CHAPTER 9
"DWINDLING GIANTS FROM LARGENESS UNFATHOMABLE"
There was not one of us who would have interrupted Brett when he paused to light an arrant-cylinder and to choose what next he would tell us. He was speaking softly, reminiscently, and with a curious gentleness.
"I carried her to the vehicle, showed it to her. Obviously she could understand nothing of my words; but she was very quick to read my gestures; smiling readily now, with her fear quite gone. And sitting up in the palm of my hand, with her arm flung about my thumb to steady her, she bade me raise her to my ear. Her words—the softest, the tiniest of human voices—what she said was wholly unintelligible, save that I understood her name was Leela.
"She stood beside a tree at a distance while we re-entered the vehicle and brought it down to a size normal to her; and came out of it to confront her."
Martt burst out: "I tell you that was when I realized how beautiful she is. Say, you never saw a girl like her—you can't describe it——"
"I'm not trying," said Brett with his gentle smile. "She met us—there by the vehicle—to us then, Frannie, she was about your size—perhaps a little smaller. She took our hands, laid them against her forehead as though with a gesture of welcome. And led us presently to her home—the house near by. Her father (her mother is dead) her father is a musician. Noted—very high of rank and standing among his people. A kindly old man, with gray and black hair worn long to the base of his neck. We—Martt and I—didn't let ours grow, though as you see we took their mode of dress."
"How long were you there?" I asked.
"We slept perhaps three hundred times," he answered. "There are no days and nights—always that same half-luminous twilight. No change of seasons—or very little. It is nature in her softest mood. Nothing to struggle against—life made easy. Too easy. . . It was not we who learned Leela's language, but she, like an unnatural precocious child, who learned ours. . . We created a commotion among the people; the ruler sent for us. . . Oh, I have so much I'd like to tell you. But Martt can tell it—after——"
He checked himself suddenly. His words, some vague hint of what he almost had added, sent an ominous chill to my heart; and I saw, too, that Dr. Gryce had felt it, for a cloud came to his face and in his eyes I saw fear lurking.
But Brett went on at once: "I'd like to tell you of these people. A race at peace with nature and themselves. The struggle for existence all in the past. Decadence. The down-hill grade. Only by struggle can Man progress, Father. This race, with the peak of its civilization thousands of generations in its Past, gently resting, with the inevitable decadence drawing it inexorably back to the barbarism from whence it sprung. I'd like to tell you of their customs, their government—their mode of life. . . Some other time—or Martt will tell you. . . It was all so beautiful—so romantic. . . Music—their strange, beautiful arts—Music as Leela's father gave it—Art to take the place of Science and Industry. . . You ask Martt to tell you about the dancing—the pageants, if you want to call them that, to which we went so many times with Leela. . . But just now I'm tired—I think I've talked too much—and I'm worried—and it seems to press me, against all the logic of our Science, that I have no time to spend, telling all this to you. . ."
Brett, indeed, seemed suddenly tired, or perhaps harassed at the thoughts which had come to him. I had been so absorbed—as had all of us—that we had given no heed to the passing hours. Abruptly I realized that the room was chill with early morning; through the window I saw the flush of the eastern sky.
Martt followed my glance. "Why, it's dawn! Brett's been talking all night."
Brett said strangely: "Too long! Father, this gentle race living out there in such seeming security had just been visited by beings from the great world outside it. A world known to them only by legend of their past ages which they scarce knew to be true or false. Those three assailants of Leela's—and other men like them—had suddenly appeared as dwindling giants coming down out of largeness unfathomable. They had already destroyed a city. . ."
Brett's voice had risen; he was talking faster now; and there was a touch of wildness in his tone—a wildness perhaps born of his exhaustion, and the emotional stress under which I knew now he had been laboring all night.
"Our arrival there, Father—the three assailants of Leela—I think the larger, him whom we have called the 'giant'—I think he is leader of the invaders from that greater world. Our appearance—our own power to change size which perhaps he observed there in the forest—must have frightened him. The invaders vanished. But at the end of those months we lived there—another of these giants was seen.
"They're coming back again—to threaten Leela and all her people! I came here to see you, Father—to tell you all I've told—and to leave Martt. But I'm going back—to do what I can against this threat—this invasion. And I want to go back to Leela. She——"
"She was afraid to come with us," Martt put in. "I wanted her to come—and now I want to go back with Brett. We've been arguing about it for days—he won't let me go back with him—he's stubborn——"
Brett reiterated: "I'm going back. I'm going alone. As soon as I've slept—I've got to sleep now—you, you'll excuse me—let me take a good long sleep—I'm too tired to argue about it now. . . Good night, Frannie, dear—good night, Father—good night, Frank."
He was presently gone from the room. Dr. Gryce had been sitting beside me and I put my hand on his arm. His face was quite colorless; his voice, suddenly very old and helpless, was murmuring, "I don't want him to go out there again. I'm afraid—and I don't want him to do it. . ."