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XI
After a moment she rose, went over and knelt down in the sand before theminiature city, studying the situation. All she could see of the leadhero in the bowler hat were his legs protruding from the drain.
"Is this battery of artillery still shelling him?" she inquired, lookingover her shoulder at Smith.
He went over and dropped on his knees beside her.
"You see," he explained, "our hero is still under water."
"All this time!" she exclaimed in consternation. "He'll drown, won'the?"
"He'll drown unless he can crawl into that drain."
"Then he must crawl into it immediately," she said with decision.
So he of the bowler was marched along a series of pegs indicating thesubterranean drain, and set down in the court of the castle.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed the Lady Alene. "We can't leave him here! Theywill know him by his bowler hat!"
"No," said Smith gloomily, "we can't leave him here. But what can we do?If he runs out they'll fire at him by platoons."
"_Couldn't_ they miss him?" pleaded the girl.
"I'm afraid not. He has already lived through several showers ofbullets."
"But he can't die _here_!--here under the very eyes of the Princess!"she insisted.
"Then," said Smith, "the Princess will have to pull him through. It's upto her now."
The girl knelt there in excited silence, studying the problem intently.
It was bad business. The battlements bristled with bayonets; outside,cavalry, infantry, artillery were massed to destroy the gentleman in thebowler hat.
Presently the flush deepened on the girl's cheeks; she took the bowlerhat between her gloved fingers and set its owner in the middle of themoat again.
"Doesn't he crawl into the drain?" asked Smith anxiously.
"No. But the soldiers in the castle think he does. So," she continuedwith animation, "the brutal commander rushes downstairs, seizes acandle, and enters the drain from the castle court with about a thousandsoldiers!"
"But----"
"With about ten thousand soldiers!" she repeated firmly. "And nosooner--_no sooner_--does their brutal and cowardly commander enter thatdrain with his lighted candle than the Princess runs downstairs, seizesa hatchet, severs the gas main with a single blow, and pokes the end ofthe pipe into the drain!"
"B-but----" stammered Smith, "I think----"
"Oh, _please_ wait! You don't understand what is coming."
"_What_ is coming?" ventured Smith timidly, instinctively closing bothears with his fingers.
"Bang!" said Lady Alene triumphantly. And struck the city of sand withher small, gloved hand.
After a silence, still kneeling there, they turned and looked at eachother through the red sunset light.
"The explosion of gas killed them both," said Smith, in an awed voice.
"No."
"What?"
"No. The explosion killed everybody in the city except those two younglovers," she said.
"But why?"
"Because!"
"By what logic----"
"I desire it to be so, Mr. Smith." And she picked up the bowler hat andthe Princess and calmly set them side by side amid the ruins.
After a moment Smith reached over and turned the two lead figures sothat they faced each other.
There was a long silence. The red sunset light faded from the sand.
Then, very slowly, the girl reached out, took the bowler hat between hersmall thumb and forefinger, and gently inclined the gentleman forward atthe slightest of perceptible angles.
After a moment Smith inclined him still farther forward. Then, withinfinite precaution, he tipped forward the Princess, so that between herlips and the lips of the bowler hat only the width of a grass bladeremained.
The Lady Alene looked up at him over her left shoulder, hesitated,looked at bowler hat and at the Princess. Then, supporting her weight onone hand, with the other she merely touched the Princess--delicately--sothat not even a blade of grass could have been slipped between theirpainted lips.
She was a trifle pale as she sank back on her knees in the sand. Smithwas paler.
After both her gloved hands had rested across his palm for five fullminutes, his fingers closed over them, tightly, and he leaned forward alittle. She, too, swayed forward a trifle. Her eyes were closed when hekissed her.
Now, whatever misgivings and afterthoughts the Lady Alene Innesly mayhave had, she was nevertheless certain that to resist Smith was to fightagainst the stars in their courses. For not only was she in the toils ofan American, but more hopeless still, an American who chronicled themost daring and headlong idiosyncrasies of the sort of young men of whomhe was very certainly an irresistible example.
To her there was something Shakespearean about the relentless sequenceof events since the moment when she had first succumbed to the small,oblong pink package, and her first American novel.
And, thinking Shakespeareanly as she stood in the purple evening light,with his arm clasping her waist, she looked up at him from her charmingabstraction:
"'If 'twere done,'" she murmured, "'when 'tis done, then 'twere well itwere done quickly.'" And then, gazing deep into his eyes, a noble idiomof her adopted country fell from her lips:
"Dearest," she said, "my father won't do a thing to you."
And so she ran away with him to Miami where the authorities, civil andreligious, are accustomed to quick action.
It was only fifty miles by train, and preliminary telephoning did therest.
The big chartered launch that left for Verbena Inlet next morning pokedits nose out of the rainbow mist into the full glory of the rising sun.Her golden head lay on his shoulder.
Sideways, with delicious indolence, she glanced at a small boat whichthey were passing close aboard. A fat gentleman, a fat lady, and aboatman occupied the boat. The fat gentleman was fast to a tarpon.
Up out of the dazzling Atlantic shot three hundred pounds of quiveringsilver. Splash!
"Why, Dad!" exclaimed the girl.
Her father and mother looked over their shoulders at her in woodenamazement.
"We are married----" called out their pretty daughter across the sunlitwater. "I will tell you all about it when you land your fish. Looksharp, Dad! Mind your reel!"
"Who is that damned rascal?" demanded the Duke.
"My husband, Dad! Don't let him get away!--the fish, I mean. Put thedrag on! Check!"
Said his Grace of Pillchester in a voice of mellow thunder:
"If I were not fast to my first tarpon----"
"Reel in!" cried Smith sharply, "reel or you lose him!"
The Duke reeled with all the abandon of a squirrel in a wheel.
"Dearest," said Mrs. John Smith to her petrified mother, "we will seeyou soon at Verbena. And _don't_ let Dad over-play that fish. He alwaysover-plays a salmon, you know."
The Duchess folded her fat hands and watched her departing offspringuntil the chartered launch was a speck on the horizon. Then she lookedat her husband.
"Fancy!" she said.
"Nevertheless," remarked the youthful novelist, coldly, "there isnothing on earth as ignoble as a best-seller."
"I wonder," ventured Duane, "whether you know which books actually dosell the best."
"Or which books of bygone days were the best-sellers?"
"Some among them are still best-sellers," added Athalie.
"A truly important book----" began the novelist, but Athalie interruptedhim:
"O solemn child," she said, "write on!--and thank the gods for theirimportant gifts to you of hand and mind! So that you keep tired eyesawake that otherwise would droop to brood on pain or sorrow you havedone well; and what you have written to this end will come nearer beingimportant than anything you ever write."
"True, by the nine muses!" exclaimed Stafford with emphasis. Athalieglanced at him out of sweetly humourous eyes.
"There is a tenth muse," she said. "Did you never hear of her?"
"Never! Where did you discover her, Athalie?"
"Where I discover many, many things, my friend."
"In your crystal?" I said. She nodded slowly while the sweetmeat wasdissolving in her mouth.
Through the summer silence a bell here and there in the dusky citysounded the hour.
"The tenth muse," she repeated, "and I believe there are other sisters,also. Many a star is suspected before its unseen existence is proven....Please--a glass of water?"