Convoyed by the spearmen, the party of Leoncia, the two Morgans, and
Torres, was led through the pleasant fields, all under a high state of
primitive cultivation, and on across running streams and through
woodland stretches and knee deep pastures where grazed cows of so
miniature a breed that, full-grown, they were no larger than young
calves.
“They’re milch cows without mistake,” Henry commented. “And they’re
perfect beauties. But did you ever see such dwarfs! A strong man could
lift up the biggest specimen and walk off with it.”
“Don’t fool yourself,” Francis spoke up. “Take that one over there, the
black one. I’ll wager it’s not an ounce under three hundredweight.”
“How much will you wager?” Henry challenged.
“Name the bet,” was the reply.
“Then a hundred even,” Henry stated, “that I can lift it up and walk
away with it.”
“Done.”
But the bet was never to be decided, for the instant Henry left the path
he was poked back by the spearmen, who scowled and made signs that they
were to proceed straight ahead.
Where the way came to lead past the foot of a very rugged cliff, they
saw above them many goats.
“Domesticated,” said Francis. “Look at the herd boys.”
“I was sure it was goat-meat in that stew,” Henry nodded. “I always did
like goats. If the Lady Who Dreams, whoever she may be, vetoes the
priest and lets us live, and if we have to stay with the Lost Souls for
the rest of our days, I’m going to petition to be made master goatherd
of the realm, and I’ll build you a nice little cottage, Leoncia, and you
can become the Exalted Cheese-maker to the Queen.”
But he did not whimsically wander farther, for, at that moment, they
emerged upon a lake so beautiful as to bring a long whistle from
Francis, a hand-clap from Leoncia, and a muttered ejaculation of
appreciation from Torres. Fully a mile in length it stretched, with more
than half the same in width, and was a perfect oval. With one exception,
no habitation broke the fringe of trees, bamboo thickets, and rushes
that circled its shore, even along the foot of the cliff where the
bamboo was exceptionally luxuriant. On the placid surface was so vividly
mirrored the surrounding mountains that the eye could scarcely discern
where reality ended and reflection began.
In the midst of her rapture over the perfect reflection, Leoncia broke
off to exclaim her disappointment in that the water was not crystal
clear:
“What a pity it is so muddy!”
“That’s because of the wash of the rich soil of the valley floor,” Henry
elucidated. “It’s hundreds of feet deep, that soil.”
“The whole valley must have been a lake at some time,” Francis
concurred. “Run your eye along the cliff and see the old water-lines. I
wonder what made it shrink.”
“Earthquake, most likely—opened up some subterranean exit and drained it
off to its present level—and keeps on draining it, too. Its rich
chocolate color shows the amount of water that flows in all the time,
and that it doesn’t have much chance to settle. It’s the catch-basin for
the entire circling watershed of the valley.”
“Well, there’s one house at least,” Leoncia was saying five minutes
later, as they rounded an angle of the cliff and saw, tucked against the
cliff and extending out over the water, a low-roofed bungalow-like
dwelling.
The piles were massive tree-trunks, but the walls of the house were of
bamboo, and the roof was thatched with grass-straw. So isolated was it,
that the only access, except by boat, was a twenty-foot bridge so narrow
that two could not walk on it abreast. At either end of the bridge,
evidently armed guards or sentries, stood two young men of the tribe.
They moved aside, at a gesture of command from the Sun Priest, and let
the party pass, although the two Morgans did not fail to notice that the
spearmen who had accompanied them from the Long House remained beyond
the bridge.
