by Zona Gale
CHAPTER VIII
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING
By afternoon the island of Yaque was an accomplished fact ofdistinguishable parts. There it lay, a thing of rock and green, likethe islands of its sister latitudes before which the passing shipsof all the world are wont to cast anchor. But having once castanchor before Yaque the ships of all the world would have had greatdifficulty in landing anybody.
Sheer and almost smoothly hewn from the utmost coast of the islandrose to a height of several hundred feet one scarcely deviating wallof rock; and this apparently impregnable wall extended in eitherdirection as far as the sight could reach. Above the natural rampartthe land sloped upward still in steep declivities, but cut bytortuous gorges, and afar inland rose the mountain upon whose summitthe light had been descried. There the glass revealed white towersand columns rising from a mass of brilliant tropical green, and nowsmitten by the late sun; but save these towers and columns not asign of life or habitation was discernible. No smoke arose, nowharf or dock broke the serene outline of the black wall lapped bythe warm sea; and there was no sound save that of strong torrentsafar off. Lonely, inscrutable, the great mass stood, slightlyshelved here and there to harbour rank and blossomy growths of greenand presenting a rugged beauty of outline, but apparently asuninhabitable as the land of the North Silences.
Consternation and amazement sat upon the faces of the owner of _TheAloha_ and his guests as they realized the character of theremarkable island. St. George and Amory had counted upon anadventure calling for all diplomacy, but neither had expected thedelight of hazard that this strange, fairy-like place seemed aboutto present. Each felt his blood stirring and singing in his veins atthe joy of the possibilities that lay folded before them.
"We shall be obliged to land upon the east coast then, Jarvo?"observed St. George; "but how long will it take us to sail round theisland?"
"Very long," Jarvo responded, "but no, adon, we land on this coast."
"How is that possible?" St. George asked.
"Well, hi--you," said Little Cawthorne, "I'm a goat, but I'm nomountain goat. See the little Swiss kid skipping from peak to peakand from crag to crag--"
"Do we scale the wall?" inquired St. George, "or is there a passagein the rock?"
Bennietod hugged himself in uncontrollable ecstasy.
"Hully Gee, a submarine passage, in under de sea, like Jules Werne,"he said in a delight that was almost awe.
"There is a way over the rock," said Jarvo, "partly hewn, partlynatural, and this is known to the islanders alone. That way we musttake. It is marked by a White Blade blazoned on the rock over theentrance of the submarines. The way is cunningly concealed--hardlywill the glass reveal it, adon."
Barnay shook his head.
"You've a bad time comin' with the home-sickness," he prophesied,tucking his beard far down in his collar until he looked, forBarnay, smooth-shaven. "I've sailed the sou' Atlantic up an' downfer a matther av four hundhred years, more or less, an' I niver asmuch as seed hide _nor_ hair av the place before this prisint. Thereain't map or chart that iver dhrawed breath that shows ut, new orold. Ut's been lifted out o' ground to be afther swallowin' us in--asweet dose will be the lot av us, mesilf with as foine a gir-rl avschool age as iver you'll see in anny counthry."
"Ah yes, Barnay," said St. George soothingly--but he would havetried now to soothe a man in the embrace of a sea-serpent in justthe same absent-minded way, Amory thought indulgently.
The sun was lowering and birds of evening were beginning to broodover the painted water when _The Aloha_ cast anchor. In the latelight the rugged sides of the island had an air of almost sinisterexpectancy. There was a great silence in their windless shelterbroken only by the boom and charge of the breakers and the gulls andchoughs circling overhead, winging and dipping along the water andreturning with discordant cries to their crannies in the black rock.Before the yacht, blazoned on a dark, water-polished stratum of thevolcanic stone, was the White Blade which Jarvo told them marked thesubterranean entrance to the mysterious island.
St. George and his companions and Barnay, Jarvo and Akko were ondeck. Rollo, whose soul did not disdain to be valet to a steamyacht, was tranquilly mending a canvas cushion.
"The adon will wait until sunrise to go ashore?" asked Jarvo.
"_Sunrise_!" cried St. George. "Heaven on earth, no. We'll go now."
There was no need to ask the others. Whatever might be toward, theywere eager to be about, though Rollo ventured to St. George adeprecatory: "You know, sir, one can't be too careful, sir."
