The World's Desire Part 16

Ah, within my heart a hunger for the love unfelt, unknown, Stirs at length, and wakes and murmurs as a child that wakes to moan, Left to sleep within some silent house of strangers and alone.

So my heart awakes, and waking, moans with hunger and with cold, Cries in pain of dim remembrance for the joy that was of old; For the love that was, that shall be, half forgot and half foretold.

Have I dreamed it or remembered? In another world was I, Lived and loved in alien seasons, moved beneath a golden sky, In a golden clime where never came the strife of men that die.

But the G.o.ds themselves were jealous, for our bliss was over great, And they brought on us division, and the horror of their Hate, And they set the Snake between us, and the twining coils of Fate.

And they said, "Go forth and seek each other's face, and only find Shadows of that face ye long for, dreams of days left far behind, Love the shadows and be loved with loves that waver as the wind."

Once more the sweet singing died away, but as the Wanderer grasped his sword and fixed the broad s.h.i.+eld upon his arm he remembered the dream of Meriamun the Queen, which had been told him by Rei the Priest. For in that dream twain who had sinned were made three, and through many deaths and lives must seek each other's face. And now it seemed that the burden of the song was the burden of the dream.

Then he thought no more on dreams, or songs, or omens, but only on the deadly foe that stood before him wrapped in darkness, and on Helen, in whose arms he yet should lie, for so the G.o.ddess had sworn to him in sea-girt Ithaca. He spoke no word, he named no G.o.d, but sprang forward as a lion springs from his bed of reeds; and, lo! his buckler clashed against s.h.i.+elds that barred the way, and invisible arms seized him to hurl him back. But no weakling was the Wanderer, thus to be pushed aside by magic, but the stoutest man left alive in the whole world now that Aias, Telamon's son, was dead. The priests wondered as they saw how he gave back never a step, for all the might of the Wardens of the Gate, but lifted his short sword and hewed down so terribly that fire leapt from the air where the short sword fell, the good short sword of Euryalus the Phaeacian. Then came the clas.h.i.+ng of the swords, and from all the golden armour that once the G.o.d-like Paris wore, ay, from buckler, helm, and greaves, and breastplate the sparks streamed up as they stream from the anvil of the smith when he smites great blows on swords made white with fire.

Swift as hail fell the blows of the unseen blades upon the golden armour, but he who wore it took no harm, nor was it so much as marked with the dint of the swords. So while the priests wondered at this miracle the viewless Wardens of the Gate smote at the Wanderer, and the Wanderer smote at them again. Then of a sudden he knew this, that they who barred the path were gone, for no more blows fell, and his sword only cut the air.

Then he rushed on and pa.s.sed behind the veil and stood within the shrine.

But as the curtains swung behind him the singing rose again upon the air, and he might not move, but stood fixed with his eyes gazing where, far up, a loom was set within the shrine. For the sound of the singing came from behind the great web gleaming in the loom, the sound of the song of Helen as she heard the swords clash and the ringing of the harness of those whose knees were loosened in death. It was thus she sang:

Clamour of iron on iron, and shrieking of steel upon steel, Hark how they echo again!

Life with the dead is at war, and the mortals are shaken and reel, The living are slain by the slain!

Clamour of iron on iron; like music that chimes with a song, So with my life doth it chime, And my footsteps must fall in the dance of Erinnys, a revel of wrong, Till the day of the pa.s.sing of Time!

Ghosts of the dead that have loved me, your love have been vanquished of death, But unvanquished of death is your hate; Say, is there none that may woo me and win me of all that draw breath, Not one but is envied of Fate?

Now the song died, and the Wanderer looked up, and before him stood three shadows of mighty men clad in armour. He gazed upon them, and he knew the blazons painted on their s.h.i.+elds; he knew them for heroes long dead--Pirithous, Theseus, and Aias.

They looked upon him, and then cried with one voice:

"Hail to thee, Odysseus of Ithaca, son of Laertes!"

"Hail to thee," cried the Wanderer, "Theseus, aegeus' son! Once before didst thou go down into the House of Hades, and alive thou camest forth again. Hast thou crossed yet again the stream of Ocean, and dost thou live in the sunlight? For of old I sought thee and found thee not in the House of Hades?"

The semblance of Theseus answered: "In the House of Hades I abide this day, and in the fields of asphodel. But that thou seest is a shadow, sent forth by Queen Persephone, to be the guard of the beauty of Helen."

"Hail to thee, Pirithous, Ixion's son," cried the Wanderer again. "Hast thou yet won the dread Persephone to be thy love? And why doth Hades give his rival holiday to wander in the sunlight, for of old I sought thee, and found thee not in the House of Hades."

Then the semblance of Pirithous answered:

"In the House of Hades I dwell this day, and that thou seest is but a shadow which goes with the shadow of the hero Theseus. For where he is am I, and where he goes I go, and our very shadows are not sundered; but we guard the beauty of Helen."

