CHAPTER XXI.
I OFFEND THE KING'S FOSTER BROTHER, AND AM FORCED TO TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES.
When the door was closed upon me the first thing that I did was to feel for my precious ring. It was safe. I took it out and looked at it long and curiously. It had never seemed so hideous, so wonderful, so fascinating, or so absorbing to me as it did at that moment. I apostrophised it. I almost worshipped it.
"You are some good, after all," said I. "There you lie in my hand, too big for anything but the thumb of a giant, looking at me with those great shining devil's eyes of yours, and hoping to get me into trouble; but I'll get you into trouble while you get me out of it, for I'll leave you with the greatest rapscallion of modern times."
The red and glowing pupils gleamed with a long-reaching ray of light, thrown right into the centre of my blinking eyes, and, was I mistaken, or did I see one of them wink at me? I put the ring back under the breast of my shirt and got up and tried the door. It was, as I supposed, fastened. There was a couch in the room, and in the space outside I saw a hammock. It swung from corner to corner of the short veranda.
"Ah!" you may say, "why didn't you just go out on that veranda, and if it was on the first floor step out into the garden and so escape?"
In the first place, if I could have escaped from this place, what had I to gain? I should leave Cynthia behind. In the second place, I was not on the ground floor, but two flights from the ground, which is an unusual thing in a tropic-built house. From the picture which I made of the palace as it looked in those days, you can see that above the terrace itself there were two other stories. This brought my room on the third floor. I suppose you think that I might have risked dropping down into the garden, but of what use? However, there was no question as to that. I could not get out if I would. The veranda was surrounded by a lattice work of iron. I was inclosed in a cage, and, though not as confining a one as that in which the pirates had placed me, it was a cage all the same.
I entered the veranda from the long French window of the room and lay down in the hammock. I had nothing with which to while away my time, and I lay thinking what the upshot of all this business was to be. As I reclined I heard voices. They came from the garden below me. I peered downward as well as I could through my wire lattice, and there I saw Cynthia with the two dusky maidens hovering near. They overwhelmed her with their attentions, each one seeming to vie with the other in striving to show how much affection she could lavish on the white girl. As I watched them, they seemed to get angry with each other. I saw that it was jealousy, and I also saw that if Cynthia was clever she could do more for herself than I could do for her. So I called as if I were singing. I sang an old-fashioned tune which my mother used to play on the ancient spinnet in summer evenings at home when the farm work was done. I sang these words, or words to this effect:
"Be careful what you do, dear one. You can work on their feelings. Do not make one jealous of the other. Find out who is the King's favourite, and, if you must anger either, let it be the other. I am here just above you. Where are you lodged? Can you send Solomon with a line under his wing, or can you, in passing, tie a note to the thread which I shall lower close to the jasmine vine? Do not answer, but do what you can to tell me where you are lodged."
I saw Cynthia start and look all around and above her at the rooms of the palace. The two princesses were quarrelling, and nearly coming to blows, so that Cynthia could raise her eyes to my place of detention without being observed. I repeated my words. I added to them. I went further. I told her how much I loved her, and assured her that nothing but the most insuperable difficulties should part us. I saw that she understood me. She waited until I had finished, and then she walked to where one of the black belles had pushed the other into a flowering bank, and, approaching them with gentle step, she held out a hand to each, speaking sweetly and softly, as I knew that Cynthia could do, though I had had little experience of it myself. Her manner and words seemed to subdue them, and finally they were reconciled with each other and with her. As I lounged in my hammock after they had left the garden, the door of my room softly opened, and I found that a boy had entered. He had in his hand a tray, and on it were some sweets and a glass of a pale-coloured decoction, also a glass of water. He looked strangely familiar to me, and when he raised his liquid eyes to me I recognised Lacelle. I found later that the torch bearer was an old friend of Lacelle's and Zalee's. That his mother was one of the women employed about the kitchens, and that he had taken the girl directly to her, and that she had disguised her in the clothes of one of the serving lads. Christophe cared nothing about making a prisoner of the Haïtienne; all that he wanted was the party of white people, whom he thought might be fomenting a revolution, or might be connected with the pirates who infested the Isle of Pines, and made those terrible dashes upon the unprotected coast. I often wonder what he would have thought had he known that his favourite Mauresco had deserted him for the buccaneers themselves. But it was not within my province to tell of this, or, in fact, to talk of Mauresco at all. So long as I was to reproduce the ring and thus get our freedom, it would be well for me to remain silent about Mauresco, whose ring would be recognised at once should I own that I had ever even seen him. For Christophe to know that Mauresco had been killed by any of our party, would insure instant death for every one of us.
I sat looking at Lacelle while these thoughts ran through my mind. She was in no hurry to leave me, and seemed puzzling her brains as to how she should communicate with me. Finally she stretched her hand toward the glass of yellow liquid, and, pointing to her mouth, she shook her head. I stretched my hand toward the glass with the pretended intention of drinking the liquid, when she bounded to the table and, with a look of horror, seized the glass and carried it out to the veranda. I watched her as she poured it down the stem of the vine which grew from the ground below.