by Zona Gale
CHAPTER XVII
BENEATH THE SURFACE
Up came the dusk to the doors of the king's palace--a hurry of greybanners flowing into the empty ways where the sun had been. Uponthis high dominion Night could not advance unheralded, and here theTwilight messengered her coming long after the dark lay thick on thelowland and on the toiling water.
St. George, leaning from Amory's window, looked down on the shadowsrising in exquisite hesitation, as if they came curling from thelighted censer of Med. There is no doubt at all, Olivia had saidgravely, that the dusk is patterned, if only one could seeit--figured in unearthly flowers, in wandering stars, in upper-airsprites, grey-winged, grey-bodied, so that sometimes glimpsing themone fancies them to be little living goblins. He smiled, rememberingher words, and glanced over his shoulder down the long room wherethe other light was now beginning to creep about, first expressing,then embracing the chamber dusk. It seemed precisely the momentwhen something delicate should be caught passing from gloom toradiance, to be thankfully remembered. But only many-winged colourswere visible, though he could hear a sound like little murmurousspeech in the dusky roof where the air had a recurrent fashion ofwhispering knowingly.
Indeed, the air everywhere in the palace had a fashion of whisperingknowingly, for it was a place of ghostly draughts and blastscreeping through chambers cleft by yawning courts and open corridorsand topped by that skeleton dome. And as St. George turned from thewindow he saw that the door leading into the hall, urged by somenimble gust, imaginative or prying, had swung ajar.
St. George mechanically crossed the room to close the door, notinghow the pale light warmed the stones of that cave-like corridor.With his hand upon the latch his eyes fell on something crossing thecorridor, like a shadow dissolving from gloom to gloom. Well beyondthe open door, stealing from pillar to pillar in the dimness andmoving with that swiftness and slyness which proclaim a covertpurpose as effectually as would a bell, he saw old Malakh.
Now St. George was in felt-soled slippers and he was coatless,because in the adjoining room Jarvo, with a heated, helmet-likeapparatus, was attempting to press his blue serge coat. In thatroom too was Amory, catching glimpses of himself in a mirror ofpolished steel, but within reach, on the divan where Jarvo had justlaid it, was Amory's coat; and St. George caught that up, slipped iton, and was off down the corridor after the old man, moving asswiftly and slyly as he. St. George had no great faith in him or inwhat he might know, but the old man puzzled him, and mystificationis the smell of a pleasant powder.
The palace was very still. Presumably, Mrs. Hastings and Mr.Frothingham were already at chess in the drawing-room awaitingdinner. St. George heard a snatch of distant laughter, in quicklittle lilts like a song, and it occurred to him that its echo therewas as if one were to pin a ruffle of lace to the grim stones. Someone answered the laugh, and he heard the murmurous touching of softskirts entering the corridor as he dived down the ancient dark ofone of the musty passages. There the silence was resumed. In thepalace it was as though the stillness were some living sleeper,waking with protests, thankful for the death of any echo.
No one was in the gallery. St. George, stepping softly, followed asnear as he dared to that hurrying figure, flitting down the dark. Astill narrower hallway connected the main portion of the palace witha shoulder of the south wing, and into this the old man turned andskirted familiarly the narrow sunken pool that ran the length ofthe floor, drawing the light to its glassy surface and revealing theshadows sent clustering to the indistinguishable roof.
Midway the gallery sprang a narrow stairway, let in the wall andonce leading to the ancient armoury, but now disused and piled withrubbish. Old Malakh went up two steps of this old stairway, turnedaside, and slipped away so swiftly that his amazed pursuer caught nomore than an after-flutter of his dun-coloured garments. St. George,his softly-clad feet making no noise upon the stones, boundedforward and saw, through a triangular aperture in the stones, andset so low that a man must crouch upon the step to enter, a yawningplace of darkness.
He might very well have been taking his life in his hands, for hecould have no idea whether the aperture led to the imperial dungeonsor to the imperial rain-water cistern; but St. George instantly bentand slipped down into that darkness, thick with the dust of theflight of the old man. With the distinctly pleasurable sensation ofbeing still alive he found himself standing upright upon an unevenfloor of masonry. He thrust out his arms and touched sides of mossyrock. Then just before him a pale flame flickered. The old man hadkindled a little taper that hardly did more than make shallowhollows in the darkness through which he moved.
