OLIVIA PROPOSES
Prince Tabnit's announcement was received by his guests in the
silence of amazement. If they had been told that Miss Holland's
father was secretly acting as King of England they could have been
no more profoundly startled than to hear stated soberly that he had
been for nearly a year the king of a cannibal island. For the
cannibal phase of his experience seemed a foregone conclusion. To
St. George, profoundly startled and most incredulous, the possible
humour of the situation made first appeal. The picture of an
American gentleman seated upon a gold throne in a leopard-skin coat,
ordering "oysters and foes" for breakfast, was irresistible.
"But he shaved with a shell when he chose,
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man"
floated through his mind, and he brought himself up sharply.
Clearly, somebody was out of his head, but it must not be he.
"What?" cried Mrs. Hastings in two inelegant syllables, on the
second of which her uncontrollable voice rose. "My brother Otho, a
vestry-man at St. Mark's--"
"Aunt Dora!" pleaded Olivia. "Tell us," she besought the prince.
"King Otho I of Yaque," the prince was begining, but the title was
not to be calmly received by Mrs. Hastings.
"_King_ Otho!" she articulated. "Then--am I royalty?"
"All who may possibly succeed to the throne Blackstone holds to be
royalty," said the lawyer in an edictal voice, and St. George looked
away from Olivia.
_The Princess Olivia_!
"King Otho," continued the prince, "ruled wisely and well for seven
months, and it was at the beginning of that time that the imperial
submarine was sent to the Azores with letters and a packet to you.
The enterprise, however, was attended by so great danger of
discovery that it was never repeated. This is why, for so long, you
have had no word from the king. And now I come," said the prince
with hesitation, "to the difficult part of my narrative."
He paused and Mr. Frothingham rushed to his assistance.
"As the family solicitor," said the lawyer, pursing his lips, and
waving his hands, once, from the wrists, "would you not better
divulge to my ear alone, the--a--"
"No--no!" flashed Olivia. "No, Mr. Frothingham--please."
The prince inclined his head.
"Will it surprise you, Miss Holland," he said, "to learn that I made
my voyage to this country expressly to seek you out?"
"To seek me?" exclaimed Olivia. "But--has anything happened to my
father?"
"We hope not," replied the prince, "but what I have to tell will
none the less occasion you anxiety. Briefly, Miss Holland, it is
more than three months since your father suddenly and mysteriously
disappeared from Yaque, leaving absolutely no clue to his
whereabouts."
A little cry broke from Olivia's lips that went to St. George's
heart. Mrs. Hastings, with a gesture that was quite wild and sent
her bonnet hopelessly to one side, burst into a volley of
exclamations and demands.
"Who did it?" she wailed. "Who did it? Otho is a gentleman. He
would never have the bad taste to disappear, like all those
dreadful people's wives, if somebody hadn't--"
"My dear Madame," interposed Mr. Frothingham, "calm--calm
yourself. There are families of undisputed position which
record disappearances in several generations."
"Please," pleaded Olivia. "Ah, tell us," she begged the prince
again.
"There is, unfortunately, but little to tell, Miss Holland," said
the prince with sympathetic regret. "I had the honour, three months
ago, to entertain the king, your father, at dinner. We parted at
midnight. His Majesty seemed--"
"His Majesty!" repeated Mrs. Hastings, smiling up at the opposite
wall as if her thought saw glories.
"--in the best of health and spirits," continued the prince. "A
meeting of the High Council was to be held at noon on the following
day. The king did not appear. From that moment no eye in Yaque has
fallen upon him."
"One moment, your Highness," said St. George quickly; "in the
absence of the king, who presides over the High Council?"
"As the head of the House of the Litany, the chief administrator of
justice, it is I," said the prince with humility.
"Ah, yes," St. George said evenly.
"But what have you done?" cried Olivia. "Have you had search made?
Have you--"
"Everything," the prince assured her. "The island is not large. Not
a corner of it remains unvisited. The people, who were devoted to
the king, your father, have sought night and day. There is, it is
hardly right to conceal from you," the prince hesitated, "a
circumstance which makes the disappearance the more alarming."
"Tell us. Keep nothing from us, I beg, Prince Tabnit," besought
Olivia.
"For centuries," said the prince slowly, "there has been in the
keeping of the High Council of the island a casket, containing what
is known as the Hereditary Treasure. This casket, with some of the
finest of its jewels, was left by King Abibaal himself. Since his
time every king of the island has upon his death bequeathed to the
casket the finest jewel in his possession; and its contents are now
therefore of inestimable value. The circumstance to which I refer is
that two days after the disappearance of the king, your father,
which spread grief and alarm through all Yaque, it was discovered
that the Hereditary Treasure was gone."
"Gone!" burst from the lips of the prince's auditors.
