She leant towards him until her lips almost touched his ear, and whispered:
"Lucien Apleon, The Emperor, has decreed that Ralph Bastin is to be slain!"
"Tell me more, Rose, trust me absolutely, dear child!" His voice was very hoa.r.s.e as he spoke.
"How do you know this?" he added. "But perhaps you had better tell me who and what you are, dear child!"
He leant to her that his voice might be a whisper only, for he realized her warning of a moment ago. "Do not fear, dear child, I shall hold as sacred as my faith in G.o.d, anything that you tell me!"
She laid her pretty little plump hand in his, and looked at him confidingly out of her great Eastern liquid eyes, as with a beaming smile, she said:
"I could not be afraid of you, good George, you saved my life, and----"
She sighed, and there was a sound of supreme content this time in the sigh. "No," she went on, "I could not be afraid of you, my saviour from death. And I can, I will, confide in you, for I sorely need a friend, and I feel, I know I can trust you. I had been asking G.o.d, yesterday, to help me, to guide me to a friend, and I feel that He has sent you into my life at this point when I, a lone girl, need most a friend. Someday I may be able to tell you all the story of my life.
It will be enough here, however, to tell you that, for two months, I have been in Babylon, with my brother--my only living relative, as far as I know. Babylon----"
She shuddered as she repeated the name, and her face flushed scarlet, then paled as swiftly, while a look of horror leaped into her eyes, and she gazed fearfully round as though she feared some terror of the foul and mighty city might even here have pursued her.
"No tongue dare, no tongue _can_ tell a thousandth part of the abominations of that sink of iniquity. I came here with my brother three days ago, and he has joined hands with "The People of the Mark."
He is clever, very clever! They know that, and because he will be useful to them, he has been placed in high office among them, and----"
She paused abruptly, and with another frightened glance around, whispered:
"Do you know what "the mark" is, and what it means?"
"Is it what has been flying over the "Eternal City" here, in the centre of that great white flag that floats over the Apleon Palace? I think you must mean that, and if so it is the two Greek characters for the name of Christ, with a crooked serpent put between them!"
"Yes!" the one word came in merest whisper from her, then leaning closer to him, she went on:
"But do you know, George, the _import_ of the foul Mark?"
"I believe I do!" he whispered back. "I believe it is what our Scriptures call the "Mark of the Beast." If that be so, as I am convinced it is, it is the brand of the Anti-christ--and----"
He, too, seemed to feel the need of increased caution, for he glanced fearsomely round, as he added:
"And I believe I know who the Anti-christ will prove to be."
She shot a swift glance upwards to the cas.e.m.e.nt window, and with upraised finger, leant towards him until her warm lips touched his ear, as she repeated what she had said once before:
"The very air here, seems full of spies. It was so at Babylon!
_Lucien Apleon_ is THE ANTI-CHRIST."
Again her frightened glance travelled to the cas.e.m.e.nt Then she went on:
"My brother always confided everything to me. And in telling me the secret of the Emperor Apleon--though exactly how he learned it, I cannot say--he never dreamed that I should have any scruples about serving the Anti-christ. But I love G.o.d! I missed the great "Rapture," when G.o.d"s true children were taken "into the air" with their Lord, but, though it cost me torture, or my very life, during these coming days of awful persecution, I can do no other than cleave to our Lord."
In an unconscious gesture of loyalty to her G.o.d, she had drawn herself up to her full height, while her vow of fidelity had been uttered aloud.
For awhile longer they talked on together of Babylon, of "The Mark," of Anti-christ, of the probable coming days of horror and persecution, then a chance question of his as to how she came to learn to speak English so well, led her to say:
"Shall I tell you my story? The sun is too hot for you to go out for another two hours, and----"
"Yes, tell me, Rose," he cried, not giving her time to finish her sentence.
He glanced towards a low Eastern couch on the other side of the room, as he added: "But before you begin, I want to see you lying upon that couch; after all you have pa.s.sed through, and in view of unexpected contingencies that may arise, any hour, you must rest all that you can."
He made her comfortable, with cushions, on the couch, then seating himself cross-legged on the floor by her side--the posture was a favorite one of his, and had been acquired, long ago, during his residence in the East--he bade her go on.
"I was born," she began, "in a little village at the foot of Lebanon, but when I was only six years old my father got work in the neighbourhood of Trebizond, and we migrated thither. Within a week of our arrival, at our new home, I became a scholar in a lady Missionary"s cla.s.s of native children, where, among other things, I learned English.
