Romance Island

by Zona Gale

  CHAPTER XIX

  IN THE HALL OF KINGS

  Somewhat before noon the great doors of the Palace of the Litany andof the Hall of Kings were thrown open, and the people streamed infrom the palace grounds and the Eurychorus. Abroad amongthem--elusive as that by which we know that a given moment belongsto dawn, not dusk--was the sense of questioning, of unrest, ofexpectancy that belongs to the dawn itself. Especially the youthsand maidens--who, besides wisdom, knew something of spells--waitedwith a certain wistfulness for what might be, for Change is a kindof god even to the immortals. But there were also those who weighedthe departures incident to the coming of the strange people fromover-seas; and there were not lacking conservatives of the oldregime to shake wise heads and declare that a barbarian is abarbarian, the world over.

  All that rainbow multitude, clad for festival, rose with the firstlight music that stole, winged and silken, from hidden cedaralcoves, and some minutes past the sounding of the hour of noon thechamfered doors set high in the south wall of the Hall of Kings wereswung open, and at the head of the stair appeared Olivia.

  She was alone, for the custom of Yaque required that the islandprincesses should on the day of their recognition first appear alonebefore their people in token of their mutual faith. From thewardrobes at the castle Olivia had chosen the coronation gown ofQueen Mitygen herself. It was of fine lace woven in a single piece,and it lay in a foam of shining threads traced with pure lines ofshadow. On her head were a jeweled coronal and jeweled hair-loops inthe Phoenician fashion, once taken from a king's casket and sentsecretly, upon the decline of Assyrian ascendancy, to be bartered inthe marts of Coele-Syria. Chains of jewels, in a noon of colour, layabout her throat, as once they lay upon the shoulders of the deadqueens of Yaque and, before them, of the women of the elderdynasties long since recorded in indifferent dust. Girdling herwaist was a zone of rubies that burned positive in the temperedlight. With all her delicacy, Olivia was like her rubies--vivid,graphic, delineated not by light but by line.

  The members of the High Council rustled in their colour and white,and flashed their golden stars; the Golden Guards (save the apostatefew who were that day sentenced to be set adrift) were filling thestairway like a bank of buttercups; and Olivia's women, led byAntoinette in a gown of colours not to be lightly denominated, wereentering by an opposite door. In the raised seats near the HighCouncil, Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Frothingham leaned to wave asustaining greeting. Until that high moment Mrs. Medora Hastings hadbeen by no means certain that Olivia would appear at all, though sheopenly nourished the hope that "everything would go off smoothly."("I don't care much for foreigners and never have," she confided toMr. Frothingham, "still, I was thinking while I was at breakfast,after all, to the prince _we are_ the foreigners. There is somethingin that, don't you think? And then the dear prince--he is so verymetaphysical!")

  Upon the beetling throne Olivia took her place, and her women sankabout her like tiers of sunset clouds. She was so little and sobeautiful and so unconsciously appealing that when Prince Tabnit andCassyrus and the rest of the court entered, it is doubtful if an eyeleft Olivia, to homage them. But Prince Tabnit was the last to notethat, for he saw only Olivia; and the world--the world was anintaglio of his own designing.

  With due magnificence the preliminary ceremonies of the coronationproceeded--musty necessities, like oaths and historical truths,being mingled with the most delicate observances, such as thenaming of the former princesses of the island, from Adija, daughterof King Abibaal, to Olivia, daughter of King Otho; and such ascounting the clouds for the misfortunes of the regime. This lastduty fell to the office of the lord chief-chancellor, and from anupper porch he returned quickening with the intelligence that therewas not a cloud in the sky, a state of the heavens known to nocoronation since Babylon was ruled by Assyrian viceroys. The lordchief-chancellor and Cassyrus themselves brought forth the crown--abeautiful crown, shining like dust-in-the-sun--and Cassyrus, in avoice that trumpeted, rehearsed its history: how it had been made ofjewels brought from the coffers of Amasis and Apries, when KingNebuchadnezzar wrested Phoenicia from Egypt, and, too, of all mannerof precious stones sent by Queen Atossa, wife of Darius, when theCrotoniat Democedes, with two triremes and a trading vessel, visitedYaque before they went to survey Hellenic shores, with whatdisastrous result. And Olivia, standing in the queen's gown,listened without hearing one word, and turned to have her veillifted by Antoinette and the daughter of a peer of Yaque; and sheknelt before the people while the lord chief-chancellor set thecrown on her bright hair. It was a picture that thrilled the lordchief-chancellor himself--who was a worshiper of beauty, and a mangiven to angling in the lagoon and making metric translations of theinscriptions.

