by Ouida
Ilia Illyris was the only woman on earth who could, in all sincerity and unconsciousness, have treated his rank as a thing indifferent to her. Her complete isolation from the world, and ignorance of its values and its habits; the disdain which she inherited for all the distinctions of position, and all the simulacrum of royalty and power, made her omission of all the deference which others showed him, and the simplicity and familiarity of her intercourse with him, entirely natural and indeed inevitable. It was as welcome to him as was to the weary wayfarer a draught of the clear spring water which flowed under the parsley and cresses of the rivulets of Mount Atys.
Who could surpass the Illyris in their traditions? Her pride was not in herself, but in those whose name she bore.
As the companionship of Ednor was agreeable to Othyris as the breeze and smell of the sea are agreeable after hours spent in a crowded ball-room, so the little house of Illyris was a refuge to him from the Court and from the world, as a shady moss-grown nook in a woodland is to the harried deer.
Ilia Illyris showed Othyris no disrespect, but she showed him no deference. Usually, wherever he appeared, women were in a flutter of expectation and displayed their charms as pedlars their wares. Her stillness, her calmness, the unvarying simplicity of her manner, and the occasional severity of her words, were a fascination to him strong in proportion to its novelty. She might have been a woman of the Homeric age. He had asked for her friendship at first sight; but when six months had passed he could not flatter himself that he had obtained it.
Had he deserved it? He could not, to be sincere with himself, think so. Weighed by her standards, his life seemed to him frivolous, unproductive, selfish. Besides, he saw that he was to her always the descendant of the man who had betrayed and imprisoned Platon Illyris.
To the temper of Ilia Illyris, treachery was the one unpardonable sin; tainting for centuries, generation after generation, unpardonable, unforgettable, eldest-born of hell, — of that hell which men have created for themselves. The crime of the Gunderöde seemed to her an offence against the nation still more than against her race. Racial feud is dark and strong and deathless in the national character of this country, still barbaric in so much, and classic in so much, and mingled with so many alien elements brought into it by its conquered, and by its conquerors; by those whom it had dragged at the chariot wheels of its triumphs, and by those who had overrun its soil and destroyed its civilisation.
But what wounded and stung Othyris was that he made no way with her as a man; as a prince he was quite willing to abdicate all rights of rank, he was satisfied to come there as any scholar might have gone to any teacher; but he was mortified to find that his own individuality, when it had laid aside all adventitious claims of place or privilege, should seem so little welcome to her. She was more cordial to Janos, the peasant who dwelt in a hut near them and did such rough work as the woman Maïa could not do indoors and out; a shaggy, bearded figure like a faun, clothed in goatskin in winter and in summer almost nude.
‘She has the name of Rhea Silvia,’ he thought.
‘She should bear a Romulus in her womb, who would be eponymous to an eternal city.’
Her entire unlikeness to all others of her sex fascinated Othyris; he could no more have spoken to her lightly than he could have struck the statue of Astarte in the face. Before her, he was subdued into submission, and took pleasure in the mysterious and novel timidity he felt; but away from her he felt a restless vexation at his own subjection and rage.
‘I am like some awkward, blushing Cymon, of the cattle-stall and the ploughshare!’ he thought with anger. She was a beautiful woman, but she might have been made, he thought, of ivory, or marble, or silver, like that wondrous statue of Astarte which had once been throned upon these hills, and of which the traditions remained in the pages of Helicarnassus. She seemed absolutely detached from modern life, wholly insensible to the influence of others, entirely callous also to the pain or the offence her words might cause. Yet he could not feel that such speech was rudeness in her, or was intended to wound; it was the direct and simple expression of her thoughts, and what she had said was true. Any denial of its truth would have died on his lips if he had tried to utter it.
