by Zona Gale
CHAPTER X
TYRIAN PURPLE
The "porch of light" proved to be an especially fascinating place atevening. Evening, which makes most places resemble their soulsinstead of their bodies, had a grateful task in the beautiful roomwhose spirit was always uppermost, and Evening moved softly in itsivory depths, preluding for Sleep. Here, his lean, shadowed face allanxiety, Rollo stood, holding at arm's length a parti-coloured robewith floating scarfs.
"It seems to me, sir," he said doubtfully, "that this one would 'avedone better. Beggin' your pardon, sir."
St. George shook his head distastefully.
"It doesn't matter," he said, and broke into a slow smile as helooked at Amory. The robes which the prince had provided for theevening were rather harder to become accustomed to than the notionof 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 countsevery 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 thestyles of Deuteronomy you aren't necessarily what you might callup."
"Yes, sir," said Rollo, dropping his eyes, "but a well-dressed manwas a well-dressed man, sir, then _as_ now."
As a matter of fact the well-knit, athletic young figures lookeduncommonly well in the garments _a la mode_ in Yaque. One would havesaid that if the garments followed Deuteronomy fashions they had atall events been cut by the scissors of a court tailor to Louis XV.The result was beautiful and bizarre, but it did not suggeststageland because the colours were so good.
"I dare say," said St. George, examining the exquisitely fine clothwhose shades were of curious depth and richness, "that this may beregular 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 casements and resumed hiswalk up and down before the windows that looked away to the hugethreatening bulk of Mount Khalak. Since the prince's announcementthat afternoon St. George had done little besides continuing thatwalk. Now it wanted hardly half an hour to the momentous ceremony ofthe evening, big with at least one of the dozen portents of which heaccused it.
"Amory," he burst out as he walked, "if you didn't know anythingabout it, would you say that the prince could possibly have made herconsent to marry him?"
Amory, left in the middle of the great room, stood polishing hispince-nez exactly as if he had been waiting at the end ofChillingworth's desk of a bright, American morning.
"If I didn't know anything about it," he said cheerfully, "I shouldsay that he had. As it is, having this afternoon watched a certainmotor wear its way past me, I should say that nothing in Yaque ismore unlikely. And that's about as strong as you could put it."
"We don't know what the man may have threatened," said St. Georgemorosely, "he may have played upon her devotion to her father tosome ridiculous extent. He may have refused to land the submarine atYaque at all otherwise--"
St. George broke off suddenly.
"Toby!" he said.
Amory looked over and nodded. He had seen that look before on St.George's face.
"She's not going to marry the prince," said St. George, "and if herfather is alive and in a hole, he's going to be pulled out. Andshe's _not_ going to marry the prince."
"Why, no," assented Amory, "no."
He had guessed a good deal of the truth since he had been watchingSt. George flee over seas upon a yacht, shod, so to speak, withfire, and he had arrived at the suspicion that _The Aloha_ waswinged by little Loves and guided under water by plenty of blue andgreen dragons. But he had not, until now, been thoroughly certainthat St. George's spirit of adventure had another name; and thoughtheoretically his sympathies leaped to the look in his friend'seyes, yet he found himself wondering practically what effect romancewould be having upon their enterprise. After all, from a newspaperpoint of view, to relinquish any part of the adventure was a kind oftragedy, and it cost Amory something to emphasize his assent.
"Of course she won't," he said, "and now let's toddle down and seeabout it."
When the tread of the feet of a detachment of the Royal Golden Guardwas heard without, Rollo advanced to the door with a dignity whichamounted to melancholy. The setting of a palace and the proximity ofa prince had raised his office to the majesty of skilled labour. Healways threw open the door now as who should say, "Enter. But mindyou have a reason."
At sight of the long liberty of the corridor where the light laymysteriously touching tiles and tapestries to festal colours,Amory's spirits rose contagiously, and his eyes shone behind hispince-nez.
"Me," he said, looking ahead with enjoyment at the glitteringescort, "me--done in a fabric of about the eleventh shade of theYaque spectrum--made loose and floppy, after a modish Canaanitishmodel. I'll wager that when the first-born of Canaan was in theflood-tide of glory, this very gown was worn by one of the mostbeautiful women in the pentapolis of Philistia. I'm going tophotograph the model for the Sunday supplement, and name it _TheNebuchadnezzar_."
