by Zona Gale
CHAPTER XII
BETWEEN-WORLDS
Down nebulous ways they went, the thin darkness flowing past them.The sloping avenue ran all the width of the palace grounds, and hereamong slim-trunked trees faint fringes of the light touched away thedimness in the open spaces and expressed the borders of the dusk.Always the way led down, dipping deeper in the conjecture of shadow,and always before them glimmered the mist of Olivia's veil, aneidolon of love, of love's eternal Vanishing Goal.
And St. George was in pursuit. So were Amory and Jarvo, and Rollo ofthe oil-skins, but these mattered very little, for it was St. Georgewhose eyes burned in his pale face and were striving to catch thefaintest motion in that fleeing car ahead.
"Faster, Jarvo," he said, "we're not gaining on them. I thinkthey're gaining on us. Put ahead, can't you?"
Amory vexed the air with frantic questionings. "How did it happen?"he said. "Who did it? Was it the guard? What did they do it for?"
"It looks to me," said St. George only, peering distractedly intothe gloom, "as if all those fellows had on uniforms. Can you see?"
Jarvo spoke softly.
"It is true, adon," he said, "they are of the guard. This is whatthey had planned," he added to Amory. "I feared the harm would be toyou. It is the same. Your turn would be the next."
"What do you mean?" St. George demanded.
Amory, with some incoherence, told him what Jarvo had come to themto propose, and heightened his own excitement by plunging into thebusiness of that night and the next, as he had had it from thelittle brown man's lips.
"Up the mountain to-morrow night," he concluded fervently, "what doyou think of that? Do you see us?"
"Maniac, no," said St. George shortly, "what do we want to go up themountain for if Miss Holland is somewhere else? Faster, Jarvo, can'tyou?" he urged. "Why, this thing is built to go sixty miles an hour.We're creeping."
"Perhaps it's better to start in gentle and work up a pace, sir,"observed Rollo inspirationally, "like a man's legs, sir, beggin'your pardon."
St. George looked at him as if he had first seen him, so that Amoryonce more explained his presence and pointed to the oil-skins. AndSt. George said only:
"Now we're coming up a little--don't you think we're coming up alittle? Throw it wide open, Jarvo--now, go!"
"What are you going to do when you catch them?" demanded Amory. "Wecan't lunge into them, for fear of hurting Miss Holland. And whoknows what devilish contrivance they've got--dum-dum bullets with apoison seal attachment," prophesied Amory darkly. "What are yougoing to do?"
"I don't know what we're going to do," said St. George doggedly,"but if we can overtake them it won't take us long to find out."
Never so slightly the pursuers were gaining. It was impossible totell whether those in the flying car knew that they were followed,and if they did know, and if Olivia knew, St. George wonderedwhether the pursuit were to her a new alarm, or whether she werelooking to them for deliverance. If she knew! His heart stood stillat the thought--oh, and if they had both known, that morning atbreakfast at the Boris, that _this_ was the way the genie would comeout of the jar. But how, if he were unable to help her? And howcould he help her when these others might have Heaven knew whatresources of black art, art of all the colours of the Yaquespectrum, if it came to that? The slim-trunked trees flew past them,and the tender branches brushed their shoulders and hung out theirflowers like lamps. Warm wind was in their faces, sweet,reverberant voices of the wood-things came chorusing, and aheadthere in the dimness, that misty will-o'-the-wisp was her veil,Olivia's veil. St. George would have followed if it had led himbetween-worlds.
In a manner it did lead him between-worlds. Emerging suddenly upon abroader avenue their car followed the other aside and shot through agreat gateway of the palace wall--a wall built of such massiveblocks that the gateway formed a covered passageway. From there,delicately lighted, greenly arched, and on this festal night, quitedeserted, went the road by which, the night before, they had enteredMed.
"Now," said St. George between set teeth, "now see what you can do,Jarvo. Everything depends on you."
Evidently Jarvo had been waiting for this stretch of open road andexpecting the other car to take it. He bent forward, his wirylittle frame like a quivering spring controlling the motion. Themotor leaped at his touch. Away down the road they tore with thewind singing its challenge. Second by second they saw theirgain increase. The uniforms of the guards in the car becamedistinguishable. The white of Olivia's veil merged in thebrightness of her gown--was it only the shining of the gold of theuniforms or could St. George see the floating gold of her hair?Ah, wonderful, past all speech it was wonderful to be fleeingtoward her through this pale light that was like a purer elementthan light itself. With the phantom moving of the boughs in thewood on either side light seemed to dance and drip from leaf toleaf--the visible spirit of the haunted green. The unreality of itall swept over him almost stiflingly. Olivia--was it indeed Oliviawhom he was following down lustrous ways of a land vague as astar; or was his pursuit not for her, but for the exquisite,incommunicable Idea, and was he following it through a worldforth-fashioned from his own desire?
