by Ouida
‘Surely you owe the King, your father, obedience?’ he said feebly and with what little dignity he possessed.
Othyris replied:
‘I owe the King, my father, obedience, undoubtedly in much; as a soldier, as a son, as a subject; but only in some matters, not in all. Marriage or celibacy are matters of private life, of personal choice. My father’s rights stop short of my private life, of my personal choice.’
‘I cannot admit that,’ said his uncle nervously, and in alarm; ‘you would introduce rebellion into the sacred arx of the family.’
‘There is one thing more sacred than the family. It is self-respect,’ replied Othyris.
‘You would imply—’
‘Nothing that is offensive. I merely mean that self-respect cannot exist where there is not liberty of opinion and of action in personal matters.’
‘Liberty! The catchword of the canaille!’
‘Sometimes. But nevertheless the finest word in human language.’
Stephen looked at him with curiosity through his blue glasses.
‘They accredit you with subversive opinions. Where did you get their infection?’
Othyris smiled slightly.
‘Of my opinions I can say truly that they are my own, borrowed from no man.’
‘There is nothing more dangerous,’ said his uncle, with irritable impatience.
‘Why so?’
‘Because — because — the person who trusts and glories in his own powers of judgment, defies authority and breaks loose from tradition. He becomes a law unto himself.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You think that permissible?’
‘I think it inevitable if a man, whatever be his station, have any respect for himself.’
‘You would destroy religion!’
‘I would destroy superstitions and priesthoods.’
‘You would destroy faith, law, order! It is anarchy! anarchy and chaos!’ said Stephen, with a nervous thrill of horror which shook his whole feeble person. ‘I would trust no daughter of mine to you. Time will temper your folly, no doubt, and show you the error of your ways; but I would not risk the future of my child in such an experiment. Can you be the son of my beloved sister, of my dear and faultless Feodor own a?’
Othyris bowed his head reverently at his mother’s name.
‘Then,’ he said, after a pause, ‘since we are both of accord, my dear uncle, that I am wholly unworthy of my cousin’s hand, we will discuss and disagree no more. I am always your devoted servant and nephew; and we are both agreed that I could not either deserve, or properly fill, any nearer relation to you.’
Poor Stephen felt that he had blundered stupidly in giving Othyris a chance of withdrawal. What, too, would his wife say? She also was not easy to reconcile to any departure from her accepted plans. The proposed alliance for her youngest daughter pleased her: she considered, as every one did, that Elim would in all probability succeed eventually to the throne of Helianthus.
‘But your father?’ he said, with vacillation and fear. He was keenly afraid of his brother-in-law, in whose coffers lay many of his own signatures.
‘When you and I are of accord,’ said Othyris, ‘my father, however displeased or regretful he may be, will be powerless.’
‘Of accord! You and I are of accord in nothing!’
‘In opinion, no; but concerning my unworthiness of my cousin Xenia’s hand, yes.’
The unfortunate King of Gelum felt that he had been checkmated, and that further argument was useless. The younger man had been the more astute.
Othyris went to his sleeping-carriage in the imperial train, which was to take him to the southeast frontier, well content with the issue of the interview.
As the train bore him towards the frontier, he looked at the still frozen plains over which it passed, the snow-laden leaden skies, the miserable cabins blocked up and blotted out by the winter’s drifts, the starved cattle with bones piercing through their hides, the wretched horses trying to scrape their way to buried roots or mosses or to break the ice of frozen pools and ditches, the peasants dragging driftwood over the snow or digging paths to their churches; and the sharp brutal contrast of this misery with the splendour of the scenes from which he had come, hurt him as with some physical pain. Ninety-seven years of his great-grandfather’s life had been passed without the peace and pleasure of the Father of his People having been for an hour disturbed by this contrast, or his conscience ever having been awakened by the knowledge of the ocean of misery rolling over these plains. ‘God forgive us!’ thought Othyris; and then even that thought seemed to him a blasphemy. Who could believe in the goodness of a God by whom such contrasts had been created between man and man?