Amory murmured on, and St. George hardly heard him. He could almostcount by minutes now the time until he should see her. Would she seehim, and might he just possibly speak with her, and what would theevening hold for her? As he went forth where she would be, the spellof the place was once more laid upon him, as it had been laid in thehour of his coming. Once more, as in the hour when he had firstlooked down upon the valley brimming with a light "better than anylight that ever shone" he was at one with the imponderable thingswhich, always before, had just eluded him. Now, as then, the thoughtof Olivia was the symbol for them all. So the two went on throughthe winding galleries--silent, haunted--to the great staircase, andbelow into the crowded court. And when they reached the thresholdof the audience-chamber they involuntarily stood still.
The hall was like a temple in its sense of space and height andclear air, but its proportions did not impress one, and indeed onecould not remember its boundaries as one does not consider theboundaries of a grove. It was amphitheatre-shaped, and about it rana splendid colonnade, in the niches of whose cornices were beautifulgrotesques--but Yaque seemed to be a land whose very grotesques hadall the dignity of the ultimate instead of crying for the indulgencedue a phase. The roof was inlaid with prisms of clear stone, and onhigh were pilasters carved with the Tyrian sphinxes crucified uponupright crosses, surmounted by parhelions of burnished metal. Allthe seats faced a great dais at the chamber's far end where threethrones were set.
But it was the men and women in the great chamber who filled St.George with wonder. The women--they were beautiful women,slow-moving, slow-eyed, of soft laughter and sudden melancholy, andclear, serene profiles and abundant hair. And they were all _alive_,fully and mysteriously alive, alive to their finger-tips. It was asif in comparison all other women acted and moved in a kind ofhalf-consciousness. It was as if, St. George thought vaguely, onewere to step through the frame of a pre-Raphaelite tapestry andsuddenly find its strange women rejoicing in fulfillment instead ofyearning, in noon instead of dusk. As he stood looking down the vastchamber, all springing columns and light lines lifting through thehoney-coloured air, it smote St. George that these people, insteadof being far away, were all near, surprisingly, unbelievably near tohim,--in a way, nearer to his own elusive personality than he washimself. They were all obviously of his own class; he couldperfectly imagine his mother, with her old lace and Roman mosaics,moving at home among them, and the bishop, with his wise, kindlysmile. Yet he was irresistibly reminded of a certain haunting dreamof his childhood in which he had seemed to himself to walk the worldalone, with every one else allied against him because they all knewsomething that he did not know. That was it, he thought suddenly,and felt his pulse quickening at the intimation: _They all knewsomething that he did not know_, that he could not know. But, asthey swept him
with their clear-eyed, impersonal look, a lookthat seemed in some exquisite fashion to take no account ofindividuality, he was gratefully aware of a curious impressionthat they would like to have had him know, too.
"They wish I knew--they'd rather I did know," St. George foundhimself thinking in a strange excitement, "if only I could know--ifonly I could know."
He looked about him, smiling a little at his folly. He saw thelight flash on Amory's glasses as they turned inquisitively on thisand that, and somehow the sight steadied him.
"Ah well," he assured himself, "I'll look them up in a thousandyears or so, and we'll dine together, and then we'll say: 'Don't youremember how I didn't know?'"
Immediately there presented himself to them a little man who provedto be Balator, lord-chief-commander of the Royal Golden Guard, andnow especially directed by the prince, he pleasantly told them, tobe responsible for their entertainment and comfort during theceremony to follow. They were, in fact, his guests for the evening,but St. George and Amory were uncertain whether, considering hisoffice, this was a high honour or a kind of exalted durance.However, as the man was charming the doubt was not important. He hadan attenuated face, so conveniently brown by race as to suggest themost soldierly exposure, and he had great, peaceable, slow-liddedeyes. He was, they subsequently learned, an authority upon insectlife in Yaque, for he had never had the smallest opportunity to goto war.
As Balator led his guests to their seats near the throne every onelooked on them, as they passed, with the serenest fellowship, and noregard persisted longer than a glance, friendly and fugitive.Balator himself not only refrained from stoning the barbarians withcommonplaces, but he did not so much as mention America to them ortreat them otherwise than as companions, as if his was not only thecosmopolitanism that knows no municipal or continental aliens of itsown class, but a kind of inter-dimensional cosmopolitanism as well.
"Which," said Amory afterward, "was enviable. The next man fromTrebizond or Saturn or Fez whom I meet I'm going to greet and treatas if he lived the proverbial 'twenty minutes out.'"
A great clock boomed and throbbed through the palace, striking anhour that was no more intelligible than the jargon of a ship's clockto a landsman. Somewhere an orchestra thrilled into haunting sound,poignant with disclosures barely missed. Overhead, through themighty rafters of the conical roof, the moon looked down.
