The Island Queen, R. M. Ballantyne [sight word readers .txt] 📗

“It’s a dream—all a wild, unbelievable dream!” sighed the old gentleman, as, with flushed face and dishevelled hair, he spread himself out in an easy chair, with Queen Pina on his knee and Brown-eyes at his feet. “Hush! all of you—wait a bit.”

There was dead silence, and some surprise for a few seconds, while Mr Rigonda shut his eyes tight and remained perfectly still, during which brief lull the volcanic action in the cat ceased, and its fur slowly collapsed.

“Dreams shift and change so!” murmured the sceptical man, gradually opening his eyes again—“What! you’re there yet, Pina?”

“Of course I am, darling daddy.”

“Here, pinch me on the arm, Dominick—the tender part, else I’ll not waken up sufficiently to dispel it.”

A fresh outburst of hilarity, which started the stomachic volcanoes and hair afresh, while Pauline flung her arms round her father’s neck for the fiftieth time, and smothered him. When he was released, and partially recovered, Otto demanded to know if he really wanted the dream dispelled.

“Certainly not, my boy, certainly not, if it’s real; but it would be so dreadfully dismal to awake and find you all gone, that I’d prefer to dream it out, and turn to something else, if possible, before waking. I—I—”

Here the old gentleman suddenly seized his handkerchief, with a view to wipe his eyes, but, changing his mind, blew his nose instead.

Just then the door opened, and a small domestic entered with that eminently sociable meal, tea. With a final explosion, worthy of Hecla or Vesuvius, the cat shot through the doorway, as if from a catapult, and found refuge in the darkest recesses of the familiar coal-hole.

“But who,” said Mr Rigonda, casting his eyes suddenly downward, “who is this charming little brown-eyed maid that you have brought with you from the isles of the southern seas? A native—a little Fiji princess—eh?”

“Hush! father,” whispered Pauline in his ear, “she’s a dear little orphan who has adopted me as her mother, and would not be persuaded to leave me. So, you see, I’ve brought her home.”

“Quite right, quite right,” returned the old man, stooping to kiss the little one. “I’ve often thought you’d be the better of a sister, Pina, so, perhaps, a daughter will do as well.”

“Now, then, tea is ready; draw in your chairs, darlings,” said Mrs Rigonda, with a quavering voice. The truth is that all the voices quavered that night, more or less, and it was a matter of uncertainty several times whether the quavering would culminate in laughter or in tears.

“Why do you so often call Pina a queen, dear boy?” asked Mrs Rigonda of her volatile son, Otto.

“Why?” replied the youth, whose excitement did not by any means injure his appetite—to judge from the manner in which he disposed of muffins and toast, sandwiched now and then with wedges of cake—“Why? because she is a queen—at least she was not long ago.”

An incredulous smile playing on the good lady’s little mouth, Pauline was obliged to corroborate Otto’s statement.

“And what were you queen of?” asked her father, who was plainly under the impression that his children were jesting.

“Of Refuge Islands, daddy,” said Pina; “pass the toast, Otto, I think I never was so hungry. Coming home obviously improves one’s appetite.”

“You forget the open boat, Pina.”

“Ah, true,” returned Pauline, “I did for a moment forget that. Yes, we were fearfully hungry that time.”

Of course this led to further inquiry, and to Dominick clearing his throat at last, and saying—“Come, I’ll give you a short outline of our adventures since we left home. It must only be a mere sketch, of course, because it would take days and weeks to give you all the details.”

“Don’t be prosy, Dom,” said Otto, helping himself to a fifth, if not a tenth, muffin. “Prosiness is one of your weak points when left to your own promptings.”

“But before you begin, Dom,” said old Mr Rigonda, “tell us where Refuge Islands are.”

“In the Southern Pacific, father.”

“Yes,” observed Otto; “at the bottom of the Southern Pacific.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the old gentleman, whose incredulity was fast taking the form of sarcasm. “Not far, I suppose, from that celebrated island which was the last home and refuge of our famous ancestor, the Spanish pirate, who was distantly related, through a first cousin of his mother, to Don Quixote.”

“You doubt us, daddy, I see,” said Pauline, laughing; “but I do assure you we are telling you the simple truth. I appeal to Dr Marsh.”

Dr Marsh, who had chiefly acted the part of observant listener up to that moment, now assured Mr Rigonda with so much sincerity that what had been told him was true, that he felt bound to believe him.

“Yes, indeed,” said Dr Marsh, “your daughter was in truth a queen, and I was one of her subjects. Indeed, I may say that, in one sense, she is a queen still, but she has been dethroned by fire and water, as you shall presently hear, though she still reigns in the affections of her people, and can never be dethroned again!”

This speech was greeted with some merriment, for the doctor said it with much enthusiasm. Then Dominick began to give an account of their adventures, interrupted and corrected, not infrequently, by his pert brother Otto, who, being still afflicted with his South-Sea-island appetite, remained unsatisfied until the last slice of toast, and the last muffin, and the last wedge of cake had disappeared from the table.

Dominick’s intentions were undoubtedly good; and when he asserted that it was his purpose to give his father and mother merely an outline of their adventures, he was unquestionably sincere; but the outline became so extended, and assumed such a variety of complex convolutions, that there seemed to be no end to the story—as there certainly seemed to be no end to the patience of the listeners. So Dominick went, “on and on and on,” as story-books put it, until the fire in the grate began to burn low; until Otto had consumed the contents of the teapot, and the cream-jug, and the sugar-basin, and had even gathered up, economically, the crumbs of the cake; until the still eager audience had begun to yawn considerately with shut mouths; until the household cat, lost in amazement at prolonged neglect, had ventured to creep from the coal-hole, and take up a modest position on the floor, in the shadow of its little old mistress.

There is no saying how long this state of things would have gone on, if it had not been for the exuberant spirits of Otto, who, under an impulse of maternal affection, sprang to his mother’s side with intent to embrace her, and unwittingly planted his foot on the cat’s tail.

Then, indeed, the convoluted outline came to an abrupt end; for, with a volcanic explosion, suggestive of thunder and lightning, inlaid with dynamite, the hapless creature sprang from the room, followed by a shriek from its mistress, and a roar of laughter from all the rest.

It is not certainly known where that cat spent the following fortnight. The only thing about it that remains on record is the fact that, at the end of that space of time, it returned to its old haunts, deeply humbled, and much reduced; that it gradually became accustomed to the new state of things, and even mounted the table, and sat blinking in its old position, and grew visibly fatter, while the old lady revived old times by stroking it, as she had been wont to, and communicating to it some of her thoughts and fancies.

“Ay, pussy,” she said, on one of these occasions when they chanced to be alone together, “little did you and I think, when we used to be sitting so comfortably here, that our darlings were being tossed about and starved in open boats on the stormy sea! Ah! pussy, pussy, we little knew—but ‘it’s all well that ends well,’ as a great writer that you know nothing about has said, and you and I can never, never be thankful enough for getting back, safe and sound, our dear old man, and our darling boys, and our—our little Pauline, the Island Queen.”