by Ouida
‘But you may change your state.’ he said to her; ‘you may marry.’
‘That is not likely.’ she answered.
‘Why? You are young.’
‘It is not likely,’ she repeated. ‘It would not suit me, I think. I wed Aquilegia.’ she added.
‘Aquilegia is neither yours nor mine.’
‘I put away little sums as I can, and I hope to save enough to buy it some day.’
‘That is well. May Pallas Athene watch over you! You are wiser than most women.’
The price of Aquilegia, the house, the fields, the olives and the poplars, was small. It was but a hundred of the broad crowns of Helianthus; those gold coins which had so deeply offended the national feeling of the people when they had been first issued bearing the arms and the effigy of Theodoric.
‘It is like him.’ said Othyris to himself, when he read those lines from the hero of the War of Independence.
He was not offended. He understood. He did not resent even the manner of address. He considered that Platon Illyris had the right to say whatever he chose to any Gunderöde. He knew that it would be best that he should go there no more. But he looked at a few wild wood-blossoms set in an old silver goblet on a table in his studio, and thought, ‘ Whatever betide I must go sometimes where those flowers grew.’
Not yet; for he would seem to the peasants to go there to receive their guerdon of gratitude, and to Illyris would appear to go in contempt of the power of a man so old to enforce his will.
CHAPTER XXI
OTHYRIS had been by sea to his estate of Ænothrea, and was returning thence on board his sailing-yacht, when a small boat with a lateen sail bore down towards the royal schooner, and a man within it held up one of his oars in a gesture of appeal. Othyris, standing on deck, saw the signal, and caused his yacht to slacken speed and await the little craft. The fisherman, who alone occupied the boat, came to the schooner’s side and held up a letter.
‘Take it and bring it hither,’ commanded Othyris; and when he received it, he found it was a note in the cypher which Ednor used in writing to him. He had the boatmen dismissed with a handful of silver, and went down into his cabin to decipher the message, which was very brief. It told him that Platon Illyris had died on the previous day, and that Ednor was perforce leaving Helios to avoid arrest for an article in his journal on the life and death of the hero, for which his personal seizure was now ordered by the State. He had known that the yacht was expected to return that day, and had sent one of his fisher friends to watch for its appearance in the offing.
Othyris read the message with emotion. The grave could not give more complete oblivion to that great life than men in old age had given to it; yet its end in such isolation, in such ingratitude, hurt him. His return to the city was made as rapidly as was possible; but when he reached the harbour of the Soleia it was noon on the following day, and the journal conducted by Ednor had taken the tidings of the death of Illyris amongst the populace; the newspapers of the noble and commercial classes did not vouchsafe a line to his memory, nor even announce his decease. It was through him that they were living there in peace without a foreign occupation to harass and despoil them, but it had long ago been decided for them that all their gratitude was due alone to the now reigning House of Gunderöde.
When Othyris landed he drove rapidly to his palace, changed his yachting clothes for those of mourning, and entered a closed carriage, of which he drew down the blinds. He took no one of his gentlemen with him. The horses were driven by his order towards Aquilegia. He had no clear plan or definite intention in his mind; his impulse was to go to Ilia; she was desolate indeed; probably, he thought, she would not accept any protection or counsel from him, but he would at least offer them. He passed unnoticed through the city; his carriage was un distinguishable from any other gentleman’s brougham, and he saw no signs of any especial movement in the streets. The dead hero had belonged to an almost forgotten past. The memory of a populace is evanescent as the dew of the daybreak. But as he drew near the poor quarters which led towards the Gate of Olives, these narrow, ancient thoroughfares seemed to be unusually hushed whilst unusually thronged by people. The doors and windows of the old, lofty, lowering stone houses were for the most part closed, and their inhabitants were in the narrow, paven roads; but their usual noisy cries, and rough altercations, and bursts of song, and shrill oaths, were all stilled; the people were very quiet, and they were moving, as by one accord, towards the lofty marble gate, which had seen the passing of the triumphs and the funerals of two thousand years before. There were more street guards than usual in the lanes and roads; they did not interfere, but they were in threes and fours together, and looked sullen, suspicious, ready to use their arms on the first excuse.
