The Pagan Madonna - Page 52/141

"Oh, I'm all right. I'm only furious with rage, that's all. You are still

tied?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I really don't understand your father."

"I have never understood him. Yet he was very kind to me when I was

little. I don't suppose there is anything in heaven or on earth that he's

afraid of."

"He is afraid of me."

"Do you believe that?"

"I know it. He would give anything to be rid of me. But go on."

"With what?"

"Your past."

"Well, I'm something like him physically. We are both so strong that we

generally burst through rather than take the trouble to go round. I'm

honestly sorry for him. Not a human being to love or be loved by. He never

had a dog. I don't recollect my mother; she died when I was three; and

that death had something to do with the iron in his soul. Our old butler

used to tell me that Father cursed horribly, I mean blasphemously, when

they took the mother out of the house. There are some men like that, who

love terribly, away and beyond the average human ability. After the mother

died he plunged into the money game. He was always making it, piling it up

ruthlessly but honestly. Then that craving petered out, and he took a hand

in the collecting game. What will come next I don't know. As a boy I was

always afraid of him. He was kind to me, but in the abstract. I was like

an extra on the grocer's bill. He put me into the hands of a tutor--a

lovable old dreamer--and paid no more attention to me. He never put his

arms round me and told me fairy stories."

"Poor little boy! No fairy stories!"

"Nary a one until I began to have playmates."

"Do the ropes hurt?"

"They might if I were alone."

"What do you make of the beads?"

"Only that they have some strange value, or father wouldn't be after them.

Love beads! Doesn't sound half so plausible as Cunningham's version."

"That handsome man who limped?"

"Yes."

"A real adventurer--the sort one reads about!"

"And the queer thing about him, he keeps his word, too, for all his

business is a shady one. I don't suppose there is a painting or a jewel or

a book of the priceless sort that he doesn't know about, where it is and

if it can be got at. Some of his deals are aboveboard, but many of them

aren't. I'll wager these beads have a story of loot."