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Stephen Archer and Other Tales

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_A DAY AND NIGHT MÄHRCHEN_.


CHAPTER I.

WATHO.


There was once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a
witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she
comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She
cared for nothing in itself--only for knowing it. She was not
naturally cruel, but the wolf had made her cruel.

She was tall and graceful, with a white skin, red hair, and black
eyes, which had a red fire in them. She was straight and strong, but
now and then would fall bent together, shudder, and sit for a moment
with her head turned over her shoulder, as if the wolf had got out of
her mind on to her back.




CHAPTER II.

AURORA.


This witch got two ladies to visit her. One of them belonged to the
court, and her husband had been sent on a far and difficult embassy.
The other was a young widow whose husband had lately died, and who had
since lost her sight, Watho lodged them in different parts of her
castle, and they did not know of each other's existence.

The castle stood on the side of a hill sloping gently down into a
narrow valley, in which was a river, with a pebbly channel and a
continual song. The garden went down to the bank of the river,
enclosed by high walls, which crossed the river and there stopped.
Each wall had a double row of battlements, and between the rows was a
narrow walk.

In the topmost story of the castle the Lady Aurora occupied a spacious
apartment of several large rooms looking southward. The windows
projected oriel-wise over the garden below, and there was a splendid
view from them both up and down and across the river. The opposite
side of the valley was steep, but not very high. Far away snow-peaks
were visible. These rooms Aurora seldom left, but their airy spaces,
the brilliant landscape and sky, the plentiful sunlight, the musical
instruments, books, pictures, curiosities, with the company of Watho
who made herself charming, precluded all dulness. She had venison and
feathered game to eat, milk and pale sunny sparkling wine to drink.

She had hair of the yellow gold, waved and rippled; her skin was fair,
not white like Watho's, and her eyes were of the blue of the heavens
when bluest; her features were delicate but strong, her mouth large
and finely curved, and haunted with smiles.




CHAPTER III.

VESPER.


Behind the castle the hill rose abruptly; the north-eastern tower,
indeed, was in contact with the rock, and communicated with the
interior of it. For in the rock was a series of chambers, known only
to Watho and the one servant whom she trusted, called Falca. Some
former owner had constructed these chambers after the tomb of an
Egyptian king, and probably with the same design, for in the centre of
one of them stood what could only be a sarcophagus, but that and
others were walled off. The sides and roofs of them were carved in low
relief, and curiously painted. Here the witch lodged the blind lady,
whose name was Vesper. Her eyes were black, with long black lashes;
her skin had a look of darkened silver, but was of purest tint and
grain; her hair was black and fine and straight-flowing; her features
were exquisitely formed, and if less beautiful yet more lovely from
sadness; she always looked as if she wanted to lie down and not rise
again. She did not know she was lodged in a tomb, though now and then
she wondered she never touched a window. There were many couches,
covered with richest silk, and soft as her own cheek, for her to lie
upon; and the carpets were so thick, she might have cast herself down
anywhere--as befitted a tomb. The place was dry and warm, and
cunningly pierced for air, so that it was always fresh, and lacked
only sunlight. There the witch fed her upon milk, and wine dark as a
carbuncle, and pomegranates, and purple grapes, and birds that dwell
in marshy places; and she played to her mournful tunes, and caused
wailful violins to attend her, and told her sad tales, thus holding
her ever in an atmosphere of sweet sorrow.




CHAPTER IV.

PHOTOGEN.


Watho at length had her desire, for witches often get what they want:
a splendid boy was born to the fair Aurora. Just as the sun rose, he
opened his eyes. Watho carried him immediately to a distant part of
the castle, and persuaded the mother that he never cried but once,
dying the moment he was born. Overcome with grief, Aurora left the
castle as soon as she was able, and Watho never invited her again.

