A House of Pomegranates, Oscar Wilde [suggested reading TXT] 📗

hid her face in her blue

mantle. ‘Pretty boy, pretty boy,’ she muttered, ‘that is a

terrible thing to do.’

 

He tossed his brown curls and laughed. ‘My soul is nought to me,’

he answered. ‘I cannot see it. I may not touch it. I do not know

it.’

 

‘What wilt thou give me if I tell thee?’ asked the Witch, looking

down at him with her beautiful eyes.

 

‘Five pieces of gold,’ he said, ‘and my nets, and the wattled house

where I live, and the painted boat in which I sail. Only tell me

how to get rid of my soul, and I will give thee all that I

possess.’

 

She laughed mockingly at him, and struck him with the spray of

hemlock. ‘I can turn the autumn leaves into gold,’ she answered,

‘and I can weave the pale moonbeams into silver if I will it. He

whom I serve is richer than all the kings of this world, and has

their dominions.’

 

‘What then shall I give thee,’ he cried, ‘if thy price be neither

gold nor silver?’

 

The Witch stroked his hair with her thin white hand. ‘Thou must

dance with me, pretty boy,’ she murmured, and she smiled at him as

she spoke.

 

‘Nought but that?’ cried the young Fisherman in wonder and he rose

to his feet.

 

‘Nought but that,’ she answered, and she smiled at him again.

 

‘Then at sunset in some secret place we shall dance together,’ he

said, ‘and after that we have danced thou shalt tell me the thing

which I desire to know.’

 

She shook her head. ‘When the moon is full, when the moon is

full,’ she muttered. Then she peered all round, and listened. A

blue bird rose screaming from its nest and circled over the dunes,

and three spotted birds rustled through the coarse grey grass and

whistled to each other. There was no other sound save the sound of

a wave fretting the smooth pebbles below. So she reached out her

hand, and drew him near to her and put her dry lips close to his

ear.

 

‘To-night thou must come to the top of the mountain,’ she

whispered. ‘It is a Sabbath, and He will be there.’

 

The young Fisherman started and looked at her, and she showed her

white teeth and laughed. ‘Who is He of whom thou speakest?’ he

asked.

 

‘It matters not,’ she answered. ‘Go thou to-night, and stand under

the branches of the hornbeam, and wait for my coming. If a black

dog run towards thee, strike it with a rod of willow, and it will

go away. If an owl speak to thee, make it no answer. When the

moon is full I shall be with thee, and we will dance together on

the grass.’

 

‘But wilt thou swear to me to tell me how I may send my soul from

me?’ he made question.

 

She moved out into the sunlight, and through her red hair rippled

the wind. ‘By the hoofs of the goat I swear it,’ she made answer.

 

‘Thou art the best of the witches,’ cried the young Fisherman, ‘and

I will surely dance with thee to-night on the top of the mountain.

I would indeed that thou hadst asked of me either gold or silver.

But such as thy price is thou shalt have it, for it is but a little

thing.’ And he doffed his cap to her, and bent his head low, and

ran back to the town filled with a great joy.

 

And the Witch watched him as he went, and when he had passed from

her sight she entered her cave, and having taken a mirror from a

box of carved cedarwood, she set it up on a frame, and burned

vervain on lighted charcoal before it, and peered through the coils

of the smoke. And after a time she clenched her hands in anger.

‘He should have been mine,’ she muttered, ‘I am as fair as she is.’

 

And that evening, when the moon had risen, the young Fisherman

climbed up to the top of the mountain, and stood under the branches

of the hornbeam. Like a targe of polished metal the round sea lay

at his feet, and the shadows of the fishing-boats moved in the

little bay. A great owl, with yellow sulphurous eyes, called to

him by his name, but he made it no answer. A black dog ran towards

him and snarled. He struck it with a rod of willow, and it went

away whining.

 

At midnight the witches came flying through the air like bats.

‘Phew!’ they cried, as they lit upon the ground, ‘there is some one

here we know not!’ and they sniffed about, and chattered to each

other, and made signs. Last of all came the young Witch, with her

red hair streaming in the wind. She wore a dress of gold tissue

embroidered with peacocks’ eyes, and a little cap of green velvet

was on her head.

 

‘Where is he, where is he?’ shrieked the witches when they saw her,

but she only laughed, and ran to the hornbeam, and taking the

Fisherman by the hand she led him out into the moonlight and began

to dance.

 

Round and round they whirled, and the young Witch jumped so high

that he could see the scarlet heels of her shoes. Then right

across the dancers came the sound of the galloping of a horse, but

no horse was to be seen, and he felt afraid.

