[Begun in No. 5 of HARPER"S YOUNG PEOPLE, Dec. 2]
THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS.
A Day and Night Mahrchen.
BY GEORGE MACDONALD.
VIII.--THE LAMP.
Watho having given orders, took it for granted they were obeyed, and that Falca was all night long with Nycteris, whose day it was. But Falca could not get into the habit of sleeping through the day, and would often leave her alone half the night. Then it seemed to Nycteris that the white lamp was watching over her. As it was never permitted to go out--while she was awake at least--Nycteris, except by shutting her eyes, knew less about darkness than she did about light. Also, the lamp being fixed high overhead, and in the centre of everything, she did not know much about shadows either. The few there were fell almost entirely on the floor, or kept like mice about the foot of the walls.
Once, when she was thus alone, there came the noise of a far-off rumbling: she had never before heard a sound of which she did not know the origin, and here, therefore, was a new sign of something beyond these chambers. Then came a trembling, then a shaking; the lamp dropped from the ceiling to the floor with a great crash, and she felt as if both her eyes were hard shut and both her hands over them. She concluded that it was the darkness that had made the rumbling and the shaking, and rushing into the room, had thrown down the lamp. She sat trembling. The noise and the shaking ceased, but the light did not return. The darkness had eaten it up!
Her lamp gone, the desire at once awoke to get out of her prison. She scarcely knew what out meant; out of one room into another, where there was not even a dividing door, only an open arch, was all she knew of the world. But suddenly she remembered that she had heard Falca speak of the lamp _going out_: this must be what she had meant. And if the lamp had gone out, where had it gone? Surely where Falca went, and like her it would come again. But she could not wait. The desire to go out grew irresistible. She must follow her beautiful lamp! She must find it! She must see what it was about!
Now there was a curtain covering a recess in the wall, where some of her toys and gymnastic things were kept; and from behind that curtain Watho and Falca always appeared, and behind it they vanished. How they came out of solid wall, she had not an idea; all up to the wall was open s.p.a.ce, and all beyond it seemed wall; but clearly the first and only thing she could do was to feel her way behind the curtain. It was so dark that a cat could not have caught the largest of mice. Nycteris could see better than any cat, but now her great eyes were not of the smallest use to her. As she went she trod upon a piece of the broken lamp. She had never worn shoes or stockings, and the fragment, though, being of soft alabaster, it did not cut, yet hurt her foot. She did not know what it was, but, as it had not been there before the darkness came, she suspected that it had to do with the lamp. She knelt, therefore, and searched with her hands, and bringing two large pieces together, recognized the shape of the lamp. Therewith it flashed upon her that the lamp was dead, that this brokenness was the death of which she had read without understanding, that the darkness had killed the lamp. What, then, could Falca have meant when she spoke of the lamp _going out_? There was the lamp--dead, indeed, and so changed that she would never have taken it for a lamp but for the shape. No, it was not the lamp any more now it was dead, for all that made it a lamp was gone, namely, the bright shining of it. Then it must be the shine, the light, that had gone out! That must be what Falca meant--and it must be somewhere in the other place in the wall. She started afresh after it, and groped her way to the curtain.
Now she had never in her life tried to get out, and did not know how; but instinctively she began to move her hands about over one of the walls behind the curtain, half expecting them to go into it, as she supposed Watho and Falca did. But the wall repelled her with inexorable hardness, and she turned to the one opposite. In so doing she set her foot upon an ivory die, and as it met sharply the same spot the broken alabaster had already hurt, she fell forward with her outstretched hands against the wall. Something gave way, and she tumbled out of the cavern.
IX.--OUT.
But, alas! _out_ was very much like _in_, for the same enemy, the darkness, was here also. The next moment, however, came a great gladness--a fire-fly, which had wandered in from the garden. She saw the tiny spark in the distance. With slow pulsing ebb and throb of light, it came pushing itself through the air, drawing nearer and nearer, with that motion which more resembles swimming than flying, and the light seemed the source of its own motion.
"My lamp! my lamp!" cried Nycteris. "It is the shiningness of my lamp, which the cruel darkness drove out. My good lamp has been waiting for me here all the time! It knew I would come after it, and waited to take me with it."
She followed the fire-fly, which, like herself, was seeking the way out.
If it did not know the way, it was yet light; and because all light is one, any light may serve to guide to more light. If she was mistaken in thinking it the spirit of her lamp, it was of the same spirit as her lamp--and had wings. The gold-green jet boat, driven by light, went throbbing before her through a long narrow pa.s.sage. Suddenly it rose higher, and the same moment Nycteris fell upon an ascending stair. She had never seen a stair before, and found going up a curious sensation.
