by Ouida
The enunciation of such opinions made a lively sensation in Helios, and caused a great scandal in society. Nothing is so dangerous or so detested as an attack on vested interests. All the superior classes, all the users of gold pens, all the comfortable and complacent persons to whom civilisation was a Bona Dea, mother of prosperity, of invention, of luxury and of good government, felt themselves outraged in their most sacred sentiments.
A cancer in the milk-white breast of their goddess! What blasphemy!
Any other orator than a son of the King would have been howled down into silence at the first word.
On ne prêche qu’aux convertis. Othyris knew that. He knew that respect for his rank alone restrained his hearers from comments far from complimentary to him; he read their astonishment and their disapprobation on their features, beneath the surface-smiles of courteous urbanity; he was well aware what inane self-complacency he had troubled and startled.
The reports by stenographers of this speech, which so entirely offended all prosperity and affronted privilege, were by superior order withdrawn from publication in the Press, and a few commonplace words were substituted for it in all reports of the meeting.
The suppression made the Ministry nervous. They did not care to offend a person who was so nearly in direct succession to the throne; but the actual occupant of the throne had crossed out heavily with a red pencil the proofs of the speech when submitted to him and had ordered its entire suppression; and no resistance was possible.
‘That you suppressed my speech was a matter of course,’ said Othyris, when he next met Michael Soranis, who had succeeded Kantakuzene as Prime Minister when the latter was defeated over the scheme for the fortification of the Hundred Isles. ‘But I think you should not have put other words into my mouth. Mon verre est petit, mais je bois dans mon verre’
‘But your Royal Highness makes others drink, alas!’ murmured with a sigh the harassed politician.
‘Do I make others drink?’ wondered Othyris, as he passed onward across the great courtyard of the House of Deputies. He did not think so. It is very hard to make others drink, unless they have a taste for the draught you offer, and in that case they get it without you.
The Crown Prince was, of course, greatly scandalised at the speech. ‘It is a direct incitement to the poor to plunder the rich,’ he said with horror.
‘What would he propose instead of the labour of the poor if that were abolished? Everything is done which can be done to diminish the evil effects of the deadly trades; the trades themselves must exist; no children anywhere are forced to work at them. If the parents send them, that is not the fault of the masters or of the overseers. What would he substitute instead of the children? The commerce of the world cannot be stopped because some suffer.’
No one should say that rich men stole; they accumulate. Even so, Governments do not ever steal; they annex. Everything is excused when it is en gros, or en bloc: you kill one man, you go to the scaffold or the hulks; you kill fifty thousand men, you are decorated, pensioned, honoured, deified. Certainly you do; what could be more right and proper? The whole question lies in your quantities. The whole matter is one of degree.
CHAPTER X
IN the autumn of the year, King John was suddenly taken ill, for almost the first time in his life, except when he had suffered from an occasional surfeit of the pleasures of the table with its consequent indigestion. He had contracted a slight cold in paying an unexpected night-visit to rouse up a distant garrison, and with the chill of it upon him had gone to a monster battue, where he had slaughtered the birds and beasts driven past him till his arms ached. The dense autumn woods were damp and vaporous, and in them his cold was increased, so that it became bronchitis. He was never in any danger, but the mere idea of his malady caused depression in the Exchanges of Europe; why, it would probably have puzzled the stockholders and the publicists to say, for if he had died, his eldest son would have succeeded him peaceably, and would have continued to govern on precisely the same lines, with the placid and resolute composure of a man who knows that Heaven keeps his powder dry for him.
Ignorant people imagine that the law having settled that the King never dies, it cannot be a matter of great concern who is, or who has ceased to be, the King; since, if the personality change, the office remains unchanged. Even courtiers admit this, since they say, ‘The King is dead; long live the King!’
