Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Ten-foot Chain; or Can Love Survive the Shackles? A Unique Symposium by Abdullah Achmed Brand Max Means E K Eldred Kurtz Sheehan Perley Poore
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 703 lines and 21962 words, and 15 pages
"My dear, you scorn titles, and yet as an untitled woman you are not a match for the first red-faced tradesman's daughter. Stand up!"
She rose and he led her in front of a pier glass. Solemnly he studied her pale image.
"A sleeping soul!" he repeated.
She covered her face.
"Will that bait catch the errant lover, Bertha?"
"God will make up the difference."
He cursed softly. She had not known he could be so moved.
"Poor child, let me talk with you."
He led her back to a chair almost with kindness and sat somewhat behind her so that he need not meet her eyes.
"This love you wait for--it is not a full-grown god, dear girl, but a blind child. Given a man and a woman and a certain propinquity, and nature does the rest. We put a mask on nature and call it love, we name an abstraction and call it God. Love! Love! Love! It is a pretty disguise--no more. Do you understand?"
"I will not."
She listened to his quick breathing.
"Bertha, if I were to chain you with a ten-foot chain to the first man off the streets and leave you alone with him for three days, what would happen?"
Her hand closed on the arm of the chair. He rose and paced the room as his idea grew.
The vague terror grew coldly in her, for she could see the idea taking hold of him like a hand.
Her smile made her almost beautiful.
"Sire, in all the world there is only one man for every woman."
"Book talk."
He set his teeth because he could not meet her eyes.
"And who will bring you this one man?"
"God."
Once more the soundless laugh.
"Then I shall play the part of God. Bertha, you must now make your decision: a marriage for the good of the State, or the ten-foot chain, the dark room--and love!"
"Even you will not dare this, sire."
"Bertha, there is nothing I do not dare. What would be known? I give orders that this room be utterly darkened; I send secret police to seize a man from the city at random and fetter him to a chain in that room; then I bring you to the room and fasten you to the other end of the chain, and for three days I have food introduced into the room. Results? For the man, death; for you, a knowledge first of yourself and, secondly, of love. The State will benefit."
"It is bestial--incredible."
"Bestial? Tut! I play the part of God and even surpass Him. I put you face to face with a temptation through which you shall come to know yourself. You lose a dream; you gain a fact. It is well. Shame will guard the secret in your heart--and the State will benefit. Still you see that I am paternal--merciful. I do not punish you for your past obstinacy. I still give you a choice. Bertha, will you marry as I wish, or will you force me to play the part of God?"
"I shall not marry."
She made up her mind the moment he left the room. She drew on her cloak. Before the pier glass she paused.
"Aye," she murmured, "I could not match the first farmer's daughter. But still there must be one man in the world--and God will make up the difference!"
She threw open the door which gave on a passage leading to a side entrance. A grenadier of the palace guard jumped to attention and presented arms.
"Pardon," he said.
He completely blocked the hall; the prince had left nothing to chance. She started to turn back and then hesitated and regarded the man carefully.
"Fritz!" she said at last, for she recognized the peasant who had been a stable-boy on her father's estate before he took service in the grenadiers. "You are Fritz Barr!"
He flushed with pleasure.
"And my little black pony you used to take care of?"
"Yes, yes!"
He grinned and nodded; and then she noted a revolver in the holster at his side.
"What are your orders, Fritz?"
"But if I were to ask you for your revolver?"
He stirred uneasily and she took money from her purse and gave it to him.
"With this you could procure another weapon?"
He drew a long breath; the temptation was great.
"Then do so. It will never be known from whom I received the gun--and my need is desperate--desperate!"
He unbuckled the weapon without a word, and with it in her hand she returned to the room.
There was a tall western window, and before this she drew up a chair to watch the setting of the sun.
"Will he ring the bell when the edge of the sun touches the hills or when it is completely set?" she thought.
The white circle grew yellow; then it took on a taint of orange, bulging oddly at the sides into a clumsy oval. From the gardens below came a stir of voices and then the thrill of a girl's laughter. She smiled as she listened, and, leaning from the window, the west wind blew to her the scent of flowers. She sat there for a long time, breathing deeply of the fragrance and noting all the curves of the lawn with a still, sad pleasure. The green changed from bright to dark; when she looked up the sun had set.
As she turned from the gay western sky, the room was doubly dim and the breeze of the evening set the curtains rustling and whispering. Silence she was prepared for, but not those ghostly voices, not the shift and sweep of the shadows. She turned the electric switch, closing her eyes to blur the shock of the sudden deluge of light. The switch clicked, but when she opened her eyes the room was still dark; they had cut the connecting wires.
Thereafter her mind went mercifully blank, for what she faced was, like birth and death, beyond comprehension. Noise at the windows roused her from the daze at last and she found that a number of workmen were sealing the room so that neither light nor sound could enter or escape. The only air would be from the ventilator. And still she could not realize what had happened, what was to happen, until the last sounds of the workmen ceased and the deep, dread silence began; silence that had a pulse in it--the beating of her heart.
She was standing in the middle of the room when the first shapes formed in the black night, and terror hovered about her suddenly, touching her as with cold fingers. She felt her way back to a corner and crouched there against the wall, waiting, waiting. They had seized the doomed man long before this. They must have bound and gagged him and carried him to the palace.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page