CHAPTER X
"IF," said Kathleen, sitting disconsolate in her marble, "if I am reallya statue come alive, I wonder you're not afraid of me."
"I've got the ring," said Mabel with decision. "Cheer up, dear! you willsoon be better. Try not to think about it."
She spoke as you speak to a child that has cut its finger, or fallendown on the garden path, and rises up with grazed knees to which gravelsticks intimately.
"I know," Kathleen absently answered.
"And I've been thinking," said Mabel brightly, "we might find out a lotabout this magic place, if the other statues aren't too proud to talk tous."
"They aren't," Kathleen assured her; "at least, Phoebus wasn't, he wasmost awfully polite and nice."
"Where is he?" Mabel asked.
"In the lake--he was," said Kathleen.
"Then let's go down there," said Mabel. "Oh, Cathy! it is jolly beingyour own proper thickness again." She jumped up, and the withered fernsand branches that had covered her long length and had been gatheredclosely upon her as she shrank to her proper size fell as forest leavesdo when sudden storms tear them. But the white Kathleen did not move.
The two sat on the grey moonlit grass with the quiet of the night allabout them. The great park was still as a painted picture; only thesplash of the fountains and the far-off whistle of the Western expressbroke the silence, which, at the same time, they deepened.
"What cheer, little sister!" said a voice behind them--a golden voice.They turned quick, startled heads, as birds, surprised, might turn.There in the moonlight stood Phoebus, dripping still from the lake,and smiling at them, very gentle, very friendly.
"Oh, it's you!" said Kathleen.
"None other," said Phoebus cheerfully. "Who is your friend, theearth-child?"
"This is Mabel," said Kathleen.
Mabel got up and bowed, hesitated, and held out a hand.
"I am your slave, little lady," said Phoebus, enclosing it in marblefingers. "But I fail to understand how you can see us, and why you donot fear."
Mabel held up the hand that wore the ring.
"Quite sufficient explanation," said Phoebus; "but since you havethat, why retain your mottled earthy appearance? Become a statue, andswim with us in the lake."
"I can't swim," said Mabel evasively.
"Nor yet me," said Kathleen.
"_You_ can," said Phoebus. "All statues that come to life areproficient in all athletic exercises. And you, child of the dark eyesand hair like night, wish yourself a statue and join our revels."
"I'd rather not, if you will excuse me," said Mabel cautiously. "You see... this ring ... you wish for things, and you never know how longthey're going to last. It would be jolly and all that to be a statue_now_, but in the morning I should wish I hadn't."
"Earth-folk often do, they say," mused Phoebus. "But, child, you seemignorant of the powers of your ring. Wish exactly, and the ring willexactly perform. If you give no limit of time, strange enchantmentswoven by Arithmos the outcast god of numbers will creep in and spoil thespell. Say thus: 'I wish that till the dawn I may be a statue of livingmarble, even as my child friend, and that after that time I may be asbefore, Mabel of the dark eyes and night-coloured hair."
"Oh, yes, do, it would be so jolly!" cried Kathleen. "Do, Mabel! And ifwe're both statues, shall we be afraid of the dinosaurus?"
"In the world of living marble fear is not," said Phoebus. "Are we notbrothers, we and the dinosaurus, brethren alike wrought of stone andlife?"
"And could I swim if I did?"
"Swim, and float, and dive--and with the ladies of Olympus spread thenightly feast, eat of the food of the gods, drink their cup, listen tothe song that is undying, and catch the laughter of immortal lips."
"A feast!" said Kathleen. "Oh, Mabel, do! You would if you were ashungry as I am."
"But it won't be real food," urged Mabel.
"It will be real to you, as to us," said Phoebus; "there is no otherrealness even in your many-coloured world."
Still Mabel hesitated. Then she looked at Kathleen's legs and suddenlysaid:--
"Very well, I will. But first I'll take off my shoes and stockings.Marble boots look simply awful--especially the laces. And a marble,stocking that's coming down--and mine _do_!"
She had pulled off shoes and stockings and pinafore.
"Mabel has the sense of beauty," said Phoebus approvingly. "Speak thespell, child, and I will lead you to the ladies of Olympus."
Mabel, trembling a little, spoke it, and there were two little livestatues in the moonlit glade. Tall Phoebus took a hand of each.
"Come--run!" he cried. And they ran.
