by Ouida
Willingly, and with fierce pleasure in his slow veins, would the King have arrested his son, have called out the troops, have raked the streets with musketry fire, and blocked the squares with cannon; but the serum of fear was infiltrated into his veins by an accomplished adept in mental therapeutics; and Kantakuzene, with his flute-like voice and persuasive speech, was, momentarily at least, his master. Jealousy and, fear, two doubtful counsellors, made the King estimate the popularity of his second son as a far more potent factor than it actually was. He attributed to Elim projects and ambitions which Elim had never harboured, and which were indeed wholly alien to his temperament. A mind which sees every side of each question, which is doubtful of the wisdom of any step, which is divided between emotions and opinions, between censure and sympathy, is not a mind to conceive and execute hardy and daring schemes of self-aggrandisement: such a mind, as it shrinks from decision, is untempted by lust of power, since in all power all action must be swift, sharp, unhesitating, and certain of itself.
Othyris would have been fully as reluctant to head a republic as he would have been unwilling to reign; he abhorred responsibility, and had no belief in his own wisdom to sustain him under it. This is not the temperament of ambitious agitators. But the King had never had either the inclination or capacity to study and understand his son’s character, and to his narrow and angular intelligence the intricacies and scruples of such a character were not even conceivable; he only saw in the nation’s favourite a rebel in public life and a rival in private life. The King was afraid; he was in the power of a son whom he had threatened, ridiculed, coerced, hated ever since the day that he had shot the eagle to wound the tender heart of a child. He was afraid — afraid of exposure, of scandal, of losing before the sight of men that reputation of cleanliness and of chastity which he had maintained so carefully throughout his life.
Kantakuzene attributed the evident irresolution, which had succeeded the dogged obstinacy and impenetrability of the King’s attitude, to that dread of the Red Spectre of which Othyris had spoken; a spectre which haunts the sleep and dominates the waking thoughts of all potentates. ‘He is afraid,’ he thought. ‘Will he yield to fear?’
Kantakuzene was not a vain man; his self-esteem never obscured his judgment; therefore he did not attribute to his own persuasion the gradual change which he perceived come over the King’s countenance and attitude. John of Gunderöde rose out of his chair and paced the carpet with steps which indicated an uneasy mind; his sullen features had on them a transient expression of anxiety; he smoked feverishly, throwing aside his cigarettes scarcely consumed; his hands were thrust into his trousers pockets, his eyes were veiled under their heavy lids. The Crown Prince looked at him furtively in astonishment, not daring to speak.
Kantakuzene thought, ‘Is it possible that he is wavering? Is it possible that he is afraid?’ There were hesitation and indecision indicated in the movements of the monarch.
Precisely as the chimes and clocks of the city sounded the second hour of the day, Demetrius Kantakuzene was ushered into the presence of Othyris. Othyris laid down the volume he read, and the cigarette he smoked; he was tranquil; he seemed even indifferent ‘Your Excellency is punctual. Has the struggle been hard?’
He saw that it had been hard. The countenance of the Minister was worn, pallid, harassed, drawn.
His voice was almost inaudible, and his breath was drawn in quick gasps as he answered:
‘I have had the honour, sir, to be ordered to convey to the public the news that His Majesty the King graciously consents to honour the body of Platon Illyris with sepulture in the Pantheon, called by the populace the “House of the Immortals.”’
‘I congratulate you,’ he said to Kantakuzene. ‘You have won a bloodless victory where defeat would have cost much bloodshed.’
‘Sir,’ said Kantakuzene, ‘thank God that your life is not to be thrown away in its youth. Your motives would never have been understood or your sacrifices appreciated.’
‘That would not have mattered,’ replied Othyris.
‘What would have mattered is that there would have been civil war in Helios.’
Kantakuzene sighed, as an overstrained horse sighs when reaching the summit of a hill of stones, its sinews swollen and its lungs choked, resting without rest.
