Romance Island Part 24

"Tell me what?" demanded Amory with ungrateful irritation. "Is the stuff poison?" he asked, tottering in spite of himself as he crossed the floor toward him. But Jarvo turned his face, and upon it was such an incongruous terror that Amory involuntarily stood still.

"There are known to be two," said Jarvo, holding the vase at arm's length, "and the one is abundant life, if the draught is not over-measured. But the other is ten thousand times worse than death."

"What do you mean?" cried Amory roughly. "What are you talking about? If the stuff is poison can't you say so?"

Jarvo looked at him swiftly.

"These things are not spoken aloud in Yaque," he said simply, and after that he held his peace. Amory threatened him and laughed at him, but Jarvo shook his head. At last Amory scoffed at the whole matter and stretched out his hand for the vase.

"Come," he said, "at all events I'll take it with me. It can't be very much worse than the American liqueurs."

"My word for it, sir, beggin' your pardon," said Rollo earnestly, "it's a kind of what you might call med-i-eval Burgundy, sir."

"It is not well," said Jarvo, handing the vase with reluctance, "yet take it--but see that it touches no lips. I charge you that, adon."

Amory smiled and slipped the little vase in his coat pocket.

"It's all right," he said, "I won't let it get away from me. I can find my legs now; I'll go back down. Look sharp, Rollo. Be down there with the oil-skins. We put on this Tyrian purple stuff over the whole outfit," he explained to Jarvo, "and I suppose, you know, that you can get both robes back here for us, if we escape in them?"

"a.s.suredly, adon," said Jarvo, "and you must escape without delay.

This wine must mean that the prince, too, wishes you harm. Now let me be before you for a little, so that no one may see us together. I shall go now, immediately, to the motor--it is waiting already by the wall on the side of the courtyard opposite the windows of the banquet hall. I shall not fail you."

"On the side of the courtyard opposite the windows of the banquet room," repeated Amory. "Thanks, Jarvo. You're all kinds of a good fellow."

"Yes, adon," gravely a.s.sented the little man from the threshold.

Ten minutes later Amory followed. Already Rollo had packed the oil-skins, and Amory, his nerves steadied and the excitement of all that the night promised come upon him, hurried before him down the corridor, his thoughts divided in their allegiance between the delight of telling St. George what was toward, and the new and alluring delight of seeing Antoinette Frothingham near at hand in the banquet room. After all, he had had only the vaguest glimpse of a little figure in rose and silver, and he doubted if he could tell her from the princess, but for the interpreting gown.

Amory looked up with an irrepressible thrill of delight. He was just at that moment crossing the high white audience-hall, the anteroom to the Hall of Kings--he, Amory, in Tyrian purple garments. If anything were needed to complete the picture it would be to meet face to face, there in that big, lonely room, a little figure in rose and silver. It made his heart beat even to think of the possibilities of that situation. He skirted the Hall of Kings, and stood in one of the archways of the colonnade, facing the banquet room.

The banquet-table extended about three sides of the room, whose centre the guests faced. The middle s.p.a.ce was left pure, unvexed by columns or furnishing. At the room's far end Amory glimpsed the prince, at his side Olivia's white veil, and her women about her; and, nearer, St. George and Balator in the place appointed. A guard came to conduct him, and he crossed to his seat and sank down with the look that could be made to mean whatever Amory meant.

"I expect to be served," murmured the journalist in him, "by beautiful tame megatheriums, in sashes. And is that glyptodon salad?"

St. George's eyes were upon the guests, so tranquilly seated, aware of the hour.

"I fancy," he said in half-voice, "that presently we shall see little flames issuing from their hair, as there used from the hair of the ladies in Werner's ballets."

Then as Balator leaned toward him in his splendid leisure, fostering his charm, there came an amazing interruption.

The low key of the room was electrically raised by a cry, loosed from some other plight of being, like an odour of burning encroaching upon a garden.

"Why have you not waited?" some one called, and the voice--clear, equal, imperious--evened its way upon the air and reduced to itself the soft speech of the others. Silence fell upon them all, and their eyes were toward a figure standing in the open interval of the room--a figure whose aspect thrilled St. George with sudden, inexplicable emotion.

It was an old man, incredibly old, so that one thought first of his age. His beard and hair were not all grey, but he had grotesquely brown and wrinkled flesh. His stuff robe hung in straight folds about his singularly erect figure, and there was in his bearing the dignity of one who has understood all fine and gentle things, all things of quietude. But his look was vacant, as if the mind were asleep.

"Why have you not waited?" he repeated almost wonderingly. "Why have you not sent for me?" and his eyes questioned one and another, and rested on the face of the prince upon the dais, with Olivia by his side. The guard, whom in some fashion the strange old man had eluded, hurried from the borders of the room. But he broke from them and was off up half the length of the hall toward the prince's seat.

"Do you not know?" he cried as he went, "I am Malakh. Read one another's eyes and you will know. I am Malakh."

As the guards closed about him he tottered and would have fallen save that they caught him roughly and pressed to a door, half carrying him, and he did not resist. But as speech was renewed another voice broke the murmur, and with great amazement St. George knew that this was Olivia's voice.