It was easy to follow now, and St. George went breathlessly onpast the rudely-hewn walls and giant pillars of that hidden way.He might have been lost with ease in any of the lower processes ofthe palace which they had that morning visited; but he could notbe deceived about the chambers which he had once seen, and thissubterranean course was new to him. Was it, he wondered, new toOlivia, and to Jarvo? Else why had it been omitted in thatmorning's search? And was this strange guide going on at random,or did he know--something? A suspicion leaped to St. George's mindthat made his heart beat. The king--might he be down hereafter all, and might this weird old man know where? His ownconsciousness became chiefly conjecture, and every nerve was alertin the pursuit; not the less because he realized that if he wereto lose this strange conductor who went on before, either insecure knowledge or in utter madness, he himself might wander forthe rest of his life in that nether world.
Past grim latchless doors sealing, with appropriate gestures, theirforgotten secrets, past outlying passages winding into the heart ofthe mountain, past niches filled with shapeless crumbling rubbishthey hurried--the mad old man and his bewildered pursuer. Twice theway turned, gradually narrowing until two could hardly have passedthere, and at last apparently terminated in a short flight ofsteps. Old Malakh mounted with difficulty and St. George, waiting,saw him standing before a blank stone wall. Immediately and withouteffort the old man's scanty strength served to displace one of thewall's huge stones which hung upon a secret pivot and rollednoiselessly within. He stepped through the aperture, and St. Georgesprang behind him, watched his moment to cross the threshold,crouched in the leaping shadow of the displaced stone andlooked--looked with the undistinguishing amazement that a man feelsin the panorama of his dreams.
The room was small and low and set with a circular bench, runningabout a central pillar. On the table was a confusion of thingsbrilliantly phosphorescent, emitting soft light, and mingled withbulbs, coils and crucibles lying in a litter of egg-shells,feathers, ivory and paper. But it was not these that held St. Georgeincredulous; it was the fire that glowed in their midst--a fire thatleaped and trembled and blazed inextinguishable colour, smouldering,sparkling, tossing up a spray of strange light, lambent with thosewizard hues of the pennons and streamers floating joyously from thedome of the Palace of the Litany--the fire from the subject heartsof a thousand jewels. There could be no doubting what he saw. There,flung on the table from the mouth of a carven casket and harbouringthe captive light of ages gone, glittered what St. George knewwould be the gems of the Hereditary Treasure of the kings of Yaque.
But for old Malakh to know where the jewels were--that was asamazing as was their discovery. St. George, breathing hard in hiscorner, watched the long, fine hands of the old man trembling amongthe delicate tubes and spindles, lingering lovingly among thestones, touching among the necklaces and coronals of the dead queenswhose dust lay not far away. It was as if he were summoning anddiscarding something shining and imponderable, like words. Thecontents of the casket which all Yaque had mourned lay scattered inthis secret place of which only this strange, mad creature, a chancepensioner at the palace, had knowledge.
Suddenly the memory of Balator's words smote St. George with newperception. "He walks the streets of Med," Balator had told him atthe banquet, "saying 'Melek, Melek,' which is to say 'king,' and sohe is seeking the king. But he is mad, and he weeps; an
d thereforethey pretend to believe that he says, 'Malakh,' which is to say'salt,' and they call him that, for his tears."
Could old Malakh possibly know something of the king? The hopereturned to St. George insistently, and he watched, spending histhought in new and extravagant conjecture, his mental visionblurring the details of that heaped-up, glistening confusion; and onthe opposite side of the table the old man lifted and laid downthat rainbow stuff of dreams, delighting in it, speaking softlyabove it. Had he been the king's friend, St. George was asking--butwhy did no one know anything of him? Or had he been an enemy who haddone the king violence--but how was that possible, in his age andfeebleness? Mystifying as the matter was, St. George exulted as muchas he marveled; for it would be his, at all events, to place thejewels in Olivia's hands and clear her father's name; he longed tostep out of the dark and confront the old man and seize the casketout of hand, and he would probably have done so and taken hischances at getting back to the upper world, had he not been chainedto his corner by the irresistible hope that the old man knewsomething more--something about the king. And while he wondered,reflecting that at any cost he must prevent the replacing of thepivotal stone, he saw old Malakh take up his taper, turn away fromthe table, and open a door which the room's central pillar had cutfrom his view.
