I sat in silence and shame. What he said was true: I had not been
a wise neighbour to the Little Ones!
Mr. Raven resumed:
"You wronged at the same time the stupid creatures themselves. For
them slavery would have been progress. To them a few such lessons
as you could have given them with a stick from one of their own
trees, would have been invaluable."
"I did not know they were cowards!"
"What difference does that make? The man who grounds his action on
another's cowardice, is essentially a coward himself.—I fear worse
will come of it! By this time the Little Ones might have been able
to protect themselves from the princess, not to say the giants—they
were always fit enough for that; as it was they laughed at them! but now, through your relations with her,——"
"I hate her!" I cried.
"Did you let her know you hated her?"
Again I was silent.
"Not even to her have you been faithful!—But hush! we were followed
from the fountain, I fear!"
"No living creature did I see!—except a disreputable-looking cat
that bolted into the shrubbery."
"It was a magnificent Persian—so wet and draggled, though, as to
look what she was—worse than disreputable!"
"What do you mean, Mr. Raven?" I cried, a fresh horror taking me
by the throat. "—There was a beautiful blue Persian about the
house, but she fled at the very sound of water!—Could she have
been after the goldfish?"
"We shall see!" returned the librarian. "I know a little about
cats of several sorts, and there is that in the room which will
unmask this one, or I am mistaken in her."
He rose, went to the door of the closet, brought from it the
mutilated volume, and sat down again beside me. I stared at the
book in his hand: it was a whole book, entire and sound!
"Where was the other half of it?" I gasped.
"Sticking through into my library," he answered.
I held my peace. A single question more would have been a plunge
into a bottomless sea, and there might be no time!
"Listen," he said: "I am going to read a stanza or two. There is
one present who, I imagine, will hardly enjoy the reading!"
He opened the vellum cover, and turned a leaf or two. The parchment
was discoloured with age, and one leaf showed a dark stain over
two-thirds of it. He slowly turned this also, and seemed looking
for a certain passage in what appeared a continuous poem. Somewhere
about the middle of the book he began to read.
But what follows represents—not what he read, only the impression
it made upon me. The poem seemed in a language I had never before
heard, which yet I understood perfectly, although I could not write
the words, or give their meaning save in poor approximation. These
fragments, then, are the shapes which those he read have finally
taken in passing again through my brain:—
"But if I found a man that could believe
In what he saw not, felt not, and yet knew, From him I should take substance, and receive Firmness and form relate to touch and view; Then should I clothe me in the likeness true Of that idea where his soul did cleave!" He turned a leaf and read again:— "In me was every woman. I had power Over the soul of every living man, Such as no woman ever had in dower— Could what no woman ever could, or can; All women, I, the woman, still outran, Outsoared, outsank, outreigned, in hall or bower.
"For I, though me he neither saw nor heard, Nor with his hand could touch finger of mine, Although not once my breath had ever stirred A hair of him, could trammel brain and spine With rooted bonds which Death could not untwine— Or life, though hope were evermore deferred." Again he paused, again turned a leaf, and again began:— "For by his side I lay, a bodiless thing; I breathed not, saw not, felt not, only thought, And made him love me—with a hungering After he knew not what—if it was aught Or but a nameless something that was wrought By him out of himself; for I did sing
"A song that had no sound into his soul; I lay a heartless thing against his heart, Giving him nothing where he gave his whole Being to clothe me human, every part: That I at last into his sense might dart, Thus first into his living mind I stole.