Just as she reached what seemed the top, the fire-fly ceased to shine, and so disappeared. She was in utter darkness once more. But when we are following the light, even its extinction is a guide. If the fire-fly had gone on shining, Nycteris would have seen the stair turn, and would have gone up to Watho"s bedroom; whereas now, feeling straight before her, she came to a latched door, which after a good deal of trying she managed to open--and stood in a maze of wondering perplexity, awe, and delight. What was it? Was it outside of her, or something taking place in her head? Before her was a very long and very narrow pa.s.sage, broken up she could not tell how, and spreading out above and on all sides to an infinite height and breadth and distance--as if s.p.a.ce itself were growing out of a trough. It was brighter than her rooms had ever been, brighter than if six alabaster lamps had been burning in them. There was a quant.i.ty of strange streaking and mottling about it, very different from the shapes on her walls. She was in a dream of pleasant perplexity, of delightful bewilderment. She could not tell whether she was upon her feet or drifting about like the fire-fly, driven by the pulses of an inward bliss. But she knew little as yet of her inheritance.
Unconsciously she took one step forward from the threshold, and the girl who had been from her very birth a troglodyte stood in the ravishing glory of a Southern night, lit by a perfect moon--not the moon of our Northern clime, but a moon like silver glowing in a furnace--a moon one could see to be a globe--not far off, a mere flat disk on the face of the blue, but hanging down half way, and looking as if one could see all round it by a mere bending of the neck.
"It is my lamp!" she said, and stood dumb with parted lips. She looked and felt as if she had been standing there in silent ecstasy from the beginning.
"No, it is not my lamp," she said, after a while; "it is the mother of all the lamps."
And with that she fell on her knees, and spread out her hands to the moon. She could not in the least have told what was in her mind, but the action was in reality just a begging of the moon to be what she was--that precise incredible splendor hung in the far-off roof, that very glory essential to the being of poor girls born and bred in caverns. It was a resurrection--nay, a birth itself--to Nycteris. What the vast blue sky, studded with tiny sparks like the heads of diamond nails, could be; what the moon, looking so absolutely content with light--why, she knew less about them than you and I! but the greatest of astronomers might envy the rapture of such a first impression at the age of sixteen. Immeasurably imperfect it was, but false the impression could not be, for she saw with the eyes made for seeing, and saw indeed what many men are too wise to see.
As she knelt, something softly flapped her, embraced her, stroked her, fondled her. She rose to her feet, but saw nothing, did not know what it was. It was likest a woman"s breath. For she knew nothing of the air even, had never breathed the still new-born freshness of the world. Her breath had come to her only through long pa.s.sages and spirals in the rock. Still less did she know of the air alive with motion--of that thrice blessed thing, the wind of a summer night. It was like a spiritual wine, filling her whole being with an intoxication of purest joy. To breathe was a perfect existence. It seemed to her the light itself she drew into her lungs. Possessed by the power of the gorgeous night, she seemed at one and the same moment annihilated and glorified.
She was in the open pa.s.sage or gallery that ran round the top of the garden walls, between the cleft battlements, but she did not once look down to see what lay beneath. Her soul was drawn to the vault above her, with its lamp and its endless room. At last she burst into tears, and her heart was relieved, as the night itself is relieved by its lightning and rain.
And now she grew thoughtful. She must h.o.a.rd this splendor. What a little ignorance her jailers had made of her! Life was a mighty bliss, and they had sc.r.a.ped hers to the bare bone. They must not know that she knew. She must hide her knowledge--hide it even from her own eyes, keeping it close in her bosom, content to know that she had it, even when she could not brood on its presence, feasting her eyes with its glory. She turned from the vision, therefore, with a sigh of utter bliss, and with soft quiet steps and groping hands stole back into the darkness of the rock.
What was darkness or the laziness of Time"s feet to one who had seen what she had that night seen? She was lifted above all weariness, above all wrong.
When Falca entered, she uttered a cry of terror. But Nycteris called to her not to be afraid, and told her how there had come a rumbling and a shaking, and the lamp had fallen. Then Falca went and told her mistress, and within an hour a new globe hung in the place of the old one.
Nycteris thought it did not look so bright and clear as the former, but she made no lamentation over the change; she was far too rich to heed it. For now, prisoner as she knew herself, her heart was full of glory and gladness; at times she had to hold herself from jumping up and going dancing and singing about the room. When she slept, instead of dull dreams, she had splendid visions. There were times, it is true, when she became restless, and impatient to look upon her riches, but then she would reason with herself, saying, "What does it matter if I sit here for ages with my poor pale lamp, when out there a lamp is burning at which ten thousand little lamps are glowing with wonder?"
