Romance Island Part 23

I do not know all, but I come to warn you, and to warn the adon who has been kind to us. You have brought us here when we were alone in America," said Jarvo simply. "Akko and I will help you now. It was Akko who remembered the tower."

Amory looked down at the bowl of his pipe, and shook his vestas in their box, and turned his eyes to Rollo, listening near by with an air of the most intense abstraction. Yes, all these things were real. They were all real, and here was he, Amory, smoking. And yet what was all this amazing talk about danger in the palace, and being warned, and remembering the tower?

"Anybody would think I was Cra.s.s, writing head-lines," he told himself, and blew a cloud of smoke through which to look at Jarvo.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded sternly.

Jarvo had a little key in his hand, which he shook. The key was on a slender, carved ring, and it jingled. And when he offered it to him Amory abstractedly took it.

"See, adon," said Jarvo, "see! In the ilex grove on the road that we took last night there is a white tower--it may be that you have noticed it to-day. That tower is empty, and this is the key. There may be guards, but I shall know how to pa.s.s among them. You must come with me there to-night, the three. Even then it may be too late, I do not know. The G.o.ds will permit the possible. But this I know: the Royal Guard are of the lahnas, on whom the tax to make good the Hereditary Treasure will fall most heavily. They are filled with rage against your people--you and the king who is of your people. I do not know what they will do, but you are not safe for one moment in the palace. I come to warn you."

Amory's pipe went out. He sat pulling at it abstractedly, trying to fit together what St. George had told him of the Hereditary Treasure situation. And more than at any other time since his arrival on the island his heart leaped up at the prospect of promised adventure.

What if St. George's romantic apostasy were not, after all, to spoil the flavour of the kind of adventure for which he, Amory, had been hoping? He leaned eagerly forward.

"What would you suggest?" he said.

Jarvo's eyes brightened. At once he sprang to his feet and stood before Amory, taking soft steps here and there as he talked, in movement graceful and tenuous as the greyhound of which he had reminded St. George.

"In the palace yard," explained the little man rapidly, "is a motor which came from Melita, bringing guests for the ceremony of to-night. They will remain in the palace until after the marriage of the prince, two days hence. But the motor--that must go back to-night to Melita, adon. I have made for myself permission to take it there. But you--the three--must go with me. At the tower in the ilex grove I shall leave you, and I shall return. Is this good?"

"Excellent. But what afterward?" demanded Amory. "Are we all to keep house in the tower?"

Jarvo shook his head, like a man who has thought of everything.

"Through to-morrow, yes," he said, "but to-morrow night, when the dark falls--"

He bent forward and spoke softly.

"Did not the adon wish to ascend the mountain?" he asked.

"Rather," said Amory, "but how, good heavens?"

"I and Akko wish to ascend also; the prince has sent us no message, and we fear him," said Jarvo simply. "There are on the island, adon, six carriers, trained from birth to make the ascent. They are the sons of those whose duty it was to ascend, and they the sons for many generations. The trail is very steep, very perilous. Six were taught to go up with messages long before the knowledge of the wireless way, long before the flight of the airships. They are become a tradition of the island. It is with them that you must ascend--if you have no fear."

"Fear!" cried Amory. "But these men, what of them? They are in the employ of the State. How do you know they will take us?"

Jarvo dropped his eyes.

"I and Akko," he said quietly, "we are two of these six carriers, adon."

Then Amory leaped up, scattering the ashes of his pipe over the tiles. This, then, was what was the matter with the feet of the two men, about which they had all speculated on the deck of _The Aloha_, the feet trained from birth to make the ascent of the steep trail, feet become long, tenuous, almost prehensile--

"It's miracles, that's what it is," declared Amory solemnly. "How on earth did they come to take you to New York?" he could not forbear asking.

"The prince knew nothing of your country, adon," answered Jarvo simply. "He might have needed us to enter it."

"To climb the custom-house," said Amory abstractedly, and laughed out suddenly in sheer light-heartedness. Here was come to them an undertaking to which St. George himself must warm as he had warmed at the prospect of the voyage. To go up the mountain to the threshold of the king's palace, where lived the daughter of the king.

Amory bent himself with a will to mastering each detail of the little man's proposals. Rollo, they decided, was at once to make ready a few belongings in the oil-skins. Immediately after the banquet St. George and Amory were to mingle with the throng and leave the palace--no difficult matter in the press of the departures--and, on the side of the courtyard beneath the windows of the banquet room, Jarvo, already joined by Rollo, would be awaiting them in the motor bound for Melita.

"It sounds as if it couldn't be done," said Amory in intense enjoyment. "It's bully."

He paced up and down the room, talking it over. He folded his arms, and looked at the matter from all sides and wondered, as touching a story being "covered" for Chillingworth, whether he were leaving anything unthought.

