by Ouida
Old age is always disagreeable to early manhood, which despises it because it is old age; but when it has a sunset glory behind it of a splendour of achievement which the mists of calumny or the night of death cannot darken, then, of necessity, it is extremely and unspeakably offensive to young men, especially to a generation which has achieved nothing.
Ednor indeed came there with the reverence of a disciple and the sympathy of a scholar, but Ednor was not often free to do what he chose. So, gradually, an absolute solitude had been the lot of the hero of the War of Independence; but it was not lamented by him; he preferred the minds of great writers long dead to those of the doctrinaires and the nihilists of modern thought. He had become used to his loneliness, and valued it. Loneliness, if melancholy, is at least not irritating. The mind of a people is shallow. It soon forgets. For years the Hélianthines cherished the name and adored the acts of their hero; but all public evidence of their gratitude being unwelcome to those who ruled over them, and even being repressed with severity, they ceased to dare show what they felt, and as his own generation passed away his hold on the memory of the nation became slighter. To the generation which was that of Othyris the great patriot had become little more than a tradition; and, like Othyris, it had ceased to remember that he was still a living man.
Scrupulous and stern in his estimate of the obligations of honour, Illyris preserved an absolute neutrality on all public matters. He never went outside the olive groves and cedar shadows of Aquilegia; and the few who visited him in that solitude found him inexorable in his resolve to have nothing to do with revolutionary politics.
‘When a man is as old as I am, his name is but a pricked bladder; even the peas have dropped out of it.’ he said to those who urged him to let them use his name. He knew that he had liberated his country once; but that, through the treachery of another, and the unwisdom perchance of himself, neither he nor Helianthus were free — scarcely freer, except in semblance, than when the foreigner had ruled there.
The only companion of the old hero in his retreat in Aquilegia was the grand-daughter of one of his three dead sons. Many influences had combined to make her what she was, and the silence and stately gloom of her birthplace — the old northern city on the grey dull waters — had been to her what the darkness of a sunless chamber is to the gladiolus; it had bleached the rose-colour from the calyx. She had never known the joyousness of youth. Laughter had seldom parted her beautiful serious lips. She was not sad, but she was never gay. She was what Athene, made mortal, might have been. She had been born in a northern country, on a northern sea; a country of vast plains white with level frozen snow through long winters, and green with rich grass and covered by sleek herds and by fat flocks in spring and summer, with many-coloured barges drifting slowly along streams and through canals, and beautiful ancient cities with architecture fine and delicate as the lace-work for which their women were famous, and bell towers making music morn and eve over the gabled roofs and moss-grown walls. There she had spent a peaceful but lonesome childhood in a town full of mediaeval legend, art, and history.
She had much of the beauty of a fine and classic statue: its harmony of line, its justness of proportion, its purity of colour. One could have fancied she was a Greek goddess imbued with life; there was something in her aloof from ordinary existence, from general humanity; something which was not arrogance, and was still less shyness; an immutable serenity which never varied, a disdain which was unconscious, even when it was unkind.
She had dwelt with poverty, but she had been nourished on great thoughts, and she had in her veins the blood of an ancient and heroic race.
Her mother had been a woman of that northern city on the cold grey sea; the daughter of an artisan, a worker in brass and steel; she had been married for her beauty and her piety by the son of Gelon Illyris, who, when exiled by the Gunderöde, had gained his living as a gunsmith in the dim old Gothic seaport town which was hers by birth. She had died in the early years of her wedded life, and her daughter had never known her; she grew up, alone with her father, who was heartbroken by the loss of his wife in her youth. She had been educated by the nuns of a solemn mediaeval refuge which stood on the edge of one of the dark and sluggish canals of the old streets. Here she had learned to make the beautiful lace which her mother had made before her, and here she had learned other feminine arts and crafts, and a power of reticence and silence not common to youth. From her father she had learned the Hélianthine tongue, the Hélianthine history, the Hélianthine classics, and had conceived for them an impassioned reverence. By him, also, she had been taught to hold in awe and honour the great hero from whose blood they sprang.
