by Ouida
‘Hate the sin and love the sinner. Is not that what one ought to do?’
Princess Gertrude shuddered.
‘Love a regicide? — oh, my dear Elim! Christ Himself would not enjoin that.’
‘Why is a regicide worse than any other murderer?’
‘Pray, if you think such things, do not say them to me.’
‘Well, tell me why? Argue with me — do not muzzle me!’
But she was obstinately mute. The subject seemed to her too horrible, too blasphemous, too diabolical, to be discussed in speech. That the son of a king should think the assassination of a king a crime on the same level as the murder of a shoeblack or a shepherd, appeared to her impious.
‘Really, I cannot listen to you when you are in such terrible moods as this.’ she said nervously. ‘A king is the Lord’s Anointed! His person is sacred.’
‘Indeed?’ said Othyris, with sarcastic incredulity.
‘Then it ought also to be invulnerable. A sovereign ought not even to have the heel of Achilles. But he has.’
She was silent; she dared not blame Providence for not having made monarchs bullet-proof. Yet she could not either assert that they were so. It was one of those mysteries which she was accustomed to put away in the innermost chambers of her mind, in faith and fear, there unexamined to await the will of the Most High for explanation.
CHAPTER XII
ALMOST the only person in Helios whom Elim, Duke of Othyris, counted as his friend was, paradoxically enough, the editor of a small newspaper of pronounced republican sympathies. Ednor was a scholar and a liberty-loving enthusiast; on both of which accounts his lot in Helios was an unhappy one. He wrote all the articles for his little journal himself, and the views which were expressed in its columns frequently earned for him the imposition of heavy fines and even occasional periods of imprisonment or exile. When he was fortunate enough to have his freedom, he lived in a garret in the poorest and lowest quarter of the town; and there Othyris used to visit him as frequently as he could manage to do so without attracting attention.
On one of these visits, in the summer after the fall of the Ivory Tower, Ednor happened to mention that he had just been to see Platon Illyris, the old hero who had freed Helianthus from the foreign yoke half a century before, but whose glorious victories in the War of Independence his former comrade-in-arms, the first Theodoric, had basely utilised, at the psychological moment, to seize the vacant throne for the House of Gunderöde. To Ednor’s great astonishment Othyris appeared not to be aware of the fact that Illyris was now living in obscurity and retirement close to Helios.
‘Is it possible, sir,’ he asked Othyris, ‘that you did not know it?’
‘No, I never had a hint of it.’
‘The police know it: have known it for years.’
‘And my father, I suppose?’
‘No doubt the King must always have been aware of it.’
Othyris sprang to his feet, speaking with a determination he rarely displayed.
‘I will go and see Platon Illyris to-morrow; he is the greatest man that Helianthus ever possessed.’
‘His greatness dates from very long ago.’
‘So does Homer’s,’ said Othyris, with irritation. Who was there in the present generation worthy to hold a lantern to light the steps of the old hero of Argileion and of Samaris?
That he himself should have been ignorant of the presence in the country of such a man seemed to him almost criminal in its affront to a mighty past.
‘Sir,’ said Ednor, with hesitation, ‘your royal father is very adverse to your liberal opinions, to your protection of liberal thinkers, to your avowed antagonism to the existing institutions (to use the newspaper phrase); he will remember (if you forget) that Platon Illyris was put in chains by your grand-sire, the late sovereign, Theodoric. For you, sir, to visit him — will it be prudent?’
‘That is not a question I ask myself.’
‘No; but when others are involved, might you not ask it?’
Othyris was surprised.
‘How could my visit hurt him? It might be held to compromise me, but not him.’
‘I fear that it would do both, sir.’
Othyris rose with some impatience; when contradicted he was apt to remember that he was a prince.
‘My father, the King, holds what views he thinks right. I hold mine. Had I dreamed that the hero of Argileion was dwelling near Helios, he should not have waited so long for the little I can do to show him my profound respect.’
Ednor sighed and desisted from argument.
