OPEN SECRETS
"Will you have tea?" asked Olivia.
St. George brought a deck cushion and tucked it in the willow
steamer chair and said adoringly that he would have tea. Tea. In a
world where the essentials and the inessentials are so deliciously
confused, to think that tea, with some one else, can be a kind of
Heaven.
"Two lumps?" pursued Olivia.
"Three, please," St. George directed, for the pure joy of watching
her hands. There were no tongs.
"Aren't the rest going to have some?" Olivia absently shared her
attention, tinkling delicately about among the tea things. "Doesn't
every one want a cup of tea?" she inquired loud enough for nobody to
hear. St. George, shifting his shoulder from the rail, looked
vaguely over the deck of _The Aloha_, sighed contentedly, and smiled
back at her. No one else, it appeared, would have tea; and there was
none to regret it.
St. George's cursory inspection had revealed the others variously
absorbed, though they were now all agreed in breathing easily since
Barnay, interlarding rational speech with Irishisms of thanksgiving,
had announced five minutes before that the fires were up and that in
half an hour _The Aloha_ might weigh anchor. The only thing now left
to desire was to slip clear of the shadow of the black reaches of
Yaque, shouldering the blue.
Meanwhile, Antoinette and Amory sat in the comparative seclusion of
the bow with their backs to the forward deck, and it was definitely
manifest to every one how it would be with them, but every one was
simply glad and dismissed the matter with that. Mr. Frothingham, in
his steamer chair, looked like a soft collapsible tube of something;
Bennietod, at ease upon the uncovered boards of the deck, was
circumspectly having cheese sandwiches and wastefully shooting the
ship's rockets into the red sunset, in general celebration; and
Rollo, having taken occasion respectfully to submit to whomsoever it
concerned that fact is ever stranger than fiction, had gone below.
Mr. Otho Holland and Little Cawthorne--but their smiles were like
different names for the same thing--were toasting each other in
something light and dry and having a bouquet which Mr. Holland, who
ought to know, compared favourably with certain vintages of 1000
B.C. In a hammock near them reclined Mrs. Medora Hastings, holding
two kinds of smelling salts which invariably revived her simply by
inducing the mental effort of deciding which was the better. Her
hair, which was exceedingly pretty, now rippled becomingly about her
flushed face and was guiltless of side-combs--she had lost them both
down a chasm in that headlong flight from the cliff's summit, and
they irrecoverably reposed in the bed of some brook of the Miocene
period. And Mrs. Hastings, her hand in that of her brother, lay in
utter silence, smiling up at him in serene content.
For King Otho of Yaque was turning his back upon his island domain
for ever. In that hurried flight across the Eurychôrus among his
distracted subjects, his resolution had been taken. Jarvo and Akko,
the adieux to whom had been every one's sole regret in leaving the
island, had miraculously found their way to the king and his party
in their flight, and were despatched to Mount Khalak for such of
their belongings as they could collect, and the island sovereign was
well content.
"Ah well now," he had just observed, languidly surveying the
tropical horizon through a cool glass of winking amber bubbles, "one
must learn that to touch is far more delicate than to lift. It is
more wonderful to have been the king of one moment than the ruler of
many. It is better to have stood for an instant upon a rainbow than
to have taken a morning walk through a field of clouds. The
principle has long been understood, but few have had--shall I
say the courage?--to practise it. Yet 'courage' is a term
from-the-shoulder, and what I require is a word of finger-tips,
over-tones, ultra-rays--a word for the few who understand that to
leave a thing is more exquisite than to outwear it. It is by its
very fineness circumscribed--a feminine virtue. Women understand it
and keep it secret. I flatter myself that I have possessed the high
moment, vanished against the noon. Ah, my dear fellow--" he added,
lifting his glass to St. George's smile.
But little Cawthorne--all reality in his heliotrope outing and duck
and grey curls--raised a characteristic plaint.
"Oh, but I've done it," he mournfully reviewed. "When'll I ever be
in another island, in front of another vacated throne? Why didn't I
move into the palace, and set up a natty, up-to-date little
republic? I could have worn a crown as a matter of taste--what's the
use of a democracy if you aren't free to wear a crown? And what kind
of American am I, anyway, with this undeveloped taste for acquiring
islands? If they ever find this out at the polls my vote'll be
challenged. What?"
"Aw whee!" said Bennietod, intent upon a Roman candle, "wha' do you
care, Mr. Cawt'orne? You don't hev to go back fer to be a
child-slave to Chillingwort'. Me, I've gotta good call to jump
overboard now an' be de sonny of a sea-horse, dead to rights!"
St. George looked at them all affectionately, unconscious that
already the experience of the last three days was slipping back into
the sheathing past, like a blade used. But he was dawningly aware,
as he sat there at Olivia's feet in glorious content, that he was
looking at them all with new eyes. It was as if he had found new
names for them all; and until long afterward one does not know that
these moments of bestowing new names mark the near breathing of the
god.