"Will you prefer to stay aboard?" St. George put it quietly.
"Oh, no, sir," said Rollo with a grieved face, "one should meetdanger with a light heart, sir," and went below to pack theoil-skins.
"Hear me now," said Barnay in extreme disfavour. "It's I that am tolay hereabouts and wait for you, sorr? Lord be good to me, an' fwhatif she lays here tin year', and you somewheres fillin' the eyes avthe aygles with your brains blowed out, neat?" he demandedmisanthropically. "Fwhat if she lays here on that gin'ral theorytill she's rotted up, sorr?"
"Ah well now, Barnay," said St. George grimly, "you couldn't have aneasier career."
Little Cawthorne, from leaning on the rail staring out at theisland, suddenly pulled himself up and addressed St. George.
"Here we are," he complained, "here has been me coming through thewatery deep all the way from Broadway, with an octopus clinging toeach arm and a dolphin on my back, and you don't even ask how Istood the trip. And do you realize that it's sheer madness for thefive of us to land on that island together?"
"What do you mean?" asked St. George.
The little man shook his grey curls.
"What if it's as Barnay says?" he put it. "What if they should bagus all--who'll take back the glad news to the harbour? Lord, youcan't tell what you're about walking into. You don't even know thespecific gravity of the island," he suggested earnestly. "How doyou know but your own weight will flatten you out the minute youstep ashore?"
St. George laughed. "He thinks he is reading the fiction page," heobserved indulgently. "Still, I fancy there is good sense on thepage, for once. We don't know anything about anything. I suppose wereally ought not to put all five eggs in one basket. But, by Jove--"
He looked over at Amory with troubled eyes.
"As host of this picnic," he said, "I dare say I ought to stayaboard and let you fellows--but I'm hanged if I will."
Little Cawthorne reflected, frowning; and you could as well haveexpected a bird to frown as Little Cawthorne. It was rather the nameof his expression than a description of it.
"Suppose," he said, "that Bennietod and I sit rocking here in thisbay--if it is a bay--while you two rest your chins on the top ofthat ledge of rock up there, and look over. And about to-morrow orday after we two will venture up behind you, or you could send oneof the men back--"
"My thunder," said Bennietod wistfully, "ain't I goin' to get toclimb in de pantry window at de palace--nor fire out of aloophole--"
"Bennietod an' I couldn't talk to a prince anyway," said LittleCawthorne; "we'd get our language twisted something dizzy, andprobably tell him 'yes, ma'am.'"
St. George's eyes softened as he looked at the little man. He knewwell enough what it cost him to make the suggestion, which the goodsense of them all must approve. Not only did Little Cawthorne alwayssacrifice himself, which is merely good breeding, but he madeopportunities to do so, which is both well-bred and virtuous. WhenRollo came up with the oil-skins they told him what had beendecided, and Rollo, the faithful, the expressionless, dropped hiseyelids, but he could not banish from his voice the wistfulness thathe might have been one to stay behind.
"Sometimes it _is_ best for a person to change his mind, sir," washis sole comment.
Presently the little green dory drew away from _The Aloha_, and theyleft her lying as much at her ease as if the phantom island beforeher were in every school-boy's geography, with a scale of miles anda list of the principal exports at
tached.
"If we had diving dresses, adon," Jarvo suggested, "we might havegone down through the sluice and entered by the lagoon where thesubmarines pass."
"Jove," said Amory, trying to row and adjust his pince-nez at thesame time, "Chillingworth will never forgive us for missing that."
"You couldn't have done it," shouted Little Cawthorne derisively,from the deck of the yacht, "you didn't wear your rubbers. Ifanybody sticks a knife in you send up a r-r-r-ocket!"
The landing, effected with the utmost caution, was upon a flatstone already a few inches submerged by the rising tide. Looking upat the jagged, beetling world above them their task appearedhopeless enough. But Jarvo found footing in an instant, and St.George and Amory pressed closely behind him, Rollo and little Akkosilently bringing up the rear and carrying the oil-skins. Slowly andcautiously as they made their way it was but a few minutes until thethree standing on the deck, and Barnay open-mouthed in the dory, sawthe sinuous line of the five bodies twist up the tortuous courseconsiderably above the blazoned emblem of the White Blade.