And now the witch's care was, that the child should not know darkness.
Persistently she trained him until at last he never slept during the
day, and never woke during the night. She never let him see anything
black, and even kept all dull colours out of his way. Never, if she
could help it, would she let a shadow fall upon him, watching against
shadows as if they had been live things that would hurt him. All day
he basked in the full splendour of the sun, in the same large rooms
his mother had occupied. Watho used him to the sun, until he could
bear more of it than any dark-blooded African. In the hottest of every
day, she stript him and laid him in it, that he might ripen like a
peach; and the boy rejoiced in it, and would resist being dressed
again. She brought all her knowledge to bear on making his muscles
strong and elastic and swiftly responsive--that his soul, she said
laughing, might sit in every fibre, be all in every part, and awake
the moment of call. His hair was of the red gold, but his eyes grew
darker as he grew, until they were as black as Vesper's. He was the
merriest of creatures, always laughing, always loving, for a moment
raging, then laughing afresh. Watho called him Photogen.




CHAPTER V.

NYCTERIS.


Five or six months after the birth of Photogen, the dark lady also
gave birth to a baby: in the windowless tomb of a blind mother, in the
dead of night, under the feeble rays of a lamp in an alabaster globe,
a girl came into the darkness with a wail. And just as she was born
for the first time, Vesper was born for the second, and passed into a
world as unknown to her as this was to her child--who would have to be
born yet again before she could see her mother.

Watho called her Nycteris, and she grew as like Vesper as possible--in
all but one particular. She had the same dark skin, dark eyelashes and
brows, dark hair, and gentle sad look; but she had just the eyes of
Aurora, the mother of Photogen, and if they grew darker as she grew
older, it was only a darker blue. Watho, with the help of Falca, took
the greatest possible care of her--in every way consistent with her
plans, that is,--the main point in which was that she should never see
any light but what came from the lamp. Hence her optic nerves, and
indeed her whole apparatus for seeing, grew both larger and more
sensitive; her eyes, indeed, stopped short only of being too large.
Under her dark hair and forehead and eyebrows, they looked like two
breaks in a cloudy night-sky, through which peeped the heaven where
the stars and no clouds live. She was a sadly dainty little creature.
No one in the world except those two was aware of the being of the
little bat. Watho trained her to sleep during the day, and wake during
the night. She taught her music, in which she was herself a
proficient, and taught her scarcely anything else.




CHAPTER VI.

HOW PHOTOGEN GREW.


The hollow in which the castle of Watho lay, was a cleft in a plain
rather than a valley among hills, for at the top of its steep sides,
both north and south, was a table-land, large and wide. It was covered
with rich grass and flowers, with here and there a wood, the outlying
colony of a great forest. These grassy plains were the finest hunting
grounds in the world. Great herds of small, but fierce cattle, with
humps and shaggy manes, roved about them, also antelopes and gnus, and
the tiny roedeer, while the woods were swarming with wild creatures.
The tables of the castle were mainly supplied from them. The chief of
Watho's huntsmen was a fine fellow, and when Photogen began to outgrow
the training she could give him, she handed him over to Fargu. He with
a will set about teaching him all he knew. He got him pony after pony,
larger and larger as he grew, every one less manageable than that
which had preceded it, and advanced him from pony to horse, and from
horse to horse, until he was equal to anything in that kind which the
country produced. In similar fashion he trained him to the use of bow
and arrow, substituting every three months a stronger how and longer
arrows; and soon he became, even on horseback, a wonderful archer. He
was but fourteen when he killed his first bull, causing jubilation
among the huntsmen, and, indeed, through all the castle, for there too
he was the favourite. Every day, almost as soon as the sun was up, he
went out hunting, and would in general be out nearly the whole of the
day. But Watho had laid upon Fargu just one commandment, namely, that
Photogen should on no account, whatever the plea, be out until
sundown, or so near it as to wake in him the desire of seeing what was
going to happen; and this commandment Fargu was anxiously careful not
to break; for, although he would not have trembled had a whole herd of
bulls come down upon him, charging at full speed across the level, and
not an arrow left in his quiver, he was more than afraid of his
mistress. When she looked at him in a certain way, he felt, he said,
as if his heart turned to ashes in his breast, and what ran in his
veins was no longer blood, but milk and water. So that, ere long, as
Photogen grew older, Fargu began to tremble, for he found it steadily
growing harder to restrain him. So full of life was he, as Fargu said
to his mistress, much to her content, that he was more like a live
thunderbolt than a human being. He did not know what fear was, and
that not because he did not know danger; for he had had a severe
laceration from the razor-like tusk of a boar--whose spine, however,
he had severed with one blow of his hunting-knife, before Fargu could
reach him with defence. When he would spur his horse into the midst of
a herd of bulls, carrying only his bow and his short sword, or shoot
an arrow into a herd, and go after it as if to reclaim it for a
runaway shaft, arriving in time to follow it with a spear-thrust
before the wounded animal knew which way to charge, Fargu thought with
terror how it would be when he came to know the temptation of the
huddle-spot leopards, and the knife-clawed lynxes, with which the
forest was haunted. For the boy had been so steeped in the sun, from
childhood so saturated with his influence, that he looked upon every
danger from a sovereign height of courage. When, therefore, he was
approaching his sixteenth year, Fargu ventured to beg of Watho that
she would lay her commands upon the youth himself, and release him
from responsibility for him. One might as soon hold a tawny-maned lion
as Photogen, he said, Watho called the youth, and in the presence of
Fargu laid her command upon him never to be out when the rim of the
sun should touch the horizon, accompanying the prohibition with hints
of consequences, none the less awful that they were obscure. Photogen
listened respectfully, but, knowing neither the taste of fear nor the
temptation of the night, her words were but sounds to him.