"Oh--it is jolly!" Mabel panted. "Look at my white feet in the grass! Ithought it would feel stiff to be a statue, but it doesn't."
"There is no stiffness about the immortals," laughed the Sun-god. "Forto-night you are one of us."
And with that they ran down the slope to the lake.
"Jump!" he cried, and they jumped, and the water splashed up roundthree white, gleaming shapes.
"Oh! I _can_ swim!" breathed Kathleen.
"So can I," said Mabel.
"Of course you can," said Phoebus. "Now three times round the lake,and then make for the island."
Side by side the three swam, Phoebus swimming gently to keep pace withthe children. Their marble clothes did not seem to interfere at all withtheir swimming, as your clothes would if you suddenly jumped into thebasin of the Trafalgar Square fountains and tried to swim there. Andthey swam most beautifully, with that perfect ease and absence of effortor tiredness which you must have noticed about your own swimming--indreams. And it was the most lovely place to swim in; the water-lilies,whose long, snaky stalks are so inconvenient to ordinary swimmers, didnot in the least interfere with the movements of marble arms and legs.The moon was high in the clear sky-dome. The weeping willows, cypresses,temples, terraces, banks of trees and shrubs, and the wonderful oldhouse, all added to the romantic charm of the scene.
"This is the nicest thing the ring has brought us yet," said Mabel,through a languid but perfect side-stroke.
"I thought you'd enjoy it," said Phoebus kindly; "now once more round,and then the island."
SIDE BY SIDE THE THREE SWAM.]
They landed on the island amid a fringe of rushes, yarrow,willow-herb, loose-strife, and a few late, scented, powdery, creamyheads of meadow-sweet. The island was bigger than it looked from thebank, and it seemed covered with trees and shrubs. But when, Phoebusleading the way, they went into the shadow of these, they perceived thatbeyond the trees lay a light, much nearer to them than the other side ofthe island could possibly be. And almost at once they were through thebelt of trees, and could see where the light came from. The trees theyhad just passed among made a dark circle round a big cleared space,standing up thick and dark, like a crowd round a football field, asKathleen remarked.
First came a wide, smooth ring of lawn, then marble steps going down toa round pool, where there were no water-lilies, only gold and silverfish that darted here and there like flashes of quicksilver and darkflames. And the enclosed space of water and marble and grass was lightedwith a clear, white, radiant light, seven times stronger than thewhitest moonlight, and in the still waters of the pool seven moons layreflected. One could see that they were only reflections by the waytheir shape broke and changed as the gold and silver fish rippled thewater with moving fin and tail that steered.
The girls looked up at the sky, almost expecting to see seven moonsthere. But no, the old moon shone alone, as she had always shone onthem.
"There are seven moons," said Mabel blankly, and pointed, which is notmanners.
"Of course," said Phoebus kindly; "everything in our world is seventimes as much so as in yours."
"But there aren't seven of you," said Mabel.
"No, but I am seven times as much," said the Sun God. "You see, there'snumbers, and there's quantity, to say nothing of quality. You see that,I'm sure."
"Not q
uite," said Kathleen.
"Explanations always weary me," Phoebus interrupted. "Shall we jointhe ladies?"
On the further side of the pool was a large group, so white, that itseemed to make a great white hole in the trees. Some twenty or thirtyfigures there were in the group--all statues and all alive. Some weredipping their white feet among the gold and silver fish, and sendingripples across the faces of the seven moons. Some were pelting eachother with roses--roses so sweet that the girls could smell them evenacross the pool. Others were holding hands and dancing in a ring, andtwo were sitting on the steps playing cat's-cradle--which is a veryancient game indeed--with a thread of white marble.
As the new-comers advanced a shout of greeting and gay laughter went up.
"Late again, Phoebus!" some one called out. And another: "Did one ofyour horses cast a shoe?" And yet another called out something aboutlaurels.
"I bring two guests," said Phoebus, and instantly the statues crowdedround, stroking the girls' hair, patting their cheeks, and calling themthe prettiest love-names.
"Are the wreaths ready, Hebe?" the tallest and most splendid of theladies called out. "Make two more!"
And almost directly Hebe came down the steps, her round arms hung thickwith rose-wreaths. There was one for each marble head.
Every one now looked seven times more beautiful than before, which, inthe case of the gods and goddesses, is saying a good deal. The childrenremembered how at the raspberry vinegar feast Mademoiselle had said thatgods and goddesses always wore wreaths for meals.
