Their night was a troubled one, and they brought a strange report of it into the day. Whether the fear of their sleep came out into their waking, or their waking fear sank with them into their dreams, awake or asleep they were never at rest from it. All night something seemed going on in the house—something silent, something terrible, something they were not to know. Never a sound awoke; the darkness was one with the silence, and the silence was the terror.
Once, a frightful wind filled the house, and shook its inside, they said, so that it quivered and trembled like a horse shaking himself; but it was a silent wind that made not even a moan in their chamber, and passed away like a soundless sob.
They fell asleep. But they woke again with a great start. They thought the house was filling with water such as they had been drinking. It came from below, and swelled up until the garret was full of it to the very roof. But it made no more sound than the wind, and when it sank away, they fell asleep dry and warm.
The next time they woke, all the air, they said, inside and out, was full of cats. They swarmed—up and down, along and across, everywhere about the room. They felt their claws trying to get through the night-gowns lady Mara had put on them, but they could not; and in the morning not one of them had a scratch. Through the dark suddenly, came the only sound they heard the night long—the far-off howl of the huge great-grandmother-cat in the desert: she must have been calling her little ones, they thought, for that instant the cats stopped, and all was still. Once more they fell fast asleep, and did not wake till the sun was rising.
Such was the account the children gave of their experiences. But I was with the veiled woman and the princess all through the night: something of what took place I saw; much I only felt; and there was more which eye could not see, and heart only could in a measure understand.
As soon as Mara left the room with the children, my eyes fell on the white leopardess: I thought we had left her behind us, but there she was, cowering in a corner. Apparently she was in mortal terror of what she might see. A lamp stood on the high chimney-piece, and sometimes the room seemed full of lamp-shadows, sometimes of cloudy forms. The princess lay on the settle by the wall, and seemed never to have moved hand or foot. It was a fearsome waiting.
When Mara returned, she drew the settle with Lilith upon it to the middle of the room, then sat down opposite me, at the other side of the hearth. Between us burned a small fire.
Something terrible was on its way! The cloudy presences flickered and shook. A silvery creature like a slowworm came crawling out from among them, slowly crossed the clay floor, and crept into the fire. We sat motionless. The something came nearer.
But the hours passed, midnight drew nigh, and there was no change. The night was very still. Not a sound broke the silence, not a rustle from the fire, not a crack from board or beam. Now and again I felt a sort of heave, but whether in the earth or in the air or in the waters under the earth, whether in my own body or in my soul—whether it was anywhere, I could not tell. A dread sense of judgment was upon me. But I was not afraid, for I had ceased to care for aught save the thing that must be done.
Suddenly it was midnight. The muffled woman rose, turned toward the settle, and slowly unwound the long swathes that hid her face: they dropped on the ground, and she stepped over them. The feet of the princess were toward the hearth; Mara went to her head, and turning, stood behind it. Then I saw her face. It was lovely beyond speech—white and sad, heart-and-soul sad, but not unhappy, and I knew it never could be unhappy. Great tears were running down her cheeks: she wiped them away with her robe; her countenance grew very still, and she wept no more. But for the pity in every line of her expression, she would have seemed severe. She laid her hand on the head of the princess—on the hair that grew low on the forehead, and stooping, breathed on the sallow brow. The body shuddered.
“Will you turn away from the wicked things you have been doing so long?” said Mara gently.
The princess did not answer. Mara put the question again, in the same soft, inviting tone.
Still there was no sign of hearing. She spoke the words a third time.
Then the seeming corpse opened its mouth and answered, its words appearing to frame themselves of something else than sound.—I cannot shape the thing further: sounds they were not, yet they were words to me.
“I will not,” she said. “I will be myself and not another!”
“Alas, you are another now, not yourself! Will you not be your real self?”
“I will be what I mean myself now.”
“If you were restored, would you not make what amends you could for the misery you have caused?”
“I would do after my nature.”
“You do not know it: your nature is good, and you do evil!”
“I will do as my Self pleases—as my Self desires.”
“You will do as the Shadow, overshadowing your Self inclines you?”
“I will do what I will to do.”
“You have killed your daughter, Lilith!”
“I have killed thousands. She is my own!”
“She was never yours as you are another’s.”
“I am not another’s; I am my own, and my daughter is mine.”
“Then, alas, your hour is come!”
“I care not. I am what I am; no one can take from me myself!”
“You are not the Self you imagine.”
“So long as I feel myself what it pleases me to think myself, I care not. I am content to be to myself what I would be. What I choose to seem to myself makes me what I am. My own thought makes me me; my own thought of myself is me. Another shall not make me!”
“But another has made you, and can compel you to see what you have made yourself. You will not be able much longer to look to yourself anything but what he sees you! You will not much longer have satisfaction in the thought of yourself. At this moment you are aware of the coming change!”