Suddenly indistinguishable sounds were in his ears, words fromAmory, from Jarvo certain exultant gutturals. He felt the carslacken speed, he looked ahead for the swift beckoning of the veil,and then he saw that where, in the delicate distance, the othermotor had sped its way, it now stood inactive in the road beforethem, and they were actually upon it. The four guards in the motorwere standing erect with uplifted faces, their gold uniforms shininglike armour. But this was not all. There, in the highway beside thecar, the mist of her veil like a halo about her, Olivia stood alone.
St. George did not reckon what they meant to do. He dropped over theside of the tonneau and ran to her. He stood before her, and all thejoy that he had ever known was transcended as she turned towardhim. She threw out her hands with a little cry--was it gladness, orrelief, or beseeching? He could not be certain that there was evenrecognition in her eyes before she tottered and swayed, and hecaught her unconscious form in his arms. As he lifted her he lookedwith apprehension toward the car that held the guards. To hisbewilderment there was no car there. The pursued motor, like awinged thing of the most innocent vagaries, had taken itself offutterly. And on before, the causeway was utterly empty, dipping idlybetween murmurous green. But at the moment St. George had no time tospend on that wonder.
He carried Olivia to the tonneau of Jarvo's car, jealous when Rollolifted her gown's hem from the dust of the road and when Amory threwopen the door. He held her in his arms, half kneeling beside her,profoundly regardless where it should please the others to disposethemselves. He had no recollection of hearing Jarvo point the waythrough the trees to a path that led away, as far from them as avoice would carry, to the Ilex Tower whose key burned in Amory'spocket, promising radiant, intangible things to his imagination. St.George understood with magnificent unconcern that Amory and Rollowere gone off there to wait for the return of him and Jarvo; he tookit for granted that Jarvo had grasped that Olivia must be takenback to her aunt and her friends at the palace; and afterward heknew only, for an indeterminate space, that the car was movingacross some dim, heavenly foreground to some dim, ultimatedestination in which he found himself believing with infinite faith.
For this was Olivia, in his arms. St. George looked down at her, atthe white, exquisite face with its shadow of lashes, and it seemedto him that he must not breathe, or remember, or hope, lest the godsshould be jealous and claim the moment, and leave him once moreforlorn. That was the secret, he thought, not to touch away theelusive moment by hope or memory, but just to live it, filled withits ecstasies, borne on the crest of its consciousness. It seemed tohim in some intimately communicated fashion, that the moment, thevery world of the island, was become to him a more intense objectof consciousness than himself. And somehow Olivia was itsexpression--Olivia, here in his arms, with the stir of her breathand the light, light pressure of her
body and the fall of her hair,not only symbols of the sovereign hour, but the hour's realities.
On either side the phantom wood pressed close about them, and itslight seemed coined by goblin fingers. Dissolving wind, persuadinglittle voices musical beyond the domain of music that he knew,quick, poignant vistas of glades where the light spent itself inits longed-for liberty of colour, labyrinthine ways of shadow thattaught the necessity of mystery. There was something lyric about itall. Here Nature moved on no formal lines, understood no frugalityof beauty, but was lavish with a divine and special errantry to adivine and special understanding. And it had been given St. Georgeto move with her merely by living this hour, with Olivia in hisarms.
