_ BOOK III. PAWNS AND PLAYERS
CHAPTER II
That night the sun went down in angry crimson that ate like fire through the sullen heart of clouds banked low along the horizon. In Varia's garden the shrill insect voices were hushed; the trees drooped their leaves motionless. It was a hot and breathless night, when thunder muttered distantly and vague lightnings played hide-and-seek among the clouds, and the earth was still as an animal that crouches waiting for a blow.
Eudemius entered his room shortly before midnight, while the storm menaced and would not break. His thoughts still had their way with him, and they were none too happy thoughts. By the open window stood a tall standard of wrought bronze, from the arms of which seven lamps swung by chains, their flames flaring in the faint hot breeze which entered; otherwise the room was dark. Eudemius drew a light couch near the window and stretched himself upon it, slowly, like one worn out by weariness and pain. The lamplight fell upon his face, and showed it less of a mask, more unguarded, grim and hollow-cheeked, stamped with the seal of suffering. A slave entered, without noise, and placed on a stand a bowl of dewy fruit, a silver pitcher of wine, and a tall cup of the exquisite Samian ware, rose-pink, thin as a fragile egg shell. In the dim light it glowed like a ruby; Eudemius glanced at it with a faint pleasure in its beauty. As the slave turned away, he spoke.
"Hath thy lady retired?"
The man stopped in the doorway.
"Lord, I know not."
"Then find out. If not, bid her come to me here."
The man, bending, crossed his arms before his face, and went. Eudemius lay and waited, watching the wan lightning at play in the lowering sky, listening to the far-off grumble of the thunder. Scents from the garden drifted to him on the warm sickly breeze; once a bat flapped past the window. His eyes grew heavy with drowsiness.
But a step close at hand aroused him. He turned his head and saw Varia coming toward him, her face pale in the dim light. She stopped when she reached the couch, and stood waiting in silence. Eudemius rose, carefully, lest he bring on a spasm of pain, and stood under the light of the seven lamps.
"Come here to me, child!" he said. Varia came, and stood where the light fell on her face and throat; and he took her by the shoulders and looked long at her. His dark eyes passed over her from brow to feet; noted the dusky warmth of her hair, where jewels gleamed like a coiled snake's eyes; the curves of cheek and throat, the ripening grace of her slim body, half-revealed beneath her silken robe. He studied her with an impersonal criticism, as though she were a statue with whose workmanship fault might be found. Had she been a statue, he could have found no fault.
"Thou art fair, child," he said musingly, while she stood passive under his hands. "Art thou fair enough to win him, handicapped as thou art? And yet, who would take thee, when there are others for the asking, as fair as thou and with none of thy defects? If thou didst but know how to use that beauty of thine, it might make less of difference. For men have wedded fools before this. Ay, but those fools must have been half woman as well as fool; but thou--thou art all fool."
He looked at her strangely; suddenly pushed aside the robe from her shoulders and laid his hands on her soft bare flesh.
"Ay, she's fair enough!" he muttered. "If I could but lash that torpid soul of hers to life--teach her what all other women in the world know by nature and instinct! For if she have the beauty of the immortal women, without the warm spirit of sex behind it, it will avail her nothing. Passionless, she can never inspire passion. To see her mated to him--his child in her arms--a son--a son!--who should redeem for me all the bitterness and the disappointment she hath brought--would not that be better than nothing?"
His hands on her shoulders shook. She glanced up at him under her lids,--a strange glance into which there flashed something that died as it came. Her eyes were dilated, but she made no motion to push his hands from her.
"Could she win him?" Eudemius's voice was not above a whisper, yet it was tense with restrained excitement. Drops of sweat beaded his forehead; the cords of his neck were taut. "Varia, dost know, child, what thou art?"
"Ay," she answered quietly. "A fool. Thou hast said it."
Eudemius gave an exclamation of bitter impatience.
"Fool--yes, and child and woman as well. Hast thou never thought what it might be to become as other women are? To know the kiss of a man's lips on thine--to feel his arms about thee--to listen to the tale of love that is told to all but thee--"
"Tale!" said Varia, catching at the word. "Oh, I have heard tales--wonderful tales, more wonderful than any that ever were told before! And I have known the kiss of a man's lips on mine; and I have felt a man's arms about me!"
Eudemius gripped her slender shoulders, staring at her, and his face worked. Then he flung her away from him.
"Thou poor fool!" he said in contemptuous pity. He clenched his hands and strode up and down before the couch. "Oh, if I could but waken thee--if I could but waken thee! I'd use thee, poor tool as thou art--I'd make thee, a worthless pawn, queen to play my game for me! Thou art mine, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, to do with as I will. Sometimes my hands itch to shake into thee the sense thou lackest--or else to shake the useless life out of thee."
He stopped before her, breathless with thwarted passion that time after time dashed itself like surge against the inexorable rock of Circumstance, to fall back baffled and beaten.
"Tell me!" he said, in a voice grown suddenly calm. "Child o' mine, dost think that thou couldst win a man?"
It was a strange question from father to child, but then he did not see it so. And Varia, looking at him, made a strange answer.
"I have won a man!" she said, and her voice was slow and haunting. "Body and soul I have won him; he is mine for all time to come, to do with as I will. I am a fool, but I have done this thing, and I think--" She stopped, and her voice changed and grew scornful--"I think it is but a little thing to do!"