  Then it was in the room as if a faint flame had been breathed uponand had upleaped in a thousand ways of expectancy, and as if asecret sign had been set in the lift and dip of the music--the musicthat was so like the great chamber with its lift and dip of carvenline. The thrill with which one knows the glad news of an unopenedletter was upon them all, and they heard that swift breath of anevent that stirs before its coming. When Olivia's women fell backfrom the dais with wonder and murmur, the murmur was caught up inthe great hall, and ran from tier to tier as amazement, asincredulity, and as thanksgiving.

  For there, beside the beetling throne, was standing a man, slenderlybuilt, with a youthful, sensitive face and critically-drooping lids,and upon them all his eyes were turned in faint amusement warmed byan idle approbation.

  "Perfect--perfect. Quite perfect," he was saying below his breath.

  Olivia turned. The next moment she stood with outstretched armsbefore her father; and King Otho, in his long, straight robe,encrusted with purple amethysts, bent with exquisite courtesy abovehis daughter's hands.

  "My dear child," he murmured, "the picture that you make entirelyjustifies my existence, but hardly my absence. Shall we ask hisHighness to do that?"

  It mattered little who was to do that so long as it was done. For tothat people, steeped in dream, risen from the crudity of mere eventsto breathe in the rarer atmosphere of their significance, here was ahappening worthy their attention, for it had the dignity of mystery.Even Mrs. Medora Hastings, billowing toward the throne with cries,was less poignantly a challenge to be heard. Upon her the king laida tranquillizing hand and, with a droop of eyelids in recognition ofMr. Frothingham, he murmured: "Ah, Medora--Medora! Delight in themoment--but do not embrace it," while beside him, star-eyed, Oliviastood waiting for Prince Tabnit to speak.

  To Olivia, trembling a little as she leaned upon his arm, King Othobent with some word, at which she raised to his her startled face,and turned from him uncertainly, and burned a heavenly colour frombrow to chin. Then, her father's words being insistent in her ear,and her own heart being tumultuous with what he had told her, sheturned as he bade her, and, following his glance, slipped beneath ashining curtain that cut from the audience chamber the stillseclusion of the King's Alcove, a chamber long sacred to thesovereigns of Yaque.

  Confused with her wonder and questioning, hardly daring tounderstand the import of her father's words, Olivia went down apassage set between two high white walls of the palace, opento-day to the upper blue and to the floating pennons of the dome.Here, prickly-leaved plants had shot to the cornices withuncouth contorting of angled boughs, and in their inner greenruffle-feathered birds looked down on her with the uncannyinterest of myriapods. She caught about her the lace of her skirtsand of her floating veil, and the way echoed musically to thetouch of her little sandals and was bright with the shining of herdiadem. And at the end of the passage she lifted a swaying curtainof soft dyes and entered the King's Alcove.

  The King's Alcove laid upon one the delicate demands of calm openwater--for its floor of white transparent tiles was cunningly tracedwith the reflected course of the carven roof, and one seemed to lookinto mirrored depths of disappearing line between spaces shaped likepetals and like chevrons. In the King's Alcove one stood in a worldof white and on
e's sight was exquisitely won, now by a niche open toa blue well of sea and space, now by silver plants lucent in highcasements. And there one was spellbound with this mirroring of theNear which thus became the Remote, until one questioned gravelywhich was "there" and which was "here," for the real was extendedinto vision, and vision was quickened to the real, and nothing laybetween. But to Olivia, entering, none of these things was clearlyevident, for as the curtain of many dyes fell behind her she wasaware of two figures--but the one, with a murmured word which shemanaged somehow to answer without an idea what she said or what ithad said either, vanished down the way that she had come. And shestood there face to face with St. George.