When I was eleven, my father and mother died of small-pox, and I became a little waiting-maid to my dear American missionary teacher. Miss Roosevelly, living in the house, with her, of course.
"My brother Ha.s.san, was eight years older than me, and he lived with a schoolmaster, in Constantinople. I had also a dear old grandmother, my mother"s mother, who lived about four miles from the tiny mission where I lived, and, now and again, I was allowed to visit grandmother for two or three days at a time.
"My life was an even, regular, but never monotonous one, for I was always busy. Then, a year or more ago, there came an awful event in my life. I was sixteen, and I had gone to spend a few days with dear old grandmother, and----"
There came the faintest click in her voice, and she glanced toward the lemonade caraffe. His watching eyes saw her need, and he reached the caraffe and a gla.s.s, and poured out a draught. She took a big gulp, then sipped more slowly. And while she drank, he watched her and he realized more than ever, how true and sweet as well as how beautiful her face was.
Young as she was, in development she was a woman, as is invariably the case of maidens born under tropical skies. It is true that her beauty was, as yet, of the tender, budding type, but it was the full bursting bud of the queen of flowers, and already foreshadowed the wondrous brilliance of the full-blown blossom.
Eastern though she was, she had blue eyes--forget-me-not-blue--though the long silken eye-lashes, and the thin, arched, pencilled-like eye-brows were raven black. When she had finished her lemonade, and had replaced the gla.s.s on the table, she went on with her story.
"It was the first evening of my home-coming to dear grandmother. The sun was setting, and the roseate gold of his departing glory was illuminating everything. How lovely it all was! The gold of that sunset--I shall never wholly forget it, I think--was everywhere. It glittered among the tree-tops, gilded the hill-crests, changed the eastern horizon into a molten sea of warmest gold and colour; and----"
"Transfigured Rose, eh," he broke in, with a smile.
She laughed merrily as she said: "I am afraid I was forgetting myself, talking so much description!"
A shadow pa.s.sed over her face, as she went on:
"How quickly everything was to be changed, though! Grandmother"s voice called me from inside, Come, Rose, my child, and we will give G.o.d our evening chant!
"I am afraid I sighed, as I turned from watching all that sunset loveliness. It was not that I disliked our evening devotions, but somehow felt that evening--as I have often done, in fact--that I would fain worship G.o.d with all His evening miracle before my eyes, and would fain then have lingered on in the glorious after-glow, though that after-glow lasted all too short a time.
"I turned into the house, but I did not close the door, for it would have seemed like sacrilege to have shut out all that glory. I took my place by grandmother"s side, with my hands folded across my breast, as, together, we chanted "Our Father who art in Heaven! Hallowed be Thy name."
"How it all remains with me, and ever will, all the little items of that last night of dear grandma"s life! I can seem to hear her voice even now, she was very old, and it quavered and quivered like one of our hill-country dulcimers!
"Our chant over, grandmother prayed, she prayed extra long that night and our quick night had come down before she had finished. I lit a little lamp, and we went to bed. Then----"
A shudder pa.s.sed through her beautiful, reclining frame, as she continued, and her voice had a new note in it, a note of pain:
"It was about midnight. The whole country slept. There were sixteen small houses in our little village. They all huddled close together, (for once there had been a wall enclosing them) suddenly there was a sound of gun-fire. I leaped from my bed--Ah, me! I cannot describe it. In half-an-hour the awful tragedy was completed. Every old man and woman was killed, slain with a sword, or hacked to death, or speared. Babies, and little children were brained against the walls of the houses; strong men--fathers, lovers, sons--had been murdered with every wantonness of savagery conceivable. The only persons spared had been the budding girls, and one or two of the best looking of the women.
"Everything of value, that was readily portable, had been seized, each raider keeping his own lootings. Then, at last, at a given signal, the murderers and robbers reformed themselves into a solid company, and rode away, setting fire to the village in half-a-dozen separate places before they left.
"I was, of course, one of the girls whose life had been spared. The man who had seized upon me, when, in my fright, I had run from my bed to the cottage door, had flashed the light of a torch upon me, and even now I can recall the fierce delight and satisfaction that leaped into his greedy eyes, and the manner of his mutterings:
"Good! Good! She"ll _sell_ well!"