“No one ever made me. I defy that Power to unmake me from a free woman! You are his slave, and I defy you! You may be able to torture me—I do not know, but you shall not compel me to anything against my will!”
“Such a compulsion would be without value. But there is a light that goes deeper than the will, a light that lights up the darkness behind it: that light can change your will, can make it truly yours and not another’s—not the Shadow’s. Into the created can pour itself the creating will, and so redeem it!”
“That light shall not enter me: I hate it!—Begone, slave!”
“I am no slave, for I love that light, and will with the deeper will which created mine. There is no slave but the creature that wills against its creator. Who is a slave but her who cries, ‘I am free,’ yet cannot cease to exist!”
“You speak foolishness from a cowering heart! You imagine me given over to you: I defy you! I hold myself against you! What I choose to be, you cannot change. I will not be what you think me—what you say I am!”
“I am sorry: you must suffer!”
“But be free!”
“She alone is free who would make free; she loves not freedom who would enslave: she is herself a slave. Every life, every will, every heart that came within your ken, you have sought to subdue: you are the slave of every slave you have made—such a slave that you do not know it!—See your own self!”
She took her hand from the head of the princess, and went two backward paces from her.
A soundless presence as of roaring flame possessed the house—the same, I presume, that was to the children a silent wind. Involuntarily I turned to the hearth: its fire was a still small moveless glow. But I saw the worm-thing come creeping out, white-hot, vivid as incandescent silver, the live heart of essential fire. Along the floor it crawled toward the settle, going very slow. Yet more slowly it crept up on it, and laid itself, as unwilling to go further, at the feet of the princess. I rose and stole nearer. Mara stood motionless, as one that waits an event foreknown. The shining thing crawled on to a bare bony foot: it showed no suffering, neither was the settle scorched where the worm had lain. Slowly, very slowly, it crept along her robe until it reached her bosom, where it disappeared among the folds.
The face of the princess lay stonily calm, the eyelids closed as over dead eyes; and for some minutes nothing followed. At length, on the dry, parchment-like skin, began to appear drops as of the finest dew: in a moment they were as large as seed-pearls, ran together, and began to pour down in streams. I darted forward to snatch the worm from the poor withered bosom, and crush it with my foot. But Mara, Mother of Sorrow, stepped between, and drew aside the closed edges of the robe: no serpent was there—no searing trail; the creature had passed in by the centre of the black spot, and was piercing through the joints and marrow to the thoughts and intents of the heart. The princess gave one writhing, contorted shudder, and I knew the worm was in her secret chamber.
“She is seeing herself!” said Mara; and laying her hand on my arm, she drew me three paces from the settle.
Of a sudden the princess bent her body upward in an arch, then sprang to the floor, and stood erect. The horror in her face made me tremble lest her eyes should open, and the sight of them overwhelm me. Her bosom heaved and sank, but no breath issued. Her hair hung and dripped; then it stood out from her head and emitted sparks; again hung down, and poured the sweat of her torture on the floor.
I would have thrown my arms about her, but Mara stopped me.
“You cannot go near her,” she said. “She is far away from us, afar in the hell of her self-consciousness. The central fire of the universe is radiating into her the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of what she is. She sees at last the good she is not, the evil she is. She knows that she is herself the fire in which she is burning, but she does not know that the Light of Life is the heart of that fire. Her torment is that she is what she is. Do not fear for her; she is not forsaken. No gentler way to help her was left. Wait and watch.”
It may have been five minutes or five years that she stood thus—I cannot tell; but at last she flung herself on her face.
Mara went to her, and stood looking down upon her. Large tears fell from her eyes on the woman who had never wept, and would not weep.
“Will you change your way?” she said at length.
“Why did he make me such?” gasped Lilith. “I would have made myself—oh, so different! I am glad it was he that made me and not I myself! He alone is to blame for what I am! Never would I have made such a worthless thing! He meant me such that I might know it and be miserable! I will not be made any longer!”
“Unmake yourself, then,” said Mara.
“Alas, I cannot! You know it, and mock me! How often have I not agonised to cease, but the tyrant keeps me being! I curse him!—Now let him kill me!”
The words came in jets as from a dying fountain.
“Had he not made you,” said Mara, gently and slowly, “you could not even hate him. But he did not make you such. You have made yourself what you are.—Be of better cheer: he can remake you.”
“I will not be remade!”
“He will not change you; he will only restore you to what you were.”
“I will not be aught of his making.”
“Are you not willing to have that set right which you have set wrong?”
She lay silent; her suffering seemed abated.
“If you are willing, put yourself again on the settle.”
“I will not,” she answered, forcing the words through her clenched teeth.
A wind seemed to wake inside the house, blowing without sound or impact; and a water began to rise that had no lap in its ripples, no sob in its swell. It was cold, but it did not benumb. Unseen and noiseless it came. It smote no sense in me, yet I knew it rising. I saw it lift at last and float her. Gently it bore her, unable to resist, and left rather than laid her on the settle. Then it sank swiftly away.
