“No, Psyche, that is a spider. Emeralda has sent a spider. The spider has crawled to the top, along the smooth diamond; there the spider weaves his web. And the diamond … is crumbling to pieces …”
“Astra! …”
“Psyche, creep closer to me … Let me feel your little round head, your wingless shoulders …”
“Astra, everything is black; clouds are drifting past the stars!”
“Sleep thus in my mantle, sleep thus at my feet. Sleep, my little child, and cover yourself for the night … Psyche, your old nurse is dead. Psyche, now I am your nurse … Sleep now by blind Astra …”
Feeling for Psyche, she threw her mantle round her. The night was dark. Astra’s powerless hand dropped over Psyche. Psyche fell asleep.
XXIII
IT WAS STILL DARK when Psyche awoke. She looked up at Astra, who sat sleeping, her grey head on her breast; faintly shone her star. Very gently, so as not to wake her, Psyche rose, and left the terrace. She knew the way. She went through the halls and passages, down the steps, the endless steps. In the corners sat the sacred spiders, and wove …
Psyche went lower down, to the vaults. There burned the everlasting lamps. She went among the royal tombs, crystal sarcophagi, and found her father’s coffin. By the lamp, which was always kept burning, she recognised his embalmed, rigid face. The eyes were closed. He knew nothing about her: that she had gone away and come back. Death was between them, and severed them forever.
She kissed the glass, and her tears, round, hard, and red, clattered on the crystal.
She knelt down and tried to pray. In a corner of the vault, a black spot moved. It was a big spider with a white cross on its body.
“So, you have come back again … I knew that you would come. We can escape from nothing. Everything happens as it happens. Everything is as it is. Everything goes to dust; into the pits of the Past, into the power of Emeralda … Now become a spider like us, weave your web, and be wise …”
Psyche got up.
“No! …” she exclaimed, “I will not become a spider, I will weave no web. I have sinned, but I will weave no web; I have sinned and will do penance. The world is awful—desert and wood and space; life is awful—love and pain, joy and despair, sin and punishment. And if fate is as it is, it is in vain to weave a web and to heap up treasures of dust. Spider, were it not more human to love, to live, and even to sin, than to weave web upon web? Spider, I envy you not your sacredness! …”
The spider puffed itself out maliciously.
“You seem to be still proud of your murder and your immorality and shamelessness! Your princely name you have dragged through the mire, your wings you have given up for a panther’s skin and a grape-wreath, and know not yet what repentance is. If you had been wise and had become a spider, you would have served Emeralda, and there would have been no need to go down to the Underworld!”
But Psyche was no longer afraid. She had come to kiss her father’s coffin; she left her jewelled tears in the treasure, which the spiders watched over, and ascended the hundreds of steps and came on to the terrace of the battlements.
There as a child she had wandered and gazed, a child with wings, and innocent, her soul full of dreams. Now she wandered again along the ramparts and battlements high as a man; the doves fluttered about her, the swans looked up at her … and full of dejection for former innocence and youth, she wept and wept: no longer a brook, but topazes, rubies, tears of sin, that, rattling down, frightened the doves and the swans, which, indignant, thought that she was pelting them with stones. The doves flew away, and the swans, offended, turned their backs on her. Then she sat down in an embrasure—no wings now lay against the stone-work—and she folded her arms round her knees. She looked towards the horizon; behind it loomed other horizons, first pink, then silver; blue, then gold; behind the grey, pale and misty, and then fading away. Then beyond, the horizon became milk-white, like an opal, and in the reflection of the last rays of the setting sun, it seemed as if lakes were mirrored there; islands rose in the air, aerial paradises, watery streaks of blue sea, oceans of ether and light-quivering nothingness.
And Psyche bowed her head, full of sadness, and sobbed. The world was not changed, but more beautiful than ever; gloriously beautiful loomed the ever-changing horizon. Yet Psyche sobbed, full of sadness. She knew that the horizons were pure delusions, and that behind them was the desert with the Sphinx. Oh! if she could once more believe in the aerial paradises, the purple seas, the golden regions with people of light, who lived under rosy bananas! Alas! had she not trod a paradise, the sweet Present, the adorable garden of a moment, so little and so short in duration? It was past, it was past! Oh, how her soul scorched, how her shoulders ached, how her eyes burned!