 

‘Faster,’ cried the Witch, and she threw her arms about his neck,

and her breath was hot upon his face. ‘Faster, faster!’ she cried,

and the earth seemed to spin beneath his feet, and his brain grew

troubled, and a great terror fell on him, as of some evil thing

that was watching him, and at last he became aware that under the

shadow of a rock there was a figure that had not been there before.

 

It was a man dressed in a suit of black velvet, cut in the Spanish

fashion. His face was strangely pale, but his lips were like a

proud red flower. He seemed weary, and was leaning back toying in

a listless manner with the pommel of his dagger. On the grass

beside him lay a plumed hat, and a pair of riding-gloves gauntleted

with gilt lace, and sewn with seed-pearls wrought into a curious

device. A short cloak lined with sables hang from his shoulder,

and his delicate white hands were gemmed with rings. Heavy eyelids

drooped over his eyes.

 

The young Fisherman watched him, as one snared in a spell. At last

their eyes met, and wherever he danced it seemed to him that the

eyes of the man were upon him. He heard the Witch laugh, and

caught her by the waist, and whirled her madly round and round.

 

Suddenly a dog bayed in the wood, and the dancers stopped, and

going up two by two, knelt down, and kissed the man’s hands. As

they did so, a little smile touched his proud lips, as a bird’s

wing touches the water and makes it laugh. But there was disdain

in it. He kept looking at the young Fisherman.

 

‘Come! let us worship,’ whispered the Witch, and she led him up,

and a great desire to do as she besought him seized on him, and he

followed her. But when he came close, and without knowing why he

did it, he made on his breast the sign of the Cross, and called

upon the holy name.

 

No sooner had he done so than the witches screamed like hawks and

flew away, and the pallid face that had been watching him twitched

with a spasm of pain. The man went over to a little wood, and

whistled. A jennet with silver trappings came running to meet him.

As he leapt upon the saddle he turned round, and looked at the

young Fisherman sadly.

 

And the Witch with the red hair tried to fly away also, but the

Fisherman caught her by her wrists, and held her fast.

 

‘Loose me,’ she cried, ‘and let me go. For thou hast named what

should not be named, and shown the sign that may not be looked at.’

 

‘Nay,’ he answered, ‘but I will not let thee go till thou hast told

me the secret.’

 

‘What secret?’ said the Witch, wrestling with him like a wild cat,

and biting her foam-flecked lips.

 

‘Thou knowest,’ he made answer.

 

Her grass-green eyes grew dim with tears, and she said to the

Fisherman, ‘Ask me anything but that!’

 

He laughed, and held her all the more tightly.

 

And when she saw that she could not free herself, she whispered to

him, ‘Surely I am as fair as the daughters of the sea, and as

comely as those that dwell in the blue waters,’ and she fawned on

him and put her face close to his.

 

But he thrust her back frowning, and said to her, ‘If thou keepest

not the promise that thou madest to me I will slay thee for a false

witch.’

 

She grew grey as a blossom of the Judas tree, and shuddered. ‘Be

it so,’ she muttered. ‘It is thy soul and not mine. Do with it as

thou wilt.’ And she took from her girdle a little knife that had a

handle of green viper’s skin, and gave it to him.

 

‘What shall this serve me?’ he asked of her, wondering.

 

She was silent for a few moments, and a look of terror came over

her face. Then she brushed her hair back from her forehead, and

smiling strangely she said to him, ‘What men call the shadow of the

body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.

Stand on the sea-shore with thy back to the moon, and cut away from

around thy feet thy shadow, which is thy soul’s body, and bid thy

soul leave thee, and it will do so.’

 

The young Fisherman trembled. ‘Is this true?’ he murmured.

 

‘It is true, and I would that I had not told thee of it,’ she

cried, and she clung to his knees weeping.

 

He put her from him and left her in the rank grass, and going to

the edge of the mountain he placed the knife in his belt and began

to climb down.

 

And his Soul that was within him called out to him and said, ‘Lo!

I have dwelt with thee for all these years, and have been thy

servant. Send me not away from thee now, for what evil have I done

thee?’

 

And the young Fisherman laughed. ‘Thou hast done me no evil, but I

have no need of thee,’ he answered. ‘The world is wide, and there

is Heaven also, and Hell, and that dim twilight house that lies

between. Go wherever thou wilt, but trouble me not, for my love is

calling to me.’

 

And his Soul besought him piteously, but he heeded it not, but

leapt from crag to crag, being sure-footed as a wild goat, and at

last he reached the level ground and the yellow shore of the sea.

 

Bronze-limbed and well-knit, like a statue wrought by a Grecian, he

stood on the sand with his back to the moon, and out of the foam

came white arms that beckoned to him, and out of the waves rose dim

forms that did him homage. Before him lay his shadow, which was

the body of his soul, and behind him hung the moon in the honey-coloured air.

 

And his Soul said to him, ‘If indeed thou must