A PRESCRIBED MALADY
"You are wonderful, staying out there all night watching for--us." He
was about to say "me."
"How could any one sleep? Neenah found this dress for me--aren't these
baggy trousers funny? She rifled the late Mr. Wyckholme's wardrobe. This
costume once adorned a sultana, I'm told. It is a most priceless
treasure. I wore it to-night because I was much less conspicuous as a
sultana than I might have been had I gone to the wall as a princess."
"I like you best as the Princess," he said, frankly surveying her in the
grey light.
"I think I like myself as the Princess, too," she said naïvely. He
sighed deeply. They were quite close to the excited group on the terrace
when she said: "I am very, very happy now, after the most miserable
night I have ever known. I was so troubled and afraid----"
"Just because I went away for that little while? Don't forget that I am
soon to go out from you for all time. How then?"
"Ah, but then I will have Paris," she cried gaily. He was puzzled by her
mood--but then, why not? What could he be expected to know of the moods
of royal princesses? No more than he could know of their loves.
Lady Deppingham was got to bed at once. The Princess, more thrilled by
excitement than she ever had been in her life, attended her friend. In
the sanctity of her chamber, the exhausted young Englishwoman bared her
soul to this wise, sympathetic young woman in Persian vestment.
"Genevra," she said solemnly, in the end, "take warning from my example.
When you once are married, don't trifle with other men--not even if you
shouldn't love your husband. Sooner or later you'd get tripped up. It
doesn't pay, my dear. I never realised until tonight how much I really
care for Deppy and I am horribly afraid that I've lost something I can
never recover. I've made him unhappy and--and--all that. Can you tell me
what it is that made me--but never mind! I'm going to be good."
"You were not in love with Mr. Browne. That is why I can't understand
you, Agnes."
"My dear, I don't understand myself. How can I expect you or my husband
to understand me? How could I expect it of Bobby Browne? Oh, dear; oh,
dear, how tired I am! I think I shall never move out of this bed again.
What a horrible, horrible time I've had." She sat up suddenly and stared
wide-eyed before her, looking upon phantoms that came out of the hours
just gone.
"Hush, dear! Lie down and go to sleep. You will feel better in a little
while." Lady Agnes abruptly turned to her with a light in her eyes that
checked the kindly impulses.
"Genevra, you are in love--madly in love with Hollingsworth Chase. Take
my advice: marry him. He's one man in a--" Genevra placed her hand over
the lips of the feverish young woman.
"I will not listen to anything more about Mr. Chase," she said firmly.
"I am tired--tired to death of being told that I should marry him."
"But you love him," Lady Agnes managed to mumble, despite the gentle
impediment.
"I _do_ love him, yes, I do love him," cried the Princess, casting
reserve to the winds. "He knows it--every one knows it. But marry him?
No--no--no! I shall marry Karl. My father, my mother, my grandfather,
have said so--and I have said it, too. And his father and grandfather
and a dozen great grandparents have ordained that he shall marry a
princess and I a prince, That ends it, Agnes! Don't speak of it again."
She cast herself down upon the side of the bed and clenched her hands in
the fierceness of despair and--decision. After a moment, Lady Agnes said
dreamily: "I climbed up the ladder to make a 'ladyship' of myself by
marriage and I find I love my husband. I daresay if you should go down
the ladder a few rounds, my dear, you might be as lucky. But take my
advice, if you _won't_ marry Hollingsworth Chase, don't let him come to
Paris."
The Princess Genevra lifted her face instantly, a startled expression in
her eyes.
"Agnes, you forget yourself!"
"My dear," murmured Lady Agnes sleepily, "forgive me, but I have such a
shockingly absent mind." She was asleep a moment later.
In the meantime, Bobby Browne, disdaining all commands and entreaties,
refused to be put to bed until he had related the story of their capture
and the subsequent events that made the night memorable. He talked
rapidly, feverishly, as if every particle of energy was necessary to the
task of justifying himself in some measure for the night's mishap. He
sat with his rigid arm about his wife's shoulders. Drusilla was stroking
one of his hands in a half-conscious manner, her eyes staring past his
face toward the dark forest from which he had come. Mr. Britt was
ordering brandy and wine for his trembling client.