She wept and she sobbed, and hid her face in her hands. She did not notice that the wind was rising, that the horizon quivered, that clouds were speeding through the air, white colossi like towers and dragons, riders and horses.
She did not see the changes in the sky; she did not see the going up and down of wings, of flaming wings in the silver lightning that flashed from the sky; she did not hear the warning thunder, not did she see the clouds emitting sparks. But suddenly she distinctly heard a voice:
“Psyche! Psyche!”
She looked up. Before her, she saw descending on broad wings a steed of pure light and flame. And she uttered a cry, that sounded in the air like an endless shout of gladness:
“Chimera!”
It was he. He descended. The basalt terrace trembled, as though shaken by an earthquake; under his hoofs the stone shot sparks, and he stood before her resplendent and beautiful.
“Chimera!” she cried, and folded her hands and sank down before him on her knees.
She could say nothing else. She was dazzled, and it seemed as though her soul ascended heavenward in the pure delight of love.
“Psyche!” sounded his voice of bronze, “I have come down, for I love you. But I may not bear you any more on my back through the delusive regions of air, because you have committed sin. Psyche, it is your bounden duty to obey Emeralda’s command. Go down to Hell and seek the Jewel.”
“Chimera, adored one, delight of my soul, oh, your splendour fills my eyes! Your word gives strength to my weakness! I feel it! You may not bear me away; I am unworthy of your wings. But I adore and bless you for coming! Chimera, Chimera, your splendour has beamed once more upon me! your voice has inspired me, and I will do what you say. You let the light of hope break in upon me; new strength flows through my limbs. Chimera, I hope, I hope! I will go down into Hell; I will seek … Shall I find? I know not … But I hope! The horizon is quivering with hope and ether and the Future!”
“Psyche!” sounded his voice again like bronze, “be strong! Take heart! Descend! Do penance! Seek! Once more you will see me!”
“Once more!”
“Be strong, take heart, do penance!”
He ascended, whilst Psyche remained kneeling. When he was high in the air, there came a peal of thunder, as if the heavens would burst asunder. The sky was dark, but it lit up by the lightning. In the black sky, in the lightning flame, rose fearfully the three hundred towers. And the thunder-claps rumbled on, one after the other, as if the Past were perishing in the last day …
With a joyful cry, Psyche hastened along the terraces, the battlements, ramparts, entered the castle, and went down the steps. Lower and lower she descended, lower than the vaults; and as she passed them, she threw a kiss in the direction where the old king lay buried … She descended still lower, and yet she heard the thunder pealing above, and the castle seemed to tremble to its very foundations.
She descended still lower: she descended very deep pits, built like towers reversed to the central nave of the earth. She descended step after step, thousands of steps, groping in the darkness. She walked with unerring feet, that felt for the next step, that detected the slippery stone; she felt and never hesitated. Another step and then another; again a pit, pit after pit, all
the pits of the Past. Bats flew up and flapped their wings, spiders she felt crawling over her, an icy dampness fell like a chill wind upon her shoulders.
Deeper down she went, and deeper. It was pitch dark, and above she heard nothing more; she heard only the flapping of gigantic bats, the droning of the envious spiders. But she defended herself with her little hand; as she descended, she beat about her, beat the bats away, seized a vampire, held it tightly by the neck, and strangled it.
Her foot glided over toads, she slipped over snakes, but she got up again and beat the bats and fought with the vampires. The Chimera had so inspired her with strength, that she felt strong as a giant, young and courageous; he had filled her eyes with such light that she saw him in the darkness.
