CHAPTER IX.
OUT.
But alas! _out_ was very much like _in_, for the same enemy, the
darkness, was here also. The next moment, however, came a great
gladness--a firefly, which had wandered in from the garden. She saw
the tiny spark in the distance. With slow pulsing ebb and throb of
light, it came pushing itself through the air, drawing nearer and
nearer, with that motion which more resembles swimming than flying,
and the light seemed the source of its own motion.
"My lamp! my lamp!" cried Nycteris. "It is the shiningness of my lamp,
which the cruel darkness drove out. My good lamp has been waiting for
me here all the time! It knew I would come after it, and waited to
take me with it."
She followed the firefly, which, like herself, was seeking the way
out. If it did not know the way, it was yet light; and, because all
light is one, any light may serve to guide to more light. If she was
mistaken in thinking it the spirit of her lamp, it was of the same
spirit as her lamp--and had wings. The gold-green jet-boat, driven by
light, went throbbing before her through a long narrow passage.
Suddenly it rose higher, and the same moment Nycteris fell upon an
ascending stair. She had never seen a stair before, and found going-up
a curious sensation. Just as she reached what seemed the top, the
firefly ceased to shine, and so disappeared. She was in utter darkness
once more. But when we are following the light, even its extinction is
a guide. If the firefly had gone on shining, Nycteris would have seen
the stair turn, and would have gone up to Watho's bedroom; whereas
now, feeling straight before her, she came to a latched door, which
after a good deal of trying she managed to open--and stood in a maze
of wondering perplexity, awe, and delight. What was it? Was it outside
of her, or something taking place in her head? Before her was a very
long and very narrow passage, broken up she could not tell how, and
spreading out above and on all sides to an infinite height and breadth
and distance--as if space itself were growing out of a trough. It was
brighter than her rooms had ever been--brighter than if six alabaster
lamps had been burning in them. There was a quantity of strange
streaking and mottling about it, very different from the shapes on her
walls. She was in a dream of pleasant perplexity, of delightful
bewilderment. She could not tell whether she was upon her feet or
drifting about like the firefly, driven by the pulses of an inward
bliss. But she knew little as yet of her inheritance. Unconsciously
she took one step forward from the threshold, and the girl who had
been from her very birth a troglodyte, stood in the ravishing glory of
a southern night, lit by a perfect moon--not the moon of our northern
clime, but a moon like silver glowing in a furnace--a moon one could
see to be a globe--not far off, a mere flat disc on the face of the
blue, but hanging down halfway, and looking as if one could see all
round it by a mere bending of the neck.
"It is my lamp!" she said, and stood dumb with parted lips. She looked
and felt as if she had been standing there in silent ecstasy from the
beginning.
"No, it is not my lamp," she said after a while; "it is the mother of
all the lamps."
And with that she fell on her knees, and spread out her hands to the
moon. She could not in the least have told what was in her mind, but
the action was in reality just a begging of the moon to be what she
was--that precise incredible splendour hung in the far-off roof, that
very glory essential to the being of poor girls born and bred in
caverns. It was a resurrection--nay, a birth itself, to Nycteris. What
the vast blue sky, studded with tiny sparks like the heads of diamond
nails, could be; what the moon, looking so absolutely content with
light.--why, she knew less about them than you and I! but the greatest
of astronomers might envy the rapture of such a first impression at
the age of sixteen. Immeasurably imperfect it was, but false the
impression could not be, for she saw with the eyes made for seeing,
and saw indeed what many men are too wise to see.
As she knelt, something softly flapped her, embraced her, stroked her,
fondled her. She rose to her feet, but saw nothing, did not know what
it was. It was likest a woman's breath. For she know nothing of the
air even, had never breathed the still newborn freshness of the world.
Her breath had come to her only through long passages and spirals in
the rock. Still less did she know of the air alive with motion--of
that thrice blessed thing, the wind of a summer night. It was like a
spiritual wine, filling her whole being with an intoxication of purest
joy. To breathe was a perfect existence. It seemed to her the light
itself she drew into her lungs. Possessed by the power of the gorgeous
night, she seemed at one and the same moment annihilated and
glorified.
She was in the open passage or gallery that ran round the top of the
garden walls, between the cleft battlements, but she did not once look
down to see what lay beneath. Her soul was drawn to the vault above
her, with its lamp and its endless room. At last she burst into tears,
and her heart was relieved, as the night itself is relieved by its
lightning and rain.
And now she grew thoughtful. She must hoard this splendour! What a
little ignorance her gaolers had made of her! Life was a mighty bliss,
and they had scraped hers to the bare bone! They must not know that
she knew. She must hide her knowledge--hide it even from her own eyes,
keeping it close in her bosom, content to know that she had it, even
when she could not brood on its presence, feasting her eyes with its
glory. She turned from the vision, therefore, with a sigh of utter
bliss, and with soft quiet steps and groping hands, stole back into
the darkness of the rock. What was darkness or the laziness of Time's
feet to one who had seen what she had that night seen? She was lifted
above all weariness--above all wrong.
When Falca entered, she uttered a cry of terror. But Nycteris called
to her not to be afraid, and told her how there had come a rumbling
and a shaking, and the lamp had fallen. Then Falca went and told her
mistress, and within an hour a new globe hung in the place of the old
one. Nycteris thought it did not look so bright and clear as the
former, but she made no lamentation over the change; she was far too
rich to heed it. For now, prisoner as she knew herself, her heart was
full of glory and gladness; at times she had to hold herself from
jumping up, and going dancing and singing about the room. When she
slept, instead of dull dreams, she had splendid visions. There were
times, it is true, when she became restless, and impatient to look
upon her riches, but then she would reason with herself, saying, "What
does it matter if I sit here for ages with my poor pale lamp, when out
there a lump is burning at which ten thousand little lamps are glowing
with wonder?"
She never doubted she had looked upon the day and the sun, of which
she had read; and always when she read of the day and the sun, she had
the night and the moon in her mind; and when she read of the night and
the moon, she thought only of the cave and the lamp that hung there.