He had won this battle in the privacy of the King’s closet; but all the other battles with party, with opposition, with colleagues, with supporters, with the Senate and the Press, with the committees and the constituencies, were all yet to be fought. To Othyris the matter seemed at an end; but to the politician the endless coil of difficulties appeared as yet scarcely touched, and although he was victorious, he thought, like Wellington, that victory was the next saddest thing to a defeat.
‘What made him yield?’ asked Othyris.
‘I cannot tell, sir.’
Kantakuzene was too adroit to couple fear with the royal name. Othyris thought it was dread of the Red Spectre; he never supposed that it was dread of himself. The motive, however, did not matter; what was of import was that the desire of the people was granted. He scarcely gave a thought to the fact that his own life had been spared.
Kantakuzene, though only Prime Minister-elect, had acted with promptitude and temerity. He had given orders that, so long as the multitudes remained only harmlessly excited, they should not be molested, but that upon the slightest sign of disturbance or menace the repression should be severe. The people, however, gave no excuse for such severity. They were gratified, grateful, orderly, though effervescent and emotional, and crowded together in the streets chanting with tears and smiles their national songs, and shouting that for once unchastised Hymn of Eos, which had roused their fathers’ fathers in dungeon and cell, on the benches of galleys, and by the cold hearths of rural cabins.
By the unconscious obedience to that magnetic current which moves a crowd, the bulk of the people had come towards and into the square in which the residence of Othyris was situated, and were shouting his name before its long and imposing frontage of pale fawn-coloured marble.
His gentlemen, sorely disquieted, conversed together in troubled tones. Othyris was alone in his studio, where no one of them ever dared to follow him except by his command. Through the long perspective of rooms which opened one out of another, they could see the lights glittering in the Square, and the sound of the people’s outcries echoed to them through the open windows of the last salon. Would the crowd disperse quietly, they wondered, if no answer were vouchsafed to it? The gates stood wide open, as usual; the porter with his gilded stick, and the two sentries, the only guardians of the building, would be easily overpowered if the mob should become angry; within the palace there was a crowd of servants, but these would be of no use for defence. The courtiers grew nervous as the cries of the citizens became more insistent.
Like the Scots of old they agreed that some one should bell the cat, should enter their master’s atelier, and give the alarm; but no one of them cared to accept that office. Every few minutes one or other of them walked through the rooms and looked from behind the draperies of one of the windows on to the piazza below. In the centre of it was the vast fountain, a work of the sixteenth century, placed between the statues of the Dioscuri; dolphins and sea-horses plunging; adolescents astride on them, laughing; towering columns of water shooting upwards, turning in the air, falling downwards in torrents of foam. In the electric light directed on it, its marbles and its waters were one mass of silver. Around it, and filling the whole square, were the many-coloured and motley representatives of the various arts, and crafts, and labours, and degrees of industry and poverty which made up the democracy of Helios. They entirely filled the great space; on two sides were palaces used for public offices; at the opposite end to that of Othyris there were public gardens with dense tall trees and palms of untold age. The populace made that hoarse ominous sound, like that of a sullen sea, which is its habitual note both in joy and in rage. But ever and again above the clamour there rose a
clearer call: it was the call on the name of Elim by the people who loved him.
The gentlemen, who one by one gazed down on the spectacle from behind the curtains, were alarmed and impressed; the numbers of the crowd increased with every moment as new-comers poured in through the various streets which led to it.
The cries grew more turbulent, the press more feverish; the chanting of the Hymn of Eos was crossed by the refrain of the Gallian hymn of revolution and the translated strophes of northern odes to Labour and to Anarchy. They were in that mood when, if the will and the power to direct them be there, such throngs can be led to any excesses, to any crimes, through a sea of blood.
The courtiers consulted together; Othyris must be told, they again agreed, but by whom?
‘He must hear them in his studio,’ said one of the gentlemen. ‘If he choose to come out to them he will do so.’
In their own thoughts they all blamed him deeply for his encouragement of the demands of the people, who, in their estimation, were but the mere tools of the socialists.
