Part 5 (1/2)

XVIII. The Armed G.o.ddess

I dreamed that I sat reading in my study, with books lying about all round me. Suddenly a voice, marvellously clear and silvery, called me by name. Starting up and turning, I saw behind me a long vista of white marble columns, Greek in architecture, flanking on either side a gallery of white marble. At the end of this gallery stood a shape of exceeding brilliancy, the shape of a woman above mortal height, clad from head to foot in s.h.i.+ning mail armour. In her right hand was a spear, on her left arm a s.h.i.+eld. Her brow was hidden by a helmet, and the aspect of her face was stern,-- severe even, I thought. I approached her, and as I went, my body was lifted up from the earth, and I was aware of that strange sensation of floating above the surface of the ground, which is so common with me in sleep that at times I can scarce persuade myself after waking that it has not been a real experience. When I alighted at the end of the long gallery before the armed woman, she said to me:

”Take off the night-dress thou wearest.”

I looked at my attire and was about to answer-- ”This is not a night-dress,” when she added, as though perceiving my thought:--

”The woman's garb is a night-dress; it is a garment made to sleep in.

The man's garb is the dress for the day. Look eastward!”

I raised my eyes and, behind the mail-clad shape, I saw the dawn breaking, blood-red, and with great clouds like pillars of smoke rolling up on either side of the place where the sun was about to rise.

But as yet the sun was not visible. And as I looked, she cried aloud, and her voice rang through the air like the clash of steel:--

”Listen!”

And she struck her spear on the marble pavement. At the same moment there came from afar off, a confused sound of battle. Cries, and human voices in conflict, and the stir as of a vast mult.i.tude, the distant clang of arms and a noise of the galloping of many horses rus.h.i.+ng furiously over the ground. And then, sudden silence.

Again she smote the pavement, and again the sounds arose, nearer now, and more tumultuous. Once more they ceased, and a third time she struck the marble with her spear. Then the noises arose all about and around the very spot where we stood, and the clang of the arms was so close that it shook and thrilled the very columns beside me. And the neighing and snorting of horses, and the thud of their ponderous hoofs flying over the earth made, as it were, a wind in my ears, so that it seemed as though a furious battle were raging all around us. But I could see nothing. Only the sounds increased, and became so violent that they awoke me, and even after waking I still seemed to catch the commotion of them in the air. *

--Paris, February 15, 1883.

---------- * This dream was shortly followed by Mrs Kingsford's antivivisection expedition to Switzerland, the fierce conflict of which amply fulfilled any predictive significance it may have had.

XIX. The Game of Cards: A Parable

I dreamed I was playing at cards with three persons, the two opposed to me being a man and a woman with hoods pulled over their heads, and cloaks covering their persons. I did not particularly observe them. My partner was an old man without hood or cloak, and there was about him this peculiarity, that he did not from one minute to another appear to remain the same. Sometimes he looked like a very young man, the features not appearing to change in order to produce this effect, but an aspect of youth and even of mirth coming into the face as though the features were lighted up from within.

Behind me stood a personage whom I could not see, for his hand and arm only appeared, handing me a pack of cards. So far as I discerned, it was a man's figure, habited in black. Shortly after the dream began, my partner addressed me, saying,

”Do you play by luck or by skill?”

I answered: ”I play by luck chiefly; I don't know how to play by skill. But I have generally been lucky.” In fact, I had already, lying by me, several ”tricks” I had taken. He answered me:--

”To play by luck is to trust to without; to play by skill is to trust to within. In this game, Within goes further than Without.”

”What are trumps?” I asked.

”Diamonds are trumps,” he answered.

I looked at the cards in my hand and said to him:--”I have more clubs than anything else.”

At this he laughed, and seemed all at once quite a youth. ”Clubs are strong cards, after all,” he said. ”Don't despise the black suits. I have known some of the best games ever played won by players holding more clubs than you have.”

I examined the cards and found something very odd about them. There were the four suits, diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades. But the picture cards in my hand seemed different altogether from any I had ever seen before. One was queen of Clubs, and her face altered as I looked at it. First it was dark,--almost dusky,--with the imperial crown on the head; then it seemed quite fair, the crown changing to a smaller one of English aspect, and the dress also transforming itself. There was a queen of Hearts, too, in an antique peasant's gown, with brown hair, and presently this melted into a suit of armor which shone as if reflecting firelight in its burnished scales. The other cards seemed alive likewise, even the ordinary ones, just like the court-cards. There seemed to be pictures moving inside the emblems on their faces. The clubs in my hand ran into higher figures than the spades; these came next in number, and diamonds next. I had no picture-cards of diamonds, but I had the Ace.