hand brought him nothing, it was giving to things a new relationship—inwardness and outwardness; the falling drops made a sound new and pleasant to his ears, and after a while he perceived that it came in response to his own action—something, not himself, making for righteousness, applauding him for what he was doing.
This called for further investigation. Groping deeper, he grasped and drew up a handful of mud, smooth and yielding to the touch, less elusive than water, presenting itself to his handling as something pliant and adaptable, something which it was possible to keep intact and to control. It did not run away as he lifted it. With a germinating sense of possession he clasped it more tightly, and as he did so moisture oozed out of it, trickling between his fingers and separating itself with the same pleasant sound of running water, a fresh offering of applause from the something which was not himself.
Gradually (for all his movements were deliberate) his small handful of mud coagulated, hardened, and took form. This way and that he turned it, plying it into fresh shapes, then, as its stiffness increased, moulded it into a ball, and, setting it to roll from palm to palm, found in the even regularity of its motion a new and unexpected diversion.
Before long, from it continuous revolutions, the ball assumed a polished and uniform surface, while at the same time the constant manipulation and contact of the Blind God had begun to cause certain chemical changes and fermentations of a minute but profoundly important character. Here and there he dented it with fingermarks, personal impressions made for future reference and verification; and having thus sealed it with his sign manual, he continued to let it roll.
And it rolled, and it rolled, and it rolled. To the god himself the whole interest of this process, so apparently monotonous, lay in his own gradual acquirement of the thing which we call skill. This little mud ball was giving him a new idea about himself; sleight of hand was communicating fresh life to his brain; he felt himself becoming an expert in rolling. It never entered into his head that the little mud ball which he had merely taken up for a plaything was also becoming an expert in being rolled. But though he knew little about it, it interested him. Enclosing it in the warmth of his palms, infecting it unconsciously with emanations from his own being, he had begun to evolve for himself a new idea, the idea of expansion by possession. Here he had got hold at last of something to think about that he would not willingly let go. He did not know what it was, and he had no use for it; but it was something for hand and brain to catch hold of, and so—find themselves. Slowly and precariously his mind worked toward a digestive adaptation of this new fact, till, tired with the unwonted exertion, he fell fast asleep.
A god sleeps and wakes without any idea of time; such a thing as “a forty winks sleep” forms no part of his composition, especially if in his winkless and waking state he happens to be blind. Time, in fact, has no concern for one who leads a life without motives, desires or interests. But by the time the Blind God woke up again it had had a good deal to do with the little ball of earth on which his interests were now beginning to be so blindly centered. As he sat holding it enlapped on the banks of the stream, sheltering its spinnings between curved palms, instilling into it by subtle expenditure the currents of his own divinely untroubled life, wonderful things had happened to it. It had begun to teem with minute forms of existence, very busy, very urgent about their own concerns, paying no attention to him whatsoever— no, none; not conscious of him any more than he was conscious of them, and so wasting no time in asking, as we mortals do nowadays, “Where do we come from?” or “How did we get here?” or “Where are we going to next?” None of those superfluous and parenthetic inquiries disturbed or deflected the quick courses of its blood from the immediate business in hand—not to begin with, at all events.
The Blind God had no such thoughts about himself, and in that matter these small emanating life-atoms which he held in the hollow of his hand took after him. But in other respects they were infinitely his inferiors; they had lost all sense of repose. Gripping life in a feverish and fractious clutch, they had rendered it fragmentary. They were tremendously busy and worried about things which did no good to anybody else and only harm to themselves—they were, that is to say, extraordinarily intent on living at each other’s expense; and they did so by a continual process of killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, with long bad bouts of indigestion as the result.
The Blind God sat holding in his hands all those innumerable and continuously struggling issues of life and death; and he knew no more of the one than of the other. And yet, all unintentionally, he had made them, fashioned them out of clay, infected and warmed them into life, setting them there in his own likeness to make other lives on their own account—lives which would succeed or fail without any direct help or sustenance from him. Here within the hollow of his hand they ran, up and down, to and fro, killing each other, eating each other, loving and hating each other, but caring nothing about him, and he caring nothing about them—though they were all made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.
Just in the same way, if you think of it, does the sun, where once the creative process has been started, breed life upon our own earth, and open sweetly within us those light-given gifts of the five senses; yet all the while it knows nothing about us and remains itself unconquerably blind, deaf, mute and intractable, rejoicing at nothing, sorrowing at nothing, caring nothing for all the love and hatred and hunger and satiety which have been bred in us out of its own superabundant heats. So it was with this little ball of mud which a blind god’s hands had fashioned, and into which, without knowing it, he had put so much life.
And so time went on—time measured monotonously by the revolutions of a little ball of mud in a blind god’s hands, and the monotonous but responsive revolutions of the god’s brain. The main thing was that though everything appeared to stand still around them, they two had set up between them a new relationship—the relationship of motion. It was so huge an advance in comparison with the nothingness that went before, that the Blind God, even though it seemed to lead nowhere, could not divest himself of the acquirement. Waking or sleeping, he continued to let the ball roll within the hollow of his hands. And it rolled and it rolled.
But after a time some of the life-atoms, taking after their maker, began to have an idea that this ball of mud upon which they lived was not everything, that there was something outside, not themselves, which they could not account for, but which could perhaps account for them. And presently one or two of them who happened to be very far-sighted detected the dim form of the divinity stretching immeasurably above and beyond them. At once they began pointing, directing the attention of those more short-sighted than themselves. “See, see!” they cried, “up there, and out yonder! There lies He—the object of our search, the key to all wisdom.”