The sweet of life--the sweet of life and the world his own. Thewords had never meant so much. He had often said them in exultation,but he had never known their truth: the world was literally his own,under the law. Nothing seemed impossible. His mind went back to theunexplained disappearing of that other motor and, however it hadbeen, that did not seem impossible either. It seemed natural, andonly a new doorway to new points of contact. In this amazing land nospeculation was too far afield to be the food of every day. Here menunderstood miracle as the rest of the world understands invention.Already the mere existence of Yaque proved that the space ofexperience is transcended--and with the thought a fancy, elusive andprofound, seized him and gripped at his heart with an emotion widerthan fear. What had become of the other car? Had it gone down someroad of the wood which the guards knew, or ... The words of PrinceTabnit came back to him as they had been spoken in that wonderfultour of the island. "The higher dimensions are being conquered.Nearly all of us can pass into the fifth at will, 'disappearing,' asyou have the word." Was it possible that in the vanishing of thepursued car this had been demonstrated before him? Into this space,inclusive of the visible world and of Yaque as well, had the carpassed _without the pursuers being able to point_ to the directionwhich it had taken? St. George smiled in derision as this flashedupon him, and it hardly held his thought for a moment, for his eyeswere upon Olivia's face, so near, so near his own ... Undoubtedly,he thought vaguely, that other motor had simply swerved aside tosome private opening of the grove and, from being hard-pressed andalmost overtaken, was now well away in safety. Yet if this were so,would they not have taken Olivia with them? But to that strange andunapparent hyperspace they could not have taken her, because she didnot understand. "...just as one," Prince Tabnit had said, "whounderstands how to die and come to life again would not be able totake with him any one who himself did not understand how toaccompany him..."
Some terrifying and exalting sense swept him into a new intimacy ofunderstanding as he realized glimmeringly what heights and depthslay about his ceasing to see that car of the guard. Yet, withOlivia's head upon his arm, all that he theorized in that flash oftime hung hardly beyond the border of his understanding. Indeed, itseemed to St. George as if almost--almost he could understand, as ifhe could pierce the veil and know utterly all the secrets of spiritand sense that confound. "We shall all know _when we are able tobear it_," he had once heard another say, and it seemed to him nowthat at last he was able to bear it, as if the sense of theuninterrupted connection between the two worlds was almost a part ofhis own consciousness. A moment's deeper thought, a quicker flowingof the imagination, a little more poignant projecting of himselfabove the abyss and he, too, would understand. It came to him thathe had almost understood every time that he had looked at Olivia.Ah, he thought, and how exquisite, how matchless she was, and whatHeaven beyond Heaven the world would hold for him if only she wereto love him. St. George lifted the little hand that hung at herside, and stooped momentarily to touch his cheek to the soft hairthat swept her shoulder. Here for him lay the sweet of life--thesweet of the world, ay, and the sweet of all the world's mysteries.This alien land was no nearer the truth than he. His love was theexpression of its mystery. They went back through the greatarchway, and entered the palace park. Once more the slim-trunkedtrees flew past them with the fringes of light expressing theborders of the dusk. St. George crouched, half-kneeling, on thefloor of the tonneau, his free hand protecting Olivia's face fromthe leaning branches of heavy-headed flowers. He had been sopassionately anxious that she should know that he was on the island,near her, ready to serve her; but now, save for his alarm andanxiety about her, he felt a shy, profound gratitude that the hourhad fallen as it had fallen. Whatever was to come, this nearness toher would be his to remember and possess. It had been his supremehour. Whether she had recognized him in that moment on the road,whether she ever knew what had happened made, he thought, nodifference. But if she was to open her eyes as they reached theborder of the park, and if she was to know that it was like thisthat the genie had come out of the jar--the mere notion made himgiddy, and he saw that Heaven may have little inner Heaven-courtswhich one is never too happy to penetrate.
But Olivia did not stir or unclose her eyes. The great strain of theevening, the terror and shock of its ending, the very relief withwhich she had, at all events, realized herself in the hands offriends were more than even an island princess could pass through inserenity. And when at last from the demesne of enchantment the caremerged in the court of the palace, Olivia knew nothing of it and,as nearly as he could recall afterward, neither did St. George. Heunderstood that the courtyard was filled with murmurs, and that asOlivia was lifted from the car the voice of Mrs. Medora Hastings, inall its excesses of tone and pitch, was tilted in a kind ofuniversal reproving. Then he was aware that Jarvo, beseeching himnot to leave the motor, had somehow got him away from all the tumultand the questioning and the crush of the other motors settingtardily off down the avenue in a kind cf majestic pursuit of theprincess. After that he remembered nothing but the grateful gloom ofthe wood and the swift flight of the car down that nebulous way,thin darkness flowing about him.
He was to go back to join Amory in some kind of tower, he knew; andhe was infinitely resigned, for he remembered that this was in someway essential to his safety, and that it had to do with the ascentof Mount Khalak to-morrow night. For the rest St. George was certainof nothing save that he was floating once more in a sea of light,with the sweet of the world flowing in his veins; and upon his armand against his shoulder he could still feel the thrill of thepressure of Olivia's head.
The genie had come out of the jar--and never, never would he goback.