OUT INTO THE VOID
So it was all over.
Had she been the dupe of malicious gods? Yes, if within that malign
pantheon there was a throne for her old enemy, _Amour-Propre_. For it was
_Amour-Propre_ that had played her this scurvy trick and had upset her
poor little boat ‘drifting oarless on a full sea’—not of Grace but of
Chance. After all, Jansenism, Cartesianism, her mother’s philosophy of
indifference, had all the same aim—to give a touch of sea-craft to the
poor human sailor, and to flatter him with the belief that some harbour
lies before him. But they lie, they lie! There is no port, no rudder, no
stars, and the frail fleet of human souls is at the mercy of every wind
that blows.
She laughed bitterly when she remembered her certainty of her own
election, her anger against the mighty hands slowly, surely, torturing
her life into salvation. She laughed still more at her faith in a kind,
heavenly Father, a rock in a weary land, a certain caterer of lovely
gifts. How had she ever been fool enough to believe in this? Had she no
eyes for the countless proofs all round her that any awful thing might
happen to any one? People, just as real and alive as she was herself,
were disfigured by smallpox, or died of plague, or starved in the
streets, or loved without being loved in return; and yet, she had wrapped
herself round in an imaginary ghostly tenderness, certain in her foolish
heart that it was against the order of the universe that such things
should happen to _her_.
And as to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, she knew that the whole business had
been a foolish _vision_, a little seed growing to grotesque dimensions
in a sick brain, and yet this knowledge was powerless to stem the mad
impetus of her misery.
How she longed for Jacques during these days, for his comforting
hands, his _allégresse_, his half-mocking patience. She saw him, pale
and chestnut-haired with his light, mysterious, beckoning eyes—so
strangely like the picture by Da Vinci in the Louvre of Saint John the
Baptist—marching head erect to his bright destiny down the long white
roads of France, and he would never come back.
And yet, she had hinted to Madame Pilou that the fable of the dog and the
shadow is the epitome of all tragedy. Somewhere inside her had she always
known what must happen?
First, this time of faultless vision. And then, because—though hope was
dead—there still remained ‘the adamant of desire,’ she began once more to
dance. But with hope were cut the cables binding her to reality, and it
was out into the void that she danced now.
EPILOGUE
THE RAPE TO THE LOVE OF INVISIBLE THINGS
αἵ σε μαινόμεναι πάννυχοι χορεύουσι τὸν ταμίαν Ἴακχον.
SOPH. AN. 1151.
‘_Art springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward
leap is the image of the god._’—JANE HARRISON.
_Some years later a troupe of wits, in quest of the ‘crotesque,’ were
visiting the well-known lunatic asylum—‘les petites maisons.’_
_‘And now for the Pseudo-Sappho!’ cried one. ‘She, all said, is by far
the most delicious.’_
_They made their way to where a woman sat smiling affably. She greeted
them as a queen her courtiers._
_‘Well, Alcinthe. Mignonne has been drooping since you were here, and
cooing that all the doves have left the Royaume de Tendre. Where is dear
Théodite? Ma chère, I protest that he is the king of les honnêtes gens.’_
_The wits laughed delightedly. Suddenly one had an idea._
_‘Did not the ancients hold that in time the worshipper became the god?
Surely we have here a proof that their belief was well founded. And if
the worshipper becomes the god then should not also the metamorphosis of
the lover into his mistress—Céladon into Astrée, Cyrus into Mandane—be
the truly gallant ending of a “roman”?’_
_He drew out his tablets_,—
_‘I must make a note of that, and fashion it into an epigram for Sappho.’_
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[1] _Les petites maisons_, a group of buildings, used among other things
as a lunatic asylum.
[2] As only Duchesses were privileged to sit in the Queen’s presence, to
say that some one had _le tabouret chez la reine_ meant that they were a
Duchess.
[3] Neuf-germain was notorious as the worst poet of his day.
[4] The great seventeenth century herald.
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