The strife of thought, accusing and excusing, began afresh, and gathered fierceness. The soul of Lilith lay naked to the torture of pure interpenetrating inward light. She began to moan, and sigh deep sighs, then murmur as holding colloquy with a dividual self: her queendom was no longer whole; it was divided against itself. One moment she would exult as over her worst enemy, and weep; the next she would writhe as in the embrace of a friend whom her soul hated, and laugh like a demon. At length she began what seemed a tale about herself, in a language so strange, and in forms so shadowy, that I could but here and there understand a little. Yet the language seemed the primeval shape of one I knew well, and the forms to belong to dreams which had once been mine, but refused to be recalled. The tale appeared now and then to touch upon things that Adam had read from the disparted manuscript, and often to make allusion to influences and forces—vices too, I could not help suspecting—with which I was unacquainted.
She ceased, and again came the horror in her hair, the sparkling and flowing alternate. I sent a beseeching look to Mara.
“Those, alas, are not the tears of repentance!” she said. “The true tears gather in the eyes. Those are far more bitter, and not so good. Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father’s arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates. Once with his father, he is to himself of no more account. It will be so with her.”
She went nearer and said,
“Will you restore that which you have wrongfully taken?”
“I have taken nothing,” answered the princess, forcing out the words in spite of pain, “that I had not the right to take. My power to take manifested my right.”
Mara left her.
Gradually my soul grew aware of an invisible darkness, a something more terrible than aught that had yet made itself felt. A horrible Nothingness, a Negation positive infolded her; the border of its being that was yet no being, touched me, and for one ghastly instant I seemed alone with Death Absolute! It was not the absence of everything I felt, but the presence of Nothing. The princess dashed herself from the settle to the floor with an exceeding great and bitter cry. It was the recoil of Being from Annihilation.
“For pity’s sake,” she shrieked, “tear my heart out, but let me live!”
With that there fell upon her, and upon us also who watched with her, the perfect calm as of a summer night. Suffering had all but reached the brim of her life’s cup, and a hand had emptied it! She raised her head, half rose, and looked around her. A moment more, and she stood erect, with the air of a conqueror: she had won the battle! Dareful she had met her spiritual foes; they had withdrawn defeated! She raised her withered arm above her head, a pæan of unholy triumph in her throat—when suddenly her eyes fixed in a ghastly stare.—What was she seeing?
I looked, and saw: before her, cast from unseen heavenly mirror, stood the reflection of herself, and beside it a form of splendent beauty, She trembled, and sank again on the floor helpless. She knew the one what God had intended her to be, the other what she had made herself.
The rest of the night she lay motionless altogether.
With the gray dawn growing in the room, she rose, turned to Mara, and said, in prideful humility, “You have conquered. Let me go into the wilderness and bewail myself.”
Mara saw that her submission was not feigned, neither was it real. She looked at her a moment, and returned:
“Begin, then, and set right in the place of wrong.”
“I know not how,” she replied—with the look of one who foresaw and feared the answer.
“Open thy hand, and let that which is in it go.”
A fierce refusal seemed to struggle for passage, but she kept it prisoned.
“I cannot,” she said. “I have no longer the power. Open it for me.”
She held out the offending hand. It was more a paw than a hand. It seemed to me plain that she could not open it.
Mara did not even look at it.
“You must open it yourself,” she said quietly.
“I have told you I cannot!”
“You can if you will—not indeed at once, but by persistent effort. What you have done, you do not yet wish undone—do not yet intend to undo!”
“You think so, I dare say,” rejoined the princess with a flash of insolence, “but I KNOW that I cannot open my hand!”
“I know you better than you know yourself, and I know you can. You have often opened it a little way. Without trouble and pain you cannot open it quite, but you CAN open it. At worst you could beat it open! I pray you, gather your strength, and open it wide.”
“I will not try what I know impossible. It would be the part of a fool!”
“Which you have been playing all your life! Oh, you are hard to teach!”
Defiance reappeared on the face of the princess. She turned her back on Mara, saying, “I know what you have been tormenting me for! You have not succeeded, nor shall you succeed! You shall yet find me stronger than you think! I will yet be mistress of myself! I am still what I have always known myself—queen of Hell, and mistress of the worlds!”
Then came the most fearful thing of all. I did not know what it was; I knew myself unable to imagine it; I knew only that if it came near me I should die of terror! I now know that it was LIFE IN DEATH—life dead, yet existent; and I knew that Lilith had had glimpses, but only glimpses of it before: it had never been with her until now.
She stood as she had turned. Mara went and sat down by the fire. Fearing to stand alone with the princess, I went also and sat again by the hearth. Something began to depart from me. A sense of cold, yet not what we call cold, crept, not into, but out of my being, and pervaded it. The lamp of life and the eternal fire seemed dying together, and I about to be left with naught but the consciousness that I had been alive. Mercifully, bereavement did not go so far, and my thought went back to Lilith.