The silence of Mrs. Hastings and her quiet devotion to her brother
somehow gave St. George a new respect for her. Over by the
wheel-house something made a strange noise of crying, and St. George
saw that Mr. Frothingham sat holding a weird little animal, like a
squirrel but for its stumpy tail and great human eyes, which he had
unwittingly stepped on among the rocks. The little thing was licking
his hand, and the old lawyer's face was softened and glowing as he
nursed it and coaxed it with crumbs. As he looked, St. George warmed
to them all in new fellowship and, too, in swift self-reproach; for
in what had seemed to him but "broad lines and comic masks" he
suddenly saw the authority and reality of homely hearts. The better
and more intimate names for everything which seemed now within his
grasp were more important than Yaque itself. He remembered, with a
thrill, how his mother had been wont to tell him that a man must
walk through some sort of fairy-land, whether of imagination or of
the heart, before he can put much in or take much from the
market-place. And lo! this fairy-land of his finding had
proved--must it not always prove?--the essence of all Reality.
His eyes went to Olivia's face in a flash of understanding and
belief.
"Don't you see?" he said, quite as if they two had been talking what
he had thought.
She waited, smiling a little, thrilled by his certainty of her
sympathy.
"None of this happened really," triumphantly explained St. George,
"I met you at the Boris, did I not? Therefore, I think that since
then you have graciously let me see you for the proper length of
time, and at last we've fallen in love just as every one else does.
And true lovers always do have trouble, do they not? So then, Yaque
has been the usual trouble and happiness, and here we are--engaged."
"I'm not engaged," Olivia protested serenely, "but I see what you
mean. No, none of it happened," she gravely agreed. "It couldn't,
you know. Anybody will tell you that."
In her eyes was the sparkle of understanding which made St. George
love her more every time that it appeared. He noted, the white cloth
frock, and the coat of hunting pink thrown across her chair, and he
remembered that in the infinitesimal time that he had waited for her
outside the Palace of the Litany, she must have exchanged for these
the coronation robe and jewels of Queen Mitygen. St. George liked
that swift practicality in the race of faery, though he was
completely indifferent to Mrs. Hastings' and Antoinette's claims to
it; and he wondered if he were to love Olivia more for everything
that she did, how he could possibly live long enough to tell her.
When one has been to Yaque the simplest gifts and graces resolve
themselves into this question.
_The Aloha_ gently freed herself from the shallow green pocket where
she had lain through three eventful days, and slipped out toward the
waste of water bound by the flaunting autumn of the west. An island
wind, fragrant of bark and secret berries, blew in puffs from the
steep. A gull swooped to her nest in a cranny of the basalt. From
below a servant came on deck, his broad American face smiling over a
tray of glasses and decanters and tinkling ice. It was all very
tranquil and public and almost commonplace--just the high tropic
seas at the moment of their unrestrained sundown, and the odour of
tea-cakes about the pleasantly-littered deck. And for the moment,
held by a common thought, every one kept silent. Now that _The
Aloha_ was really moving toward home, the affair seemed suddenly
such a gigantic impossibility that every one resented every one
else's knowing what a trick had been played. It was as if the
curtain had just fallen and the lights of the auditorium had flashed
up after the third act, and they had all caught one another
breathless or in tears, pretending that the tragedy had really
happened.
"Promise me something," begged St. George softly, in sudden alarm,
born of this inevitable aspect; "promise me that when we get to New
York you are not going to forget all about Yaque--and me--and
believe that none of us ever happened."
Olivia looked toward the serene mystery of the distance.
"New York," she said only, "think of seeing you in New York--now."
"Was I of more account in Yaque?" demanded St. George anxiously.
"Sometimes," said Olivia adorably, "I shall tell you that you were.
But that will be only because I shall have an idea that in Yaque you
loved me more."
"Ah, very well then. And sometimes," said St. George contentedly,
"when we are at dinner I shall look down the table at you sitting
beside some one who is expounding some baneful literary theory, and
I shall think: What do I care? He doesn't know that she is really
the Princess of Far-Away. But I do."
"And he won't know anything about our motor ride, alone, the night
that I was kidnapped, either--the literary-theory person," Olivia
tranquilly took away his breath by observing.
St. George looked up at her quickly and, secretly, Olivia thought
that if he had been attractive when he was courageous he was doubly
so with the present adorably abashed look in his eyes.
"When--alone?" St. George asked unconvincingly.
She laughed a little, looking down at him in a reproof that was all
approbation, and to be reproved like that is the divinest praise.
"How did you know?" protested St. George in fine indignation.
"Besides," he explained, "I haven't an idea what you mean."
"I guessed about that ride," she went on, "the night before last,
when you were walking up and down outside my window. I don't know
what made me--and I think it was very forward of me. Do you want to
know something?" she demanded, looking away.
