The Keepers of the People

CHAPTER VI

THE HITCH IN THE SUCCESSION

1000The refusal of Prince Ralph to aid her had naturally inflamed the passion of the Princess Agnes to broaden the lives of her Varandal sisters on the higher plane: that phrase of Lady Hammersmith clung in her mind: and her desire to reign a queen equal with him grew stronger along with it. In a natural womanliness too, she came to forget the bargain she had ignored, the understanding that she was to be no more than his helper in ruling, and reckoned an equal share in his power her just due; and she began to grow angry at being robbed of it. From the first she had a half-formed design of using the passion for her, which she was sure would spring up in him, to bend him to her will, as she had bent other men to it by that instrument; and she saw soon that she had been in error to come to an open breach with him, and made haste to repair it. After an interval they were on the old terms for a little while; and as soon as she thought that she had won him back to confidence in her, she began the attempt. She was very fond with him, assailed him with blandishments, with every weapon in the womanly armoury, trying to cajole him into giving her her way. When this failed, she betook herself to tears and reproaches. Then she found she was about to become a mother, and rejoiced in it, as in a new weapon. But all her weapons, even this last, were blunted against his resolve to keep the Varandals. Then she was indeed angry, and asked an audience of Prince Raleigh to lay her grievances before him.

1001The old Prince knew that all was not well between her and Prince Ralph, and it disquieted him but little. He knew that his son’s happiness was not bound up in her, and all he desired himself from her was a grandson, that his mind might be at ease about the succession. He listened patiently to her while she complained that she was denied the rights of a Princess, that bars and guards prevented her from going where she wished about the palace; that she might not go among the Varandals, save at night, riding with her husband; that she had no say in the ruling of the people. She laid before him her scheme for broadening the lives of her Varandal sisters on the higher plane. When she had made an end of it, he questioned her closely as to what Prince Ralph had told her before he married her, of the life of a Princess of Varandaleel; and when she had answered him, and his heart-reading eyes drew the truth from her, he said in his cold, even voice, “You have the life promised you. The rule of the women is the ruin of the people.”