Something was taking place in her which we did not know. We knew we did not feel what she felt, but we knew we felt something of the misery it caused her. The thing itself was in her, not in us; its reflex, her misery, reached us, and was again reflected in us: she was in the outer darkness, we present with her who was in it! We were not in the outer darkness; had we been, we could not have been WITH her; we should have been timelessly, spacelessly, absolutely apart. The darkness knows neither the light nor itself; only the light knows itself and the darkness also. None but God hates evil and understands it.
Something was gone from her, which then first, by its absence, she knew to have been with her every moment of her wicked years. The source of life had withdrawn itself; all that was left her of conscious being was the dregs of her dead and corrupted life.
She stood rigid. Mara buried her head in her hands. I gazed on the face of one who knew existence but not love—knew nor life, nor joy, nor good; with my eyes I saw the face of a live death! She knew life only to know that it was dead, and that, in her, death lived. It was not merely that life had ceased in her, but that she was consciously a dead thing. She had killed her life, and was dead—and knew it. She must DEATH IT for ever and ever! She had tried her hardest to unmake herself, and could not! she was a dead life! she could not cease! she must BE! In her face I saw and read beyond its misery—saw in its dismay that the dismay behind it was more than it could manifest. It sent out a livid gloom; the light that was in her was darkness, and after its kind it shone. She was what God could not have created. She had usurped beyond her share in self-creation, and her part had undone His! She saw now what she had made, and behold, it was not good! She was as a conscious corpse, whose coffin would never come to pieces, never set her free! Her bodily eyes stood wide open, as if gazing into the heart of horror essential—her own indestructible evil. Her right hand also was now clenched—upon existent Nothing—her inheritance!
But with God all things are possible: He can save even the rich!
Without change of look, without sign of purpose, Lilith walked toward Mara. She felt her coming, and rose to meet her.
“I yield,” said the princess. “I cannot hold out. I am defeated.—Not the less, I cannot open my hand.”
“Have you tried?”
“I am trying now with all my might.”
“I will take you to my father. You have wronged him worst of the created, therefore he best of the created can help you.”
“How can HE help me?”
“He will forgive you.”
“Ah, if he would but help me to cease! Not even that am I capable of! I have no power over myself; I am a slave! I acknowledge it. Let me die.”
“A slave thou art that shall one day be a child!” answered Mara.—“Verily, thou shalt die, but not as thou thinkest. Thou shalt die out of death into life. Now is the Life for, that never was against thee!”
Like her mother, in whom lay the motherhood of all the world, Mara put her arms around Lilith, and kissed her on the forehead. The fiery-cold misery went out of her eyes, and their fountains filled. She lifted, and bore her to her own bed in a corner of the room, laid her softly upon it, and closed her eyes with caressing hands.
Lilith lay and wept. The Lady of Sorrow went to the door and opened it.
Morn, with the Spring in her arms, waited outside. Softly they stole in at the opened door, with a gentle wind in the skirts of their garments. It flowed and flowed about Lilith, rippling the unknown, upwaking sea of her life eternal; rippling and to ripple it, until at length she who had been but as a weed cast on the dry sandy shore to wither, should know herself an inlet of the everlasting ocean, henceforth to flow into her for ever, and ebb no more. She answered the morning wind with reviving breath, and began to listen. For in the skirts of the wind had come the rain—the soft rain that heals the mown, the many-wounded grass—soothing it with the sweetness of all music, the hush that lives between music and silence. It bedewed the desert places around the cottage, and the sands of Lilith’s heart heard it, and drank it in. When Mara returned to sit by her bed, her tears were flowing softer than the rain, and soon she was fast asleep.
The Mother of Sorrows rose, muffled her face, and went to call the Little Ones. They slept as if all the night they had not moved, but the moment she spoke they sprang to their feet, fresh as if new-made. Merrily down the stair they followed her, and she brought them where the princess lay, her tears yet flowing as she slept. Their glad faces grew grave. They looked from the princess out on the rain, then back at the princess.
“The sky is falling!” said one.
“The white juice is running out of the princess!” cried another, with an awed look.
“Is it rivers?” asked Odu, gazing at the little streams that flowed adown her hollow cheeks.
“Yes,” answered Mara, “—the most wonderful of all rivers.”
“I thought rivers was bigger, and rushed, like a lot of Little Ones, making loud noises!” he returned, looking at me, from whom alone he had heard of rivers.
“Look at the rivers of the sky!” said Mara. “See how they come down to wake up the waters under the earth! Soon will the rivers be flowing everywhere, merry and loud, like thousands and thousands of happy children. Oh, how glad they will make you, Little Ones! You have never seen any, and do not know how lovely is the water!”
“That will be the glad of the ground that the princess is grown good,” said Odu. “See the glad of the sky!”