Such a visit seemed to him a great imprudence, certain to cause great risk of troublous entanglements, but he saw that to attempt to dissuade Othyris from it would be waste of words. The utmost he could hope to do would be to endeavour to have this imprudence kept secret, or, at the least, minimised.
Othyris bade his friend adieu and descended the break-neck staircase rapidly; he said to himself, ‘What is worth doing at all, is best done quickly ‘; and he went out into the street, where the amber light of a summer afternoon was shining on the uneven stones, the moss-grown walls, the many-coloured rags. He was free from all serious engagements. Women were awaiting him at more than one afternoon reception, and longing for the presence of ‘le bel Elim.’ ‘l’ Altesse frisé, ‘le Duc doré.’ ‘le Prince charmant’; but the disappointment he would inflict on these fair creatures did not touch him greatly.
That afternoon, by a rare chance, he found himself free and alone. So fortunate a coincidence might not, he knew, occur again for weeks. He took it as it offered; and hastened to leave the quarter he was in, which was the poorest and lowest, the Montmarte and the Marais, of Helios, and go out by the north gate towards the slopes of the Helichrysum hills, the spurs of the great mountain range called Mount Atys. A few persons recognised him, and uncovered their heads as he passed; but for the greater part of the way he was left unnoticed, much to his satisfaction. It never occurred to the majority that this pedestrian could possibly be a prince. The people never easily understand that those who can ride or drive at pleasure may possibly prefer to walk. Those who are deprived of all luxury can never comprehend that luxury may become monotonous and tiresome.
Most of the dwellers in these streets were engaged in their various daily labours, but the old dark houses with grated windows and iron-plated doors were gay with many-coloured rags and climbing plants blossoming over their balconies; mediaeval lanthorns swung on chains from their walls, and storks were building their nests on the roofs; beautiful olive skinned children rolled in play with merry dogs on the uneven stones, and old men and women slept on the steps of churches which had once been classic temples; and, ever and again (the singer unseen), some soft sweet voice was heard, falling down through the air, as a nightingale’s, in showers of liquid sound. In these quarters the King’s second son was well known, but few recognised him as he went rapidly and alone up the steep, uneven, paven highway which led to the lower slopes of Mount Atys.
Once outside the barrier of the town, with its high grey walls and its great entrance-gate, called the Gate of Olives, the soft and radiant landscape without broke full upon his sight, the terraces of the olive plantations rising one above each other in lofty tiers, their sad, silver-grey foliage relieved at frequent intervals by the white blossoms of the wild peach-and pear-trees. The day was brilliant, and its full beauty faced him as he passed the guards of the town, the customs-officials, and the soldiers standing sentinel under the portcullis of the city gates, who all hastened in eager obsequiousness to salute him and to present arms. Once beyond these huge Cyclopean walls and ponderous iron doors, he was alone with the rural solitudes, which on this side of the town were not marred by any modern agriculture or vulgarity-exhaling suburban erections.
The grass of the fields grew close up to the city bastions, and the rivulets ran down from the woods to fill their moat. Othyris drew in with a deep breath the aromatic air which blew freshly from the mountains and valleys o
f the alps of Atys, and thought that he was much better here than in the perfumed and crowded drawing-rooms of the great ladies of Helios, flattered and wooed by honeyed lying lips, and bound to lie sweetly to the liars in return. It was rarely at this season that he could escape thus into the solitude and freshness of the country, and the escape was the more delightful to him from its rarity, and its vague forbidden flavour of the école buissonnière.
In an aged pear-tree by the roadside two golden orioles were at work on a half-made nest among the white clusters of the blossoms; he paused and watched them, then went on his way the happier for the sight.
The olive woods needed little culture. There were no labourers under the trees. Peasants were few and far between upon these hills. The sylvan solitudes were in perfect repose. The murmur of the sea was audible in the stillness, but the sea was unseen. In the distance, thrusting their grand heads into the white cirrus clouds, were the high crests of the snow mountains, blue as sapphires, spiritual and glorious as the dream-palaces which poets visit in their sleep.
