My South Sea Sweetheart | Page 6

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 I have ever met, with an inly rooted attraction towards illnesses, deaths, and funerals. We had had few deaths on Hiliwa Dara, but there had been one or two. A native from among our field laborers had died of consumption; a young brown girl had "gone out" in her confinement; a baby or two had given in to baby ailments. Dinah made the most of all such occurrences; it would be unkind to say that they actually gave her joy, but they certainly did seem in some obscure fashion to liven her and do her good. Her bedroom was hung