by Zona Gale
CHAPTER XV
A VIGIL
Upon Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham, drowsing over thepocket chess-board, the sound of footsteps and men's voices in thecorridor acted with electrical effect. Then the door was opened andbehind Olivia and Antoinette appeared the two visitors who seemed tohave fallen from the neighbouring heavens. The two chess-pretenderslooked up aghast. If there were a place in the world wherechaperonage might be relaxed the uninformed observer would say thatit would be the top of Mount Khalak.
"Mercy around us!" cried Mrs. Medora Hastings, "if it isn't thatnewspaper man! He's probably come over here to cable it all over thefront page of every paper in New York. Well," she addedcomplacently, as if she had brought it all about, "it seems good tosee some of your own race. How _did_ you get here? Some trick, Isuppose?"
"My dear fellows," burst out Mr. Augustus Frothingham fervently,"thank God! I'm not, ordinarily, unequal to my situations, but Iconfess to you, as I would not to a client, that I don't object tosharing 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 anidea that he controlled the hour?
From a tumult of questioning, none of which was fully answeredbefore Mrs. Hastings put another query, the lawyer at lengthelicited the substance of what had occurred.
"You came up the side of the mountain, carried by four of thosefrightful natives?" shrilled Mrs. Hastings. "Olivia, think. It's awonder they didn't murder you first and throw you over afterward,isn't it, Olivia? Oh, and my poor dear brother. To think of hislying somewhere all mangled and bl--"
Emotion overcame Mrs. Hastings. Her tortoise-shell glasses fell toher lap and both her side-combs tinkled melodiously to the tiledfloor.
"This reminds me," said Mr. Frothingham, settling back and finding apencil with which to emphasize his story, "this reminds me very muchof a case that I had on the June calendar--"
In half an hour St. George and Amory saw that all seriousconsideration of their situation must be accomplished alone withOlivia; for in that time Mr. Frothingham had been reminded of twomore cases and Mrs. Hastings had twice been reduced to tears by thepicture of the possible fate of her brother. Moreover, therepresently appeared supper--a tray of the most savoury delicacies, toproduce which Olivia had slipped away and, St. George had no doubt,said over some spell in the kitchens. Supper in the white marbleroom of the king's palace was almost as wonderful as muffins and teaat the Boris.
There were Olivia in her gown of roses on one side of the table andAntoinette on the other and between them the hungry and happyadventurers. Across the room under a tall silver vase that mighthave been the one proposed by Achilles at the funeral games forPatroclus ("that was the work of the 'skilful Sidonians'" St. Georgerecalled with a thrill), Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Frothingham wereconscientiously finishing their chess, since the lawyer believed incompleting whatever he undertook, if for nothing more than a warningnever to undertake it again. Manifestly the little ivory kings andqueens and castles were in league with all the other magic of thenight, for the game prolonged itself unconscionably, and the supperparty found it far from difficult to do the same. St. George lookedat Olivia in her gown of roses, and his eyes swept the high whitewalls of the room with its frescoes and inscriptions, its brokenstatues and defaced chests of stone and ancient armour, and so backto Olivia in her gown of roses, with her little ringless handstouching and lifting among the alien dishes as she ministered tohim. What a dear little gown of roses and what beautiful hands, St.George thought; and as for the broken statues and the inscriptionsand the contents of the stone chests, nobody had paid any attentionto them for so long that they could hardly have missed his regard.Nor Amory's. For Amory was in the midst of a reminiscent referenceto the Chiswicks, in the Adirondacks, and to Antionette Frothinghamin a launch.
At last they all were aware that the chess-board was being closedand Mrs. Hastings had risen.
"I suppose," she was saying, "that they have an idea here, the poordeluded creatures, that it is very late. But I tell Olivia that weare so much farther east it _can't_ be very late in New York at thisminute, and I intend to go to bed by my watch as I always do, andthat is New York time. If I were in New York I wouldn't be sleepynow, and I'm no different here, am I? I don't think people are halfindependent enough."
Mrs. Hastings stepped round a stone god, almost faceless, that stoodin a little circular depression in the floor.
"Olivia, where," she inquired, patting the bobbing, ticking jet onher gown, "where do you think that frightful, mad, old man is?"
"I heard him cross the corridor a little while ago," Oliviaanswered. "I think he went to his room."
"I must say, Olivia," said Mrs. Hastings with a damp sigh, "that youare very selfish where I am concerned--in _this_ matter."
"Ah," said Olivia, "please, Aunt Dora. He is far too feeble to harmany one. And he's away there on the second floor."
"I'm sure he's a murderer," protested Mrs. Hastings. "He has themurderer's eye. Mr. Hastings would have said he has. We all sleep onthe ground floor here," she continued plaintively, "because we areso high up anyway that I think the air must be just as pure as itwould be up stairs. I always leave my window up the width of myhandkerchief-box."
As they went out to the great corridor Olivia spoke softly to St.George.
"Look up," she said.