“Are the rivers the glad of the princess?” asked Luva. “They are not her juice, for they are not red!”
“They are the juice inside the juice,” answered Mara.
Odu put one finger to his eye, looked at it, and shook his head.
“Princess will not bite now!” said Luva.
“No; she will never do that again,” replied Mara. “—But now we must take her nearer home.”
“Is that a nest?” asked Sozo.
“Yes; a very big nest. But we must take her to another place first.”
“What is that?”
“It is the biggest room in all this world.—But I think it is going to be pulled down: it will soon be too full of little nests.—Go and get your clumsies.”
“Please are there any cats in it?”
“Not one. The nests are too full of lovely dreams for one cat to get in.”
“We shall be ready in a minute,” said Odu, and ran out, followed by all except Luva.
Lilith was now awake, and listening with a sad smile.
“But her rivers are running so fast!” said Luva, who stood by her side and seemed unable to take her eyes from her face. “Her robe is all—I don’t know what. Clumsies won’t like it!”
“They won’t mind it,” answered Mara. “Those rivers are so clean that they make the whole world clean.”
I had fallen asleep by the fire, but for some time had been awake and listening, and now rose.
“It is time to mount, Mr. Vane,” said our hostess.
“Tell me, please,” I said, “is there not a way by which to avoid the channels and the den of monsters?”
“There is an easy way across the river-bed, which I will show you,” she answered; “but you must pass once more through the monsters.”
“I fear for the children,” I said.
“Fear will not once come nigh them,” she rejoined.
We left the cottage. The beasts stood waiting about the door. Odu was already on the neck of one of the two that were to carry the princess. I mounted Lona’s horse; Mara brought her body, and gave it me in my arms. When she came out again with the princess, a cry of delight arose from the children: she was no longer muffled! Gazing at her, and entranced with her loveliness, the boys forgot to receive the princess from her; but the elephants took Lilith tenderly with their trunks, one round her body and one round her knees, and, Mara helping, laid her along between them.
“Why does the princess want to go?” asked a small boy. “She would keep good if she staid here!”
“She wants to go, and she does not want to go: we are helping her,” answered Mara. “She will not keep good here.”
“What are you helping her to do?” he went on.
“To go where she will get more help—help to open her hand, which has been closed for a thousand years.”
“So long? Then she has learned to do without it: why should she open it now?”
“Because it is shut upon something that is not hers.”
“Please, lady Mara, may we have some of your very dry bread before we go?” said Luva.
Mara smiled, and brought them four loaves and a great jug of water.
“We will eat as we go,” they said. But they drank the water with delight.
“I think,” remarked one of them, “it must be elephant-juice! It makes me so strong!”
We set out, the Lady of Sorrow walking with us, more beautiful than the sun, and the white leopardess following her. I thought she meant but to put us in the path across the channels, but I soon found she was going with us all the way. Then I would have dismounted that she might ride, but she would not let me.
“I have no burden to carry,” she said. “The children and I will walk together.”
It was the loveliest of mornings; the sun shone his brightest, and the wind blew his sweetest, but they did not comfort the desert, for it had no water.
We crossed the channels without difficulty, the children gamboling about Mara all the way, but did not reach the top of the ridge over the bad burrow until the sun was already in the act of disappearing. Then I made the Little Ones mount their elephants, for the moon might be late, and I could not help some anxiety about them.
The Lady of Sorrow now led the way by my side; the elephants followed—the two that bore the princess in the centre; the leopardess brought up the rear; and just as we reached the frightful margin, the moon looked up and showed the shallow basin lying before us untroubled. Mara stepped into it; not a movement answered her tread or the feet of my horse. But the moment that the elephants carrying the princess touched it, the seemingly solid earth began to heave and boil, and the whole dread brood of the hellish nest was commoved. Monsters uprose on all sides, every neck at full length, every beak and claw outstretched, every mouth agape. Long-billed heads, horribly jawed faces, knotty tentacles innumerable, went out after Lilith. She lay in an agony of fear, nor dared stir a finger. Whether the hideous things even saw the children, I doubt; certainly not one of them touched a child; not one loathly member passed the live rampart of her body-guard, to lay hold of her.
“Little Ones,” I cried, “keep your elephants close about the princess. Be brave; they will not touch you.”
“What will not touch us? We don’t know what to be brave at!” they answered; and I perceived they were unaware of one of the deformities around them.
“Never mind then,” I returned; “only keep close.”
They were panoplied in their blindness! Incapacity to see was their safety. What they could nowise be aware of, could not hurt them.
But the hideous forms I saw that night! Mara was a few paces in front of me when a solitary, bodiless head bounced on the path between us. The leopardess came rushing under the elephants from behind, and would have seized it, but, with frightful contortions of visage and a loathsome howl, it gave itself a rapid rotatory twist, sprang from her, and buried itself in the ground. The death in my arms assoiling me from fear, I regarded them all unmoved, although never, sure, was elsewhere beheld such a crew accursed!
