She stood for one moment more, — silent; her eyes brilliant, her face beautiful with inspired thought, — then with a quiet, half-deprecatory gesture, in response to the fresh outbreak of passionate cheering, she retired from the platform. Pasquin Leroy, whose eyes had been riveted on her from the first to the last word of her oration, now started as from a dream, and rose up half-unconsciously, passing his hand across his brow, as though to exorcise some magnetic spell that had crept over his brain. His face was flushed, his pulses were throbbing quickly. His companions, Max Graub and Axel Regor, looked at him inquisitively. The audience was beginning to file out of the hall in orderly groups.
“What next?” said Graub; “Shall ye go?”
“I suppose so,” said Leroy, with a quick sigh, and forcing a smile; “But — I should have liked to speak with her — —”
At that moment his shoulder was touched by a man he recognised as Johan Zegota. He gave the sign of the Revolutionary Committee bond, to which Leroy and his comrades responded.
“Will you all three come over the way?” whispered Zegota cautiously; “We are entertaining Lotys to supper at the inn opposite, — the landlord is one of us. Thord saw you sitting here, and sent me to ask you to join us.”
“With pleasure,” assented Leroy; “We will come at once!”
Zegota nodded and disappeared.
“So you will see the end of this escapade!” said Max Graub, a trifle crossly. “It would have been much better to go home!”
“You have enjoyed escapades in your time, have you not, my friend? Some even quite recently?” returned Leroy gaily. “One or two more will not hurt you!”
They edged their way out among the quietly moving crowd, and happening to push past General Bernhoff, that personage gave an almost imperceptible salute, which Leroy as imperceptibly returned. It was clear that the Chief of Police was acquainted with Pasquin Leroy, the ‘spy’ on whose track he had been sent by Carl Pérousse, and moreover, that he was evidently in no hurry to arrest him. At any rate he allowed him to pass with his friends unmolested, out of the People’s Assembly Rooms, and though he followed him across the road, ‘shadowing him,’ as it were, into a large tavern, whose lighted windows betokened some entertainment within, he did not enter the hostelry himself, but contented his immediate humour by walking past it to a considerable distance off, and then slowly back again. By and by Max Graub came out and beckoned to him, and after a little earnest conversation Bernhoff walked off altogether, the ring of his martial heels echoing for some time along the pavement, even after he had disappeared. And from within the lighted tavern came the sound of a deep, harmonious, swinging chorus —
“Way, make way! — for our banner is unfurled,
Let each man
stand by his neighbour! The thunder of our footsteps shall roll
through the world, In the March of the Men of Labour!”
“Yes!” said Max Graub, pausing to listen ere re-entering the tavern— “If — and it is a great ‘if’ — if every man will stand by his neighbour, the thunder will be very loud, — and by all the deities that ever lived in the Heaven blue, it is a thunder that is likely to last some time! The possibility of standing by one’s neighbour is the only doubtful point!”
CHAPTER XX. — THE SCORN OF KINGS
Inside the tavern, from whence the singing proceeded, there was a strange scene, — somewhat disorderly yet picturesque. Lotys, seated at the head of a long supper-table, had been crowned by her admirers with a wreath of laurels, — and as she sat more or less silent, with a rather weary expression on her face, she looked like the impersonation of a Daphne, exhausted by the speed of her flight from pursuing Apollo. Beside her, nestling close against her caressingly, was a little girl with great black Spanish eyes, — eyes full of an appealing, half-frightened wistfulness, like those of a hunted animal. Lotys kept one arm round the child, and every now and again spoke to her some little caressing word. All the rest of the guests at the supper-board were men, — and all of them members of the Revolutionary Committee. When Pasquin Leroy and his friends entered, there was a general clapping of hands, and the pale countenance of Lotys flushed a delicate rose-red, as she extended her hand to each.
“You begin your career with us very well!” she said gently, her eyes resting musingly on Leroy; “I had not expected to see you to-night!”