CHAPTER VII.

HOW NYCTERIS GREW.


The little education she intended Nycteris to have, Watho gave her by
word of mouth. Not meaning she should have light enough to read by, to
leave other reasons unmentioned, she never put a book in her hands.
Nycteris, however, saw so much better than Watho imagined, that the
light she gave her was quite sufficient, and she managed to coax Falca
into teaching her the letters, after which she taught herself to read,
and Falca now and then brought her a child's book. But her chief
pleasure was in her instrument. Her very fingers loved it, and would
wander about over its keys like feeding sheep. She was not unhappy.
She knew nothing of the world except the tomb in which she dwelt, and
had some pleasure in everything she did. But she desired,
nevertheless, something more or different. She did not know what it
was, and the nearest she could come to expressing it to herself
was--that she wanted more room. Watho and Falca would go from her
beyond the shine of the lamp, and come again; therefore surely there
must be more room somewhere. As often as she was left alone, she would
fall to poring over the coloured bas-reliefs on the walls. These were
intended to represent various of the powers of Nature under
allegorical similitudes, and as nothing can be made that does not
belong to the general scheme, she could not fail at least to imagine a
flicker of relationship between some of them, and thus a shadow of the
reality of things found its way to her.

There was one thing, however, which moved and taught her more than all
the rest--the lamp, namely, that hung from the ceiling, which she
always saw alight, though she never saw the flame, only the slight
condensation towards the centre of the alabaster globe. And besides
the operation of the light itself after its kind, the indefiniteness
of the globe, and the softness of the light, giving her the feeling as
if her eyes could go in and into its whiteness, were somehow also
associated with the idea of space and room. She would sit for an hour
together gazing up at the lamp, and her heart would swell as she
gazed. She would wonder what had hurt her, when she found her face wet
with tears, and then would wonder how she could have been hurt without
knowing it. She never looked thus at the lamp except when she was
alone.




CHAPTER 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 space, 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 kneeled 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 alter 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.




CHAPTER 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 firefly, 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 firefly, 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 passage.
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
firefly 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 firefly 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 passage, 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 space 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 quantity 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 firefly, 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 disc on the face of the
blue, but hanging down halfway, 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 splendour 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 know nothing of the
air even, had never breathed the still newborn freshness of the world.
Her breath had come to her only through long passages 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 passage 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 hoard this splendour! What a
little ignorance her gaolers had made of her! Life was a mighty bliss,
and they had scraped 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 lump 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.

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