CHAPTER XVI. A GRUESOME DANCE

I rose to resume my journey, and walked many a desert mile. How I longed

for a mountain, or even a tall rock, from whose summit I might see

across the dismal plain or the dried-up channels to some bordering hope!

Yet what could such foresight have availed me? That which is within a

man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what

is about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event. Foreseeing

is not understanding, else surely the prophecy latent in man would come

oftener to the surface!

The sun was half-way to the horizon when I saw before me a rugged rocky

ascent; but ere I reached it my desire to climb was over, and I longed

to lie down. By that time the sun was almost set, and the air had begun

to grow dark. At my feet lay a carpet of softest, greenest moss, couch

for 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 many

waters, playing broken airs and ethereal harmonies with the stones of

their buried channels. Loveliest chaos of music-stuff the harp aquarian

kept sending up to my ears! What might not a Händel have done with that

ever-recurring gurgle and bell-like drip, to the mingling and mutually

destructive melodies their common refrain!

As I lay listening, my eyes went wandering up and down the rocky slope

abrupt above me, reading on its face the record that down there, ages

ago, rushed a cataract, filling the channels that had led me to its

foot. My heart swelled at the thought of the splendid tumult, where

the waves danced revelling in helpless fall, to mass their music in one

organ-roar below. But soon the hidden brooks lulled me to sleep, and

their 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 river

that had plunged adown the rocks! The powdery drift had filled its

course to the level of the dreary expanse! As I looked back I saw that

the river had divided into two branches as it fell, that whose bank I

had now followed to the foot of the rocky scaur, and that which first I

crossed to the Evil Wood. The wood I descried between the two on the

far horizon. Before me and to the left, the desert stretched beyond my

vision, but far to the right I could see a lift in the sky-line, giving

hope of the forest to which my hostess had directed me.

I sat down, and sought in my pocket the half-loaf I had brought with

me--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 a

stone! I threw it away, and set out again.

About noon I came to a few tamarisk and juniper trees, and then to a few

stunted firs. As I went on, closer thickets and larger firs met me, and

at length I was in just such a forest of pines and other trees as that

in which the Little Ones found their babies, and believed I had returned

upon a farther portion of the same. But what mattered WHERE while

EVERYWHERE was the same as NOWHERE! I had not yet, by doing something in

it, made ANYWHERE into a place! I was not yet alive; I was only dreaming

I lived! I was but a consciousness with an outlook! Truly I had been

nothing else in the world I had left, but now I knew the fact! I said

to myself that if in this forest I should catch the faint gleam of the

mirror, I would turn far aside lest it should entrap me unawares, and

give me back to my old existence: here I might learn to be something by

doing something! I could not endure the thought of going back, with so

many beginnings and not an end achieved. The Little Ones would meet what

fate was appointed them; the awful witch I should never meet; the dead

would ripen and arise without me; I should but wake to know that I had

dreamed, and that all my going was nowhither! I would rather go on and

on 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, and

I could see a long way in every direction. The forest was like a great

church, solemn and silent and empty, for I met nothing on two feet or

four that day. Now and then, it is true, some swift thing, and again

some slow thing, would cross the space on which my eye happened that

moment to settle; but it was always at some distance, and only enhanced

the sense of wideness and vacancy. I heard a few birds, and saw plenty

of butterflies, some of marvellously gorgeous colouring and combinations

of colour, some of a pure and dazzling whiteness.

Coming to a spot where the pines stood farther apart and gave room for

flowering shrubs, and hoping it a sign of some dwelling near, I took the

direction where yet more and more roses grew, for I was hungry after the

voice 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, I

thought, to wander alone, a bare existence never going out of itself,

never widening its life in another life, but, bound with the cords of

its poor peculiarities, lying an eternal prisoner in the dungeon of its

own being! I began to learn that it was impossible to live for oneself

even, save in the presence of others--then, alas, fearfully possible!

evil was only through good! selfishness but a parasite on the tree

of life! In my own world I had the habit of solitary song; here not a

crooning murmur ever parted my lips! There I sang without thinking; here

I thought without singing! there I had never had a bosom-friend; here

the affection of an idiot would be divinely welcome! “If only I had a

dog to love!” I sighed--and regarded with wonder my past self, which

preferred the company of book or pen to that of man or woman; which, if

the author of a tale I was enjoying appeared, would wish him away that I

might return to his story. I had chosen the dead rather than the living,

the thing thought rather than the thing thinking! “Any man,” I said

now, “is more than the greatest of books!” I had not cared for my

live brothers and sisters, and now I was left without even the dead to

comfort me!