In truth, with Jarvo to set light foot where no foot seemed everbefore to have been set, with Jarvo to inspect every twig and pebbleand to take sharp turns where no turn seemed possible, the ascent,perilous as it was, proved to be no such superhuman feat as frombelow it had appeared. But it seemed interminable. Even when the sealay far beneath them and the faces of the watchers on the deck of_The Aloha_ were no longer distinguishable, the grim wall continuedto stretch upward, melting into the sky's late blue.
The afterglow laid a fair path along the water, and the warm duskcame swiftly out of the east. At snail's pace, now with heads bentto knees, now standing erect to draw themselves up by the arms or toleap a wicked-looking crevice, the four took their way up the blackside of the rock. Birds of the cliffs, disturbed from long rest,wheeled and screamed about them, almost brushing their faces withlong, fearless wings. There was an occasional shelf where, withbacks against the wall spotted with crystals of feldspar, theywaited to breathe, hardly looking down from the dizzy ledge. Greatslabs of obsidian were piled about them between stretches ofcalcareous stone, and the soil which was like beds of old lavacovered by thin layers of limestone, was everywhere pierced by sharpshoulders of stone lying in savage disarray. Gradually rock-slidesand rock-edges yielded a less insecure footing on the upper reaches,but the chasms widened and water dripping from lateral crevassesmade the vague trail slippery and the occasional earth sodden andtreacherous. For a quarter of a mile their way lay over a kind ofporous gravel into which their feet sank, and beyond at the summitof a ridge Jarvo halted and threw back to them a summary warning toprepare for "a long leap." A sharp angle of rock, jutting out, hadbeen split down the middle by some ancient force--very likely aPaleozoic butterfly had brushed it with its wing--and the edges hadbeen worn away in a treacherous slope to the very lip of thecrumbling promontory. From this edge to the edge of the oppositeabutment there was a gap of wicked width, and between was a sheerdrop into space wherefrom rose the sound of tumbling waters. WhenJarvo had taken the leap, easily and gracefully, alighting on theother side like the greyhound that he resembled, and the others,following, had cleared the edge by as safe a margin as if the abysswere a minor field-day event, St. George and Amory looked back withsudden wonder over the path by which they had come.
"I feel as if I weighed about ninety pounds," said St. George; "am Ifading away or anything?"
Amory stood still.
"I was thinking the same thing," he said. "By Jove--do yousuppose--what if Little Cawthorne hit the other end of thenail, as usual? Suppose the specific gravity--suppose there issomething--suppose it doesn't hold good in this dimension thata body--by Jove," said Amory, "wouldn't that be the deuce?"
St. George looked at Jarvo, bounding up the stony way as easily asif he were bounding down.
"Ah well now," he said, "you know on the moon an ordinary man wouldweigh only twenty-six or seven pounds. Why not here? We aren't helddown by any map!"
They laughed at the pleasant enormity of the idea and were hurryingon when Akko, behind them, broke his settled silence.
"In America," he said, "a man feels like a mountain. Here he feelslike a man."
"What do you mean by that?" demanded St. George uneasily. But Akkosaid no more, and St. George and Amory, with a disquieting idea thateach was laughing at the other, let the matter drop.
From there on the way was easier, leveling occasionally, frequentlyswelling to gentle ridges, and at last winding up a steep trail thatwas not difficult to keep in spite of the fast falling night. And atlength Jarvo, rounding a huge hummock where converging ridges met,scrambled over the last of these and threw himself on the ground.
"Now," he said simply.
The two men stood beside him and looked down. It seemed to St.George that they looked not at all upon a prospect but upon thesudden memory of a place about which he might have dreamed often andoften and, waking, had not been able to remember, though itsfamiliarity had continued insistently to beat at his heart; or thatin what was spread before him lay the satisfaction of Burne-Jones'wistful definition of a picture: "... a beautiful, romantic dream ofsomething that never was, never will be, in a light better than anylight that ever shone, in a land no one can define or remember, onlydesire..." yet it was to St. George as if he had reached no strangeland, no alien conditions; but rather that he had come home. It waslike a home-coming in which nothing is changed, none of the littleimprovements has been made which we resent because no one hasthought to tell us of them; but where everything is even more as oneremembers than one knew that one remembered.
