There were other things in the room besides the test tubes: a shelf of reference books, a card index, a table holding his carefully hooded miscroscope. There was also a long bench against one wall supporting a variety of bottles, packets of slides, boxes of new test tubes, as well as a number of glass-topped boxes in which specimens were preserved for study alive before they went into the alcohol.
Lydia could never resist peeping into these condemned cells with a satisfaction which she would scarcely have cared to admit, or, indeed, even have felt in the case of other creatures, but somehow with spiders it just served them right for being spiders. As a rule there would be five or six of them in similar boxes, and it was with surprise one morning that she noticed a large bell jar ranged neatly in the line. After she had done the rest of the dusting, curiosity took her over to the bench. It should, of course, have been much easier to observe the occupant of the bell jar than those of the boxes, but in fact it was not, because the inside, for fully two-thirds of its height, was obscured by web. A web so thickly woven as to hide the occupant entirely from the sides. It hung in folds, almost like a drapery, and on examining it more closely, Lydia was impressed by the ingenuity of the work; it looked surprisingly like a set of Nottingham lace curtains though reduced greatly in scale, of course, and perhaps not quite in the top flight of design. Lydia went closer to look over the top edge of the web, and down upon the occupant. "Good gracious!" she said.
The spider, squatting in the center of its web-screened circle, was quite the largest she had ever seen. She stared at it. She recalled that Edward had been in a state of some excitement the previous evening, but she had paid little attention except to tell him, as on several previous occasions, that she was much too busy to go and look at a horrible spider: she also recalled that he had been somewhat hurt about her lack of interest. Now, seeing the spider, she could understand that: she could even understand for once how it was possible to talk of a beautifully colored spider, for there could be no doubt at all that this specimen deserved a place in the nature's-living-jewels class.
The ground color was a pale green with a darker stippling, which faded away toward the under side. Down the center of the back ran a pattern of blue arrowheads, bright in the center and merging almost into the green at the points. At either side of the abdomen were bracket-shaped squiggles of scarlet. Touches of the same scarlet showed at the joints of the green legs, and there were small markings of it, too, on the upper part of what Edward resoundingly called the cephalothorax, but which Lydia thought of as the part where the legs were fastened on.
Lydia leaned closer. Strangely, the spider had not frozen into immobility in the usual spiderish manner. Its attention seemed to be wholly taken up by something held out between its front pair of legs, something that flashed as it moved. Lydia thought that the object was an aquamarine, cut and polished. As she moved her head to make sure, her shadow fell across the bell jar. The spider stopped twiddling the stone, and froze. Presently a small, muffled voice said:
"Hullo! Who are you?" with a slight foreign accent.
Lydia looked round. The room was as empty as before.
"No. Here!" said the muffled voice.
She looked down again at the jar, and saw the spider pointing to itself with its number two leg on the right.
"My name," said the voice, sociably, "is Arachne. What's yours?"
"Er Lydia," said Lydia, uncertainly.
"Oh, dear! Why?" asked the voice.
Lydia felt a trifle nettled. "What do you mean, why?" she asked.
"Well, as I recall it, Lydia was sent to hell as a punishment for doing very nasty things to her lover. I suppose you aren't given to?"
"Certainly not," Lydia said, cutting the voice short.
"Oh," said the voice, doubtfully. "Still, they can't have given you the name for nothing. And, mind you, I never really blamed Lydia. Lovers, in my experience, usually deserve" Lydia lost the rest as she looked around the room again, uncertainly.
"I don't understand," she said. "I mean, is it really?"
"Oh, it's me, all right," said the spider. And to make sure, it indicated itself again, this time with the third leg on the left.
"But but spiders can't"
"Of course not. Not real spiders, but I'm Arachne I told you that."
A hazy memory stirred at the back of Lydia's mind.
"You mean the Arachne?" she inquired.
"Did you ever hear of another?" the voice asked, coldly.
"I mean, the one who annoyed Athene though I can't remember just how?" said Lydia.
"Certainly. I was technically a spinster, and Athene was jealous and"
"I should have thought it would be the other way oh, I see, you mean you spun?"
"That's what I said. I was the best spinner and weaver, and when I won the all-Greece open competition and beat Athene she couldn't take it; she was so furiously jealous that she turned me into a spider. It's very unfair to let gods and goddesses go in for competitions at all, I always say. They're spitefully bad losers, and then they go telling lies about you to justify the bad-tempered things they do in revenge. You've probably heard it differently?" the voice added, on a slightly challenging note.
"No, I think it was pretty much like that," Lydia told her, tactfully. "You must have been a spider a very long time now," she added.
"Yes, I suppose so, but you give up counting after a bit." The voice paused, then it went on: "I say, would you mind taking this glass thing off? It's stuffy in here; besides, I shouldn't have to shout."
Lydia hesitated.
"I never interfere with anything in this room. My husband gets so annoyed if I do."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid I shall run away. I'll give you my word on that, if you like."
But Lydia was still doubtful.
"You're in a pretty desperate position, you know," she said, with an involuntary glance at the alcohol bottle.
"Not really," said the voice in a tone that suggested a shrug. "I've often been caught before. Something always turns up it has to. That's one of the few advantages of having a really permanent curse on you. It makes it impossible for anything really fatal to happen."
Lydia looked round. The window was shut, the door, too, and the fireplace was blocked up.
"Well, perhaps for a few minutes, if you promise," she allowed.
She lifted the jar, and put it down to one side. As she did so the curtains of web trailed out, and tore.
"Never mind about them. Phew! That's better," said the voice, still small, but now quite clear and distinct.
The spider did not move. It still held the aquamarine, catching the light and shining, between its front legs.
On a sudden thought, Lydia leaned down and looked at the stone more closely. She was relieved to see that it was not one of her own.
"Pretty, isn't it?" said Arachne. "Not really my color, though. I rather kill it, I think. One of the emeralds would have been more suitable even though they were smaller."
"Where did you get it?" Lydia asked.
"Oh, a house just near here. Next door but one, I think it was."
"Mrs. Ferris's yes, of course, that would be one of hers."
"Possibly," agreed Arachne. "Anyway, it was in a cabinet with a lot of others, so I took it, and I was just coming through the hedge out of the garden, looking for a comfortable hole to enjoy it in, when I got caught. It was the stone shining that made him see me. A funny sort of man, rather like a spider himself, if he had had more legs."