Romance Island

by Zona Gale

  CHAPTER VI

  TWO LITTLE MEN

  Next morning St. George was early astir. He had slept little and hisdreams had been grotesques. He threw up his blind and looked acrossbuildings to the grey park. The sky was marked with rose, the stillreservoir gave back colour upon its breast, and the tower upon itsmargin might have been some guttural-christened castle on the Rhine.St. George drew a deep breath of good, new air and smiled for thesake of the things that the day was to bring him. He was in thegolden age when the youthful expectation of enjoyment is justbeginning to be savoured by the inevitable longing for more light,and he seemed to himself to be alluringly near the verge of both.

  His first care the evening before had been to hunt outChillingworth. He had found him in a theatre and had got him out tothe foyer and kept him through the third act, pouring in his ears asmuch as he felt that it was well for him to know. Chillingworth haddrawn his square, brown hands through his hair and, in lieu ofcopy-paper, had nibbled away his programme and paced the corner bythe cloak-room.

  "It looks like a great big thing," said the city editor; "don't youthink it looks like a great big thing?"

  "Extraordinarily so," assented St. George, watching him.

  "Can you handle it alone, do you think?" Chillingworth demanded.

  "Ah, well now, that depends," replied St. George. "I'll see itthrough, if it takes me to Yaque. But I'd like you to promise, Mr.Chillingworth, that you won't turn Crass loose at it while I'm gone,with his feverish head-lines. Mrs. Hastings and her niece must bespared that, at all events."

  "Don't you be a sentimental idiot," snapped Chillingworth, "andspoil the biggest city story the paper ever had. Why, this may drawthe whole United States into a row, and mean war and a newpossession and maybe consulates and governorships and one thing oranother for the whole staff. St. George, don't spoil the sport.Remember, I'm dropsical and nobody can tell what may happen. By theway, where did you say this prince man is?"

  "Ah, I didn't say," St. George had answered quietly. "If you'llforgive me, I don't think I shall say."

  "Oh, you don't," ejaculated Chillingworth. "Well, you please bearound at eight o'clock in the morning."

  St. George watched him walking sidewise down the aisle as he alwayswalked when he was excited. Chillingworth was a good sort at heart,too; but given, as the bishop had once said of some one else, tospending right royally a deal of sagacity under the obviousimpression that this is the only wisdom.

  At his desk next morning Chillingworth gave to St. George a notefrom Amory, who had been at Long Branch with _The Aloha_ when theletter was posted and was coming up that noon to put ashoreBennietod.

  "May Cawthorne have his day off to-morrow and go with me?" theletter ended. "I'll call up at noon to find out."

  "Yah!" growled Chillingworth, "it's breaking up the whole staff,that's what it's doin'. You'll all want cut-glass typewriters next."

  "If I should sail to-day," observed St. George, quite as if he wereboarding a Sound steamer, "I'd like to take on at least two men. AndI'd like Amory and Cawthorne. You could hardly go yourself, couldyou, Mr. Chillingworth?"

  "No, I couldn't," growled Chillingworth, "I've got to keep my tastesdown. And I've got to save up to buy kid gloves for the staff. Lookhere--" he added, and hesitated.

  "Yes?" St. George complied in some surprise.

  "Bennietod's half sick anyway," said Chillingworth, "he's thin aswater, and if you would care--"

  "By all means then," St. George assented heartily, "I would careimmensely. Bennietod sick is like somebody else healthy. Will youmind getting Amory on the wire when he calls up, and tell him toshow up without fail at my place at noon to-day? And to wait therefor me."

  Little Cawthorne, with a pair of shears quite a yard long, wassitting at his desk clipping jokes for the fiction page. He washumming a weary little tune to the effect that "Billy Enny took apenny but now he hadn't many--Lookie They!" with which he whiledaway the hours of his gravest toil, coming out strongly on the"Lookie They!" until Benfy on the floor above pounded for quietwhich he never got.

  "Cawthorne," said St. George, "it may be that I'm leaving to-nighton the yacht for an island out in the southeast. And the chief saysthat you and Amory are to go along. Can you go?"

  Little Cawthorne's blue eyes met St. George's steadily for a moment,and without changing his gaze he reached for his hat.

  "I can get the page done in an hour," he promised, "and I can packmy thirty cents in ten minutes. Will that do?"

  St. George laughed.

  "Ah, well now, this goes," he said. "Ask Chillingworth. Don't tellany one else."

  "'Billy Enny took a penny,'" hummed Little Cawthorne in perfecttranquillity.

