“At least it was for love of them, not from cowardice that I served the giants!”
“Granted. But you ought to have served the Little Ones, not the giants! You ought to have given the Little Ones water; then they would soon have taught the giants their true position. In the meantime you could yourself have made the giants cut down two-thirds of their coarse fruit-trees to give room to the little delicate ones! You lost your chance with the Lovers, Mr. Vane! You speculated about them instead of helping them!”
XXIX
The Persian Cat
I sat in silence and shame. What he said was true: I had not been a wise neighbour to the Little Ones!
Mr. Raven resumed:
“You wronged at the same time the stupid creatures themselves. For them slavery would have been progress. To them a few such lessons as you could have given them with a stick from one of their own trees, would have been invaluable.”
“I did not know they were cowards!”
“What difference does that make? The man who grounds his action on another’s cowardice, is essentially a coward himself.—I fear worse will come of it! By this time the Little Ones might have been able to protect themselves from the princess, not to say the giants—they were always fit enough for that; as it was they laughed at them! but now, through your relations with her—”
“I hate her!” I cried.
“Did you let her know you hated her?”
Again I was silent.
“Not even to her have you been faithful!—But hush! we were followed from the fountain, I fear!”
“No living creature did I see!—except a disreputable-looking cat that bolted into the shrubbery.”
“It was a magnificent Persian—so wet and draggled, though, as to look what she was—worse than disreputable!”
“What do you mean, Mr. Raven?” I cried, a fresh horror taking me by the throat. “—There was a beautiful blue Persian about the house, but she fled at the very sound of water!—Could she have been after the goldfish?”
“We shall see!” returned the librarian. “I know a little about cats of several sorts, and there is that in the room which will unmask this one, or I am mistaken in her.”
He rose, went to the door of the closet, brought from it the mutilated volume, and sat down again beside me. I stared at the book in his hand: it was a whole book, entire and sound!
“Where was the other half of it?” I gasped.
“Sticking through into my library,” he answered.
I held my peace. A single question more would have been a plunge into a bottomless sea, and there might be no time!
“Listen,” he said: “I am going to read a stanza or two. There is one present who, I imagine, will hardly enjoy the reading!”
He opened the vellum cover, and turned a leaf or two. The parchment was discoloured with age, and one leaf showed a dark stain over two-thirds of it. He slowly turned this also, and seemed looking for a certain passage in what appeared a continuous poem. Somewhere about the middle of the book he began to read.
But what follows represents—not what he read, only the impression it made upon me. The poem seemed in a language I had never before heard, which yet I understood perfectly, although I could not write the words, or give their meaning save in poor approximation. These fragments, then, are the shapes which those he read have finally taken in passing again through my brain:—
“But if I found a man that could believe
In what he saw not, felt not, and yet knew,
From him I should take substance, and receive
Firmness and form relate to touch and view;
Then should I clothe me in the likeness true
Of that idea where his soul did cleave!”
He turned a leaf and read again:—
“In me was every woman. I had power
Over the soul of every living man,
Such as no woman ever had in dower—
Could what no woman ever could, or can;
All women, I, the woman, still outran,
Outsoared, outsank, outreigned, in hall or bower.“For I, though me he neither saw nor heard,
Nor with his hand could touch finger of mine,
Although not once my breath had ever stirred
A hair of him, could trammel brain and spine
With rooted bonds which Death could not untwine—
Or life, though hope were evermore deferred.”
Again he paused, again turned a leaf, and again began:—
“For by his side I lay, a bodiless thing;
I breathed not, saw not, felt not, only thought,
And made him love me—with a hungering
After he knew not what—if it was aught
Or but a nameless something that was wrought
By him out of himself; for I did sing“A song that had no sound into his soul;
I lay a heartless thing against his heart,
Giving him nothing where he gave his whole
Being to clothe me human, every part:
That I at last into his sense might dart,
Thus first into his living mind I stole.“Ah, who was ever conquering Love but I!
Who else did ever throne in heart of man!
To visible being, with a gladsome cry
Waking, life’s tremor through me throbbing ran!”
A strange, repulsive feline wail arose somewhere in the room. I started up on my elbow and stared about me, but could see nothing.
Mr. Raven turned several leaves, and went on:—
“Sudden I woke, nor knew the ghastly fear
That held me—not like serpent coiled about,
But like a vapour moist, corrupt, and drear,
Filling heart, soul, and breast and brain throughout;
My being lay motionless in sickening doubt,
Nor dared to ask how came the horror here.“My past entire I knew, but not my now;
I understood nor what I was, nor where;
I knew what I had been: still on my brow
I felt the touch of what no more was there!
I was a fainting, dead, yet live Despair;
A life that flouted life with mop and mow!“That I was a queen I knew