He looked, and saw that the vast circular chamber was ofincalculable height, extending up to the very dome of the palace,and shaping itself to the lines of the topmost of the three hugecones. It was a great well of light, playing over strange frescoesof gods and daemons, of constellations and of beasts, and exquisitewith all the secret colours of some other way of vision. As high asthe eye could see, the precious metals upon the skeleton of the openroof shone in the bright light that was set there--the light on thesummit of the king's palace.
St. George turned from the glory of it and looked into her eyes.
"'A new Heaven and a new earth,'" he said; but he did not mean thedome of light nor yet the splendour of the palace.
* * * * *
Manifestly, there is no use in being asleep when one can dreamrather better awake. St. George wandered aimlessly between his roomand Amory's and took the time to reflect that when a man looks theway Amory did he might as well have Cupids painted on his coat.
"St. George," Amory said soberly, "is this the way you've beenfeeling all the way here? Is this what you came for? Then, on mysoul, I forgive you everything. I would have climbed ten mountainsto meet Antoinette Frothingham."
"I've been watching you, you son of Dixie," said St. George darkly;"don't you lose your head just when you need it most."
"I have a notion yours is gone," defended Amory critically, "andmine is only going."
"That's twice as dangerous," St. George wisely opined;"besides--mine is different."
"So is mine," said Amory, "so is everybody's."
St. George stepped through the long window to the terrace. Amorydidn't care whether anybody listened; he simply longed to talk, andSt. George had things to think about. He crossed the terrace to thesouth, and went back to the very spot where he and Olivia had stood;and there, because the night would have it no other way, hestretched along the broad wall among the vines, and lit his pipe,and lay looking out at sea. Here he was, liberated from the businessof "buzzing in a corner, trifling with monosyllables," set upon afield pleasant with hazard and without paths, to move in the primalexperiences where words themselves are born. Better and moreintimate names for everything seemed now almost within his ken.
He had longed unspeakably to go pilgriming, and he had forthwithbeen permitted to leave the world behind with its thickets andthresholds, its hesitations and confusions, its marching armies,breakfasts, friendships and the like, and to live on the edge ofwhat will be. He thought of his mother, in her
black gowns and Romanmosaic pins with a touch of yellow lace at her throat, listening tothe bishop as he examined the dicta of still cloisters, and he toldhimself that he knew a heresy or two that were like belief. Hismother and the bishop at Tuebingen and on the Baltic! Curiouslyenough, they did not seem very remote. He adored his mother and thebishop, and so the thought of them was a part of this fairy tale.All pleasant thoughts whether of adventure or impression boastkinship, perhaps have identity. And the name of that identity wasOlivia. So he "drove the night along" on the leafy parapet.
He was not far from asleep, nor perhaps from the dream of the Romanemperor who believed the sea to have come to his bedside and spokenwith him, when something--he was not sure whether it was a voice ora touch--startled him awake. He rose on his elbow and lookeddrowsily out at the glorified blackness--as if black were no longerabsence cf colour but, the veil of negative definitions having beenpierced, were found to be a mystic union of colour and moreinclusive than white. The very dark seemed delicately vocal and to"fill the waste with sound" no less than the wash of the waves. St.George awoke deliciously confused by a returning sense of the sweetand the joy of the night.
"'This was the loneliest beach between two seas,'" there flittedthrough his mind, "'and strange things had been done there in theancient ages.'" He turned among the vines, half listening. "And inthere is the king's daughter," he told himself, "and this iscertainly 'the strangest thing that ever befell between two seas.'And I have a great mind to look up the old woman of that tale whomust certainly be hereabout, dancing 'widdershins.'"
Then, like a bright blade unsheathed in a quiet chamber, a cry ofgreat and unmistakable fear rang out from the palace--a woman'scry, uttered but once, and giving place to a silence that was evenmore terrifying. In an instant St. George was on his feet, runningwith all his might.
"Coming!" he called, "where are you--where are you?" And his heartpounded against his side with the certainty that the voice had beenOlivia's.
It was unmistakably Olivia's voice that replied to him.
"Here!" she cried clearly, and St. George followed the sound anddashed through the long open window of the room next that in whichhe had first seen her that night.
"Here," she repeated, "but be careful. Some one is in this room."
"Don't be afraid," he cried cheerily into the dark. "It's allright," which is exactly what he would have said if there had beenabout dragons and real shades from Sidon.
The room was now in darkness, and in the dim light cast by the highmoon he could at first discern nothing. He heard a silken rustlingand the tap of slippered feet. The next instant the apartment wasquick with light, and in the curtained entrance to an inner room,Olivia, in a brown dressing-gown, her hair vaguely bright about herflushed face, stood confronting him.
Between them, his thin hand thrown up, palm outward, to protect hiseyes from the sudden light, was the old man whom St. George had lastseen by the shrine on the terrace.
St. George was prepared for a mere procession of palace ghosts, butat this strange visitor he stared for an uncomprehending moment.
