THE TWO WORLDS
Two days and nights crept slowly into the past, and now the white people of the château had come to the eve of their last day's stay on the island of Japat: the probationary period would expire with the sun on the following day, the anniversary of the death of Taswell Skaggs. The six months set aside by the testator as sufficient for all the requirements of Cupid were to come to an inglorious end at seven o'clock on March 29th. According to the will, if Agnes Ruthven and Robert Browne were not married to each other before the close of that day all of their rights in the estate were lost to them.
To-morrow would be the last day of residence required, but, alack! Was it to be the last that they were to spend in the world-forsaken land? As they sat and stared gloomily at the spotless sea there was not a single optimist among them who felt that the end was near. Not a few were convincing themselves that their last days literally would be spent on the island.
No later than that morning a steamer—a small Dutch freighter—had come to a stop off the harbour. But it turned tail and fled within an hour. No one came ashore; the malevolent tug went out and turned back the landing party which was ready to leave the ship's side. The watchers in the château knew what it was that the tug's captain shouted through his trumpet at a safe distance from the steamer. Through their glasses they saw the boat's crew scramble back to the deck of the freighter; the action told the story plainer than words.
The black and yellow flags at the end of the company's pier lent colour to a grewsome story!
The hopeless look deepened in the eyes of the watchers. They saw the steamer move out to sea and then scuttle away as if pursued by demons.
Hollingsworth Chase alone maintained a stubborn air of confidence and unconcern. He may not have felt as he looked, but something in his manner, assumed or real, kept the fires of hope alight in the breasts of all the others.
"Don't be downhearted, Bowles," he said to the moping British agent. "You'll soon be managing the bank again and patronising the American bar with the same old regularity."
"My word, Mr. Chase," groaned Bowles, "how can you say a thing like that? I daresay they've blown the bank to Jericho by this time. Besides, there won't be an American bar. And, moreover, I don't intend to stay a minute longer than I have to on the beastly island. This taste of the old high life has spoiled me for everything else. I'm going back to London and sit on the banks of the Serpentine until it goes dry. Stay here? I should rather say not."
There had been several vicious assaults upon the gates by the infuriated islanders during the day following the rescue of the heirs. Their rage and disappointment knew no bounds. For hours they acted like madmen; only the most determined resistance drove them back from the gates. Some powerful influence suddenly exerted itself to restore them to a state of calmness. They abruptly gave up the fruitless, insensate attacks upon the walls and withdrew to the town, apparently defeated. The cause was obvious: Rasula had convinced them that Death already was lifting his hand to blot out the lives of those who opposed them.
Bobby Browne was accomplishing wonders in the laboratory. He seldom was seen outside the distilling room; his assiduity was marked, if not commented upon. Hour after hour he stood watch over the water that went up in vapour and returned to the crystal liquid that was more precious than rubies and sapphires. He was redeeming himself, just as he was redeeming the water from the poison that had made it useless. He experimented with lizards: the water as it came from the springs brought quick death to the little reptiles. The fishes in the aquarium died before it occurred to any one to remove them from the noxious water.
Drusilla kept close to his side during all of these operations. She seemed afraid or ashamed to join the others; she avoided Lady Deppingham as completely as possible. Her effort to be friendly when they were thrown together was almost pitiable.
As for Lady Agnes, she seemed stricken by an unconquerable lassitude; the spirits that had controlled her voice, her look, her movements, were sadly missing. It was with a most transparent effort that she managed to infuse life into her conversation. There were times when she stood staring out over the sea with unseeing eyes, and one knew that she was not thinking of the ocean. More than once Genevra had caught her watching Deppingham with eyes that spoke volumes, though they were mute and wistful.
From time to time the sentinels brought to Lord Deppingham and Chase missives that had been tossed over the walls by the emissaries of Rasula. They were written by the leader himself and in every instance expressed the deepest sympathy for the plague-ridden château. It was evident that Rasula believed that the occupants were slowly but surely dying, and that it was but a question of a few days until the place would become a charnel-house. With atavic cunning he sat upon the outside and waited for the triumph of death.
"There's a paucity of real news in these gentle messages that annoys me," Chase said, after reading aloud the last of the epistles to the Princess and the Deppinghams. "I rejoice in my heart that he isn't aware of the true state of affairs. He doesn't appreciate the real calamity that confronts us. The Plague? Poison? Mere piffle. If he only knew that I am now smoking my last—the last cigarette on the place!" There was something so inconceivably droll in the lamentation that his hearers laughed despite their uneasiness.
"I believe you would die more certainly from lack of cigarettes than from an over-abundance of poison," said Genevra. She was thinking of the stock she had hoarded up for him in her dressing-table drawer, under lock and key. It occurred to her that she could have no end of housewifely thrills if she doled them out to him in niggardly quantities, at stated times, instead of turning them over to him in profligate abundance.
"I'm sure I don't know," he said, taking a short inhalation. "I've never had the poison habit."
"I say, Chase, can't you just see Rasula's face when he learns that we've been drinking the water all along and haven't passed away?" cried Deppingham, brightening considerably in contemplation of the enemy's disgust.
"And to think, Mr. Chase, we once called you 'the Enemy,'" said Lady Agnes in a low, dreamy voice. There was a far-away look in her eyes.
"I appear to have outlived my usefulness in that respect," he said. He tossed the stub of his cigarette over the balcony rail. "Good-bye!" he said, with melancholy emphasis. Then he bent an inquiring look upon the face of the Princess.