"As utterly as if the Fifth Dimension had received it," the prince
gravely assured them. "The loss, as you may imagine, is a grievous
one. The High Council immediately issued a proclamation that if the
treasure be not restored by a certain date--now barely two weeks
away--a heavy tax will be levied upon the people to make good, in
the coin of the realm, this incalculable loss. Against this the
people, though they are a people of peace, are murmurous."
"Indeed!" cried Mrs. Hastings. "Great loyalty it is that sets up the
loss of their trumpery treasure over and above the loss of their
king, my brother Otho! If," she shrilled indignantly, "we are not
unwise to listen to this at all. What is it you think? What is it
your people think?"
She raised her head until she had framed the prince in
tortoise-shell. Mrs. Hastings never held her head quite still. It
continually waved about a little, so that usually, even in peace, it
intimated indignation; and when actual indignation set in, the jet
on her bonnet tinkled and ticked like so many angry sparrows.
"Madame," said the prince, "there are those among his Majesty's
subjects who would willingly lay down their lives for him. But he is
a stranger to us--come of an alien race; and the double
disappearance is a most tragic occurrence, which the burden of the
tax has emphasized. To be frank, were his Majesty to reappear in
Yaque without the treasure having been found--"
"Oh!" breathed Mrs. Hastings, "they would kill him!"
The prince shuddered and set his white teeth in his nether lip.
"The gods forbid," he said. "Such primeval punishment is as unknown
among us as is war itself. How little you know my people; how
pitifully your instincts have become--forgive me--corrupted by
living in this barbarous age of yours, fumbling as you do at
civilization. With us death is a sacred rite, the highest tribute
and the last sacrifice to the Absolute. Our dying are carried to the
Temple of the Worshipers of Distance, and are there consecrated.
The limit of our punishment would be aerial exposure--"
"You mean?" cried St. George.
"I mean that in extreme cases we have, with due rite and ceremonial,
given a victim to an airship, without ballast or rudder, and
abundantly provisioned. Then with solemn ritual we have set him
adrift--an offering to the great spirits of space--so that he may
come to know. This," the prince paused in emotion, "this is the
worst that could befall your father."
"How horrible!" cried Olivia. "Oh, how horrible."
"Oh," Mrs. Hastings moaned, "he was born to it. He was born to it.
When he was six he tied kites to his arms and jumped out the window
of the cupola and broke his collar bone--oh, Otho,--oh Heaven,--and
I made him eat oatmeal gruel three times a day when he was getting
well."
"Prince Tabnit," said St. George, "I beg you not to jest with us.
Have consideration for the two to whom this man is dear."
"I am speaking truth to you," said the prince earnestly. "I do not
wish to alarm these ladies, but I am bound in honour to tell you
what I know."
"Ah then," said St. George, his narrowed eyes meeting those of the
prince, "since the taking of life is unknown to you in Yaque, will
you explain how it was that your servant adopted such unerring
means to take the life of Miss Holland? And why?"
"My servant," said the prince readily, "belongs to the lahnas or
former serfs of the island. Upon her people, now the owners of rich
lands, the tax will fall heavily. Crazed by what she considers her
people's wrongs following upon the coming of the stranger sovereign,
the poor creature must have developed the primitive instincts of
your race. Before coming to this country my servant had never heard
of murder save as a superseded custom of antiquity, like the
crucifying of lions. Her discovery of your daily practice of murder,
and of murder practised as a cure for crime--"
"Sir," began the lawyer imposingly.
"--wakened in her the primitive instincts of humanity, and her
instinct took the deplorable and fanatic form of your own courts,"
finished the prince. "Her bitterness toward his Majesty she sought
to visit upon his daughter."
Olivia sprang to her feet.
"I must go to my father. I must go to Yaque," she cried ringingly.
"Prince Tabnit, will you take me to him?"
Into the prince's face leaped a fire of admiration for her beauty
and her daring. He bowed before her, his lowered lashes making thick
shadows on his dark cheeks.
"I insist upon this," cried little Olivia firmly, "and if you do not
permit it, Prince Tabnit, we must publish what you have told us
from one end of the city to the other."
"Yes, by Jove," thought St. George, "and one's country will have a
Yaque exhibit in its own department at the next world's fair."
"Olivia! My child! Miss Holland--," began the lawyer.
The prince spoke tranquilly.
"It is precisely this errand," he said, "that has brought me to
America. Do you not see that, in the event of your father's failure
to return to his people, you will eventually be Queen of Yaque?"
St. George found himself looking fixedly at Mrs. Hastings' false
front as the only reality in the room. If in a minute Rollo was
going to waken him by bringing in his coffee, he was going to
throttle Rollo--that was all. Olivia Holland, an American heiress,
the hereditary princess of a cannibal island! St. George still
insisted upon the cannibal; it somehow gave him a foothold among the
actualities.
