"Ah, very well," he said briefly, "we will visit the prince."
"Farewell, adon," said Jarvo, bowing low, "may the G.o.ds permit the possible."
"Of course you will communicate with us to-morrow," suggested St.
George, "so that if we wish to send Rollo down to the yacht--"
"The G.o.ds will permit the possible, adon," Jarvo repeated gently.
There was a flash of Akko"s white teeth and the two little men were gone.
St. George and Amory turned to the descending of the wide white steps. Such immense, impossible white steps and such a curious place for these two to find themselves, alone, with a valet. Struck by the same thought they looked at each other and nodded, laughing a little.
"Alone in the distance," said Amory, emptying his pipe, "and not a cab to be seen."
Rollo thrust forward his lean, shadowed face.
"Shall I look about for a "ansom, sir?" he inquired with perfect gravity.
St. George hardly heard.
"It"s like cutting into a great, smooth sheet of white paper," he said whimsically, "and making any figure you want to make."
Before they reached the bottom of the steps they divined, issuing from an isolated, temple-seeming building below, a train of sober-liveried attendants, all at first glance resembling Jarvo and Akko. These defiled leisurely toward the strangers and lined up irregularly at the foot of the steps.
"Enter Trouble," said Amory happily.
They found themselves confronting, in the midst of the attendants, an olive man with no angles, whose face, in spite of its health and even wealth of contour, was ridiculously grave, as if the _papier-mache_ man in the down-town window should have had a sudden serious thought just before his _papier-mache_ incarnation.
"Permit me," said the man in perfect English and without bowing, "to bring to you the greeting of his Highness, Prince Tabnit, and his welcome to Yaque. I am Ca.s.syrus, an officer of the government. At the command of his Highness I am come to conduct you to the palace."
"The prince is most kind," said St. George, and added eagerly: "He is returned, then?"
"a.s.suredly. Three days ago," was the reply.
"And the king--is he returned?" asked St. George.
The man shook his head, and his very anxiety seemed important.
"His Majesty, the King," he affirmed, "is still most lamentably absent from his throne and his people."
"And his daughter?" demanded St. George then, who could not possibly have waited an instant longer to put that question.
"The daughter of his Majesty, the King," said Ca.s.syrus, looking still more as if he were having his portrait painted, "will in three days be recognized publicly as Princess of Yaque."
St. George"s heart gave a great bound. Thank Heaven, she was here, and safe. His hope and confidence soared heavenward. And by some miracle she was to take her place as the people of Yaque had pet.i.tioned. But what was the meaning of that news of the prince"s treachery which Jarvo and Akko had come bearing? The prince had faithfully fulfilled his mission and had conducted the daughter of the King of Yaque safely to her father"s country. What did it all mean?
St. George hardly noted the majestic square through which they were pa.s.sing. Impressions of great buildings, dim white and misty grey and bathed in light, bewilderingly succeeded one another; but, as in the days which followed the news of his inheritance, he found himself now in a temper of unsurprise, in that mental atmosphere--properly the normal--which regards all miracle as natural law. He even omitted to note what was of pa.s.sing strangeness: that neither the retinue of the minister nor the others upon the streets cast more than casual glances at their unusual visitors. But when the great gates of the palace were readied his attention was challenged and held, for though mere marvels may become the air one breathes, beauty will never cease to amaze, and the vista revealed was of almost disconcerting beauty.
Avenues of brightness, arches of green, glimpses of airy columns, of boundless lawns set with high, pyramidal shrines, great places of quiet and straight line, alleys whose shadow taught the necessity of mystery, the sound of water--the pure, positive element of it all--and everywhere, above, below and far, that delicate, labyrinth light, diffused from no visible source. It was as if some strange compound had changed the character of the dark itself, trans.m.u.ting it to a subtle essence more exquisite than light, inhabiting it with wonders. And high above their heads where this translucence seemed to mix with the upper air and to fuse with moonbeams, sprang almost joyously the pale domes and cornices of the palace, sending out floating streamers and pennons of colours nameless and unknown.
"Jupiter," said the human Amory in awe, "what a picture for the first page of the supplement."
St. George hardly heard him. The picture held so perfectly the elusive charm of the Question--the Question which profoundly underlies all things. It was like a triumphant burst of music which yet ends on a high note, with imperfect close, hinting pa.s.sionately at some triumph still loftier.