He was around the table in an instant. The open door revealed threestone steps which the old man was ascending, one at a time.Following him cautiously St. George heard a door grate outward atthe head of the stair, saw the taper move forward in darkness, andthe next moment found himself standing in the room of the tombs ofthe kings of Yaque. And he saw that the panel which had swunginward to admit them was set low in the monolithic tomb of KingAbibaal himself.
Old Malakh had crossed swiftly to the wall opposite the tomb, andstood before the vacant niche which was to be occupied, as Jarvo hadannounced, by "His Majesty, King Otho, by the grace of God." There,setting aside his taper, the old man stretched his arms upward tothe empty shelf and with a gesture of inconceivable weariness bowedhis head upon them and stood silent, the leaping candle-lightsilvering his hair.
"Upon my soul," thought St George with finality, "he's murdered him.Old Malakh has murdered the king, and it's driven him crazy."
With that he did step out of the dark, and he laid his hand suddenlyupon the old man's shoulder.
"Malakh," he said, "what have you done with the king?"
The old man lifted his head and turned toward St. George a face ofsingular calm. It was as if so many phantoms vexed his brain that astrange reality was of little consequence. But as his eyes met thoseof St. George a sudden dimness came over them, the lids flutteredand dropped, and his lips barely formed his words:
"The king," he said. "I did not leave the king. It was the king whosomehow went away and left me here--"
He threw out his hands blindly, tottered and swayed from the wall;and St. George received him as he fell, measuring his length uponthe stones before King Otho's future tomb.
St. George caught down the light and knelt beside him. Death seemedto have come "pressing within his face," and breathing hardlydisquieted his breast. St. George fumbled at the old man's robe, andbeneath his fingers the heart fluttered never so faintly. Heloosened the cloth at the withered throat, passed his hand over thestill forehead, and looked desperately about him.
The other inmates of the palace were, he reflected, about two goodcity blocks from him; and he doubted if he could ever find hisunaided way back to them. Mechanically, though he knew that hecarried no flask, he felt conscientiously through his pockets--ahabit of the boy in perplexity which never deserts the manin crises. In the inside pocket of the coat that he waswearing--Amory's coat--his fingers suddenly closed aboutsomething made of glass. He seized it and drew it forth.
It was a little vase of rock-crystal, ornamented with goldmedallions, covered with exquisite and precise engraving of greatbeauty and variety of design--gryphons, serpents, winged discs, mencontending with lions. St. George stared at it uncomprehendingly. Inthe press of events of the last eight-and-forty hours Amory hadquite forgotten to mention to him the prince's intended gift ofwine, almost three thousand years old, sealed in Phoenicia.
St. George drew the stopper. In an instant an odour, spicy,penetrating, delicious, saluted him and gave life to the dead air ofthe room. For a moment he hesitated. He knew that the flask had notbeen among Amory's belongings and that he himself had never seen itbefore. But the odour was, he thought, unmistakable, and so powerfulthat already he felt as if the liquor were racing through his ownveins. He touched it to his lips; it was like a full draught of somemarvelous elixir. Sudden confidence sat upon St. George, andthanking his guiding stars for the fortunate chance, heunhesitatingly set the flask to the old man's lips.
There was a long-drawn, shuddering breath, a fluttering of theeyelids, a movement of the limbs, and after that old Malakh layquite still upon the stones. Once more St. George thrust his handwithin the bosom of the loose robe, and the heart was beatingrapidly and regularly and with amazing force. In a moment deepbreaths succeeded one another, filling the breast of the unconsciousman; but the eyelids did not unclose, and St. George took up thetaper and bent to scan the quiet face.
