Romance Island Part 20

Before the prince could reply there occurred a phenomenon that sent all thought of such insubstantialities as the secrets of the Fourth Dimension far in the background.

The prince's motor, closely followed by the others of the train, had reached a little eminence from which the island unrolled in fair patterns. Before them the smooth road unwound in varied light. At their left lay a still grove from whose depths was glimpsed a slim needle of a tower, rising, arrow-like, from the green. In the distance lay Med, with shining domes. The water of the lagoon gave brightness here and there among the hills. And as St. George and the prince looked over the prospect they saw, far down the avenue toward Med, a little, moving speck--a speck moving with a rapidity which neither the prince's motor nor any known motor of Yaque had ever before permitted itself.

In an instant the six members of the Royal Golden Guard, who upon beautiful, spirited horses rode in advance of the train of the prince, wheeled and thundered back, lifting glittering hands of warning. "Aside! Aside!" shrieked the main Golden Guard, "a motor is without control!"

Immediately there was confusion. At a touch the prince's car was drawn to the road's extreme edge, and the Golden Guards rode furiously back along the train, hailing the peaceful, slow-going machines into orderly retreat. They were all sufficiently amenable, for at sight of the alarming and unprecedented onrush of the growing speck that was bearing full down upon them, anxiety sat upon every face.

St. George watched. And as the car drew nearer the thought which, at first sight of its speed, had vaguely flashed into being, took definite shape, and his blood leaped to its music. Whose hand would be upon that lever, whose daring would be directing its flight, whose but one in all Yaque--and that Olivia's?

It was Olivia. That was plain even in the mere instant that it took the great, beautiful motor, at thirty miles an hour, to flash past them. St. George saw her--coat of hunting pink and fluttering veil and shining eyes; he was dimly conscious of another little figure beside her, and of the unmistakable and agonized Mrs. Hastings in the tonneau; but it was only Olivia's glance that he caught as it swept the prince. There was the faintest possible smile, and she was gone; and St. George, his heart pounding, sat staring stupidly after that shining cloud of dust, frantically wondering whether she could just possibly have seen him. For this was no trick of the imagination, his galloping heart told him that. And whether or not Yaque was a place, the world, the world was within his grasp, instinct with possibilities heavenly sweet. His eyes met Amory's in the minute when Ca.s.syrus, prime minister of Yaque, had it borne in upon him that this was no runaway machine, but the ordinary and preferred pace of the daughter of their king; and while Ca.s.syrus, at the enormity of the conception, breathed out expostulations in several languages--some of them known to us only by means of inscriptions on tombs--Amory spoke to St. George:

"Who was the other girl?" he asked comprehensively.

"What other girl?" St. George blankly murmured.

And at this, Amory turned away with a look that could be made to mean whatever Amory meant.

On went the imperial train faring back to Med over the road lately stirred to shining dust by the wheels of Olivia's auto. Olivia's auto. St. George was secretly saying over the words with a kind of ecstatic non-comprehension, when the prince spoke:

"That," he said, "may explain why an American has been able to govern us. Chance crowned him, but he made himself king."

Prince Tabnit hesitated and his eyes wandered--and those of St.

George followed--to a far winding dot in that opal valley, a mere speck of silver with a p.r.i.c.k of pink, fleeing in a cloud of sunny dust.

"I do not know if you will know what I mean," said the prince, "but hers is the spirit, and the spirit of her father, the king, which Yaque had never known. It is the spirit which we of Phoenicia seem to have lost since the wealth of the world acc.u.mulated at her ports and she gave her trust to the hands of mariners and mercenaries, and later bowed to the conqueror. It is the spirit that not all the continental races, I fancy, have for endowment, but yours possesses in rich measure. For this we would exchange half that we have achieved."

St. George nodded, glowing.

"It is a great tribute, your Highness," he said simply, and in his heart he laid it at Olivia's feet.

Thereafter, in the long ride to Melita, during luncheon upon a high white terrace overlooking the sailless sea, and in the hours on the unforgetable roads of the islands, St. George, while incommunicable marvels revealed themselves linked with incommunicable beauty, sat in the prince's motor, his eyes searching the horizon for that fleeing speck of silver and pink. It did not appear again. And when the train of the prince rolled into the yard of the Palace of the Litany it trembled upon St. George's lips to ask whether the formalities of the court would permit him that day to scale the skies and call upon the royal household.

