ENLIGHTENING A PRINCESS
As gently as I could, after I felt that my voice might be trusted not to
betray itself, I told her of Monsieur Dragot's deductions, who we
thought she really was--not the daughter of that old scoundrel, at all.
I let her see the record of his crimes, her mother's discovery of the
plates, the kidnaping, and, unless something most recent and unexpected
had happened, the queen regent of Azuria was waiting at this minute for
the little princess to return.
She had been sitting very still, like a child with parted lips
enchantingly absorbed by a fairy tale. When I finished she turned her
wondering eyes to mine, and gasped:
"It can't be true!"
"I think it is," I said. "I mean that it is so far as Monsieur can judge
from the threads of evidence he holds, and what you've told me makes his
theory more convincing."
"Oh--and I've called this man Father for so long! You don't suppose he
still might be, somehow?"
"There's no somehow about it," I had to smile at this question. "He
either is, or isn't; in the same indefeasible sense that white isn't
black."
"I didn't mean that he might be just partly, of course," she said so
quietly and seriously that I burst out laughing. "But it's awfully hard
to understand, all at once! That must account for the subtle antagonism
I felt for him. It really accounts for so much!--for the way he
encouraged me to spend money, heaps and heaps of it! Why, I've
everything I can think of--from Havana, New Orleans and Vera Cruz!"
"He wanted you to spend his large bills so he could get good money in
change," I suggested.
"That's obvious now, but suppose I'd been arrested and sent to prison!"
"I won't suppose anything of the kind," I declared, so vigorously that
she laughed.
"I do feel like a thief, though," she added soberly. "Why, everything I
possess has been bought fraudulently."
"You couldn't help it! Chuck 'em away, if it'll make you feel better!"
"I can't chuck 'em all away," and this time we both laughed.
"You can as soon as we reach New York, and--and----" But as I did not
know how to finish this, I stopped; for what had been in my mind was:
"When you and I share all I own!"--and, of course, that wouldn't have
done to say aloud.
For perhaps a minute she, also, was silent. Then she turned, with the
frankest, sweetest manner I have ever seen, and said in a voice of
mellifluent charm:
"Do you know that you've been just awfully splendid?"
I knew that my face got very red, but I tried to answer casually enough:
"The splendid things were done by Tommy, Gates, Smilax, and the other
fellows. You'll like Tommy, and Monsieur knows--did I tell you he knows
your mother?"
"Don't," she whispered. "You make me feel like I'm being led into a new
world, with new people, and new customs, and new things!" Now her eyes
widened as if making a discovery, as she added: "My fa----, that is, Mr.
Graham, must actually have recognized Monsieur Dragot!"
"There's no other deduction," I agreed. "Our case is proved almost
beyond a doubt. Don't call that fellow your father again, or even Mr.
Graham. Smilax and I have a name we'll share with you."
"What?"
"Efaw Kotee."
Her laughter rippled through the wood, as she cried:
"How perfectly lovely! I know what it means!"
"Then you speak Seminole, Miss--Miss--but you say it isn't Sylvia?"
An expression of happy mischief in her face made it adorable.
"No, it isn't Sylvia. It's Doloria--you see, my life has been sad!"
"One wouldn't say so to look at you now. And I think Doloria's a
thousand times prettier than Sylvia! Doloria! Just Doloria--like that?"
For I wanted an excuse to keep on saying it.
"I--I suppose so," she hesitated. "Of course, it's always had Graham
after it, but--what did your Monsieur Dragot say my last name was?"
"He didn't say."
"Then I haven't any."
"Oh, well, you needn't bother about that. Any time it gets lonesome you
can hitch on Bronx--that is, I mean, only in case, you know."
I could have bitten out my tongue for this! I don't know what fiends
possessed me to be such an unmitigated ass! It was as unfair as
poison--an insult to the only precepts I have ever genuinely felt proud
of: the code of playing fair. Before I could pretend to have been making
a silly joke she brushed away my contrition by asking:
"Why Bronx? What does that mean?"
Glory be! I had forgotten that she could not know my name! But now I had
to deny myself, cast my birthright to the winds, or else let her see
that I was a miserable cad who could not be trusted as protector to a
girl thrown upon his care.