"Yes," she said, as if he had asked the question aloud. "You shall have three a day, that's all."
"You'll leave the entire fortune to me when you sail away, I trust," he said. The Deppinghams were puzzled.
"But you also will be sailing away," she argued.
"I? You forget that I have had no orders to return. Sir John expects me to stay. At least, so I've heard in a roundabout way."
"You don't mean to say, Chase, that you'll stay on this demmed Island if the chance comes to get away," demanded Lord Deppingham earnestly. The two women were looking at him in amazement.
"Why not? I'm an ally, not a deserter."
"You are a madman!" cried Lady Agnes. "Stay here? They would kill you in a jiffy. Absurd!"
"Not after they've had another good long look at my warships. Lady Deppingham," he replied, with a most reassuring smile.
"Good Lord, Chase, you're not clinging to that corpse-candle straw, are you?" cried his lordship, beginning to pace the floor. "Don't be a fool! We can't leave you here to the mercy of these brutes. What's more, we won't!"
"My dear fellow," said Chase ruefully, "we are talking as though the ship had already dropped anchor out there. The chances are that we will have ample time to discuss the ethics of my rather anomalous position before we say good-bye to each other. I think I'll take a stroll along the wall before turning in."
He arose and leisurely started to go indoors. The Princess called to him, and he paused.
"Wait," she said, coming up to him. They walked down the hallway together. "I will run upstairs and unlock the treasure chest. I do not trust even my maid. You shall have two to-night—no more."
"You've really saved them for me?" he queried, a note of eagerness in his voice. "All these days?"
"I have been your miser," she said lightly, and then ran lightly up the stairs.
He looked after her until she disappeared at the top with a quick, shy glance over her shoulder. Then he permitted his spirits to drop suddenly from the altitude to which he had driven them. An expression of utter dejection came into his face; a haggard look replaced the buoyant smile.
"God, how I love her—how I love her!" he groaned, half aloud.
She was coming down the stairs now, eager, flushed, more abashed than she would have had him know. Without a word she placed the two cigarettes in his outstretched palm. Her eyes were shining.
In silence he clasped her hand and led her unresisting through the window and out upon the broad gallery. She was returning the fervid pressure of his fingers, warm and electric. They crossed slowly to the rail. Two chairs stood close together. They sat down, side by side. The power of speech seemed to have left them altogether.
He laid the two cigarettes on the broad stone rail. She followed the movement with perturbed eyes, and then leaned forward and placed her elbows on the rail. With her chin in her hands, she looked out over the sombre park, her heart beating violently. After a long time she heard him saying hoarsely:
"If the ship should come to-morrow, you would go out of my life? You would go away and leave me here—"
"No, no!" she cried, turning upon him suddenly. "You could not stay here. You shall not!"
"But, dearest love, I am bound to stay—I cannot go And, God help me, I want to stay. If I could go into your world and take you unto myself forever—if you will tell me now that some day you may forget your world and come to live in mine—then, ah, then, it would be different! But without you I have no choice of abiding place. Here, as well as anywhere."
She put her hands over her eyes.
"I cannot bear the thought of—of leaving you behind—of leaving you here to die at the hands of those beasts down there. Hollingsworth, I implore you—come! If the opportunity comes—and it will, I know—you will leave the island with the rest of us?"
"Not unless I am commanded to do so by the man who sent me here to serve these beasts, as you call them."
"They do not want you! They are your enemies!"
"Time will tell," he said sententiously. He leaned over and took her hand in his. "You do love me?"
"You know I do—yes, yes!" she cried from her heart, keeping her face resolutely turned away from him. "I am sick with love for you. Why should I deny the thing that speaks so loudly for itself—my heart! Listen! Can you not hear it beating? It is hurting me—yes, it is hurting me!"
He trembled at this exhibition of released, unchecked passion, and yet he did not clasp her in his arms.
"Will you come into my world, Genevra?" he whispered. "All my life would be spent in guarding the love you would give to me—all my life given to making you love me more and more until there will be no other world for you to think of."
"I wish that I had not been born," she sobbed. "I cannot, dearest—I cannot change the laws of fate. I am fated—I am doomed to live forever in the dreary world of my fathers. But how can I give you up? How can I give up your love? How can I cast you out of my life?"
"You do not love Prince Karl?"
"How can you ask?" she cried fiercely. "Am I not loving you with all my heart and soul?"
"And you would leave me behind if the ship should come?" he persisted, with cruel insistence. "You will go back and marry that—him? Loving me, you will marry him?" Her head dropped upon her arm. He turned cold as death. "God help and God pity you, my love. I never knew before what your little world means to you. I give you up to it. I crawl back into the one you look down upon with scorn. I shall not again ask you to descend to the world where love is."
Her hand lay limp in his. They stared bleakly out into the night and no word was spoken.
The minutes became an hour, and yet they sat there with set faces, bursting hearts, unseeing eyes.
Below them in the shadows, Bobby Browne was pacing the embankment, his wife drawn close to his side. Three men, Britt, Saunders and Bowles, were smoking their pipes on the edge of the terrace. Their words came up to the two in the gallery.
"If I have to die to-morrow," Saunders, the bridegroom, was saying, with real feeling in his voice, "I should say, with all my heart, that my life has been less than a week long. The rest of it was nothing. I never was happy before—and happiness is everything."