Mara still went in front of me, and the leopardess now walked close behind her, shivering often, for it was very cold, when suddenly the ground before me to my left began to heave, and a low wave of earth came slinking toward us. It rose higher as it drew hear; out of it slouched a dreadful head with fleshy tubes for hair, and opening a great oval mouth, snapped at me. The leopardess sprang, but fell baffled beyond it.
Almost under our feet, shot up the head of an enormous snake, with a lamping wallowing glare in its eyes. Again the leopardess rushed to the attack, but found nothing. At a third monster she darted with like fury, and like failure—then sullenly ceased to heed the phantom-horde. But I understood the peril and hastened the crossing—the rather that the moon was carrying herself strangely. Even as she rose she seemed ready to drop and give up the attempt as hopeless; and since, I saw her sink back once fully her own breadth. The arc she made was very low, and now she had begun to descend rapidly.
We were almost over, when, between us and the border of the basin, arose a long neck, on the top of which, like the blossom of some Stygian lily, sat what seemed the head of a corpse, its mouth half open, and full of canine teeth. I went on; it retreated, then drew aside. The lady stepped on the firm land, but the leopardess between us, roused once more, turned, and flew at the throat of the terror. I remained where I was to see the elephants, with the princess and the children, safe on the bank. Then I turned to look after the leopardess. That moment the moon went down, For an instant I saw the leopardess and the snake-monster convolved in a cloud of dust; then darkness hid them. Trembling with fright, my horse wheeled, and in three bounds overtook the elephants.
As we came up with them, a shapeless jelly dropped on the princess. A white dove dropped immediately on the jelly, stabbing it with its beak. It made a squelching, sucking sound, and fell off. Then I heard the voice of a woman talking with Mara, and I knew the voice.
“I fear she is dead!” said Mara.
“I will send and find her,” answered the mother. “But why, Mara, shouldst thou at all fear for her or for any one? Death cannot hurt her who dies doing the work given her to do.”
“I shall miss her sorely; she is good and wise. Yet I would not have her live beyond her hour!”
“She has gone down with the wicked; she will rise with the righteous. We shall see her again ere very long.”
“Mother,” I said, although I did not see her, “we come to you many, but most of us are Little Ones. Will you be able to receive us all?”
“You are welcome every one,” she answered. “Sooner or later all will be little ones, for all must sleep in my house! It is well with those that go to sleep young and willing!—My husband is even now preparing her couch for Lilith. She is neither young nor quite willing, but it is well indeed that she is come.”
I heard no more. Mother and daughter had gone away together through the dark. But we saw a light in the distance, and toward it we went stumbling over the moor.
Adam stood in the door, holding the candle to guide us, and talking with his wife, who, behind him, laid bread and wine on the table within.
“Happy children,” I heard her say, “to have looked already on the face of my daughter! Surely it is the loveliest in the great world!”
When we reached the door, Adam welcomed us almost merrily. He set the candle on the threshold, and going to the elephants, would have taken the princess to carry her in; but she repulsed him, and pushing her elephants asunder, stood erect between them. They walked from beside her, and left her with him who had been her husband—ashamed indeed of her gaunt uncomeliness, but unsubmissive. He stood with a welcome in his eyes that shone through their severity.
“We have long waited for thee, Lilith!” he said.
She returned him no answer.
Eve and her daughter came to the door.
“The mortal foe of my children!” murmured Eve, standing radiant in her beauty.
“Your children are no longer in her danger,” said Mara; “she has turned from evil.”
“Trust her not hastily, Mara,” answered her mother; “she has deceived a multitude!”
“But you will open to her the mirror of the Law of Liberty, mother, that she may go into it, and abide in it! She consents to open her hand and restore: will not the great Father restore her to inheritance with His other children?”
“I do not know Him!” murmured Lilith, in a voice of fear and doubt.
“Therefore it is that thou art miserable,” said Adam.
“I will go back whence I came!” she cried, and turned, wringing her hands, to depart.
“That is indeed what I would have thee do, where I would have thee go—to Him from whom thou camest! In thy agony didst thou not cry out for Him?”
“I cried out for Death—to escape Him and thee!”
“Death is even now on his way to lead thee to Him. Thou knowest neither Death nor the Life that dwells in Death! Both befriend thee. I am dead, and would see thee dead, for I live and love thee. Thou art weary and heavy-laden: art thou not ashamed? Is not the being thou hast corrupted become to thee at length an evil thing? Wouldst thou yet live on in disgrace eternal? Cease thou canst not: wilt thou not be restored and BE?”
She stood silent with bowed head.
“Father,” said Mara, “take her in thine arms, and carry her to her couch. There she will open her hand, and die into life.”
“I will walk,” said the princess.