"That'll be the same old moon," said Amory. "By Jove! Won't it?"
"It will, please Heaven," said St. George restlessly; "I don't know.Will it?"
Near the throne was seated a company of dignitaries who wore upontheir breasts great stars and were soberly dressed in a kind ofscholar's gown. Some whispered together and nodded and looked assolemn as tithing men; and others were feverishly restless andcontinually took papers from their graceful sleeves. Bydevelopments these were revealed to be the High Council of Yaque,conservative and radical, even in dimensional isolation. Fartherback rose tier upon tier of seats sacred to the wives and daughtersof the ministry, and St. George even looked hopelessly andmechanically among these for the face that he sought.
To some seats slightly elevated, not far from the dais, hisattention was at length challenged by an upheaving and billowing ofpurple and black. He looked, and in the same instant what seemed tohave been a kind of storm centre resolved itself cloudily into Mrs.Medora Hastings, breathlessly resuming her seat, while Mr. AugustusFrothingham, in indescribably gorgeous apparel elaborately bent toreceive--and a member of the High Council bent to hand--twoglittering articles which St. George was certain were side-combs.There the lady sat, tilting her head to keep her tortoise-shellglasses on her nose, perpetually curving their chain over her ear, agesture by which the side-combs were perpetually displaced. If theisland people had been painted purple, St. George felt sure that shewould have acted quite the same. Personality meant nothing toher--not, as with them, because it had been merged in somethinggreater, but because, with her, it was overborne by self. And theresat Mr. Frothingham (who did not attend the play during courtbecause he believed that a man of affairs should not undulystimulate the imagination), his head thrown back so that his longhair rested on his amazing collar, his hands laid trimly along hisknees. In that crystal air, instinct with its delicate, dominantimplication of things imponderable, the personality of eachpersisted undisturbed, in a kind of adamantine unconsciousness.Again, as when he had considered the soul of Rollo, St. Georgesmiled a shade bitterly. Is it then so easy to persist, he wondered?Is love's uttermost gift so little? But as the music swelled withpremonitory meaning, he understood something that its verytransitoriness disclosed: the persistence of love, love's mereimmortality, is the dead letter of the law without that which iselusive, imponderable, even evanescent as the spirit of the land towhich he had come, into which he felt himself new-born.
Immediately, bestowing its gift of altered mood, other music, cut bythe lift and fall of trumpets, sounded from hidden places all aboutthe walls and from the alcoves of the lofty roof. Then a veilhanging between two pillars was drawn aside, and the prince's trainappeared. There were a detachment of the guard, splendid in theirunrelieved gold, and the officers of the court, at their headCassyrus, the premier, who had manifestly been compounded of Heavento be a drum-major, and had so undeviating a look that he seemedalways to have been caught, red-handed, at his post. Last camePrince Tabnit, dressed in pure white save for a collar of preciousstones from which hung the strange green gem that St. Georgeremembered. His clear face and the whiteness of his hair lent to himan air of almost unearthly distinction. His delicate hands wearingno jewels were at his sides, and his head was magnificently erect.He mounted the dais as the music sank to silence, and withoutpreface began to speak.
"My people," he said, and St. George felt himself thrilling with thestrength and tenderness of that voice, "in the continuance of thisour time of trial we come among you that we may win strength andcourage from your presence. Since one mind dwells in us all, we haveno need of words of cheer. That no message from his Majesty, theKing, has come to us is known to you all, with mourning. But thegods--to whom 'here' is the same as 'there'--will permit thepossible, and they have permitted to us the presence of the daughterof our sovereign, by the grace of the infinite, heir to the throneof Yaque. In two days, should his Majesty not then have returned tohis sorrowing people, she will, in accordance with our custom, becrowned Hereditary Princess of Yaque and, after one year, Queen ofYaque and your rightful sovereign."
As the prince paused, a little breath of assent was in the room,more potent than any crudity of applause.
"Next," pursued the prince, "we would invite your attention to ourown affairs, which are of importance solely as they are affected bythe immemorial tradition of the House of the Litany. Therefore, inaccordance with the custom of our predecessors for two thousandyears," lightly pursued the prince, "we have named this day as theday of our betrothal. Moreover, this is determined upon in justiceto the daughters of the twenty peers of Yaque, whose marriage thelaw forbids until the choice of the head of the House of the Litanyhas been made..."
St. George listened, and his hope soared heavenward as the hope ofyoung love will soar, in spite of itself, at the mere sight of opensky. The daughters of the twenty peers of Yaque! Of course they wereto be considered. Why should he fear that, because Olivia was inYaque, the mere mention of a betrothal referred to Olivia? He wasbold enough to smile at his fears, to smile even when, as the princeceased speaking, the music sounded again, as it were from the air,in a chorus of pure young voices with a ripple of unknown strings inaccompaniment.
