CHAPTER XXVI
The Wooing of Lakla
I had slept soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the greatchamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after thatculminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours--the facing ofthe Three.
Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I heard Larry'svoice:
"They look like birds." Evidently he was thinking of the Three; asilence--then: "Yes, they look like _birds_--and they look, and it'smeaning no disrespect to them I am at all, they look like_lizards_"--and another silence--"they look like some sort of gods, and,by the good sword-arm of Brian Boru, they look human, too! And it's_none_ of them they are either, so what--what the--what the sainted St.Bridget are they?" Another short silence, and then in a tone of awedand absolute conviction: "That's it, sure! That's what they are--itall hangs in--they couldn't be anything else--"
He gave a whoop; a pillow shot over and caught me across the head.
"Wake up!" shouted Larry. "Wake up, ye seething caldron of fossilizedsuperstitions! Wake up, ye bogy-haunted man of scientific unwisdom!"
Under pillow and insults I bounced to my feet, filled for a momentwith quite real wrath; he lay back, roaring with laughter, and myanger was swept away.
"Doc," he said, very seriously, after this, "I know who the Threeare!"
"Yes?" I queried, with studied sarcasm.
"Yes?" he mimicked. "Yes! Ye--ye" He paused under the menace of mylook, grinned. "Yes, I know," he continued. "They're of the Tuatha De,the old ones, the great people of Ireland, _that's_ who they are!"
I knew, of course, of the Tuatha De Danann, the tribes of the godDanu, the half-legendary, half-historical clan who found their home inErin some four thousand years before the Christian era, and who haveleft so deep an impress upon the Celtic mind and its myths.
"Yes," said Larry again, "the Tuatha De--the Ancient Ones who hadspells that could compel Mananan, who is the spirit of all the seas,an' Keithor, who is the god of all green living things, an' evenHesus, the unseen god, whose pulse is the pulse of all the firmament;yes, an' Orchil too, who sits within the earth an' weaves with theshuttle of mystery and her three looms of birth an' life an'death--even Orchil would weave as they commanded!"
He was silent--then:
"They are of them--the mighty ones--why else would I have bent my kneeto them as I would have to the spirit of my dead mother? Why elsewould Lakla, whose gold-brown hair is the hair of Eilidh the Fair,whose mouth is the sweet mouth of Deirdre, an' whose soul walked withmine ages agone among the fragrant green myrtle of Erin, serve them?"he whispered, eyes full of dream.
"Have you any idea how they got here?" I asked, not unreasonably.
"I haven't thought about that," he replied somewhat testily. "But atonce, me excellent man o' wisdom, a number occur to me. One of them isthat this little party of three might have stopped here on their wayto Ireland, an' for good reasons of their own decided to stay a while;an' another is that they might have come here afterward, havin' gotwind of what those rats out there were contemplatin', and have stayedon the job till the time was ripe to save Ireland from 'em; the restof the world, too, of course," he added magnanimously, "but Ireland inparticular. And do any of those reasons appeal to ye?"
I shook my head.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked wearily.
"I think," I said cautiously, "that we face an evolution of highlyintelligent beings from ancestral sources radically removed from thosethrough which mankind ascended. These half-human, highly developedbatrachians they call the _Akka_ prove that evolution in thesecaverned spaces has certainly pursued one different path than onearth. The Englishman, Wells, wrote an imaginative and veryentertaining book concerning an invasion of earth by Martians, and hemade his Martians enormously specialized cuttlefish. There was nothinginherently improbable in Wells' choice. Man is the ruling animal ofearth today solely by reason of a series of accidents; under anotherseries spiders or ants, or even elephants, could have become thedominant race.
"I think," I said, even more cautiously, "that the race to which theThree belong never appeared on earth's surface; that their developmenttook place here, unhindered through aeons. And if this be true, thestructure of their brains, and therefore all their reactions, must bedifferent from ours. Hence their knowledge and command of energiesunfamiliar to us--and hence also the question whether they may nothave an entirely different sense of values, of justice--and that israther terrifying," I concluded.
Larry shook his head.