"I!" cried Olivia.
Mrs. Hastings, brows lifted, lips parted, winked with lightning
rapidity in an effort to understand.
St. George pulled himself together.
"Your Highness," he said sternly, "there are several things upon
which I must ask you to enlighten us. And the first, which I hope
you will forgive, is whether you have any direct proof that what
you tell us of Miss Holland's father is true."
"That's it! That's it!" Mr. Frothingham joined him with all the
importance of having made the suggestion. "We can hardly proceed in
due order without proofs, sir."
The prince turned toward the curtain at the room's end and the youth
appeared once more, this time bearing a light oval casket of
delicate workmanship. It was of a substance resembling both glass
and metal of changing, rainbow tints, and it passed through St.
George's mind as he observed it that there must be, to give such a
dazzling and unreal effect, more than seven colours in the spectrum.
"A spectrum of seven colours," said the prince at the same moment,
"could not, of course, produce this surface. I confess that until I
came to this country I did not know that you had so few colours. Our
spectrum already consists of twelve colours visible to the naked
eye, and at least five more are distinguishable through our powerful
magnifying glasses."
St. George was silent. It was as if he had suddenly been permitted
to look past the door that bars and threatens all knowledge.
The prince unlocked the casket. He drew out first a quantity of
paper of extreme thinness and lightness on which, embossed and
emblazoned, was the coat of arms of the Hollands--a sheaf of wheat
and an unicorn's head--and this was surmounted by a crown.
"This," said the prince, "is now the device upon the signet ring of
the King of Yaque, the arms of your own family. And here chances to
be a letter from your father containing some instructions to me. It
is true that writing has with us been superseded by wireless
communication, excepting where there is need of great secrecy. Then
we employ the alphabet of any language we choose, these being almost
disused, as are the Cuneiform and Coptic to you."
"And how is it," St. George could not resist asking, "that you know
and speak the English?"
The prince smiled swiftly.
"To you," he said, "who delve for knowledge and who do not know that
it is absolute and to be possessed at will, this can not now be made
clear. Perhaps some day..."
Olivia had taken the paper from the prince and pressed it to her
lips, her eyes filling with tears. There was no mistaking that
evidence, for this was her father's familiar hand.
"Otho always did write a fearful scrawl," Mrs. Hastings commented,
"his l's and his t's and his vowels were all the same height. I used
to tell him that I didn't know whatever people would think."
"I may, moreover," continued the prince, "call to mind several
articles which were included in the packet sent from the Azores by
his Majesty. You have, for example, a tapestry representing an ibis
hunt; you have an image in pink sutro, or soft marble, of an ancient
Phoenician god--Melkarth. And you have a length of stained glass
bearing the figure of the Tyrian sphinx, crucified, and surrounded
by coiled asps."
"Yes, it is true," said Olivia, "we have all these things."
"Why, the trash must be quite expensive," observed Mrs. Hastings. "I
don't care much for so many colours myself, perhaps because I always
wear black; though I did wear light colours a good deal when I was a
girl."
"What else, Mr. St. George?" inquired the prince pleasantly.
"Nothing else," cried Olivia passionately. "I am satisfied. My
father is in danger, and I believe that he is in Yaque, for he would
never of his own will desert a place of trust. I must go to him.
And, Aunt Dora, you and Mr. Frothingham must go with me."
"Oh, Olivia!" wailed Mrs. Hastings, a different key for every
syllable, "think--consider! Is it the necessary thing to do? And
what would your poor dear uncle have done? And is there a better way
than his way? For I always say that it is not really necessary to do
as my poor dear husband would have done, providing only that we can
find a better way. Oh," she mourned, lifting her hands, "that this
frightful thing should come to me at my age. Otho may be married to
a cannibal princess, with his sons catching wild goats by the hair
like Tennyson and the whistling parrots--"
"Madame," said the prince coldly, "forgets what I have been saying
of my country."
"I do not forget," declared Mrs. Hastings sharply, "but being behind
civilization and being ahead of civilization comes to the same thing
more than once. In morals it does."
St. George was silent. Olivia's splendid daring in her passionate
decision to go to her father stirred him powerfully; moreover, her
words outlined a possible course of his own whose magnitude startled
him, and at the same time filled him with a sudden, dazzling hope.
"But where is your island, Prince Tabnit?" he asked. "You've
naturally no consul there and no cable, since you are not even on
the map."
"Yaque," said the prince readily, "lies almost due southwest from
the Azores."
Mr. Frothingham stirred skeptically.
"But such an island," he said pompously, "so rich in material for
the archaeologist, the anthropologist, the explorer in all fields of
antiquity--ah, it is out of the question, out of the question!"