And, on the other hand, it was decidedly repulsive to tell a
lie--especially to her who seemed by her magnetic gaze to challenge the
truth right out of a fellow. But conscience is, after all, only a name
for our hidden prosecutor, judge and jury, and our sentences are light
or heavy depending upon how many witnesses we can persuade to perjure
themselves. No man lives who has not at some time used bribery in the
mythical court room of his heart. Among women, of course, it is the
accepted mode of legal procedure; and this gave me hope to believe that
she might be somewhat forgiving when she found me out.
"Why Bronx?" she was asking again.
"Oh," I laughed, "it's a usual name in my part of the country, that's
all--like Smith, and Jones."
I thought this would satisfy, but it gave her another thought, instead.
"Your name isn't Jackachobee, of course?"
"As far as Jack, yes. Every one calls me Jack."
A little while before this my cigarette case had fallen, to the ground
by us. She had picked it up, and was even now turning it idly between
her fingers.
"I see it here," she said, looking more closely at the monogram. "'J.
B.' What does the B stand for, Mr.--Mr. Jack?"
"Brown," I answered desperately, and could feel every ancestor of a long
and honorable line of Bronxes turning over in their graves. For I detest
Brown. It's a good name, an exceptionally fine and distinguished name,
the name not only of dear relatives but of very good friends. Yet it
just so happened that at this particular moment I detested it--or was it
the lie behind it? So to repair my self-esteem I blurted somewhat
incoherently: "Bangs!"--having known a rather decent chap named Bangs.
"Is it spelled with a hyphen?" she glanced up rather quizzically.
"Brown-Bangs?"
Her mind seemed to have flown lightly beyond me, anticipating the extent
of my confusion, for the smile about her mouth, while enigmatic,
suggested--enticingly suggested--mischief.
"Of course," I answered. "Brown-Bangs; Brown-Bangs!" And I wondered how
many witnesses I should have to bribe now! I wished that in the first
place I had said: "It would be unfair to tell you what isn't so, and
dangerous to tell you what is!" But she would have guessed the truth by
that, to a certainty. Sinners always find comfort in good resolutions,
so I resolved to be more circumspect in the future. A gentleman's duty
in my position was to be over circumspect; very much over circumspect,
indeed!
Somewhat indifferently she laid the cigarette case back upon the ground,
happening to put it near a little vine with lavender flowers, shaped
like pon-pons; and in doing this it also happened that one of its tiny
briars clung to her hand.
"Watch," she cried, gaily leaning forward. "Watch the leaves! We call
this the 'shame-face vine,' because whenever it sticks any one every
leaf on that particular stem is overcome with remorse!"
To my amazement the nine delicate leaves on the offending stem began to
hang their heads and curl up, for all the world expressive of deep
humility. It was another of the million or so lessons to be found in
Nature for any one who sees with the right kind of eyes. Of course, I
could have hung my head for that lie about the Browns, although curling
up--at least, after the manner of the shame-face vine--would have
required a contortionist.
"A well named little weed," I laughed. "But what wouldn't be penitent
after hurting such a pretty hand!"
"I was just wondering," she said, ignoring this banality--for which in
my heart I thanked her--"if there are weeds that show embarrassment for
people who tell fibs?"
Now there was no possible way for her to have learned my name!
"You don't think there was any fibbing when I said you were a
sure-'nough princess, do you?"
"Oh, please, let's not talk of that again," she entreated. "I don't want
to be a princess just yet, because it's still very satisfying to have
been taken away from that awful place. I'm so humbly thankful to you,"
she almost whispered, "that just Cinderella without the slipper will
suit me nicely."
Beloved of the gods! If she wasn't at that moment princess, queen and
all the royal families made into one!
"But I must tell you this much," I insisted gently, "and then we won't
speak of it again until you wish. Monsieur says your mother is only
Regent until you come; that your destiny is marked out for you, that by
every law of God and man you've got to go back and take up the Cross
where you left it seventeen years ago,--that you're booked to marry a
Prince, I think. And he's armed with an iron-bound authority to take
you. He says you've no possible escape--though, of course, you won't
want any. I have to tell you this," I continued more hastily, for it was
an extremely difficult thing to say, "because I'm only an ordinary kind
of American chap, as bad as the worst and as good as the best, but your
court in Azuria would have forty duck fits if it knew we were playing
together in the woods without a chaperone. Suppose you make me your
Chancellor, or something like that--chancellor of your Oasian
possessions! Then I can report for orders and escort you about with all
propriety, and we can talk and laugh occasionally without having some
big soldier stick me in the back with his halberd."