"Chillingworth!" he said to himself in ecstasy. "Wouldn't Chillingworth dote to idolatry upon this sight?"

Then Amory stood still, facing something that he had not seen before. He had come, in his walk, upon a little table set near the room's entrance, and bearing a decanter and some cups.

"h.e.l.lo," he said, "Rollo, where did this come from?"

Rollo came forward, velvet steps, velvet pressing together of his hands, face expressionless as velvet too.

"A servant of 'is 'ighness, sir," he said--Rollo did that now and then to let you know that his was the blood of valets--"left it some time ago, with the compliments of the prince. It looks like a good, nitzy Burgundy, sir," added Rollo tolerantly, "though the man did say it was bottled in something B.C., sir, and if it was it's most likely flat. You can't trust them vintages much farther back than the French Revolootion, beggin' your pardon, sir."

Amory absently lifted the decanter, and then looked at it with some curiosity. The decanter was like a vase, ornamented with gold medallions covered with exquisite and precise engraving of great beauty and variety of design. Serpents, men contending with lions, sacred trees and apes were chased in the gold, and the little cups of sard were engraved in pomegranates and segments of fruit and pendent acorns, and were set with cones of cornelian. The cups were joined by a long cord of thick gold.

Amory set his hand to the little golden stopper, perhaps hermetically sealed, he thought idly, at about the time of the accidental discovery of gla.s.s itself by the Phoenicians. Amory was not imaginative, but as he thought of the possible age of the wine, there lay upon him that fascination communicable from any link between the present and the living past.

"Solomon and Sargon," he said to himself, "the geese in the capitol, Marathon, Alexander, Carthage, the Norman conquest, Shakespeare and Miss Frothingham!"

He smiled and twisted the carven stopper.

"And the girl is alive," he said almost wonderingly. "There has been so much Time in the world, and yet she is alive now. Down there in the banquet room."

The odour of the contents of the vase, spicy, penetrating, delicious, crept out, and he breathed it gratefully. It was like no odour that he remembered. This was nothing like Rollo's "good, nitzy Burgundy"--this was something infinitely more wonderful. And the odour--the odour was like a draught. And wasn't this the wine of wines, he asked himself, to give them courage, exultation, the most superb daring when they started up that delectable mountain? St.

George must know; he would think so too.

"Oh, I say," said Amory to himself, "we must put some strength in Jarvo's bones too--poor little brick!"

With that Amory drew the carven stopper, fitted in the little funnel that hung about the neck of the vase, poured a half-finger of the wine in each cup, and lifted one in his hand. But the mere odour was enough to make a man live ten lives, he thought, smiling at his own strange exultation. He must no more than touch it to his lips, for he wanted a clear head for what was coming.

"Come, Jarvo," he cried gaily--was he shouting, he wondered, and wasn't that what he was trying to do--to shout to make some far-away voice answer him? "Come and drink to the health of the prince. Long may he live, long may he live--without us!"

Amory had stood with his back to the little brown man while he poured the wine. As he turned, he lifted one cup to his lips and Rollo gravely presented the other to Jarvo. But with a bound that all but upset the velvet valet, the little man cleared the s.p.a.ce between him and Amory and struck the cup from Amory's hand.

"Adon!" he cried terribly, "adon! Do not drink--do not drink!"

The precious liquid splashed to the floor with the falling cup and ran red about the tiles. Instantly a powerful and delightful fragrance rose, and the thick fumes possessed the air. Amory threw out his hands blindly, caught dizzily at Rollo, and was half dragged by Jarvo to the open window.

"Oh, I say, sir--" burst out Rollo, more upset over the loss of the wine than he was alarmed at the occurrence. If it came to losing a good, nitzy Burgundy, Rollo knew what that meant.

"Adon," cried Jarvo, shaking Amory's shoulders, "did you taste the liquor--tell me--the liquor--did you taste?"

Amory shook his head. Jarvo's face and the hovering Rollo and the whole room were enveloped in mist, and the wine was hot on his lips where the cup had touched them. Yet while he stood there, with that permeating fragrance in the air, it came to him vaguely that he had never in his life known a more perfectly delightful moment. If this, he said to himself vaguely, was what they meant by wine in the old days, then so far as his own experience went, the best "nitzy"

Burgundy was no more than a flabby, _vin ordinaire_ beside it. Not that "flabby" was what he meant to call it, but that was the word that came. For he felt as if no less than six men were flowing in his veins, he summed it up to himself triumphantly.

But after all, the effect was only momentary. Almost as quickly as those strange fumes had arisen they were dissipated. And when presently Amory stood up unsteadily from the seat of the window, he could see clearly enough that Jarvo, with terrified eyes, was turning the vase in his hands.

"It is the same," he was saying, "it must be the same. The G.o.ds have permitted the possible. I was here to tell you."