He returned home by sea, his father having given him the mission of a complimentary visit to the Ottoman ruler who was at that moment harrying, burning, pillaging, massacring, in an adjacent Christian semi Asiatic state, wholly undisturbed by the Christian potentates of the civilised West. His own yacht and two war-vessels awaited him at a southern port. His visit to the Oriental potentate was felicitously concluded, and his homeward voyage was beautiful across the dark foaming inland sea, and past the cypress woods, the ancient monasteries, the minarets fine as lace and lofty as fountains, towards the famous city, lying like a half-moon on the edge of the waters: the city which had been his birthplace.
His schooner, with the frigates which formed her escort on this visit of ceremonial, wound through the narrow channels of the passage which was as a bone amongst dogs to the western Powers, and, entering on the Mare Magnum, in due time he saw the long blue line of the Hélianthine hills.
‘My country!’ he murmured, with that pride of possession and humility of filial love, between which the patriot’s affection is divided. But then, he thought, was it in truth his country? Were hybrids, such as he and his, truly the sons of any land, with any right to say ‘My race, my tongue, my country?’ Was not the poorest peasant born on that earth, under these olive-trees, by that sea, or on those hills, more really a son of the soil than he, mongrel that he was, with the blood of many nationalities in him, bred in and in, but cross-bred?
Helios was before him, like a silver cup lying in the lap of the calm waters. It was beautiful as a city in a mirage seen by a dying man. But there, on the sea-terraces of the Soleia, paced armed sentinels; on the quays rode armed carabineers; in the streets and lanes city guards hunted beggars and children and dogs; at the gates waited weary and dusty cattle, horses, mules, with their peasant drivers blocked in a mass, one on another, whilst the Octroi officials ransacked, weighed, cursed and bullied; in the dreary factories, with their long lines of windows, multitudes toiled in the joyless, monotonous, mechanical toil with which modern inventions have cursed the workman; in the fortress, with its glorious angel trumpeting to the skies, were a hundred brazen mouths of cannon turned night and day on to the crowded quarters whence revolution might raise her Medusa’s head; and in its arsenals were closely packed millions on millions of cases of ammunition of the newest and the deadliest sort. Was not Helios in all her beauty like a fair woman with a cancer in her womb?
He was aroused from his meditations by the approach towards his yacht of three barges, occupied by a deputation of welcome from the municipality of the city. Syndic, assessors, councillors, and notabilities were crowded on board them in one of those servile, useless, and senseless ceremonies which dog the steps and poison the lives of princes, and degrade the citizens concerned in them into panders, parrots, and puppets.
‘I am going back to my harness.’ thought Othyris, as he saw the scarlet and gold robes of the Mayor, gorgeous in the sunlight of the gangway. ‘ Must you come out to meet me with the bit and the bridle? O garrulous and servile fools! Cannot you spend your time in the innumerable duties which call to you in vain? Go, take your robes, and your scarves, and your vellum, and your froth, and your platitudes, and your protestations elsewhere. Be men, not crawling sycophants!’
He receiv
ed them with coldness and visible impatience; he replied to their address briefly and with weariness; his own gentlemen were surprised and disquieted, but the deputation did not perceive that they were unwelcome; they were surrounded by the clouds of their own incense, giddy with the gazes of their own self-adoration! Servility is, to the servile, a self-engendered gas which intoxicates. They were enamoured of their own abasement as women are of their own petty vanities. They found delight and honour even in their own humiliation.
His father and his brothers took this form of sycophancy seriously, as a meet attitude on the part of the public and a correct obeisance to themselves. But Othyris could not do so. To his temperament and opinions, his own manhood was lowered by the abasement of theirs. A common humanity made him feel himself degraded by their miserable servility. They were men well-to-do in the world, well fed, well clothed, well housed, well educated, as education is considered in modern life; they had no excuse for their own self-chosen degradation, for the wretched self-imposed prostration which they sought with such avidity. It hurt the dignity of his own self-respect to see theirs so debased; but their hides were so thick, their vision so oblique, their paltry pride so obtuse, that they could not even be taught what self-respect meant.