“Madame, I had never heard you speak,” he answered; and as he addressed her, he pressed her hand with unconscious fervour, while his eloquent eyes dilated and darkened, as, moved by some complex emotion, she quickly withdrew her slender fingers from his clasp. “And I felt I should never know you truly as you are, till I saw you face the people. Now — —”
He paused. She looked at him wonderingly, and her heart began to beat with a strange quick thrill. It is not always easy to see the outlines of a soul’s development, or the inchoate formation of a great love, — and though everything in a certain sense moved her and appealed to her that was outside herself, it was difficult to her to believe or to admit that she, in her own person, might be the cause of an entirely new set of thoughts and emotions in the mind of one man. Seeing he was silent, she repeated softly and with a half smile.
“‘Now’?”
“Now,” continued Leroy quickly, and in a half-whisper; “I do know you partly, — but I must know you more! You will give me the chance to do that?”
His look said more than his words, and her face grew paler than before. She turned from him to the child at her side —
“Pequita, are you very tired?”
“No!” was the reply, given brightly, and with an upward glance of the dark eyes.
“That is right! Pasquin Leroy my friend! this is Pequita, — the child we told you of the other night, the only daughter of Sholto. She will dance for us presently, will you not, my little one?”
“Yes, indeed!” and the young face lighted up swiftly at the suggestion; while Leroy, taking the seat indicated to him at the supper-table, experienced a tumult of extraordinary sensations, — the chief one of which was, that he felt himself to have been ‘snubbed,’ very quietly but effectually, by a woman who had succeeded, though he knew not how, in suddenly awakening in him a violent fever of excitement, to which he was at present unable to give a name. Rallying himself, however, he glanced up and down the board smilingly, lifting his glass to salute Sergius Thord, who responded from his place at the bottom of the table, — and very soon he regained his usual placidity, for he had enormous strength of will, and kept an almost despotic tyranny over his feelings. His companions, Max Graub and Axel Regor, were separated from him, and from each other, at different sides of the table, and Paul Zouche the poet, was almost immediately opposite to him. He was glad to see that he was next but one to Lotys — the man between them being a desperado-looking fellow with a fierce moustache, and exceedingly gentle eyes, — who, as he afterwards discovered, was one of the greatest violinists in the world, — the favourite of kings and Courts, — and yet for all that, a prominent member of the Revolutionary Committee. The supper, which was of a simple, almost frugal character, was soon served, and the landlord, in setting the first plate before Lotys, laid beside it a knot of deep crimson roses, as an offering of homage and obedience from himself. She thanked him with a smile and glance, and taking up the flowers, fastened them at her breast. Conversation now became animated and general; and one of the men present, a delicate-looking young fellow, with a head resembling somewhat that of Keats, started a discussion by saying suddenly —
“Jost has sold out all his shares in that new mine that was started the other day. It looks as if he did not think, after all his newspaper puffs, that the thing was going to work.”
“If Jost has sold, Pérousse will,” said his neighbour; “The two are concerned together in the floating of the whole business.”
“And yet another piece of news!” put in Paul Zouche suddenly; “For if we talk of stocks and shares, we talk of money! What think you, my friend
s! I, Paul Zouche, have been offered payment for my poems! This very afternoon! Imagine! Will not the spheres fall? A poet to be paid for his poems is as though one should offer the Creator a pecuniary consideration for creating the flowers!”
His face was flushed, and his eyes deliriously bright.
“Listen, my Sergius!” he said; “Wonders never cease in this world; but this is the most wonderful of all wonders! Out of the merest mischief and monkeyish malice, the other day I sent my latest book of poems to the King—”
“Shame! shame!” interrupted a dozen voices. “Against the rules, Paul! You have broken the bond!”
Paul Zouche laughed loudly.