In the pitchy darkness his flaming wings were distinctly visible. And on she went descending; thick clouds of dust, the deepest shadows of Emeralda’s transitoriness, rose up, but she kept breathing, never hesitating, and her foot felt instinctively the next step, and she struck at the bats and fought with the vampires. When she throttled them, a human cry was heard, and the echo sounded a thousand times like the anxious cry of a murder. But she was not afraid. She kept on descending …
She kept descending. At last she felt no more steps but a void, under her feet, and she sank … like a feather, through heavier air; she sank, she sank deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper … A black draught of air, an invisible wind, damp and chill, made her feel that she had passed all the pits, that she was sinking outside them in the open air, invisible and black, thick as ink. Then she began to sink more slowly, and … her feet touched the ground. Sounds soft and low, like the plaintive strains of a viol, rose up from afar, like music of the sea, the plaint of a thousand voices which never became melody.
The far-off sound continued quivering as an accompaniment of wind, of a black wind which blew, and overpowered, the music of the sea. Sometimes it went a little higher, sometimes a little lower, and always remained the vague and distant incomprehensible harmony.
From where the wind came, from where the plaintive murmuring arose, thither would Psyche go. And with her foot she kept feeling, and with her outstretched hands, on and on she went …
Long, long she went in the darkness, till the darkness became less opaque and lit up with phosphoric flickerings; and she saw:
That she was ascending a path between two inky seas. Black as ink were the waves.
Then she heard them roaring; then she saw their crests lit up with a blue phosphorescent glow.
Then she heard the soft, low sounds, the plaintive viols swell, till they became a dull, and continuous soughing.
The black wind rose as with a gigantic sail, and suddenly blew the hurricane.
In the pitch-dark air, the lightning flashed blue.
And between the two inky seas, Psyche went slowly on, against the gusts of wind.
Then she uttered a cry, as though she were calling.
The hurricane took her cry for help over the endless sea of Hell … And from all sides dived up the gruesome frights—leviathan monsters. They opened their jaws at Psyche, and the water streamed out. Their scaly tortuous bodies wound along over the black surface of the ocean, and on the horizon, they dived up and down, and the ocean dived with them. Storm-flood, waterfall—storm-flood, waterfall … They spread out their dragon wings, and caught up the boisterous wind; they shot up waterspouts like towering fountains, of a blue and yellowish hue. Their round squinting eyes stood out watchful, like green and yellow signals; they lifted their red-lobed jaws, abysses of red-slimy desires, bubbling with foamy slaver.
“Monsters of the sea of pain, where shall I find the Jewel for Emeralda?”
Psyche asked the question in a high, musical key, and her voice rang out clearly in the hurricane and plaintive moanings of the sea. Her high soprano sounded above all the roaring of the elements and plaintive cries; and three times she repeated the question:
“Monsters of the sea of pain, where shall I find the Jewel of Emeralda?”
The leviathans pressed together along the path that Psyche trod. But amidst the noise of their tossing and snorting and spouting, she heard the plaintive sea swelling, the sea of plaintive voices; and then in the blue phosphorescent glow between the monsters, she saw the drowned shades heaving to and fro, always writhing in fear, always drowning in the inky sea; the everlasting wailing of the plaintive sea, the cry of souls in pain; the gigantic plaintive viol, with strings ever playing …
“Vanity, vanity!”
Did she hear aright?
It was one single sound, like a note repeated again and again. “Vanity, vanity!” was the inexorable answer, first vague as a dream, mystic as a thought, sounding more distinctly as an admonition against worldly pride. And so distinct did the sound become, that Psyche, brave Psyche, who feared neither vampire nor monster of the deep … that courageous Psyche hesitated and felt all her strength giving way.
“If it were vanity to seek, to ask for the Jewel, how much farther should she go?”
“Should she go back?”
She looked round.
But she saw that behind her step, the seas immediately closed till they became one single sea of ink; she saw that the only path for her stretched across the seas, that behind her it immediately sank away.
She could not go back, she must go on.
And she buoyed up her sinking soul; she went on, and in a high soprano voice repeated again and again her question:
“Spirits in the sea of pain, where shall I find the Jewel for Emeralda?”
“Vanity, vanity!”