  St. George set off at once for the McDougle Street house. A thousanddoubts beset him and he felt that if he could once more be face toface with the amazing prince these might be better cleared away.Moreover, the glimpses which the prince had given him of a worldwhich seemed to lie as definitely outside the bourne of presentknowledge as does death itself filled St. George with unrest, spicedhis incredulity with wonder, and he found himself longing to talkmore of the things at which the strange man had hinted.

  The squalor of the street was even less bearable in the earlymorning. St. George wondered, as he hurried across from the GrandStreet station, how the prince had understood that he must not onlyavoid the great hotels, but that he must actually seek outincredible surroundings like these to be certain of privacy. Foronly the very poor are sufficiently immersed in their own affairs tobe guiltless of curiosity, save indeed a kind of surface morbidwonderment at crepe upon a door or the coming of a well-dressedwoman to their neighbourhood. The prince might have lived inMcDougle Street for years without exciting more than derisivecomment of the denizens, derision being no other than their humourgone astray.

  St. George tapped at the door which the night before had admittedhim to such revelation. There was no answer, and a repeated summonsbrought no sound from within. At length he tentatively touched thelatch. The door opened. The room was quite empty. No remnant offurniture remained.

  He entered, involuntarily peering about as if he expected to findthe prince in a dusty corner. The windows were still shuttered, andhe threw open the blinds, admitting rectangles of sunlight. He couldhave found it in his heart, as he looked blankly at the four walls,to doubt that he had been there at all the night before, soemphatically did the surroundings deny that they had ever harboureda title. But on the floor at his feet lay a scrap of paper, twistedand torn. He picked it up. It was traced in indistinguishablecharacters, but it bore the Holland coat of arms and crown which theprince had shown them. St. George put the paper in his pocket andquestioned a group of boys in the passage.

  "Yup," shouted one of the boys with that prodigality of intonationdistinguishing the child of the streets, who makes every statementas if his word had just been contradicted out of hand, "he means debloke wid de black block. Aw, he lef' early dis mornin' wid 's junkfollerin.' Dey's two of 'em. Wot's he t'ink? Dis ain't no Nigger'sRest. Dis yere's all Eyetalian."

  St. George hurried to Fifty-ninth Street. It was not yet teno'clock, but the departure of the prince made him vaguely uneasy andfor his life he could not have waited longer. Perhaps it was nottrue at all; perhaps none of it had happened. The McDougle Streetpart had vanished; what if the Boris too were a myth? But as hesprang up the steps at the apartment house St. George knew better.The night before her hand had lain in his for an infinitesimal time,and she had said "Until to-morrow."

  On sending his name to Mrs. Hastings he was immediately bidden toher apartment. He found the drawing-room in confusion--the furniturecovered with linen, the bric-a-brac gone, and three steamer trunksstrapped and standing outside the door. All of which mattered to himless than nothing, for Olivia was there alone.

  She came down the dismantled room to meet him, smiling a little andvery pale but, St. George thought, even more beautiful than she hadbeen the day before. She was dressed for walking and h
ad on a soberlittle hat, and straightway St. George secretly wondered how hecould ever have approved of anything so flagrant as a Gainsborough.She lifted her veil as they sat down, and St. George liked that. Tocomplete his capitulation she turned to a little table set beforethe bowing flames of juniper branches in the grate.

  "This is breakfast," she told him; "won't you have a cup of tea anda muffin? Aunt Medora will be back presently from the chemist's."

  For the first time St. George blessed Mrs. Hastings.

  "You are really leaving to-day, Miss Holland?" he asked, noting thelittle ringless hand that gave him two lumps.

  "Really leaving," she assented, "at noon to-day. Mr. Frothinghamsails with us, and his daughter Antoinette, who will be a greatcomfort to me. The prince doesn't know about her yet," she addednaively, "but he must take her."

  St. George nodded approvingly. Unless all signs failed, hereflected, Yaque had some surprises in store at the hands of thedaughter of its sovereign.

  "Where does the prince appoint?" he asked.

  He listened in entire disapproval while she told him of the placebelow quarantine where they were to board the submarine. The prince,it appeared, had sent his servant early that morning to assure themthat all was in readiness, a bit of oriental courtesy which made noimpression upon St. George, though it explained the promptwithdrawal from 19 McDougle Street. When she had finished, St.George rose and stood before the fire, looking down at her from aworld of uncertainty.

  "I don't like it, Miss Holland," he declared, and hesitated, dividedbetween the desire to tell her that he was going too, and the fearlest Mrs. Hastings should arrive from the chemist's.

  Olivia made a gesture of throwing it all from her.