  He had risen from a low divan before a small table set with figs andbread and a decanter of what would have been bordeaux if it had notbeen distilled from the vineyards of Yaque. He was very pale andhaggard, and his eyes were darkly circled and still fever-bright.But he came toward her as if he had quite forgotten that this is aworld of danger and that she was a princess and that, little morethan a week ago, her name was to him the unknown music. He cametoward her with a face of unutterable gladness, and he caught andcrushed her hands in his and looked into her eyes as if he couldlook to the distant soul of her. He led her to a great chair hewnfrom quarries of things silver and unremembered, and he sat at herfeet upon a bench that might have been a stone of the altar of someforgotten deity of dreams, at last worshiped as it should long havebeen worshiped by all the host that had passed it by. He looked upin her face, and the room was like a place of open water whereheaven is mirrored in earth, and earth reflects and answers heaven.

  St. George laughed a little for sheer, inextinguishable happiness.

  "Once," he said, "once I breakfasted with you, on tea and--if Iremember correctly--gold and silver muffins. Won't you breakfastwith me now?"

  Olivia looked down at him, her heart still clamourous with itsanxiety of the night and of the morning.

  "Tell me where you can have been," she said only; "didn't you knowhow distressed we would be? We imagined everything--in this dreadfulplace. And we feared everything, and we--" but yet the "we" did notdeceive St. George; how could it with her eyes, for all theiravoidings, so divinely upon him?

  "Did you," he said, "ah--did you wonder? I wish I knew!"

  "And my father--where did you find him?" she besought. "It was you?You found him, did you not?"

  St. George looked down at a fold of her gown that was fallen acrosshis knee. How on earth was he ever to move, he wondered vaguely, ifthe slightest motion meant the withdrawing of that fold. He lookedat her hand, resting so near, so near, upon the arm of the chair;and last he looked again into her face; and it seemed wonderful andbefore all things wonderful, not that she should be here, jeweledand crowned, but that he should so unbelievably be here with her.And yet it might be but a moment, as time is measured, until thismoment would be swept away. His eyes met hers and held them.

  "Would you mind," he said, "now--just for a little, while we waithere--not asking me that? Not asking me anything? There will be timeenough in there--when _they_ ask me. Just for now I only want tothink how wonderful this is."

  She said: "Yes, it is wonderful--unbelievable," but he thought thatshe might have meant the white room or her queen's robe or any oneof all the things which he did not mean.

  "_Is_ it wonderful to you?" he asked, and he said again: "I wish--Iwish I knew!"

  He looked at her, sitting in the moon of her laces and the stars ofher gems, and the sense of the immeasurableness of the hour cameupon him as it comes to few; the knowledge that the evanescentmoment is very potent, the world where the siren light of the Remotemay at any moment lie quenched in some ashen present. To him, heldmomentarily in this place that was like shoreless, open water, thepresent was inestimably precious and it lay upon St. George like thedelicate claim of his love itself. What the next hour held for themneither could know, and this universal uncertainty was for himcrystallized in an instant of high wisdom; over the little handlying so perilously near, his own closed suddenly and he crushed herfingers to his lips.

  "Olivia--dear heart," he said, "we don't know what they may do--whatwill happen--oh, may I tell you _now_?"

  There was no one to say that he might not, for the hand was notwithdrawn from his. And so he did tell her, told her all his heartas he had known his heart to be that last night on _The Aloha_, andin that divine twilight of his arriving on the island, and in thosehours beside the airy ramparts of the king's palace, and in thevigil that followed, and always--always, ever since he couldremember, only that he hadn't known that he was waiting for her, andnow he knew--now he knew.

  "Must you not have known, up there in the palace," he besought her,"the night that I got there? And yesterday, all day yesterday, youmust have known--didn't you know? I love you, Olivia. I couldn'thave told you, I couldn't have let you know, only now, when we can'tknow what may come or what they may do--oh, say you forgive me.Because I love you--I love you."

  She rose swiftly, her veil floating about her, silver over the goldof her hair; and the light caught the enchantment of the gems of thestrange crown they had set upon her head, and she looked down athim in almost unearthly beauty. He stood before her, waiting for themoment when she should lift her eyes. And the eyes were lifted, andhe held out his arms, and straight to them, regardless of thecoronation laces of Queen Mitygen, went Olivia, Princess of Yaque.He put aside her shining hair, as he had put it aside in that divinemoment in the motor in the palace wood; and their lips met, in thatworld that was like the shoreless open sea where earth reflectsheaven, and heaven comes down.

