Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  ‘Whilst you philosophise, Philemon, poor child, is in prison.’

  ‘You are very harsh to me.’

  ‘Why should I not be? You have everything the world can give. You do not need any indulgence.’

  ‘Do you think material possessions can compensate for the unrest of the mind, for the captivity of the spirit?’

  ‘I can understand that to some temperaments they do not compensate; but your sorrows seem fictitious to me, beside the reality of the woes that I have seen.’

  At that moment the peasant Janos rushed through the olive trees, and fell at the feet of Othyris; he was a rude, wild, hairy figure, with great black eyes, now burning with pain and wet with tears; his breast was bare; his skin was bronzed brown, his beard long and unkempt.

  ‘My lord, my lord!’ he cried. ‘They say you are one of those who reign. Oh, hear, and be merciful, my lord! They have taken my boy, my first-born son; he was singing down on the shore, as he filled a creel with seaweed; the song is forbidden, they say — I do not know. How can singing a song be a crime? They have taken him into the city, into their prison. I have been there; they will not open to me, nor let him out. You who are great, and full of power, make them open. Give me back my boy!’

  Othyris was profoundly affected.

  ‘Get up, good man,’ he said with gentleness. ‘I am grieved; but, alas, I am as powerless as you are.’

  ‘Set him free; set him free! ‘cried Janos, who did not rise, but kept his brown toil-worn hands clasped round the knees of the man whom he believed was omnipotent. ‘He was sixteen last day of all the Saints. Only sixteen, my lord! a little lad who should be at play, and he works like an ox at the mill, to aid me, and get bread for his brothers. Only singing a song! — God in Heaven! the same old song that was sung by the men who followed the Great Man when he drove the strangers into the sea.’

  His hands relaxed their hold, he rolled upon the turf in the hysterical anguish of the southern peasant, tearing madly at his matted auburn hair, shrieking like a butchered ram whose throat is gashed by the knife.

  ‘You might have spared me this,’ said Othyris to Ilia Illyris. ‘Believe me, I need no pressure.’

  ‘I did not know that he was near.’

  She bent over the writhing body of the peasant.

  ‘Janos, arise,’ she said as she touched his shoulder. ‘You can hear me? You hurt yourself and me, my friend. The Duke of Othyris is sorry for you and for the boy.’

  Janos was calmed by her touch and her voice, as an infuriated animal is touched by those of one whom he loves and is accustomed to obey. He did not rise from the ground, but he ceased to rave, and writhe, and tear his hair and beard; he lay face downward on the grass, trembling and sobbing bitterly. Othyris stood near him, moved to a great and painful pity.

  To those who are accustomed, by breeding and through pride, to restrain in themselves the outward expression of all emotion, a violent and ungoverned display of strong feeling always appears to the heartless indecent, to the merciful most piteous. Unveiled emotion always appears an offence to those accustomed to the restraints of a polished society.

  ‘I feel wholly with you, Janos.’ he said. ‘Rise, my poor man, and take courage. If there be any way in which I can help you I will take it. Are you sure your son went quietly with the town guards? If he struggled—’

  ‘No doubt he struggled. No doubt he rebelled. He is a youth with a man’s heart.’ said Ilia Illyris with some disdain. ‘Do not even the timid fawn and sheep rebel, when they are being dragged to the shambles?’

  Janos staggered up to his feet.

  ‘Did he rebel? I know not, my lord. No one was there. As they passed through the city gate he saw Damon, the son of Orestes, who is a comrade of his, and he cried aloud to him of what had chanced. “Tell father,” he cried—” tell father they take me to prison for singing the Song of Sunrise,” and Damon, the son of Orestes, came up hither to me, fast as a dog may run, and he said: “They are taking him down to the city prison. Philemon will not sleep at home to-night, nor many nights to come.” And that is all that Damon, the son of Orestes, knew, and all that I know.’

  Then he threw up his arms to heaven, and wailed aloud; a dark, wild, most sorrowful, most terrible figure, standing in the clear green sunlight beneath the trees.

  ‘I will do what I can,’ said Othyris.

