Читать книгу The Jingo - George Randolph Chester - Страница 3

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The king slapped his hand to the back of his neck and jumped to his feet. Shaking the rain from his hair; he slammed and bolted the big wooden shutters just behind him. The princess, in the supple devilment of her nineteen years, leaned meekly against the shutters, but there was a suspicious spark in the wide brown eyes with which she held her brother's attention.

"We only stuck our noses out!" she deceptively apologized, as her slim brown hand slid stealthily up to the bolt.

The king laughed in spite of himself as he gazed down on her, her curling brown hair gleaming wet and the raindrops glistening on her oval face; and he shook his head at his younger brother, a tall boy of seventeen, who stood laughing behind her, quite ready for any mischief the girl might suggest.

"Shutters were made to keep storms out," the king stated, with every appearance of stern wisdom.

"Jump!" suddenly cried their guest from his seat in front of the wide fireplace, where thick flaming logs did their best against the damp and chill of the spring storm.

The guest, a black-bearded young man, with the fashionable red braiding on his dark blue jacket, was too late with his warning, for the princess had at last succeeded in slyly slipping the bolt, and she and her younger brother sprang away, shrieking with laughter, as the shutters flew wide open and the storm rushed in from the night, drenching the king and the marble floor, blowing out most of the flaring candle-balls which formed a frieze about the big hall, and swirling great volumes of smoke from the fireplace.

The king, a tall and wholesome-looking fellow of about thirty-five, shook the water again from his hair and beard, and made an energetic plunge for his brother and sister.

"Head them off, Onalyon!" he called, as, eluding him, they circled the big apartment, hurdling the dignified benches which came in their way.

At that moment they had turned in the far corner of the hall, had dodged the breathless and laughing king, and had headed straight for outdoors, almost hand in hand. Prince Onalyon sprang to intercept them. The girl, her cheeks and her eyes flaming with the joy of the romp, and the hem of her white robe cracking behind her like a whip, revealing every lithe curve of her, giggled something to her brother; and with shrieking mischief they hurled straight on, heads down.

Onalyon, watching the girl with suddenly gleaming eyes, braced himself, determined that they should not dash out upon the storm-swept terrace. Before he quite knew what had happened, however, he was himself rushed over the threshold and the big shutters bolted against him, leaving him to make his way through the rain to the main entrance.

The girl held the bolt while her younger brother stood before her, ready to grapple with the king and defend their victory at all hazards. The king, however, merely sat down and laughed.

"You may occasion the prince a severe cold," he observed with twinkling eyes.

"I hope he sneezes for the rest of his life!" giggled the princess.

"You might find that annoying in your husband," he suggested.

"She's not going to marry Onalyon!" immediately asserted her younger brother.

"I am afraid she must," insisted the king, becoming grave. "We've allowed her to be a child a long time."

"I won't!" And the girl tilted herself for a second upon the toes of her dainty sandals to come down on her heels for emphasis. "Please don't say I have to!" and, slipping down upon the arm of the king's chair, she turned her eyes appealingly to him. "You're always saying it." Seeing the collar of his tunic gaping conveniently open at the back, she dangled one of her dripping curls into the space to make him squirm. "Why must I?"

"To prevent war, for one thing."

"I wish we could have a war," she remarked; and, plucking a gray hair from his beard, she tried to twist it round his nose. "I'd rather have that than marry Onalyon."

"Is there any other among the nobles whom you would prefer?" he anxiously inquired.

"Who would it be?" she laughingly demanded. "Birrquay has a funny nose, and Calamaz talks about himself all the time, and Polecon is too fat, and Grisophal looks cross, and Huppylac squeaks, and Onalyon spends too much time on his beard. The rest are all too young or too old, and the nicest ones are all married."

"I'll speak to Onalyon about that beard," laughed the king, much relieved. "This is the first time that a marriage between the two dynasties has seemed possible since the war a hundred years ago."

The princess screamed, and hastily jumping from the arm of the chair, stood, with distended eyes, confronting her younger brother, emitting shriek after shriek straight at him. Tedoyah, searching the apartment for something--anything--to relieve the agony of serious conversation, had found on the floor a leaf which had been blown in by the storm. Upon the leaf was the priceless gift of a cold, cold worm; and this he had, with great care and delicacy, dropped into the exact center of the warm palm of Bezzanna.

"I'll put spiders in your bed!" she hysterically cried. "I'll put snakes in your clothes! I'll put bugs in your cap! I'll fill your pockets with caterpillars!"

An extra loud clap of thunder, which seemed to shake the very building, resounded outside just as Onalyon entered from the corridor, dripping and laughing.

"I like it, since I'm wet through," he said, hurrying to the fire and snapping the water from his fingers into Bezzanna's face as he passed her. "It's a fearful storm--the worst we've had in years, I think."

"I want to see it," declared Bezzanna wistfully going to the shutters and sliding her hand longingly to and fro upon the bolt. "I don't see why you men, who claim to have all the intelligence there is, can't invent some way to see out without letting in the wind and the rain and the cold."

Both the king and the prince laughed.