"That last sort of knocks your argument, Doc," he said. "They hadsense of justice enough to help _me_ out--and certainly they knowlove--for I saw the way they looked at Lakla; and sorrow--for therewas no mistaking that in their faces.
"No," he went on. "I hold to my own idea. They're of the Old People.The little leprechaun knew his way here, an' I'll bet it was they whosent the word. An' if the O'Keefe banshee comes here--which save themark!--I'll bet she'll drop in on the Silent Ones for a social visitbefore she an' her clan get busy. Well, it'll make her feel more athome, the good old body. No, Doc, no," he concluded, "I'm right; itall fits in too well to be wrong."
I made a last despairing attempt.
"Is there anything anywhere in Ireland that would indicate that theTuatha De ever looked like the Three?" I asked--and again I hadspoken most unfortunately.
"Is there?" he shouted. "Is there? By the kilt of CormackMacCormack, I'm glad ye reminded me. It was worryin' me a littlemeself. There was Daghda, who could put on the head of a great boaran' the body of a giant fish and cleave the waves an' tear to piecesthe birlins of any who came against Erin; an' there was Rinn--"
How many more of the metamorphoses of the Old People I might haveheard, I do not know, for the curtains parted and in walked Rador.
"You have rested well," he smiled, "I can see. The handmaiden bade mecall you. You are to eat with her in her garden."
Down long corridors we trod and out upon a gardened terrace asbeautiful as any of those of Yolara's city; bowered, blossoming,fragrant, set high upon the cliffs beside the domed castle. A table,as of milky jade, was spread at one corner, but the Golden Girl wasnot there. A little path ran on and up, hemmed in by the mass ofverdure. I looked at it longingly; Rador saw the glance, interpretedit, and led me up the stepped sharp slope into a rock embrasure.
Here I was above the foliage, and everywhere the view was clear.Below me stretched the incredible bridge, with the frog peoplehurrying back and forth upon it. A pinnacle at my side hid the abyss.My eyes followed the cavern ledge. Above it the rock rose bare, but atthe ends of the semicircular strand a luxuriant vegetation began,stretching from the crimson shores back into far distances. Of brownsand reds and yellows, like an autumn forest, was the foliage, withhere and there patches of dark-green, as of conifers. Five miles ormore, on each side, the forests swept, and then were lost to sight inthe haze.
I turned and faced an immensity of crimson waters, unbroken, a truesea, if ever there was one. A breeze blew--the first real wind I hadencountered in the hidden places; under it the surface, that had beenas molten lacquer, rippled and dimpled. Little waves broke with aspray of rose-pearls and rubies. The giant Medusae drifted--stately,luminous kaleidoscopic elfin moons.
Far down, peeping around a jutting tower of the cliff, I saw dippingwith the motion of the waves a floating garden. The flowers, too, wereluminous--indeed sparkling--gleaming brilliants of scarlet andvermilions lighter than the flood on which they lay, mauves and oddshades of reddish-blue. They gleamed and shone like a little lake ofjewels.
Rador broke in upon my musings.
"Lakla comes! Let us go down."
It was a shy Lakla who came slowly around the end of the path and,blushing furiously, held her hands out to Larry. And the Irishman tookthem, placed them over his heart, kissed them with a tenderness thathad been lacking in the half-mocking, half-fierce caresses he hadgiven the priestess. She blushed deeper, holding out the taperingfinger
s--then pressed them to her own heart.
"I like the touch of your lips, Larry," she whispered. "They warm mehere"--she pressed her heart again--"and they send little sparkles oflight through me." Her brows tilted perplexedly, accenting the nuanceof diablerie, delicate and fascinating, that they cast upon the flowerface.
"Do you?" whispered the O'Keefe fervently. "Do you, Lakla?" He benttoward her. She caught the amused glance of Rador; drew herself asidehalf-haughtily.
"Rador," she said, "is it not time that you and the strong one, Olaf,were setting forth?"
"Truly it is, handmaiden," he answered respectfully enough--yet with acurrent of laughter under his words. "But as you know the strong one,Olaf, wished to see his friends here before we were gone--and he comeseven now," he added, glancing down the pathway, along which camestriding the Norseman.