  ‘Go, Janos,’ said Ilia. ‘You hear what hope is given you. I will come and speak with your wife before the sun is down.’

  ‘Will he be back this night?’ said Janos, the great sobs breaking his words.

  ‘There is no hope of that, my poor friend,’ said Othyris. ‘The law is quick to take, and very slow to loose.’

  ‘When — when—’ gasped Janos—’ when, oh my lord?’

  ‘I cannot tell; I can promise nothing. I possess no power. But what I can I will do. Go now. You will hear from me.’

  The accent of authority, which was natural to Othyris when wearied or opposed, asserted itself through the kindness and compassion of his tone. It cowed and silenced the peasant; he ceased to importune, he tried to restrain his grief; he ceased to wail and scream; with despair upon his face he slunk away between the great trunks of the olives; he did not dare even to pray any more.

  ‘He is a poor, rude creature, sir,’ said Ilia. ‘He is not a courtier!’

  ‘He is distraught,’ said Othyris; ‘and you, lady, are unkind.’

  The colour rose into her cheeks.

  ‘I was wrong,’ she said; ‘I should have thanked you. You were good to him.’

  Othyris bowed to her, and took his leave in silence.

  He was wounded by what seemed to him her injustice and unkindness.

  Ilia remained out of doors by that old well where she had spoken with him; she sat down upon its marble ledge, which was broad and solid as a bench and carved with the acanthus leaf so dear to classic stone-workers. She was vaguely startled by the influence which she dimly perceived that she possessed over Othyris. Some slight comprehension of the intense restraint which he must put upon himself to submit to her disregard of all the formalities and deference to which he was by habit accustomed, and by his birth entitled, dawned on her; and for the first time she asked herself why he did so. Was it not, she thought, because he was sincerely weary of the conventionalities and hypocrisies of etiquette?

  This explanation seemed to her simple and natural; and she could not, from her ignorance of the world, measure in any degree the vast power which she must exercise over him to make him subdued to such renunciation of his claims to respect, such submission to her continual ironies and censure, her complete indifference to his rank. But for the first time, that morning, some perception of all which she ignored, and which he renounced, dawned on her; and the dignity and forbearance of his attitude under the provocation which she perpetually gave, claimed her admiration and moved her to a certain penitence. Birth, and the whimsical caprices of men, gave him the authority and the rank he held; it was the fault of the world, not of himself.

  She sat under the olives, whilst the swallows flew to and from their nests under the eaves of her house, and a greater sympathy stirred in her towards the son of the King than she had ever felt before. He was to her only Elim of Gunderöde, but to all the world he was one of the Princes of Helianthus, before whose coming crowds acclaimed, and trumpets sounded, and sentinels saluted, and in whom all the servility of the human race recognised un grand de la terre.

  ‘Ilia! ‘called the voice of Platon Illyris from the study window.

  She rose and went.

  ‘So they have taken the son of Janos to their prison because he sang the Song of Eos! ‘said Illyris as she entered. ‘Heavens and Earth! But for that hymn what were the country to-day? A geographical expression! A loose shaft of arrows that any hand could break! Ah, child, if you had heard the people sing that song in the days of my youth! It roused them as one man from the mountains to the sea. We who were scholars called it the Hymn of Eos; but the
people called it the Song of Sunrise. It is so old, so old, that mighty hymn. Men say it was written by Pindar. That is mere conjecture. But what is sure is that its strophes were sung when the armies of the Medes and Persians were driven out of Helianthus, and the tyranny of the Asiatics ended then and for ever.’

  The Song of Eos!

  Across the long dark space of joyless years Illyris saw the rosy morns and golden eves of his early manhood, when he, and the brothers and friends of his heart, had gone through the seeding grass of summer, or along the edge of the blue sea, chanting; its chorus in triumphant defiance.

  The Song of Eos!

  How often had the grandeur of its strophe and ante-strophe rolled like thunder above the ranks of his young soldiers, urging them on to combat and to victory as though the Divine Twins rode on their milk-white steeds and called to them aloud, as in the great strife of yore.

  And now the classic battle-chant was a forbidden thing, an offence, a misdemeanour, a breach of common law!