Hebe herself arranged the roses on the girls' heads--and AphroditeUrania, the dearest lady in the world, with a voice like mother's atthose moments when you love her most, took them by the hands and said:--
"Come, we must get the feast ready. Eros--Psyche--Hebe--Ganymede--allyou young people can arrange the fruit."
"I don't see any fruit," said Kathleen, as four slender forms disengagedthemselves from the white crowd and came toward them.
"You will though," said Eros, a really nice boy, as the girls instantlyagreed; "you've only got to pick it."
"Like this," said Psyche, lifting her marble arms to a willow branch.She reached out her hand to the children--it held a ripe pomegranate.
"I see," said Mabel. "You just----" She laid her fingers to the willowbranch and the firm softness of a big peach was within them.
"Yes, just that," laughed Psyche, who was a darling, as any one couldsee.
After this Hebe gathered a few silver baskets from a convenient alder,and the four picked fruit industriously. Meanwhile the elder statueswere busy plucking golden goblets and jugs and dishes from the branchesof ash-trees and young oaks and filling them with everything nice to eatand drink that any one could possibly want, and these were spread on thesteps. It was a celestial picnic. Then everyone sat or lay down and thefeast began. And oh! the taste of the food served on those dishes, thesweet wonder of the drink that melted from those gold cups on the whitelips of the company! And the fruit--there is no fruit like it grown onearth, just as there is no laughter like the laughter of those lips, nosongs like the songs that stirred the silence of that night of wonder.
"Oh!" cried Kathleen, and through her fingers the juice of her thirdpeach fell like tears on the marble steps. "I do wish the boys werehere!"
"I do wonder what they're doing," said Mabel.
IT WAS A CELESTIAL PICNIC.]
"At this moment," said Hermes, who had just made a wide ring of flight,as a pigeon does, and come back into the circle--"at this moment theyare wandering desolately near the home of the dinosaurus, having escapedfrom their home by a window, in search of you. They fear that you haveperished, and they would weep if they did not know that tears do notbecome a man, however youthful."
Kathleen stood up and brushed the crumbs of ambrosia from her marblelap.
"Thank you all very much," she said. "It was very kind of you to haveus, and we've enjoyed ourselves very much, but I think we ought to gonow, please."
"If it is anxiety about your brothers," said Phoebus obligingly, "itis the easiest thing in the world for them to join you. Lend me yourring a moment."
He took it from Kathleen's half-reluctant hand, dipped it in thereflection of one of the seven moons, and gave it back. She clutched it."Now," said the Sun-god, "wish for them that which Mabel wished forherself. Say----"
"I know," Kathleen interrupted. "I wish that the boys may be statues ofliving marble like Mabel and me till dawn, and afterwards be like theyare now."
"If you hadn't interrupted," said Phoebus--"but there, we can't expectold heads on shoulders of young marble. You should have wished them_here_--and--but no matter. Hermes, old chap, cut across and fetch them,and explain things as you come."
He dipped the ring again in one of the reflected moons before he gaveit back to Kathleen.
"There," he said, "now it's washed clean ready for the next magic."
"It is not our custom to question guests," said Hera the queen, turningher great eyes on the children; "but that ring excites, I am sure, theinterest of us all."
"It is _the_ ring," said Phoebus.
"That, of course," said Hera; "but if it were not inhospitable to askquestions I should ask, How came it into the hands of theseearth-children?"
"That," said Phoebus, "is a long tale. After the feast the story, andafter the story the song."
Hermes seemed to have "explained everything" quite fully; for whenGerald and Jimmy in marble whiteness arrived, each clinging to one ofthe god's winged feet, and so borne through the air, they were certainlyquite at ease. They made their best bows to the goddesses and took theirplaces as unembarrassed as though they had had Olympian suppers everynight of their lives. Hebe had woven wreaths of roses ready for them,and as Kathleen watched them eating and drinking, perfectly at home intheir marble, she was very glad that amid the welling springs ofimmortal peach-juice she had not forgotten her brothers.
"And now," said Hera, when the boys had been supplied with everythingthey could possibly desire, and more than they could eat--"now for thestory."
"Yes," said Mabel intensely; and Kathleen said, "Oh _yes_; now for thestory. How splendid!"
"The story," said Phoebus unexpectedly, "will be told by our guests."
"Oh _no_!" said Kathleen, shrinking.