  They sat upon the white-cushioned divan, and St. George half kneltbeside her as he had knelt that night in the fleeing motor, andthere were an hundred things to say and an hundred things to hear.And because this fragment of the past since they had met wasincontestably theirs, and because the future hung trembling beforethem in a mist of doubt, they turned happy, hopeful eyes to thatfuture, clinging to each other's hands. The little chamber oftranslucent white, where one looked down to a mirrored dome and upto a kind of sky, became to them a place bounded by the touch andthe look and the voice of each other, as every place in the world isbounded for every heart that beats.

  "Sweetheart," said St. George presently, "do you remember that youare a princess, and I'm merely a kind of man?"

  Was it not curious, he thought, that his lips did not speak a newlanguage of their own accord?

  "I know," corrected Olivia adorably, "that I'm a kind of princess.But what use is that when it only makes trouble for us?"

  "Us"--"makes trouble for us." St. George wondered how he could everhave thought that he even guessed what happiness might be when"trouble for us" was like this. He tried to say so, and then:

  "But do you know what you are doing?" he persisted. "Don't yousee--dear, don't you see that by loving me you are giving up a worldthat you can never, never get back?"

  Olivia looked down at the fair disordered hair on his temples. Itseemed incredible that she had the right to push it from hisforehead. But it was not incredible. To prove it Olivia touched itback. To prove that _that_ was not incredible, St. George turneduntil his lips brushed her wrist.

  "Don't you know, don't you, dear," he pressed the matter, "that verypossibly these people here have really got the secret that all therest of the world is talking about and hoping about and dreamingthey will sometime know?"

  Olivia heard of this likelihood with delicious imperturbability.

  "I know a secret," she said, just above her breath, "worth two ofthat."

  "You'll never be sorry--never?" he urged wistfully, resolutelydenying himself the entire bliss of that answer.

  "Never," said Olivia, "never. Shall you?"

  That was exceptionally easy to make clear, and thereafter hewhimsically remembered something else:

  "You live in the king's palace now," he reminded her, "and this isanother palace where you might live if you chose. And you might be aqueen, with drawing-
rooms and a poet laureate and all the rest. Andin New York--in New York, perhaps we shall live in a flat."

  "No," she cried, "no, indeed! Not 'perhaps,' I _insist_ upon aflat." She looked about the room with its bench brought from thealtar of a forgotten deity of dreams, with its line and colourdissolving to mirrored point and light--the mystic union of sightwith dream--and she smiled at the divine incongruity and the divineresemblance. "It wouldn't be so very different--a flat," she saidshyly.

  Wouldn't it--wouldn't it, after all, be so very different?

  "Ah, if you only think so, really," cried St. George.

  "But it will be different, just different enough to like better,"she admitted then. "You know that I think so," she said.

  "If only you knew how much I think so," he told her, "how I havethought so, day and night, since that first minute at the Boris.Olivia, dear heart--when did you think so first--"

  She shook her head and laid her hands upon his and drew them to herface.

  "Now, now--now!" she cried, "and there never was any time but now."

  "But there will be--there will be," he said, his lips upon her hair.

  After a time--for Time, that seems to have no boundaries in theabstract, is a very fiend for bounding the divine concrete--after atime Amory spoke hesitatingly on the other side of the curtain ofmany dyes.

  "St. George," he said, "I'm afraid they want you. Mr. Holland--theking, he's got through playing them. He wants you to get up and give'em the truth, I think."

  "Come in--come in, Amory," St. George said and lifted the curtain,and "I beg your pardon," he added, as his eyes fell upon Antoinettein a gown of colours not to be lightly denominated. She had followedOlivia from the hall, and had met Amory midway the avenue of pricklytrees, and they had helpfully been keeping guard. Now they went onbefore to the Hall of Kings, and St. George, remembering what musthappen there, turned to Olivia for one crowning moment.

  "You know," she said fearfully, "before father came the princeintended the most terrible things--to set you and Mr. Amory adriftin a rudderless airship--"

  St. George laughed in amusement. The poor prince with his impossibledevices, thinking to harm him, St. George--_now_.

  "He meant to marry you, he thought," he said, "but, thank Heaven, hehas your father to answer to--and me!" he ended jubilantly.