  Platon Illyris struck his tremulous hand upon the wooden arm of his chair. God of Battles! For what had they fought, he and his? For what had they died, all the brave and beautiful youths of the years of the liberation?

  O cruel cynic that men call Fate! O grinning satirist that men call Time!

  ‘If I had known, if I had foreseen this rule of the Gunderöde,’ he muttered, ‘I would have left the stranger in the land, I would have left the foreigner in her palaces, and the alien flag on her towers; and I would have bought a sailing vessel and sailed far away from her shores, and left to their choice a bloodless and spineless people, who, having achieved freedom, knew not how to hold it in their nerveless hands!’

  The land had been to him as a fair woman enslaved and fettered. He had given all his life to her service, and had set her free, and had put in her hands the golden fruit and flowers of liberty; and she, she had thrown down the fruit in the dust, and had stretched out her wrists to the fetters! Wise in their generation had been the men who had never fought, the men who had never dreamed, the men who never pitied, or strove, or desired; but sat in their dens like the spiders, and spun their webs, and devoured their prey, and waxed fat, leaving others to toil and to suffer, and the great salt sea of human tears to roll on from pole to pole!

  CHAPTER XIX

  ON leaving Aquilegia, Othyris took his way to the annex of the Soleia Palace, used as a pied-à-terre by Tyras, who happened at this time to be spending a few days in Helios. It was never for very long that Gavroche honoured Helios or Helianthus; he was generally to be found in the pleasure places of other countries, where he felt freer, and was not worried by any obligations to conduct himself occasionally with decency. Othyris found him in his bath-room, having been groomed by his valet and wrapped in robes of silken stuffs, and left, by his command, to sleep an hour or two before being dressed for the evening. Without, it was still a light and lovely evening, with the rays of the sun still rising like an array of spears above the horizon of the sea.

  But in the rooms of Tyras all was shuttered and perfumed and hot. Tyras had never looked at a sunset in his life. He was lying on his back on a soft couch; he was always tired; he was a Hercules in his build, but he was an utter wreck in his constitution. At seven-and-twenty he was a ruin, wholly in body and partly in mind.

  Othyris looked at him with his usual contempt; and the prostrate figure stretched itself with lazy ennui.

  He was not pleased to see his brother enter; but he had never dared to keep out Othyris, for whom he had the sullen respect and the unwilling submission of the debtor to the creditor.

  ‘What the devil can you want at this hour? ‘he muttered, with the straw of a strong drink between his teeth.

  ‘I do not come for pleasure, you may be sure.’ said Othyris.

  ‘Have any of them been to you?’ said Gavroche, meaning his creditors.

  ‘No. You are not drunk, I think.’ said Elim, ‘at least not so drunk as not to be able to understand. Sit up, and hear me.’

  ‘I will hear you.’ said Tyras, ‘but damn me if I will sit up. What is it you come to say?’

  ‘Listen, and comprehend. You will see the Minister of Justice, Deliornis, at the Palace to-night. You must take him aside, and tell him that the youth whose name is written on this paper has been arrested and imprisoned for singing a forbidden song; that he must let out this lad by such means and on such counts as he may judge fittest; but that the boy is innocent and must be restored to his parents, who are poor peasants dwelling on Mount Atys, without being marked or injured for life by a penal sentence or by a longer imprisonment, or by any punishment of any kind. You hear?’

  ‘You want chestnuts taken out of the fire. Why do you not speak to Rags yourself?’

  ‘I never speak to the man whom you call Rags; and any interference of mine would only damage this lad; they would be sure he was an anarchist and an atheist if I tried to save him. You are orthodox and royalist! Certainly your protection will be injurious to him in another way, but he is a peasant, not a citizen, and so that kind of indecent calumny will not hurt him much, as he will always remain in ignorance of it.’

  ‘Deliornis is very rough on all the revolutionary scum; he will be a mule to move.’ ‘My dear Gavroche! When a monarchical mule is touched by a prince’s whip he moves at once, obediently; indeed he can never trot fast enough! Besides the Minister can take his information, and satisfy his conservative conscience. This is what you have got to do; and you are not to name me in the matter.’