"After all," said Browne, hoarse with nervousness, "there is some good
to be derived from our experiences, hard as it may be to believe. I have
found out the means by which Rasula intends to destroy every living
creature in the château." He made this statement at the close of the
brief, spasmodic recital covering the events of the night. Every one
drew nearer. Chase threw off his spell of languidness and looked hard at
the speaker. "Rasula coolly asked me, at one of our resting places, if
there had been any symptoms of poisoning among us. I mentioned Pong and
the servants. The devil laughed gleefully in my face and told me that it
was but the beginning. I tell you. Chase, we can't escape the diabolical
scheme he has arranged. We are all to be poisoned--I don't see how we
can avoid it if we stay here much longer. It is to be a case of slow
death by the most insidious scheme of poisoning imaginable, or, on the
other hand, death by starvation and thirst. The water that comes to us
from the springs up there in the hills is to be poisoned by those
devils."
There were exclamations of unbelief, followed by the sharp realisation
that he was, after all, pronouncing doom upon each and every one of
those who listened.
"Rasula knows that we have no means of securing water except from the
springs. Several days ago his men dumped a great quantity of some sort
of poison into the stream--a poison that is used in washing or polishing
the rubies, whatever it is. Well, that put the idea into his head. He is
going about it shrewdly, systematically. I heard him giving instructions
to one of his lieutenants. He thought I was still unconscious from a
blow I received when I tried to interfere in behalf of Lady Agnes, who
was being roughly dragged along the mountain road. Day and night a
detachment of men are to be employed at the springs, deliberately
engaged in the attempt to change the flow of pure water into a slow,
subtle, deadly poison, the effects of which will not be immediately
fatal, but positively so in the course of a few days. Every drop of
water that we drink or use in any way will be polluted with this deadly
cyanide. It's only a question of time. In the end we shall sicken and
die as with the scourge. They will call it the plague!"
A shudder of horror swept through the crowd. Every one looked into his
neighbour's face with a profound inquiring light in his eyes, seeking
for the first evidence of approaching death.
Hollingsworth Chase uttered a short, scornful laugh as he unconcernedly
lifted a match to one of his precious cigarettes. The others stared at
him in amazement. He had been exceedingly thoughtful and preoccupied up
to that moment.
"Great God, Chase!" groaned Browne. "Is this a joke?"
"Yes--and it's on Rasula," said the other laconically.
"But even now, man, they are introducing this poison into our
systems----"
"You say that Rasula isn't aware of the fact that you overheard what he
said to his man? Then, even now, in spite of your escape, he believes
that we may go on drinking the water without in the least suspecting
what it has in store for us. Good! That's why I say the joke is on him."
"But, my God, we must have water to drink," cried Britt. Mrs. Saunders
alone divined the thought that filled Chase's mind. She clapped her
hands and cried out wonderingly:
"I know! I--I took depositions in a poisoning case two years ago. Why,
of course!"
"Browne, you are a doctor--a chemist," said Chase calmly, first
bestowing a fine smile upon the eager Mrs. Saunders. "Well, we'll distil
and double and triple distil the water. That's all. A schoolboy might
have thought of that. It's all right, old man. You're fagged out; your
brain isn't working well. Don't look so crestfallen. Mr. Britt, you and
Mr. Saunders will give immediate instructions that no more water is to
be drunk--or used--until Mr. Browne has had a few hours' rest. He can
take an alcohol bath and we can all drink wine. It won't hurt us. At ten
o'clock sharp Dr. Browne will begin operating the distilling apparatus
in the laboratory. As a matter of fact, I learned somewhere--at college,
I imagine--that practically pure water may be isolated from wine." He
arose painfully and stretched himself. "I think I'll get a little
much-needed rest. Do the same, Browne--and have a rub down. By Jove,
will you listen to the row my clients are making out there in the woods!
They seem to be annoyed over something."
Outside the walls the islanders were shouting and calling to each other;
rifles were cracking, far and near, voicing, in their peculiarly
spiteful way, the rage that reigned supreme.
As Chase ascended the steps Bobby Browne and his wife came up beside
him.
"Chase," said Browne, in a low voice, his face turned away to hide the
mortification that filled his soul, "you are a man! I want you to know
that I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
"Never mind, old man! Say no more," interrupted Chase, suddenly
embarrassed.
"I've been a fool, Chase. I don't deserve the friendship of any one--not
even that of my wife. It's all over, though. You understand? I'm not a
coward. I'll do anything you say--take any risk--to pay for the trouble
I've caused you all. Send me out to fight----"
"Nonsense! Your wife needs you, Browne. Don't you, Mrs. Browne? There,
now! It will be all right, just as I said. I daresay, Browne, that I
wouldn't have been above the folly that got the better of you. Only--"
he hesitated for a minute--"only, it couldn't have happened to me if I
had a wife as dear and as good and as pretty as the one you have."
