AMARANTH
I stepped out of the elevator into a part of the Palace that I had not
seen before. The room into which the waiting negro ushered me was
completely dark, though a thin line of light at the further end showed
me that there was a lighted room beyond.
I strained my eyes, striving to penetrate the gloom. I took a few steps
forward, stretching out my hands to feel if any obstacle were in the
way. Looking back, I could not even discern the heavy curtain that had
dropped soundlessly behind me.
I knew that there was someone in the room, and that it was not Lembken.
I waited; I heard the rustle of a woman’s garment. Then swiftly the room
was flooded with the soft solar light.
It was bare, except for the rugs and a low divan pushed against one
wall, with a little table beside it. Everything was of the color of
gold: the walls, the ceiling, the rugs upon the floor. And before me,
clothed from head to foot in a sheer, trailing garment of dull gold,
stood the girl Amaranth.
Her dark hair was bound back in a loose Grecian knot, her sandaled feet
gleamed white on the gold fabric under them; she stretched out her white
arms to me and, taking me by the hand, led me to the divan and placed me
at her side.
“Poor Arnold!” she began in a caressing tone, “you have suffered so much
in your ignorance and your desire to help your friends. But all your
troubles are ended now, and your friends shall not be harmed. Do you
think you can love me, Arnold?”
She looked at me with neither boldness nor hesitation, and then, folding
her arms, drummed her sandal heels against the foot of the divan.
“Are you not lucky, Arnold, to have won my love!” she continued. “I gave
my love to you from the moment when I first saw you enter the room in
which I sat with Lembken, looking so stern, so resolute, like one of
those adventurous heroes of the twentieth century of whom we read in our
romances. That is why I made Lembken tell Mehemet to bring you here. He
was so hurt by your departure that I think he would have let his plans
go to ruin rather than himself plead with you. He is very sensitive and
kind.
“You are not afraid to love me, Arnold?” she continued, looking at me
with curious scrutiny. “You need not be afraid. Lembken has grown tired
of me, so I must find another. He has taken a fancy to Coral, my blue,
an absurd little yellow-haired thing. You shall see her.”
She clapped her hands twice, and a door opened, apparently a part of the
wall. A fair-haired girl, dressed in a loose blue tunic and Zouave
trousers, entered, carrying a tray on which were two golden winecups.
Amaranth took the nearest cup in her hands, touched the rim with her
lips, and held it out to me.
“Drink with me, Arnold,” she said.
But I would not drink, lest the corruption of the wine should dull me
and disarm my strength in the spell of that enervating hell. I handed
back the cup to her.
Amaranth looked at me for an instant with quivering lips. Then she burst
into tears and hurled the cup at the maid. She flung the other also. The
first missed its mark and fell against the base of the wall, where it
shed its ruby contents in a widening stain. The second cup struck the
maid’s cheek and cut it, and the wine drenched the blue tunic.
The maid smiled, biting her lips, stooped down, picked up both cups,
and, placing them on the tray, departed silently. Amaranth sobbed as if
her heart was broken. Then suddenly she turned and flung her arms about
me.
“Arnold, I love you!” she cried. “You saw her? She is Lembken’s favorite
now, that yellow-haired fool with the blue eyes like saucers. Lembken
means us for each other. Can you not love me?”
I sat in silence, trying to pick my path cautiously through the mists of
bewildering doubt. Amaranth unclasped her arms from about my neck, and
her face assumed a look of mockery.
“Oh, I know!” she said, “it is that Elizabeth of yours whom you think
you love. And you think you can only love one at a time, in your
romantic twentieth-century way. Well, I will match myself against her.
You shall bring her here, Arnold, and I will fight her for you, and I
will be your blue and she shall be your white, and I will serve you
obediently till I have won your heart. Look on me, Arnold! See how
beautiful I am! For I was born here; I am Boss Rose’s daughter, and I
have never left the People’s House. Look at the whiteness of my skin!