Othyris understood without questioning any one. The people were going to honour the dead body of Platon Illyris in whatever way they might be able to do so.
The news of the death of Illyris had awakened the dormant memories of the populace. His life had belonged to a past generation; his memory had been faint in the thoughts of the living multitudes; that he was near them in a still breathing presence had never been realised. But with one of those great waves of nervous feeling which move the multitudes of men in cities, as the ocean is moved by subterranean forces, the plebs of Helios had been stirred by Ednor’s article on the dying hero into a sudden consciousness of its own ingratitude, and of the claims on it of its long-neglected deliverer.
In the noble and commercial quarters of the city there was no agitation; only annoyance and a vague fear, the sense of an unwelcome ghost arisen and intrusive. But in the poor quarters stretching towards the west, and down to the port, the awakening was general and repentant. The name of Illyris ran like a fiery messenger through the crowds, almost as in the years of their grandsires’ youth.
Into their pale blood, dulled by the monotony of modern toil, some warmth of an earlier spirit entered; into the heavy hopelessness and sullen covetousness, which grow together in the breast of the sons of labour, there arose some purer, finer recollection and desire. It was far away from them, that epopee of their grandsires, and the fruits of its heroism had been reaped by others than themselves, but some reflection from the glow of its heroism fell on them and illumined the narrow chambers of their joyless and sunless souls. From them to others who felt less, and who understood nothing, the electrical current of sympathy ran as the magnetism of evil or of good always flows through the unconsciousness of crowds. Thousands and tens of thousands were thrilled from head to foot, wept, moved, echoed, strove, pressed onward and upward, scarcely knowing why, but crying ‘Illyris! Illyris! ‘as the crowds in all ages shout Adonai or Barabbas, as the suggestionism of numbers makes them do. Women dishevelled and bare-bosomed; children thrown down, crushed; struggling youths and maidens madly waving boughs of laurel, as in the Daphnephoria of old; the bronzed, half-nude porters and stevedores of the quays; fishers, and mariners, and boatmen from the harbours; the workers from factory, and engine-room, and cellar; the pluckers of pelts, the makers of chemicals, the marble-workers, the bird-snarers, the rag-pickers, the sea-weed gleaners, the carpet-weavers, the killers and cleaners of fish; all the innumerable divisions of the great, weary, hungry classes, who thronged together between the centre of the city and the Gate of Olives, in swarms like the conies of the sand plains, — all these with one impulsion pushed against each other in their upward way, and, now breaking their silence, shouted as with one voice:
‘To the Pantheon! To the House of the Immortals! Bury him by Theodoric!’
In ever-increasing numbers, and now with deafening cries, they struggled, like a shoal of fish pushing through a weir, up the road which led towards the olive orchards of Aquilegia. The police did not interfere, but they were reinforced by detachments of carabineers, mounted, with their arms shining in the sun.
There joined the crowd from other quarters of the town students, artists, artisans of a higher class, and also the unemployed, — those
unemployed by choice, and those in enforced idleness through misadventure, all the gabies and all the loiterers who come out into the streets when there is anything to see or hear in them; but the multitude remained, in its vast majority, essentially of the populace.
Othyris had got out of his carriage before the first stragglers had arrived at the foot of the ascent to Aquilegia, and had taken the familiar path which wound up amongst the olive-trees, — the precipitous bridle-path which he had taken on his first visit to Illyris; he hoped to reach the house before the crowds from the town could do so. He was out of the sight of the throngs, who were still at the base of the hill, but the sound of their shrill outcries reached him as he mounted the mule-track between the great trees; he could even distinguish the words, ‘To the House of the Immortals! To the House of the Immortals!’