‘Let us go to him, father; let us go.’ she urged many a time. But the son of Gelon was a tired and sorrowful man; his heart was in his wife’s grave; he had never seen the great hero of his race, and Helianthus seemed to him far off, very far off, lying in the warm southern light, washed by the waves of the Mare Magnum.
‘You can go to him, child, when I die, should he be living then,’ he said to her, knowing that he had in him the pains of a mortal disease; and when he did die, which was in her sixteenth year, she went straightway from his grave to a southward-bound vessel loading in the docks. She did not know whether the hero of her race was living or dead; but Helianthus was surely there, in that odorous warmth, that amber light, that fragrance as of dew-wet roses, of which the Hélianthine poets had written in so many different ages. She was drawn by it as the young fledged bird is drawn off the nest by the charm of the balmy air, the smile of the sunbeams dancing.
So one day Platon Illyris, standing in his doorway, leaning on his great olive-wood stick, saw a young girl, dusty and travel-stained, and clothed in black, come up his grass-grown path between the untrimmed rose-bushes.
She paused within a few yards of the threshold, and was silent, being afraid.
‘Who are you? ‘ he asked her, in no gentle tones, for he was intolerant of trespassers.
She put back the veil from her head.
‘I am Ilia Illyris.’
‘Who do you say?’
‘I am Ilia Illyris.’ ‘The grandchild of Gelon?’
‘Yes.’
A wave of emotion passed over his stern features as a shadow may flit for a moment over a marble bust. ‘Why do you come hither?’ he asked.
‘I came to see the hero of Argileion and Samaris.’
A faint smile came on his cold, stern face. They were his greatest battles.
‘Is your father dead? ‘he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You have no one?’
‘No one.’
‘You cannot stay here.’
‘That must be as you will, sir.’
He was silent; the submission, immediate and unquestioning, softened him. He called to his woman-servant:
‘Maïa! Come hither.’
The servant answered his call — a strong, tall, bronzed figure, in the costume of the country, with the sad, patient eyes of a mare in the yoke of a plough.
‘I am here, master,’ she answered.
‘Take this child within,’ he said to her. ‘Cleanse her from the dust, and give her food. Let her rest. I will see her later.’
‘Come,’ said the woman Maïa, showing no surprise, asking no questions.
Ilia also said nothing, but stooped and kissed the earth; the earth of her fathers. Then she went indoors in silence with Maïa.
Maïa asked her no questions. Whatever the master did was well done, and beyond dispute. Thus the maiden from the north came to dwell at Aquilegia.
Here in this spot, beautiful by nature and sad from solitude, Ilia passed seven years of her youth, joylessly, as youth usually reckons joy, but not unhappily; in a profound calm, an unbroken peacefulness, but also in an unbroken monotony; and monotony, a couch of roses to age, is often a bed of nettles to youth. She could not even be certain that she was welcome; sometimes she thought that she was only tolerated, as the storks were upon the ro
of.
The years were marked by the coming and going of those storks, of the herons, of the swallows, of the nightingales, of the thrushes, of the quails. There was little else to mark time, except the succession of the wild flowers, from the January celandine to the December snapdragon. The distance was not much more than three miles downward through the olives to the seaward road, leading on the left to the beach and on the right to the south gate of Helios, called the Gate of Olives; but the city might have been a hundred miles distant for aught that Illyris or Ilia had to do with it. Their one woman-servant went to its market when needful. Letters of friends there were none for either of them. Now and then Ilia finished some of the fine lace of which the art had been taught her in childhood by the nuns, sent it to a merchant of the north, and received its price. Twice a year she drew her slender income from the bank, went into the city, and bought for herself a black or a white gown. That was all. The rest of her time was passed in attending to household matters, and in study; grave studies in the learned volumes, chiefly Greek and Latin, by which the house was filled; for the library of Illyris had been saved by a friend when he had been first imprisoned and exiled: the friend was dead, but the books had been safely carried to Aquilegia when Illyris had first arrived there.