As he faced us I saw that a transformation had been wrought in him.Gone was the pitiful seeking, and gone too the just as pitiful hope.The set face softened as he looked at the Golden Girl and bowed low toher. He thrust a hand to O'Keefe and to me.
"There is to be battle," he said. "I go with Rador to call the armiesof these frog people. As for me--Lakla has spoken. There is no hopefor--for mine Helma in life, but there is hope that we destroy theShining Devil and give _mine_ Helma peace. And with that I am wellcontent, _ja!_ Well content!" He gripped our hands again. "We willfight!" he muttered. "_Ja!_ And I will have vengeance!" The sternnessreturned; and with a salute Rador and he were gone.
Two great tears rolled from the golden eyes of Lakla.
"Not even the Silent Ones can heal those the Shining One has taken,"she said. "He asked me--and it was better that I tell him. It is partof the Three's--_punishment_--but of that you will soon learn," she wenton hurriedly. "Ask me no questions now of the Silent Ones. I thoughtit better for Olaf to go with Rador, to busy himself, to give his mindother than sorrow upon which to feed."
Up the path came five of the frog-women, bearing platters and ewers.Their bracelets and anklets of jewels were tinkling; their middlescovered with short kirtles of woven cloth studded with the sparklingornaments.
And here let me say that if I have given the impression that the_Akka_ are simply magnified frogs, I regret it. Frog-like they are,and hence my phrase for them--but as unlike the frog, as we know it,as man is unlike the chimpanzee. Springing, I hazard, from thestegocephalia, the ancestor of the frogs, these batrachians followed adifferent line of evolution and acquired the upright position just asman did his from the four-footed folk.
The great staring eyes, the shape of the muzzle were frog-like, butthe highly developed brain had set upon the head and shape of it vitaldifferences. The forehead, for instance, was not low, flat, andretreating--its frontal arch was well defined. The head was, in asense, shapely, and with the females the great horny carapace thatstood over it like a fantastic helmet was much modified, as were thespurs that were so formidable in the male; colouration was differentalso. The torso was upright; the legs a little bent, giving them theircrouching gait--but I wander from my subject.[1]
They set their burdens down. Larry looked at them with interest.
"You surely have those things well trained, Lakla," he said.
"Things!" The handmaiden arose, eyes flashing with indignation. "Youcall my _Akka_ things!"
"Well," said Larry, a bit taken aback, "what do you call them?"
"My _Akka_ are a _people_," she retorted. "As much a people as your raceor mine. They are good and loyal, and they have speech and arts, andthey slay not, save for food or to protect themselves. And I thinkthem beautiful, Larry, _beautiful_!" She stamped her foot. "And you callthem--_things_!"
Beautiful! These? Yet, after all, they were, in their grotesquefashion. And to Lakla, surrounded by them, from babyhood, they werenot strange, at all. Why shouldn't she think them beautiful? The samethought must have struck O'Keefe, for he flushed guiltily.
"I think them beautiful, too, Lakla," he said remorsefully. "It's mynot knowing your tongue too well that traps me. _Truly_, I think thembeautiful--I'd tell them so, if I knew their talk."
Lakla dimpled, laughed--spoke to the attendants in that strange speechthat was unquestionably a language; they bridled, looked at O'Keefewith fantastic coquetry, cracked and boomed softly among themselves.
"They say they like _you_ better than the men of Muria," laughed Lakla.
"Did I ever think I'd be swapping compliments with lady frogs!" hemurmured to me. "Buck up, Larry--keep your eyes on the captive Irishprincess!" he muttered to himself.
"Rador goes to meet one of the _ladala_ who is slipping through withnews," said the Golden Girl as we addressed ourselves to the food."Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to muster the _Akka_--for there willbe battle, and we must prepare. Nak," she added, "is he who wentbefore me when you were dancing with Yolara, Larry." She stole aswift, mischievous glance at him. "He is headman of all the _Akka_."
"Just what forces can we muster against them when they come, darlin'?"said Larry.
"Darlin'?"--the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word--"what'sthat?"
"It's a little word that means Lakla," he answered. "It does--thatis, when I say it; when you say it, then it means Larry."
"I like that word," mused Lakla.
"You can even say Larry darlin'!" suggested O'Keefe.