‘Surely,’ he thought, ‘if any should lie in that House, he has supreme right to do so.’
The atmosphere was glorious with light and warmth; the deep-blue skies seen between the boughs, the golden shafts of sunlight, the shimmering silver of the vault of olive leaves, the shining marble and jasper and porphyry dust beneath his feet, the emerald lizards, the brilliant ruby gladiolus, the bright gold of the tansy discs, were all dazzling in the radiance of morning; but for once his soul was without response; he was harassed by regret, by doubt, by apprehension.
Would the noonday pass without bloodshed?
Would his father’s government be tolerant of this gathering?
Would the demand for the burial be granted?
And Ilia Illyris? What would she do?
The sounds of the shouting people, low down at the foot of the hills, were borne to his ear through the sweet sylvan silence. He hastened onward, hoping to see her, to be able to warn her in time to keep the bier within the house, and thus to avoid all which might appear collusion with the public demonstration. But as the mule-path took a sharp narrow bend to the right, he saw, on another curve above, under the olives, a coffin borne on the shoulders of Janos and of five labouring men, and behind it the veiled figure of a woman. His heart stood still with emotion. It was the figure of a solitary mourner coming slowly down the side of Mount Atys with all that remained to her on earth of relative or friend.
If she went downward another mile, he knew that she would inevitably meet the people of Helios as they ascended. At any cost of repulse or offence he felt that he must for her own sake arrest her on her dangerous path. He went out from the shade of the great trees and with uncovered head approached her, raising his hand in a gesture, which made the bearers of the dead body pause, the bier resting on their shoulders.
She paused also; he could not see her face, not even her eyes, through the black gauze.
‘Even in such an hour as this!’ she said, as if to herself, in wonder and repugnance; even in such an hour could he not leave her alone!
Othyris, with his head uncovered, stood reverently by the side of the coffin.
‘Go back,’ he said to her, ‘go back, I entreat you. There are thousands of people coming up the hill. They come in all honour and reverence, but there are rough men and coarse women amongst them; many have come up from the docks and the lowest quarters, and their excitement is increasing every moment. Go back, whilst there is time.’
She did not move; she only imperfectly understood his meaning; she heard the sounds like the swell of the angry sea, which came from the foot of the hill, but she did not know that it was the muttering of human voices which blent with the familiar murmur of the breakers on the shore below. The bearers lowered the coffin gently to the ground, and stood, bareheaded, listening.
‘Is it the people of Helios who at last remember him, do you say? ‘she said, with a great calmness in her voice. ‘It is late; too late!’
‘It is too late indeed,’ said Othyris with emotion.
‘They cannot hinder his going to his last rest.
Let me pass, sir, I only take him to the graveyard of the poor.’
‘They would take him to the Pantheon.’
‘That would surely be his right?’
‘Undoubtedly, but the matter will not pass without conflict, trouble, perhaps bloodshed. The crowd is honest and penitent, but it is rough. There will be scenes unfit for you, unseemly for his memory. Go back to the house, I entreat you.’
‘Why? I do not fear the people of my father’s city.’
‘They will not harm you by intention. As their mood is now, they would die for you, but you do not know what a perilous and inflammable thing is a mob. I fear, also, they will not be allowed to return peacefully to the city. I mean that they will not be permitted to bear this coffin to the mausoleum, as they wish to do. There will be, I fear, collision and conflict between them and those in authority.’
‘With your father’s communal guards, with your father’s troops?’
‘With the guards of the city, with the troops of the State.’
‘I understand. The Gunderöde will fear him, even dead! They will find him, even dead, too great; as the corpse of the Guise seemed to the Valois! Janos, go onward.’
The labourers bent down, and raised the coffin to their shoulders.
‘Wait! Wait, for pity’s sake,’ cried Othyris, despairing to move her by any reasoning. ‘He who lies hidden from us in that shell lived forty years in silence and obscurity to avoid all danger of strife and bloodshed which might have arisen from the magic of his name. Do not risk those dangers now over his dead body. He would bid you not run the risk of insurrection and military intervention.
