The Keepers of the People

1435Ruth was silent for the rest of the evening, pondering on this strange world into which she had come. That night she was with Althea gazing from a window of the Golden Rooms out upon the cool, starlit garden.

1436“I shall sleep very sound, without dreaming to-night,” said Althea softly, with a long-drawn sigh of luxurious content.

1437“You have grown very hard-hearted,” said Ruth.

1438“Me? Hard-hearted? I don’t think so,” said Althea, with a little surprise.

1439“You suggested killing those wretched prisoners,” said Ruth.

1440“No,” said Althea. “I saw that they must die; and I was good to them. I suggested the hemlock. The Princes would have had them shot, or bayoneted; now they will die quite pleasantly — men never think of little things like that,” she added with a gentle sigh.

1441“Yes; you are hard-hearted,” said Ruth.

1442“No, no,” said Althea; “I am not: only there is no nonsense about me. For what is death after all, when it comes painless, and you do not know it is coming so as to grow frightened about it? Besides, when I am considering the people, I lose my own private feeling. We have all taken so much trouble with the people; we cannot have them spoiled for a matter of six hundred Cossacks. If you come to take as much trouble about them, you will grow like me.”

1443“Never! Surely never!” cried Ruth.

1444“Yes; surely you will, if once you grow keen about them. You are a sensible creature,” said Althea.

1445The next morning Lord Lisdor found them breakfasting with Prince Ralph, talking of the celebration of a great national festival, without a cloud in their minds. Later he found Colonel Sayers riding out, and since his journey to Varandaleel had cured him of his nervous dread of horses, he rode with him about the battle-fields. In the afternoon they came to the camp of the prisoners, and they looked a brutish crew indeed after the finely built Varandals, with their bright, fine faces, amongst whom he had spent the day. They seemed insensible to their lot, prisoners in a land wantonly invaded; and were squatted in groups, talking dully after their labours in clearing the plain of their dead.

1446Lord Lisdor looked over them carefully: then he said, “I’d never have believed, if I hadn’t seen it, that a miserable lot of brutes like these could have beaten those two bodies of Varandals.”