"The lads, maybe, are bolder," said Zeus the king, taking off hisrose-wreath, which was a little tight, and rubbing his compressed ears.
"I really can't," said Gerald; "besides, I don't know any stories."
"Nor yet me," said Jimmy.
"It's the story of how we got the ring that they want," said Mabel in ahurry. "I'll tell it if you like. Once upon a time there was a littlegirl called Mabel," she added yet more hastily, and went on with thetale--all the tale of the enchanted castle, or almost all, that you haveread in these pages. The marble Olympians listened enchanted--almost asenchanted as the castle itself, and the soft moonlit moments fell pastlike pearls dropping into a deep pool.
"And so," Mabel ended abruptly, "Kathleen wished for the boys and theLord Hermes fetched them and here we all are."
A burst of interested comment and question blossomed out round the endof the story, suddenly broken off short by Mabel.
"But," said she, brushing it aside, as it grew thinner, "now we want_you_ to tell _us_."
"To tell you----?"
"How you come to be alive, and how you know about the ring--andeverything you _do_ know."
"Everything I know?" Phoebus laughed--it was to him that she hadspoken--and not his lips only but all the white lips curled in laughter."The span of your life, my earth-child, would not contain the words Ishould speak, to tell you all I know."
"Well, about the ring anyhow, and how you come alive," said Gerald; "yousee, it's very puzzling to us."
"Tell them, Phoebus," said the dearest lady in the world; "don't teasethe children."
So Phoebus, leaning back against a heap of leopard-skins that Dionysushad lavishly plucked from a spruc
e fir, told.
"All statues," he said, "can come alive when the moon shines, if they sochoose. But statues that are placed in ugly cities do not choose. Whyshould they weary themselves with the contemplation of the hideous?"
"Quite so," said Gerald politely, to fill the pause.
"In your beautiful temples," the Sun-god went on, "the images of yourpriests and of your warriors who lie cross-legged on their tombs comealive and walk in their marble about their temples, and through thewoods and fields. But only on one night in all the year can any seethem. You have beheld us because you held the ring, and are of onebrotherhood with us in your marble, but on that one night all may beholdus."
"And when is that?" Gerald asked, again polite, in a pause.
"At the festival of the harvest," said Phoebus. "On that night as themoon rises it strikes one beam of perfect light on to the altar incertain temples. One of these temples is in Hellas, buried under thefall of a mountain which Zeus, being angry, hurled down upon it. One isin this land; it is in this great garden."
"Then," said Gerald, much interested, "if we were to come up to thattemple on that night, we could see you, even without being statues orhaving the ring?"
"Even so," said Phoebus. "More, any question asked by a mortal we areon that night bound to answer."
"And the night is--when?"
"Ah!" said Phoebus, and laughed. "Wouldn't you like to know!"
Then the great marble King of the Gods yawned, stroked his long beard,and said: "Enough of stories, Phoebus. Tune your lyre."
"But the ring," said Mabel in a whisper, as the Sun-god tuned the whitestrings of a sort of marble harp that lay at his feet--"about how youknow all about the ring?"
"Presently," the Sun-god whispered back. "Zeus must be obeyed; but askme again before dawn, and I will tell you all I know of it." Mabel drewback, and leaned against the comfortable knees of one Demeter--Kathleenand Psyche sat holding hands. Gerald and Jimmy lay at full length, chinson elbows, gazing at the Sun-god; and even as he held the lyre, beforeever his fingers began to sweep the strings, the spirit of music hung inthe air, enchanting, enslaving, silencing all thought but the thought ofitself, all desire but the desire to listen to it.
Then Phoebus struck the strings and softly plucked melody from them,and all the beautiful dreams of all the world came fluttering close withwings like doves' wings; and all the lovely thoughts that sometimeshover near, but not so near that you can catch them, now came home as totheir nests in the hearts of those who listened. And those who listenedforgot time and space, and how to be sad, and how to be naughty, and itseemed that the whole world lay like a magic apple in the hand of eachlistener, and that the whole world was good and beautiful.
And then, suddenly, the spell was shattered. Phoebus struck a brokenchord, followed by an instant of silence; then he sprang up, crying,"The dawn! the dawn! To your pedestals, O gods!"
In an instant the whole crowd of beautiful marble people had leaped toits feet, had rushed through the belt of wood that cracked and rustledas they went, and the children heard them splash in the water beyond.They heard, too, the gurgling breathing of a great beast, and knew thatthe dinosaurus, too, was returning to his own place.