Again and again Othyris had said to himself: ‘Is this the only result of that mighty and glorious epos — that we are here? ‘What greater bathos could there be than this, that the resurrection of a nation, the ideals of its youth, the sacrifices of its women, the high and burning hopes of its patriots, should have had as their only result the paltry, fulsome, and useless ceremonials of a royal Court, the corruptions and conventionalities of a modern government, the tyrannies of taxation and contravention, the endless waste of an insatiable exchequer, the slavery of military conscription, the comedy and the formulae of parliaments?
The thunders had rolled along the mountains, the volcanic flames had leaped, the winds of the storms had swept through the air, the glorious sunrise had shone forth from the darkness, and the day had dawned — and for what issue? Oh ridiculus mus! Ilia and Illyris could not feel the paltriness of the issue in contrast to the splendour of the effort more acutely than he himself felt it.
‘It is not wholly our fault,’ he said with hesitation to Ilia one day. ‘Do not think that I say so because I am a son of the King. Our race is akin to Helianthus, not in harmony with its past or its present. But were we other than we are, I doubt if we could alter the national character or the corruption which has become the marrow of the bones of the people. Helianthus has been too long soaked in the poisonous vapours of tyranny, and bribery, and untruth and all their congeners, to wash in a Jordan of political morality and become clean. The disease has entered the innermost cells of the people’s flesh and of their brain; the greatest ruler, the holiest saint, could do nothing to cut it out; it will live on them as long as the nation lives. Can you ever obtain a plain answer to a direct question? Can any one buy the commonest thing without an effort being made to cheat in the matter of its price? Do you know anything of the conduct of elections, municipal, political, or ecclesiastical? Is it possible for a man or a woman to enter any career, or to advance in any, without underhand methods and dishonest craft? Can a mere teacher in a village school be given the place without pressure and influence indirect and often injurious to the public interests? You here in your woodland solitude know and see nothing of the sea of mud in which the Hélianthine public life has its being. Were my father Solomon or Antoninus he could do little or nothing. Were we all demi-gods or angels we could not strive against the national debauchery of the national conscience.’
Ilia was silent; she could not contradict, she would not assent; but she realised that beyond the trees and rocks and torrents of her dwelling-place there were many things of which she had no knowledge. Even the great and virile intellect of her only relative was dimmed by the passage of many years and the effect of long isolation, so that perhaps it knew little of that modern life with which he had never any contact. Janos and his fellows were much what their forefathers had been two thousand years before, and even their religion, though it bore another name, was identical in superstition and in symbol with that of the days of Pan.
Ilia lived out of the world of men; she realised that she might be unable to judge it.
CHAPTER XVII
THE Hélianthine fleet was anchored in the bay, that beautiful and romantic Bay of Helios which has been renowned through a score of centuries for the many sea-fights which have dyed its blue waters red with carnage ever since the days when the temples of Poseidon, newly built with freshly-quarried marbles, had crowned the semicircle of its mountainous coast. King John kept his navy, as all sovereigns keep theirs, nowadays, as a visiting-card to be left on neighbours, near or far, and sent about the seas of the world to produce amity, or threaten enmity, as might happen to be necessary. It is an expensive visiting-card, but as the nation pays the price of it, a sovereign and a government need not concern themselves about its cost. It is also sometimes a cumb
rous card, when it happens now and then that its errand is repented of when it has already had time to weigh anchors and get up steam. But as an innocuous way of making yourself disagreeable to some, or amiable to others, without binding yourself by treaties, it has no equal; and if the cost of sending it about is vast, well — it is the taxpayer who suffers, and he is scarcely aware of what he pays, since it is all comprised in the Naval Estimates, with which the tax payer does not often occupy himself, considering them the affair of experts.
The festive display of the Hélianthine fleet closely resembled a hostile demonstration, as its ironclads lay on the dancing waters of a glad azure sea. The huge, ugly metal hulls were in line, one after another, as near shore as they could dare to approach; and their gigantic guns bellowed defiance across the bay, as though the whole of mankind were their foes.