Across the bridge and entered into the bungalow-like dwelling on stilts,
they found themselves in a large room better furnished, crude as the
furnishings were, than they would have expected in the Valley of Lost
Souls. The grass mats on the floor were of fine and careful weave, and
the shades of split bamboo that covered the window-openings were of
patient workmanship. At the far end, against the wall, was a huge golden
emblem of the rising sun similar to the one before the altar by the Long
House. But by far most striking, were two living creatures who strangely
inhabited the place and who scarcely moved. Beneath the rising sun,
raised above the floor on a sort of dais, was a many-pillowed divan that
was half-throne. And on the divan, among the pillows, clad in a
softly-shimmering robe of some material no one of them had seen before,
reclined a sleeping woman. Only her breast softly rose and softly fell
to her breathing. No Lost Soul was she, of the inbred and degenerate
mixture of Carib and Spaniard. On her head was a tiara of beaten gold
and sparkling gems so large that almost it seemed a crown.
Before her, on the floor, were two tripods of gold——the one containing
smouldering fire, the other, vastly larger, a golden bowl fully a fathom
in diameter. Between the tripods, resting with outstretched paws like
the Sphinx, with unblinking eyes and without a quiver, a great dog,
snow-white of coat and resembling a Russian wolf-hound, stedfastly
regarded the intruders.
“She looks like a lady, and seems like a queen, and certainly dreams to
the queen’s taste,” Henry whispered, and earned a scowl from the Sun
Priest.
Leoncia was breathless, but Torres shuddered and crossed himself, and
said:
“This I have never heard of the Valley of Lost Souls. This woman who
sleeps is a Spanish lady. She is of the pure Spanish blood. She is
Castilian. I am as certain, as that I stand here, that her eyes are
blue. And yet that pallor!” Again he shuddered. “It is an unearthly
sleep. It is as if she tampered with drugs, and had long tampered with
drugs——”
“The very thing!” Francis broke in with excited whispers. “The Lady Who
Dreams drug dreams. They must keep her here doped up as a sort of
super-priestess or super-oracle.—That’s all right, old priest,” he broke
off to say in Spanish. “If we wake her up, what of it? We have been
brought here to meet her, and, I hope, awake.”
The Lady stirred, as if the whispering had penetrated her profound of
sleep, and, for the first time, the dog moved, turning his head toward
her so that her down-dropping hand rested on his neck caressingly. The
priest was imperative, now, in his scowls and gestured commands for
silence. And in absolute silence they stood and watched the awakening of
the oracle.
Slowly she drew herself half upright, paused, and re-caressed the happy
wolf hound, whose cruel fangs were exposed in a formidable, long-jawed
laugh of joy. Awesome the situation was to them, yet more awesome it
became to them when she turned her eyes full upon them for the first
time. Never had they seen such eyes, in which smouldered the world and
all the worlds. Half way did Leoncia cross herself, while Torres, swept
away by his own awe, completed his own crossing of himself and with
moving lips of silence enunciated his favorite prayer to the Virgin.
Even Francis and Henry looked, and could not take their gaze away from
the twin wells of blue that seemed almost dark in the shade of the long
black eyelashes.
“A blue-eyed brunette,” Francis managed to whisper.
But such eyes! Round they were, rather than long. And yet they were not
round. Square they might have been, had they not been more round than
square. Such shape had they that they were as if blocked off in the
artist’s swift and sketchy way of establishing circles out of the sums
of angles. The long, dark lashes veiled them and perpetuated the
illusion of their darkness. Yet was there no surprise nor startlement in
them at first sight of her visitors. Dreamily incurious were they, yet
were they languidly certain of comprehension of what they beheld. Still
further, to awe those who so beheld, her eyes betrayed a complicated
totality of paradoxical alivenesses. Pain trembled its quivering anguish
perpetually impending. Sensitiveness moistly hinted of itself like a
spring rain-shower on the distant sea-horizon or a dew-fall of a
mountain morning. Pain—ever pain—resided in the midst of languorous
slumberousness. The fire of immeasurable courage threatened to glint
into the electric spark of action and fortitude. Deep slumber, like a
palpitant, tapestried background, seemed ever ready to obliterate all in
sleep. And over all, through all, permeating all, brooded ageless
wisdom. This was accentuated by cheeks slightly hollowed, hinting of
asceticism. Upon them was a flush, either hectic or of the paint-box.