At his feet lay a pleasant valley filled with the purple of deeptwilight. Far below a lagoon caught the late light and spread it ina pattern among hidden green. In the midst of the valley towered themountain whose summit, royally crowned by shining towers, had beenvisible from the open sea. At its feet, glittering in the abundantlight shed upon its white wall and dome and pinnacle, stood Med, theKing's City--but its light was not the light of the day, for thatwas gone; nor of the moon, not risen; and no false lights vexed thedark. Yet he was looking into a cup of light, as clear as the lightin a gazing-crystal and of a quality as wholly at variance withreality. The rocky coast of Yaque was literally a massive, naturalwall; and girt by it lay the heart of the island, fertile andpopulous and clothed in mystery. This new face which Nature turnedto him was a glorified face, and some way _it meant what he meant_.
St. George was off for a few steps, trampling impatiently over thecoarse grass of the bank. Somewhere in that dim valley--was shethere, was she there? Was she in trouble, did she need him, did shethink of him? St. George went through the ancient, delicious listas conscientiously as if he were the first lover, and she were thefirst princess, and this were the first ascent of Yaque that theworld had ever known. For by some way of miracle, the mystery of theisland was suddenly to him the very mystery of his love, and the twoso filled his heart that he could not have told of which he wasthinking. That which had lain, shadowy and delicious, in his soulthese many days--not so very many, either, if one counts thesuns--was become not only a thing of his soul but a thing of theoutside world, almost of the visible world, something that hadexisted for ever and which he had just found out; and here, wrappedin nameless light, lay its perfect expression. When a shaft ofsilver smote the long grass at his feet, and the edge of the moonrose above the mountain, St. George turned with a poignantexultation--did a mere victory over half a continent ever make a manfeel like that?--and strode back to the others.
"Come on," he called ringingly in a voice that did everything butconfess in words that something heavenly sweet was in the man'smind, "let's be off!"
Amory was carefully lighting his pipe.
"I feel sort of tense," he explained, "as if the whole place wouldexplode if I threw down my match. What do you think of it?"
St. George did not answer.
"It's a place where all the lines lead up," he was saying tohimself, "as they
do in a cathedral."
The four went the fragrant way that led to the heart of the island.First the path followed the high bank the branches of whose tropicalundergrowth brushed their faces with brief gift of perfume. On theother side was a wood of slim trunks, all depths of shadow anddelicacies of borrowed light in little pools. Everywhere, everywherewas a chorus of slight voices, from bark and air and secret moss,singing no forced notes of monotone, but piping a true song of thegladness of earth, plaintive, sweet, indescribably harmonious. Itcame to St. George that this was the way the woods at night wouldalways sound if, somehow, one were able to hear the sweetness thatpoured itself out. Even that familiar sense in the night-woods thatsomething is about to happen was deliciously present with him; andthough Amory went on quietly enough, St. George swam down that greenway, much as one dreams of floating along a street, above-heads.
The path curved, and went hesitatingly down many terraces. Here,from the dimness of the marge of the island, they gradually emergedinto the beginnings of the faint light. It was not like enteringupon dawn, or upon the moonlight. It was by no means like going tomeet the lights of a city. It was literally "a light better thanany light that ever shone," and it wrapped them round first like aveil and then like a mantle. Dimly, as if released from thecenser-smoke of a magician's lamp, boughs and glades, lines andcurves were set free of the dark; and St. George and Amory could seeabout them. Yet it did not occur to either to distrust thephenomenon, or to regard it as unnatural or the fruit of anyunnatural law. It was somehow quite as convincing to them as is hisfirst sight of electric light to the boy of the countryside, and nomore to be regarded as witchcraft.
St. George was silent. It was as if he were on the threshold ofFar-Away, within the Porch of the Morning of some day divine. Theplace was so poignantly like the garden of a picture that one hasseen as a child, and remembered as a place past all speechbeautiful, and yet failed ever to realize in after years, or to makeany one remember, or, save fleetingly in dreams to see once more,since the picture-book is never, never chanced upon again. Sometimeshe had dreamed of a great sunny plain, with armies marching;sometimes he had awakened at hearing the chimes, and fanciedsleepily that it was infinite music; sometimes, in the country inthe early morning, he had had an unreasonable, unaccountable momentof perfect happiness: and now the fugitive element of them allseemed to have been crystallized and made his own in that floatingwalk down the wooded terraces of this unknown world. And yet hecould not have told whether the element was contained in thatbeauty, or in his thought of Olivia.
