And now it was night again and Rose hurried away to the tryst. She made
no doubt that she should find him there.
"Playmate!" she called.
"Here," answered the voice. "There's your chair. There's your throne."
She plunged into the thick of the confidence intended for him.
"He has come."
"I know it. Peter told me."
"It's all as bad as I thought. Playmate, I'm afraid I shall have to go
away."
"Can't you stand up to it?"
"I don't know. It's pretty bad."
"I guess it will have to come to your telling me about it."
"Yes. You see, the worst of it is, he wants to make me love somebody I
can't love."
"Peter?"
"No, no, not Peter. Not nice, like Peter."
"Could you love Peter?"
"Why should you ask me that? Peter belongs to Electra."
"Not so very much. Could you love him if he asked you to?"
"Oh, that's not fair, playmate!"
"Yes, it is, when the night's as dark as this and it's only you and me.
Could you love Peter?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"I want to know everything about you. Could you love Peter?"
For some reason, she felt constrained to use one of her small
obstinacies.
"I couldn't love any man when another woman stood between us."
"That's a good girl. Did you love your husband?"
"My husband!" She choked upon the word. "Tom Fulton! Did you know him?"
"Oh, yes, I knew him."
"Was it likely I loved him?"
He was considering, it seemed.
"Yes," he said then, "it's very likely. Tom was a handsome devil."
"But he was--a devil."
"A woman wouldn't know that, not at first."
"No. I didn't, at first."
"Who is this other man?"
"A prince."
"So you would be a princess."
"No, I should not be a princess." Her voice had a curious sound.
"What has your father to do with it?"
"Everything. The prince can advance him in certain ways. My father plays
for high stakes."
"Are you sure you don't want to be a princess?" The voice seemed to coax
her. "Even if you do want it very much," it seemed to say, "why not
relinquish it and stay here under the tree?"
"No," she said, "I don't want to be a princess, even if I could be. And
I don't want anything my father can offer me, or buy for me, or steal
for me."
"Then, playmate, when he comes back, you'll have to stand up to him
or--cut."
At that moment he saw before him the imagined picture of her face with
the tears upon it.
"It isn't easy," she was saying. "If you knew my father, you would see.
You can't withstand him, he looks so kind. You can't refuse him, because
he seems to want nothing but your good. You can't say you won't have a
splendid time with him, because you simply have it."
"Are you sure he is so bad?"
"I am sure," she answered gravely. "He is very bad. And it is not
because he wills to be bad. It is because he wills to have power, and as
if he were better fitted to have power than almost anybody--except that
he is not good. Why, do you know what power he has? He wears a ring, the
seal of the Brotherhood. Whatever order is stamped with that seal is
carried out, even if it is thousands of miles away. When Ivan Gorof
died"--she stopped, shuddering.
"What was that?"
"I can't tell you. It is too dreadful. He withstood my father. And when
he was found, they picked up in the chamber a bit of red wax on a shred
of paper--there was nothing else--but I know and we all know it was a
part of the seal that held the warrant they read to him--the
assassins--before he died."
"Did your father sentence him to death?"
"Who else? Sometimes I get thinking about it at night, and then it seems
to me as if all the people in the world had been delivered into his
hand. That is because I know I have grown to be afraid of him."
"Was he always cruel to you?"
"Oh, never! never in the world! When I was little, I traveled about with
him, and I had the best time a child ever had. I was feted, and carried
on shoulders, and made much of because I was his daughter. Then I grew
up and it all--changed." Her voice fell. She remembered the snare of the
fowler, but that she could not tell him.
"Is he unkind to you now?"
"Never! it is unbroken kindness,--a benevolence, shall I call it? But it
terrifies me. For under it all is that unbending will. And I keep
hardening myself against it, and yet I know the time will come when he
will have his way, because he is stronger than I."
"You must not let him be stronger than you. The birch bends, but it can
resist."
"You don't know! If he were outwardly cruel, I could defy him. But he is
like the sun that nourishes and then burns. He seems to have such life
in himself, such great inborn power, no one can resist it. You almost
feel as if you were going against natural laws when you go against him;
and you know you'll be beaten because the laws are inevitable."
"That wasn't what you said of him that first night down in the shack."
"No! I scoffed at him then a little. He was so far away! Now I have been
near him again and I tremble."
"But as you picture him, he's all good, all benevolence. You could
convince a man like that."
"Never! He hasn't any soul. He is this great natural force that radiates
power."