When she stood up, she showed herself to be slender and fragile as a
fairy. Tiny were her bones, not too-generously flesh-covered; yet the
lines of her were not thin. Had either Henry or Francis registered his
impression aloud, he would have proclaimed her the roundest thin woman
he had ever seen.
The Sun Priest prostrated his aged frame till he lay stretched flat out
on the floor, his old forehead burrowing into the grass mat. The rest
remained upright, although Torres evidenced by a crumpling at the knees
that he would have followed the priest’s action had his companions shown
signs of accompanying him. As it was, his knees did partly crumple, but
straightened again and stiffened under the controlled example of Leoncia
and the Morgans.
At first the Lady had no eyes for aught but Leoncia; and, after a
careful looking over of her, with a curt upward lift of head she
commanded her to approach. Too imperative by far was it, in Leoncia’s
thought, to proceed from so etherially beautiful a creature, and she
sensed with immediacy an antagonism that must exist between them. So she
did not move, until the Sun Priest muttered harshly that she must obey.
She approached, regardless of the huge, long-haired hound, threading
between the tripods and past the beast, nor would stop until commanded
by a second nod as curt as the first. For a long minute the two women
gazed steadily into each other’s eyes, at the end of which, with a
flicker of triumph, Leoncia observed the other’s eyes droop. But the
flicker was temporary, for Leoncia saw that the Lady was studying her
dress with haughty curiosity. She even reached out her slender, pallid
hand and felt the texture of the cloth and caressed it as only a woman
can.
“Priest!” she summoned sharply. “This is the third day of the Sun in the
House of Manco. Long ago I told you something concerning this day.
Speak.”
Writhing in excess of servility, the Sun Priest quavered:
“That on this day strange events were to occur. They have occurred, O
Queen.”
Already had the Queen forgotten. Still caressing the cloth of Leoncia’s
dress, her eyes were bent upon it in curious examination.
“You are very fortunate,” the Queen said, at the same time motioning her
back to rejoin the others. “You are well loved of men. All is not clear,
yet does it seem that you are too well loved of men.”
Her voice, mellow and low, tranquil as silver, modulated in exquisite
rhythms of sound, was almost as a distant temple bell calling believers
to worship or sad souls to quiet judgment. But to Leoncia it was not
given to appreciate the wonderful voice. Instead, only was she aware of
anger flaming up to her cheeks and burning in her pulse.
“I have seen you before, and often,” the Queen went on.
“Never!” Leoncia cried out.
“Hush!” the Sun Priest hissed at her.
“There,” the Queen said, pointing at the great golden bowl. “Before, and
often, have I seen you there.
“You——also, there,” she addressed Henry.
“And you,” she confirmed to Francis, although her great blue eyes opened
wider and she gazed at him long——too long to suit Leoncia, who knew the
stab of jealousy that only a woman can thrust into a woman’s heart.
The Queen’s eyes glinted when they had moved on to rest on Torres.
“And who are you, stranger, so strangely appareled, the helmet of a
knight upon your head, upon your feet the sandals of a slave?”
“I am Da Vasco,” he answered stoutly.
“The name has an ancient ring,” she smiled.
“I am the ancient Da Vasco,” he pursued, advancing unsummoned. She
smiled at his temerity but did not stay him. “This is the helmet I wore
four hundred years ago when I led the ancestors of the Lost Souls into
this valley.”
The Queen smiled quiet unbelief, as she quietly asked:
“Then you were born four hundred years ago?”
“Yes, and never. I was never born. I am Da Vasco. I have always been. My
home is in the sun.”
Her delicately stenciled brows drew quizzically to interrogation, though
she said nothing. From a gold-wrought box beside her on the divan she
pinched what seemed a powder between a fragile and almost transparent
thumb and forefinger, and her thin beautiful lips curved to gentle
mockery as she casually tossed the powder into the great tripod. A sheen
of smoke arose and in a moment was lost to sight.
“Look!” she commanded.