The sun has never shone on it. Look at my lips, Arnold! Put your mouth
to my cheek—it is as soft as the bloom upon a nectarine. Do you think,
then, I am afraid to match myself against your Elizabeth?”
She smiled contemptuously, and tilted back her head, and clasped her
hands behind it, and watched me through her lashes. Yet I detected a
resource of feverish resolve in her; and I knew that she and I, Mehemet,
Sanson, were that night weaving the threads in a fabric upon the loom of
destiny, and that each word we spoke flashed like the thread-bearing
shuttle over it.
So, piecing my words together with infinite care, because the lives of
Esther and all those who were dear to me hung on them, I answered her:
“Forgive my sullen mood. You have promised that my friends shall go
free; yet they expect to die at sunrise, and it is hard to be at ease.
How can I save them?”
Amaranth unclasped her hands and turned to me with a quick gesture of
penitence.
“Ah, it was wrong of me to speak of love first, when you have such a
burden of sorrow, Arnold!” she answered. “I had forgotten that men’s
minds are troubled in the world below. Here we are free and have no
cares, except how we shall take our pleasures. And to think that you
left us to help your friends, when Lembken would have done everything
you wished!
“Now I will set your mind at rest. Lembken has already given the command
that your friends shall live until Sanson has spoken in the Temple, and
when he has spoken he will no longer have power—if you obey Lembken. But
he was deeply hurt by your leaving him, for he is very sensitive to
unkindness, and so he asked me to speak to you on his behalf. Now, if
you act loyally, you may save your friends and the world. Tomorrow there
will be an end to all of Sanson’s mad schemes of tyranny. Mehemet and
his guards have abandoned him. Lembken knows everything; he knows all
the desperate plans his poor people have made, and his heart is wrung
for them.”
She paused, and placing her hand on mine, looked very earnestly at me.
“Arnold, you know that Sanson has been poisoning the people’s minds
against Lembken, in pursuance of his plan to depose him,” she continued.
“So your part, which will be detailed to you later, will be to enter the
Temple tomorrow among the priests. You will defend Lembken against
Sanson. You will remind the people how they elected him from year to
year, because he was their friend. Tell them he has not changed. And in
return liberty shall be established and the hated Guard disbanded.
Lembken asks only for his dignity and wealth, and his friends in the
People’s House. He is growing old, Arnold, and desires power no more.”
She watched me with that centuries-old look, and in my heart I knew I
had not fathomed hers. This was what I had meant to propose. Yet—yet I
doubted her.
“It is agreed, then,” she cried gaily, “and now you will be one of us.
It is past midnight, Arnold, and in a few short hours you shall be
hidden in the priests’ room to be coached for your part. Till then—”
She ceased suddenly, as the sound of voices came from the room beyond
the further door. She slipped from the divan.
“Sanson has been with Lembken,” she whispered. “He is coming this way.
Arnold, do you want to see your enemy broken? That will be a glorious
beginning to this first night of ours, and afterwards we shall go to the
revels in the garden. I shall be proud of you, Arnold, for now the girls
are taunting me because Lembken is tired of me. How I shall be envied!
But come here quickly!”
She took me to the door in the wall through which the girl Coral had
come. At a distance of a few paces it was invisible. I wondered how many
more such doors were set in the walls of Lembken’s palace.
“You shall listen here,” she said, “I trust you Arnold. You will not
lose your self-control and enter, no matter what you hear? Ah, I shall
test your love for that Elizabeth! But I trust you, and the beginning of
this night’s masque shall be the humbling of your enemy. Stay here until
I call you!”
She thrust me behind the door and withdrew, closing it. I heard the
rustle of her garment as she crossed the room—then nothing.
I found myself standing in a dim corridor that ran as far as I could see
in either direction. The nameless horror of the Palace overcame me, and
it was with a strong effort that I controlled my wild impulse of flight.
