He? I’d forgotten this him; or, if not forgotten, left him out of account ever since she first told me we were standing at his palace gates. And now she was saying he every moment, no other name but he, the way young wives talk. Something began to grow colder and harder inside me. And this also is like what I’ve known in wars; when that which was only they or the enemy all at once becomes the man, two feet away, who means to kill you.
“Who are you talking of?” I asked; but I meant, “Why do you talk of him to me? What have I to do with him?”
“But, Maia,” she said, “I’ve told you all my story. My god, of course. My lover. My husband. The master of my house.”
“Oh, I can’t bear it,” said I, leaping up. Those last words of hers, spoken softly and with trembling, set me on fire. I could feel my rage coming back. Then (like a great light, a hope of deliverance, it came to me) I asked myself why I’d forgotten, and how long I’d forgotten, that first notion of her being mad. Madness; of course. The whole thing must be madness. I had been nearly as mad as she to think otherwise. At the very name madness the air of that valley seemed more breathable, seemed emptied of a little of its holiness and horror.
“Have done with it, Psyche,” I said sharply. “Where is this god? Where the palace is? Nowhere—in your fancy. Where is he? Show him to me? What is he like?”
She looked a little aside and spoke, lower than ever but very clear, and as if all that had yet passed between us were of no account beside the gravity of what she was now saying. “Oh, Orual,” she said, “not even I have seen him … yet. He comes to me only in the holy darkness. He says I mustn’t … not yet … see his face or know his name. I’m forbidden to bring any light into his … our … chamber.”
Then she looked up, and as our eyes met for a moment I saw in hers unspeakable joy.
“There’s no such thing,” I said, loud and stern. “Never say these things again. Get up. It’s time——”
“Orual,” said she, now at her queenliest, “I have never told you a lie in my life.”
I tried to soften my manner. Yet the words came out cold and stern. “No, you don’t mean to lie. You’re not in your right mind, Psyche. You have imagined things. It’s the terror and the loneliness … and that drug they gave you. We’ll cure you.”
“Orual,” said she.
“What?”
“If it’s all my fancy, how do you think I have lived these many days? Do I look as if I’d fed on berries and slept under the sky? Are my arms wasted? Or my cheeks fallen in?”
I would, I believe, have lied to her myself and said they were, but it was impossible. From the top of her head to her naked feet she was bathed in life and beauty and well–being. It was as if they flowed over her or from her. It was no wonder Bardia had worshipped her as a goddess. The very rags served only to show more of her beauty; all the honey–sweetness, all the rose–red and the ivory, the warm, breathing perfection of her. She even seemed (“But that’s impossible,” I thought) taller than before. And as my lie died unspoken she looked at me with something like mockery in her face. Her mocking looks had always been some of her loveliest.
“You see?” she said. “It’s all true. And that—no, listen, Maia—that’s why all will come right. We’ll make—he will make you able to see, and then——”
“I don’t want it!” I cried, putting my face close to hers, threatening her almost, till she drew back before my fierceness. “I don’t want it. I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Do you understand?”
“But … Orual … why? What do you hate?”
“Oh, the whole—what can I call it? You know very well. Or you used to. This, this——” And then something she had said about him (hardly noticed till now) began to work horribly in my mind. “This thing that comes to you in the darkness … and you’re forbidden to see it. Holy darkness, you call it. What sort of thing? Faugh! it’s like living in the house of Ungit. Everything’s dark about the gods … I think I can smell the very … ” The steadiness of her gaze, the beauty of her, so full of pity yet in a way so pitiless, made me dumb for a moment. Then my tears broke out again. “Oh, Psyche,” I sobbed, “you’re so far away. Do you even hear me? I can’t reach you. Oh, Psyche, Psyche … you loved me once … come back. What have we to do with gods and wonders and all these cruel, dark things? We’re women, aren’t we? Mortals. Oh, come back to the world. Leave all that alone. Come back where we were happy.”
“But Orual—think. How can I go back? This is my home. I am a wife.”
“Wife? Of what?” said I, shuddering.
“If you only knew him,” she said.
“You like it! Oh, Psyche!”
She would not answer me. Her face flushed. Her face, and her whole body, were the answer.
“Oh, you ought to have been one of Ungit’s girls,” said I savagely. “You ought to have lived in there—in the dark—all blood and incense and muttering and the reek of burnt fat. To like it … living among things you can’t see … dark and holy and horrible. Is it nothing to you at all that you are leaving me … going into all that … turning your back on all our love?”
“No, no, Maia. I can’t go back to you. How could I? But you must come to me.”
“Oh, it’s madness,” said I.
Was it madness or not? Which was true? Which would be worse? I was at that very moment when, if they meant us well, the gods would speak. Mark what they did instead.
It began to rain. It was only a light rain, but it changed everything for me.
“Here, child,” said I, “come under my cloak. Your poor rags! Quick. You’ll be wet through.”
She gazed at me wonderingly. “How should I get wet, Maia,” she said, “when we are sitting indoors with a roof above us? And ‘rags’?—but I forgot. You can’t see my robes either.” The rain shone on her cheeks as she spoke.
If that wise Greek who is to read this book doubts that this turned my mind right round, let him ask his mother or wife. The moment I saw her, my child whom I had cared for all her life, sitting there in the rain as if it meant no more to her than it does to cattle, the notion that her palace and her god could be anything but madness was at once unbelievable. All those wilder misgivings, all the fluttering to and fro between two opinions, was (for that time) quite over. I saw in a flash that I must choose one opinion or the other; and in the same flash knew which I had chosen.
“Psyche,” I said (and my voice had changed). “This is sheer raving. You can’t stay here. Winter’ll be on us soon. It’ll kill you.”
“I cannot leave my home, Maia.”
“Home! There’s no home here. Get up. Here—under my cloak.”
She shook her head, a little wearily.
“It’s no use, Maia,” she said. “I see it and you don’t. Who’s to judge between us?”
“I’ll call Bardia.”
“I’m not allowed to let him in. And he wouldn’t come.”
That, I knew, was true.
“Get up, girl,” I said. “Do you hear me? Do as you’re told. Psyche, you never disobeyed me before.”
She looked up (wetter every moment) and said, very tender in voice but hard as a stone in her determination, “Dear Maia, I am a wife now. It’s no longer you that I must obey.”
I learned then how one can hate those one loves. My fingers were round her wrist in an instant, my other hand on her upper arm. We were struggling.
“You shall come,” I panted. “We’ll force you away—hide you somewhere—Bardia has a wife, I believe—lock you up—his house—bring you to your senses.”