Only Hermes had time, since one flies more swiftly than one swims, tohover above them for one moment, and to whisper with a mischievouslaugh:--
"In fourteen days from now, at the Temple of Strange Stones."
"What's the secret of the ring?" gasped Mabel.
"The ring is the heart of the magic," said Hermes. "Ask at the moonriseon the fourteenth day, and you shall know all."
With that he waved the snowy caduceus and rose in the air supported byhis winged feet. And as he went the seven reflected moons died out and achill wind began to blow, a grey light grew and grew, the birds stirredand twittered, and the marble slipped away from the children like a skinthat shrivels in fire, and they were statues no more, but flesh andblood children as they used to be, standing knee-deep in brambles andlong coarse grass. There was no smooth lawn, no marble steps, noseven-mooned fish-pond. The dew lay thick on the grass and the brambles,and it was very cold.
"We ought to have gone with them," said Mabel with chattering teeth. "Wecan't swim now we're not marble. And I suppose this _is_ the island?"
It was--and they couldn't swim.
They knew it. One always knows those sort of things somehow withouttrying. For instance, you know perfectly that you can't fly. There aresome things that there is no mistake about.
The dawn grew brighter and the outlook more black every moment.
"There isn't a boat, I suppose?" Jimmy asked.
"No," said Mabel, "not on this side of the lake; there's one in theboat-house, of course--if you could swim there."
"You know I can't," said Jimmy.
"Can't any one think of anything?" Gerald asked, shivering.
"When they find we've disappeared they'll drag all the water for milesround," said Jimmy hopefully, "in case we've fallen in and sunk to thebottom. When they come to drag this we can yell and be rescued."
"Yes, dear, that _will_ be nice," was Gerald's bitter comment.
"Don't be so disagreeable," said Mabel with a tone so strangely cheerfulthat the rest stared at her in amazement.
"The ring," she said. "Of course we've only got to wish ourselves homewith it. Phoebus washed it in the moon ready for the next wish."
"You didn't tell us about that," said Gerald in accents of perfect goodtemper. "Never mind. Where _is_ the ring?"
"_You_ had it," Mabel reminded Kathleen.
"I know I had," said that child in stricken tones, "but I gave it toPsyche to look at--and--and she's got it on her finger!"
Every one tried not to be angry with Kathleen. All partly succeeded.
"If we ever get off this beastly island," said Gerald, "I suppose youcan find Psyche's statue and get it off again?"
"No I can't," Mabel moaned. "I don't know where the statue is. I'venever seen it. It may be in Hellas, wherever that is--or anywhere, foranything _I_ know."
No one had anything kind to say, and it is pleasant to record thatnobody said anything. And now it was grey daylight, and the sky to thenorth was flushing in pale pink and lavender.
The boys stood moodily, hands in pockets. Mabel and Kathleen seemed tofind it impossible not to cling together, and all about their legs thelong grass was icy with dew.
A faint sniff and a caught breath broke the silence.
"Now, look here," said Gerald briskly, "I won't have it. Do you hear?Snivelling's no good at all. No, I'm not a pig. It's for your own good.Lets make a tour of the island. Perhaps there's a boat hidden somewhereamong the overhanging boughs."
"How could there be?" Mabel asked.
"Some one might have left it there, I suppose," said Gerald.
"But how would they have got off the island?"
"In another boat, of course," said Gerald; "come on."
Downheartedly, and quite sure that there wasn't and couldn't be anyboat, the four children started to explore the island. How often eachone of them had dreamed of islands, how often wished to be stranded onone! Well, now they were. Reality is sometimes quite different fromdreams, and not half so nice. It was worst of all for Mabel, whose shoesand stockings were far away on the mainland. The coarse grass andbrambles were very cruel to bare legs and feet.
They stumbled through the wood to the edge of the water, but it wasimpossible to keep close to the edge of the island, the branches grewtoo thickly. There was a narrow, grassy path that wound in and out amongthe trees, and this they followed, dejected and mournful. Every momentmade it less possible for them to hope to get back to the school-houseunnoticed. And if they were missed and beds found in their presentunslept-in state--well, there would be a row of some sort, and, asGerald said, "Farewell to liberty!"