  "Have a muffin--do," she begged. "This is my last breakfast inAmerica for a time--let me have a pleasant memory of it. Mr. St.George, I want--oh, I want to tell you how greatly I appreciate--"

  "Ah, please," urged St. George, and smiled while he protested, "yousee, I've been very selfish about the whole matter. I'm selfish nowto be here at all when, I dare say, you've no end of things to do."

  "No," Olivia disclaimed, "I have not," and thus proved that she wasa woman of genius. For a less complex woman always flutters throughthe hour of her departure. Only Juno can step from the cloudswithout packing a bag and feeding the peacocks and leaving, pinnedto an asphodel, a note for Jupiter.

  "Then tell me what you are going to do in Yaque," he besought."Forgive me--what are you going to do all alone there in thatstrange land, and such a land?"

  He divined that at this she would be very brave and buoyant, and hewas lost in anticipative admiration; when she was neither he admiredmore than ever.

  "I don't know," said Olivia gravely, "I only know that I must go.You see that, do you not--that I must go?"

  "Ah, yes," St. George assured her, "I do indeed, believe me. Don'tyou think," he said, "that I might give you a lamp to rub if youneed help? And then I'll appear."

  "In Yaque?"

  He nodded gravely.

  "Yes, in Yaque. I shall rise out of a jar like the Evil Genie; andthough I shall be quite helpless you will still have the lamp. And Ishall be no end glad to have appeared."

  "But suppose," said Olivia merrily, "that when I have eaten apomegranate or a potato or something in Yaque I forget all aboutAmerica? And when you step out of the jar I say 'Off with his head,'by mistake. How shall I know it is you when the jar is opened?"

  "I shall ask you what the population of Yaque is," he assured her,"and how the island compares with Manhattan, and if this is yourfirst visit, and how you are enjoying your stay; and then you willrecognize the talk of civilization and spare me."

  "No," she protested, "I've longed to say 'Off with his head' to toomany people who have said all that to me. And you mustn't say that aholiday always seems like Sunday, either."

  Whereat they both laughed, and it seemed an uncommonly pleasantworld, and even the sad errand that was taking Olivia to Yaquelooked like a hope.

  Then the talk ran on pleasantly, and things went very brisklyforward, and there was no dearth of fleet little smiles at this andthat. What was she to bring him from Yaque--a pet ibis? No, he hadno taste for ibises--unless indeed there should be Fourth-Dimensionibises; and even then he begged that she would select instead amagic field-glass, with which one might see what is happening at aninfinite distance; although of what use would that be to him, hewanted to know, since it would be his too late to follow hererrantry through Yaque? They felt, as they talked, quite like thepuppets of the days of Haroun-al-Raschid; only the puppets, poorchildren of mere magic, had not the traditions of the golden age ofscience for a setting, and were obliged to content themselves withmere tricks of jars of genii instead of applied electricity and itsdaring. What an Arabian Nights' Entertainment we might have had ifonly Scheherazade had ever heard of the Present! As for thethousand-and-one-nights, they would not have contained all herinvention. No wonder that the time went trippingly for the two whowere concerned in such bewildering speculation as the prince hadmade possible and who were furthering acquaintanceship besides.

  "Ah, well now, at all events," begged St. George at length, "willyou remember something while you are away?"

  "Your kindness, always," she returned.

  "But will you remember," said St. George with his boy's eagerness,"that there is some one who hopes no less than you for your success,and who will be infinitely proud of any command at all from you? Andwill you remember that, though I may not be successful, I shall atleast be doing something to try to help you?"

  "You are very good," she said gently, "I shall remember. For alreadyyou have not only helped me--you have made the whole matterpossible."

  "And what of that," propounded St. George gloomily, "if I can't helpyou just when the danger begins? I insist, Miss Holland, that ittakes far more good nature to see some one else set off at adventurethan it takes to go one's self. Won't you let me come back here attwelve o'clock and go down with you to the boat?"

  "By all means," Olivia assented, "my aunt and I shall both be glad,Mr. St. George. Then you can wish us well. What is a submarinelike," she wanted to know; "were you ever on one?"

  "Never, excepting a number of times," replied St. George, supremelyunconscious of any vagueness. He was rapidly losing count of allevents up to the present. He was concerned only with these things:that she was here with him, that the time might be measured byminutes until she would be caught away to undergo neither knew whatperils, and that at any minute Mrs. Hastings might escape from thechemist's.