Suddenly, at the opening of great doors, a flood of saffron lightwas poured upon a stair, and at the summit appeared the leisurelyhead of a procession which the two men were destined never toforget. Across the gallery and down the stair--it might have beenthe Golden Stair linking Near with Far--came a score of exquisitewomen in all the glory of their youth, of perfect physical beautyand splendid strength and fullness of life; and the wonder was nottheir beauty mor
e than a kind of dryad delicacy of that beauty,which was yet not frailty but a look of angelic strength. But theywere not remote--they were gloriously human, almost, one would say,divinely human, all gentle movement and warmth and tender breath.They were not remote, save as one's own soul would be remote by itsvery excess of intimacy with life, Little maids, so shy that theiractuality was certain, came before them carrying flowers, and thesewere followed by youths scattering fragrant burning powder whosefallen flames were instantly pounced upon and extinguished by smallfurry lemurs trained to lay silver discs upon the flames. And asthey all ranged themselves about the throne a little figure appearedat the top of the stairway alone, beneath the lifted curtain.
She was veiled; but the elastic step, the girlish grace, the poiseand youthful dignity were not to be mistaken. The room whirled roundSt. George, and then closed in about him and grew dark. For this wasthe woman advancing to her betrothal; from the manner of herentrance there could be no doubt of that. And it was none of thedaughters of the twenty peers. It was Olivia.
She wore a trailing gown of rainbow hues, more like the hues ofwater than of texture, and the warm light fell upon these as shedescended and variously multiplied them to beauty. Her little feetwere sandaled and a veil of indescribable thinness was wound abouther abundant hair and fell across her face, but the gold of her hairescaped the veil and rippled along her gown. Carven chains andnecklaces were upon her throat, and bracelets of beaten gold andjewels upon her arms. About her forehead glittered a jeweled bandwith pendent gems which, at her moving, were like noon sun uponwater.
As he realized that this was indeed she whom he had come to seek,only to find her hedged about with difficulties--and it might be bydivinities--which he had not dreamed of coping, a kind of madnessseized St. George. The lights danced before his eyes, and hisimpulse had to do with rushing up to the dais and crying everybodydefiance but Olivia. On the moon-lit deck of _The Aloha_ he haddreamed out the island and the rescue of the island princess, and apossible home-going on his yacht to a home about which he had evendared to dream, too. But it had not once occurred to him to forecastsuch a contingency as this, or, later, so to explain to himselfPrince Tabnit's change of purpose in permitting her recognition asPrincess of Yaque--indeed, if what Jarvo and Akko had told him inNew York were accurate, in bringing her to the island at all. Andyet what, he thought crazily, if his guess at her part in thisbetrothal were far wrong? What if her father's safety were not theonly consideration? What if, not unnaturally dazzled by thefairy-land which had opened to her ... even while he feared, St.George knew far better. But the number of terrors possible to a manin love is equal to those of battle-fields.
Amory bent toward him, murmuring excitedly.
"Jupiter," he said, "is she the American girl?"
"She's Miss Holland," answered St. George miserably.
"No--no, not the princess," said Amory, "the other."
St. George looked. On the stair was a little figure in rose andsilver--very tiny, very fair, and no doubt the lawyer's daughter.
"I dare say it is," he told him, as one would say, "Now what thedeuce of it?"
Prince Tabnit had risen to receive Olivia, and St. George had to seehim extend his hand and assist her beside him upon the dais. In theabsence of her father she was obliged to stand alone. Then thelittle figure in rose and silver and one of the daughters of thepeers advanced and lifted her veil, and St. George wanted to shoutwith sudden exultation. This then was she--so near, so near. Surelyno great harm could come to them so long as the sea and the mysteryof the island no longer lay between them. Did she know of hispresence? Although he and Amory were seated so near the throne, theywere at one side, and her clear, pure profile was turned towardthem. And Olivia did not lift her eyes throughout the primeminister's long address, of which St. George and Amory, so lappedwere they in wild projects and importunities, heard nothing until,uttered with indescribable pompousness, as if Cassyrus were adowager and had made the match himself, the concluding words beatupon St. George's heart like stones. They were the formalannouncement of the betrothal of Olivia, daughter of his Majesty,Otho I of Yaque, to Tabnit, Prince of Yaque and Head of the House ofthe Litany.