  Tyras raised his head from the cushions, and looked at his brother with glassy, insolent, mocking eyes in which there danced a hundred little devils of vile suspicions and lubricities which he did not dare embody in words.

  ‘There is the boy’s name,’ said Othyris, as he put a slip of paper on a marble table beside the bath. ‘Take it with you to the Palace, or you will forget the name. The boy was arrested on the seashore beneath Mount Atys yesterday, Thursday, in the forenoon. Put out of your head all impudent and unclean suppositions. There is no place for them in this case. The youth is a harmless and ignorant little peasant. What he sang was the Song of Eos. That song may be very abhorrent to Deliornis, but it is written in the hearts of the whole populace of this country.’

  ‘And your motive; what is it?’

  ‘It is not one which you could understand. Abstract justice would be as unintelligible to you as is voluntary sobriety.’

  Gavroche laughed a little, lazily. He always appreciated his brother’s epigrammatic phrases.

  ‘What will you give me?’ he asked. ‘Every affair comes to that.’

  ‘When one negotiates with those who are purchasable, yes. I am quite prepared to pay you and to pay your politician. Every favour obtained from an incorruptible Minister must be paid twice over: to the intermediary, and to the incorruptible.’

  Tyras laughed again, relishing the reply.

  ‘You amuse me! What will Deliornis want beyond the honour of conversing confidentially with me in the sight of society? Nothing, I should think. It will give him such immense pleasure. I am a slightly damaged peach, perhaps, but I am a prize peach, and I am still in the basket.’

  ‘What will you want?’ said Othyris. ‘Say at once. I must leave you in five minutes.’

  ‘Give me Coscyra.’ ‘I admire your modesty.’

  Coscyra was one of the finest estates in the possession of Othyris.

  ‘Give me Coscyra,’ repeated Gavroche.

  ‘No. No one of my estates ever goes out of my ownership.’

  ‘You think the people on them a charge d’âmes!’

  ‘Never mind what I think. They do not change hands. What I will do if you get this poor lad’s freedom is to have all the paper you have given to Reuben Muntze bought up by my agents and destroyed. Muntze is the most dangerous of all your Jews.’

  ‘But that will not give me any money!’

  ‘No, but it will save you a good deal. Have you ever calculated the interest you pay al
l these men?’

  ‘No; it runs on—’

  ‘Precisely. It does run on; and the longer it runs on the worse for you. Bankrupt princes, my dear Gavroche, have been seen in this world.’

  ‘Yes; but they are always sure of a good dinner with American nouveaux riches! ‘said Gavroche with a chuckle. ‘If Uncle Basil had left me what he left you—’

  ‘A score of Basils would not have saved you from yourself.’

  Gavroche, who was no fool, knew that this was true; and for once he was silenced.

  ‘Well,’ said Othyris, ‘do you accept?’

  ‘You will set me free of Muntze altogether?’

  ‘I will set you free of all your existing obligations to him. I dare say you will try to make others tomorrow. But I shall hope to prevent that.’

  Tyras hesitated; he would have preferred money down; but Muntze was the most intrusive, the most ill-bred, the most odious of all his creditors. He had got the money-lender made a baron, and decorated; but Muntze was always importuning and never satisfied; he was always wanting unattainable things: election to patrician clubs inexorably shut in his face; entrance to houses where the hall-porters would have closed the doors against him; presentations to men who would sooner have sat down to dinner with a sweep; invitations to race-meetings, to yachting-matches, to the drawing-rooms of great ladies, to the dressing-rooms of great actresses. For Muntze was ambitious of social success, and did not quite correctly estimate social requirements; was loud in his dress, profuse in his jewellery, self-assertive in his manners, and had not the humility and amiability which alone can excuse the pretentions of the novus homo to be received in high places; he did not even know how to lose at cards to his social superiors with tact. There was no doubt, thought Tyras, he was the most painful kind of creditor under the sun.

  ‘I accept,’ he said sullenly. ‘Will you put it in writing?’

  ‘No, I will not,’ replied Othyris. ‘When the young man is given back to his parents, I will do what I have said. You know me.’