And Torres, approaching the great bowl, gazed into it. What he saw, the
rest of his party never learned. But the Queen herself leaned forward
and gazing down from above, saw with him, her face a beautiful
advertisement of gentle and pitying mockery. And what Torres himself saw
was a bedroom and a birth in the second story of the Bocas del Toro
house he had inherited. Pitiful it was, with its last secrecy exposed,
as was the gently smiling pity in the Queen’s face. And, in that
flashing glimpse of magic vision, Torres saw confirmed about himself
what he had always guessed and suspected.
“Would you see more,” the Queen softly mocked. “I have shown you the
beginning of you. Look now, and behold your ending.”
But Torres, too deeply impressed by what he had already seen, shuddered
away in recoil.
“Forgive me, Beautiful Woman,” he pleaded. “And let me pass. Forget, as
I shall hope ever to forget.”
“It is gone,” she said, with a careless wave of her hand over the bowl.
“But I cannot forget. The record will persist always in my mind. But
you, O Man, so young of life, so ancient of helmet, have I beheld before
this day, there in my Mirror of the World. You have vexed me much of
late with your portending. Yet not with the helmet.” She smiled with
quiet wisdom. “Always, it seems to me, I saw a chamber of the dead, of
the long dead, upright on their unmoving legs and guarding through
eternity mysteries alien to their faith and race. And in that dolorous
company did it seem that I saw one who wore your ancient helmet....
Shall I speak further?”
“No, no,” Torres implored.
She bowed and nodded him back. Next, her scrutiny centred on Francis,
whom she nodded forward. She stood up upon the dais as if to greet him,
and, as if troubled by the fact that she must gaze down on him, stepped
from the dais to the floor so that she might gaze up into his face as
she extended her hand. Hesitatingly he took her hand in his, then knew
not what next to do. Almost did it appear that she read his thought, for
she said:
“Do it. I have never had it done to me before. I have never seen it
done, save in my dreams and in the visions shown me in my Mirror of the
World.”
And Francis bent and kissed her hand. And, because she did not signify
to withdraw it, he continued to hold it, while, against his palm, he
felt the faint but steady pulse of her pink finger-tips. And so they
stood in pose, neither speaking, Francis embarrassed, the Queen sighing
faintly, while the sex anger of woman tore at Leoncia’s heart, until
Henry blurted out in gleeful English:
“Do it again, Francis! She likes it!”
The Sun Priest hissed silencing command at him. But the Queen, half
withdrawing her hand with a startle like a maiden’s, returned it as
deeply as before into Francis’ clasp, and addressed herself to Henry.
“I, too, know the language you speak,” she admonished. “Yet am I
unashamed, I, who have never known a man, do admit that I like it. It is
the first kiss that I have ever had. Francis——for such your friend calls
you——obey your friend. I like it. I do like it. Once again kiss my
hand.”
Francis obeyed, waited while her hand still lingered in his, and while
she, oblivious to all else, as if toying with some beautiful thought,
gazed lingeringly up into his eyes. By a visible effort she pulled
herself together, released his hand abruptly, gestured him back to the
others, and addressed the Sun Priest.
“Well, priest,” she said, with a return of the sharpness in her voice,
“You have brought these captives here for a reason which I already know.
Yet would I hear you state it yourself.”
“O Lady Who Dreams, shall we not kill these intruders as has ever been
our custom? The people are mystified and in doubt of my judgment, and
demand decision from you.”
“And you would kill?”
“Such is my judgment. I seek now your judgment that yours and mine may
be one.”
She glanced over the faces of the four captives. For Torres, her
brooding expression portrayed only pity. To Leoncia she extended a
frown; to Henry, doubt. And upon Francis she gazed a full minute, her
face growing tender, at least to Leoncia’s angry observation.
“Are any of you unmarried?” the Queen asked suddenly. “Nay,” she
anticipated them. “It is given me to know that you are all unmarried.”
She turned quickly to Leoncia. “Is it well,” she demanded, “that a woman
should have two husbands?”