"Larry darlin'!" said Lakla. "When they come we shall have first ofall my _Akka_--"
"Can they fight, _mavourneen_?" interrupted Larry.
"Can they fight! My _Akka_!" Again her eyes flashed. "They willfight to the last of them--with the spears that give the swiftrotting, covered, as they are, with the jelly of those _Saddu_there--" She pointed through a rift in the foliage across which, onthe surface of the sea, was floating one of the moon globes--and now Iknow why Rador had warned Larry against a plunge there. "With spearsand clubs and with teeth and nails and spurs--they are a strong andbrave people, Larry--darlin', and though they hurl the _Keth_ at them,it is slow to work upon them, and they slay even while they arepassing into the nothingness!"
"And have we none of the _Keth_?" he asked.
"No"--she shook her head--"none of their weapons have we here,although it was--it was the Ancient Ones who shaped them."
"But the Three are of the Ancient Ones?" I cried. "Surely they cantell--"
"No," she said slowly. "No--there is something you must know--andsoon; and then the Silent Ones say you will understand. You,especially, Goodwin, who worship wisdom."
"Then," said Larry, "we have the _Akka_; and we have the four men ofus, and among us three guns and about a hundred cartridges--an'--an'the power of the Three--but what about the Shining One, Fireworks--"
"I do not know." Again the indecision that had been in her eyes whenYolara had launched her defiance crept back. "The Shining One isstrong--and he has his--slaves!"
"Well, we'd better get busy good and quick!" the O'Keefe's voice rang.But Lakla, for some reason of her own, would pursue the matter nofurther. The trouble fled from her eyes--they danced.
"Larry darlin'?" she murmured. "I like the touch of your lips--"
"You do?" he whispered, all thought flying of anything but thebeautiful, provocative face so close to his. "Then, _acushla_, you'regoin' to get acquainted with 'em! Turn your head, Doc!" he said.
And I turned it. There was quite a long silence, broken by aninterested, soft outburst of gentle boomings from the servingfrog-maids. I stole a glance behind me. Lakla's head lay on theIrishman's shoulder, the golden eyes misty sunpools of love andadoration; and the O'Keefe, a new look of power and strength upon hisclear-cut features, was gazing down into them with that look whichrises only from the heart touched for the first time with that true,all-powerful love, which is the pulse of the universe itself, the realmusic of the spheres of which Plato dreamed, the love that is strongerthan death itself, immortal as the high gods and the true soul of allthat mystery we call life.
Then Lakla raised her hands, pressed down Larry's head
, kissed himbetween the eyes, drew herself with a trembling little laugh from hisembrace.
"The future Mrs. Larry O'Keefe, Goodwin," said Larry to me a littleunsteadily.
I took their hands--and Lakla kissed me!
She turned to the booming--smiling--frog-maids; gave them somecommand, for they filed away down the path. Suddenly I felt, well, alittle superfluous.
"If you don't mind," I said, "I think I'll go up the path there againand look about."
But they were so engrossed with each other that they did not even hearme--so I walked away, up to the embrasure where Rador had taken me.The movement of the batrachians over the bridge had ceased. Dimly atthe far end I could see the cluster of the garrison. My thoughts flewback to Lakla and to Larry.
What was to be the end?
If we won, if we were able to pass from this place, could she live inour world? A product of these caverns with their atmosphere and lightthat seemed in some subtle way to be both food and drink--how wouldshe react to the unfamiliar foods and air and light of outer earth?Further, here so far as I was able to discover, there were nomalignant bacilli--what immunity could Lakla have then to thosemicroscopic evils without, which only long ages of sickness and deathhave bought for us a modicum of protection? I began to be oppressed.Surely they had been long enough by themselves. I went down the path.
I heard Larry.
"It's a green land, _mavourneen_. And the sea rocks and dimplesaround it--blue as the heavens, green as the isle itself, and foamhorses toss their white manes, and the great clean winds blow over it,and the sun shines down on it like your eyes, _acushla_--"
"And are you a king of Ireland, Larry darlin'?" Thus Lakla--
But enough!
At last we turned to go--and around the corner of the path I caughtanother glimpse of what I have called the lake of jewels. I pointed toit.