As they whispered together, and the shouts of the throngs echoed through the great, silent, lighted suite of apartments, the door which opened into the corridor leading to his study was pushed back, and Othyris himself came towards them. They were surprised to see how pale and agitated his countenance was, for they knew that the traditional courage of the royal House was in no member of it greater than in himself. But with a firm step he passed by them, saluted them by a courteous gesture, and went through the rooms to those end windows which looked on the piazza.
The windows opened on to a large balcony. He passed out on to it, and stood looking down upon the populace. He was recognised at once, and greeted with the passionate warmth of a southern people. He waited a little white for the first vehemence of their welcome to spend itself, then he advanced to the marble balustrade and held up his hand. In the comparative silence which ensued his voice reached clear and unwavering to the strained ears of the expectant throngs. He could have done - with them in that moment whatever he had chosen.
‘My friends.’ he said to them, ‘I thank you for your kindness, but no honour is due to me; I myself was powerless. Take your gratitude whither it is due: to one who, possessing the power, had also the will to do that which you wished — our sovereign lord the King.’
It was loyalty, it was filial duty, it was the fealty of a gentleman to his race; but it was not what the people desired or expected. An angry murmur rose from their restless ranks.
‘I have no other bidding for you, my friends. If you believe that you owe me anything, obey me now.’ he said, and stood still a moment to see what effect his words had on them. He felt as if he betrayed them. He felt untrue to his own faiths, and to their faith in him. But what other course was open to him? He could not lead them to the siege of the Soleia.
A brawny giant from the docks, naked to the waist, with a red cap on his black poll, shouted back to him:
‘To hell with John of Gunderöde! It is you we want!’
‘You! You! You! We want you!’ the whole multitude echoed as with one voice. But already Othyris had gone back into the room, and they saw him no more; nor did he return to the balcony, though with impassioned entreaties and imprecations they implored him to come out to them once more.
Two agents of police, supple and strong as pythons, had glided through the closely-pressed ranks and seized the man of the docks and dragged him away out of sight, with an action so rapid and noiseless that the people scarcely realised what had been done, and had neither time nor chance for rescue.
When Kantakuzene congratulated him with warmth and gratitude on his answer to the populace, Othyris received his compliments with great coldness.
‘Surely I could have done nothing else?’ he said with curt disdain. ‘You would not have had me lead them to the siege of the Arsenal or the sack of the Soleia?’
The Minister thought, but did not say, that it was precisely these things which many would have expected from a prince in open antagonism with the Crown.
He himself was not a little astonished at the inertia, as he considered it, of a young man who was avowedly a malcontent, and, as all knew, on ill terms with his royal father.
‘He has had his opportunity,’ he thought, ‘and he has thrown it away; it will not come back again. Blood would have run like water, of course; but it is just possible that if he had put himself at the head of the people he might have made himself master of the city and the throne. The King grows more unpopular every year, and the army is mined by socialism. We could not be perfectly sure of its obedience in any serious conflict with the populace.’
And Kantakuzene, who had a pleasant sense of humour, laughed a little to himself as he imagined his august master, as he might have seen him, hurrying out in travelling-cap and mackintosh, by a side door of the palace, in the grey of dawn or in the dead of night, and getting on board a steamship to go where his millions were safely awaiting him over the seas. The Crown Prince, he thought, would have stayed and would have fought like a bull-terrier to the end in such an event.
As it was, the demonstration ended harmlessly; on the morrow the people returned peaceably to their work. They were only partly satisfied, but reckoned that half a loaf was better than no bread, and to have had their will in one thing argued well to them for the future.
The person who gained most by the events was the person to whom they had seemed most threatening. Kantakuzene became once more as popular with the masses as he had always been in the days of his early manhood. To his influence the people attributed their victory, and to his influence the bourgeoisie attributed the peaceful issue of a dangerous movement. Only the King and the Crown Prince, who had always disliked, now hated him; he had forced royalty into concessions to the popular will.