"Of course we can get off all right," said Gerald. "Just all shout whenwe see a gardener or a keeper on the mainland. But if we do, concealmentis at an end and all is a
bsolutely up!"
"Yes," said everyone gloomily.
"Come, buck up!" said Gerald, the spirit of the born general beginningto reawaken in him. "We shall get out of this scrape all right, as we'vegot out of others; you know we shall. See, the sun's coming out. Youfeel all right and jolly now, don't you?"
"Yes, oh yes!" said everyone, in tones of unmixed misery.
The sun was now risen, and through a deep cleft in the hills it sent astrong shaft of light straight at the island. The yellow light, almostlevel, struck through the stems of the trees and dazzled the children'seyes. This, with the fact that he was not looking where he was going, asJimmy did not fail to point out later, was enough to account for whatnow happened to Gerald, who was leading the melancholy littleprocession. He stumbled, clutched at a tree-trunk, missed his clutch,and disappeared, with a yell and a clatter; and Mabel, who came next,only pulled herself up just in time not to fall down a steep flight ofmoss-grown steps that seemed to open suddenly in the ground at her feet.
"Oh, Gerald!" she called down the steps: "are you hurt?"
"No," said Gerald, out of sight and crossly, for he _was_ hurt, ratherseverely; "it's steps, and there's a passage."
"There always is," said Jimmy.
"I knew there was a passage," said Mabel; "it goes under the water andcomes out at the Temple of Flora. Even the gardeners know that, but theywon't go down, for fear of snakes."
"Then we can get out that way--I do think you might have said so,"Gerald's voice came up to say.
"I didn't think of it," said Mabel. "At least---- And I suppose it goespast the place where the Ugly-Wugly found its good hotel."
"I'm not going," said Kathleen positively, "not in the dark, I'm not. SoI tell you!"
"Very well, baby," said Gerald sternly, and his head appeared from belowvery suddenly through interlacing brambles. "No one asked you to go inthe dark. We'll leave you here if you like, and return and rescue youwith a boat. Jimmy, the bicycle lamp!" He reached up a hand for it.
Jimmy produced from his bosom, the place where lamps are always kept infairy stories--see Aladdin and others--a bicycle lamp.
"We brought it," he explained, "so as not to break our shins over bitsof long Mabel among the rhododendrons."
"Now," said Gerald very firmly, striking a match and opening the thick,rounded glass front of the bicycle lamp, "I don't know what the rest ofyou are going to do, but I'm going down these steps and along thispassage. If we find the good hotel--well, a good hotel never hurt anyone yet."
"It's no good, you know," said Jimmy weakly; "you know jolly well youcan't get out of that Temple of Flora door, even if you get to it."
"I _don't_ know," said Gerald, still brisk and commander-like; "there'sa secret spring inside that door most likely. We hadn't a lamp last timeto look for it, remember."
"If there's one thing I do hate it's under-groundness," said Mabel.
"_You're_ not a coward," said Gerald, with what is known as diplomacy."_You're_ brave, Mabel. Don't I know it! You hold Jimmy's hand and I'llhold Cathy's. Now then."
"I won't have _my_ hand held," said Jimmy, of course. "I'm not a kid."
"Well, Cathy will. Poor little Cathy! Nice brother Jerry'll hold poorCathy's hand."
Gerald's bitter sarcasm missed fire here, for Cathy gratefully caughtthe hand he held out in mockery. She was too miserable to read his mood,as she mostly did. "Oh, thank you, Jerry dear," she said gratefully;"you _are_ a dear, and I _will_ try not to be frightened." And for quitea minute Gerald shamedly felt that he had not been quite, quite kind.
So now, leaving the growing goldness of the sunrise, the four went downthe stone steps that led to the underground and underwater passage, andeverything seemed to grow dark and then to grow into a poor pretence oflight again, as the splendour of dawn gave place to the small doggedlighting of the bicycle lamp. The steps did indeed lead to a passage,the beginnings of it choked with the drifted dead leaves of many oldautumns. But presently the passage took a turn, there were more steps,down, down, and then the passage was empty and straight--lined above andbelow and on each side with slabs of marble, very clear and clean.Gerald held Cathy's hand with more of kindness and less of exasperationthan he had supposed possible.
And Cathy, on her part, was surprised to find it possible to be so muchless frightened than she expected.