CHAPTER VIII
ON the night of Elim’s return from his mission, which was the eve of the Feast of the Ascension, a roar as of thunder, but sounding duller and slower as it smote the ear, startled the sleeping population of Helios. An ancient building had suddenly collapsed, none knew from what cause; there was no visible reason for its end; the air was calm, the waves were peaceful; it had lived its life and fell, with no visible sign of decay or of age upon it. It had stood there for twelve centuries, having been erected during the Byzantine rule of the country. The Ivory Tower, or the Lily Tower, as it was called by the populace, was one of the most famous and poetic possessions of the city, standing conspicuously on the north-west shore of the Bay of Helios. It looked like one of the porcelain towers of China, for it was made of bricks enamelled white; its form had the elegance of the minaret; at its base was the sea, in its rear a wood of cypress and of laurels.
The coast of Helianthus is never more beautiful than by night. On this night of the Ascension the city, until a late hour, was a crescent of artificial light. The watch-towers were crowned by cressets of fires. The quays and bridges were outlined with lamps, and, on the hills, many a village and villa glowed with points aflame, which heralded the advent of a religious feast in that union of pagan and Christian superstitions which formed the country’s creed. But where the Ivory Tower had stood, and had worn its diadem of flame on all such nights as this, there was darkness, and the only light came from the moon-rays shining on a great heap of dust and ashes, which covered the rocks and shelved down into the sea, like a huge grave, nameless and naked. Time would bring to cover it the short, sweet grass, the wild strawberry plant, the bramble and the dog-rose, the creeping thistle, the sweet-scented myrtle, the mosses, the daisies, the gold of the charlock and ragwort; but it was now only a mountain of dust.
‘Is that all?’ said the King, when he heard the cause of the sound which had disturbed his slumbers. ‘I was afraid it was the powder magazine.’
To have lost even a few caissons of melinite would have seemed to him a much greater calamity than the ruin of any monument of art or relic of antiquity.
The Ivory Tower had been a thing of beauty, its whiteness growing warm in the golden glow of sunrise, its lofty and slender grace saluted by returning mariners throughout twelve centuries, its sonorous chimes resounding through summer silence, and rebuking winter storm. It had been kept in repair for no other reason than its extreme beauty, or what the artistic world called beauty; a great waste of money in the eyes of the monarch. For it had been an entirely useless thing, in the estimation of the ruler of Helianthus; it had never been used as a granary, as a signal station, as an observatory, nor even as a Christian house of prayer.
Late in the evening following on its fall, Othyris went by sea to view the ruins. During the day, the beach was crowded by throngs of townspeople, visiting the site of the disaster, who would have given him no peace had he gone there by daylight; even by night it was necessary to go very late to avoid being mobbed by the people.
The sky was lustrous with that radiance which the King would have considered so inferior to that of a searchlight. The moon was at the full, and Jove and Saturn were low on the southern horizon, but Antares and Arcturus shone, higher in the heavens, in all their solar splendour and their menacing mystery.
‘Happy those simple souls to whom the stars and planets are only lamps to steer by, hung up by the hand of God.’ thought Othyris, as a fishing-boat passed him leaning low down in the trough of the phosphorescent water.
When he went ashore with one of his gentlemen, he felt as if he stood by the grave of a friend. The vast pile of ruined bricks and shattered enamels covered a wide area of the rocks, and the base was washed by the white, moonlit, rippling surge.
‘If let alone,’ he thought, ‘in half a century the ruin will be a green hill. Nature will have clothed it. Let us leave it alone.’
The light from the round, golden moon was strong; it shone on the face and form of a woman who was standing on a strip of beach which had been left untouched by the fallen materials. She was clothed in black, and wore a black veil upon her head, after the manner of the women of the populace; she was young, and her profile was like that of the Athene; as she gazed upward it looked pure and clear as a cameo; the nose straight, the upper lip short, the eyelashes long, the throat white and fine as in sculpture.
‘I have never seen her,’ thought Othyris. ‘She is dressed like a woman of the people; but her face and her form are those of a goddess.’
She did not notice him; she was absorbed in the spectacle of the ruin before her.