“How you yell, my baboons!” he cried; “How you screech about the rules of your lair! Wait till you hear! You surely do not suppose I sent the book out of any humility or loyalty, or desire for notice, do you? I sent it out of pure hate and scorn, to show him as a fool-Majesty, that there was something he could not do — something that should last when he was forgotten! — a few burning lines that should, like vitriol, eat into his Throne and outlast it! I sent it some days ago, and got an acknowledgment from the flunkey who writes Majesty’s letters. But this afternoon I received a much more important document, — a letter from Eugène Silvano, secretary to our very honourable and trustworthy Premier! He informs me in set terms, that his Majesty the King has been pleased to appreciate my work as a poet, to the extent of offering me a hundred golden pieces a year for the term of my natural life! Ha-ha! A hundred golden pieces a year! And thus they would fasten this wild bird of Revolutionary song to a Royal cage, for a bit of sugar! A hundred golden pieces a year! It means food and lodging — warm blankets to sleep in — but it means something else, — loss of independence!”
“Then you will not accept it?” said Pasquin Leroy, looking at him with interest over the rim of the glass from which he was just sipping his wine.
“Accept it! I have already refused it! By swift return of post!”
Shouts of “Bravo! bravo!” echoed around him on all sides; men sprang up and shook hands with him and patted him on the back, and even over the dark face of Sergius Thord there passed a bright illumining smile.
“Zouche, with all thy faults, thou art a brave man!” said the young man with the Keats-like head, who was in reality confidential clerk to one of the largest stockbrokers in the metropolis; “A thousand times better to starve, than to accept Royal alms!”
“To your health, Zouche!” said Lotys, leaning forward, glass in hand. “Your refusal of the King’s offered bounty is a greater tragedy than any you have ever tried to write!”
“Hear her!” cried Zouche, exultant; “She knows exactly how to put it! For look you, there are the true elements of tragedy in a worn coat and scant food, while the thoughts that help nations to live or die are burning in one’s brain! Then comes a King with a handful of gold — and gold would be useful — it always is! But — by Heaven! to pay a poet for his poems is, as I said before, as if one were to meet the Deity on His way through space, scattering planets and solar systems at a touch, and then to say— ‘Well done, God! We shall remunerate You for your creative power as long as You shall last — so much per aeon!’”
Leroy laughed.
“You wild soul!” he said; “Would you starve then, rather than accept a king’s bounty?”
“I would!” answered Paul. “Look you, my brave Pasquin! Read back over all the centuries, and see the way in which these puppets we call kings have rewarded the greatest thinkers of their times! Is it anywhere recorded that the antique virgin, Elizabeth of England, ever did anything for Shakespeare? True — he might have been ‘graciously permitted’ to act one of his sublime tragedies before her — by Heaven! — she was only fit to be his scrubbing woman, by intellectual comparison! Kings and Queens have always trembled in their shoes, and on their thrones, before the might of the pen! — and it is natural therefore that they should ignore it as much as conveniently possible. A general, whose military tactics succeed in killing a hundred thousand innocent men receives a peerage and a hundred thousand a year, — a speculator who snatches territory and turns it into stock-jobbing material, is called an ‘Empire Builder’; but the man whose Thought destroys or moulds a new World, and raises up a new Civilization, is considered beneath a crowned Majesty’s consideration! ‘Beneath,’ by Heaven! — I, Paul Zouche, may yet mount behind Majesty’s chair, and with a single rhyme send his crown spinning into space! Meanwhile, I have flung back his hundred golden pieces, with as much force in the edge of my pen as there would be in my hand if you were his Majesty sitting there, and I flung them across the table now!”
Again Leroy laughed. His eyes flashed, but there was a certain regret and wistfulness in them.
“You approve, of course?” he said, turning to Sergius Thord.
Sergius looked for a moment at Zouche with an infinitely grave and kindly compassion.
