"I--why, why--Frannie----" I would have told her then that I loved her,
as I had very nearly told her myriad times in ten years past. But who
was I to ask the love of any girl? A sorter of planetary messages, poor
as a towerman in the lower traffic! "I--why yes, Frannie. Of course I
like you. You're--beautiful."
She had a quaint little circular hat, stiff and round, with a dull-red
plume and a tassel. We men wore hats of a solidly wooden aspect--low,
round crowns and triangular brims. Martt's was sea-green, with tassels
all around its brim. But mine and Brett's were sober gray, and
unadorned.
We started on foot. The city streets were dim in the luminous twilight.
Overhead, the sky with its thin-strewn stars was cloudless. A holiday
aspect was everywhere. Crowds of people were in the streets. Young men
and girls, gay with laughter. Most of them were cloaked. A vehicle,
with runners like a sleigh gliding over the grassy pavement, drawn by a
squat, four-legged animal, went by us. It was jammed with girls; one of
them leaned out and waved at me. Her slim white arm came down; her hand
twitched off my hat, sent it spinning. I caught a glimpse of her face;
dark, laughing eyes, a mouth with mocking lips stained red. . . .
The sleigh passed on.
With Brett leading us we turned toward the lake. Most of the crowd
seemed to be heading that way. Occasionally we were recognized. Stares
of interest at us, the strangers, and cheers for Brett.
He said to me, "They're all very happy, Frank. Like children." I
fancied that he sighed--he, for whom this night of all nights should
have been his happiest.
In a group, with the swirling merrymakers about us, we made our way
to the lake shore. The water was rippled by a gentle night breeze;
the stars gleamed on the water surface with tiny silver paths. Boats
were here--double canoes with outriders; and a few sailboats, small,
single-masted, with triangular and crescent sails.
We found a small canoe; Brett sculled it with a broad-bladed paddle.
Other boats were around us. A long canoe with a dozen sweeping
paddles shot by us with the racing strokes of its men, and with
shouts from its laughing girls. Another, smaller, turned over. Its
men swam, and righted it. They climbed aboard, hauling up the girls.
The wet draperies clung to them; they came up like dripping, gleeful
water-sprites, tossing their black hair. . . . A barge went slowly
along, drawn by two canoes. A lighted canopy was over its occupants--a
huge, woven garland of flowers. The canopy gleamed with spots of
vivid-colored lights.
"The luminous flowers," said Brett. And I saw that the large purple
blossoms were gleaming with a purple light--a phosphorescence inherent
in them; and red blossoms, like crimson lanterns; and others orange,
and green. Music floated upward from the barge, soft and sweet over
the water. The tinkle of strings--the voices of girls singing, and men
humming with a deeper background of harmony. . . .
A night for love-making. The night romantic. Brett's wedding night--and
yet, he had sighed. I knew why, for upon my own heart lay a weight
of apprehension, heavier because it was so incongruous. Martt quite
evidently did not feel it--he was shouting and laughing constantly
with his pleasure. A girl from a neighboring boat tossed him a large,
blood-red, glowing blossom. It fell short, went into the water and
slowly sank, staining the water with its red light. Martt all but
turned us over trying to rescue it.
Frannie, too, seemed gay. I tried to smile; but I felt that it was
forced. The depression upon me would not be shaken off. It grew to
seem almost sinister. The very atmosphere of happiness around me seemed
to intensify it. These merrymakers--in the midst of life. . . . At such
a moment as this, death could choose to strike. . . .
"Look!" shouted Martt. "The lights off there--is that where we're
going?"
A patch of gay-colored lights gleamed from over the water ahead. "Yes,"
said Brett. "An island there, where they hold the festival. It's not
far."
It was an irregular circular island, a mile perhaps in extent. The lake
waters indented it with a hundred tiny bays, inlets, and narrow, placid
waterways. We ascended one of them. The surface of the island was
gently undulating, and wooded, with mossy dells--nooks arched with the
luminous flowers. Nooks for love-making.
The whole island was strewn thick with the flowers; they grew upon
tall, single stems--gay-colored lanterns nodding in the breeze. Beneath
them were laughing couples; some hidden, sought and found by groups of
marauding girls, to seize the man and laughingly whisk him away. And
everywhere was music, soft as an echo. . . .
* * * * *
We ascended the narrow waterways, came to a lagoon with a glassy
surface wherein a thousand spots of the lantern-flowers were
mirrored like colored stars. Near the shore here, beyond a dock at
which we landed, was a broad enclosed space with an arcade of the
lantern-flowers arching over it. Brilliant with their light. Most of
the crowd seemed congregated there--a milling throng on the level floor
inside, with liquid strains of music mingling with the shouts and
laughter.