"Those are lovely flowers, Lakla," I said. "I have never seenanything like them in the place from whence we come."
She followed my pointing finger--laughed.
"Come," she said, "let me show you them."
She ran down an intersecting way, we following; came out of it upon alittle ledge close to the brink, three feet or more I suppose aboutit. The Golden Girl's voice rang out in a high-pitched, tremulous,throbbing call.
The lake of jewels stirred as though a breeze had passed over it;stirred, shook, and then began to move swiftly, a shimmering torrentof shining flowers down upon us! She called again, the movement becamemore rapid; the gem blooms streamed closer--closer, wavering,shifting, winding--at our very feet. Above them hovered a littleradiant mist. The Golden Girl leaned over; called softly, and up fromthe sparkling mass shot a green vine whose heads were five flowers offlaming ruby--shot up, flew into her hand and coiled about the whitearm, its quintette of lambent blossoms--regarding us!
It was the thing Lakla had called the _Yekta_; that with which she hadthreatened the priestess; the thing that carried the dreadfuldeath--and the Golden Girl was handling it like a rose!
Larry swore--I looked at the thing more closely. It was a hydroid, adevelopment of that strange animal-vegetable that, sometimes almostmicroscopic, waves in the sea depths like a cluster of flowersparalyzing its prey with the mysterious force that dwells in itsblossom heads![2]
"Put it down, Lakla," the distress in O'Keefe's voice was deep. Laklalaughed mischievously, caught the real fear for her in his eyes;opened her hand, gave another faint call--and back it flew to itsfellows.
"Why, it wouldn't hurt me, Larry!" she expostulated. "They know me!"
"Put it down!" he repeated hoarsely.
She sighed, gave another sweet, prolonged call. The lake ofgems--rubies and amethysts, mauves and scarlet-tinged blues--waveredand shook even as it had before--and swept swiftly back to that placewhence she had drawn them!
Then, with Larry and Lakla walking ahead, white arm about his brownneck; the O'Keefe still expostulating, the handmaiden laughingmerrily, we passed through her bower to the domed castle.
Glancing through a cleft I caught sight again of the far end of thebridge; noted among the clustered figures of its garrison of thefrog-men a movement, a flashing of green fire like marshlights onspear tips; wondered idly what it was, and then, other thoughtscrowding in, followed along, head bent, behind the pair who had foundin what was Olaf's hell, their true paradise.
[1] The _Akka_ are viviparous. The female produces progeny atfive-year intervals, never more than two at a time. They aremonogamous, like certain of our own _Ranidae_. Pending my monographupon what little I had time to learn of their interesting habits andcustoms, the curious will find instruction and entertainment inBrandes and Schvenichen's _Brutpfleige der Schwanzlosen Bat rachier_,p. 395; and Lilian V. Sampson's _Unusual Modes of Breeding amongAnura_, Amer. Nat. xxxiv., 1900.--W. T. G.
[2] The _Yekta_ of the Crimson Sea, are as extraordinary developmentsof hydroid forms as the giant _Medusae_, of which, of course, they arenot too remote cousins. The closest resemblances to them in outerwater forms are among the _Gymnoblastic Hydroids_, notably _Clavetellaprolifera_, a most interesting ambulatory form of six tentacles.Almost every bather in Southern waters, Northern too, knows the painthat contact with certain "jelly fish" produces. The _Yekta's_development was prodigious and, to us, monstrous. It secretes in itsfive heads an almost incredibly swiftly acting poison which I suspect,for I had no chance to verify the theory, destroys the entire nervoussystem to the accompaniment of truly infernal agony; carrying at thesame time the illusion that the torment stretches through infinitiesof time. Both ether and nitrous oxide gas produce in the majority thissensation of time extension, without of course the pain symptom. WhatLakla called the _Yekta_ kiss is I imagine about as close to theorthodox idea of Hell as can be conceived. The secret of her controlover them I had no opportunity of learning in the rush of events thatfollowed. Knowledge of the appalling effects of their touch came, shetold me, from those few "who had been kissed so lightly" that theyrecovered. Certainly nothing, not even the Shining One, was dreaded bythe Murians as these were--W. T. G.