The Keepers of the People

1082Prince Ralph watched Althea closely to see if any harm came from her intercourse with his wife; and finding that it had but deepened a certain contempt for women that was growing up in her, he allowed her to dine with them in the great hall. He had been used to sit at his father’s right hand, but now Althea was set between them, and this by no means lessened the jealousy of the Princess Agnes.

1083The months rolled on; and Prince Ralph and his wife drifted slowly further and further apart, while Althea became more and more a part of his life. As they watched over the people together, and went more often among them in the evenings, disguised, something of his passion for their welfare communicated itself to her. He talked to her of them and of his feeling for them with less reserve; and her sympathy with it grew, as she learned to know them better. The government was going more and more smoothly, the harvests had been good for five years, and the country was at the height of prosperity.

1084Now and again a quarrel would break out between two villages: the more often they quarrelled the better pleased the Princes were, esteeming it a flagrant proof of a high spirit: and they would fight the quarrel out. By a law of the first Prince fists were the only weapons allowed them; the use of any others was severely punished; and the perpetual necessity on them to practise boxing kept the men in admirable training. The image of Ruth was growing dimmer in Prince Ralph’s rare dreams.

1085Latchimi, basking as in sunshine in the fondness of Prince Ralph, dreaming all the days in the beautiful garden of the Pavilion of Wonderful Delights, had enjoyed months of great happiness. Then the shadow of knowledge fell upon it. In an evil hour, tiring of her flowers and dreams, she had set herself to learn the language of the mutes who served her; and they had told her of the Princess Agnes and her child. It fitted her simple code of morals, indeed, that he should have another wife: it was the prerogative of the man: but none the less she hated this woman for her whiteness, for that Prince Ralph had known her first; and wild storms of jealousy broke at whiles the calm of her serene life. Her maids were the sufferers; to him she said little of it; she showed rather a more passionate fondness for him; but she saw in the fact that his child was a girl, the reason of his rare heaviness of spirit. It was in the Pavilion of Wonderful Delights that he most often dreamed of Ruth. One night his ears had been dull to her talk; she had drawn away from him, and, crouched by the window, was gazing sadly at the stars; and the gentle bubbling of his narghile, from the pile of cushions on which he lay dreaming, alone broke the silence.