"We'll go in there," said Brett. "I'll find seats for you--then I must
leave, to join Leela and her father. There is to be a musical program.
But first--just Greedo, Zee and Leela, and our marriage. Most of the
music comes afterward."
Within the arcade the lights blended into a kaleidoscope of color. All
the cloaks were discarded now. Costumes vividly splashed as a painter's
palette. Heavy perfumes. And that soft, echoing music. I could not tell
its source.
At one end of the room was a raised, canopied platform, with doors
behind it. Most of the crowd were choosing low seats, like stools
ranged in rows. Brett got us settled.
"I'll leave you now--and meet you over there by the right-hand end of
the platform, afterward."
He left us. With Frannie between us, Martt and I sat quiet, watching
and listening. We had not long to wait. The light around us began to
dim; sliding curtains were obscuring the flowers over us. A hush fell
upon the crowd. The soft music was stilled. A hush of expectancy.
The arcade was in gloom. The light on the platform intensified. A
deep-red glow, with a single spot focused upon a small, raised dais.
Into the red glow came Greedo, robed unobtrusively in black. He was
carrying a crescent frame of strings. He seated himself, and in the
silence swept his hands across the strings. His fingers plucked them
like a harp; and then his other hand slid upon them. The staccato
notes rippled clear as a mountain rill, soft, muted to seem an echo of
music. And blended with them was a low, crying melody--a fragment, then
silence.
Leela had appeared. She crossed through the red glow, mounted the
dais, and stood in the silver light--Leela, robed to her feet in a
misty silver veil through which her figure vaguely was outlined. She
stood there drooping--a Naiad veiled in the fountain mist. . . . Then
Greedo's music sounded. And Leela sang.
It was like nothing I had ever heard before. Music, toned strangely,
with strange intervals to make it neither major nor minor. Not
happiness, nor yet sadness. A wistfulness. A longing. But with the
promise of fulfilment.
I listened, breathlessly; and the arcade around me faded. Greedo's
figure in the shadow was forgotten. There was only the white figure of
Leela; her face, the purity of girlhood, her eyes half closed, her lips
parted with the song. Nothing else--save myself. I stood in a void,
stretching out my arms to Romance. All that I had ever dreamed, and
vaguely longed for without understanding what it meant, was upon me.
All that woman could mean to man--the spirit of the ideal never to be
attained in mortal flesh--seemed suddenly attained. Romance--that thing
elusive--intangible as a thought in the vaguest of dreams. It was mine!
The song ended. Applause rang out. Leela was gone.
Martt breathed beside me, "Frank! Wasn't that--wonderful! It was
like----Look, here comes Zee!"
Zee was on the platform--a whirlwind of veils, stained by the red
light, white limbs flashing as she whirled. Greedo's music was faster
now. Snapping staccato, with a thrum of melody. The lights changed to
a mingled riot of color within which Zee was dancing. An elf. A sprite
of the woodland, with tossing hair and fluttering arms; and a laughing
face. . . . A figure in the fairy-tale of a child. . . .
But only for a moment. Then the dance slowed. Maturity came suddenly.
Zee mounted the dais, and the light there was abruptly green. She stood
in an attitude of terror, her eyes wide, hands before her, posturing
with horror.
It made my heart leap. For an instant I fancied it had been real. But
the light turned silver. The horror faded into a passion of love,
her white arms extended, her breasts rising and falling beneath the
veils, her red lips parted with passionate longing. The abandonment
of youth--so young, with newly awakened passion as yet but half
understood. Then again she was whirling around the platform, leaping on
her bare toes, light as a faun. . . .
Behind me, suddenly a woman screamed! The reality of a long scream
of terror! Greedo's music ceased. The lights wavered. Zee was gone.
A scream from the audience; then another. A chaos of mingled cries.
Clattering of feet. Stools overturned. . . . Someone fell against me. I
went down, recovered and climbed upright. The audience was in a panic.
I heard Martt shout, "Look, Frank! Look there over the water!"
People were pushing me--surging to escape from the arcade. Shouting.
Calling to one another. And the woman behind me was still screaming.
I saw it then. Through the open side of the arcade, out a mile or
more over the water, the great giant figure of a man was standing,
waist-deep in the lake, his naked torso towering a hundred feet above
it. A giant, wading in the lake, his face grotesque, malevolently
grinning in the starlight!
[Illustration: "The giant grinned malevolently in the starlight."]