‘I do not speak to you of any peril you yourself may run,’ he continued, after vainly waiting for some answer or some sign. ‘I know that personal fear would not weigh with you for an instant. But he would be the first to stand between the people and their impulses, could he now arise from the dead. I can imagine no greater grief to him than for his name to become the cause of strife.’
She was silent.
On the lips of any other speaker the words would have touched her heart and convinced her. On his they had a taint of self-interest, of authority, of that menace of the power of the State which had never been heard by Illyris with tolerance or obedience, and against which all the principles of those she had loved had been arrayed.
‘Lady,’ said Othyris, with great emotion in his voice, ‘no one ever lived who had more reverence for the dead than I. You cannot doubt my entire good faith, or the sincerity of my counsels. I entreat you not to make this sacred bier a cause of strife and bloodshed, the beginning of civil war. I will answer to you and to the people of Helios that the uttermost shall be done to obtain for his memory due honour, and for his tomb a fitting place. But, in his name, I implore you not to lend yourself to what will degenerate into party odium, not to embitter this solemn hour with fratricidal hatreds. If his dead lips could speak, he would surely say to you: “Go back, my daughter; go back.”’
She listened; her head drooped, the veil shadowing her features; the accent of his voice went to her heart; she felt his sincerity, she felt his wisdom; she was conscious that to resist his counsel was to be headstrong, unwise, unworthy.
‘Take up the coffin.’ she said to the men who had brought it there. ‘Let us return to the house, and await nightfall.’
They obeyed her without a word.
Othyris bowed very low before her, as people bowed to him.
‘I thank you,’ he said humbly. ‘I will now go and speak to the people, and hear their wishes.’
The bearers and their sacred burden remounted the narrow, rocky path under the great olives, Ilia Illyris walking beside them. Othyris descended the hill in the direction of the ascending mob of people; the confused shrill clamour of whose voices and the louder chorus of the Hymn of Eos rose upward from the lower slopes and from the beach.
He was wholly uncertain of his own power to control or to persuade them; he was well aware that in their present enthusiastic and enraged temper they might see in him only an enemy, only a scion o
f Theodoric of Gunderöde. He could not tell what their mood might be, or what reception even to ferocity they might not give him.
But all he thought of was Ilia’s safety, and the necessity of saving the city from insurrection. The popular temper was like melinite; a spark might cause a ruin incalculable and irremediable.
A few minutes brought him within sight of the earliest stragglers of the throng; they recognised his tall and slender form as he came down through the silvery olive foliage.
‘Elim! Elim!’ cried the foremost men. ‘Elim! Give him his rightful place of burial! Let him lie by Theodoric!’
They pressed forward to reach the King’s son, who in their eyes was all-powerful, in whom they were disposed to trust, but in whom, nevertheless, they could not feel sure that they had an ally or a protector.
He was well known and was beloved in those poor quarters whence came these throngs of working-people, and by the shore which sent forth the stevedores, the porters, the boatmen, the stokers, the fishermen; but they could not be sure how far they had his support in the temerity of their demand on the Crown.
He was always their protector and friend, but they could not be sure if they could rely on his assistance against his father; and of the King’s antagonism and refusal they could have no doubt.
He was only one man against many thousands, but as he came towards them, out of the deep shade of the trees, he awed them. In his serenity, his composure, his simplicity, he appealed to their respect; and by that difference from themselves which was in him he forced from them a not unwilling admiration, a vague consciousness of superiority.
He uncovered his head as he approached them, and they cheered him. They knew that there was great courage in his action.
He mounted a boulder of rock by the roadside which made a natural rostrum, and stood there a little above them. As far as they could be seen for the trees the people were in great numbers, and the sound of the footsteps of the ascending masses answered the sound of the sea dashing angrily on the beach far below.