The plaintive viol kept trembling, and the same sound sounded ever, the unchangeable answer. The hurricane was no longer chill, but warm, sultry, strangely sultry; more and more sultry blew the everlasting cyclone.
The sea-monsters kept back; they dived again below; the sea sank with them, the shadows swayed to and fro in storm-flood, waterfall—storm-flood, waterfall, and many-headed hydras came sinuously up. The sea no longer shone with phosphorescent glow, but was quite black, pitch black, black as boiling pitch, without foam and without light, and kept sending up a discharge of miry, vaporous matter. In the boiling pitch, the hydras, with their thousand snaky heads, kept diving up, tortoise-scaled; swayed to and fro, to and fro the pale faces of the shades, but ever sounded the plaintive viol, and ever rang forth the same note, the unchangeable answer to Psyche’s shrill question:
“Hydras of the sea of pain, spirits in the sea of pain, where shall I find the Jewel for Emeralda?”
“Vanity, vanity! …”
The pitch seethed and hissed and steamed.
It was no longer a sea of water, no longer a sea of pitch;
It was a sea of nothing but flame, pitch-black flame, a sea of jet-black fire, fire and flame, that waved from the horizon, where a single streak of pale light appeared. In the black flames burned the shades, in the black flames wound the hydras in and out; the thick smoke shot up into the clouds, and the clouds sent it back again …
“Spirits in the pitch-black flames, where shall I find the Jewel for Emeralda?”
“Vanity, vanity! …”
The hurricane kept blowing, the plaintive viol kept trembling, and ever sounded the same note, the unchangeable answer. But scorchingly, more scorchingly blew the wind, like a tempest from a sun for ever doomed. The black night now assumed a dark-purple steam; the clouds drove a bloody vapour into the heavens.
And on either side of Psyche’s path suddenly shot out the flaming hurricane of the sun, gigantic purple tongues of fire, scarlet and orange. The lower clouds drove them back, and when Psyche looked round, she stood in a flaming fire. The flaming hurricane seethed round her; behind her feet the path was on fire. The air was fire. But Psyche, whose own soul was on fire, in her own scorching fire of remorse, felt not the glowing heat, and she saw,
Out of the living scarlet craters, the orange caves, the hellish chimeras working up their sinuous way like glowing spirals: half arabesque, hal
f beast; half dragon, half tail; flaming sea-horses. They spat and fanned the glowing fire, and, riding aloft on the burning hurricane, the shades swept past Psyche.
“Spirits in the scarlet flames …”
“Vanity, vanity!”
This was the only answer, that sounded afar off in her ears, the answer of the tortured, angry spirits, which in the strength of their sin and passion came flying up from the craters.
On she went …
She went on along the path that unfolded before her.
How confidently she went on, how calmly! Why was she not afraid? Oh! she knew too much to be afraid and not to go on in confidence. Was the answer not always more distinct and unchangeable? Psyche’s soul breathed freely, and in the fire around her her own fire seemed to diminish. For when the fire round her became yellower, sulphur-yellow, pure yellow, the pure golden yellow of the sun, then she uttered a cry of joy, as though she knew the answer:
“Spirits in the sulphur flames, spirits in the sun’s flames! …”
She smiled … Smiling, she hastened on with joyful voice, with winged step; and so rapidly did she flee along the path smoothed out for her tread, that behind her the answer could scarcely reach her.
“Vanity, vanity!”
Oh! it was always the plaintive viol, but the too poignant grief was tempered with melancholy; the plaintive sea became like a sea of melancholy; the thousands of voices were full of melancholy. And when the flames became less dense and lighter, when they changed from sulphur yellow to soft azure, a flaming sea of azure, in the silent dawning moonlight scenery, high broad, blue flaming tongues that shot from the moon—when the hellish hurricane no longer raged, but gave way to a more benign breeze, then Psyche asked no more in so shrill a key, but knowing all, her voice murmured dejectedly:
“Spirits in the azure flames, where shall I find the Jewel for Emeralda?”
The melancholy viol vibrated more gently; the spirits rocking to and fro in the thin blue fire sang more softly:
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