THE TWO WORLDS
Two days and nights crept slowly into the past, and now the white people
of the château had come to the eve of their last day's stay on the
island of Japat: the probationary period would expire with the sun on
the following day, the anniversary of the death of Taswell Skaggs. The
six months set aside by the testator as sufficient for all the
requirements of Cupid were to come to an inglorious end at seven o'clock
on March 29th. According to the will, if Agnes Ruthven and Robert Browne
were not married to each other before the close of that day all of their
rights in the estate were lost to them.
To-morrow would be the last day of residence required, but, alack! Was
it to be the last that they were to spend in the world-forsaken land? As
they sat and stared gloomily at the spotless sea there was not a single
optimist among them who felt that the end was near. Not a few were
convincing themselves that their last days literally would be spent on
the island.
No later than that morning a steamer--a small Dutch freighter--had come
to a stop off the harbour. But it turned tail and fled within an hour.
No one came ashore; the malevolent tug went out and turned back the
landing party which was ready to leave the ship's side. The watchers in
the château knew what it was that the tug's captain shouted through his
trumpet at a safe distance from the steamer. Through their glasses they
saw the boat's crew scramble back to the deck of the freighter; the
action told the story plainer than words.
The black and yellow flags at the end of the company's pier lent colour
to a grewsome story!
The hopeless look deepened in the eyes of the watchers. They saw the
steamer move out to sea and then scuttle away as if pursued by demons.
Hollingsworth Chase alone maintained a stubborn air of confidence and
unconcern. He may not have felt as he looked, but something in his
manner, assumed or real, kept the fires of hope alight in the breasts of
all the others.
"Don't be downhearted, Bowles," he said to the moping British agent.
"You'll soon be managing the bank again and patronising the American bar
with the same old regularity."
"My word, Mr. Chase," groaned Bowles, "how can you say a thing like
that? I daresay they've blown the bank to Jericho by this time. Besides,
there won't be an American bar. And, moreover, I don't intend to stay a
minute longer than I have to on the beastly island. This taste of the
old high life has spoiled me for everything else. I'm going back to
London and sit on the banks of the Serpentine until it goes dry. Stay
here? I should rather say not."
There had been several vicious assaults upon the gates by the infuriated
islanders during the day following the rescue of the heirs. Their rage
and disappointment knew no bounds. For hours they acted like madmen;
only the most determined resistance drove them back from the gates. Some
powerful influence suddenly exerted itself to restore them to a state of
calmness. They abruptly gave up the fruitless, insensate attacks upon
the walls and withdrew to the town, apparently defeated. The cause was
obvious: Rasula had convinced them that Death already was lifting his
hand to blot out the lives of those who opposed them.
Bobby Browne was accomplishing wonders in the laboratory. He seldom was
seen outside the distilling room; his assiduity was marked, if not
commented upon. Hour after hour he stood watch over the water that went
up in vapour and returned to the crystal liquid that was more precious
than rubies and sapphires. He was redeeming himself, just as he was
redeeming the water from the poison that had made it useless. He
experimented with lizards: the water as it came from the springs brought
quick death to the little reptiles. The fishes in the aquarium died
before it occurred to any one to remove them from the noxious water.
Drusilla kept close to his side during all of these operations. She
seemed afraid or ashamed to join the others; she avoided Lady Deppingham
as completely as possible. Her effort to be friendly when they were
thrown together was almost pitiable.
As for Lady Agnes, she seemed stricken by an unconquerable lassitude;
the spirits that had controlled her voice, her look, her movements, were
sadly missing. It was with a most transparent effort that she managed to
infuse life into her conversation. There were times when she stood
staring out over the sea with unseeing eyes, and one knew that she was
not thinking of the ocean. More than once Genevra had caught her
watching Deppingham with eyes that spoke volumes, though they were mute
and wistful.
From time to time the sentinels brought to Lord Deppingham and Chase
missives that had been tossed over the walls by the emissaries of
Rasula. They were written by the leader himself and in every instance
expressed the deepest sympathy for the plague-ridden château. It was
evident that Rasula believed that the occupants were slowly but surely
dying, and that it was but a question of a few days until the place
would become a charnel-house. With atavic cunning he sat upon the
outside and waited for the triumph of death.
"There's a paucity of real news in these gentle messages that annoys
me," Chase said, after reading aloud the last of the epistles to the
Princess and the Deppinghams. "I rejoice in my heart that he isn't aware
of the true state of affairs. He doesn't appreciate the real calamity
that confronts us. The Plague? Poison? Mere piffle. If he only knew that
I am now smoking my last--_the_ last cigarette on the place!" There was
something so inconceivably droll in the lamentation that his hearers
laughed despite their uneasiness.
"I believe you would die more certainly from lack of cigarettes than
from an over-abundance of poison," said Genevra. She was thinking of the
stock she had hoarded up for him in her dressing-table drawer, under
lock and key. It occurred to her that she could have no end of
housewifely thrills if she doled them out to him in niggardly
quantities, at stated times, instead of turning them over to him in
profligate abundance.
"I'm sure I don't know," he said, taking a short inhalation. "I've never
had the poison habit."
"I say, Chase, can't you just see Rasula's face when he learns that
we've been drinking the water all along and haven't passed away?" cried
Deppingham, brightening considerably in contemplation of the enemy's
disgust.
"And to think, Mr. Chase, we once called you 'the Enemy,'" said Lady
Agnes in a low, dreamy voice. There was a far-away look in her eyes.
"I appear to have outlived my usefulness in that respect," he said. He
tossed the stub of his cigarette over the balcony rail. "Good-bye!" he
said, with melancholy emphasis. Then he bent an inquiring look upon the
face of the Princess.