Adam turned and led the way. The princess walked feebly after him into the cottage.
Then Eve came out to me where I sat with Lona in my bosom. She reached up her arms, took her from me, and carried her in. I dismounted, and the children also. The horse and the elephants stood shivering; Mara patted and stroked them every one; they lay down and fell asleep. She led us into the cottage, and gave the Little Ones of the bread and wine on the table. Adam and Lilith were standing there together, but silent both.
Eve came from the chamber of death, where she had laid Lona down, and offered of the bread and wine to the princess.
“Thy beauty slays me! It is death I would have, not food!” said Lilith, and turned from her.
“This food will help thee to die,” answered Eve.
But Lilith would not taste of it.
“If thou wilt nor eat nor drink, Lilith,” said Adam, “come and see the place where thou shalt lie in peace.”
He led the way through the door of death, and she followed submissive. But when her foot crossed the threshold she drew it back, and pressed her hand to her bosom, struck through with the cold immortal.
A wild blast fell roaring on the roof, and died away in a moan. She stood ghastly with terror.
“It is he!” said her voiceless lips: I read their motion.
“Who, princess!” I whispered.
“The great Shadow,” she murmured.
“Here he cannot enter,” said Adam. “Here he can hurt no one. Over him also is power given me.”
“Are the children in the house?” asked Lilith, and at the word the heart of Eve began to love her.
“He never dared touch a child,” she said. “Nor have you either ever hurt a child. Your own daughter you have but sent into the loveliest sleep, for she was already a long time dead when you slew her. And now Death shall be the atonemaker; you shall sleep together.”
“Wife,” said Adam, “let us first put the children to bed, that she may see them safe!”
He came back to fetch them. As soon as he was gone, the princess knelt to Eve, clasped her knees, and said,
“Beautiful Eve, persuade your husband to kill me: to you he will listen! Indeed I would but cannot open my hand.”
“You cannot die without opening it. To kill you would not serve you,” answered Eve. “But indeed he cannot! no one can kill you but the Shadow; and whom he kills never knows she is dead, but lives to do his will, and thinks she is doing her own.”
“Show me then to my grave; I am so weary I can live no longer. I must go to the Shadow—yet I would not!”
She did not, could not understand!
She struggled to rise, but fell at the feet of Eve. The Mother lifted, and carried her inward.
I followed Adam and Mara and the children into the chamber of death. We passed Eve with Lilith in her arms, and went farther in.
“You shall not go to the Shadow,” I heard Eve say, as we passed them. “Even now is his head under my heel!”
The dim light in Adam’s hand glimmered on the sleeping faces, and as he went on, the darkness closed over them. The very air seemed dead: was it because none of the sleepers breathed it? Profoundest sleep filled the wide place. It was as if not one had waked since last I was there, for the forms I had then noted lay there still. My father was just as I had left him, save that he seemed yet nearer to a perfect peace. The woman beside him looked younger.
The darkness, the cold, the silence, the still air, the faces of the lovely dead, made the hearts of the children beat softly, but their little tongues would talk—with low, hushed voices.
“What a curious place to sleep in!” said one, “I would rather be in my nest!” “It is SO cold!” said another.
“Yes, it is cold,” answered our host; “but you will not be cold in your sleep.”
“Where are our nests?” asked more than one, looking round and seeing no couch unoccupied.
“Find places, and sleep where you choose,” replied Adam.
Instantly they scattered, advancing fearlessly beyond the light, but we still heard their gentle voices, and it was plain they saw where I could not.
“Oh,” cried one, “here is such a beautiful lady!—may I sleep beside her? I will creep in quietly, and not wake her.”
“Yes, you may,” answered the voice of Eve behind us; and we came to the couch while the little fellow was yet creeping slowly and softly under the sheet. He laid his head beside the lady’s, looked up at us, and was still. His eyelids fell; he was asleep.
We went a little farther, and there was another who had climbed up on the couch of a woman.
“Mother! mother!” he cried, kneeling over her, his face close to hers. “—She’s so cold she can’t speak,” he said, looking up to us; “but I will soon make her warm!”
He lay down, and pressing close to her, put his little arm over her. In an instant he too was asleep, smiling an absolute content.
We came to a third Little One; it was Luva. She stood on tiptoe, leaning over the edge of a couch.
“My own mother wouldn’t have me,” she said softly: “will you?”
Receiving no reply, she looked up at Eve. The great mother lifted her to the couch, and she got at once under the snowy covering.
Each of the Little Ones had by this time, except three of the boys, found at least an unobjecting bedfellow, and lay still and white beside a still, white woman. The little orphans had adopted mothers! One tiny girl had chosen a father to sleep with, and that was mine. A boy lay by the side of the beautiful matron with the slow-healing hand. On the middle one of the three couches hitherto unoccupied, lay Lona.
