Hypolympia Part 15

MAIA.

He cannot bring back the dead.

PERSEPHONE.

What has happened? Cydippe is livid, her limbs are stark, her eyes are wide open, and motionless, and unnaturally brilliant.

SILVa.n.u.s [_to_ CHLORIS].

She was gathering a little posy of your wild flowers--eyebright, and crane's bills and small blue pansies, when----

FAUNA.

There glided out of the intertwisted fibres of the blue-berries a serpent----

ALCYONE.

Grey, with black arrows down the spine, and a flat, diabolical head----

FAUNA.

And Cydippe never saw it, and stretched out her hand again, and--see----

SILVa.n.u.s.

The viper fixed his fangs here, in the blue division of the vein, here in her translucent wrist. See, it swells, it darkens!

FAUNA.

And with a scream she fell, and swooned away, and died, turning backwards, so that her hair caught in the springy herbage, and her head rolled a little in her pain, so that her hair was loosened and tightened, and look, there are still little tufts of blue-berry leaves in her hair.

SILVa.n.u.s.

But here comes aesculapius.

[_They all greet_ aeSCULAPIUS, _who enters from the left, with his basket of remedies_.]

PERSEPHONE.

Ah! sage master of simples, this is a problem beyond thy solution, a case beyond thy cure.

aeSCULAPIUS [_to the G.o.ddesses_].

You think that Cydippe is dead?

MAIA.

Unquestionably. The savage viper has slain her.

aeSCULAPIUS.

Then prepare to behold what should seem a greater miracle to you than to me. But, first, Silva.n.u.s, bind a strip of clothing very tightly round the upper part of her arm, for no more than we can help of those treasonable messengers must fly posting from the wound to Cydippe's heart.

PERSEPHONE [_sententiously_].

It can receive no more such messages.

aeSCULAPIUS.

I think you are mistaken. And now, Fauna, a few drops of water in this cup from the trickling spring yonder. That is well. Stand farther away from Cydippe, all of you.

PERSEPHONE.

What are those pure white needles you drop into the water? How quickly they dissolve. Ah! he lays the mixture to Cydippe's wound.

She sighs; her eyelids close; her heart is beating. What is this magic, aesculapius?

aeSCULAPIUS.

Do not tell your husband, Persephone, or he will complain to Zeus that I am depriving him of his population. But if there is magic in this, there is no miracle. [_To the others._] Take her softly into the house and lay her down. She will take a long sleep, and will wake at the end of it with no trace of the poison or recollection of her suffering.

[_They carry_ CYDIPPE _forth_. PERSEPHONE, MAIA, _and_ aeSCULAPIUS _remain_.]

MAIA.

Then--she was not dead?

aeSCULAPIUS.

No; it was but the poison-swoon, which precedes death, if it be not arrested.

MAIA.

How rejoiced I am!

PERSEPHONE.

One would say your joy had disappointed you.

MAIA.

No, indeed, for I am attached to Cydippe, but oh! Persephone, it is strange to be at the very threshold of the mystery----

PERSEPHONE.

And to have the opening door shut in our faces? Perhaps ... next time ... they may not be able to find aesculapius.