THE ISLE OF HEARTS
The room in which St. George was looking was long and lofty and hung
with pale tapestries. White pillars supporting the domed white
ceiling were wound with garlands. The smoke from a little brazen
tripod ascended pleasantly, and about the windows stirred in the
faint wind draperies of exceeding thinness, woven in looms stilled
centuries ago.
Olivia was crossing before the windows. She wore a white gown strewn
with roses, and she seemed as much at home on this alien
mountain-top as she had been in her aunt's drawing-room at the
Boris. But her face was sad, and there was not a touch of the
piquancy which it had worn the night before in the throne-room, nor
of its delicious daring as she had sped past him in the big Yaque
touring car. Save for her, the room was deserted; it was as if the
prince had come to the castle and found the Sleeping Princess the
only one awake.
If in that supreme moment St. George had leaped forward and taken
her in his arms no one--no one, that is, in the fairy-tale of what
was happening--would greatly have censured him. But he stood without
for a moment, hardly daring to believe his happiness, hardly knowing
that her name was on his lips.
He had spoken, however, and she turned quickly, her look uncertainly
seeking the doorway, and she saw him. For a moment she stood still,
her eyes upon his face; then with a little incredulous cry that
thrilled him with a sudden joyous hope that was like belief, she
came swiftly toward him.
St. George loved to remember that she did that. There was no waiting
for assurance and no fear; only the impulse, gloriously obeyed, to
go toward him.
He stepped in the room, and took her hands in his and looked into
her eyes as if he would never turn away his own. In her face was a
dawning of glad certainty and welcome which he could not doubt.
"You," she cried softly, "you. How is it possible? But how is it
possible?"
Her voice trembled a little with something so sweet that it raced
through his veins with magic.
"Did you rub the lamp?" he said. "Because I couldn't help coming."
She looked at him breathlessly.
"Have you," he asked her gravely, "eaten of the potatoes of Yaque?
And are you going to say, 'Off with his head'? And can you tell me
what is the population of the island?"
At that they both laughed--the merry, irrepressible laugh of youth
which explains that the world is a very good place indeed and that
one is glad that one belongs there. And the memory of that breakfast
on the other side of the world, of their happy talk about what would
happen if they two were impossibly to meet in Yaque came back to
them both, and set his heart beating and flooded her face with
delicate colour. In her laugh was a little catching of the breath
that was enchanting.
"Not yet," she said, "your head is safe till you tell me how you got
here, at all events. Now tell me--oh, tell me. I can't believe it
until you tell me."
She moved a little away from the door.
"Come in," she said shyly, "if you've come all the way from America
you must be very tired."
St. George shook his head.
"Come out," he pleaded, "I want to stand on top of a high mountain
and show you the whole world."
She went quite simply and without hesitation--because, in Yaque, the
maddest things would be the truest--and when she had stepped from
the low doorway she looked up at him in the tender light of the
garden terrace.
"If you are quite sure," she said, "that you will not disappear in
the dark?"
St. George laughed happily.
"I shall not disappear," he promised, "though the world were to turn
round the other way."
They crossed the still terrace to the parapet and stood looking out
to sea with the risen moon shining across the waters. The light wind
stirred in the cedrine junipers, shaking out perfume; the great
fairy pile of the palace rose behind them; and before them lay the
monstrous moon-lit abyss than whose depths the very stars, warm and
friendly, seemed nearer to them. To the big young American in blue
serge beside the little new princess who had drawn him over seas the
dream that one is always having and never quite remembering was
suddenly come true. No wonder that at that moment the patient Amory
was far enough from his mind. To St. George, looking down upon
Olivia, there was only one truth and one joy in the universe, and
she was that truth and that joy.
"I can't believe it," he said boyishly.
"Believe--what?" she asked, for the delight of hearing him say so.
"This--me--most of all, you!" he answered.
"But you must believe it," she cried anxiously, "or maybe it will
stop being."
"I will, I will, I am now!" promised St. George in alarm.
Whereat they both laughed again in sheer light-heartedness. Then,
resting his broad shoulders against a prism of the parapet, St.