Immediately all the other life-atoms came running to look, and, not seeing so clearly, they built tall towers, and ran up to the top of them in order to look again; and then taller towers, and taller, till every one of them either saw or said he saw—for having built a tower and climbed up to the top of it, no one was willing to admit that he was so blind or such a fool that he could not see anything. So the little ball of mud became full of towers with people standing on the top of them, gazing. “Look,” they said, “He is watching us. We must be careful how we behave!”
But those life-atoms were so tiny and their towers so small that the Blind God’s touch passed over them, discovering nothing; and their little voices were too thin and weak to raise question or answer to his ears. For hi
m the mud ball remained as smooth as it had ever been, and though he continued to roll it this way and that, he never detected the swarms of life that were on it or knew that he had at his beck a clamorously worshipping community. Very faithfully he attached himself to that one aspect of life which he had discovered, the keeping in motion of a small mud ball which he had picked up for himself and dried and moulded. Dimly, behind that, other ideas of life were preparing to follow.
Meantime, though he remained thus unconscious of their existence, the little life-atoms had begun to study him more and more. And the whole root of their philosophy about him was that he, having made them, saw and knew all that they were doing, and that if they themselves could only see as they were seen and know as they were known, life would have for them no further mystery. At the top of their towers some of them had begun to fix magnifying glasses so as to get a better view of him, but others said that magnifying glasses were a wicked device impiously invented, and that to look at a god through any such artificial aids was a negation to faith, a danger to hope, and a hindrance to charity. So they came and broke the magnifying glasses and killed those who looked through them, and pulled down their towers, till at last those who looked through the magnifying glasses began to retaliate, killing them in turn and pulling down their towers, and building bigger and stronger ones of their own. And in the end the people with the magnifying glasses won.
And so, as their glasses got bigger and stronger, they began to find out more about the things outside of them, and about that great still form of divinity that lay beyond and seemed, without motion, to be watching them. And at last one of them, on the top of the biggest tower of all and with the biggest magnifying glass of all, made a great discovery. He discovered that the god was blind!
This discovery filled him, apparently, with joy; it seemed to him to explain away everything in the most satisfactory manner possible; and he called out for all the other little life-atoms to come and hear what he had discovered and bow to the logic of his conclusions. And the plain unanswerable fact of the discovery so dazzled them that they did so. “This god of ours,” he said, “is blind; he knows nothing about us, has no conception, then he does not exist, and he is not really there. What you thought was a form is only space, and where you saw eyes is only emptiness.”
When the other little life-atoms heard that what they had believed to be eyes was only emptiness, and that what they had conceived to be form and design were only side issues from space and chance, many of them were glad, but some were very sorry and out of heart. And they sat and moped at the foot of their ruined towers, and, cursing the eyeglasses which had told them so much more than they wished to know, declared that life was no longer worth living. “What is the use?” they cried. “If He is not watching how we behave, what reason have we for behaving at all?”
And all the while the Blind God sat rolling his little mud ball from palm to palm and loving it—loving it, and wishing that he could make more of it, and find in it the self-expression and the companionship which his heart had begun to crave. For the little mud ball had taught him to think and to feel and to wish, and to let his thoughts go outside of himself in directions he had never tried. And because of the little mud ball he now found that time hung heavy on his hands, and his feet were weary of the chill waters that flowed around them, and his body was weary of its rest. He wanted to have things outside of himself, like himself, with which he might exchange the ideas of life which were beginning to formulate within him—all the product of this little ball of mud which he had taken into his hands and fathered with blind warmth! But though he wanted all those things he had no way of getting them, for he was a blind god, and he did not know.
But down below him, on his little mud world, the life-atoms had found out all about him—so they thought. They had found out that he was blind, that he knew nothing about them, and therefore—knowing nothing about them—did not really exist.
But though they had discovered his infirmities and his limitations, they had not got at his heart. About that they knew nothing—nor did he; the little mud ball could not teach him everything—not all at once.
But after a long time it taught him to feel very tired; and all at once he sighed a deep sigh that passed in a soft shudder through his whole being. And as he so sighed the little mud ball slipped through his fingers and fell into the stream and was drowned.
The Blind God did not sorrow for it much; he only felt a little vexed with himself. “I must be more careful next time,” he thought. And, stooping down, he gathered up a fresh handful of mud and moulded it into form, and once more started rolling it.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
A Haunted House
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English writer and one of the key members of the Bloomsbury Group of artists, writers, and intellectuals. She is considered one of the great novelists and important Modernists of the early twentieth century. Her writing is known for its experimental style, lyric quality, and use of stream of consciousness. Woolf suffered from depression throughout her life and committed suicide in 1941. Her most celebrated works include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and A Room of One’s Own (1929).
Woolf’s “A Haunted House” was first published in the collection Monday or Tuesday published by Hogarth Press in 1921. It displays Woolf’s masterful control of her prose, working through its musicality and rhythms to lead us toward the meaning of an extraordinary and fantastic haunting.
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered. “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. “Safe, safe, safe” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room...” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The Treasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,” she says. And he adds, “Kiss
es without number.” “Waking in the morning—” “Silver between the trees—” “Upstairs—” “In the garden—” “When summer came—” “In winter snowtime—” The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,” he breathes. “Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry, “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
Table of Contents
EDITH NESBIT The Book of Beasts
INTRODUCTION
FOREWORD
KUBLA KHAN
DARKNESS
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
PETER RUGG, THE MISSING MAN
THE MORTAL IMMORTAL
The Treasury Of The Fantastic Page 85