Fortunately the next day all the newspapers of Europe were able to print in capital letters the happy fact that the attack was not dangerous, since King John had been able to eat some spoonfuls of chicken purée. His kingdom was intensely interesting to all the other Powers, because each of them wanted it; and it had an equal interest for politicians as for speculators, because its geographical position and its trimming policy made it an unknown quantity in the possible event of a great war; politicians and speculators both being keenly aware that Treaties of Alliance, like all other contracts, hold good only until some penknife makes a slit in them, and are inviolable only until one or other of the contracting parties tears them up and dances on their pieces.
The Crown Prince was assiduous in his attendance at his father’s bedside. Like every person conscious of considerable superiority in himself to all others, he could not but be sensible that life in denying him the highest opportunities was unjust. He would not have believed in himself as he did, if he had not believed that he alone was destined to govern Helianthus with that force and firmness which the mingled idiocy and wickedness of its inarticulate multitudes required. But he had an extreme respect for his father.
His father, he considered, was an admirable ruler; although in the recesses of his mind, Theo could not but be conscious that he himself would be a still better one.
His father did yield sometimes; Theo knew that he himself would never yield, on any question whatsoever, or to any adviser ever born of man. If any one had ever presumed to point out to him as a deterrent the fate of Louis XVI., he would have replied that Louis would have lived and died at the Tuileries or Versailles if he had only known how to use the guillotine properly on his subjects, instead of waiting till his subjects used it on him; which perhaps is true, for if he had been quicker than the nation in making the axe his ally, there would probably have been no Terror, no Consulate, no Empire. Theo put away from him as whispers of the devil those irrepressible desires to be himself the ruler which assailed him, and obtruded themselves on the reverential sorrow with which he heard that the lobe of his father’s left lung was inflamed as well as the left bronchial tube. Slightly, only very slightly, the physicians affirmed, so slightly indeed that the inflammation was almost imperceptible; perhaps even totally imperceptible, thought the nurse, whose experience in hospital wards had made her sceptical of medical assertions.
Four nights were passed by the Crown Prince, fully dressed, in a chamber adjoining the King’s. He was respectfully assured that such a vigil was not necessary, but he was a man who would never allow his duty to be dictated to him even by so infallible a pope as a doctor. During that semi-slumber, that mixture of confused dreams and congested reflections which accompany such vigils, he could not but see as in a vision the country as it would be when it should have passed under his own rule — a country shaved, cropped, drilled, put in irons, fed by rule, lodged by order, made clean by Act of Parliament, kept virtuous by regulations, with an inexorable hygiene and an inoculated virtue; its foremost privilege and duty being to carry the musket, its second being to pay all taxes with humble alacrity on the days ordained.
Theo of Gunderöde never doubted his own infallibility, his own semi-divinity, his own absolute preciousness to the nation which, without him and his, would, he was certain, be lost in a whirlpool of blood and a chaos of infidelity. It never came within his mental vision to suppose that he was an ordinary man with less than the usual allowance of brain and more than the usual allowance of obstinacy, whose life or whose death was entirely immaterial to the world except so far as the fables and falsehoods of other men�
��s follies had lifted him up into unreal values.
Such stupidity is, indeed, not without its uses to persons of exalted station, as it prevents them from ever doubting their own suitability for such exaltation. No shadow or shred of such a doubt had ever visited the mind of the Crown Prince; a mind made of stout impenetrable stuff, as minds which are comfortable to their possessors always are. He was as honestly convinced of his own utility and indispensability to his country as a mother is convinced of hers to the foetus she carries in her womb. The country could only live, breathe, have its being, through him and his family; remove himself and his family, where would the country be? Broken up under some foreign rule, no doubt, or swamped in socialism under his brother Elim. He himself was the only possible Vice-Regent of God in Helianthus. Doubtless he overrated his own qualities; and in his own estimate called obstinacy firmness, ignorance wisdom, fool-hardiness courage, stupidity superiority, brutality virility, and so on, even as ordinary mortals baptize their defects as excellences. But this could only be proved when he came to the throne, and so long as he lived there would certainly be always one person to whom it would never be proven, namely, himself.