St. George looked, and sank to his knees and looked again, holdingthe light now here, now there, and peering in growing bewilderment.What he saw he was wholly unable to define. It was as if a mask wereslowly to dissolve and yet to lie upon the features which it hadcovered, revealing while it still made mock of concealing. Colourwas in the lips, colour was stealing into the changed face. The_changed_ face--changed, St. George could not tell how; and thelonger he looked, and though he rubbed his eyes and turned themtoward the dark and then looked again, moving the taper, he couldneither explain nor define what had happened.
He set the candle on the floor and sprang away from the quietfigure, searching the dark. The great silent place, with itsshoulders of sarcophagi jutting from the gloom was black save forthe little ring of pallid light about that prostrate form. St.George sent his hand to his forehead, and shook himself a bit, andstraightened his shoulders with a smile.
"It must be the stuff you've tasted," he addressed himself solemnly."Heaven knows what it was. It's the stuff you've tasted."
Though he had barely touched his lips to the rock-crystal vase St.George's blood was pounding through his veins, and a curiousexhilaration filled him. He looked about at the rims and corners ofthe tombs caught by the light, and he laughed a little--though thiswas not in the least what he intended--because it passed throughhis mind that if King Abibaal and Queen Mitygen, for example, mightbe treated with the contents of the mysterious vase they would nodoubt come forth, Abibaal with memories of the Queen of Sheba in hiseyes, and Queen Mitygen with her casket of Alexander's letters. ThenSt. George went down on his knees again, and raised the old man'shead until it rested upon his own breast, and he passed the candlebefore his face, his hand trembling so that the light flickered andleaped up.
This time there was no mistaking. The tissues of old Malakh's ashenface and throat and pallid hands were undergoing some subtletransfiguration. It was as if new blood had come encroaching intheir veins. It was as if the muscles were become firm and full, asif the wrinkled skin had been made smooth, the lips grown fresh, asif--the word came to St. George as he stared, spell-stricken--as if_youth_ had returned.
St. George slipped down upon the stones and sat motionless. Therewas a little blue, forked vein on the man's forehead, and upon thishe fastened his eyes, mechanically following it downward and back.Lines had crossed it, and there had been a deep cleft between theeyes, but these had disappeared, leaving the brow almost smooth. Thecheeks were now tinged with colour, and the throat, where he hadpulled aside the robe, showed firm and white. Mechanically St.George passed his hand along the inert arm, and it was no morewithered than his own--the arm of no greybeard, but of a man in theprime of life. What did it mean--what did it mean? St. Georgewaited, the blood throbbing in his temples, a mist bef
ore his eyes.What did it mean?
The minutes dragged by and still the unconscious man did not stir orunclose his eyes. From time to time St. George pressed his hand tothe heart, and found it beating on rhythmically, powerfully. When hefound himself sitting with averted head, as if he were afraid tolook back at that changing face, a fear seized him that he had losthis reason and that what he imagined himself to see was a phase ofmadness. So he left the old man's side and sturdily tramped awayinto the huge dark of the room, resolutely explaining to himselfthat this was all very natural; the old man had been ill, improperlynourished, and the powerful stimulant of the wine had partlyrestored him. But even while he went over it St. George knew in hisheart that what had happened was nothing that could be so explained,nothing that could be explained at all by anything within his ken.
His footsteps echoed startlingly on the stones, and the chill breathof the place smote his face as he moved. He stumbled on a displacedtile and pitched forward upon a jagged corner of sarcophagus, andreeled as if at a blow from some arm of the darkness. The taper raysstruck a length of wall before him, minting from the gloom a sheetof pale orchids clinging to the unclean rock. St. George remembereda green slope, spangled with crocuses and wild strawberries,coloured like the orchids but lying under free sky, in free air. Itseemed only a trick of Chance that he was not now lying on that farslope, wherever it was, instead of facing these ghost blooms in thisghost place. Back there, where the light glimmered beside the tombof King Abibaal, nobody could tell what awaited him. If the mancould change like this, might he not take on some shape too hideousto bear in the silence? St. George stood still, suddenlyclenching his hands, trying to reach out through the dark and tograsp--himself, the self that seemed slipping away from him. But washe mad already, he wondered angrily, and hurried back to the farflickering light, stumbling, panting, not daring to look at thefigure on the floor, not daring not to look.