As I stood there I heard the sound of stealthy footsteps, and, looking
up, saw the maid Coral coming softly toward me. She was carrying the
tray, with two full winecups, and she stopped beside me and set it down
on the carpet.
She stood looking at me. Her eyes were blazing with anger, and her slim
body shook under the blue tunic. But on her mouth was the same set smile
that I had seen when she picked up the cups.
She said nothing, but, placing her hand against the door, opened it an
inch or two without the slightest sound. At that moment I heard a door
opened, the rustle of Amaranth’s robe, and a lithe tread on the floor.
Sanson spoke. “I have said all that there is to say,” he answered. “Why
do you plead with me? Do you think a woman can plead with me where
Lembken failed? He shall have his honors and residence here—no more.”
“But spare your prisoners, Sanson,” said Amaranth softly. “Spare Arnold.
For my sake,” she said, pleading.
Sanson spoke curtly. “All Christians and all morons must be tomorrow’s
sacrifice to the new era,” he answered.
“Do not go, Sanson,” Amaranth besought him, as he moved away from her.
“Listen to me! You, who are so merciless and cruel, why do you not take
all?”
“I have all that I need,” he said impatiently. “What more?”
“Why have you spared Lembken? Why do you not slay him and rule with us?
We hate him. He is a tyrant, and you know the fate of his women when
they have ceased to please. You who have made yourself the master of the
world, for whose sight we throng the sides of the crystal walls as you
cross the courts below—why have you refused the pleasures that are for
the world’s masters?”
He stood still; I fancied that he was looking at her, trying to measure
his problem in the balances once more. Coral cast a glance at me. The
smile was still on her face, but she nodded her head thoughtfully, as if
she, too, had her problem.
“Listen, Sanson,” continued Amaranth fiercely, “when Boss Rose climbed
to power he built the People’s House and made it a pleasure-palace for
the world’s elect. Then he died under a murderer’s dagger, and Lembken,
who had long envied him, came to rule in his place. He, too, has lived
his time. Now he is broken. You, the next ruler of the world—why do you
not do as he did? We are tired of him. We want another lord, Sanson.”
I knew that she was clinging to him as she had clung to me. I did not
look at Coral, but I knew that she was still smiling.
“You can set us free, Sanson,” continued Amaranth gently. “You can rid
us of our tyrant.”
The murmuring voice went on and on, and Sanson made no answer.
“You have not entered the People’s House for seven years until tonight.
Do you think we have forgotten that you exist? Do you think we have not
wondered why the master of the world has left us to the whims of that
fat old man? Sit by me, Sanson. Do you not see how you have toiled while
Lembken has taken his ease? You have waited so long for one woman. Oh,
yes, I know; all a great man’s secrets are known everywhere, though he
thinks them in sanctuary, securely guarded. You can take her—but take us
too. Live your life, Sanson! Save us and reign over us! Take me,
Sanson—”
I heard the man breathe as if in a trance. That strange pity which he
inspired in me awoke again. All the long tragedy of his life, the vigil
of five and thirty years, the love that must prove vain—I realized it
all. For this vain love he had ensnared the world, and now the world
leaped at him to ensnare him. Devil as he was, in will his life had
been, in one respect, a hero’s.
“Drink with me, Sanson,” I heard Amaranth murmur. “You do not know the
taste of wine. A pledge to our love. A pledge to our lives!”
She was conquering. The tyrant of the world was almost prostrate at the
feet of this girl of twenty years. Attila’s fate was to be his. I heard
him groan in bitterness of conflict.
Amaranth clapped twice. Instantly the girl Coral stooped down, pushing
me fiercely from the door, and, taking up the tray, went in. Amaranth
took the brimming winecup and touched it with her lips.
“Drink, Sanson!” she murmured.
I was watching them now. I saw Sanson rise and raise the cup in his
hand. He did not drink, neither did he reject it, but stood like one in
a daze, all movement inhibited by the fierceness of that inner struggle.
Amaranth seized the second cup from the tray, leaped from the couch, and
raised it on high.