"For whatever he says, I've got to do," thought St. George, "but no matter what he says, I shall go. Doesn't Amory realize that we've been more than twelve hours on this island, and that nothing has been done?"

And then as they crossed the gra.s.sy court in the delicate hush of the merging light--the nameless radiance already penetrating the dusk--the prince spoke smoothly, as if his words bore no import deeper than his smile:

"You are come," he said courteously, "in time for one of the ceremonies of our regime most important--to me. You will, I hope, do honour to the occasion by your presence. This evening, in the Hall of Kings in the Palace of the Litany, will occur the ceremony of my betrothal."

"Your betrothal, your Highness?" repeated St. George uncertainly.

"You will be attended by an escort," the prince continued, "and Balator, the commander of the guard, will receive you in the hall.

May the G.o.ds permit the possible."

He swept through the portico before them, and they followed dumbly.

The betrothal of the prince.

St. George heard, and his eager hope went down in foreboding. He turned, hardly daring to read his own dread in the eyes of Amory.

Amory, as St. George had said, was delicious, especially his drawl; but there were times--now, for example, when all that the eyes of Amory expressed was what his lips framed, _sotto-voce_:

"An American heiress, betrothed to the prince of a cannibal island!

Wouldn't Chillingworth turn in his grave at his desk?"

CHAPTER X

TYRIAN PURPLE

The "porch of light" proved to be an especially fascinating place at evening. Evening, which makes most places resemble their souls instead of their bodies, had a grateful task in the beautiful room whose spirit was always uppermost, and Evening moved softly in its ivory depths, preluding for Sleep. Here, his lean, shadowed face all anxiety, Rollo stood, holding at arm's length a parti-coloured robe with floating scarfs.

"It seems to me, sir," he said doubtfully, "that this one would 'ave done better. Beggin' your pardon, sir."

St. George shook his head distastefully.

"It doesn't matter," he said, and broke into a slow smile as he looked at Amory. The robes which the prince had provided for the evening were rather harder to become accustomed to than the notion of intuitive knowledge.

"There's an air about this one though, sir," opined Rollo firmly, "there's a cut--a sort of _way_ with the seams, so to speak, sir, that the other can't touch. And cut is what counts, sir, cut counts every time."

"Ah, yes, I dare say, Rollo," said St. George, "and as a judge of 'cut' I don't say you can be equaled. But I do say that in the styles of Deuteronomy you aren't necessarily what you might call up."

"Yes, sir," said Rollo, dropping his eyes, "but a well-dressed man was a well-dressed man, sir, then _as_ now."

As a matter of fact the well-knit, athletic young figures looked uncommonly well in the garments _a la mode_ in Yaque. One would have said that if the garments followed Deuteronomy fashions they had at all events been cut by the scissors of a court tailor to Louis XV.

The result was beautiful and bizarre, but it did not suggest stageland because the colours were so good.

"I dare say," said St. George, examining the exquisitely fine cloth whose shades were of curious depth and richness, "that this may be regular Tyrian purple."

Amory waved his long sleeves.

"Stop," he languidly begged, "you make me feel like a golden text."

St. George went back to the row of open cas.e.m.e.nts and resumed his walk up and down before the windows that looked away to the huge threatening bulk of Mount Khalak. Since the prince's announcement that afternoon St. George had done little besides continuing that walk. Now it wanted hardly half an hour to the momentous ceremony of the evening, big with at least one of the dozen portents of which he accused it.

"Amory," he burst out as he walked, "if you didn't know anything about it, would you say that the prince could possibly have made her consent to marry him?"

Amory, left in the middle of the great room, stood polishing his pince-nez exactly as if he had been waiting at the end of Chillingworth's desk of a bright, American morning.

"If I didn't know anything about it," he said cheerfully, "I should say that he had. As it is, having this afternoon watched a certain motor wear its way past me, I should say that nothing in Yaque is more unlikely. And that's about as strong as you could put it."

"We don't know what the man may have threatened," said St. George morosely, "he may have played upon her devotion to her father to some ridiculous extent. He may have refused to land the submarine at Yaque at all otherwise--"

St. George broke off suddenly.

"Toby!" he said.