"Hurray!" shouted little Mr. Saunders in his excitement. Bowles and the three clerks joined him in the exhibition. Then the Persians and the Turks and the Arabs began to chatter; the servants, always cold and morose, revealed signs of unusual emotion; the white people laughed as if suddenly delivered from extreme pain. The Princess was conscious of the fact that at least five or six pairs of eyes were watching her face.
She closed her lips and compelled her eyelids to obey the dictates of a resentful heart: she lowered them until they gave one the impression of indolent curiosity, even indifference. All the while, her incomprehensible heart was thumping with a rapture that knew no allegiance to royal conventions.
A few minutes later he was among them, listening with his cool, half-satirical smile to their protestations of joy and relief, a.s.sailed by more questions than he could well answer in a day, his every expression a protest against their contention that he had done a brave and wonderful thing.
"Nonsense," he said in his most deprecating voice, taking a seat beside the Princess on the railing and fanning himself lazily with his hat to the mortification of his body-servant, who waved a huge palm leaf in vigorous adulation. "It was nothing. Just being a witness, that"s all.
You"ll find how easy it is when you get back to London and have to testify in the Skaggs will contest. Tell the truth, that"s all." The Princess was now looking at his brown face with eyes over which she had lost control. "Oh, by the by," he said, as if struck by a sudden thought. He turned toward the shady court below, where the eager refugees from Aratat were congregated. A deep, almost sepulchral tone came into his voice as he addressed himself to the veiled wives of Jacob von Blitz. "It is my painful duty to announce to the Mesdames von Blitz that they are widows."
There was a dead silence. The three women stared up at him, uncomprehending.
"Yes," he went on solemnly, "Jacob is no more. He was found guilty by his judges and executed with commendable haste and precision. I will say this for your lamented husband: he met his fate like a man and a German--without a quiver. He took his medicine bravely--twelve leaden pills administered by as many skilful surgeons. It is perhaps just as well for you that you are widows. If he had lived long enough he would have made a widower of himself." The three wives of Von Blitz hugged themselves and cried out in their joy! "But it is yet too early to congratulate yourselves on your freedom. Rasula has promised to kill all of us, whether we deserve it or not, so I daresay we"d better postpone the celebration until we"re entirely out of the woods."
"They shot him?" demanded Deppingham, when he had finished.
"Admirably. By Jove, those fellows _can_ shoot! They accepted my word against his--which is most gratifying to my pride. One other man testified against him--a chap who saw him with the Boers not ten minutes before the attempt was made to rob the vaults. Rasula appeared as counsel for the defence. Merely a matter of form. He _knew_ that he was guilty. There was no talk of a new trial; no appeal to the supreme court, Britt; no expense to the community."
He was as unconcerned about it as if discussing the most trivial happening of the day. Five ancient men had sat with the venerable Cadi as judges in the market-place. There were no frills, no disputes, no summing up of the case by state or defendant. The judges weighed the evidence; they used their own judgment as to the law and the penalty.
They found him guilty. Von Blitz lived not ten minutes after sentence was pa.s.sed.
"As to their intentions toward us," said Chase, "they are firm in their determination that no one shall leave the chateau alive. Rasula was quite frank with me. He is a cool devil. He calmly notified me that we will all be dead inside of two weeks. No ships will put in here so long as the plague exists. It has been cleverly managed. I asked him how we were to die and he smiled as though he was holding something back as a surprise for us. He came as near to laughing as I"ve ever seen him when I asked him if he"d forgotten my warships. "Why don"t you have them here?" he asked. "We"re not ready," said I. "The six months are not up for nine days yet." "No one will come ash.o.r.e for you," he said pointedly. I told him that he was making a great mistake in the att.i.tude he was taking toward the heirs, but he coolly informed me that it was best to eradicate all danger of the plague by destroying the germs, so to speak. He agreed with me that you have no chance in the courts, but maintains that you"ll keep up the fight as long as you live, so you might just as well die to suit his convenience. I also made the interesting discovery that suits have already been brought in England to break the will on the grounds of insanity."
"But what good will that do us if we are to die here?" exclaimed Bobby Browne.
"None whatsoever," said Chase calmly. "You must admit, however, that you exhibited signs of hereditary insanity by coming here in the first place. I"m beginning to believe that there"s a streak of it in my family, too."
"And you--you saw him killed?" asked the Princess in an awed voice, low and full of horror.
