Part 26

"If I were Dean, I wouldn't wait to be fired, Corrie; I'd resign," he rallied. "Some day I'll challenge you to a game of auto tag, and show you that trick."

"You can't; I'd get by," Corrie retorted, his violet-blue eyes afire with excitement.

"Instead of you two fighting about that nonsense, you might take me around the course in one of your cars," Isabel remarked gloomily. "I've asked you often enough."

"You'll not do that," Mr. Rose pronounced with decision. "It's not fit and I won't have it. And I'm tired of hearing you sulk at Corrie and Gerard because they've got the sense to say no. You'll keep out of the racing cars and off the race track, my girl. Flavia, if you don't make your brother stop eating nuts, he'll be ashamed to meet a squirrel in the woods."

There was open mutiny in the glance Isabel darted at her uncle, but she said nothing. Mr. Rose was not contradicted in his own house by anyone.

"Nuts agree with me, sir," Corrie protested, aggrieved. "Besides, I feel as if I had to celebrate somehow; I have had such a bully day." He leaned back in his chair, turning to Gerard his gaze of shining acknowledgment and measureless content. "I don't think I ever spent such an all-round good old day, just all right all through. I shall have to tie a gold medal on the calendar, or mark it with a white stone, or----"

"Or drop a pearl in the vase of Al-Mansor," Gerard suggested. His own feelings were not very far removed from Corrie's, that night.

"What is that?" Isabel questioned. "I never heard that story. What is the vase of Al-Mansor?"

"A legend of the days of the caliphs. If you care about it, some day I will find a copy to send."

"Some day! I want to hear it now."

"Tell us, with all the trimmings," Corrie urged, "No sliding around the flowery parts and cutting scenes, but the full performance. Flavia loves that sort of thing, too; she and I grew up on the Arabian Nights and Byron and Irving. We dramatized 'The Fall of Granada,' for the toy theatre, but Bulwer was dead, so it didn't matter.

"Perkins, up in my den you'll find a five-pound box of Turkish Delight, sent to-night from the candy shop; bring it here to help the Oriental atmosphere."

Flavia looked up, and Gerard caught her eyes, no longer quite untroubled before his own.

"What a set of comparisons to face," he deprecated. "Shall I dare it, Miss Rose?"

"Would you leave us to suffer all the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity?" she wondered. "To dream all night of elusive pearls that disappear in their vase as Cleopatra's in her goblet of vinegar?"

Mr. Rose took a cigar and a match, nodding humorously at his guest.

"You're in for it," he signified. "Better get it over."

"And no cutting," exacted Corrie, sotto voce.

"Very well, then; pray imagine yourselves in the bazaar, and remember this isn't my fault," Gerard submitted. He paused, assembling his recollections. "On ascending the throne at Bagdad, in the full noon of the glory of the caliphs; it is told that Al-Mamoun, the son of Haroun-al-Raschid, the great-grandson of Al-Mansor, received from the former vizier a small golden vase.

"'Lord of the East, newly-risen Sun of the true believers,' said the vizier, 'your great-grandfather of venerated memory caused to be made this vase, proposing to place therein a pearl for every day of perfect happiness he should pass. And when he received the vase from the goldsmith, he complained that the vase was too small. But, alas, the mighty Al-Mansor died without ever putting in a single pearl, for the day when the vase came home he learned that his loved sultana plotted against his life.

"'After many years, in his turn came to rule your illustrious father, Haroun the Wise, and took the vase. He, the great king, who never travelled without a hundred scholars in his train, who built a school for poor children beside every mosque, he the magnificent in war and peace, in all his long reign enriched the vase by two pearls; the day of his coronation and the day of his death; the day before he saw Marida the Beautiful and the day he forgot her forever. Now, Commander of the Faithful, according to my charge I deliver the vase to you, with hope that your joys may exhaust the sea of pearls.'

"Hearing, Al-Mamoun fell into profound musing.

"'Vizier,' he said, 'I cannot mark the day I began to reign, who loved my father and take his place with tears, and the day of my death no man knows. But, by the favor of Allah, I will add one pearl to the vase while I live.'

"The next morning many workmen came to the palace. Around the fairest part of the garden they reared a lofty wall, within its circle they placed everything which the king might desire. On the day appointed, in that spot assembled his favorite musicians, the scholars in whose conversation he most delighted, the captains whose faces reminded him of victories and the poets whose words fell like drops from the spring that bubbles before Allah's throne in Paradise. Only, because women had troubled the days of Al-Mansor and Haroun, no woman was admitted.

"With pomp, music and rejoicing, Al-Mamoun moved at sunrise to the garden of delights that was to shelter him from the world for one day. But, as his foot touched the threshold, a great cry of lamentation went through the palace.

"'What now?' demanded the king, halting.

"A guard of the serail answered, his brow in the dust:

"'Lord, the sultana has drowned herself in the Court of Fountains, because of grief that your day of perfect happiness could be passed without her.'