Rose MacLeod Part 35

"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 a.s.sa.s.sins--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?"