"Yes," she said, as if he had asked the question aloud. "You shall have
three a day, that's all."
"You'll leave the entire fortune to me when you sail away, I trust," he
said. The Deppinghams were puzzled.
"But you also will be sailing away," she argued.
"I? You forget that I have had no orders to return. Sir John expects me
to stay. At least, so I've heard in a roundabout way."
"You don't mean to say, Chase, that you'll stay on this demmed Island if
the chance comes to get away," demanded Lord Deppingham earnestly. The
two women were looking at him in amazement.
"Why not? I'm an ally, not a deserter."
"You are a madman!" cried Lady Agnes. "Stay here? They would kill you in
a jiffy. Absurd!"
"Not after they've had another good long look at my warships. Lady
Deppingham," he replied, with a most reassuring smile.
"Good Lord, Chase, you're not clinging to that corpse-candle straw, are
you?" cried his lordship, beginning to pace the floor. "Don't be a fool!
We can't leave you here to the mercy of these brutes. What's more, we
won't!"
"My dear fellow," said Chase ruefully, "we are talking as though the
ship had already dropped anchor out there. The chances are that we will
have ample time to discuss the ethics of my rather anomalous position
before we say good-bye to each other. I think I'll take a stroll along
the wall before turning in."
He arose and leisurely started to go indoors. The Princess called to
him, and he paused.
"Wait," she said, coming up to him. They walked down the hallway
together. "I will run upstairs and unlock the treasure chest. I do not
trust even my maid. You shall have two to-night--no more."
"You've really saved them for me?" he queried, a note of eagerness in
his voice. "All these days?"
"I have been your miser," she said lightly, and then ran lightly up the
stairs.
He looked after her until she disappeared at the top with a quick, shy
glance over her shoulder. Then he permitted his spirits to drop suddenly
from the altitude to which he had driven them. An expression of utter
dejection came into his face; a haggard look replaced the buoyant smile.
"God, how I love her--how I love her!" he groaned, half aloud.
She was coming down the stairs now, eager, flushed, more abashed than
she would have had him know. Without a word she placed the two
cigarettes in his outstretched palm. Her eyes were shining.
In silence he clasped her hand and led her unresisting through the
window and out upon the broad gallery. She was returning the fervid
pressure of his fingers, warm and electric. They crossed slowly to the
rail. Two chairs stood close together. They sat down, side by side. The
power of speech seemed to have left them altogether.
He laid the two cigarettes on the broad stone rail. She followed the
movement with perturbed eyes, and then leaned forward and placed her
elbows on the rail. With her chin in her hands, she looked out over the
sombre park, her heart beating violently. After a long time she heard
him saying hoarsely:
"If the ship should come to-morrow, you would go out of my life? You
would go away and leave me here--"
"No, no!" she cried, turning upon him suddenly. "You _could_ not stay
here. You shall not!"
"But, dearest love, I am bound to stay--I cannot go And, God help me, I
want to stay. If I could go into your world and take you unto myself
forever--if you will tell me now that some day you may forget your world
and come to live in mine--then, ah, then, it would be different! But
without you I have no choice of abiding place. Here, as well as
anywhere."
She put her hands over her eyes.
"I cannot bear the thought of--of leaving you behind--of leaving you
here to die at the hands of those beasts down there. Hollingsworth, I
implore you--come! If the opportunity comes--and it will, I know--you
will leave the island with the rest of us?"
"Not unless I am commanded to do so by the man who sent me here to serve
these beasts, as you call them."
"They do not want you! They are your enemies!"
"Time will tell," he said sententiously. He leaned over and took her
hand in his. "You do love me?"
"You know I do--yes, yes!" she cried from her heart, keeping her face
resolutely turned away from him. "I am sick with love for you. Why
should I deny the thing that speaks so loudly for itself--my heart!
Listen! Can you not hear it beating? It is hurting me--yes, it is
hurting me!"
He trembled at this exhibition of released, unchecked passion, and yet
he did not clasp her in his arms.
"Will you come into my world, Genevra?" he whispered. "All my life would
be spent in guarding the love you would give to me--all my life given to
making you love me more and more until there will be no other world for
you to think of."
"I wish that I had not been born," she sobbed. "I cannot, dearest--I
cannot change the laws of fate. I am fated--I am doomed to live forever
in the dreary world of my fathers. But how can I give you up? How can I
give up your love? How can I cast you out of my life?"
"You do not love Prince Karl?"
"How can you ask?" she cried fiercely. "Am I not loving you with all my
heart and soul?"
"And you would leave me behind if the ship should come?" he persisted,
with cruel insistence. "You will go back and marry that--him? Loving me,
you will marry him?" Her head dropped upon her arm. He turned cold as
death. "God help and God pity you, my love. I never knew before what
your little world means to you. I give you up to it. I crawl back into
the one you look down upon with scorn. I shall not again ask you to
descend to the world where love is."
Her hand lay limp in his. They stared bleakly out into the night and no
word was spoken.
The minutes became an hour, and yet they sat there with set faces,
bursting hearts, unseeing eyes.
Below them in the shadows, Bobby Browne was pacing the embankment, his
wife drawn close to his side. Three men, Britt, Saunders and Bowles,
were smoking their pipes on the edge of the terrace. Their words came up
to the two in the gallery.
"If I have to die to-morrow," Saunders, the bridegroom, was saying, with
real feeling in his voice, "I should say, with all my heart, that my
life has been less than a week long. The rest of it was nothing. I never
was happy before--and happiness is everything."