  Although the commonplace is no respecter of enchantments, it wasquite fifteen minutes before the sword fell and Mrs. Hastings didmake the moment her prey, as pinkly excited as though herdrawing-room had been untenanted. And in the meantime no one knowswhat pleasantly absurd thing St. George longed to say, it is soperilous when one is sailing away to Yaque and another stands uponthe shore for a word of farewell. But, indeed, if it were not forthe soberest moments of farewell, journeys and their returns wouldbecome very tame affairs. When the first man and maid said even themost formal farewell, providing they were the right man and theright maid, the very stars must have begun their motion. Very likelythe fixed stars are nothing but grey-beards with no imagination.Distance lends enchantment, but the frivolous might say that thepreliminary farewell is the mint that coins it. And, enchantmentbeing independent of the commonplace, after all, it may have beenthat certain stars had already begun to sing while St. George satstaring at the little bowing flames of the juniper branches andOlivia was taking her tea. Then in came Mrs. Hastings, a veryliteral interfering goddess, and her bonnet was frightfully awry sothat the parrot upon it looked shockingly coquettish and irreverentand lent to her dignity a flavour of ill-timed waggishness. But itmust be admitted that Mrs. Hastings and everything that she worewere "_les antipodes des graces_." She was followed by a footman,his arms filled with parcels, and she sank among them on the divanand held out her limp, plump hand for a cup of tea. Mrs. Hasti
ngshad the hands that are fettered by little creases at the wrists andwhose wedding rings always seem to be uncomfortably snug. She satdown, and her former activity dissolved, as it were, into anothersort of energy and became fragments of talk. Mrs. Hastings was likethe old woman in Ovid who sacrificed to the goddess of silence, butcould never keep still; save that Mrs. Hastings did not sacrifice.

  "Good morning, Mr. St. George," she said. "I'm sure I've quiteforgotten everything. Olivia dear, I've had all the prescriptionsmade up that I've ever taken to Rutledge's, because no one can tellwhat the climate will be like, it's so low on the map. I've lookedup the Azores--that's where we get some of our choicest cheese. Andcamphor--I've got a pound of camphor. And I must say positively thatI always was against these wars in the far East, because all thecamphor comes from Korea or one of those frightful islands and nowit has gone up twenty-six cents a pound. And then the flaxseed,Olivia dear. I've got a tin of flaxseed, for no one can tell--"

  St. George doubted if she knew when he said good morning, althoughshe named him Mr. St. John, gave him permission to go to the boat,hoped in one breath that he would come again to see them, and in thenext that he would send them a copy of whatever the _Sentinel_ mightpublish about them, in serene oblivion of the state of thepost-office department in Yaque. Mrs. Hastings, in short, was one ofthe women who are thrown into violent mental convulsions by theprospect of a journey; this was not at all because she was settingsail specifically for Yaque, for the moment that she saw a porter ora pier, though she was bound only for the Bronx or Staten Island,she was affected in the same way.

  As Olivia gave St. George her hand he came perilously near tellingher that he would follow her to Yaque; but he reflected that if hewere to tell her at all, he would better do so on the way to thesubmarine. So he went blindly down the hall and rang the elevatorbell for so long that the boy deliberately stopped on the floorbelow and waited, with the diabolical independence of the Americanlords of the lift, "for to teach 'im a lessing," this one explainedto a passing chamber-maid.

  St. George hurried to his apartment to leave a note for Amory whowas directed upon his arrival to bide there and await his host'sreturn. Then he paced the floor until it was time to go back to theBoris, deaf to Rollo's solemn information that the dust comes up outof the varnish of furniture during the night, like cream out ofmilk. By the time he had boarded a down-town car, St. George hadtortured himself to distraction, and his own responsibility in thissubmarine voyage loomed large and threatening. Therefore, itsuddenly assumed the proportion of mountains yet unseen when, thoughit wanted ten minutes to twelve when he reached the Boris, his cardwas returned by a faint polite clerk with the information that Mrs.Hastings and Miss Holland had been gone from the hotel for half anhour. There was a note for him in their box the clerk believed, andpresently produced it--a brief, regretful word from Olivia tellinghim that the prince had found that they must leave fully an hourearlier than he had planned.

  Sick with apprehension, cursing himself for the ease and dexteritywith which he had permitted himself to be outwitted by Tabnit, St.George turned blindly from the office with some vague idea ofchartering all the tugs in the harbour. It came to him that he hadbungled the matter from first to last, and that Bud or Bennietodwould have used greater shrewdness. And while he was in the midst ofanathematizing his characteristic confidence he stepped in the outerhallway and saw that which caused that confidence to balloonsmilingly back to support him.

  In the vestibule of the Boris, deaf to the hovering attention of adoor-boy more curious than dutiful, stood two men of the stature andcomplexion of Prince Tabnit of Yaque. They were dressed like theyouth who had answered the door of the prince's apartment, and theywere speaking softly with many gestures and evidently in someperplexity. The drooping spirits of St. George soared to Heaven ashe hastened to them.