He resolutely caught up the candle and peered once more at the face.As steadily and swiftly as change in the aspect of the sky the facehad gone on changing. St. George had followed to the chamber an oldtottering man; the figure before him was a man of not more thanfifty years.
St. George let fall the candle, which flickered down, upright in itssocket; and he turned away, his hand across his eyes. Since this wasmanifestly impossible he must be mad, something in the stuff thathe had tasted had driven him mad. He felt strong as a lion, strongenough to lift that prostrate figure and to carry it through thewinding passages into the midst of those above stairs, and to begthem in mercy to tell him how the man looked. What would _she_ say?He wondered what Olivia would say. Dinner would be over and theywould be in the drawing-room--Olivia and Amory and AntoinetteFrothingham; already the white room and the lights and Antoinette'slaughter seemed to him of another world, a world from which he hadirrevocably passed. Yet there they were above, the same roofcovering them, and they did not know that down here in this place ofthe dead he, St. George, was beyond all question going mad.
With a cry he pulled off Amory's coat, flung it over the unconsciousman, and rushed out into the blackness of the corridor. He would nottake the light--the man must not die alone there in the dark--andbesides he had heard that the mad could see as well in the dark asin the light. Or was it the blind who could see in the dark? Nodoubt it was the blind. However, he could find his way, he thoughttriumphantly, and ran on, dragging his hand along the slipperystones of the wall--he could find his way. Only he must call out, totell them who it was that was lost. So he called himself by name,aloud and sternly, and after that he kept on quietly enough, serenein the conviction that he had regained his self-control, fighting tokeep his mind from returning to the face that changed before hiseyes, like the appearances in the puppet shows. But suddenly hebecame conscious that it was his own name that he went shoutingthrough the passages; and that was openly absurd, he reasoned, sinceif he wanted to be found he must call some one else's name. But hemust hurry--hurry--hurry; no one could tell what might be happeningback there to that face that changed.
"Olivia!" he shouted, "Amory! Jarvo--oh, Jarvo! Rollo, youscoundrel--"
Whereat the memory that Rollo was somewhere on a yacht assailed him,and he pressed on, blindly and in silence, until glimmering beforehim he saw a light shining from an open door. Then he rushed forwardand with a groan of relief threw himself into the room. Opposite thedoor loomed the grim sarcophagus of King Abibaal, and beside it onthe floor lay the figure with the face that changed. He had gone acircle in those tortuous passages, and this was the room of thetombs of the kings.
He dragged himself across the chamber toward the still form. He mustlook again; no one could tell what might have happened. He pulleddown the coat and looked. And there was surely nothing in thedelicate, handsome, English-looking face upturned to his to givehim new horror. It was only that he had come down here in the wakeof a tottering old creature, and that here in his place lay a manwho was not he. Which was manifestly impossible.
Mechanically St. George's hand went to the man's heart. It wasbeating regularly and powerfully, and deep breaths were coming fromthe full, healthily-coloured lips. For a moment St. George kneltthere, his blood tingling and pricking in his veins and pulsing inhis temples. Then he swayed and fell upon the stones.
* * * * *
When St. George opened his eyes it was ten o'clock of the followingmorning, though he felt no interest in that. There was before him agreat rectangle of light. He lifted his head and saw that the lightappeared to flow from the interior of the tomb of King Abibaal. Thenext moment Amory's cheery voice, pitched high in consternation andrelief, made havoc among the echoes with a background of Jarvo'ssmooth thanksgiving for the return of adon.
St. George, coatless, stiff from the hours on the mouldy stones,dragged himself up and turned his eyes in fear upon the figurebeside him. It flashed hopefully through his mind that perhaps ithad not changed, that perhaps he had dreamed it all, that perhaps...
By his first glance that hope was dispelled. From beneath Amory'scoat on the floor an arm came forth, pushing the coat aside, and aman slenderly built, with a youthful, sensitive face and somewhatcritically-drooping lids, sat up leisurely and looked about him inslow surprise, kindling to distinct amusement.
"Upon my soul," he said softly, "what an admission--what anadmission! I can not have made such a night of it in years."
Upon which Jarvo dropped unhesitatingly to his knees.
"Melek! Melek!" he cried, prostrating himself again and again. "TheKing! The King! The gods have permitted the possible."