George looked down at her in infinite content.
"You found the island," she said; "what is still more wonderful you
have come here--but _here_--to the top of the mountain. Oh, did you
bring news of my father?"
St. George would have given everything save the sweet of the moment
to tell her that he did.
"But now," he added cheerfully, and his smile disarmed this of its
over-confidence, "I've only been here two days or so. And, though it
may look easy, I've had my hands full climbing up this. I ought to
be allowed another day or two to locate your father."
"Please tell me how you got here," Olivia demanded then.
St. George told her briefly, omitting the yacht's ownership,
explaining merely that the paper had sent him and that Jarvo and
Akko had pointed the way and, save for that journey down nebulous
ways in the wake of her veil the night before, sketching the
incidents which had followed his arrival upon the island.
"And one of the most agreeable hours I've had in Yaque," he
finished, "was last night, when you were chairman of the meeting.
That was magnificent."
"You _were_ there!" cried Olivia, "I thought--"
"That you saw me?" St. George pressed eagerly.
"I think that I thought so," she admitted.
"But you never looked at me," said St. George dolefully, "and I had
on a forty-two gored dress, or something."
"Ah," Olivia confessed, "but I had thought so before when I knew it
couldn't be you."
St. George's heart gave a great bound.
"When before?" he wanted to know ecstatically.
"Ah, before," she explained, "and then afterward, too."
"When afterward?" he urged.
(Smile if you like, but this is the way the happy talk goes in Yaque
as you remember very well, if you are honest.)
"Yesterday, when I was motoring, I thought--"
"I was. You did," St. George assured her. "I was in the prince's
motor. The procession was temporarily tied up, you remember. Did you
really think it was I?"
But this the lady passed serenely over.
"Last night," she said, "when that terrible thing happened, who was
it in the other motor? Who was it, there in the road when I--was it
you? Was it?" she demanded.
"Did you think it was I?" asked St. George simply.
"Afterward--when I was back in the palace--I thought I must have
dreamed it," she answered, "and no one seemed to know, and _I_
didn't know. But I did fancy--you see, they think father has taken
the treasure," she said, "and they thought if they could hide me
somewhere and let it be known, that he would make some sign."
"It was monstrous," said St. George; "you are really not safe here
for one moment. Tell me," he asked eagerly, "the car you were
in--what became of that?"
"I meant to ask you that," she said quickly. "I couldn't tell, I
didn't know whether it turned aside from the road, or whether they
dropped me out and went on. Really, it was all so quick that it was
almost as if the motor had stopped being, and left me there."
"Perhaps it did stop being--in this dimension," St. George could not
help saying.
At this she laughed in assent.
"Who knows," she said, "what may be true of us--_nous autres_ in the
Fourth Dimension? In Yaque queer things are true. And of course you
never can tell--"
At this St. George turned toward her, and his eyes compelled hers.
"Ah, yes, you can," he told her, "yes, you can."
Then he folded his arms and leaned against the stone prisms again,
looking down at her. Evidently the magician, whoever he was, did not
mind his saying that, for the palace did not crumble or the moon
cease from shining on the white walls.
"Still," she answered, looking toward the sea, "queer things _are_
true in Yaque. It is queer that you are here. Say that it is."
"Heaven knows that it is," assented St. George obediently.
Presently, realizing that the terrace did not intend to turn into a
cloud out-of-hand, they set themselves to talk seriously, and St.
George had not known her so adorable, he was once more certain, as
when she tried to thank him for his pursuit the night before. He had
omitted to mention that he had brought her back alone to the Palace
of the Litany, for that was too exquisite a thing, he decided, to be
spoiled by leaving out the most exquisite part. Besides, there was
enough that was serious to be discussed, in all conscience, in spite
of the moon.
"Tell me," said St. George instead, "what has happened to you since
that breakfast at the Boris. Remember, I have come all the way from
New York to interview you, Mademoiselle the Princess."