‘Oh, the pity of it!’ she murmured, and her eyes were full of tears.
Othyris uncovered his head.
‘The pity of it, indeed.!’ he said.
She started, astonished to find any one so near, and her exclamation overheard; she drew her veil more closely so as to conceal her features, and turned to leave the spot.
‘I come, Janos!’ she cried to a man in a rowing-boat below.
‘Let me not drive you away,’ murmured Othyris. ‘We have a common sorrow.’
But she did not answer or look back; she went on swiftly, noiselessly, with gliding grace along the strip of beach to where the boat waited in the surf.
‘Shall I make inquiries, sir?’ murmured the courtier who accompanied Othyris. He had been before then sent on errands of identification.
‘No, no, on no account whatever,’ said Othyris quickly. The little boat with the woman and the peasant was being sculled into deeper water, going outward and westward; it made a black shadow on the silvery spaces of the moonlit sea for a while, then passed away into shadow and distance, and was lost to sight. Was she the diva loca of the ruined shrine driven out into exile? The fancy pleased Othyris.
He took out the little sketch-book of silver point which he always carried with him, and drew her profile from memory by the light of the moon.
Her memory haunted Othyris, brief as had been the passage of her swift and silent steps over the smooth sea-sand. He smiled at his own preoccupation: truly, she had looked like a goddess drawn out from her sanctuary and not deigning longer to remain on earth.
‘lama fanciful fool.’ he said to himself; but was it not better to feed on such fancies than to be drugged with absinthe, or to be drunk with war? At least his fancies harmed no one, and cost nothing to the lives and to the savings of the nation.
She had gone away across the moonlit water into the shadows where the sea was dark; it was fitting that a divinity whose altars were in ruins should so pass away from the sight of a mere mortal!
‘I think, sir, that the man who was rowing is a peasant of the Helichrysum hills, whom I have seen in the market.’ murmured
Sir Pandarus, behind him on the beach. Othyris silenced him with a gesture.
Officious readiness in others to wait on his less noble desires had always aroused in him a strong disgust.
‘That the fox eats the dove is bad enough.’ he said once; ‘but that lesser beasts should track and trap the doves, and bring them as offerings to the fox, is much worse.’
Othyris did not forget the casta diva of the moonlit eve before the ruins of the Ivory Tower; probably because she was the only woman who had ever eluded him. She was also of a wholly different type from any he had ever seen, and he had believed that he had seen every variety of class and breeding, of form and feature, in the sex. He could not assign her rank with any certainty. She had possessed the bearing of a patrician, the simplicity of a peasant, the placid grace of a goddess, the shyness of a startled nymph. She had fled from him over the sands like any Daphne from the Sun-god.
He realised Montaigne’s truism, ‘elles nous battent mieux en fuyant comme les Scythes.’ He spent hours in the endeavour to record the vision of her, but he never succeeded in contenting himself. There were many hundreds of women in Helios who wore that severe nun-like costume, with the black veil, which at will could so successfully conceal the features. The lowest female classes were gay with colour as a butterfly or a tulip; but the industrial classes, the grades between the populace and the middle classes, invariably wore the black veil and the black skirt, as she had done, and under the protection of that sombre garb could pass unmolested from one end to the other of the city. Yet he did not think that she belonged to that class; the uncovered hand which had drawn together the folds of the veil was of fine and delicate shape, and the outline of her profile and throat had the purity of a classic cameo.
But he knew that there were many old families, once patrician but now poor and obscure, who dwelt in the small coast-towns or in the recesses of the hills above; families of ancient lineage, of proud traditions, of strong prejudices, of uncomplaining poverty. She must, he thought, belong to one of those, and have been drawn out of her privacy by the loss of the Ivory Tower, which was so great a calamity to those who loved the old heroic past of Helianthus. Othyris knew nothing of those families, but he had always felt a great respect for them, beggared as they had been by the War of Independence, faithful to their traditions and irreconcilable with what was to them a foreign monarchy, content to live in obscurity and penury, and unpurchasable by place or money; they were the last remnant of the old republican and patriotic substratum of the country.