She never doubted she had looked upon the day and the sun, of which she had read; and always when she read of the day and the sun, she had the night and the moon in her mind; and when she read of the night and the moon, she thought only of the cave and the lamp that hung there.
X.--THE GREAT LAMP.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "NYCTERIS OPENED HER EYES AND LOOKED AFTER HER JUST IN TIME TO SEE HER VANISH THROUGH A PICTURE."]
It was some time before she had a second opportunity of going out, for Falca, since the fall of the lamp, had been a little more careful, and seldom left her for long. But one night, having a little headache, Nycteris lay down upon her bed, and was lying with her eyes closed, when she heard Falca come to her, and felt she was bending over her.
Disinclined to talk, she did not open her eyes, and lay quite still.
Satisfied that she was asleep, Falca left her, moving so softly that her very caution made Nycteris open her eyes and look after her--just in time to see her vanish--through a picture, as it seemed, that hung on the wall a long way from the usual place of issue. She jumped up, her headache forgotten, and ran in the opposite direction; got out, groped her way to the stair, climbed, and reached the top of the wall.--Alas!
the great room was not so light as the little one she had left. Why?
Sorrow of sorrows! the great lamp was gone! Had its globe fallen? and its lovely light gone out upon great wings, a resplendent fire-fly, soaring itself through a yet grander and lovelier room? She looked down to see if it lay anywhere broken to pieces on the carpet below, but she could not even see the carpet. But surely nothing very dreadful could have happened--no rumbling or shaking, for there were all the little lamps shining brighter than before, not one of them looking as if any unusual matter had befallen. What if each of those little lamps was growing into a big lamp, and after being a big lamp for a while, had to go out and grow a bigger lamp still--out there, beyond this _out_?--Ah!
here was the living thing that would not be seen, come to her again--bigger to-night!--with such loving kisses, and such liquid strokings of her cheeks and forehead, gently tossing her hair, and delicately toying with it! But it ceased, and all was still. Had it gone out? What would happen next? Perhaps the little lamps had not to grow great lamps, but to fall one by one and go out first?--With that came from below a sweet scent, then another, and another. Ah, how delicious!
Perhaps they were all coming to her only on their way out after the great lamp!--Then came the music of the river, which she had been too absorbed in the sky to note the first time. What was it? Alas! alas!
another sweet living thing on its way out. They were all marching slowly out in long lovely file, one after the other, each taking its leave of her as it pa.s.sed! It must be so: here were more and more sweet sounds, following and fading! The whole of the _Out_ was going out again; it was all going after the great lovely lamp! She would be left the only creature in the solitary day! Was there n.o.body to hang up a new lamp for the old one, and keep the creatures from going?--She crept back to her rock very sad. She tried to comfort herself by saying that anyhow there would be room out there; but as she said it she shuddered at the thought of _empty_ room.
When next she succeeded in getting out, a half-moon hung in the east: a new lamp had come, she thought, and all would be well.
It would be endless to describe the phases of feeling through which Nycteris pa.s.sed, more numerous and delicate than those of a thousand changing moons. A fresh bliss bloomed in her soul with every varying aspect of infinite nature. Ere long she began to suspect that the new moon was the old moon, gone out and come in again, like herself; also that, unlike herself, it wasted and grew again; that it was indeed a live thing, subject like herself to caverns, and keepers, and solitudes, escaping and shining when it could. Was it a prison like hers it was shut in? and did it grow dark when the lamp left it? Where could be the way into it?--With that, first she began to look below, as well as above and around her, and then first noted the tops of the trees between her and the floor. There were palms with their red-fingered hands full of fruit, eucalyptus-trees crowded with little boxes of powder puffs, oleanders with their half-caste roses, and orange-trees with their clouds of young silver stars and their aged b.a.l.l.s of gold. Her eyes could see colors invisible to ours in the moonlight, and all these she could distinguish well, though at first she took them for the shapes and colors of the carpet of the great room. She longed to get down among them, now she saw they were real creatures, but she did not know how.
She went along the whole length of the wall to the end that crossed the river, but found no way of going down. Above the river she stopped to gaze with awe upon the rushing water. She knew nothing of water but from what she drank and what she bathed in; and as the moon shone on the dark, swift stream, singing l.u.s.tily as it flowed, she did not doubt the river was alive, a swift rushing serpent of life, going--out?--whither?
And then she wondered if what was brought into her rooms had been killed that she might drink it, and have her bath in it.