So Olivia told him the story of the passage in the submarine which
had arrived in Yaque two days earlier than _The Aloha_; of the first
trip up Mount Khalak in the imperial airship; of Mrs. Hastings'
frantic fear and her utter refusal ever to descend; and of what she
herself had done since her arrival. This included a most practical
account of effort that delighted and amazed St. George. No wonder
Mrs. Hastings had said that she always left everything "executive"
to Olivia. For Olivia had sent wireless messages all over the island
offering an immense reward for information about the king, her
father; she had assigned forty servants of the royal household to
engage in a personal search for such information and to report to
her each night; she had ordered every house in Yaque, not excepting
the House of the Litany and the king's palace itself, to be searched
from dungeon to tower; and, as St. George already knew, she had
brought about a special meeting of the High Council at noon that
day.
"It was very little," said the American princess apologetically,
"but I did what I could."
"What about the meeting of the High Council?" asked St. George
eagerly; "didn't anything come of that?"
"Nothing," she answered, "they were like adamant. I thought of
offering to raise the Hereditary Treasure by incorporating the
island and selling the shares in America. Nobody could ever have
found what the shares stood for, but that happens every day. Half
the corporations must be capitalized chiefly in the Fourth
Dimension. That is all," she added wearily, "save that day after
to-morrow I am to be married."
"That," St. George explained, "is as you like. For if your father
is on the island we shall have found him by day after to-morrow, at
noon, if we have to shake all Yaque inside out, like a paper sack.
And if he isn't here, we simply needn't stop."
Olivia shook her head.
"You don't know the prince," she said. "I have heard enough to
convince me that it is quite as he says. He holds events in the
hollow of his hand."
"Amory proposed," said St. George, "that we sit up here and throw
pebbles at him for a time. And Amory is very practical."
Olivia laughed--her laugh was delicious and alluring, and St. George
came dangerously near losing his head every time that he heard it.
"Ah," she cried, "if only it weren't for the prince and if we had
news of father, what a heavenly, heavenly place this would be, would
it not?"
"It would, it would indeed," assented St. George, and in his heart
he said, "and so it is."
"It's like being somewhere else," she said, looking into the abyss
of far waters, "and when you look down there--and when you look up,
you nearly _know_. I don't know what, but you nearly know. Perhaps
you know that 'here' is the same as 'there,' as all these people
say. But whatever it is, I think we might have come almost as near
knowing it in New York, if we had only known how to try."
"Perhaps it isn't so much knowing," he said, "as it is being where
you can't help facing mystery and taking the time to be amazed.
Although," added St. George to himself, "there are things that one
finds out in New York. In a drawing-room, at the Boris, for
instance, over muffins and tea."
"It will be delightful to take all this back to New York," Olivia
vaguely added, as if she meant the fairy palace and the fairy sea.
"It will," agreed St. George fervently, and he couldn't possibly
have told whether he meant the mystery of the island or the mystery
of that hour there with her. There was so little difference.
"Suppose," said Olivia whimsically, "that we open our eyes in a
minute, and find that we are in the prince's room in McDougle
Street, and that he has passed his hand before our faces and made us
dream all this. And father is safe after all."
"But it isn't all a dream," St. George said softly, "it can't
possibly all be a dream, you know."
She met his eyes for a moment.
"Not your coming away here," she said, "if the rest is true I
wouldn't want that to be a dream. You don't know what courage this
will give us all."
She said "us all," but that had to mean merely "us," as well. St.
George turned and looked over the terrace. What an Arabian night it
was, he was saying to himself, and then stood in a sudden amazement,
with the uncertain idea that one of the Schererazade magicians had
answered that fancy of his by appearing.
A little shrine hung thick with vines, its ancient stone chipped and
defaced, stood on the terrace with its empty, sightless niche turned
toward the sea. Leaning upon its base was an old man watching them.
His eyes under their lowered brows were peculiarly intent, but his
look was perfectly serene and friendly. His stuff robe hung in
straight folds about his singularly erect figure, and his beard and
hair were not all grey. But he was very old, with incredibly brown
and wrinkled flesh, and his face was vacant, as if the mind were
asleep.
