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 fire-fly, 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 fire-fly, 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 fire-fly 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 fire-fly 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 fire-fly, 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 disk on the face of
the blue, but hanging down half way, 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 splendor 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 knew nothing of the air
even, had never breathed the still new-born 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 splendor. What a little
ignorance her jailers 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 lamp 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.