At last they emerged upon a narrow, grassy terrace where white stepsmounted to a wide parapet. Jarvo ran up the steps and turned:
"Behold Med, adon," he said modestly, as if he had at that momentstirred it up in a sauce-pan and baked it before their astonishedeyes.
They were standing at the top of an immense flight of stepsextending as far to right and left as they could see, and leadingdown by easy stages and wide landings to the white-paved cityitself. The clear light flooded the scene--lucid, vivid,many-peopled. Far as the eye could see, broad streets extended,lined with structures rivaling in splendour and beauty thoseunforgotten "topless towers." Temples, palaces, and public buildingsrose, storey upon storey, built of hewn stones of great size; andnoble arches faced an open square before a temple of colossalmasonry crowning an eminence in the centre of the city. Directly inline with this eminence rose the mountain upon whose summit stoodthe far-seen pillars where burned the solitary light.
If an enchanted city had risen from the waves because some one hadchanced to speak the right word, it could have been no morebewildering; and yet the look of this city was so substantial, soadapted to all commonplace needs, so essentially the scene ofevery-day activity and purpose, that dozens of towns of pettyEuropean principalities seem far less actual and practicable homesof men. Busy citizens hurrying, the bark of a dog, the mere tone ofa temple bell spoke the ordinary occupations of all the world; andupon the chief street the moon looked down as tranquilly as if thecauseway were a continuation of Fifth Avenue.
But it was as if the spirit of adventure in St. George had suddenlyturned and questioned him, saying:
"What of Olivia?"
For Olivia gone to a far-away island to find her father was subjectof sufficient anxiety; but Olivia in the power of a pretender whomight have at command such undreamed resources was more than coolreason could comprehend. That was the principal impression that Med,the King's City, made upon St. George.
"To the right, adon," Jarvo was saying, "where the walls arehighest--that is the palace of the prince, the Palace of theLitany."
"And the king's palace?" St. George asked eagerly.
Jarvo lifted his face to the solitary summit light upon themountain.
"But how does one ascend?" cried St. George.
"By permission of Prince Tabnit," replied Jarvo, "one is borne upby six imperial carriers, trained in the service from birth. Oneattempting the ascent alone would be dashed in pieces."
"No municipal line of airships?" ventured Amory in slowastonishment.
Jarvo did not quite get this.
"The airships, adon," he said, "belong to the imperial household andare kept at the summit of Mount Khalak."
"A trust," comprehended Amory; "an absolute monarchy is a bit of atrust, anyhow. Of course, it's sometimes an outraged trust..." hemurmured on.
"The adon," said Jarvo humbly, "will understand that we, I and Akko,have borne great risk. It is necessary that we make our peace withall speed, if that may be. The very walls are the ears of PrinceTabnit, and it is better to be behind those walls. May the godspermit the possible."
"Do you mean to say," asked St. George, "that we too would betterlook out the prince at once?"
"The adon is wise," said Jarvo simply, "but nothing is hid fromPrince Tabnit."
St. George considered. In this mysterious place, whose ways were asunknown to him and to his companions as was the etiquette of thecourt of the moon, clearly diplomacy was the better part of valour.It was wiser to seek out Prince Tabnit, if he had really arrived onthe island, than to be upon the defensive.
"Ah, very well," he said briefly, "we will visit the prince."
"Farewell, adon," said Jarvo, bowing low, "may the gods permit thepossible."
"Of course you will communicate with us to-morrow," suggested St.George, "so that if we wish to send Rollo down to the yacht--"
"The gods will permit the possible, adon," Jarvo repeated gently.
There was a flash of Akko's white teeth and the two little men weregone.
St. George and Amory turned to the descending of the wide whitesteps. Such immense, impossible white steps and such a curious placefor these two to find themselves, alone, with a valet. Struck by thesame thought they looked at each other and nodded, laughing alittle.
"Alone in the distance," said Amory, emptying his pipe, "and not acab to be seen."
Rollo thrust forward his lean, shadowed face.
"Shall I look about for a 'ansom, sir?" he inquired with perfectgravity.
St. George hardly heard.