"Yes. I could not avoid it."
"They killed him on your--on your--" she could not complete the sentence, but shuddered expressively.
"Yes. He deserved death, Princess. I am more or less like the Moslem in one respect. I might excuse a thief or a murderer, but I have no pity for a traitor."
"You saw him killed," she said in the same awed voice, involuntarily drawing away from him.
"Yes," he said, "and you would have seen him killed, too, if you had gone down with me to appear against him."
She looked up quickly and then thanked him, almost in a whisper.
CHAPTER XXVIII
CENTURIES TO FORGET
"My lord," said Saunders the next day, appearing before his lordship after an agitated hour of preparation, "it"s come to a point where something"s got to be done." He got that far and then turned quite purple; his collar seemed to be choking him.
"Quite right, Saunders," said Deppingham, replacing his eyegla.s.s nervously, "but who"s going to do it and what is there to be done?"
"I"m--er--afraid you don"t quite understand, sir," mumbled the little solicitor, glancing uneasily over his shoulder. "If what Mr. Chase says is true, we"ve got a precious short time to live. Well, we"ve--we"ve concluded to get all we can out of the time that"s left, my lord."
"I see," said the other, but he did not see.
"So I"ve come to ask if it will be all right with you and her ladyship, sir. We don"t want to do anything that would seem forward and out of place, sir."
"It"s very considerate of you, Saunders; but what the devil are you talking about?"
"Haven"t you heard, sir?"
"That we are to die? Certainly."
"That"s not all, sir. Miss--Miss Pelham and I have decided to get--er--get married before it is too late."
Deppingham stared hard for a moment and then grinned broadly.
"You mean, before you die?"
"That"s it exactly, my lord. Haw, haw! It _would_ be a bit late, wouldn"t it, if we waited till afterward? Haw, haw! Splendid! But seriously, my lord, we"ve talked it all over and it strikes us both as a very clever thing to do. We had intended to wait till we got to London, but that seems quite out of the question now. Unless we do it up pretty sharp, sir, we are likely to miss it altogether. So I have come to ask if you think it will interfere with your arrangements if--if we should be married to-night."
"I"m sure, Saunders, that it won"t discommode me in the least," said his lordship genially. "By all means, Saunders, let it be to-night, for to-morrow we may die."
"Will you kindly speak to her ladyship, sir?"
"Gladly. And I"ll take it as an honour if you will permit me to give away the bride."
"Thank you, my lord," cried Saunders, his face beaming. His lordship shook hands with him, whereupon his cup of happiness overflowed, notwithstanding the fact that his honeymoon was likely to be of scarcely any duration whatsoever. "I"ve already engaged Mr. Bowles, sir, for half past eight, and also the banquet hall, sir," he said, with his frank a.s.surance.
"And I"ll be happy, Saunders, to see to the wedding supper and the rice," said his lordship. "Have you decided where you will go on your wedding journey?"
"Yes, sir," said Saunders seriously, "G.o.d helping us, we"ll go to England."
The wedding took place that night in the little chapel. It was not an imposing celebration; neither was it attended by the gladsome revelry that usually marks the nuptial event, no matter how humble. The very fact that these two were being urged to matrimony by the uncertainties of life was sufficient to cast a spell of gloom over the guests and high contracting parties alike. The optimism of Hollingsworth Chase lightened the shadows but little.
Chase deliberately took possession of the Princess after the hollow wedding supper had come to an end. He purposely avoided the hanging garden and kept to the vine-covered balcony overlooking the sea. Her mood had changed. Now she was quite at ease with him; the taunting gleam in her dark eyes presaged evil moments for his peace of mind.
"I"m inspired," he said to her. "A wedding always inspires me."
"It"s very strange that you"ve never married," she retorted. She was striding freely by his side, confident in her power to resist sentiment with mockery.
"Will you be my wife?" he asked abruptly. She caught her breath before laughing tolerantly, and then looked into his eyes with a tantalising ingenuousness.
"By no means," she responded. "I am not oppressed by the same views that actuated Miss Pelham. You see, Mr. Chase, I am quite confident that we are _not_ to die in two weeks."
"I could almost wish that we could die in that time," he said.
"How very diabolical!"
"It may seem odd to you, but I"d rather see you dead than married to Prince Karl." She was silent. He went on: "Would you consent to be my wife if you felt in your heart that we should never leave this island?"