CHAPTER XXVI. A BATTLE ROYAL
I threw myself on the bed, and began to turn over in my mind the taleshe had told me. She had forgotten herself, and, by a single incautiousword, removed one perplexity as to the condition in which I found her inthe forest! The leopardess BOUNDED over; the princess lay prostrate onthe bank: the running stream had dissolved her self-enchantment! Her ownaccount of the object of her journey revealed the danger of the LittleOnes then imminent: I had saved the life of their one fearful enemy!
I had but reached this conclusion when I fell asleep. The lovely winemay not have been quite innocent.
When I opened my eyes, it was night. A lamp, suspended from the ceiling,cast a clear, although soft light through the chamber. A deliciouslanguor infolded me. I seemed floating, far from land, upon the bosom ofa twilight sea. Existence was in itself pleasure. I had no pain. SurelyI was dying!
No pain!--ah, what a shoot of mortal pain was that! what a sickeningsting! It went right through my heart! Again! That was sharpnessitself!--and so sickening! I could not move my hand to lay it on myheart; something kept it down!
The pain was dying away, but my whole body seemed paralysed. Some evilthing was upon me!--something hateful! I would have struggled, but couldnot reach a struggle. My will agonised, but in vain, to assert itself.I desisted, and lay passive. Then I became aware of a soft hand on myface, pressing my head into the pillow, and of a heavy weight lyingacross me.
I began to breathe more freely; the weight was gone from my chest; Iopened my eyes.
The princess was standing above me on the bed, looking out into theroom, with the air of one who dreamed. Her great eyes were clear andcalm. Her mouth wore a look of satisfied passion; she wiped from it astreak of red.
She caught my gaze, bent down, and struck me on the eyes with thehandkerchief in her hand: it was like drawing the edge of a knife acrossthem, and for a moment or two I was blind.
I heard a dull heavy sound, as of a large soft-footed animal alightingfrom a little jump. I opened my eyes, and saw the great swing of a longtail as it disappeared through the half-open doorway. I sprang after it.
The creature had vanished quite. I shot down the stair, and into thehall of alabaster. The moon was high, and the place like the inside ofa faint, sun-blanched moon. The princess was not there. I must find her:in her presence I might protect myself; out of it I could not! I wasa tame animal for her to feed upon; a human fountain for a thirstdemoniac! She showed me favour the more easily to use me! My waking eyesdid not fear her, but they would close, and she would come! Not seeingher, I felt her everywhere, for she might be anywhere--might even nowbe waiting me in some secret cavern of sleep! Only with my eyes upon hercould I feel safe from her!
Outside the alabaster hall it was pitch-dark, and I had to grope my wayalong with hands and feet. At last I felt a curtain, put it aside, andentered the black hall. There I found a great silent assembly. How itwas visible I neither saw nor could imagine, for the walls, the floor,the roof, were shrouded in what seemed an infinite blackness, blackerthan the blackest of moonless, starless nights; yet my eyes couldseparate, although vaguely, not a few of the individuals in the massinterpenetrated and divided, as well as surrounded, by the darkness.It seemed as if my eyes would never come quite to themselves. I pressedtheir balls and looked and looked again, but what I saw would not growdistinct. Blackness mingled with form, silence and undefined motionpossessed the wide space. All was a dim, confused dance, filled withrecurrent glimpses of shapes not unknown to me. Now appeared a woman,with glorious eyes looking out of a skull; now an armed figure on askeleton horse; now one now another of the hideous burrowing phantasms.I could trace no order and little relation in the mingling and crossingcurrents and eddies. If I seemed to catch the shape and rhythm of adance, it was but to see it break, and confusion prevail. With theshifting colours of the seemingly more solid shapes, mingled a multitudeof shadows, independent apparently of originals, each moving afterits own free shadow-will. I looked everywhere for the princess, butthroughout the wildly changing kaleidoscopic scene, could not see hernor discover indication of her presence. Where was she? What might shenot be doing? No one took the least notice of me as I wandered hitherand thither seeking her. At length losing hope, I turned away to lookelsewhere. Finding the wall, and keeping to it with my hand, for eventhen I could not see it, I came, groping along, to a curtained openinginto the vestibule.
Dimly moonlighted, the cage of the leopardess was the arena of whatseemed a desperate although silent struggle. Two vastly differing forms,human and bestial, with entangled confusion of mingling bodies andlimbs, writhed and wrestled in closest embrace. It had lasted but aninstant when I saw the leopardess out of the cage, walking quietly tothe open door. As I hastened after her I threw a glance behind me: therewas the leopardess in the cage, couching motionless as when I saw herfirst.
The moon, half-way up the sky, was shining round and clear; the bodilessshadow I had seen the night before, was walking through the treestoward the gate; and after him went the leopardess, swinging her tail.I followed, a little way off, as silently as they, and neither of themonce looked round. Through the open gate we went down to the city, lyingquiet as the moonshine upon it. The face of the moon was very still, andits stillness looked like that of expectation.
The Shadow took his way straight to the stair at the top of which I hadlain the night before. Without a pause he went up, and the leopardessfollowed. I quickened my pace, but, a moment after, heard a cry ofhorror. Then came the fall of something soft and heavy between me andthe stair, and at my feet lay a body, frightfully blackened and crushed,but still recognisable as that of the woman who had led me home and shutme out. As I stood petrified, the spotted leopardess came bounding downthe stair with a baby in her mouth. I darted to seize her ere shecould turn at the foot; but that instant, from behind me, the whiteleopardess, like a great bar of glowing silver, shot through themoonlight, and had her by the neck. She dropped the child; I caught itup, and stood to watch the battle between them.
What a sight it was--now the one, now the other uppermost, both toointent for any noise beyond a low growl, a whimpered cry, or a snarl ofhate--followed by a quicker scrambling of claws, as each, worryingand pushing and dragging, struggled for foothold on the pavement! Thespotted leopardess was larger than the white, and I was anxious for myfriend; but I soon saw that, though neither stronger nor more active,the white leopardess had the greater endurance. Not once did she loseher hold on the neck of the other. From the spotted throat at lengthissued a howl of agony, changing, by swift-crowded gradations, into thelong-drawn CRESCENDO of a woman's uttermost wail. The white one relaxedher jaws; the spotted one drew herself away, and rose on her hind legs.Erect in the moonlight stood the princess, a confused rush of shadowscareering over her whiteness--the spots of the leopard crowding,hurrying, fleeing to the refuge of her eyes, where merging theyvanished. The last few, outsped and belated, mingled with the cloudof her streamy hair, leaving her radiant as the moon when a legion oflittle vapours has flown, wind-hunted, off her silvery disc--save that,adown the white column of her throat, a thread of blood still trickledfrom every wound of her adversary's terrible teeth. She turned away,took a few steps with the gait of a Hecate, fell, covered afresh withher spots, and fled at a long, stretching gallop.
The white leopardess turned also, sprang upon me, pulled my armsasunder, caught the baby as it fell, and flew with it along the streettoward the gate.