  And yet, after all, Heaven knew what possibilities hemmed themround. And Heaven knew what she was going to think of him when sheheard his story. He turned and caught her to him, for the crowningmoment.

  "You love me--you love me," he said, "no matter what happens or whatthey say--no matter what?"

  She met his eyes and, of her own will, she drew his face down tohers.

  "No matter what," she answered. So they went together toward thechamber which they had both forgotten.

  When they reached the Hall of Kings they heard King Otho'svoice--suave, mellow, of perfect enunciation:

  "--some one," the king was concluding, "who can tell thisconsiderably better than I. And it seems to me singularly fittingthat the recognition of the part eternally played by the 'possible'be temporarily deferred while we listen to--I dislike to use theword, but shall I say--the facts."

  It seemed to St. George when he stood beside the dais, facing thatstrange, eager multitude with his strange unbelievable story uponhis lips--the story of the finding of the king--as if his own voicewere suddenly a part of all the gigantic incredibility. Yet thedivinely real and the fantastic had been of late so fused in hisconsciousness that he had come to look upon both as thenormal--which is perhaps the only sane view. But how could he tellto others the monstrous story of last night, and hope to bebelieved?

  None the less, as simply as if he had been narrating toChillingworth the high moment of a political convention, St. Georgetold the people of Yaque what had happened in that night in the roomof the tombs with that mad old Malakh whom they all remembered. Itcame to him as he spoke that it was quite like telling to a field offlowers the real truth about the wind of which they might besupposed to know far more than he; and yet, if any one were to tellthe truth about the wind who would know how to listen? He was notamazed that, when he had done, the people of Yaque sat in a profoundsilence which might have been the silence of innocent amazement orof utter incredulity.

  But there was no mistaking the face of Prince Tabnit. Its cooltolerant amusement suddenly sent the blood pricking to St. George'sheart and filled him with a kind of madness. What he did was thelast thing that he had intended. He turned upon the prince, and hisvoice went cutting to the farthest corner of the hall:

  "Men and women of Yaque," he cried, "I accuse your prince of theknowledge that can take from and add to the years of man at will. Iaccuse him of the deliberate and criminal use of that knowledge totake King Otho from his throne!"

  St. George hardly knew what effect his words had. He saw onlyOlivia, her hands locked, her lips parted, looking in his face inanguish; and he saw Prince Tabnit smile. Prince Tabnit sat upon theking's left hand, and he leaned and whispered a smiling word in theear of his sovereign and turned a smiling face to Olivia upon herfather's right.

  "I know something of your American newspapers, your Majesty," theprince said aloud, "and these men are doing their part excellently,excellently."

  "What do you mean, your Highness?" demanded St. George curtly.

  "But is it not simple?" asked the prince, still smiling. "You havecontrived a sensation for the great American newspaper. No one candoubt."

  King Otho leaned back in the beetling throne.

  "Ah, yes," he said, "it is true. Something has been contrived.But--is the sensation of _his_ contriving, Prince?"

  Olivia stood silent. It was not possible, it was not possible, shesaid over mechanically. For St. George to have come with this storyof a potion--a drug that had restored youth to her father, hadtransformed him from that mad old Malakh--

  "Father!" she cried appealingly, "don't you remember--don't youknow?"

  King Otho, watching the prince, shook his head, smiling.

  "At dawn," he said, "there are few of us to be found remaining stillat table with Socrates. I seem not to have been of that number."

  "Olivia!" cried St. George suddenly.

  She met his eyes for a moment, the eyes that had read her own, thathad given message for message, that had seen with her the glory of amystic morning willingly relinquished for a diviner dawn. Was shenot princess here in Yaque? She laid her hand upon her father'shand; the crown that they had given her glittered as she turnedtoward the multitude.

  "My people," she said ringingly, "I believe that that man speaks thetruth. Shall the prince not answer to this charge before the HighCouncil now--here--before you all?"

  At this King Otho did something nearly perceptible with hiseyebrows. "Perfect. Perfect. Quite perfect," he said below hisbreath. The next instant the eyelids of the sovereign droopedconsiderably less than one would have supposed possible. For fromevery part of the great chamber, as if a storm long-pent had forcedthe walls of the wind, there came in a thousand murmurs--soft,tremulous, definitive--the answering voice to Olivia's question:

  "Yes. Yes. Yes..."