A narrow footpath wound upward for several miles between the trees and the great boulders of granite and marble, and led to the district which was known as Aquilegia. The way was strange to Othyris, and he met no one; but he had been carefully directed by Ednor; and at a certain point indicated, where an old moss-grown conduit covered a waterspring, which trickled down and crossed the hill-road, he came in sight of a low white house, with two cedars of Lebanon towering behind it, and with a group of black poplars interrupting the growth of the olive-trees. He stood still and looked at it with emotion.
To him it looked scarcely more than a cattle-shed, this little, obscure dwelling, which sheltered the greatest life in Helianthus, whilst he and his were lodged in the grand palaces, the mighty castles, the villas, the parks, the gardens, to which they had no more title than the hunter to the condor’s nest, the angler to the beaver’s dam!
Othyris stood still a few moments, looking up at the vast, straight stems of the cedars, sentinels set by nature over the grave of a buried genius. Then he went forward, and upward, until he came upon the clear space of rough grass which stretched before the house. He saw no one; but the door of the house stood open, and he heard the sound of some one unseen on the other side of the house, drawing up a bucket from a well.
He hesitated a few moments, wondering if he should offend: the sins of his forefathers felt like lead upon his spirit. In whose name, by what title, did he venture there?
It was a square house, chiefly built of the blocks of marble of a ruined temple, and ennobled by a fine and ancient frieze along its frontage, representing the history of the Golden Fleece. There was no garden; but on the rough grass surrounding the house there grew many rose-bushes and myrtle-bushes; the rest of the hillside was a forest of olives — olives old, unpruned, with great gnarled trunks, beneath which the flowers of spring delighted to live sheltered and to blossom unmolested.
There were here and there between them some gigantic oaks and some aged laurels. Between the dark grey olive wood and the pale grey olive foliage, the sea, visible from this height, sparkled in sunshine and fumed in storm, the semicircle of the dazzling city curving in sight on the eastern side of the bay.
A very large dog of the Ulmer breed, lying on the threshold, rose and advanced with an angry growl and a deep rolling bay.
Othyris put out his hand.
‘Good dog, I come in true faith.’
A voice, from the casement immediately above, called to the dog.
‘Ajax, Ajax, be quiet!’
The dog looked up to some invisible speaker, obeyed and was silent, standing on the watch, halfreassured, half-doubtful.
‘Ajax, be friends with me,’ said Othyris. ‘I am a friend of your race.’
The great dog allowed himself to be caressed.
Othyris looked up to the narrow aperture above, which had a sculptured coping and an iron grating; ivy and the Madonna’s herb hung all about it, so that it was partially concealed by them. He could not see the speaker who had called to Ajax, and the dwelling seemed deserted; it had no sign of life except the great dog and the innumerable swallows flying in and out of its verdure, above its roof, and between the trees around it.
It was solitary and solemn, as befitted the tomb of a great renown which men had slighted and forgotten. Illyris, like Isis, who had been worshipped there, had no place in the world of living men; the fires which had burned on so many altars for him were cold as those which had flamed for her.
Othyris, receiving no further opposition from the dog, ventured across the marble step of the entrance. He found himself in a small, stone-paved passage, with a square window, which opened on to the myrtle-bushes and the unclipt roses. An inner door to the left, also open, showed him a room lined and filled with books; in a great black leather chair an old man was seated, a large volume on his knee. Othyris knew that he must see before him Platon Illyris.
He crossed the threshold, and bowed low, very low, before that mighty figure.
‘What do you want here, whoever you are?’ asked the occupant of the chamber, in a voice still deep and firm.
‘I wished to see Platon Illyris,’ said Othyris.
‘Indeed! ‘said the old man, with a sceptical irony in his tone. ‘And who may you be that wants to see dead men?’
