Hypolympia Part 9

APHRODITE.

So it appears. And you will suffer for it. For, stiff and blank as you may determine to be, circ.u.mstances will overpower you. Under their influences you will not be able to avoid becoming softer and more redundant. But you will resist the process, I see, and you will make it as painful as you can.

ARES.

You discuss my case with a cheerful candour, Aphrodite. Are you sure of being happier yourself?

APHRODITE.

Not _sure_; but I have a reasonable confidence that I shall be fairly contented. For I, at least, am supple, and I court the influences which you think it a point of gallantry to resist.

ARES.

You will continue, I suppose, to make your main business the stimulating and the guiding of the affections? Here I admit that suppleness, as you call it, is in place.

APHRODITE.

Unfortunately, even here, immortality was no convenient prelude to our present state. We did not, indeed, neglect the heart----

ARES.

If I forget all else, there must be events----

APHRODITE.

Alas! we loved so briefly and with so facile a susceptibility, that I am tempted to ask myself whether in Olympus we really loved at all.

ARES [_with ardour_].

There, at least, memory supplies me with no sort of doubt----

APHRODITE [_coldly_].

Let us keep to generalities. Looking broadly at our experience, I should say that the misfortune of the G.o.ds, as a preparation for their mortality, was that in their deathless state the affections fell at the foot of the tree, like these withered leaves. We should have fastened the branches of life together in long elastic wires of the thin-drawn gold of perdurable sentiment.

ARES.

The rapture, the violence, the hammering pulse, the bursting heart,--I see no resemblance between these and the leaves that flutter at our feet.

APHRODITE.

These leaves had their moment of vitality, when the sap rushed through their veins, when their tissue was like a ripple of sparkling emerald on the face of the smiling sky. But they could not preserve their glow, and they are the more hopelessly dead now, because they burned in their green fire so fiercely.

ARES.

We felt no shadow of coming disability strike across our pleasures.

APHRODITE.

No; but that was precisely what made our immortality such an ill preparation for a brief existence on this island. In Olympus the sentiment of yesterday was forgotten, and we realised the pa.s.sion of to-day as little as the caprice of to-morrow. Perhaps this fragmentary tenderness was the real chastis.e.m.e.nt of our implacable prosperity.

ARES [_in a very low voice_].

Can we not resume in this our exile, and with more prospect of continuity, the emotions which were so agreeable in our former state? So agreeable--although, as you justly say, too ephemeral [_coming a little closer_]. Can you not teach us to moderate and to prolong the rapture?

APHRODITE [_rising to her feet_].

It may be. We shall see, Ares. But one thing I have already perceived. In this mortal sphere, the heart needs solitude, it needs silence. It must have its questionings and its despairs. The triumphant supremacy of the old emotions cannot be repeated here.

For we have a new enemy to contend with. Even if love should prosecute its conquests here in all the serenity of success, it will not be able to escape from an infliction worse than any which we dreamed of when we were immortals.

ARES.

And what is that, Aphrodite?

APHRODITE.

The blight of indifference.

VI

[APHRODITE _and_ CIRCE _are seated on the gra.s.s in a little dell surrounded by beechwoods. Far away a bell is heard._]

CIRCE.

What is that curious distant sound? Is it a bird?

APHRODITE.

Cydippe tells me that there is a temple on the hill beyond these woods. I wonder to whom amongst us it is dedicated?

CIRCE.

I think it must be to you, Aphrodite, for now it is explained that on coming hither I met a throng of men and maidens, sauntering slowly along in twos, exactly as they used to do at Paphos.

APHRODITE.

Were they walking apart, or wound together by garlands?

CIRCE.

They were wound together by the arm of the boy coiled about the waist of the girl, or resting upon it, a symbol, no doubt, of your cestus.

APHRODITE [_eagerly_].

With any animation of gesture, Circe?