"No," she cried--but half as if she distrusted her own strange impulse, "let him stay--let him stay."

St. George saw the prince's look question her. He himself was unable to account for her unexpected intercession, and so, one would have said, was Olivia. She looked up at the prince almost fearfully, and down the length of the listening table, and back to the old man whose eyes were upon her face.

"He is an old man, your Highness," St. George heard her saying, "let him stay."

Prince Tabnit, who gave a curious impression of doing everything that he did in obedience to inertia rather than in its defiance, indicated some command to the puzzled guards, and they led old Malakh to a stone bench not far from the dais, and there he sank down, looking about him without surprise.

"It is well," he said simply, "Malakh has come."

While St. George was marveling--but not that the old man spoke the English, for in Yaque it was not surprising to find the very madmen speaking one's own tongue--Balator explained the man.

"He is a poor mad creature," Balator said. "He walks the streets of Med saying 'Melek, Melek,' which is to say, 'king,' and so he is seeking the king. But he is mad, and they say that he always weeps, and therefore they pretend to believe that he says 'Malakh,' which is to say 'salt.' And they call him that for his tears. Doubtless the princess does not understand. Her Highness has a tender heart."

St. George was silent. The incident was trivial, but Olivia had never seemed so near.

Sometimes in the world of commonplace there comes an extreme hour which one afterward remembers with "Could that have been I? But could it have been I who did that?" And one finds it in one's heart to be certain that it was not one's self, but some one else--some one very near, some one who is always sharing one's own consciousness and inexplicably mixing with one's moments. "Perhaps,"

St. George would have said, "there is some such person who is nearly, but not quite, I myself. And if there is, it was he and not I who was at that banquet!" It was one of the hours which seem to have been made with no echo. It was; and then pa.s.sed into other ways, and one remembered only a brightness. For example, St. George listened to what Balator said, and he heard with utmost understanding, and with the frequent pleasure of wonder, and was now and then exquisitely amused as one is amused in dreams. But even as he listened, if he tried to remember the last thing that was said, and the next to the last thing, he found that these had escaped him; and as he rose from the table he could not recall ten words that had been spoken. It was as if the some one very near, who is always sharing one's consciousness and inexplicably mixing with one's moments, had taken St. George's part at the banquet while he, himself, sat there in the role of his own outer consciousness. But neither he nor that hypothetical "some one else," who was also he, lost for one instant the heavenly knowledge that Olivia was up there at the head of the table.

Amory, in spite of diplomatic effort, had not succeeded in imparting to St. George anything of his talk with Jarvo. Balator was too near, and the place was somehow too generally attentive to permit a secret word. So, as they rose from the table, St. George was still in ignorance of what was toward and knew nothing of either the Ilex Tower or the possibilities of the morrow. He had only one thought, and that was to speak with Olivia, to let her know that he was there on the island, near her, ready to serve her--ah well, chiefly, he did not disguise from himself, what he wanted was to look at her and to hear her speak to him. But Amory had depended on the confusion of the rising to communicate the great news, and to tell about Jarvo, waiting in a motor out there in the palace courtyard, by the wall on the side opposite the windows of the banquet room. In an auspicious moment Amory looked warily about, thrilling with premonition of his friend's enthusiasm.

Before he could speak, St. George uttered a startled exclamation, caught at Amory's arm, sprang forward, and was off up the long room, dragging Amory with him.

About the dais there was suddenly an appalling confusion. Push of feet, murmurs, a cry and, visible over the heads between, a glistening of gold uniforms closing about the throne seats, flashing back to the long, open windows, disappearing against the night...

"What is it?" cried Amory as he ran. "What is it?"

"Quick," said St. George only, "I don't know. They've gone with her."

Amory did not understand, but he saw that Olivia's seat was empty; and when he swept the heads for her white veil, it was not there.

"Who has?" he said.

St. George swerved to the side of the room toward the windows, and old Malakh stood there, crying out and pointing.

"The guard, I think," St. George answered, and was over the low sill of a window, running headlong across the courtyard, Amory behind him. "There they go," St. George cried. "Good G.o.d, what are we to do? There they go."

Amory looked. Down a side avenue--one of those tunnels of shadow that taught the necessity of mystery--a great motor car was speeding, and in the dimness the two men could see the white of Olivia's floating veil.

At this, Amory wheeled and searched the length of wall across the yard. If only--if only--

There on the side of the courtyard opposite the windows of the banquet room stood the motor that was that night to go back to Melita. Bolt upright on the seat was Jarvo, and climbing in the tonneau, with his neck stretched toward the confusion of the palace, was Rollo. Jarvo saw Amory, who beckoned; and in an instant the car was beside them and the two men were over the back of the tonneau in a flash.

"That way," cried St. George, with no time to waste on the miracle of Jarvo's appearance, "that way--there. Where you see the white."

At a touch the motor plunged away into the fragrant darkness. Amory looked back. Figures crowded the windows of the palace, and streamed from the banquet hall into the courtyard. Men hurried through the hall, and there was clamour of voices, and in the honey-coloured air the great bulk of the palace towered like a faithless sentinel, the alien banners in nameless colours sending streamers into the moon-lit upper s.p.a.ces.