My South Sea Sweetheart | Page 6

when famous caves are becoming common, and when
thousands of people every year go through the Mammoth Caves of
Kentucky, the Jenolan Caves of New South Wales, and other show
places, one need not fear to be accused of "travelers' tales" if one
describes an underground miracle. And a miracle inded was the Hall of
Persephone, as my scholarly father had named it. I used to think, in my
earliest days, that it was the very palace hall to which Demeter's
daughter had been rapt away, in the arms of enamored Pluto. And I
thought, too, privately, that Persephone had been a "fuss-cat" for

objecting to Pluto or anything else, so long as she had that magnificent
home to live in.
It was a hall of diamonds.
I believe, in geology, such things are known as "drusy cavities" a
singularly ugly name for a singularly beautiful thing. I did not know
even so much in those days, nor, I think, did my father. We were quite
content to be ignorant of the scientific titles rightly owned by
Persephone's Hall and its crystals. I called them diamonds, because
they were exactly like the small shiny stones in Lorraine's half-hoop
ring, but even I knew that you didn't have diamonds the size of a dinner
plate.
The hall was about forty feet long by twenty to twenty-five in width.
You came into it from a long, dark passage, designedly left unlighted,
that led you with almost startling suddenness into a blaze of crystalline
splendor like nothing else in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or
the waters under the earth. Father and Ivory, with much blasting and
digging away, had contrived one immense oblong window, open
towards the rising of the sun. Its embrasure must have been full ten feet
deep, but it let in a splendor of sun, in the early morning hours, that
burned and dazzled upon the thick-set crystal masses lining roof and
walls, till one could scarcely bear the glory of it. The drooping
chandeliers, set by Nature's hand alone; the glassy curtain that fell like
a frozen waterfall down all one end of the hall; the curious tall
"candlesticks" beside the window, shone not crystal-white alone, but
violet, blue and green and red, in sparks, as the light crept down the
walls from the great opening to the sea. Blue and white the waves were
racing, out there, with a glory of sun and spray on them that almost
matched the glory of the crystal hall within; and the sea wind streamed
through the embrasure, strong and salt and vivid on his lips, a very
philter of life....
Once I heard old Ivory say to himself, as the wind met him at the
mouth, he walking slowly, as his manner was, with his head bent a little
towards his breast:

"I remember, when I think That my youth was half divine "...
I wondered what he meant. Then it occurred to me that old people, of
course, were foolish; they said things that had no meaning at all. It was
well to be of a different species and race it was well to be young....
This morning I felt and behaved very young indeed I think, as an
unconscious protest against the suddenly acquired age of Luke. I came
into Persephone's Hall with a series of frog-like leaps my latest
accomplishment, of which I was inordinately proud and found my way
to my own side of the table, hopping.
"Honeycakes and flying fish!" I sang, taking my seat.
Lorraine told me I was a citizen of Sybaris, and when I shook my head
at her, said I had better look it up at lessons. But not even the thought
of lessons could spoil that glorious day.
Dinah would have spoiled it, if any one could. She had cooked the
breakfast in her kitchen cave, set it out on the concrete table, and was
now sitting humbly, as was her habit, at the far end, though father had
told her often enough, in my recollection, that she was not considered a
servant here on Hiliwa Dara, where all were equal, and that he would
just as soon she sat with us.
I saw, the moment I looked at her, that she was in a funeral mood.
Dinah had missed her vocation, if any one ever did. Obviously she
should, with her peculiar cast of mind, have been the wife of some
flourishing undertaker, to whom she would have been as good as a
fortune. As a matter of fact, she had, out "in the world," been married
to a commercial traveler of the wine and spirits line, who died of
extreme conviviality and, I think, of Dinah. But that is conjecture.
She was the most ghoulishly minded human being