Both Henry and Francis could not refrain from smiling their amusement at
so absurdly irrelevant a question. But to Leoncia it was neither absurd
nor irrelevant, and in her cheeks arose the flush of anger again. This
was a woman, she knew, with whom she had to deal, and who was dealing
with her like a woman.
“It is not well,” Leoncia answered, with clear, ringing voice.
“It is very strange,” the Queen pondered aloud. “It is very strange. Yet
is it not fair. Since there are equal numbers of men and women in the
world, it cannot be fair for one woman to have two husbands, for, if so,
it means that another woman shall have no husband.”
Another pinch of dust she tossed into the great bowl of gold. The sheen
of smoke arose and vanished as before.
“The Mirror of the World will tell me, priest, what disposition shall be
made of our captives.”
Just ere she leaned over to gaze into the bowl, a fresh thought
deflected her. With an embracing wave of arm she invited them all up to
the bowl.
“We may all look,” she said. “I do not promise you we will see the same
visions of our dreams. Nor shall I know what you will have seen. Each
for himself will see and know.——You, too, priest.”
They found the bowl, six feet in diameter that it was, half-full of some
unknown metal liquid.
“It might be quicksilver, but it isn’t,” Henry whispered to Francis. “I
have never seen the like of any similar metal. It strikes me as hotly
molten.”
“It is very cold,” the Queen corrected him in English. “Yet is it
fire.—You, Francis, feel the bowl outside.”
He obeyed, laying his full palm unhesitatingly to the yellow outer
surface.
“Colder than the atmosphere of the room,” he adjudged.
“But look!” the Queen cried, tossing more powder upon the contents. “It
is fire that remains cold.”
“It is the powder that smokes with the heat of its own containment,”
Torres blurted out, at the same time feeling into the bottom of his coat
pocket. He drew forth a pinch of crumbs of tobacco, match splinters, and
cloth-fluff. “This will not burn,” he challenged, inviting invitation by
extending the pinch of rubbish over the bowl as if to drop it in.
The Queen nodded consent, and all saw the rubbish fall upon the liquid
metal surface. The particles made no indentation on that surface. Only
did they transform into smoke that sheened upward and was gone. No
remnant of ash remained.
“Still is it cold,” said Torres, imitating Francis and feeling the
outside of the bowl.
“Thrust your finger into the contents,” the Queen suggested to Torres.
“No,” he said.
“You are right,” she confirmed. “Had you done so, you would now be with
one finger less than the number with which you were born.” She tossed in
more powder. “Now shall each behold what he alone will behold.”
And it was so.
To Leoncia was it given to see an ocean separate her and Francis. To
Henry was it given to see the Queen and Francis married by so strange a
ceremony, that scarcely did he realise, until at the close, that it was
a wedding taking place. The Queen, from a flying gallery in a great
house, looked down into a magnificent drawing-room that Francis would
have recognized as builded by his father had her vision been his. And,
beside her, his arm about her, she saw Francis. Francis saw but one
thing, vastly perturbing, the face of Leoncia, immobile as death, with
thrust into it, squarely between the eyes, a slender-bladed dagger. Yet
he did not see any blood flowing from the wound of the dagger. Torres
glimpsed the beginning of what he knew must be his end, crossed himself,
and alone of all of them shrank back, refusing to see further. While the
Sun Priest saw the vision of his secret sin, the face and form of the
woman for whom he had betrayed the Worship of the Sun, and the face and
form of the maid of the village at the Long House.
As all drew back by common consent when the visions faded, Leoncia
turned like a tigress, with flashing eyes, upon the Queen, crying:
“Your mirror lies! Your Mirror of the World lies!”
Francis and Henry, still under the heavy spell of what they had
themselves beheld, were startled and surprised by Leoncia’s outburst.
But the Queen, speaking softly, replied:
“My Mirror of the World has never lied. I know not what you saw. But I
do know, whatever it was, that it is truth.”
“You are a monster!” Leoncia cried on. “You are a vile witch that lies!”