Browne was silent for a long time, his arm still about Drusilla's
shoulder. At the end of the long hall he said with decision in his
voice:
"Chase, you may tell your clients that so far as I am concerned they may
have the beastly island and everything that goes with it. I'm through
with it all. I shall discharge Britt and----"
"My dear boy, it's most magnanimous of you," cried Chase merrily. "But
I'm afraid you can't decide the question in such an off-hand, _dégagé_
manner. Sleep over it. I've come to the conclusion that it isn't so much
of a puzzle as to how you are to _get_ the island as how to get _off_ of
it. Take good care of him, Mrs. Browne. Don't let him talk."
She held out her hand to him impulsively. There was an unfathomable,
unreadable look in her dark eyes. As he gallantly lifted the cold
fingers to his lips, she said, without taking her almost hungry gaze
from his face:
"Thank you, Mr. Chase. I shall never forget you."
He stood there looking after them as they went up the stairway, a
puzzled expression in his face. After a moment he shook his head and
smiled vaguely as he said to himself:
"I guess he'll be a good boy from now on." But he wondered what it was
that he had seen or felt in her sombre gaze.
In fifteen minutes he was sound asleep in his room, his long frame
relaxed, his hands wide open in utter fatigue. He dreamed of a Henner
girl with Genevra's brilliant face instead of the vague, greenish
features that haunt the vision with their subtle mysticism.
He was awakened at noon by Selim, who obeyed his instructions to the
minute. The eager Arab rubbed the soreness and stiffness out of his
master's body with copious applications of alcohol.
"I'm sorry you awoke me, Selim," said the master enigmatically. Selim
drew back, dismayed. "You drove her away." Selim's eyes blinked with
bewilderment. "I'm afraid she'll never come back."
"Excellency!" trembled on the lips of the mystified servant.
"Ah, me!" sighed the master resignedly. "She smiled so divinely. Henner
girls never smile, do they, Selim? Have you noticed that they are always
pensive? Perhaps you haven't. It doesn't matter. But this one smiled. I
say," coming back to earth, "have they begun to distil the water? I've
got a frightful thirst."
"Yes, excellency. The Sahib Browne is at work. One of the servants
became sick to-day. Now no one is drinking the water. Baillo is bringing
in ice from the storehouses and melting it, but the supply is not large.
Sahib Browne will not let them make any more ice at present." Nothing
more was said until Chase was ready for his rolls and coffee. Then Selim
asked hesitatingly, "Excellency, what is a bounder? Mr. Browne says----"
"I believe I did call him a bounder," interrupted Chase reminiscently.
"I spoke hastily and I'll give him a chance to demand an explanation.
He'll want it, because he's an American. A bounder, Selim? Well,"
closing one eye and looking out of the window calculatingly, "a bounder
is a fellow who keeps up an acquaintance with you by persistently
dunning you for money that you've owed to him for four or five years.
Any one who annoys you is a bounder."
Selim turned this over in his mind for some time, but the puzzled air
did not lift from his face.
"Excellency, you will take Selim to live with you in Paris?" he said
after a while wistfully. "I will be your slave."
"Paris? Who the dickens said anything about Paris?" demanded Chase,
startled.
"Neenah says you will go there to live, sahib."
"Um--um," mused Chase; "what does she know about it?"
"Does not the most glorious Princess live in Paris?"
"Selim, you've been listening to gossip. It's a frightful habit to get
into. Put cotton in your ears. But if I were to take you, what would
become of little Neenah?"
"Oh, Neenah?" said Selim easily. "If she would be a trouble to you,
excellency, I can sell her to a man I know."
Chase looked blackly at the eager Arab, who quailed.
"You miserable dog!"
Selim gasped. "Excellency!"
"Don't you love her?"
"Yes, yes, sahib--yes! But if she would be a trouble to you--no!"
protested the Arab anxiously. Chase laughed as he came to appreciate the
sacrifice his servant would make for him.
"I'll take you with me, Selim, wherever I go--and if I go--but, my lad,
we'll take Neenah along, too, to save trouble. She's not for sale, my
good Selim." The husband of Neenah radiated joy.
"Then she may yet be the slave of the most glorious Princess! Allah is
great! The most glorious one has asked her if she will not come with
her----"
"Selim," commanded the master ominously, "don't repeat the gossip you
pick up when I'm not around."