The wood thinned yet more, and the pines grew yet larger, sending up

huge stems, like columns eager to support the heavens. More trees of

other kinds appeared; the forest was growing richer! The roses were now

trees, and their flowers of astonishing splendour.

Suddenly I spied what seemed a great house or castle; but its forms were

so strangely indistinct, that I could not be certain it was more than a

chance combination of tree-shapes. As I drew nearer, its lines yet held

together, 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 its

nature as before. House or castle habitable, it certainly was not; it

might be a ruin overgrown with ivy and roses! Yet of building hid in the

foliage, not the poorest wall-remnant could I discern. Again and again

I seemed to descry what must be building, but it always vanished before

closer inspection. Could it be, I pondered, that the ivy had embraced a

huge edifice and consumed it, and its interlaced branches retained the

shapes of the walls it had assimilated?--I could be sure of nothing

concerning the appearance.

Before me was a rectangular vacancy--the ghost of a doorway without a

door: I stepped through it, and found myself in an open space like a

great hall, its floor covered with grass and flowers, its walls and roof

of ivy and vine, mingled with roses.

There could be no better place in which to pass the night! I gathered

a quantity of withered leaves, laid them in a corner, and threw myself

upon them. A red sunset filled the hall, the night was warm, and my

couch restful; I lay gazing up at the live ceiling, with its tracery

of branches and twigs, its clouds of foliage, and peeping patches of

loftier roof. My eyes went wading about as if tangled in it, until the

sun was down, and the sky beginning to grow dark. Then the red roses

turned black, and soon the yellow and white alone were visible. When

they vanished, the stars came instead, hanging in the leaves like

live topazes, throbbing and sparkling and flashing many colours: I was

canopied 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, and

disappearing again. For a while there were rustlings and stirrings and

little 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 rest

beneath the waves of sleep. Once more a few flutterings made me look

up: an owl went sailing across. I had only a glimpse of him, but several

times felt the cool wafture of his silent wings. The mother birds did

not move again; they saw that he was looking for mice, not children.

About midnight I came wide awake, roused by a revelry, whose noises

were yet not loud. Neither were they distant; they were close to me, but

attenuate. My eyes were so dazzled, however, that for a while I could

see 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 robed

women, none of whom seemed to see me. In dance after dance they vaguely

embodied the story of life, its meetings, its passions, its partings. A

student of Shakspere, I had learned something of every dance alluded

to in his plays, and hence partially understood several of those I

now saw--the minuet, the pavin, the hey, the coranto, the lavolta. The

dancers were attired in fashion as ancient as their dances.

A moon had risen while I slept, and was shining through the

countless-windowed roof; but her light was crossed by so many shadows

that at first I could distinguish almost nothing of the faces of

the multitude; I could not fail, however, to perceive that there was

something odd about them: I sat up to see them better.--Heavens! could

I call them faces? They were skull fronts!--hard, gleaming bone, bare

jaws, truncated noses, lipless teeth which could no more take part in

any smile! Of these, some flashed set and white and murderous; others

were clouded with decay, broken and gapped, coloured of the earth in

which they seemed so long to have lain! Fearfuller yet, the eye-sockets

were not empty; in each was a lidless living eye! In those wrecks of

faces, glowed or flashed or sparkled eyes of every colour, shape, and

expression. The beautiful, proud eye, dark and lustrous, condescending

to whatever it rested upon, was the more terrible; the lovely,

languishing eye, the more repulsive; while the dim, sad eyes, less at

variance with their setting, were sad exceedingly, and drew the heart in

spite of the horror out of which they gazed.