"You have a positive genius for imagining impossible things," commented Onalyon. "I suppose you want us to find some wood or marble, or some other solid substance, which you can see through."

"Of course I do," she replied. "I'm tired of having it all dark indoors on cold days when it rains. If we only had sheets of ice that would not melt!"

Naturally they could not help laughing at her. What she asked was so absurd--so entirely beyond the bounds of possibility--a miracle, in fact!

"That's as bad as your wanting us to set a slice of water on edge in your room, so you could see yourself in it," laughed the king.

"I didn't ask you to do that," she hotly denied, indignant at the misrepresentation. "I only asked you to find something to put in my room in which I could see to do up my hair as clearly as if I had a slice of water set on edge."

"It amounts to the same," insisted the prince.

"It does not," contradicted Tedoyah. "What she said was a perfectly sensible illustration. My whole crowd has been working on it for months."

"Women are queer," observed the king sagely. "They are always wanting impossible things."

"That's because women won't admit there is anything impossible," stoutly asserted Bezzanna. "And there isn't. Why, last summer I said there should be some way for men to fly, and you told me it was impossible. Only a few days afterward a man flew straight over Isola."

Both the king and the prince looked at her sadly.

"I suppose you will never admit that what we saw was only a big bird," sighed the king, with the hopeless air of a man who knows how useless it is to combat a feminine prejudice, no matter how absurd.

"Of course she won't admit it," maintained Tedoyah. "I saw the man myself."

"You'd see anything she did," laughed the king. "But consider how foolish that idea is! A bird is twenty times stronger than a man in proportion to its size. This has been proved. Therefore, man can not fly until he becomes twenty times stronger than he now is--which is, of course, impossible."

"I saw a man up there," Bezzanna mumbled, as much to herself as to them.

"Oh, well, maybe you did," wearily gave in the king.

"You don't believe that," she charged. "You're only saying it to stop the argument. But how do you know what kind of men there are outside of here? Maybe they are twenty times stronger and twenty times more intelligent, for that matter."

Even Tedoyah was indignant at this insulting supposition. It was going a trifle beyond the limit of mere absurdity to assert that anywhere in the world there were male human beings of better fiber and furnishing than the stalwart and brainy sons of Isola!

"You are not very patriotic, to say the least," reproached the king, really very much hurt.

"I don't say that anybody could be nicer, or better, or more lovable," hastily defended Bezzanna, filled with remorse. "They're very probably hideous monsters and I should hate them; but I do know they must be very wise. They build big ships and sail the water in them. Sometimes I watch for hours, from the top of our tower, to see them go sailing by, away yonder on the edge of the ocean; and sometimes I fancy that if they could only pass through the many miles of reefs which shut off Isola from the rest of the world, wherever it is, they would bring me some great unknown happiness; so I call and call and call to those far-off ships; but, of course, they never hear me! Are these things all foolish dreams, brother? Say no!"

"Certainly not," accommodated the king, laughing; then, more seriously: "really, though, we can not know what vast progress may have been made in the world since the ignorant age when, many hundreds of years ago, the original founders of Isola were cast ashore here in a convulsion of the sea; and, bound in by the impassable reefs that sprang up on the one side, and by unscalable mountains on the other, were forced to stay."

"They couldn't have found a better place," declared Bezzanna, with intense conviction. "Isola is the prettiest country in the world. Listen! My, how it storms! Brother, I simply must go out and see it!"

"I suppose you'll have to go," consented the king, with an indulgent smile. "It never seems to hurt you, and you do thoroughly enjoy it."

"She mustn't go this time," interposed the prince, as the two youngsters started hurriedly for their wraps. "It's really too severe for her."

"You don't need to come," she kindly told him. "You'd better go up to your rooms and take a hot bath and put on some dry clothes--and have Aunt Gee-gee order you some tea!"

This reference to the motherly ministrations of Aunt Gee-gee--which was the baby name Bezzanna still retained for the spinster Princess Zheneezha--touched the prince's pride. Aunt Gee-gee would much rather have them all weakly than strong--so she could nurse them!

"Why wait for wraps?" observed the prince as calmly as he could under his white anger; and once more he threw open the shutters and, bareheaded, stepped outside into the storm, the fury of which, however, was now somewhat abated.

"Please put these on!" cried Bezzanna, running to him with his cap and cape. "I'm sorry; truly--I didn't mean it."

"Thank you," accepted the prince happily, and put them on. "What is there about a storm that attracts you so, Bezzanna?" he asked, as he caught her arm to brace her against the rushing wind. He was glad of that excuse to touch and hold her. "Is it the wildness of it?"

"Not altogether that," she answered. "I think it's the mystery of it more than the wildness or the beauty. I have always had a queer impression that sometime the storm would bring me something very wonderful."

"What strange thoughts you have!" he commented a trifle sadly. "They come from discontent, I think. Why is Isola so unsatisfactory?"

"Because I want impossible things, I guess," she laughed.

"I hope the storm brings them to you," the prince was gallant enough to say. "What do you suppose it will be?"

"Who knows?" she returned, as Tedoyah grasped her arms to drag her away. "Perhaps"--and she laughed mischievously--"perhaps a truly lover!"