Platon Illyris never interfered with her. He oftentimes seemed not even to perceive her presence; and he was certainly unconscious of all he owed to her for the cleanliness and comfort which sweetened his latest years. At other times, but these were rare, he spoke to her of his far-away past; and then his eyes would flash and darken, and his voice grow stronger, and the fires of his spirit awaken, and the days of the past live again for him.
Ilia had no knowledge of luxury and pleasure, and had no need of that to which she was a stranger. When she could see the sun rise and set above the sea, hear the nightingale’s song in the myrtle thickets, breathe fresh, pure air, study the great thoughts of the mighty dead, and watch the succession of the wild flowers, she was content.
Illyris had possessed a profound knowledge of his fellow-men. No weakness or fault of theirs had ever escaped him. He had used them, and cast them aside as he did a notched sword. But of women he had never had any knowledge. He had the Oriental view of them — that they were made to amuse, and to conceive, and to nourish; nothing else; which is indeed the view taken by Nature herself. He did not therefore perceive that Ilia was of a finer mould, a firmer texture, than her sex in general. But she pleased his taste; he liked to see that one of his own blood was living in the fulness of youth and of beauty; her step was soft, her movements were noiseless, her voice was melodious and low, her face and form were those of the female divinities once worshipped in Helianthus, whose lineaments were still seen in many a mask and bust turned up in the soil of the woods of Mount Atys by charcoal-burners and mushroom-seekers.
The veins of Illyris had been chilled by deep wrongs and long solitude, and affections were far away from him — as far away as the days of his great battles; yet he was glad to see Ilia beneath his roof, to know that she belonged to him. He was not unkind, but he was not kind; he thought little about her; sometimes he was interested in her studies of the ancient literature of Helianthus, and gave her the aid of his own great knowledge. But at other times he would tell her rudely that women should not occupy themselves with learning. She never contradicted him; she waited patiently until a gentler mood had come to him, and he was again disposed to assist her philological or historical studies.
But she was happier thus than she would have been in the noise and turmoil of any of the cities of men. Her temperament was that of the recluse; the stir and struggle, the sights and sounds of the world were distressing and odious to her; even the old, still, darksome cities of her mother’s land were too populous for her; their chimes too noisy, and their roofs too close; their air too full of voices, and their hearths too near each other. She wanted vast solitudes, great silences, deep shade, wide waters; the vicinity of crowds hurt her like the touch of caustic; she had the soul in her of her people of an earlier time who had dwelt in lonely temples and served the altars of forest gods.
To Ilia, departure from Aquilegia would have been like the exile from Acadia to Evangeline, like the banishment to Danubian darkness to Ovid. She had nothing in her of the modern temper — nothing of its restlessness, its feverish discontent, its appetite for tumult and for change; she asked of life only repose, isolation, and the near presence of wild nature; she could live on the scantiest and plainest food, but she could not exist in an air breathed by drunken crowds. The solitude, the silence, the sanctity and majesty of these everlasting hills were dear to her; the calmness, the stillness, the deep shadows, the clear lights, the sunsets beyond the distant sea, the silvery foliage overhanging the marble walls, the sense of nearness to a great past from which she herself had sprung, to a race which, æons earlier, had been her race, whose glories were imperishable in human memory so long as human lives endured, — all these rendered her home in the olive groves of these classic hills dear to her as no other spot on earth could ever be. Her love for it was the strongest love she ever yet had known.
CHAPTER XIV
THE visit of Othyris to Aquilegia was soon repeated, and little by little Illyris almost ceased to remember that his disciple was a Gunderöde, the great-grandson of Theodoric. He only saw in him a young man of extreme intelligence, of high culture, and of original opinions; one, also, who had as much humility as capacity. He forgot that this scholar might one day reign; or if he did remember it, he only strove the more to strengthen in him all the views and principles which made Othyris averse to all that other men of his rank considered to be their religion and their right.
