Romance Island Part 10

"I must go to my father. I must go to Yaque," she cried ringingly.

"Prince Tabnit, will you take me to him?"

Into the prince's face leaped a fire of admiration for her beauty and her daring. He bowed before her, his lowered lashes making thick shadows on his dark cheeks.

"I insist upon this," cried little Olivia firmly, "and if you do not permit it, Prince Tabnit, we must publish what you have told us from one end of the city to the other."

"Yes, by Jove," thought St. George, "and one's country will have a Yaque exhibit in its own department at the next world's fair."

"Olivia! My child! Miss Holland--," began the lawyer.

The prince spoke tranquilly.

"It is precisely this errand," he said, "that has brought me to America. Do you not see that, in the event of your father's failure to return to his people, you will eventually be Queen of Yaque?"

St. George found himself looking fixedly at Mrs. Hastings' false front as the only reality in the room. If in a minute Rollo was going to waken him by bringing in his coffee, he was going to throttle Rollo--that was all. Olivia Holland, an American heiress, the hereditary princess of a cannibal island! St. George still insisted upon the cannibal; it somehow gave him a foothold among the actualities.

"I!" cried Olivia.

Mrs. Hastings, brows lifted, lips parted, winked with lightning rapidity in an effort to understand.

St. George pulled himself together.

"Your Highness," he said sternly, "there are several things upon which I must ask you to enlighten us. And the first, which I hope you will forgive, is whether you have any direct proof that what you tell us of Miss Holland's father is true."

"That's it! That's it!" Mr. Frothingham joined him with all the importance of having made the suggestion. "We can hardly proceed in due order without proofs, sir."

The prince turned toward the curtain at the room's end and the youth appeared once more, this time bearing a light oval casket of delicate workmans.h.i.+p. It was of a substance resembling both gla.s.s and metal of changing, rainbow tints, and it pa.s.sed through St.

George's mind as he observed it that there must be, to give such a dazzling and unreal effect, more than seven colours in the spectrum.

"A spectrum of seven colours," said the prince at the same moment, "could not, of course, produce this surface. I confess that until I came to this country I did not know that you had so few colours. Our spectrum already consists of twelve colours visible to the naked eye, and at least five more are distinguishable through our powerful magnifying gla.s.ses."

St. George was silent. It was as if he had suddenly been permitted to look past the door that bars and threatens all knowledge.

The prince unlocked the casket. He drew out first a quant.i.ty of paper of extreme thinness and lightness on which, embossed and emblazoned, was the coat of arms of the Hollands--a sheaf of wheat and an unicorn's head--and this was surmounted by a crown.

"This," said the prince, "is now the device upon the signet ring of the King of Yaque, the arms of your own family. And here chances to be a letter from your father containing some instructions to me. It is true that writing has with us been superseded by wireless communication, excepting where there is need of great secrecy. Then we employ the alphabet of any language we choose, these being almost disused, as are the Cuneiform and Coptic to you."

"And how is it," St. George could not resist asking, "that you know and speak the English?"

The prince smiled swiftly.

"To you," he said, "who delve for knowledge and who do not know that it is absolute and to be possessed at will, this can not now be made clear. Perhaps some day..."

Olivia had taken the paper from the prince and pressed it to her lips, her eyes filling with tears. There was no mistaking that evidence, for this was her father's familiar hand.

"Otho always did write a fearful scrawl," Mrs. Hastings commented, "his l's and his t's and his vowels were all the same height. I used to tell him that I didn't know whatever people would think."

"I may, moreover," continued the prince, "call to mind several articles which were included in the packet sent from the Azores by his Majesty. You have, for example, a tapestry representing an ibis hunt; you have an image in pink sutro, or soft marble, of an ancient Phoenician G.o.d--Melkarth. And you have a length of stained gla.s.s bearing the figure of the Tyrian sphinx, crucified, and surrounded by coiled asps."

"Yes, it is true," said Olivia, "we have all these things."

"Why, the trash must be quite expensive," observed Mrs. Hastings. "I don't care much for so many colours myself, perhaps because I always wear black; though I did wear light colours a good deal when I was a girl."

"What else, Mr. St. George?" inquired the prince pleasantly.

"Nothing else," cried Olivia pa.s.sionately. "I am satisfied. My father is in danger, and I believe that he is in Yaque, for he would never of his own will desert a place of trust. I must go to him.

And, Aunt Dora, you and Mr. Frothingham must go with me."

"Oh, Olivia!" wailed Mrs. Hastings, a different key for every syllable, "think--consider! Is it the necessary thing to do? And what would your poor dear uncle have done? And is there a better way than his way? For I always say that it is not really necessary to do as my poor dear husband would have done, providing only that we can find a better way. Oh," she mourned, lifting her hands, "that this frightful thing should come to me at my age. Otho may be married to a cannibal princess, with his sons catching wild goats by the hair like Tennyson and the whistling parrots--"

"Madame," said the prince coldly, "forgets what I have been saying of my country."

"I do not forget," declared Mrs. Hastings sharply, "but being behind civilization and being ahead of civilization comes to the same thing more than once. In morals it does."

St. George was silent. Olivia's splendid daring in her pa.s.sionate decision to go to her father stirred him powerfully; moreover, her words outlined a possible course of his own whose magnitude startled him, and at the same time filled him with a sudden, dazzling hope.

"But where is your island, Prince Tabnit?" he asked. "You've naturally no consul there and no cable, since you are not even on the map."

"Yaque," said the prince readily, "lies almost due southwest from the Azores."

Mr. Frothingham stirred skeptically.

"But such an island," he said pompously, "so rich in material for the archaeologist, the anthropologist, the explorer in all fields of antiquity--ah, it is out of the question, out of the question!"

"It is difficult," said the prince patiently, "most difficult for me to make myself intelligible to you--as difficult, if you will forgive me, as if you were to try to explain calculus to one of the street boys outside. But directly your phase of civilization has opened to you the secrets of the Fourth Dimension, much will be discovered to you which you do not now discern or dream, and among these, Yaque. I do not jest," he added wearily, "neither do I expect you to believe me. But I have told you the truth. And it would be impossible for you to reach Yaque save in the company of one of the islanders to whom the secret is known. I can not explain to you, any more than I can explain harmony or colour."

"Well, I'm sure," cried Mrs. Hastings fretfully, "I don't know why you all keep wandering from the subject so. Now, my brother Otho--"

"Prince Tabnit,"--Olivia's voice never seemed to interrupt, but rather to "divide evidence finely" at the proper moment--"how long will it take us to reach Yaque?"

St. George thrilled at that "us."

"My submarine," replied the prince, "is plying about outside the harbour. I arrived in four days."

"By the way," St. George submitted, "since your wireless system is perfected, why can not we have news of your island from here?"

"The curve of the earth," explained the prince readily, "prevents.

We have conquered only those problems with which we have had to deal. The curve of the earth has of course never entered our calculation. We have approached the problem from another standpoint."

"We have much to do, Prince Tabnit," said Olivia; "when may we leave?"

"Command me," said Prince Tabnit, bowing.

"To-morrow!" cried Olivia, "to-morrow, at noon."

"Olivia!" Mrs. Hastings' voice broke over the name like ice upon a warm promontory. Mrs. Hastings' voice was suited to say "Keziah" or "Katinka," not Olivia.

"Can you go, Mr. Frothingham?" demanded Olivia.