"It's like cutting into a great, smooth sheet of white paper," hesaid whimsically, "and making any figure you want to make."
Before they reached the bottom of the steps they divined, issuingfrom an isolated, temple-seeming building below, a train ofsober-liveried attendants, all at first glance resembling Jarvo andAkko. These defiled leisurely toward the strangers and lined upirregularly at the foot of the steps.
"Enter Trouble," said Amory happily.
They found themselves confronting, in the midst of the attendants,an olive man with no angles, whose face, in spite of its health andeven wealth of contour, was ridiculously grave, as if the_papier-mache_ man in the down-town window should have had a suddenserious thought just before his _papier-mache_ incarnation.
"Permit me," said the man in perfect English and without bowing, "tobring to you the greeting of his Highness, Prince Tabnit, and hiswelcome to Yaq
ue. I am Cassyrus, an officer of the government. Atthe command of his Highness I am come to conduct you to the palace."
"The prince is most kind," said St. George, and added eagerly: "Heis returned, then?"
"Assuredly. Three days ago," was the reply.
"And the king--is he returned?" asked St. George.
The man shook his head, and his very anxiety seemed important.
"His Majesty, the King," he affirmed, "is still most lamentablyabsent from his throne and his people."
"And his daughter?" demanded St. George then, who could notpossibly have waited an instant longer to put that question.
"The daughter of his Majesty, the King," said Cassyrus, lookingstill more as if he were having his portrait painted, "will in threedays be recognized publicly as Princess of Yaque."
St. George's heart gave a great bound. Thank Heaven, she was here,and safe. His hope and confidence soared heavenward. And by somemiracle she was to take her place as the people of Yaque hadpetitioned. But what was the meaning of that news of the prince'streachery which Jarvo and Akko had come bearing? The prince hadfaithfully fulfilled his mission and had conducted the daughter ofthe King of Yaque safely to her father's country. What did it allmean?
St. George hardly noted the majestic square through which theywere passing. Impressions of great buildings, dim white and mistygrey and bathed in light, bewilderingly succeeded one another;but, as in the days which followed the news of his inheritance, hefound himself now in a temper of unsurprise, in that mentalatmosphere--properly the normal--which regards all miracle asnatural law. He even omitted to note what was of passingstrangeness: that neither the retinue of the minister nor theothers upon the streets cast more than casual glances at theirunusual visitors. But when the great gates of the palace werereadied his attention was challenged and held, for though meremarvels may become the air one breathes, beauty will never ceaseto amaze, and the vista revealed was of almost disconcertingbeauty.
Avenues of brightness, arches of green, glimpses of airy columns, ofboundless lawns set with high, pyramidal shrines, great places ofquiet and straight line, alleys whose shadow taught the necessity ofmystery, the sound of water--the pure, positive element of itall--and everywhere, above, below and far, that delicate, labyrinthlight, diffused from no visible source. It was as if some strangecompound had changed the character of the dark itself, transmutingit to a subtle essence more exquisite than light, inhabiting it withwonders. And high above their heads where this translucence seemedto mix with the upper air and to fuse with moonbeams, sprang almostjoyously the pale domes and cornices of the palace, sending outfloating streamers and pennons of colours nameless and unknown.
"Jupiter," said the human Amory in awe, "what a picture for thefirst page of the supplement."
St. George hardly heard him. The picture held so perfectly theelusive charm of the Question--the Question which profoundlyunderlies all things. It was like a triumphant burst of music whichyet ends on a high note, with imperfect close, hinting passionatelyat some triumph still loftier.
From either side of the wall of the palace yard came glittering adetachment of the Royal Golden Guard, clad in uniforms of unrelievedcloth-of-gold. These halted, saluted, wheeled, and between theirshining ranks St. George and Amory footed quietly on, followed byRollo carrying the yellow oil-skins. To St. George there was reliefin the motion, relief in the vastness, and almost a boy's delight inthe pastime of living the hour.
Yet Royal Golden Guard, majestic avenues, and towered palace withits strange banners floating in strange light, held for him but onereality. And when they had mounted the steps of the mighty entrance,and the sound of unrecognized music reached him--a very myth ofmusic, elusive, vagrant, fugued--and the palace doors swung open toreceive them, he could have shouted aloud on the brilliantthreshold:
"He says she is here in Yaque."