“I think Paul has acted bravely;” he then said slowly; “He has been true to the principles of our Order. And under the circumstances, it must have been difficult for him to refuse what would have been a certain competence,—”
“Not difficult, Sergius!” exclaimed Zouche, “But purely triumphant!”
Thord smiled, — then went on— “You see, my friend,” and he addressed himself now to Leroy; “Kings have scorned the power of the pen too long! Those who possess that power are now taking vengeance for neglect. Thousands of pens all over the world to-day are digging the grave of Royalty, and building up the throne of Democracy. Who is to blame? Royalty itself is to blame, for deliberately passing over the claims of art and intellect, and giving preference to the claims of money. The moneyed man is ever the friend of Majesty, — but the brilliant man of letters is left out in the cold. Yet it is the man of letters who chronicles the age, and who will do so, we may be sure, according to his own experience. As the King treats the essayist, the romancist or the historian, so will these recording scribes treat the King!”
“It is possible, though,” suggested Leroy, “that the King meant well in his offer to our friend Zouche?”
“Quite possible!” agreed Thord; “Only his offer of one hundred gold pieces a year to a man of intellect, is out of all proportion to the salary he pays his cook!”
A slight flush reddened Leroy’s bronzed cheek. Thord observed him attentively, and saw that his soul was absorbed by some deep-seated intellectual irritation. He began to feel strangely drawn towards him; his eyes questioned the secret which he appeared to hold in his mind, but the quiet composure of the man’s handsome face baffled enquiry. Meanwhile around the table the conversation grew louder and less restrained. The young stockbroker’s clerk was holding forth eloquently concerning the many occasions on which he had seen Carl Pérousse at his employer’s office, carefully going into the closest questions of financial losses or gains likely to result from certain political moves, — and he remembered one day in particular, when, after purchasing a hundred thousand shares in a certain company, Pérousse had turned suddenly round on his broker with the cool remark— “If ever you breathe a whisper about this transaction, I will shoot you dead!”
Whereat the broker had replied that it was not his custom to give away his clients’ business, and that threats were unworthy of a statesman. Then Pérousse had become as friendly as he had been before menacing; and the two had gone out of the office and lunched together. And the confidential clerk thus chattering his news, declared that his employer was now evidently uneasy; and that from that uneasiness he augured a sudden fluctuation or fall in what had lately seemed the most valuable stock in the market.
“And you? Your news, Valdor,” cried one or two eager voices, while several heads leaned forward in the direction of the fiercely-moustached man who sat next to Lotys. “Where have you been with your fiddle? Do you arrive among us to-night infected by the pay, or the purple of Royalty?”
Louis Valdor, by birth a Norseman, and by sympathies a cosmopolitan, looked up w
ith a satiric smile in his dark eyes.
“There is no purple left to infect a man with, in the modern slum of Royalty!” he said; “Tobacco-smoke, not incense, perfumes the palaces of the great nowadays — and card-playing is more appreciated than music! Yet I and my fiddle have made many long journeys lately, — and we have sent our messages of Heaven thrilling through the callous horrors of Hell! A few nights since, I played at the Russian Court — before the beautiful Empress — cold as a stone — with her great diamonds flashing on her unhappy breast, — before the Emperor, whose furtive eyes gazed unseeingly before him, as though black Fate hovered in the air — before women, whose lives are steeped in the lowest intrigue — before men, whose faces are as bearded masks, covering the wolf’s snarl, — yes! — I played before these, — played with all the chords of my heart vibrating to the violin, till at last a human sigh quivered from the lips of the statuesque Empress, — till a frown crossed the brooding brow of her spouse — till the intriguing women shook off the spell with a laugh, and the men did the same with an oath — and I was satisfied! I received neither ‘pay,’ nor jewel of recognition, — I had played ‘for the honour’ of appearing before their Majesties! — but my bow was a wand to wake the little poisoned asp of despair that stings its way into the heart under every Royal mantle of ermine, and that sufficed me!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 552