The authorities were still in great alarm. The troops were still confined to barracks. The number of guards in plain clothes with revolvers hidden was very large. But the elaborate military precautions taken were in a great measure concealed, and that portion of the people which had been concerned in the demonstration of the previous days was too elated to be alarmed or to take umbrage at such precautions against itself as it perceived. They were proud of their own victory, with that thoughtless, inflated, dangerous conceit which in all ages and in all climes throws the plebs into the arms of its antagonists at the critical moments when calmness and self-restraint might give it a chance of victory.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE homage of the public to Platon Illyris on the morrow was without pomp, or parade, or military spectacle, but its simplicity made its grandeur, and the crowds which followed the bier from the hillside and the seashore across the city to the mausoleum were worthy of his memory. There was no music, there were no troops, there were no cannon, no priests, no banners, no muffled drums, no war-horses slowly pacing under plumed riders and broidered saddle-cloths: there were only the people of Helios, in thousands and tens of thousands, following the plain deal coffin in dead silence, for the Hymn of Eos had been again forbidden by special proclamation, and the people would have no other.
From far and near, from maritime village and mountain hamlet, the men and women of Helianthus flocked in masses through the gates, and swelled the populace of the various quarters of the town; a torrent of multicoloured hues, of silent but impassioned life, choking down in silence in their throats the forbidden chant which rose to the lips of all.
The troops were shut up in their barracks ready for any emergency; strong forces of guards, and police, and mounted carabineers, were drawn up along the line of route; the gates and the windows of the palaces of the aristocracy and the plutocracy were all closed, but in no sign of respect, only out of a great fear.
As the funeral passed through the Square of the Dioscuri under the lofty palms, by the falling fountains, Othyris rode out of the courtyard of his palace and placed himself beside the bier; he was in full uniform; he wore crape upon his arm; the sun shone on the fairness of his fa
ce and hair.
An immense shout of welcome and applause greeted the courage of his act.
He checked the tumultuous cheering with a gesture, entreating and commanding silence; then rode on beside the coffin at a slow pace, the smothered outcries of homage and admiration rolling down the air like the hoarse mutterings of a storm. The solemnity of the errand on which they went, the impression of awe and repentance which was on the souls of the masses that day alone restrained the populace of Helios from proclaiming their will to have him as their lord, to be ruled by him and by him alone.
The palace of Kantakuzene was but a few dozen yards distant from the Square of the Dioscuri. The dense crowds passed under its walls. From a casement, hidden by growing plants climbing over its grating, Kantakuzene looked out on the throng and saw the solitary rider on the black horse.
‘Good heavens, what imprudence!’ he murmured.
‘If I had dreamed of it, I would have kept him in by force!’
In his horror and apprehension the sweat of fear and of amaze stood in chill drops upon his forehead. Never, he knew, never would John of Gunderöde pardon either Elim or himself.
The bier and the rider beside it passed out of sight down the street, soon hidden by the projecting balconies, and sculptures, and lamp-irons of its ancient houses. The crowds continued long to tramp through the street, until the last stragglers had passed. There is no sound so ominous as the passing of a multitude. As he heard it, Kantakuzene bowed his head on his hands and sighed wearily. This demonstration might close peacefully, or it might end in bloodshed; but whatever might be its issue he knew that the germs of a great peril were in it. All the citizens of Helios seemed to be massed along the route of the funeral procession, and the whole working population of the city was abroad; at the windows of their dwellings only the aged and the very young, left at home, looked out in impatient enthusiasm; the white marble dust rose in the air in dense clouds, the tread of the many thousands of feet was like the marching of an army. From the Gate of Olives to the opposite hill on which the mausoleum stood was a distance of three miles and more; there was not a foot of it which was not occupied. Such movements have, as a rule, but little worth; populous cities send forth their masses to welcome a despot, to cheer a general, to gape at a bridegroom, to applaud the legions who return from an unjust war. But these multitudes were repentant; they were as sons who mourned a father they had long neglected; there were spontaneity, sincerity, remorse, in their souls, and their hearts beat in the unison of a passionate, if an evanescent, adoration of a dead god.