"Power!" echoed Osmond. "No wonder he's drunk on it. I could go down on
my knees and worship it."
"Not such as his!"
"Such as anybody's, so long as it is power."
For the first time she began to comprehend his mortal hunger.
"Don't you go over to him, too," she said jealously. "Peter is under his
foot. So is Electra. If you go over, I shall be alone."
"I shall never go anywhere to leave you alone." Then, after a moment, he
continued, "So you are not sure whether the prince loves you?"
"He would call it that. It is not that to me."
"Of course he loves you!"
"Don't be too sure, playmate. I know the world. You know your garden."
"Then why does he want you?"
"It's a game. My father wants to buy him. He may want to buy my father.
Then maybe he wants the prestige of owning the woman with the most
beautiful hair in Europe."
"Is that your hair, playmate?"
"He says so."
"Well, a man might do worse than gamble for a thing like that."
"You amaze me." But he would not continue that, and presently she asked
him, "What have you been thinking about lately?"
"About you."
"When?"
"All day long while I was at work, and every night when I sat here and
you didn't come."
"Was it a happy thing to do?"
"Very happy."
"Even when I didn't come?"
"Even when you didn't come."
"Then it's just as nice to think about me as to talk to me?"
"Almost!" He said it quite cheerfully, and through her pique she had to
laugh.
"What do you think, playmate?"
"I make a world and I put you in it. Then I put myself in, too."
When he spoke like this, simply and even with a gay indifference, she
wondered whether the world was a pageant to him, which it cost him no
pains to relinquish, and whether, too, though he had great kindliness
and understanding, deep emotions were forbidden him. At least, since he
was impersonal and remote, she could ask him anything.
"What is your world? Is it like this?"
"It isn't my world. It's yours and mine. We go about in it, having a
bully time, and nobody looks at us or asks us questions."
"Don't they see us?"
"Oh, yes, I dare say. Only they don't stare after us and say, 'Why do
they do thus and so?' They don't even speak of your beautiful hair. I
talk about that myself, all the time, and you like to have me. But we
should both think it mighty queer if anybody else did."
"Do we speak to the other people?"
"Sometimes. If we want to. If you see a diamond or a sapphire, or I see
a new patent weeder, then we say, 'We want to buy that.' But we don't
have much time for other folks. We travel a lot. You tell me about
pictures and Alps and thrones and principalities, because I don't know
much except about grafting trees and sowing seed at the best time. But
always we come home here to the plantation because I find that's where I
feel most at peace. And you are at peace here, too. I am delighted when
I find that out."
"Be delighted now, then. I am at peace here, more than anywhere else."
"And when we are here, we live in our house. At first, I built a large
one up there on the hill, and I had you bring over pictures for it from
abroad, and I planted trees, and it was very grand. But I wasn't
contented there, and you weren't, because of it. You saw at once that my
shell had got to fit me, and the plain house did. So I kicked over the
big house, and we lived in the old one."
"With grannie?"
"Yes, only I didn't think very much about her. She was always there, I
suppose, like the sun through the windows, very kind and warm, and glad
we were contented; but it was our house. That's what makes the charm of
everything--that it's yours and mine. I couldn't sleep in the house
though. It had to be outdoors."
"Did I have my hammock swung in the upper veranda?"
He laughed out delightedly.
"How did you know? Yes, I slept down here or under the fir by the house,
but you were afraid of caterpillars and you had to be up there."
"I'm not afraid of anything else," she explained humbly. "Not of bears
or anything in the deep woods. But caterpillars crawl so!"
"However, it didn't make any difference where you were, because while we
were asleep it was just as it is while we are awake--there is a fine
thread that goes from me to you. There might be processions of people
between us, chariots and horses and marching armies, but they couldn't
break the thread."
"And what do we do all day?"
"Talk. Think. I think to you and you think back to me."
"But we must work. If we don't, you'll get tired of me." She spoke out
of sad knowledge.
"Why, playmate!"
The reproach in his voice recalled her, and she was ashamed to find her
belief less warm than his.
"Well," he conceded, "maybe we work. I go on grafting and sowing seeds
and sending things to market, and you sit on a stone and sing."
"Shall I sing to you now?"
"No, playmate. It makes me sad."
"I could sing happy songs."
"That wouldn't make any difference. When you sing, it wakens something
in me, some discontent, some longing bigger than I am, and that's not
pleasure. It is pain."
"Are you afraid of pain?"