"More than anything," declared St. George. "What?"
"I think--" Olivia said slowly, "that it began--then--just when I
first thought how wonderful that ride would have been. Except--that
it had begun a great while before," she ended suddenly.
And at these enigmatic words St. George sent a quick look over the
forward deck. It was of no use. Mr. Frothingham was well within
range.
"Heavens, good heavens, how happy I am," said St. George instead.
"And then," Olivia went on presently, "sometimes when there are a
lot of people about--literary-theory persons and all--I shall look
across at you, differently, and that will mean that you are to
remember the exact minute when you looked in the window up at the
palace, on the mountain, and I saw you. Won't it?"
"It will," said St. George fervently. "Don't try to persuade me that
there wasn't any such mountain," he challenged her. "I suppose," he
added in wonder, "that lovers have been having these secret signs
time out of mind--and we never knew."
Olivia drew a little breath of content.
"Bless everybody," she said.
So they made invasion of that pure, dim world before them; and the
serene mystery of the distance came like a thought, drawn from a
state remote and immortal, to clasp the hand of There in the hand of
Here.
"And then sometimes," St. George went on, his exultation proving
greater than his discretion, "we'll take the yacht and pretend
we're going back--"
He stopped abruptly with a quick indrawn breath and the hope that
she had not noticed. He was, by several seconds, too late.
"Whose yacht is it?" Olivia asked promptly. "I wondered."
St. George had dreaded the question. Someway, now that it was all
over and the prize was his, he was ashamed that he had not won it
more fairly and humiliated that he was not what she believed him, a
pillar of the _Evening Sentinel_. But Amory had miraculously heard
and turned himself about.
"It's his," he said briefly, "I may as well confess to you, Miss
Holland," he enlarged somewhat, "he's a great cheat. _The Aloha_ is
his, and so am I, busy body and idle soul, for using up his yacht
and his time on a newspaper story. You were the 'story,' you know."
"But," said Olivia in bewilderment, "I don't understand. Surely--"
"Nothing whatever is sure, Miss Holland," Amory sadly assured her,
but his eyes were smiling behind his pince-nez. "You would think one
might be sure of him. But it isn't so. Me, you may depend upon me,"
he impressed it lightly. "I'm what I say I am--a poor beggar of a
newspaper man, about to be held to account by one Chillingworth for
this whole millenial occurrence, and sent off to a political
convention to steady me, unless I'm fired. But St. George, he's a
gay dilettante."
Then Amory resumed a better topic of his own; and Olivia, when she
understood, looked down at her lover as miserably as one is able
when one is perfectly happy.
"Oh," she said, "and up there--in the palace to-day--I did think for
a minute that perhaps you wanted me to marry the prince so
that--they could--."
One could smile now at the enormity of that.
"So that I could put it in the paper?" he said. "But, you see, I
never could put it in any paper, even if I didn't love you. Who
would believe me? A thousand years from now--maybe less--the
_Evening Sentinel_, if it is still in existence, can publish the
story, perhaps. Until then I'm afraid they'll have to confine
themselves to the doings of the precincts."
Olivia waived the whole matter for one of vaster importance.
"Then why did you come to Yaque?" she demanded.
Mr. Frothingham had left his place by the wheel-house and wandered
forward. The steamer chair had a back that was both broad and high,
and one sitting in its shadow was hermetically veiled from the rest
of the deck. So St. George bent forward, and told her.
After that they sat in silence, and together they looked back
toward the island with its black rocks smitten to momentary gold by
a last javelin of light. There it lay--the land locking away as
realities all the fairy-land of speculation, the land of the
miracles of natural law. They had walked there, and had glimpsed the
shadowy threshold of the Morning. Suppose, St. George thought, that
instead of King Otho, with his delicate sense of the merely visible,
a great man had chanced to be made sovereign of Yaque? And instead
of Mr. Frothingham, slave to the contestable, and Little Cawthorne
in bondage to humour, and Amory and himself swept off their feet by
a heavenly romance, suppose a party of savants and economists had
arrived in Yaque, with a poet or two to bring away the fire--what
then? St. George lost the doubt in the noon of his own certainty.
There could be no greater good, he chanted to the god who had
breathed upon him, than this that he and Amory shared now with the
wise and simple world, the world of the resonant new names. He even
doubted that, save in degree, there could be a purer talisman than
the spirit that inextinguishably shone in the face of the childlike
old lawyer as the strange little animal nestled in his coat and
licked his hand. And these were open secrets. Open secrets of the
ultimate attainment.
They watched the land dissolving in the darkness like a pearl in
wine of night. But at last, when momentarily they had turned happy
eyes to each other's faces, they looked again and found that the
dusk, taking ancient citadels with soundless tread, had received the
island. And where on the brow of the mountain had sprung the white
pillars of the king's palace glittered only the early stars.
"Crown jewels," said Olivia softly, "for everybody's head."