As he looked, St. George knew him. Here on the top of this mountain
was that amazing old man whom he had last seen in the banquet hall
at the Palace of the Litany--that old Malakh for whom Olivia had so
unexplainably interceded.
"What is that man doing here?" St. George asked in surprise.
[Illustration]
"He is a mad old man, they said," Olivia told him, "down there they
call him Malakh--that means 'salt'--because they said he always
weeps. We had stopped to look at a metallurgist yesterday--he had
some zinc and some metals cut out like flowers, and he was making
them show phosphorescent colours in his little dark alcove. The old
man was watching him and trying to tell him something, but the
metallurgist was rude to him and some boys came by and jostled him
and pushed him about and taunted him--and the metallurgist actually
explained to us that every one did that way to old Malakh. So I
thought he was better off up here," concluded Olivia tranquilly.
St. George was silent. He knew that Olivia was like this, but
everything that proved anew her loveliness of soul caught at his
heart.
"Tell me," he said impulsively, "what made you let him stay last
night, there in the banquet hall?"
She flushed, and shook her head with a deprecatory gesture.
"I haven't an idea," she said gravely, "I think I must have done it
so the fairies wouldn't prick their feet on any new sorrow. One has
to be careful of the fairies' feet."
St. George nodded. It was a charming reason for the left hand to
give the right, and he was not deceived.
"Look at him," said St. George, almost reverently, "he looks like a
shade of a god that has come back from the other world and found his
shrine dishonoured."
Some echo of St. George's words reached the old man and he caught
at it, smiling. It was as if he had just been thinking what he
spoke.
"There are not enough shrines," he said gently, "but there are far
too many gods. You will find it so."
Something in his words stirred St. George strangely. There was about
the old creature an air of such gentleness, such supreme repose and
detachment that, even in that place of quiet, his presence made a
kind of hush. He was old and pallid and fragile, but there lingered
within him, while his spirit lingered, the perfume of all fine and
gentle things, all things of quietude. When he had spoken the old
man turned and moved slowly down the ways of strange light, between
the fallen temples builded to forgotten gods, and he seemed like the
very spirit of the ancient mountain, ignorant of itself and knowing
all truth.
"How strange," said St. George, looking after him, "how unutterably
strange and sad."
"That is good of you," said Olivia. "Aunt Dora and Antoinette
thought I'd gone quite off my head, and Mr. Frothingham wanted to
know why I didn't bring back some one who could have been called as
a witness."
"Witness," St. George echoed; "but the whole place is made of
witnesses. Which reminds me: what is the sentence?"
"The sentence?" she wondered.
"The potatoes of Yaque," he reminded her, "and my head?"
"Ah well," said Olivia gravely, "inasmuch as the moon came up in the
east to-night instead of the west, I shall be generous and give you
one day's reprieve."
"Do you know, I _thought_ the moon came up in the east to-night,"
cried St. George joyfully.
* * * * *
It was half an hour afterward that Amory's languid voice from
somewhere in the sky broke in upon their talk. As he came toward
them across the terrace St. George saw that he was miraculously not
alone.
Afterward Amory told him what had happened and what had made him
abide in patience and such wondrous self-effacement.
When St. George had left him contemplating the far beauties of the
little blur of light that was Med, Mr. Toby Amory set a match to one
of his jealously expended store of Habanas and added one more aroma
to the spiced air. To be standing on the doorstep of a king's
palace, confidently expecting within the next few hours to assist in
locating the king himself was a situation warranting, Amory thought,
such fragrant celebration, and he waited in comparative content.
The moon had climbed high enough to cast a great octagonal shadow on
the smooth court, and the Habana was two-thirds memory when,
immediately back of Amory, a long window opened outward, releasing
an apparition which converted the remainder of the Habana into a
fiery trail ending out on the terrace. It was a girl of rather more
than twenty, exquisitely petite and pretty, and wearing a ruffley
blue evening gown whose skirt was caught over her arm. She stopped
short when she saw Amory, but without a trace of fear. To tell the
truth, Antoinette Frothingham had got so desperately bored
withindoors that if Amory had worn a black mask or a cloak of flame
she would have welcomed either.