Othyris hesitated; he knew that the name of his House stunk in the nostrils of Illyris. But to lie or prevaricate to the old hero was repugnant to him; it seemed unworthy. He hesitated a moment longer, then said:
‘Sir, I am the second son of the King. I am Elim of Gunderöde. Men call me the Duke of Othyris.’
The face of Illyris grew stern and dark; his broad brows contracted; his stooping form rose erect in his chair.
‘Young prince.’ he said harshly, ‘you do ill to dig dead men out of their graves. I am in mine. Let me be.’ ‘No. Let me speak with you a little while.’
‘Wherefore? A son of your House can be nought to me except an usurper, a tyrant, a stranger.’
‘That I understand. To you, it must of necessity seem so. It was not to build up our throne that you gave your blood and your brethren.’
The old man looked at him with the keenness of other days lighting up his eyes.
‘Such words are strange in your mouth. You are the great-grandson of the traitor Theodoric.’
Othyris coloured and winced at the words, but he did not resent them.
A tremor of remembrance and rage passed through the old man’s large and bony frame. He made a movement of both hands, as of one who pushes away some unclean and clinging thing.
‘You are Princes in Helianthus,’ he said harshly, ‘let that content you. Do not grudge me a runlet of cold water, a stone cell, a book, the air of the hills. Get you gone, young man. Go back to your purple and fine linen.’
‘Sir,’ said Othyris, ‘if those things satisfied me, should I be here?’
‘Who knows? Idlers go to gape at a sick and sightless lion in his cage. I was a lion once, but your great-grandsire’s nets were stronger than was my strength. Get you gone.’
But Othyris lingered, standing before the venerable figure with the folio volume open on its knees.
He had come, humbly, as a scholar and disciple, when he might have come with pomp and power; he had come as a suppliant, when he might have come in authority; he had come with his heart in his hand, strongly moved and voluntarily putting aside his high estate; — and he was received as an intruder who had broken in where he had no right to enter. He controlled his irritation and mortification with difficulty; keeping always before him, as check upon his anger, his strong sense of the great wrongs done by those of his blood to Platon Illyris, and to the nation for which the aged hero had fought and suffered.
‘If he struck me.’ he thought, ‘he would be within his rights.’ So it seemed to him.
A tame dove flew in over the myrtles and settled on the shoulder of Illyris, fluttering her wings and cooing softly.<
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‘If I wrung this creature’s neck I should be a traitor,’ said the old man. ‘The dove of Helianthus flew thus to your great - grandsire, and he first caressed, then choked her.’
‘Sir,’ said Othyris, ‘I have said I abhor the crimes of my race. Is it fair, then, to reproach me with them? The worst was done long before my birth. In what is done now, I have no more voice than that bird on your shoulder.’
‘You are of the hawk’s brood. There is a Gallic proverb: On chasse de race.’
‘Many were traitors as well as he, were they not?’ he answered. ‘The nation was not true to itself. Were nations true to themselves could any man ever enslave them?’
Platon Illyris struck his clenched hand on the marble of the window-seat beside him.
‘Where had there been a nation here except for me? And your grandsire repaid me with a cell in the fortress of Constantine.’
‘Sir, I know,’ said Othyris, with profound humility. ‘It was the blackest of all the crimes of that time, because the most ungrateful. But visit it not on me. I burn with shame for it. I come hither to ask your pardon for it. It should cling like the shirt of Nessus to my race. I do not see these things as my relatives see them. I have thought for myself, and I cannot go, unless you say that you forgive my people.’
‘And if I said it, what would the falsehood profit you?’ ‘What does a blessing profit? It is a breath, an idea, a murmur, a nothing; yet it may change remorse to peace.’
‘There is no remorse to change where there has been success.’
‘Sir, how can you tell? The death-bed of Theodoric of Gunderöde was visited by many ghosts.
I have heard old servants relate how, in the dead of night, unable to rest for the phantoms of his own thoughts and fears, he wandered sleepless and scared down the cypress alleys of Soleia, crying on dead men to pardon him, and on hell to spare him.’
Illyris was silent. His mind was far away in memories long untouched by any call to recollection.