‘What would you have him do if ever he be called to the throne?’ Ilia asked timidly one day after the departure of Othyris.
‘Refuse it,’ said Platon Illyris.
‘Would that remove his responsibility?’ she said, apprehensive of appearing rash and rude. ‘If we drop a burden do we not still remain bound to account for it?’
Illyris was silent a little while.
‘You think for yourself. That is well. I admit that it is well. You are bold. You are an Illyris,’ he said. ‘When there are two evils betwixt which a man must choose, he can but take the lesser. He is not a god to change the face of the world.’
‘But, as king, could he not do some good?’ Platon Illyris smiled grimly.
‘The strongest swimmer in a stream stronger than himself is swept away on it. There is a putrid and pestiferous current always circling round every throne of which no occupant of it can escape the miasma. Carolus Magnus himself, were he reigning to-day, could not resist the sycophant, the politician, the financier, the pressure of the Press.’ ‘Might the Duke of Othyris not create a republic and lead it?’
‘He might perhaps if occasion served; but that would be to turn traitor to his own race. A man of honour could not do that. Noblesse oblige; and it is an inexorable obligation with loyal characters. His is loyal. He is not strong, but he is sincere.” Then what future will he have?’
‘Who can say? I doubt me he will end ill. Men do not love an honest man, whether prince or peasant. But get you to your household work, child. These questions are not for women.’
He regarded her as veterans two thousand years before in Helianthus had regarded their females. He looked after her as without protest she silently left his chamber. For the first time her beauty, her grace, her dignity were apparent to him; for the first time he perceived that she was no mere spinner at the distaff, or housewife in a dwelling-place. She was an Illyris; she was not as other women were.
Did she dream dreams of a future in which this young man and she might have a mutual part? Did she see in herself a purer Eudocia, a more unselfish Irene, a Joan of Arc victorious and beloved?
Who could tell the thoughts of a mind divided at once by virginal unconsciousness of its own instincts and by the force inherited from a martial race? Memories of the springtime of
human life, of the awakening of the soul and the senses, were far away from Illyris, so far, so very far, and covered with the fallen leaves of so many passionless and joyless years, yet they arose in his mind now.
‘I am no fit guardian of youth, of a maiden’s youth,’ he thought. ‘I am so old, so old! An aged hound, toothless, and chained, and feared by none, although once he kept all at bay.’
And the heart of the hero of Argileion and Samaris was as a stone heavy in his breast.
Seeing that he was in sorrow Ajax came to him, and laid his head on the knees of his master and friend.
‘Ajax,’ said Illyris, as he laid his hand on the dog’s head, ‘ask not of the gods to live long, my friend. Age is but an unkinder death; conscious of itself and powerless to rise. Readers of history weep for Germanicus, for Marcellus, for John of Austria, for Gaston de Foix — O fools! Thrice happy were those youths!’
‘Elim of Gunderöde is a theorist, an idealist,’ he would say to Ilia. ‘It is not with theories, nor with ideals, that men are governed. It is by the sword, by the fist; by the force of the brain, not by its fancies. His mind is rich in imagination, but it is poor in willpower. To act strongly he must be strongly excited; when the excitement passes his will drops like a burnt-out match. It is volition rather than intellect which makes the man who rules others succeed in being accepted and obeyed by them. This young prince does not believe in his own powers; therefore men will never long believe in him. He is full of doubts and scruples; how should he enforce his will upon others? He has no will! He is too undecided to govern men. Indecision is an intellectual defect; it accompanies acute perception, it belongs to philosophic doubt, but it paralyses action. The student may be undecided, indeed should be, for he sees all the facts of a question, and is not called on to turn theory into fact; but the leader of men must know what he wishes, what he intends, what he rules, and must never waver in his determination and his choice.’