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 facade 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 circ.u.mstances?
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 a.s.suredly 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.
CHAPTER XV
A VIGIL
Upon Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham, drowsing over the pocket chess-board, the sound of footsteps and men"s voices in the corridor acted with electrical effect. Then the door was opened and behind Olivia and Antoinette appeared the two visitors who seemed to have fallen from the neighbouring heavens. The two chess-pretenders looked up aghast. If there were a place in the world where chaperonage might be relaxed the uninformed observer would say that it would be the top of Mount Khalak.
"Mercy around us!" cried Mrs. Medora Hastings, "if it isn"t that newspaper man! He"s probably come over here to cable it all over the front page of every paper in New York. Well," she added complacently, as if she had brought it all about, "it seems good to see some of your own race. How _did_ you get here? Some trick, I suppose?"
"My dear fellows," burst out Mr. Augustus Frothingham fervently, "thank G.o.d! I"m not, ordinarily, unequal to my situations, but I confess to you, as I would not to a client, that I don"t object to sharing this one. How did you come?"
"It"s a house-party!" said Antoinette ecstatically.
Amory looked at her in her blue gown in the light of the white room, and his spirits soared heavenward. Why should St. George have an idea that he controlled the hour?
From a tumult of questioning, none of which was fully answered before Mrs. Hastings put another query, the lawyer at length elicited the substance of what had occurred.
"You came up the side of the mountain, carried by four of those frightful natives?" shrilled Mrs. Hastings. "Olivia, think. It"s a wonder they didn"t murder you first and throw you over afterward, isn"t it, Olivia? Oh, and my poor dear brother. To think of his lying somewhere all mangled and bl--"