  "You are asking for Miss Holland, the daughter of King Otho ofYaque," he said, with no time to smile at the pranks of thedemocracy with hereditary titles.

  The men stared and spoke almost together.

  "We are," they said promptly.

  "She is not here," explained St. George, "but I have attended tosome affairs for her. Will you come with me to my apartment where wemay be alone?"

  The men, who somehow made St. George think of tan-colouredgreyhounds with very gentle eyes, consulted each other, not with thesuspicion of the vulgar but with the caution of the thorough-bred.

  "Pardon," said one, "if we may be quite assured that this is MissHolland's friend to whom we speak--"

  St. George hesitated. The hall-boy listened with an air of politeconcern, and there were curious over-shoulder glances from thepassers-by. Suddenly St. George's face lighted and he went swiftlythrough his pockets and produced a scrap of paper--the fragment thathad lain that morning on the floor of the prince's desertedapartment, and that bore the arms of the King of Yaque. It was thestrangers' turn to regard him with amazement. Immediately, to St.George's utmost embarrassment, they both bowed very low andpronounced together:

  "Pardon, adon!"

  "My name is St. George," he assured them, "and let's get into acab."

  They followed him without demur.

  St. George leaned back on the cushions and looked at them--leanlithe little men with rapid eyes and supple bodies and greatrepose. They gave him the same sense of strangeness that he hadfelt in the presence of the prince and of the woman in the BitleyReformatory--as if, it whimsically flashed to him, they some wayrhymed with a word which he did not know.

  "What is it," St. George asked as they rolled away, "what is it thatyou have come to tell Miss Holland?"

  Only one of the men spoke, the other appearing content to show tworows of exceptionally white teeth.

  "May we not know, adon," asked the man respectfully, "whether theprince has given her his news? And if the prince is still in yourland?"

  "The prince's servant, Elissa, has tried to stab Miss Holland andhas got herself locked up," St. George imparted without hesitation.

  An exclamation of horror broke from both men.

  "To stab--to _kill_!" they cried.

  "Quite so," said St. George, "and the prince, upon being discovered,disclosed some very important news to Miss Holland, and she and herfriends started an hour ago for Yaque."

  "That is well, that is well!" cried the little man, nodding, andmomentarily hesitated; "but yet his news--what news, adon, has hetold her?"

  For a moment St. George regarded them both in silence.

  "Ah, well now, what news had he?" he asked briefly.

  The men answered readily.

  "Prince Tabnit was commissioned by the Yaquians to acquaint theprincess with the news of the strange disappearance of her father,the king, and to supplicate her in his place to accept thehereditary throne of Yaque."

  "Jupiter!" said St. George under breath.

  In a flash the whole matter was clear to him. Prince Tabnit haddelivered no such message from the people of Yaque, but hadcontented himself with the mere intimation that in some vanishingfuture she would be expected to ascend the throne. And he had donethis only when Olivia herself had sought him out after an attempthad been made upon her life by his servant. It seemed to St. Georgefar from improbable that the woman had been acting under theprince's instructions and, that failing, he himself had appeared andobligingly placed the daughter of King Otho precisely within theprince's power. Now she was gone with him, in the hope of aiding herfather, to meet Heaven knew what peril in this pagan island; and he,St. George, was wholly to blame from first to last.

  "Good Heavens," he groaned, "are you sure--but are you sure?"

  "It is simple, adon," said the man, "we came with this message fromthe people of Yaque. A day before we were to land, Akko and I--I amJarvo--overheard the prince plan with the others to tell hernothing--nothing that the people desire. When they knew that we hadheard they locked us up and we have only this morning escaped fromthe submarine. If the prince has told her this message everything iswell. But as
for us, I do not know. The prince has gone."

  "He told her nothing--nothing," said St. George, "but that herfather and the Hereditary Treasure have disappeared. And he hastaken her with him. She has gone with him."

  Deaf alike to their exclamations and their questions St. George satstaring unseeingly through the window, his mind an abyss of fear.Then the cab drew up at the door of his hotel and he turned upon thetwo men precipitantly.

  "See," he cried, "in a boat on the open sea, would you two be at allable to direct a course to Yaque?"

  Both men smiled suddenly and brilliantly.

  "But we have stolen a chart," announced Jarvo with great simplicity,"not knowing what thing might befall."

  St. George wrenched at the handle of the cab door. He had a glimpseof Amory within, just ringing the elevator bell, and he bundled thetwo little men into the lobby and dashed up to him.

  "Come on, old Amory," he told him exultingly. "Heaven on earth, putout that pipe and pack. We leave for Yaque to-night!"