Whilst he kept his vigils, and persuaded himself that he was absorbed in his anxiety and apprehension, his brother Othyris was haunted by a different kind of disquietude. If his father died, he himself would be next heir to the throne. The present illness brought this possibility home to him with startling force.
Therefore, if in the innermost soul of the Crown Prince there was a lurking, secret sense of disappointment when King John got well enough to eat some roast pheasant instead of chicken broth, Othyris was, without any mingled feelings, unfeignedly glad; and a great apprehension was lifted off his mind when his father went for his first drive in the avenues of the public park, showing a complete convalescence by the size of his cheroot. The people cheered the King as he passed (for in every crowd there are always many who are good-natured, and many more who are snobs); and the sovereign thought to himself: ‘They know what they would have lost if I had died.’ To him it seemed natural and fitting that they should be grateful to himself, his physicians, and Providence for the favour of his recovery.
There was a Thanksgiving Service in honour of his recovery at the Cathedral; that great and famous building which had been in its earliest years a temple of Zeus, and in its present composite architecture was Classic, Byzantine, Renaissance, holding a score of various and opposing styles in its mighty rambling mass, and sending forth its sonorous chimes over the city at its feet. The celebration was imposing in the mingled religious, secular, and military pomp and ceremony which characterised it. All the princes of the reigning House were, of course, present; troops were massed in large numbers in the cathedral square; the great bell of solid silver, only heard on supreme occasions, sent its sweet, deep notes into the springtide; and a considerable number of persons, chiefly women and children, were crushed and suffocated between the barricades covered with crimson cloth, and the lines of armed soldiery and police. This is the human sacrifice which is as essential to the success of a modern triumph as decapitated heads rolling on the grass are necessary to the feasts of savage and misguided nations.
The monarch, standing before the high altar, with his hand on his sword hilt, and the sunlight falling down from the golden dome on to the bald crown of his head, was an inharmonious central figure; but all countries are used to that kind of incongruity. Even Cæsar’s cranium did not wholly suit the laurel wreath.
‘What is in his mind?’ wondered Othyris, as he stood a step behind his father, before that grand and glittering altar. ‘Gratitude? Faith? Desire to deserve renewed health? Sentiment, tender and touching, of the city’s rejoicing? Belief in the Deity to whom thanks and praise are being offered in his name by those lovely voices of the youthful choristers and the vox humana of the noble organ?’ No: not any one of these emotions was likely to be felt by John of Gunderöde. He was probably chafing at the length of the service, and feeling the impatience for food and drink of a hungry convalescent.
The King drove home behind his beautiful white horses, holding his plumed casque on his knees, and bending his head to the people with more cordiality than usual. The enthusiasm of the population pleased him, and the vast crowds, kept in place by the soldiery, were guarantee to him that he could go to war when he pleased. For a war was the desire of his soul.
In these days a country which has not a war on its hands is considered to be either numerically or financially weak; probably both. King John had reigned thirty years and had sent his troops nowhere; he had acquired no territory; he had utilised none of the raw material which had been gathered and drilled so perseveringly, except, indeed, once when an expedition to a desert country had been planned and executed by the ambitious old Minister, Domitian Corvus, and had ended in the decimation of the Hélianthine battalions by a ruler uncivilised and unchristian — a period of sad humiliation to the nation and the monarch. Ever since that painful period the King had no desire in his soul more strong and more difficult of realisation than his wish for war; he would have been quite ready to send his troops to be cut to pieces in aid of one of his allies; but Europe was at peace — that is, was armed to the teeth, but afraid to move. The only campaign which offered itself was one in alliance with Candor, in barbaric lands.
The great and ancient kingdom of Candor, which had of late years called herself Imperia, because she thought it sounded finer in the ears of mankind and was told that it was philologically more correct, was a great friend to the newly-made kingdom of Helianthus. She did not call herself an ally, because, whilst friendship engages to nothing, alliance compromises and may want a sword drawn; and Candor’s sword was always in use for herself alone, unsheathed, all the world over, preceding and protecting her commerce and her religion. Candor liked to keep her hands free; and to that wisdom she owed her eminence and vast extension. No doubt, to be every nation’s ally, as Julius was, comes to much the same thing in the end; but the policy of Candor (otherwise Imperia) was the wiser: no Power could say that Candor had deceived it, for she never promised anything.