“To our love, Sanson!” she cried, and drained it.
At that moment the jagged cut on the girl Coral’s face grew red with
blood again.
Coral stood holding the tray, and she looked at Amaranth and smiled. She
stood like a tinted statue.
Sanson was still standing in front of the divan. He had not drunk; he
held the cup in his hand and was himself as immobile as a statue.
“Will you not drink the pledge that I have drunk?” asked Amaranth,
laying her fingers lightly on his arm and leaning toward him.
And I had underestimated Sanson after all. Now, at the moment of
surrender, his indomitable will flamed out, seeming to possess his body
and mold each feature, every muscle to its unconquerable resolve.
“I will not drink!” he cried, and flung the cup to the floor.
He turned and strode from the room like the conqueror he was. He passed
the curtain, which fell behind him. He had won his hardest battle, taken
unaware, fighting against a cunning ambush; and I knew now that hardly
an earthly enemy could conquer him.
I was in the room now, for there was no need to hide myself any longer.
I watched Amaranth, who, as statuesque as Sanson had been, stood looking
after him. A minute passed.
Suddenly she wheeled about and clapped her hands to her side. She
staggered; a spasm of pain crossed her face, and she looked searchingly
at Coral. The maid in the blue tunic looked back at her, smiling.
Their eyes did not waver until Amaranth swayed backward and fell on the
divan. A scream broke from her lips, and then another; a third; she
wrung her hands and moaned.
I kneeled before her. “What is it, Amaranth?” I cried.
[Illustration:
Sanson’s indomitable will flamed out. “I will not drink!” he cried,
and flung the cup to the floor
]
She raised herself and looked wildly at me. Her face was ashen pale, the
features pinched; dark rings had crept beneath her eyes.
“She gave me the—wrong cup,” she whispered.
I tried to go for aid, but Amaranth clung to me. “There is no hope,” she
sobbed. “I must die. Stay with me, Arnold!”
Her head fell back and she breathed heavily. I turned and saw Coral
beside me, a smiling, waxen doll, the new queen of the harem by the
dying one.
“Go!” I thundered at her.
She shrugged her shoulders daintily and went, leaving the winecups on
the floor.
Amaranth’s hand trembled upon my sleeve. I bent over her. Her eyes fixed
themselves on mine.
“Put your hand under me,” she muttered; “raise me. All is lost now.
Sanson has beaten Lembken, and everything is ended. Save your Elizabeth
if you can.”
She drew my face toward hers and spoke in panting accents:
“It was Lembken’s plot. He learned that Sanson held you in the vaults.
His case was desperate. He asked Mehemet’s aid. Mehemet said he—his men
would not desert Sanson while he lived, but if he died they would follow
him for Lembken. I was to poison Sanson and thus win over the Guard. I
was to drug you only, and keep you out of the way. Lembken liked you; he
would not let you be killed. He has been communicating with the American
bosses. The plan—the plan—”
She gathered her strength with a last effort of will.
“The plan was of long standing. Events hastened it. Mehemet knew it.
Britain was to have a God again, Mehemet’s God, and the American Mormons
were to unite with us, for their faith is nearly the same. The people
would have a god, and this would unite all nations against the Christian
Russians. They are in Stockholm. The American battleplanes are on their
way to help us against them. When Sanson was dead the guards were to
join the airscouts. Now you must go. Save your Elizabeth. Kill Sanson. I
can say no more. Escape—”
She muttered something that I could not hear, and then her eyes, which
had closed, reopened and wavered on mine again.
“I loved you, Arnold,” she said in a weak, clear voice. “I’m glad I died
before I lost you. I used to wish I had been born in other days ... the
twentieth-century days, when ... women were different ... all different
... men mated one only ... give the people those days again if you beat
Sanson, Arnold.”
She tried to stretch out her hands to me. Her eyelids quivered, and she
sighed very deeply.
I saw a crimson stain upon my hands. It was the wine from Sanson’s
winecup.