Othyris, as he looked at these great grey monsters, lying motionless on the water, their ugliness only accentuated by the festoons of coloured bunting hung from mast and funnel, seemed to see as in a vision the first naval war of the future in that lovely bay of Helios: the new steel and aluminium war-ships heeling over, exploding, sinking, going down in whirlpools of blood-stained water, churning the bodies of dead and dying men in the agitated foam, whilst some other victorious fleet rode triumphant on the waves of the Mare Magnum, firing in derisive exultation over the abyss in which his country’s honour had perished!
But he alone was a prey to such melancholy forebodings; every one else was rejoicing and proud, for at this moment the sea-monsters were on a peaceful errand bent. The fleet was nominally commanded by the young Duke of Esthonia, virtually by an old sea-dog admiral; and the walls of the city, the beach, the bastions, the docks, the piers, the olive-clothed hills, were all crowded with an interested and admiring crowd, assembled to wish the squadron goodspeed on its cruise. It was going this time to visit the adjacent country of Gallia, by way of proving the truth of the adage that the love of one neighbour often springs from the hatred of another; for the diplomacy of Helianthus at that moment was to ascertain her value to others without ticketing herself with any definite price, and to utilise the good-will of her allies in order to scare into dumbness and numbness those who were always ready to dismember her. For Helianthus to be friendly in a sweet and cordial way to Gallia, was to make the price of Helianthus go up to Gallia’s foes.
The Finance Minister and the Chambers of the Empire of the Guthones had at the beginning of the session put a tax upon Hélianthine honey, which was the best in the world, and upon the fleece of the Hélianthine flocks, which were equally famous — both flocks and bees were nourished on the thyme-covered hills of which classic poets had sung; and the imposition of two such duties seemed but a poor return for the constant and costly state of prepared readiness for war in which the Hélianthine people had been kept by their rulers to please the Emperor Julius. It was thought well to remind these Guthonic ingrates that neither Helianthus nor Gallia was a quantity that could with impunity be neglected in the calculations of the Julian diplomacy; that, after all, Gallia and Helianthus were kindred, so said philologists, if like other kith and kin they had often quarrelled and fought.
So the great ships lay like resting whales on the heaving swell of the Mare Magnum, ready to get under weigh; whilst Gallia, who did not mistake the motives for which she was to be visited, was busy embellishing one of her chief ports, painting her lamp-posts, cleaning her revolving lights, hanging up the colours of Helianthus with her own, burnishing her ordnance, holystoning her decks, getting ready reviews, illuminations and banquets, and preparing to do the honours graciously, though keeping her weather-eye open. The naval pageant, the banquets, the presents, would cost her a vast deal of money; but in republics as in monarchies, Chambers vote and Ministers spend happily and easily moneys which are not their own. The country of Gallia was a republic; and a republic on the frontier of a monarchy is like a factory of dynamite established close to the house of a gentleman who is afraid of a popgun. It is true that this republic was almost indistinguishable from a monarchy, having a huge standing army, a very expensive fleet, a most corrupt plutocracy, a Press entirely owned by financiers, a number of worrying, fidgetting, and irritating bylaws, a most oppressive taxation, and everything else as like a monarchy as could be.
Still a republic it was; and, although its chief magistrate was a respectable manufacturer of woollen stuffs, who did his best to look as like a king as he could by means of stars and crosses on his chest, outriders before his carriage, bloody battues in his parks, public appearances in opera-boxes and at race meetings, and absolute inaccessibility to any plebeian, still, a king he was not; and therefore, to a king, he was an uncomfortable neighbour, and the republic over which he presided was a painfully unknown quantity — an x which disturbed all the calculations of hereditary potentates, whether constitutional or absolute, whether sprung up like mushrooms from the germs on battlefields, or embedded like fossils in the sandstone of ages. All the emperors and kings caressed the excellent wool-merchant, treated him as if he were one of themselves, and to their astonishment found him a very good shot. But they were always exceedingly nervous about him, and thought him a terrible example to the wool-merchants of their own dominions. The Powers could have paired themselves off, whether for dance or duel, quite comfortably if Gallia and her wool-merchant had not existed; but Gallia was always there, to give herself airs as the terra incommoda, or to offer herself in alliance, no one of them was ever sure where or to whom.