“You and I are women,” the Queen chided with sweet gentleness, “and may
not know of ourselves, being women. Men will decide whether or not I am
a witch that lies or a woman with a woman’s heart of love. In the
meanwhile, being women and therefore weak, let us be kind to each
other.”
“——And now, Priest of the Sun, to judgment. You, as priest under the Sun
God, know more of the ancient rule and procedure than do I. You know
more than do I about myself and how I came to be here. You know that
always, mother and daughter, and by mother and daughter, has the tribe
maintained a Queen of Mystery, a Lady of Dreams. The time has come when
we must consider the future generations. The strangers have come, and
they are unmarried. This must be the wedding day decreed, if the
generations to come after of the tribe are to possess a Queen to dream
for them. It is well, and time and need and place are met. I have
dreamed to judgment. And the judgment is that I shall marry, of these
strangers, the stranger allotted to me before the foundations of the
world were laid. The test is this: If no one of these will marry, then
shall they die and their warm blood be offered up by you before the
altar of the Sun. If one will marry me, then all shall live, and Time
hereafter will register our futures.”
The Sun Priest, trembling with anger, strove to protest, but she
commanded:
“Silence, priest! By me only do you rule the people. At a word from me
to the people—well, you know. It is not any easy way to die.”
She turned to the three men, saying:
“And who will marry me?”
They looked embarrassment and consternation at one another, but none
spoke.
“I am a woman,” the Queen went on teasingly. “And therefore am I not
desirable to men? Is it that I am not young? Is it, as women go, that I
am not beautiful? Is it that men’s tastes are so strange that no man
cares to clasp the sweet of me in his arms and press his lips on mine as
good Francis there did on my hand?”
She turned her eyes on Leoncia.
“You be judge. You are a woman well loved of men. Am I not such a woman
as you, and shall I not be loved?”
“You will ever be kinder to men than to women,” Leoncia
answered——cryptically as regarded the three men who heard, but clearly
to the woman’s brain of the Queen. “And as a woman,” Leoncia continued,
“you are strangely beautiful and luring; and there are men in this
world, many men, who could be made mad to clasp you in their arms. But I
warn you, Queen, that in this world are men, and men, and men.”
Having heard and debated this, the Queen turned abruptly to the priest.
“You have heard, priest. This day a man shall marry me. If no man
marries me, these three men shall be offered up on your altar. So shall
be offered up this woman, who, it would seem, would put shame upon me by
having me less than she.”
Still she addressed the priest, although her message was for the others.
“There are three men of them, one of whom, long cycles before he was
born, was destined to marry me. So, priest, I say, take the captives
away into some other apartment, and let them decide among themselves
which is the man.”
“Since it has been so long destined,” Leoncia flamed forth, “then why
put it to the chance of their decision? You know the man. Why put it to
the risk? Name the man, Queen, and name him now.”
“The man shall be selected in the way I have indicated,” the Queen
replied, as, at the same time, absently she tossed a pinch of powder
into the great bowl and absently glanced therein. “So now depart, and
let the inevitable choice be made.”
They were already moving away out of the room, when a cry from the Queen
stopped them.
“Wait!” she ordered. “Come, Francis. I have seen something that concerns
you. Come, gaze with me upon the Mirror of the World.”
And while the others paused, Francis gazed with her upon the strange
liquid metal surface. He saw himself in the library of his New York
house, and he saw beside him the Lady Who Dreams, his arm around her.
Next, he saw her curiosity at sight of the stock-ticker. As he tried to
explain it to her, he glanced at the tape and read such disturbing
information thereon that he sprang to the nearest telephone and, as the
vision faded, saw himself calling up his broker.
“What was it you saw?” Leoncia questioned, as they passed out.
And Francis lied. He did not mention seeing the Lady Who Dreams in his
New York library. Instead, he replied:
“It was a stock-ticker, and it showed a bear market on Wall Street
somersaulting into a panic. Now how did she know I was interested in
Wall Street and stock-tickers?”