'That's much nicer,' Stephanie commented. 'Now let's have Cupid and Psyche.'
Robbie smiled at her. 'All right. I think we'll just have time for that before we have to get dressed and go up to lunch. Psyche was one of three Princesses. They were all good-lookers, but she was something out of this world. The other two hooked husbands, but she was so devastatingly lovely that no one could pluck up the courage to ask her to name the day, and so dumb that she hadn't the know-how to bring any of the chaps up to scratch. But no one was interested in her mind, and people thought her such an eyeful that they even deserted the shrines of Aphrodite to come and strew flowers under Psyche's feet when she went out shopping.
'Aphrodite got to hear of this and became frightfully steamed up. She sent for her son Cupid, or Eros as the Greeks called him, and packed him off on a special mission. Her orders were that he was to shoot Psyche with one of his arrows, so that she should go absolutely goofy about the most horrid, mean, brutal man he could find, who would beat her and make her life a misery. Eros located Psyche, but he made a mess of things. The very sight of her beauty made him gasp, and he dropped the arrow on his own foot; so, of course, from that moment he was head-over-heels in love with her himself.
'Just about this time, Psyche's father got a bit tired of having an unmarried daughter on his hands; so he went and consulted the Oracle at Delphi on what to do about her. The answer was to fit her up with a first-class trousseau, then take her up to the top of a high mountain and leave her there. Her parents were very upset about this, but they were afraid that if they disobeyed the Oracle they would get it in the neck. Poor Psyche—who, you can bet, was jolly upset too—was decked out as a bride, accompanied by all and s\mdry up to the mountain top, kissed her good-bye and left, as she and everyone else supposed, to be devoured by some horrible monster.
'But things didn't pan out like that at all, and although the chronicles don't say so, it's pretty clear that Eros must have fixed with Apollo what his Oracle should decree. As dusk fell, Zephyr arrived and whisked Psyche, complete with trousseau, on a light breeze to what the estate agents would describe as a very desirable property. She was set down in a lovely garden outside the most enchanting small palace that ever you did see. Having smelt a few of the flowers, she took a peep inside the mansion then, as nobody was about, had a good look round. She found that it had all mod. cons., and that by comparison the furnishings made those in her old home palace look as if they had come out of a junk shop. She was just thinking that the curtains in the dining room must have cost about twenty times as much as her papa gave her as a dress allowance each year when a voice said in her ear: "I expect you must be pretty peckish. Please ask for anything you fancy and it will be here in a jiffy."
'That must have shaken her a bit, because there was still no one to be seen. But she plucked up her courage and opted for a boiled egg, to keep her figure down, to be followed by lashings of strawberries and cream and a stick of nougat to round it off with.'
'Really, Robbie!' Stephanie interjected. 'I'm sure that's not in the chronicles.'
'Well, no,' he admitted. 'But I imagine that's the sort of meal a sylph-like young girl without much brain might have asked for; and putting in little touches like that makes me see the characters in these stories better. Anyhow, in the flicker of an eyelid, there was her supper on the table, with gold spoons and forks to eat it with and a milk-shake to wash it down.
'When she had finished licking her fingers after the nougat, she felt a bit drowsy; so she tripped lightly up the marble staircase to the best bedroom. A look in some of the cupboards showed her that, while she had been having supper, someone had unpacked for her. All her trousseau had been put neatly away, and to it had been added a full-length chinchilla coat. She put it on and was just preening herself a bit before the cheval glass when she got another shock. A voice said: "Not for now, dearie," then invisible hands removed the coat and started to undress her.
'As this voice had been a female one, she let herself be stripped, then led into the next room and popped into a silver bath full of scented asses' milk. When the hands had helped her dry herself, she was taken back to the bedroom where she lay down on a bed of rose petals. That bit really is in the chronicle.'
Stephanie laughed. 'What does it matter? You would have made up something just as suitable. But what happened then?'
'All the lights went out, plunging the whole place into complete darkness.'
'I think I really would have been scared by that.'
'Psyche didn't have time. There was a stir in the rose-leaves beside her, and a charming male voice said: "You may never see me, but you can hear and touch me, and I've been absolutely crackers about you from the moment I set eyes on you. This palace and everything in it is yours. The servants will remain unseen, but they will obey your every wish. I am the husband that the gods chose for you, and I shall come to you like this every night. Now, in about ten seconds, I'm going to start kissing and caressing you all over. I promise you there is nothing to be frightened of. You are going to enjoy this."
'The voice was that of Eros, of course, who had taken the form of an athletic young man. Before the first crack of dawn he left her; and he had been dead right. She had enjoyed it; in fact so much that she could hardly wait for night to fall so that he would come back and do whatever he had done to her all over again.
'Well, for a month or two everything went splendidly. Psyche was perfectly content to stooge round her lovely palace and garden during the day, wondering what new kissing game her invisible husband would teach her that night. But, very understandably, the time came when, with not a soul to talk to day after day, she became lonely; so she begged him to stay on for lunch just now and again.
'He said: "There's nothing I'd like better, sweetie; but it's just not on. If you ever set eyes on me our lovely romance would go right up the spout. I'll send you some copies of Woman's Own so that you can amuse yourself with some knitting." But Psyche said she wasn't a knitting sort of girl, and begged him to let her pay a short visit to her family, or to have them to stay for the week-end. He was dead against that, too; but she became so unhappy that at length he did agree that she should have her sisters up for the day.
'When her two sisters arrived their eyes fairly popped on seeing the luxury in which Psyche was living. At first, when she told them that invisible hands brushed her hair and painted her toenails, they wouldn't believe her; but when they asked for Lobster Newberg and Crepe Suzette for lunch and these items instantly appeared on golden platters on the dinner table they simply had to.
'On their asking about her husband, she confessed that she had never seen him either. At that the sisters, having become green with jealousy, began to work on the poor girl. They told her that very soon she would be paying for that chinchilla coat in no uncertain manner. It was all very well for her to say that her chap felt like a beautiful young man, but demons could assume any form they liked. At any time he might turn into a terrible monster and tear her limb from limb. To escape such an awful fate, there was only one tiling for her to do. As he was afraid of her seeing him, it was evident that when asleep he resumed his true, hideous form, and when looked on would lose much of his power. They advised her to put an oil lamp under her bed and, when her husband had dropped off to sleep, to get it out and light it. They added that she must also conceal one of the kitchen knives somewhere handy; so that when she set eyes on the horror that had been making love to her, she could plunge the knife into him before he could do her any harm.
'As I have said, Psyche was no great brain; so she believed all her envious sisters said, and acted accordingly. As soon as her husband was sound asleep that night, she got out the carving knife and lit the lamp. The gullible little idiot got such a surprise that she dropped her knife. Instead of a three-headed baboon, or something of that kind, on the crushed rose petals, snoring slightly, lay the sort of boy friend that Helen of Troy, Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba, had they been around at that time, might have fought to get their hands on.