For the last two hours Mrs. Medora Hastings and Mr. Augustus
Frothingham had sat in a white marble room of the king's palace,
playing chess on Mr. Frothingham's pocket chess-board. Mr.
Frothingham, who loathed chess, played it when he was tired so that
he might rest and when he was rested he played it so that he might
exercise his mind--on the principle of a cool drink on a hot day and
a hot drink on a cool day. Mrs. Hastings, who knew nothing at all
about the game, had entered upon the hour with all the suave
complacency with which she would have attacked the making of a pie.
Mrs. Hastings had a secret belief that she possessed great aptitude.
Antoinette Frothingham, the lawyer's daughter, had leaned on the
high casement and looked over the sea. The window was narrow, and
deep in an embrasure of stone. To be twenty and to be leaning in
this palace window wearing a pale blue dinner-gown manifestly
suggested a completion of the picture; and all that evening it had
been impressing her as inappropriate that the maiden and the castle
tower and the very sea itself should all be present, with no
possibility of any knight within an altitude of many hundred feet.
"The dear little ponies' heads!" Mrs. Hastings had kept saying.
"What a poetic game chess is, Mr. Frothingham, don't you think?
That's what I always said to poor dear Mr. Hastings--at least,
that's what he always said to me: 'Most games are so _needless_, but
chess is really up and down poetic'"
Mr. Frothingham made all ready to speak and then gave it up in
silence.
"Um," he had responded liberally.
"I'm sure," Mrs. Hastings had continued plaintively, "neither he nor
I ever thought that I would be playing chess up on top of a volcano
in the middle of the ocean. It's this awful feeling," Mrs. Hastings
had cried querulously, "of being neither on earth nor under the
water nor in Heaven that I object to. And nobody can get to us."
"That's just it, Mrs. Hastings," Antoinette had observed earnestly
at this juncture.
"Um," said Mr. Frothingham, then, "not at all, not at all. We have
all the advantages of the grave and none of its discomforts."
Whereupon Antoinette, rising suddenly, had slipped out of the white
marble room altogether and had found the knight smoking in
loneliness on the very veranda.
Amory put his cap under his arm and bowed.
"I hope," he said, "that I haven't frightened you."
He was an American! Antoinette's little heart leaped.
"I am having to wait here for a bit," explained Amory, not without
vagueness.
Miss Frothingham advanced to the veranda rail and contrived a shy
scrutiny of the intruder.
"No," she said, "you didn't frighten me in the least, of course.
But--do you usually do your waiting at this altitude?"
"Ah, no," answered Amory with engaging candour, "I don't. But
I--happened up this way." Amory paused a little desperately. In that
soft light he could not tell positively whether this was Miss
Holland or that other figure of silver and rose which he had seen in
the throne room. The blue gown was not interpretative. If she was
Miss Holland it would be very shabby of him to herald the surprise.
Naturally, St. George would appreciate doing that himself. "I'm
looking about a bit," he neatly temporized.
Antoinette suddenly looked away over the terrace as her eyes met
his, smiling behind their pince-nez. Amory was good to look at, and
he had never been more so than as he towered above her on the steps
of the king's palace. Who was he--but who was he? Antoinette
wondered rapidly. Had a warship arrived? Was Yaque taken? Or
had--she turned eyes, round with sudden fear, upon Amory.
"Did Prince Tabnit send you?" she demanded.
Amory laughed.
"No, indeed," he said. Amory had once lived in the South, and he
accented the "no" very takingly. "I came myself," he volunteered.
"I thought," explained Antoinette, "that maybe he opened a door in
the dark, and you walked out. It _is_ rather funny that you should
be here."
"You are here, you know," suggested Amory doubtfully.
"But I may be a cannibal princess," Antoinette demurely pointed out.
It was not that her astonishment was decreasing; but why--modernity
and the democracy spoke within her--waste the possibilities of a
situation merely because it chances to be astonishing? Moments of
mystery are rare enough, in all conscience; and when they do arrive
all the world misses them by trying to understand them. Which is
manifestly ungrateful and stupid. They do these things better in
Yaque.