She had been listening attentively, gravely, to everything I said until
this last, when she burst into a scream of laughter, rocking herself to
and fro in a transport of merriment.
"You're the funniest thing I ever saw!--but so be it, Mr. Jack
Brown-Bangs, et cetera, et cetera! I make you my Royal Chancellor,
responsible for the welfare of our Oasis!"
"And for the protection of Your Serenity," I bowed, really feeling as if
I'd been knighted.
"Thank you," she said gravely. "I couldn't ask for a braver protector.
But, Chancellor," she looked at me with serious eyes, "why did you say I
must take up my Cross? It sounded like such a direful prophecy."
My lips refused to speak. As a matter of fact, I had been thinking more
about my own Cross; how I should have to carry it after she went away
until my heart broke beneath its cruel weight.
"That was a careless way of meaning something else," I tried to answer
lightly.
"You shouldn't say evasive things. It leads to speaking with two
tongues, which Echochee has taught me is wrong."
"Well, it couldn't be a direful prophecy, anyhow, when your mother and
your throne are waiting just around the corner, as it were. The direful
part of your life has passed, and most appropriately your name has
changed from Doloria to Princess--though, of the two, I prefer Doloria."
"When it means sorrow?"
"It only means sorrow to those you leave. You've paid dearly enough to
find nothing but happiness now for the rest of your life. It's written
in the sky."
"You're a comforting Chancellor," she was still looking at me calmly,
"and I'm already beginning to forget." And gently she laid her hand on
the back of my own which rested between us.
My blood bounded with an unreasoning pleasure, yet her movement had been
neither temperamental nor sentimental; it was instinctive--one of those
honest impulses that knows no sex. Did she realize, by some divine
insight, that this frankness, this absence of finical conventions, this
whole-hearted camaraderie, would hold me more sternly to my path of duty
than anything else she might have done? Did the instinct of her sex
whisper that each man's heart, however light and worldly, is the
possessor of a trusty loadstone which draws the best of him to a woman's
aid when her honor is placed unreservedly into his hands? This speaks,
of course, of men and not of human beasts; still, a woman is not put to
the peril of looking into the heart of a human beast to discover that he
is a beast--she can read it, without glasses, in his face!
"Shall we look over the rest of your estate?" I asked. And I kept the
hand until she had been helped up, then released it naturally as we
started on the tour of inspection.
We finally came to my pool, and I asked her advice in choosing a nearby
spot where I should build a lean-to; since our kitchen site, that until
now had been the location of my bailiwick, was by right of conquest
hers, a place where she should be able to approach without the
precaution of whistling like a plover--a thing she couldn't do, anyway!
So we marked a spot and started on, taking some time to encircle the
pool that, was rather large and, upon this side, densely fringed with a
riot of tropical vines and jungle stuff. Yet, when we had gone but a
little way, she stopped, looked vaguely troubled, and said:
"You won't be as near to me here as you were at the kitchen. I was so
tired last night that I didn't think very much about those men, because
our servants were leading them off. But don't you think it's possible
that some of them might wander back here on their way home?"
"There's hardly one chance in a thousand," I assured her.
"I know. But that one chance would be dreadful if--if----" she stopped,
and added wistfully: "I _would_ like to feel in the nights that you are
nearer to me!"
I turned to look at something else--at anything but her! Yet if my eyes
required a subterfuge my heart did not, and it thrilled as if some wild
musicians were tugging at its strings making them sound impassioned
harmonies. But, even as I stood swayed by the madness of the moment, I
felt that a great, an unseen, presence had pinned a decoration upon my
honor--not because it had already proved itself, but in order that it
might do so.
We therefore stopped and chose a new place on the side nearer her
spring, and that being settled--a most important selection, we pretended
it to be--she looked up at me, crying happily:
"After luncheon I'll come and help you build it!--and then you'll cut a
path straight from my tent to yours so, should there be any danger, I
can run to you without stumbling!"
For another moment, with eyes closed, I visualized my new decoration.
Luncheon, I thought, was even an improvement over breakfast. Nor did I
take so long to wash the dishes afterwards.