"It is difficult," said the prince patiently, "most difficult for me
to make myself intelligible to you--as difficult, if you will
forgive me, as if you were to try to explain calculus to one of the
street boys outside. But directly your phase of civilization has
opened to you the secrets of the Fourth Dimension, much will be
discovered to you which you do not now discern or dream, and among
these, Yaque. I do not jest," he added wearily, "neither do I expect
you to believe me. But I have told you the truth. And it would be
impossible for you to reach Yaque save in the company of one of the
islanders to whom the secret is known. I can not explain to you, any
more than I can explain harmony or colour."
"Well, I'm sure," cried Mrs. Hastings fretfully, "I don't know why
you all keep wandering from the subject so. Now, my brother Otho--"
"Prince Tabnit,"--Olivia's voice never seemed to interrupt, but
rather to "divide evidence finely" at the proper moment--"how long
will it take us to reach Yaque?"
St. George thrilled at that "us."
"My submarine," replied the prince, "is plying about outside the
harbour. I arrived in four days."
"By the way," St. George submitted, "since your wireless system is
perfected, why can not we have news of your island from here?"
"The curve of the earth," explained the prince readily, "prevents.
We have conquered only those problems with which we have had to
deal. The curve of the earth has of course never entered our
calculation. We have approached the problem from another
standpoint."
"We have much to do, Prince Tabnit," said Olivia; "when may we
leave?"
"Command me," said Prince Tabnit, bowing.
"To-morrow!" cried Olivia, "to-morrow, at noon."
"Olivia!" Mrs. Hastings' voice broke over the name like ice upon a
warm promontory. Mrs. Hastings' voice was suited to say "Keziah" or
"Katinka," not Olivia.
"Can you go, Mr. Frothingham?" demanded Olivia.
Mr. Frothingham's long hands hung down and he looked as if she had
proposed a jaunt to Mars.
"My physician has ordered a sea-change," he mumbled doubtfully, "my
daughter Antoinette--I--really--there is nothing in all my
experience--"
"Olivia!" Mrs. Hastings in tears was superintending the search for
both side-combs.
"Aunt Dora," said Olivia, "you're not going to fail me now. Prince
Tabnit--at noon to-morrow. Where shall we meet?"
St. George listened, glowing.
"May I have the honour," suggested the prince, "of waiting upon you
at noon to conduct you? And I need hardly say that we undertake the
journey under oath of secrecy?"
"Anything--anything!" cried Olivia.
"Oh, my dear Olivia," breathed Mrs. Hastings weakly, "taking me, at
my age, into this awful place of Four Dimentias--or whatever it was
you said."
"We will be ready to go with you at noon," said Olivia steadily.
St. George held his peace as they made their adieux. A great many
things remained to be thought out, but one was clear enough.
The boy servant ran before them to the door. They made their way to
the street in the early dusk. A hurdy-gurdy on the curb was bubbling
over with merry discords, and was flanked by garrulous Italians with
push-carts, lighted by flaring torches. Men were returning from
work, children were quarreling, women were in doorways, and a
policeman was gossiping with the footman in a knot of watching
idlers. With a sigh that was like a groan, Mrs. Hastings sank back
on the cushions of the brougham.
"I feel," she said, eyes closed, "as if I had been in a pagan temple
where they worship oracles and what's-his-names. What time is it? I
haven't an idea. Dear, dear, I want to get home and feel as if my
feet were on land and water again. I want some strong sleep and a
good sound cup of coffee, and then I shall know what's actually
what."
To St. George the slow drive up town was no less unreal than their
visit. His head was whirling, a hundred plans and speculations
filled his mind, and through these Mrs Hastings' chatter of
forebodings and the lawyer's patterned utterance hardly found their
way. At his own street he was set down, with Mrs. Hastings'
permission to call next day.
Miss Holland gave him her hand.
"I can not thank you," she said, "I can not thank you. But try to
know, won't you, what this has been to me. Until to-morrow."
Until to-morrow. St. George stood in the brightness of the street
looking after the vanishing carriage, his hand tingling from her
touch. Then he went up to his apartment and met Rollo--sleek,
deferential, the acme of the polite barbarism in which the prince
had made St. George feel that he and his world were living. Ah, he
thought, as Rollo took his hat, this was no way to live, with the
whole world singing to be discovered anew.
He sat down before the trim little white table with its pretty china
and silver and its one rose-shaded candle, but the doubtful content
of comfort was suddenly not enough. The spirit of the road and of
the chase was in his veins, and he was aglow with "the taste for
pilgriming." He looked about on the simple luxury with which he had
surrounded himself, and he welcomed his farewell to it. And when
Rollo had gone up stairs to complain in person of the shad-roe, St.
George spoke aloud:
"If Miss Holland sails for Yaque to-morrow on the prince's
submarine," he said, "_The Aloha_ and I will follow her."