Hearts of Three 43

Hearts of Three 43

Francis drew next, and an equally long straw was his portion. To Henry

there was no choice. The remaining straw in Leoncia’s hand was the fatal

one. All tragedy was in his face as he looked instantly at Leoncia. And

she, observing, melted in pity, while Francis saw her pity and did some

rapid thinking. It was the way out. All the perplexity of the situation

could be thus easily solved. Great as was his love for Leoncia, greater

was his man’s loyalty to Henry. Francis did not hesitate. With a merry

slap of his hand on Henry’s shoulder, he cried:

 

“Well, here’s the one unattached bachelor who isn’t afraid of matrimony.

I’ll marry her.”

 

Henry’s relief was as if he had been reprieved from impending death. His

hand shot out to Francis’ hand, and, while they clasped, their eyes

gazed squarely into each other’s as only decent, honest men’s may gaze.

Nor did either see the dismay registered in Leoncia’s face at this

unexpected denouement. The Lady Who Dreams had been right. Leoncia, as a

woman, was unfair, loving two men and denying the Lady her fair share of

men.

 

But any discussion that might have taken place, was prevented by the

little maid of the village, who entered with women to serve them the

midday meal. It was Torres’ sharp eyes that first lighted upon the

string of gems about the maid’s neck. Rubies they were, and magnificent.

 

“The Lady Who Dreams just gave them to me,” the maid said, pleased with

their pleasure in her new possession.

 

“Has she any more?” Torres asked.

 

“Of course,” was the reply. “Only just now did she show me a great chest

of them. And they were all kinds, and much larger; but they were not

strung. They were like so much shelled corn.”

 

While the others ate and talked, Torres nervously smoked a cigarette.

After that, he arose and claimed a passing indisposition that prevented

him from eating.

 

“Listen,” he quoth impressively. “I speak better Spanish than either of

you two Morgans. Also, I know, I am confident, the Spanish woman

character better. To show you my heart’s in the right place, I’ll go in

to her now and see if I can talk her out of this matrimonial

proposition.”

 

* * * * *

 

One of the spearmen barred Torres’ way, but, after going within,

returned and motioned him to enter. The Queen, reclined on the divan,

nodded him to her graciously.

 

“You do not eat?” she queried solicitously; and added, after he had

reaffirmed his loss of appetite, “Then will you drink?”

 

Torres’ eyes sparkled. Between the excitement he had gone through for

the past several days, and the new adventure he was resolved upon, he

knew not how, to achieve, he felt the important need of a drink. The

Queen clapped her hands, and issued commands to the waiting woman who

responded.

 

“It is very ancient, centuries old, as you will recognize, Da Vasco, who

brought it here yourself four centuries ago,” she said, as a man carried

in and broached a small wooden keg.

 

About the age of the keg there could be no doubt, and Torres, knowing

that it had crossed the Western Ocean twelve generations before, felt

his throat tickle with desire to taste its contents. The drink poured by

the waiting woman was a big one, yet was Torres startled by the mildness

of it. But quickly the magic of four-centuries-old spirits began to

course through his veins and set the maggots crawling in his brain.

 

The Queen bade him sit on the edge of the divan at her feet, where she

could observe him, and asked:

 

“You came unsummoned. What is it you have to tell me or ask of me?”

 

“I am the one selected,” he replied, twisting his moustache and striving

to look the enticingness of a male man on love adventure bent.

 

“Strange,” she said. “I saw not your face in the Mirror of the World.

There is ... some mistake, eh?”

 

“A mistake,” he acknowledged readily, reading certain knowledge in her

eyes. “It was the drink. There is magic in it that made me speak the

message of my heart to you, I want you so.”

 

Again, with laughing eyes, she summoned the waiting woman and had his

pottery mug replenished.

 

“A second mistake, perhaps will now result, eh?” she teased, when he had

downed the drink.

 

“No, O Queen,” he replied. “Now all is clarity. My true heart I can

master. Francis Morgan, the one who kissed your hand, is the man

selected to be your husband.”

 

“It is true,” she said solemnly. “His was the face I saw, and knew from

the first.”

 

Thus encouraged, Torres continued.

 

“I am his friend, his very good best friend. You, who know all things,

know the custom of the marriage dowry. He has sent me, his best friend,

to inquire into and examine the dowry of his bride. You must know that

he is among the richest of men in his own country, where men are very

rich.”

 

So suddenly did she arise on the divan that Torres cringed and half

shrank down, in his panic expectance of a knife-blade between his

shoulders. Instead, the Queen walked swiftly, or, rather, glided, to the

doorway to an inner apartment.

 

“Come!” she summoned imperiously.

 

Once inside, at the first glance around, Torres knew the room for what

it was, her sleeping chamber. But his eyes had little space for such

details. Lifting the lid of a heavy chest of ironwood, brass-bound, she

motioned him to look in. He obeyed, and saw the amazement of the world.

The little maid had spoken true. Like so much shelled corn, the chest

was filled with an incalculable treasure of gems——diamonds, rubies,

emeralds, sapphires, the most precious, the purest and largest of their

kinds.

 

“Thrust in your arms to the shoulders,” she said, “and make sure that

these baubles be real and of the adamant of flint, rather than illusions

and reflections of unreality dreamed real in a dream. Thus may you make

certain report to your very rich friend who is to marry me.”

 

And Torres, the madness of the ancient drink like fire in his brain, did

as he was told.

 

“These trifles of glass are such an astonishment?” she plagued. “Your

eyes are as if they were witnessing great wonders.”

 

“I never dreamed in all the world there was such a treasure,” he

muttered in his drunkenness.

 

“They are beyond price?”

 

“They are beyond price.”

 

“They are beyond the value of valor, and love, and honor?”

 

“They are beyond all things. They are a madness.”

 

“Can a woman’s or a man’s true love be purchased by them?”

 

“They can purchase all the world.”

 

“Come,” the Queen said. “You are a man. You have held women in your

arms. Will they purchase women?”

 

“Since the beginning of time women have been bought and sold for them,

and for them women have sold themselves.”

 

“Will they buy me the heart of your good friend Francis?”

 

For the first time Torres looked at her, and nodded and muttered, his

eyes swimming with drink and wild-eyed with sight of such array of gems.

 

“Will good Francis so value them?”

 

Torres nodded speechlessly.

 

“Do all persons so value them?”

 

Again he nodded emphatically.

 

She began to laugh in silvery derision. Bending, at haphazard she

clutched a priceless handful of the pretties.

 

“Come,” she commanded. “I will show you how I value them.”

 

She led him across the room and out on a platform that extended around

three sides of a space of water, the fourth side being the perpendicular

cliff. At the base of the cliff the water formed a whirlpool that

advertised the drainage exit for the lake which Torres had heard the

Morgans speculate about.

 

With another silvery tease of laughter, the Queen tossed the handful of

priceless gems into the heart of the whirlpool.

 

“Thus I value them,” she said.

 

Torres was aghast, and, for the nonce, well-nigh sobered by such

wantonness.

 

“And they never come back,” she laughed on. “Nothing ever comes back.

Look!”

 

She flung in a handful of flowers that raced around and around the whirl

and quickly sucked down from sight in the center of it.

 

“If nothing comes back, where does everything go?” Torres asked thickly.

 

The Queen shrugged her shoulders, although he knew that she knew the

secret of the waters.

 

“More than one man has gone that way,” she said dreamily. “No one of

them has ever returned. My mother went that way, after she was dead. I

was a girl then.” She roused. “But you, helmeted one, go now. Make

report to your master——your friend, I mean. Tell him what I possess for

dowry. And, if he be half as mad as you about the bits of glass, swiftly