Her sovereign and princes paid flattering visits to other countries, her fleets did the same; her ambassadors were doubly discreet, because they were careful not to know the language of any country to which they were accredited; she was always ready to lend out of her great riches, if the security given were good; and her banks were the most solid in all the world. But her sword she would not draw in international complications; it was essentially a domestic instrument, and was generally only used on black, brown, and yellow bodies, which of course are not counted as true war-game any more than in sport rabbits are counted as tigers. At the present moment Candor was pushing on Helianthus to what she called expansion; ordinary mortals call it conquest. The synonym is not new; it was in use in the time of the Caesars. King John thought expansion an admirable term, and an admirable thing; and he did not perceive that whilst it was really so to the florid health, the full-blooded strength, the plethora of wealth, the masterful temper, and the energetic force of Candor herself, it was to the Hélianthine realm and people, with their scanty resources, their insufficient population, and their enormous taxation, as injurious as blood-letting to a weak constitution. King John had visited hospitals to little purpose, for he had not learned to see the difference between robust health and anaemia. To him war always appeared a sanitary phlebotomy; so, in despite of all precedent and good sense, he prepared to go to war or, as Candor called it, to colonise, to civilise, to open new markets, to change sandy wastes into rich cornfields.
There was great activity in the ports, and the depots, and the barrack-yards; the railway trains were full of recruits and men of the reserve huddled together like cattle in trucks; there was much speech-making on platforms, and spouting of vain-glorious periods; and contractors were jubilant, getting rid of all their inferior goods at most superior prices. Helianthus, who had so much to learn and was frequently being
boxed on the ears for her ignorance by her big sisters, was as a whole flattered by the idea that she could go a-colonising with her flag flying, as in the country districts her boys and girls went a-maying with their posies tied to poles. The enterprise was not to a great degree popular, but it was trumpeted by the Press, praised in the clubs, and held up to national admiration by fluent orators both in and out of Parliament and Senate. The King even sacrificed several days of blackcock and wild turkey shooting to contribute his quota to the national enthusiasm, and to do his part in offering to the public the alcohol of a boastful vanity. He received in the throne-room a deputation of senators, deputies, and personages; he wore full-dress uniform, his grandest Orders, and a jewelled sabre; and he fully believed that he was doing his highest duty to the nation and the world in sacrificing himself thus in autumn days, when blackcock and wild turkeys might have been falling like rain before his breechloader. He congratulated the deputation, the country, and himself, on the martial temper which (according to him) was growing up amongst the younger men; and predicted that, under the favouring benignity of Providence, the Hélianthines would become stronger and more powerful with every decade, and rise to true greatness in the history of modern nations. Great! — what is the meaning of the adjective in the mouths of monarchs, of princes, and of statesmen? A docile populace, pleased to beget sons for the slaughter; ready to starve on its own hearths in order that the policy of its leaders may be victorious abroad; veteran soldiers willing to leave their occupations and families to take up arms, and meekly accepting neglect and starvation on their return to their homes; the flag flying in every far-away distant sphere, that the sweater may thrive and the goldbroker gorge; the active army a submissive servant, equally ready to ravage a dark continent abroad, or to gag liberty at home; the navy, a mighty tool always at hand to blockade, and bombard, and burn on any shore, wherever the potential traders at home require new marts, or a rival Power has gained a footing; an exchequer deep as the deep sea, into which fools pour their earnings meekly and trustfully, and the spendthrift State plunges ravenous hands unpunished — this is for a country to be great as modern monarchs and their ministers construe greatness. Should Helianthus be behind her sister-nations in this kind of greatness? Forbid it, Heaven!