St. George saw Prince Tabnit kneel before Olivia and place a ringupon her hand--no doubt the ring which had betrothed the islandprincesses for three thousand years. He saw the High Councilstanding with bowed heads, like the necessary archangels in an oldpainting; he caught the flash of the turquoise-blue ephod of thehead of the religious order, as the benediction was pronounced byits wearer. And through it all he said to himself that all would bewell if only she understood, if only she had the supremeself-consciousness to play the game. After all he knew her solittle. He was certain of her exquisite, playful fancy, but had sheimagination? Would she see the value of the moment and watch herselfmoving through it? Or would she live it with that feminine,unhumourous seriousness which is woman's weakness? She had anexquisite independence, he was certain that she had humour, and heremembered how alive she had seemed to him, receptive, like a womanwith ten senses. But after all, would not her graceful sanity ofview, that sense of tradition and unerring taste which he soreverenced, yet handicap her now and prevent her from daringwhatever she must dare?
Amory was beside himself. It was all very well to feel a greatsympathy for St. George, but the sight was more than journalisticflesh and blood could look upon with sympathetic calm.
"An American girl!" he breathed in spite of himself. "Why, St.George, if we can leave this island alive--"
"Well, _you_ won't," St. George explained, with brutal directness,"unless you can cut that."
Before silence had again fallen, the prime minister, all his feverof importance still upon him, once more faced the audience. Thistime his words came to St. George like a thunderbolt:
"In three days' time, at noon, in this the Hall of Kings," he cried,letting each phrase fall as if he were its proud inventor,"immediately following the official recognition of Olivia, daughterof Otho I, as Hereditary Princess of Yaque, there will besolemnized, according to the immemorial tradition of the island lastobserved six hundred and eighty-four years ago by Queen Pentellaria,the marriage of Olivia of Yaque, to his Highness, Prince Tabnit,head of the House of the Litany, and chief administrator of justice._For the law prescribes that no unmarried woman shall sit upon thethrone of Yaque._ At noon of the third day will be observed thedouble ceremony of the recognition and the marriage. May the godspermit the possible."
There was a soft insistence of music from above, a stir and breathabout the room, the premier backed away to his seat, and St. George,even with the horrified tightening at his heart, was conscious of avague commotion from the vicinity of Mrs. Medora Hastings. Then hesaw the prince rise and turn to Olivia, and extend his hand toconduct her from the hall. The great banquet room beyond thecolonnade was at once thrown open, and there the court circle andthe ministry were to gather to do honour to the new princess, whomPrince Tabnit was to lead to the seat at his right hand at thetable's head.
To the amazement of his Highness, Olivia made no movement to acceptthe hand that he offered. Instead, she sat slightly at one side ofthe great glittering throne, looking up at him with something likethe faintest conceivable smile which, while one saw, became oncemore her exquisite, girlish gravity. When the music sank a littleher voice sounded above it with a sweet distinctness:
"One moment, if you please, your Highness," she said clearly.
It was the first time that St. George had heard her voice since itsgood-by to him in New York. And before her words his vague fears forher were triumphantly driven. The spirit that he had hoped for wasin her face, and something else; St. George could have sworn that hesaw, but no one else could have seen the look, a glimpse of thatdelicate roguery that had held him captive when he had breakfastedwith her--several hundred years before, was it?--at the Boris. Ah,he need not have feared for her, he told himself exultantly. Forthis was Olivia--of America--standing in a company of the women whoseemed
like the women of whom men dream, and whose presence, save inglimpses at first meetings, they perhaps never wholly realize. Thesewere the women of the land which "no one can define or remember."And yet, as he watched her now, St. George was gloriously consciousthat Olivia not only held her own among them, but that in some charmof vividness and of _knowledge of laughter_, she transcended themall.
A ripple of surprise had gone round the room. For all the air of theultimate about the island-women, St. George doubted whether ever inthe three thousand years of Yaque's history a woman had raised hervoice from that throne upon a like occasion. And such a tender,beguiling, cajoling little voice it was. A voice that held littleremarques upon whatever it had just said, and that made onebreathless to know what would come next.
"Bully!" breathed Amory, his eyes shining behind his pince-nez.
Prince Tabnit hesitated.
"If the princess wishes to speak with us--" he began, and Oliviamade a charming gesture of dissent, and all the jewels in her hairand upon her white throat caught the light and were set glittering.
"No," she said gently, "no, your Highness. I wish to speak in thepresence of my people."
She gave the "my" no undue value, yet it fell from her lips withdelicious audacity.
"Indeed," she said, "I think, your Highness, that I will speak to mypeople myself."