Once when she stepped out upon the wall, it was into the midst of a fierce wind. The trees were all roaring. Great clouds were rushing along the skies, and tumbling over the little lamps: the great lamp had not come yet. All was in tumult. The wind seized her garments and hair, and shook them as if it would tear them from her. What could she have done to make the gentle creature so angry? Or was this another creature altogether--of the same kind, but hugely bigger, and of a very different temper and behavior? But the whole place was angry! Or was it that the creatures dwelling in it, the wind, and the trees, and the clouds, and the river, had all quarrelled, each with all the rest? Would the whole come to confusion and disorder? But as she gazed, wondering and disquieted, the moon, larger than ever she had seen her, came lifting herself above the horizon to look, broad and red as if she too were swollen with anger that she had been roused from her rest by their noise, and compelled to hurry up to see what her children were about, thus rioting in her absence, lest they should rack the whole frame of things. And as she rose, the loud wind grew quieter, and scolded less fiercely, the trees grew stiller, and moaned with a lower complaint, and the clouds hunted and hurled themselves less wildly across the sky. And as if she were pleased that her children obeyed her very presence, the moon grew smaller as she ascended the heavenly stair; her puffed cheeks sank, her complexion grew clearer, and a sweet smile spread over her countenance, as peacefully she rose and rose. But there was treason and rebellion in her court; for ere she reached the top of her great stairs the clouds had a.s.sembled, forgetting their late wars, and very still they were as they laid their heads together and conspired. Then combining, and lying silently in wait until she came near, they threw themselves upon her, and swallowed her up. Down from the roof came spots of wet, faster and faster, and they wetted the cheeks of Nycteris; and what could they be but the tears of the moon, crying because her children were smothering her? Nycteris wept too, and not knowing what to think, stole back in dismay to her room.
The next time she came out in fear and trembling. There was the moon still! away in the west--poor, indeed, and old, and looking dreadfully worn, as if all the wild beasts in the sky had been gnawing at her; but there she was, alive still, and able to shine.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
=The Royal Fern.=--A legend has been handed down from the time of the Danish invasions of Britain, explanatory of the generic name of Osmunda--an island, covered with large specimens of this fern, figuring prominently in the story. Osmund, the ferryman of Loch Tyne, had a beautiful child, who was the pride of his life and the joy of his heart.
In those days, when the merciless Danes were making their terrible descents upon the coasts of Great Britain, slaughtering the peaceful inhabitants, and pillaging wherever they went, no man could say how long he would be free from molestation and outrage. But Osmund, throughout the troublous times, had lived quietly in his country home with his wife and beautiful daughter.
The peaceful calm of his life was, however, destined to be broken. One evening the ferryman was sitting, with his wife and child, on the margin of the lake, after his day"s work. The setting sun was tingeing with roseate glory the fleecy banks of cloud, piled up against the horizon, silvering the surface of the rippling lake, and adding a richer hue to the golden locks of Osmund"s darling child. Suddenly the sound of hurrying footsteps startled the quiet group. Men, women, and children came hastening from the neighboring village, and breathlessly, as they pa.s.sed, they told the ferryman that the terrible Danes were coming.
Quick as thought Osmund sprang to his feet, seized his wife and child, and hurried them into his ferry-boat. Away he rowed with them pulling for very life--in the direction of a small island in the loch, densely covered with the tall and stately fronds of the royal fern. He quickly hid his precious charges amongst the cl.u.s.tering fronds, and then rowed rapidly back to his ferry place. He had rightly divined that the Danes needed his a.s.sistance, and would not hurt him.
For many hours of the ensuing night he worked with might and main to carry the fierce invaders across the ferry. When they had all disappeared on the opposite bank, Osmund returned to his trembling wife and child, and brought them safely back to his cottage. In commemoration, it is said, of this event, the fair daughter of Osmund gave the great island fern her father"s name. Those who care not to accept this fanciful origin of the name Osmunda, will perhaps incline to another suggestion which has been made, that the generic name had been derived from an old Saxon word signifying strength, the specific name indicating its royal or stately habit of growth.
TRAVELLING BAG FOR PETS.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAVELLING BAG FOR PETS.]
Little girls who like to carry their pets with them on a journey will be glad to know how to make this pretty and convenient bag, by means of which Fido and Mutt can travel like princes. The bag is made of black leather, and is closed on the side with a lock and key and clamps. The pocket for holding the dog is fifteen inches wide and nine inches and a half high. The front is cut out, leaving a margin on the edges an inch and a half wide, and the opening is filled with a wire screen, through which the little prisoner can see and breathe freely. For protection, the screen is covered by two leather flaps, fastened one at the bottom and one at the top of the bag, which overlap each other, and are secured by steel clasps.