The flame of the bull'seye threw ahead a soft circle of mistylight--the children followed it silently. Till, silently and suddenly,the light of the bull's-eye behaved as the flame of a candle does whenyou take it out into the sunlight to light a bonfire, or explode a trainof gunpowder, or what not. Because now, with feelings mixed indeed, ofwonder, and interest, and awe, but no fear, the children foundthemselves in a great hall, whose arched roof was held up by two rows ofround pillars, and whose every corner was filled with a soft, searching,lovely light, filling every cranny, as water fills the rocky secreciesof hidden sea-caves.
"How beautiful!" Kathleen whispered, breathing hard into the tickled earof her brother, and Mabel caught the hand of Jimmy and whispered, "Imust hold your hand--I must hold on to something silly, or I shan'tbelieve it's real."
For this hall in which the children found themselves was the mostbeautiful place in the world. I won't describe it, because it does notlook the same to any two people, and you wouldn't understand me if Itried to tell you how it looked to any one of these four. But to each itseemed the most perfect thing possible. I will only say that all roundit were great arches. Kathleen saw them as Moorish, Mabel as Tudor,Gerald as Norman, and Jimmy as Churchwarden Gothic. (If you don't knowwhat these are, ask your uncle who collects brasses, and he willexplain, or perhaps Mr. Millar will draw the different kinds of archesfor you.) And through these arches one could see many things--oh! butmany things. Through one appeared an olive garden, and in it two loverswho held each other's hands, under an Italian moon; through another awild sea, and a ship to whom the wild, racing sea was slave. A thirdshowed a king on his throne, his courtiers obsequious about him; and yeta fourth showed a really good hotel, with the respectable Ugly-Wuglysunning himself on the front doorsteps. There was a mother, bending overa wooden cradle. There was an artist gazing entranced on the picture hiswet brush seemed to have that moment completed, a general dying on afield where Victory had planted the standard he loved, and these thingswere not pictures, but the truest truths, alive, and, as anyone couldsee, immortal.
Many other pictures there were that these arches framed. And all showedsome moment when life had sprung to fire and flower--the best that thesoul of man could ask or man's destiny grant. And the really good hotelhad its place here too, because there are some souls that ask no higherthing of life than "a really good hotel."
"Oh, I am glad we came; I am, I am!" Kathleen murmured, and held fast toher brother's hand.
They went slowly up the hall, the ineffectual bull'seye, held by Jimmy,very crooked indeed, showing almost as a shadow in this big, gloriouslight.
And then, when the hall's end was almost reached, the children saw wherethe light came from. It glowed and spread itself from one place, and inthat place stood the one statue that Mabel "did not know where tofind"--the statue of Psyche. They went on, slowly, quite happy, quitebewildered. And when they came close to Psyche they saw that on herraised hand the ring showed dark.
Gerald let go Kathleen's hand, put his foot on the pediment, his knee onthe pedestal. He stood up, dark and human, beside the white girl withthe butterfly wings.
"I do hope you don't mind," he said, and drew the ring off very gently.Then, as he dropped to the ground, "Not here," he said. "I don't knowwhy, but not here."
And they all passed behind the white Psyche, and once more the bicyclelamp seemed suddenly to come to life again as Gerald held it in front ofhim, to be the pioneer in the dark passage that led from the Hall of----, but they did not know, then, what it was the Hall of.
Then, as the twisting passage shut in on them with a darkness thatpressed close against the little light o
f the bicycle lamp, Kathleensaid, "Give me the ring. I know exactly what to say."
Gerald gave it with not extreme readiness.
"I wish," said Kathleen slowly, "that no one at home may know that we'vebeen out to-night, and I wish we were safe in our own beds, undressed,and in our nightgowns, and asleep."
And the next thing any of them knew, it was good, strong, ordinarydaylight--not just sunrise, but the kind of daylight you are used tobeing called in, and all were in their own beds. Kathleen had framed thewish most sensibly. The only mistake had been in saying "in our ownbeds," because, of course, Mabel's own bed was at Yalding Towers, and tothis day Mabel's drab-haired aunt cannot understand how Mabel, who wasstaying the night with that child in the town she was so taken up with,hadn't come home at eleven, when the aunt locked up, and yet she was inher bed in the morning. For though not a clever woman, she was notstupid enough to be able to believe any one of the eleven fancyexplanations which the distracted Mabel offered in the course of themorning. The first (which makes twelve) of these explanations was TheTruth, and of course the aunt was far too clever to believe That!