Eve set Lilith down beside it. Adam pointed to the vacant couch on Lona’s right hand, and said,
“There, Lilith, is the bed I have prepared for you!”
She glanced at her daughter lying before her like a statue carved in semi-transparent alabaster, and shuddered from head to foot. “How cold it is!” she murmured.
“You will soon begin to find comfort in the cold,” answered Adam.
“Promises to the dying are easy!” she said.
“But I know it: I too have slept. I am dead!”
“I believed you dead long ago; but I see you alive!”
“More alive than you know, or are able to understand. I was scarce alive when first you knew me. Now I have slept, and am awake; I am dead, and live indeed!”
“I fear that child,” she said, pointing to Lona: “she will rise and terrify me!”
“She is dreaming love to you.”
“But the Shadow!” she moaned; “I fear the Shadow! he will be wroth with me!”
“He at sight of whom the horses of heaven start and rear, dares not disturb one dream in this quiet chamber!”
“I shall dream then?”
“You will dream.”
“What dreams?”
“That I cannot tell, but none HE can enter into. When the Shadow comes here, it will be to lie down and sleep also.—His hour will come, and he knows it will.”
“How long shall I sleep?”
“You and he will be the last to wake in the morning of the universe.”
The princess lay down, drew the sheet over her, stretched herself out straight, and lay still with open eyes.
Adam turned to his daughter. She drew near.
“Lilith,” said Mara, “you will not sleep, if you lie there a thousand years, until you have opened your hand, and yielded that which is not yours to give or to withhold.”
“I cannot,” she answered. “I would if I could, and gladly, for I am weary, and the shadows of death are gathering about me.”
“They will gather and gather, but they cannot infold you while yet your hand remains unopened. You may think you are dead, but it will be only a dream; you may think you have come awake, but it will still be only a dream. Open your hand, and you will sleep indeed—then wake indeed.”
“I am trying hard, but the fingers have grown together and into the palm.”
“I pray you put forth the strength of your will. For the love of life, draw together your forces and break its bonds!”
“I have struggled in vain; I can do no more. I am very weary, and sleep lies heavy upon my lids.”
“The moment you open your hand, you will sleep. Open it, and make an end.”
A tinge of colour arose in the parchment-like face; the contorted hand trembled with agonised effort. Mara took it, and sought to aid her.
“Hold, Mara!” cried her father. “There is danger!”
The princess turned her eyes upon Eve, beseechingly.
“There was a sword I once saw in your husband’s hands,” she murmured. “I fled when I saw it. I heard him who bore it say it would divide whatever was not one and indivisible!”
“I have the sword,” said Adam. “The angel gave it me when he left the gate.”
“Bring it, Adam,” pleaded Lilith, “and cut me off this hand that I may sleep.”
“I will,” he answered.
He gave the candle to Eve, and went. The princess closed her eyes.
In a few minutes Adam returned with an ancient weapon in his hand. The scabbard looked like vellum grown dark with years, but the hilt shone like gold that nothing could tarnish. He drew out the blade. It flashed like a pale blue northern streamer, and the light of it made the princess open her eyes. She saw the sword, shuddered, and held out her hand. Adam took it. The sword gleamed once, there was one little gush of blood, and he laid the severed hand in Mara’s lap. Lilith had given one moan, and was already fast asleep. Mara covered the arm with the sheet, and the three turned away.
“Will you not dress the wound?” I said.
“A wound from that sword,” answered Adam, “needs no dressing. It is healing and not hurt.”
“Poor lady!” I said, “she will wake with but one hand!”
“Where the dead deformity clung,” replied Mara, “the true, lovely hand is already growing.”
We heard a childish voice behind us, and turned again. The candle in Eve’s hand shone on the sleeping face of Lilith, and the waking faces of the three Little Ones, grouped on the other side of her couch. “How beautiful she is grown!” said one of them.
“Poor princess!” said another; “I will sleep with her. She will not bite any more!”
As he spoke he climbed into her bed, and was immediately fast asleep. Eve covered him with the sheet.
“I will go on her other side,” said the third. “She shall have two to kiss her when she wakes!”
“And I am left alone!” said the first mournfully.
“I will put you to bed,” said Eve.
She gave the candle to her husband, and led the child away.
We turned once more to go back to the cottage. I was very sad, for no one had offered me a place in the house of the dead. Eve joined us as we went, and walked on before with her husband. Mara by my side carried the hand of Lilith in the lap of her robe.
“Ah, you have found her!” we heard Eve say as we stepped into the cottage.
The door stood open; two elephant-trunks came through it out of the night beyond.
“I sent them with the lantern,” she went on to her husband, “to look for Mara’s leopardess: they have brought her.”
I followed Adam to the door, and between us we took the white creature from the elephants, and carried her to the chamber we had just left, the women preceding us, Eve with the light, and Mara still carrying the hand. There we laid the beauty across the feet of the princess, her fore-paws outstretched, and her head couching between them.