From either side of the wall of the palace yard came glittering a detachment of the Royal Golden Guard, clad in uniforms of unrelieved cloth-of-gold. These halted, saluted, wheeled, and between their shining ranks St. George and Amory footed quietly on, followed by Rollo carrying the yellow oil-skins. To St. George there was relief in the motion, relief in the vastness, and almost a boy"s delight in the pastime of living the hour.
Yet Royal Golden Guard, majestic avenues, and towered palace with its strange banners floating in strange light, held for him but one reality. And when they had mounted the steps of the mighty entrance, and the sound of unrecognized music reached him--a very myth of music, elusive, vagrant, fugued--and the palace doors swung open to receive them, he could have shouted aloud on the brilliant threshold:
"He says she is here in Yaque."
CHAPTER IX
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS
So there were St. George and Amory presently domiciled in a prince"s palace such as Asia and Europe have forgotten, as by and by they will forget the Taj Mahal and the Bon Marche. And at nine o"clock the next morning in a certain Tyrian purple room in the west wing of the Palace of the Litany the two sat breakfasting.
"One always breakfasts," observed St. George. "The first day that the first men spend on Mars I wonder whether the first thing they do will be to breakfast."
"Poor old Mars has got to step down now," said Amory. "We are one farther on. I don"t know how it will be, but if I felt on Mars the way I do now, I should a.s.sent to breakfast. Shouldn"t you?"
"On my life, Toby," said St. George, "as an idealist you are disgusting. Yes, I should."
The table had been spread before an open window, and the window looked down upon the palace garden, steeped in the gold of the sunny morning, and formal with aisles of mighty, flowering trees. Within, the apartment was lofty, its walls fashioned to lift the eye to light arches, light capitals, airy traceries, and s.p.a.ces of the hue of old ivory, held in heavenly quiet. The sense of colour, colour both captive and atmospheric, was a new and persistent delight, for it was colour purified, specialized, and infinitely extended in either direction from the crudity of the seven-winged spectrum. The room was like an alcove of outdoors, not divorced from the open air and set in contra-distinction, but made a continuation of its s.p.a.ce and order and ancient repose--a kind of exquisite porch of light.
Across this porch of light Rollo stepped, bearing a covered dish.
The little breakfast-table and the laden side-table were set with vessels of rock-crystal and drinking-cups of silver gilt, and breakfast consisted of delicately-prepared sea-food, a pulpy fruit, thin wine and a paste of delicious powdered gums. These things Rollo served quite as if he were managing oatmeal and eggs and china. One would have said that he had been brought up between the covers of an ancient history, nothing in consequence being so old or so new as to amaze him. Upon their late arrival the evening before he had instantly moved about his duties in all the quiet decorum with which he officiated in three rooms and a bath, emptying the oil-skins, disposing of their contents in great cedar chests, and, from certain rich and alien garments laid out for the guests, pretending as unconcernedly to fleck lint as if they had been broadcloth from Fifth Avenue. He stood bending above the breakfast-table, his lean, shadowed hands perfectly at home, his lean, shadowed face all automatic attention.
"Rollo," said St. George, "go and look out the window and see if Sodom is smoking."
"Yes, sir," said Rollo, and moved to the nearest cas.e.m.e.nt and bent his look submissively below.
"Everything quiet, sir," he reported literally; "a very warm day, sir. But it"s easy to sleep, sir, no matter how warm the days are if only the nights are cool. Begging your pardon, sir."
St. George nodded.
"You don"t see Jezebel down there in the trees," he pressed him, "or Elissa setting off to found Carthage? Chaldea and Egypt all calm?"
he anxiously put it.
Rollo stirred uneasily.
"There"s a couple o" blue-tailed birds sc.r.a.ppin" in a palm tree, sir," he submitted hopefully.
"Ah," said St. George, "yes. There would be. Now, if you like," he gave his servant permission, "you may go to the festivals or the funeral games or wherever you choose to-day. Or perhaps," he remembered with solicitude, "you would prefer to be present at the wedding-of-the-land-water-with-the-sea-water, providing, as I suspect, Tyre is handy?"
"Thank you, sir," said Rollo doubtfully.