The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography. C. S. Lewis
ugliest, and the other the most beautiful, of the children of men. Then one of them spoke and he realised that they were none other than the Green Lady herself and the haunted body of Weston. The robes were of feathers, and he knew well the Perelandrian birds from which they had been derived; the art of the weaving, if weaving it could be called, was beyond his comprehension.
“Welcome, Piebald,” said the Lady. “You have slept long. What do you think of us in our leaves?”
“The birds,” said Ransom. “The poor birds! What has he done to them?”
“He has found the feathers somewhere,” said the Lady carelessly. “They drop them.”
“Why have you done this, Lady?”
“He has been making me older again. Why did you never tell me, Piebald?”
“Tell you what?”
“We never knew. This one showed me that the trees have leaves and the beasts have fur, and said that in your world the men and women also hung beautiful things about them. Why do you not tell us how we look? Oh, Piebald, Piebald, I hope this is not going to be another of the new goods from which you draw back your hand. It cannot be new to you if they all do it in your world.”
“Ah,” said Ransom, “but it is different there. It is cold.”
“So the Stranger said,” she answered. “But not in all parts of your world. He says they do it even where it is warm.”
“Has he said why they do it?”
“To be beautiful. Why else?” said the Lady, with some wonder in her face.
“Thank Heaven,” thought Ransom, “he is only teaching her vanity”; for he had feared something worse. Yet could it be possible, in the long run, to wear clothes without learning modesty, and through modesty lasciviousness?
“Do you think we are more beautiful?” said the Lady, interrupting his thoughts.
“No,” said Ransom; and then, correcting himself, “I don’t know.” It was, indeed, not easy to reply. The Un-man, now that Weston’s prosaic shirt and shorts were concealed, looked a more exotic and therefore a more imaginatively, less squalidly, hideous figure. As for the Lady—that she looked in some way worse was not doubtful. Yet there is a plainness in nudity—as we speak of “plain” bread. A sort of richness, a flamboyancy, a concession, as it were, to lower conceptions of the beautiful, had come with the purple robe. For the first (and last) time she appeared to him at that moment as a woman whom an earth-born man might conceivably love. And this was intolerable. The ghastly inappropriateness of the idea had, all in one moment, stolen something from the colours of the landscape and the scent of the flowers.
“Do you think we are more beautiful?” repeated the Lady.
“What does it matter?” said Ransom dully.
“Everyone should wish to be as beautiful as they can,” she answered. “And we cannot see ourselves.”
“We can,” said Weston’s body.
“How can this be?” said the Lady, turning to it. “Even if you could roll your eyes right round to look inside they would see only blackness.”
“Not that way,” it answered. “I will show you.” It walked a few paces away to where Weston’s pack lay in the yellow turf. With that curious distinctness which often falls upon us when we are anxious and preoccupied Ransom noticed the exact make and pattern of the pack. It must have been from the same shop in London where he had bought his own: and that little fact, suddenly reminding him that Weston had once been a man, that he too had once had pleasures and pains and a human mind, almost brought the tears into his eyes. The horrible fingers which Weston would never use again worked at the buckles and brought out a small bright object—an English pocket mirror that might have cost three-and-six. He handed it to the Green Lady. She turned it over in her hands.
“What is it? What am I to do with it?” she said.
“Look in it,” said the Un-man.
“How?”
“Look!” he said. Then taking it from her he held it up to her face. She stared for quite an appreciable time without apparently making anything of it. Then she started back with a cry and covered her face. Ransom started too. It was the first time he had seen her the mere passive recipient of any emotion. The world about him was big with change.
“Oh—oh,” she cried. “What is it? I saw a face.”
“Only your own face, beautiful one,” said the Un-man.
“I know,” said the Lady, still averting her eyes from the mirror. “My face—out there—looking at me. Am I growing older or is it something else? I feel . . . I feel . . . my heart is beating too hard. I am not warm. What is it?” She glanced from one of them to the other. The mysteries had all vanished from her face. It was as easy to read as that of a man in a shelter when a bomb is coming.
“What is it?” she repeated.
“It is called Fear,” said Weston’s mouth. Then the creature turned its face full on Ransom and grinned.
“Fear,” she said. “This is Fear,” pondering the discovery; then, with abrupt finality, “I do not like it.”
“It will go away,” said the Un-man, when Ransom interrupted.
“It will never go away if you do what he wishes. It is into more and more fear that he is leading you.”
“It is,” said the Un-man, “into the great waves and through them and beyond. Now that you know Fear, you see that it must be you who shall taste it on behalf of your race. You know the King will not. You do not wish him to. But there is no cause for fear in this little thing: rather for joy. What is fearful in it?”
“Things being two when they are one,” replied the Lady decisively. “That thing” (she pointed at the mirror) “is me and not me.”
“But if you do not look you will never know how beautiful you are.”
“It comes into my mind, Stranger,” she answered, “that a fruit does not eat itself, and a man cannot be together with himself.”
“A fruit cannot do that because it is only a fruit,” said the Un-man. “But we can do it. We call this thing a mirror. A man can love himself, and be together with himself. That is what it means to be a man or a woman—to walk alongside oneself as if one were a second person and to delight in one’s own beauty. Mirrors were made to teach this art.”
“Is it a good?” said the Lady.
“No,” said Ransom.
“How can you find out without trying?” said the Un-man.
“If you try it and it is not good,” said Ransom, “how do you know whether you will be able to stop doing it?”
“I am walking alongside myself already,” said the Lady. “But I do not yet know what I look like. If I have become two I had better know what the other is. As for you, Piebald, one look will show me this woman’s face and why should I look more than once?”
She took the mirror, timidly but firmly, from the Un-man and looked into it in silence for the better part of a minute. Then she let it sink and stood holding it at her side.
“It is very strange,” she said at last.
“It is very beautiful,” said the Un-man. “Do you not think so?”
“Yes.”
“But you have not yet found what you set out to find.”
“What was that? I have forgotten.”
“Whether the robe of feathers made you more beautiful or less.”
“I saw only a face.”
“Hold it farther away and you will