Eudemius stared at her.
"Thou hast--" he whispered, and moistened his lips with a dry tongue. "Say that again, girl! Thou hast--Is this thy raving? Nay, tell me, who is the man?"
But another mood was on Varia. She laughed, like a rippling brook.
"He hath no name!" she said merrily. "No name--nothing; for he is nothing! He comes in the clouds and in the storms and in the moonlight, and whispers strange things which none may hear but I. His voice is the wind and his words are the rustle of the leaves, and his speech is golden as flame; and oh, the tales he hath told to me!"
Eudemius laughed shortly.
"At first I even thought--" he muttered, and broke off. "Child, are thy women always with thee?"
"Ay, save at night. I sleep alone," said Varia.
Eudemius poured wine from the silver pitcher and drank it. Outside, the rain was falling with a gentle dripping. The thunder had died; the breeze, cooler, came laden with damp earthy smells. Varia went to the window and knelt beside it, leaning out into the warm darkness. Her father's eyes followed her. But if Varia's mood had changed, his was not to be shaken off so lightly. He sat down on the couch, wiping his forehead free from sweat. Here, he was close enough to touch her, and he drew her back from the window so that she leaned against the couch and his knee.
"Varia," he said, moved by an impulse born of what had gone before, "dost love thy father?"
"Nay," said Varia, simply. "Why should I, my lord?"
"True," said Eudemius. "Why shouldst thou?"
Varia leaned her elbows on his knee, looking up at him with her chin on her hands. Her attitude held the frank fearlessness of a child.
"Does my lord father love me?" she asked, and smiled up at him. Something within him warned Eudemius to honesty.
"Nay, Varia," he said gently, and put a hand on her dark soft hair. "Thy father hath never loved thee."
Varia suddenly rested her cheek against his other hand.
"Poor father!" she murmured, as though he were somehow deserving of all sympathy for this, "Didst ever wish that I had not been born?"
"Ay," said Eudemius, still gently. "I have wished that."
Varia considered a long moment, and he knew that her eyes were on him.
"Why was I born?" she asked.
Eudemius turned his head away.
"Because thy mother loved me," he said, low and harshly.
"Because--my mother--loved thee!" Varia repeated. "Now that is strange! Did ever any one love thee?"
Eudemius started. Then he laughed.
"
Habet!" he exclaimed, in the language of the arena when a gladiator is down; and laughed again. "Ay, child; once one loved me, and once I loved. Thou canst not credit such softness in me? Well, I do not blame thee; but it is truth."
"I believe," said Varia, "for thou hast told me truth before, to-night. If thou hadst said my father loved me, I should never have believed thy word again, but thou gavest me truth for the truth I gave to thee. I am a fool, and sometimes it is given to fools to know the truth."
"And therein to be wiser than the sane," Eudemius muttered. "And that is truth also." He looked at her a moment with something awakened in his face.
"Is there a change then, after all, in thee?" he said suddenly, deep in thought and study of her face. "Thrice to-night hast thou said what I did not understand, and never thought to hear thee say. Can it be that sometime in the future the dawn will break?"
Varia looked at him in her turn, a curious sidelong glance. In the dim light her face all at once showed strange to him, as occasionally one will see a well-known face in a new aspect--pale, with scarlet mouth and long veiled eyes. "Thou art something besides the child I've known; though whether that thing be good or evil--" His speech died; he gazed at her as though he would pierce the mystery which shrouded her and learn what it was that made her alien, forgetting to finish his words. "There is a change, and I cannot fathom it. What is working in thee? Or is it the delusion of mine own imaginings? Thy face--thy eyes--have they changed also? Mine own imaginings--vain imaginings! What is there in thy life which could have changed thee? Ah, if but these next months might see thee still more changed!"
Varia rose from her knees beside him.
"Why should I be changed?" she asked. "And why wouldst have me changed? I am happy--I have been happy as I am. If the joy of life is not mine, as thou hast said so often, the sorrow of life is not mine either; and I do not wish to change!" Her voice grew and gathered passion. "I fear to change, for I know not what the change might bring. I do not understand. Oh, father--do not wish that I should change!"
She took a step toward him with outstretched, appealing hands. Eudemius watched her with critical eyes.
But even as he watched, his own face changed and went gray, and he caught his breath and put a hand against his side. His body stiffened and grew rigid, while at the same time long shudders ran through it, dumb protest of tortured nerves against what was in store for it and them.
"Go for Claudius!" Eudemius gasped; and Varia turned and ran. Eudemius flung himself back on the couch and lay there, striving with all his iron will to hold the convulsions in check. But he began to writhe, terribly, with no sound but the whistling of his breath through locked jaws. His hand, outflung, touched the cup that glowed like a ruby on the stand beside the couch. He clutched it, and crushed its fragile beauty into atoms; and blood dripped with the wine upon the floor.
A torch gleamed outside the door, and hasty feet came running. Claudius, the physician, entered, very old, very small, with silver hair and beard that was like a snow-drift, followed by two slaves with lights and instruments. They lighted all the lamps, so that the room was bright as noon; and Claudius took from them what he wanted, and sent them both away. Then he rolled his sleeves above his elbows, and went to the couch where the silent figure lay twisting; and as he went he tucked his long white beard inside the collar of his gown. _