Till We Have Faces_ A Myth Retold - C. S. Lewis [53]
"You have told them my story, Orual? It was ill done. I gave you no leave. My lord gave no leave. Oh, Orual! It was more like Batta than you."
I could not help it if my face reddened with anger, but I would not be turned aside. "Doubtless," I said. "There is no end to the secrecy of this — this husband as you call him. Child, has his vile love so turned your brain that you can't see the plainest thing? A god? Yet on your own showing he hides and slinks and whispers, 'Mum,' and 'Keep counsel,' and 'Don't betray me,' like a runaway slave."
I am not certain that she had listened to this. What she said was: "The Fox too! That is very strange. I never thought he would have believed in the Brute at all."
I had not said he did. But if that was what she took out of my words, I thought it no part of my duty to set her right. It was an error helping her towards the main truth. I had need of all help to drive her thither.
"Neither he nor I nor Bardia," said I, "believes for one moment in your fancy that it is the god; no more than that this wild heath is a palace. And be sure, Psyche, that if we could ask every man and woman in Glome, all would say the same. The truth is too clear."
"But what is all this to me? How should they know? I am his wife. I know."
"How can you know if you have never seen him?"
"Orual, how can you be so simple? I — how could I not know?"
"But how, Psyche?"
"What am I to answer to such a question? It's not fitting . . . it is . . . and especially to you, Sister, who are a virgin."
That matronly primness, from the child she was, went near to ending my patience. It was almost (but I think now she did not mean it so) as if she taunted me. Yet I ruled myself.
"Well, if you are so sure, Psyche, you will not refuse to put it to the test."
"What test? Though I need none myself."
"I have brought a lamp, and oil. See. Here they are." (I set them down beside her.) "Wait till he — or it — sleeps. Then look."
"I cannot do that."
"Ah! . . . You see! You will abide no test. And why? Because you are not sure yourself. If you were, you'd be eager to do it. If he is, as you say, a god, one glimpse will set all our doubts at rest. What you call our dark thoughts will be put to flight. But you daren't."
"Oh, Orual, what evil you think! The reason I cannot look at him — least of all by such trickery as you'd have me do — is that he has forbidden me."
"I can think — Bardia and the Fox can think — of one reason only for such a forbidding. And of one only for your obeying it."
"Then you know little of love."
"You fling my virginity in my face again, do you? Better it than the sty you're in. So be it. Of what you now call love, I do know nothing. You can whisper about it to Redival better than to me — or to Ungit's girls, maybe, or the King's doxies. I know another sort of love. You shall find what it's like. You shall not — "
"Orual, Orual, you are raving," said Psyche; herself unangered, gazing at me large-eyed, sorrowful, but nothing humble about her sorrow. You would have thought she was my mother, not I (almost) hers. I had known this long time that the old meek, biddable Psyche was gone forever; yet it shocked me afresh.
"Yes," I said. "I was raving. You had made me angry. But I had thought (you will set me right, I don't doubt, if I am mistaken) that all loves alike were eager to clear the thing they loved of vile charges brought against it, if they could. Tell a mother her child is hideous. If it's beautiful she'll show it. No forbidding would stop her. If she keeps it hidden, the charge is true. You're afraid of the test, Psyche."
"I am afraid — no, I am ashamed — to disobey him."
"Then, even at the best, look what you make of him! Something worse than our father. Who that loved you could be angry at your breaking so unreasonable a