CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAMP.
Watho having given orders, took it for granted they were obeyed, and
that Falca was all night long with Nycteris, whose day it was. But
Falca could not get into the habit of sleeping through the day, and
would often leave her alone half the night. Then it seemed to Nycteris
that the white lamp was watching over her. As it was never permitted
to go out--while she was awake at least--Nycteris, except by shutting
her eyes, knew less about darkness than she did about light. Also, the
lamp being fixed high overhead, and in the centre of everything, she
did not know much about shadows either. The few there were fell almost
entirely on the floor, or kept like mice about the foot of the walls.
Once, when she was thus alone, there came the noise of a far-off
rumbling: she had never before heard a sound of which she did not know
the origin, and here therefore was a new sign of something beyond
these chambers. Then came a trembling, then a shaking; the lamp
dropped from the ceiling to the floor with a great crash, and she felt
as if both her eyes were hard shut and both her hands over them. She
concluded that it was the darkness that had made the rumbling and the
shaking, and rushing into the room, had thrown down the lamp. She sat
trembling. The noise and the shaking ceased, but the light did not
return. The darkness had eaten it up!
Her lamp gone, the desire at once awoke to get out of her prison. She
scarcely knew what _out_ meant; out of one room into another, where
there was not even a dividing door, only an open arch, was all she
knew of the world. But suddenly she remembered that she had heard
Falca speak of the lamp _going out_: this must be what she had meant?
And if the lamp had gone out, where had it gone? Surely where Falca
went, and like her it would come again. But she could not wait. The
desire to go out grew irresistible. She must follow her beautiful
lamp! She must find it! She must see what it was about!
Now there was a curtain covering a recess in the wall, where some of
her toys and gymnastic things were kept; and from behind that curtain
Watho and Falca always appeared, and behind it they vanished. How they
came out of solid wall, she had not an idea, all up to the wall was
open space, and all beyond it seemed wall; but clearly the first and
only thing she could do, was to feel her way behind the curtain. It
was so dark that a cat could not have caught the largest of mice.
Nycteris could see better than any cat, but now her great eyes were
not of the smallest use to her. As she went she trod upon a piece of
the broken lamp. She had never worn shoes or stockings, and the
fragment, though, being of soft alabaster, it did not cut, yet hurt
her foot. She did not know what it was, but as it had not been there
before the darkness came, she suspected that it had to do with the
lamp. She kneeled therefore, and searched with her hands, and bringing
two large pieces together, recognized the shape of the lamp. Therewith
it flashed upon her that the lamp was dead, that this brokenness was
the death of which she had read without understanding, that the
darkness had killed the lamp. What then could Falca have meant when
she spoke of the lamp _going out_? There was the lamp--dead, indeed,
and so changed that she would never have taken it for a lamp but for
the shape! No, it was not the lamp any more now it was dead, for all
that made it a lamp was gone, namely, the bright shining of it. Then
it must be the shine, the light, that had gone out! That must be what
Falca meant--and it must be somewhere in the other place in the wall.
She started afresh alter it, and groped her way to the curtain.
Now she had never in her life tried to get out, and did not know how;
but instinctively she began to move her hands about over one of the
walls behind the curtain, half expecting them to go into it, as she
supposed Watho and Falca did. But. the wall repelled her with
inexorable hardness, and she turned to the one opposite. In so doing,
she set her foot upon an ivory die, and as it met sharply the same
spot the broken alabaster had already hurt, she fell forward with her
outstretched hands against the wall. Something gave way, and she
tumbled out of the cavern.