I rose and went among the apparitions, eager to understand something

of their being and belongings. Were they souls, or were they and their

rhythmic motions but phantasms of what had been? By look nor by gesture,

not by slightest break in the measure, did they show themselves aware

of me; I was not present to them: how much were they in relation to each

other? Surely they saw their companions as I saw them! Or was each only

dreaming itself and the rest? Did they know each how they appeared to

the others--a death with living eyes? Had they used their faces, not for

communication, not to utter thought and feeling, not to share existence

with their neighbours, but to appear what they wished to appear, and

conceal what they were? and, having made their faces masks, were they

therefore deprived of those masks, and condemned to go without faces

until they repented?

“How long must they flaunt their facelessness in faceless eyes?” I

wondered. “How long will the frightful punition endure? Have they at

length begun to love and be wise? Have they yet yielded to the shame

that has found them?”

I heard not a word, saw not a movement of one naked mouth. Were they

because of lying bereft of speech? With their eyes they spoke as if

longing to be understood: was it truth or was it falsehood that spoke

in their eyes? They seemed to know one another: did they see one skull

beautiful, and another plain? Difference must be there, and they had had

long study of skulls!

My body was to theirs no obstacle: was I a body, and were they but

forms? or was I but a form, and were they bodies? The moment one of the

dancers came close against me, that moment he or she was on the other

side of me, and I could tell, without seeing, which, whether man or

woman, had passed through my house.

On many of the skulls the hair held its place, and however dressed, or

in itself however beautiful, to my eyes looked frightful on the bones

of the forehead and temples. In such case, the outer ear often remained

also, and at its tip, the jewel of the ear as Sidney calls it,

would hang, glimmering, gleaming, or sparkling, pearl or opal or

diamond--under the night of brown or of raven locks, the sunrise

of golden ripples, or the moonshine of pale, interclouded, fluffy

cirri--lichenous all on the ivory-white or damp-yellow naked bone. I

looked down and saw the daintily domed instep; I looked up and saw the

plump shoulders basing the spring of the round full neck--which withered

at half-height to the fluted shaft of a gibbose cranium.

The music became wilder, the dance faster and faster; eyes flared and

flashed, jewels twinkled and glittered, casting colour and fire on the

pallid grins that glode through the hall, weaving a ghastly rhythmic

woof in intricate maze of multitudinous motion, when sudden came a

pause, and every eye turned to the same spot:--in the doorway stood a

woman, perfect in form, in holding, and in hue, regarding the company

as from the pedestal of a goddess, while the dancers stood “like one

forbid,” frozen to a new death by the vision of a life that killed.

“Dead things, I live!” said her scornful glance. Then, at once, like

leaves in which an instant wind awakes, they turned each to another, and

broke afresh into melodious consorted motion, a new expression in

their eyes, late solitary, now filled with the interchange of a common

triumph. “Thou also,” they seemed to say, “wilt soon become weak as

we! thou wilt soon become like unto us!” I turned mine again to the

woman--and saw upon her side a small dark shadow.

She had seen the change in the dead stare; she looked down; she

understood the talking eyes; she pressed both her lovely hands on the

shadow, gave a smothered cry, and fled. The birds moved rustling in

their nests, and a flash of joy lit up the eyes of the dancers, when

suddenly 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 many

eyes, that I saw well enough what followed. As if each shape had been

but 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 soiled

snow 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 faint

rattling shiver went through the naked company; pair after pair

the lamping eyes went out; and the darkness grew round me with the

loneliness. For a moment the leaves were still swept fluttering all one

way; then the wind ceased, and the owl floated silent through the silent

night.

Not for a moment had I been afraid. It is true that whoever would cross

the threshold of any world, must leave fear behind him; but, for myself,

I could claim no part in its absence. No conscious courage was operant

in 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 of

all dangers is the most dangerous.

I went out into the wood, at once to resume my journey. Another moon was

rising, and I turned my face toward it.