"What are you doing here?" he said wonderingly to him; "what in theworld are you doing here?"
The old man looked uncertainly about him, one hand spread againstthe pillar behind him, the other fumbling at his throat.
"I think," he answered almost indistinguishably, "I think that Imeant to sit here--to sit in the room beyond, where the mock starsshine."
Olivia uttered an exclamation.
"How could he possibly know that?" she said.
"But what does he mean?" asked St. George.
She crossed swiftly to a portiere hanging by slender rings from thefull height of the lofty room, and at her bidding St. Georgefollowed her. She pushed aside the curtain, revealing a huge cave ofthe dark, a room whose walls were sunk in shadow. But overhead theceiling was constellated in stars, so that it seemed to St. Georgeas if he were looking into a nearer heaven, homing the far lightsthat he knew. The Pleiades, Orion, and the Southern Cross, blazingdown with inconceivable brilliance, were caught and held captive inthe cup of this nearer sky.
"It is like this at night," Olivia said, "but we see nothing in thedaytime, save the vague outlines of here and there a star. But howcould he have known? There is no other door save this."
The old man had followed them and stood, his eyes fixed on theshining points.
"It is done well," he said softly, "it makes one feel thefirmament."
St. George, thrilling with the strangeness of what he saw, and thestrangeness of being there with Olivia and this weird old man of themountain, turned toward him almost fearfully. How did he know,indeed?
"Ah well," he said, striving to reassure her, "I've no doubt he haswandered in here some evening, while you were at dinner. No doubt--"
He stopped abruptly, his eyes fixed on the old man's hand. For as helifted it St. George had thought that something glittered. Withouthesitation he caught the old man's arm about the wrist, and turnedhis hand in his own palm. In the thin fingers he found a smallsealed tube, filled with something that looked like particles ofnickel.
"Do you mind telling me what that is?" asked St. George.
Old Malakh's eyes, liquid and brown and very peaceful, met his ownwithout rebuke.
"Do you mean the gem?" he asked gently. "It is a very beautifulruby."
Then St. George saw upon the hand that held the sealed tube a ringof matchless workmanship, set with a great ruby that smouldered inthe shadow where they stood. Olivia looked at St. George withstartled eyes.
"He was not wearing this when we first saw him," she said. "Ihaven't seen him wearing it at all."
St. George confronted the old man then and spoke with somedetermination.
"Will you please tell us," he said, "what there is in this tube, andhow you came by this ring?"
Old Malakh looked down reflectively at his hand, and back to St.George's face. It was wonderful, the air of courtliness and urbanityand delicate breeding which persisted through age and infirmity andthe fallow mind.
"I wish that I might tell you," he said humbly, "but I have onlylittle lights in my head, instead of words. And when I say them,they do not mean--what they _shine_. Do you not see? That is whyevery one laughs. But I know what the lights say."
St. George looked at Olivia helplessly.
"Will you tell me where his room is?" he said, "and I'll go backwith him. I don't know what to make of this, quite, but don't befrightened. It's all right. Didn't you say he is on the secondfloor?"
"Yes, but don't go alone with him," begged Olivia suddenly, "let mecall some of the servants. We don't know what he may do."
St. George shook his head, smiling a little in sheer boyish delightat that "we." "We" is a very wonderful word, when it is not put tounimportant uses by kings, editors and the like.
"I'd rather not, thank you," he said. "I'll have a talk with him, Ithink."
"His room is at the top of the stair, on the left," said Oliviareluctantly, "but I wish--"
"We shall get on all right," St. George assured her, "and don't letthis worry you, will you? I was smoking on the terrace. I'll bethere for a while yet. Good night," he said from the doorway.
"Good night," said Olivia. "Good night--and, oh, I thank you."
St. George's expectation of having a talk with the old man was,however, unfounded. Old Malakh led the way to his room--a greatplace of carven seats and a frowning bed-canopy and high windows,and doors set deep in stone; and he begged St. George to sit downand permitted him to examine the sealed tube filled with littleparticles that looked like nickel, and spoke with gentle irrelevancethe while. At the last St. George left him, feeling as if he werecommitting not so much an indignity as a social solecism when helocked the door upon the lonely creature, using for the purpose akey-like implement chained to the lock without and having a ringabout the size of the iron crown of the Lombards.
"Good night," old Malakh told him courteously, "good night. But yetall night
s are good--save the night of the heart."
St. George went back to the terrace. For hours he paced the paths ofthat little upper garden or lay upon the wall among the pungentvines. But now he forgot the iridescent dark and the companion-seaand the high moon and the king's palace, for it was not these thatmade the necromancy of the night. It was permitted him to watchbefore the threshold while Olivia slept, as lovers had watched inthe youth of the world. Whatever the morrow held, to-night had beenadded to yesternight. Not until the dawn of that morrow whitened thesky and drew from the vapourous plain the first far towers of Med,the King's City, did St. George say good night to her glimmeringwindows.