"Hail to thee, Aias, Telamon's son," cried the Wanderer. "Hast thou not forgotten thy wrath against me, for the sake of those accursed arms that I won from thee, the arms of Achilles, son of Peleus? For of old in the House of Hades I spoke to thee, but thou wouldst not answer one word, so heavy was thine anger."

Then the semblance of Aias made answer: "With iron upon iron, and the stroke of bronze on bronze, would I answer thee, if I were yet a living man and looked upon the sunlight. But I smite with a shadowy spear and slay none but men foredoomed, and I am the shade of Aias who dwells in Hades. Yet the Queen Persephone sent me forth to be the guard of the beauty of Helen."

Then the Wanderer spake.

"Tell me, ye shadows of the sons of heroes, is the way closed, and do the G.o.ds forbid it, or may I that am yet a living man pa.s.s forward and gaze on that ye guard, on the beauty of Helen?"

Then each of the three nodded with his head, and smote once upon his s.h.i.+eld, saying:

"Pa.s.s by, but look not back upon us, till thou hast seen thy desire."

Then the Wanderer went by, into the innermost chamber of the alabaster shrine.

Now when the shadows had spoken thus, they grew dim and vanished, and the Wanderer, as they had commanded, drew slowly up on the alabaster shrine, till at length he stood on the hither side of the web upon the loom. It was a great web, wide and high, and hid all the innermost recesses of the shrine. Here he waited, not knowing how he should break in upon the Hathor.

As he stood wondering thus his buckler slipped from his loosened hand and clashed upon the marble floor, and as it clashed the voice of the Hathor took up the broken song; and thus she sang ever more sweetly:--

Ghosts of the dead that have loved me, your love has been vanquished by Death, But unvanquished by Death is your Hate; Say, is there none that may woo me and win me of all that draw breath, Not one but is envied of Fate?

None that may pa.s.s you unwounded, unscathed of invisible spears-- By the splendour of Zeus there is one, And he comes, and my spirit is touched as Demeter is touched by the tears Of the Spring and the kiss of the sun.

For he comes, and my heart that was chill as a lake in the season of snow, Is molten, and glows as with fire.

And the Love that I knew not is born and he laughs in my heart, and I know The name and the flame of Desire.

As a flame I am kindled, a flame that is blown by a wind from the North, By a wind that is deadly with cold, And the hope that awoke in me faints, for the Love that is born shall go forth To my Love, and shall die as of old!

Now the song sobbed itself away, but the heart of the Wanderer echoed to its sweetness as a lyre moans and thrills when the hand of the striker is lifted from the strings.

For a while he stood thus, hidden by the web upon the loom, while his limbs shook like the leaves of the tall poplar, and his face turned white as turn the poplar leaves. Then desire overcame him, and a longing he could not master, to look upon the face of her who sang, and he seized the web upon the loom, and rent it with a great rending noise, so that it fell down on either side of him, and the gold coils rippled at his feet.

VII

THE SHADOW IN THE SUNLIGHT

The torn web fell--the last veil of the Strange Hathor. It fell, and all its unravelled threads of glittering gold and scarlet rippled and coiled about the Wanderer's feet, and about the pillars of the loom.

The web was torn, the veil was rent, the labour was lost, the pictured story of loves and wars was all undone.

But there, white in the silvery dusk of the alabaster shrine, there was the visible Helen, the bride and the daughter of Mystery, the World's Desire!

There shone that fabled loveliness of which no story was too strange, of which all miracles seemed true. There, her hands folded on her lap, her head bowed--there sat she whose voice was the echo of all sweet voices, she whose shape was the mirror of all fair forms, she whose changeful beauty, so they said, was the child of the changeful moon.

Helen sat in a chair of ivory, gleaming even through the suns.h.i.+ne of her outspread hair. She was clothed in soft folds of white; on her breast gleamed the Starstone, the red stone of the sea-deeps that melts in the suns.h.i.+ne, but that melted not on the breast of Helen. Moment by moment the red drops from the ruby heart of the star fell on her snowy raiment, fell and vanished,--fell and vanished,--and left no stain.

The Wanderer looked on her face, but the beauty and the terror of it, as she raised it, were more than he could bear, and he stood like those who saw the terror and the beauty of that face which changes men to stone.

For the lovely eyes of Helen stared wide, her lips, yet quivering with the last notes of song, were wide open in fear. She seemed like one who walks alone, and suddenly, in the noonday light, meets the hated dead; encountering the ghost of an enemy come back to earth with the instant summons of doom.

For a moment the sight of her terror made even the Wanderer afraid. What was the horror she beheld in this haunted shrine, where was none save themselves alone? What was with them in the shrine?

Then he saw that her eyes were fixed on his golden armour which Paris once had worn, on the golden s.h.i.+eld with the blazon of the White Bull, on the golden helm, whose visor was down so that it quite hid his eyes and his face--and then at last her voice broke from her:

"_Paris! Paris! Paris!_ Has Death lost hold of thee? Hast thou come to drag me back to thee and to shame? Paris, dead Paris! Who gave thee courage to pa.s.s the shadows of men whom on earth thou hadst not dared to face in war?"