Hypolympia Part 14

MAIA.

You don't even recall what the inhabitants of the country were like?

PERSEPHONE.

I recollect that they seemed dreadfully wanting in vitality. They came in troops when I held a reception; they swept by.... I cannot remember what they were like----

CHLORIS.

It must have been dreary for you there, Persephone.

PERSEPHONE.

Well, we had our own interests. I believe I did my duty. It seemed to me that I must be there if Pluto wished it, and I was pleased to be with him. But--if you can understand me--there was a sort of a dimness over everything, and I never entered into the political life of the place. As to the social life, you can imagine that they were not people that one cared to know. At the same time, of course, I feel now how ridiculous it was of me to hold that position and not take more interest.

MAIA.

Demeter, of course, never encouraged you to make any observation of the manners and customs of Hades.

PERSEPHONE.

Oh, no! that was just it. She always said: "Pray don't let me hear the least thing about the horrid place." You remember that she very strongly disapproved of my going there at all----

CHLORIS.

Yes; I remember that Arethusa, when she brought me back my daffodils, told me how angry Demeter was----

PERSEPHONE.

And yet she was quite nice to my husband when once Zeus had decided that I had better go.

[_There is a pause._ MAIA _rises and leans on the parapet, over the woods, now drowned in twilight, to the sea, which still faintly glitters. She turns and comes back to the other two, standing above them._]

MAIA.

I, too, might have observed something as I went sailing over the purpureal ocean. But I was always talking to my sisters. The fact is we all of us neglected to learn anything about death.

CHLORIS.

We thought of it as of something happening in that world of Hades which could never become of the slightest importance to us. Who could have imagined that we should have to take it into practical account?

MAIA.

Well, now we shall have to accept it, to be prepared for its tremendous approach.

CHLORIS [_after a pause_].

Perhaps this famous "death" may prove after all to be only another kind of life. [_Rising and approaching_ MAIA.] Don't you think this is indicated even by the song of these barbarians? Besides, our stay here must be the ante-chamber to something wholly different.

MAIA.

We can hardly suppose that it can lead to nothing.

CHLORIS.

No; surely we shall put off more or less leisurely, with dignity or without it, the garments of our sensuous existence, and discover something underneath all these textures of the body?

PERSEPHONE.

One of our priests in Hades, I do remember, sang that silence was a voice, and declared that even in the deserts of immensity the soul was stunned and deafened by the chorus and anti-chorus of nature.

CHLORIS.

What did he mean? What is the soul?

MAIA.

I must confess that in this our humility, our corporeal degradation, instead of feeling crushed, I am curiously conscious of a wider range of sensibility. Perhaps that is the soul? Perhaps, in the suppression of our immortality, something metallic, something hermetical, has been broken down, and already we stand more easily exposed to the influences of the spirit?

CHLORIS.

In that case, to slough the sheaths of the body, one by one, ought to be to come nearer to the final freedom, and the last coronation and consecration of existence may prove to be this very "death" we dread so much.

PERSEPHONE.

I can fancy that such conjectures as these may prove to be one of the chief sources of satisfaction in this new mortality of ours: the variegated play of light and shadow thrown upon it. Well, the less we know and see, the more exciting it ought to be to guess and to peer.

MAIA.

And some of us, depend upon it, will be able to persuade ourselves that we alone can use our eyesight in the pitch profundity of darkness, and these will find a peculiar pleasure in tormenting the others who have less confidence in their imagination.

[_They seat themselves, and are silent. Far away is once more faintly heard the song, and then it dies away. A long silence. Then, a confused hum of cries and voices is heard, and approaches the terrace from below. The G.o.ddesses start to their feet. From the left appear_ SILVa.n.u.s, ALCYONE _and_ FAUNA, _bearing the body of_ CYDIPPE, _which they place very carefully on the gra.s.s in front of the scene_.]

CHLORIS [_in an excited whisper_].

Is this our first experience of the mystery?

FAUNA _and_ ALCYONE.

She is dead! She is dead!

MAIA.

The first of the immortals to succ.u.mb to the burden of mortality!

SILVa.n.u.s.

Where is aesculapius? Call him, call him!