"You maybe," agreed Amory evenly, "though I don't know that I ever
met a desert island princess in a dinner frock. But then, I am a
beginner in desert islands."
"Are you an American?" inquired Antoinette earnestly.
Amory looked up at the frowning façade of the king's palace, and he
could have found it in his heart to believe his own answer.
"I'm the ghost," he confessed, "of a poor beggar of a Phoenician who
used to make water-jars in Sidon. I have been condemned to plow the
high seas and explore the tall mountains until I find the Pitiful
Princess. She must be up at the very peak, in distress, and I--"
Amory stopped and looked desperately about him. Would St. George
never come? How was he, Amory, to be accountable for what he told if
he were left here alone in these extraordinary circumstances?
Then Antoinette lightly clapped her hands.
"A ghost!" she exclaimed with pleasure. "Miss Holland hoped the
place was haunted. A Phoenician ghost with an Alabama accent."
She had said "Miss Holland hoped."
"Aren't you--aren't you Miss Holland?" demanded Amory promptly, a
joyful note of uncertainty in his voice.
Antoinette shook her head.
"No," she said, "though I don't know why I should tell you that."
From Amory's soul rolled a burden that left him treading air on
Mount Khalak. She was not Miss Holland. What did he care how long
St. George stayed away?
"I am Tobias Amory," he said, "of New York. Most people don't know
about the Sidonian ghost part. But I've told you because I thought,
perhaps, you might be the Pitiful Princess."
Antoinette's heart was beating pleasantly. Of New York! How--oh, how
did he get here? Was there, then, a wishing-stone in that window
embrasure where she had been sitting, and had the knight come
because she had willed it? How much did he know? How much ought she
to tell? Nothing whatever, prudently decided the lawyer's daughter.
"I've had, I'm almost certain, the pleasure of seeing you before,"
imparted Amory pleasantly, adjusting his pince-nez and looking down
at her. She was so enchantingly tiny and he was such a giant.
"In New York?" demanded Antoinette.
"No," said Amory, "no. Do desert island princesses get to New York
occasionally, then? No, I think I saw you in Yaque. Yesterday. In a
silver automobile. Did I?"
Antoinette dimpled.
"We frightened them all to death," she recalled. "Did we frighten
you?"
"So much," admitted Amory, "that I took refuge up here."
"Where were you?" Antoinette asked curiously. Really, he was very
amusing--this big courtly creature. How agreeable of Olivia to stay
away.
"Ah, tell me how you got here," she impetuously begged. "Desert
island people don't see people from New York every day."
"Well then, O Pitiful Princess," said the Shade from Sidon, "it was
like this--"
It was easy enough to fleet the time carelessly, and assuredly that
high moon-lit world was meant to be no less merry than the golden.
Whoever has chanced to meet a delightful companion on some silver
veranda up in the welkin knows this perfectly well; and whoever has
not is a dull creature. But there are delightful folk who are wont
to suspect the dullest of harbouring some sweet secret, some sense
of "those sights which alone (says the nameless Greek) make life
worth enduring," and this was akin to such a sight.
After a time, at Antoinette's conscientious suggestion, they
strolled the way that St. George had taken. And to Olivia and the
missing adventurer over by the parapet came Amory's soft query:
"St George, may I express a friendly concern?"
"Ah, come here, Toby," commanded St. George happily, "her Highness
and I have been discussing matters of state."
"Antoinette!" cried Olivia in amazement. From time immemorial
royalty has perpetually been surprised by the behaviour of its
ladies-in-waiting.
"I've been remembering a verse," said Amory when he had been
presented to Olivia, "may I say it? It goes:
"'I'll speak a story to you,
Now listen while I try:
I met a Queen, and she kept house
A-sitting in the sky.'"
"Come in and say it to my aunt," Olivia applauded. "Aunt Dora is
dying of ennui up here."
They crossed the terrace in the hush of the tropic night. Through
the fairy black and silver the four figures moved, and it was as if
the king's palace--that sky thing, with ramparts of air--had at
length found expression and knew a way to answer the ancient
glamourie of the moon.