The sovereign of Helianthus, like all his brothers in the purple, was always convinced that Gallia was conspiring against himself. She was not, because she was chiefly governed by her trading and speculating classes, who loved money and hated conspiracies. But this King John did not believe was any security against her restless passions and her ambitious instincts, which even the great syndicates might any day be unable to control. Gallia was a blood-mare who might take her head and bolt at any moment, without warning, and carry her respectable wool-merchant to an Armageddon, as helpless as was ever John Gilpin.
Therefore, since such was the custom of his brother-potentates, he sent the finest vessels of his navy to pay a visit to the southern ports of Gallia, and his favourite son to hobnob amicably with the excellent wool-stapler, whilst Hélianthine and Gallian blue-jackets would get drunk together in the streets in fraternal affection — affection which would not prevent their blowing each other into shreds the very next day if they should be so ordered to do by their respective rulers. For sailors, like soldiers, have no politics.
The great vessels were weighing anchor and departing on their mission of fraternal love and enormous expenditure; Othyris and Gavroche returned to the shore in a long - boat rowed sailors.
‘What good do you suppose this will do?’ said Othyris to Tyras, who, like himself, had been compelled by the etiquette of his family to bid Esthonia adieu and bon voyage on the deck of the great flagship, the Polyphemus.
Gavroche, who had painfully dragged his lazy length up and down the companion-way, gave his little hollow laugh, which had the sound of a tuberculous cough joined to a Mephistophelian chuckle.
‘It will benefit our brother’s babies: the wool-stapler will send them cartloads of toys and bonbons. I do not see any other particular object in the expedition.’
‘It will cost as much as would feed the eastern provinces for three months.’
‘The eastern provinces do not enter into the haute politique of our father.’
‘Their lads are undersized,’ said Othyris bitterly. ‘They count little in the drill-serjeants’ eyes.’
The eastern provinces were the crippled children of Helianthus. They were in large districts mere sandy wastes, almost Oriental in their barrenness; dry, searching winds swept them in spring, and their water-sources dried up by Pentecost; whilst in winter, oftentimes, their streams overflowed vast districts, and their tilled lands were turned into stagnant lakes. Ruins of aqueducts and reservoirs showed what
colossal, and doubtless efficient, works had existed to rectify the faults and abuses of nature in remote times, of which the very dates were forgotten. But, now, there was no attempt made on the part of the State to aid a sickly and helpless peasantry in its contest with overwhelming forces, and the east was the spavined mare in the stable of John of Gunderöde. Its districts knew no royal smile, they received no Ministerial visits; they were seldom spoken of in the Chambers, and never provided for in any Budget. The tax-collector remembered them: no one else, except the military authorities, who took away a certain percentage of their lean and tired youngsters, who were scarcely good enough for the cannon’s maw.
As the long-boat bearing Othyris and Gavroche sped across the stretch of calm blue water, freshened by a light southerly breeze, the range of the Mount Atys peaks and crags faced them, with the noonday sun illumining the snow which lingered on the summits. As the distance narrowed between them and the land, Othyris could distinguish the lines of the Helichrysum hills, and through his glass saw the olive woods of their lower slopes, and the whiteness of the broad, smooth, sandy beach below. He could even see the threads of the many water-courses; the gleam of the marble strata; the warm hues of the porphyry cliffs; and discerned even a speck which he thought was the dwelling-house of Illyris.
How willingly would he have lived there himself; the world forgetting, by the world forgot!
Happy were those who dwelt in such seclusion!
‘What do you see over there?’ said Gavroche, raising his own glass in curiosity.
‘I see Mount Atys,’ said Othyris tranquilly.
‘Look! — that peak with the snow still on it and the clouds upon its side.’
Gavroche yawned, seeing nothing of interest.
‘The Municipality is selling the Helichrysum hills to an Acetylene Company,’ he said, with relish. ‘I can put you on the thing, if you like.’