by Ouida
It was towards the close of the warm and fragrant afternoon that Ilia Illyris sat beside the stone well amongst the columbines and roses wondering how the day had gone; whether peace or strife had been the escort of the plain pinewood coffin which had been borne away from Aquilegia at daybreak by the people of Helios. Janos had not returned.
She looked up as she heard a step on the dry grass of the path which led up to her house and she saw Othyris.
He had changed his clothes in the city, and had come thither as soon as he had been able to free himself from the enthusiasm of the crowds, when the bronze gates of the House of the Immortals had closed again, after having opened to receive the coffin of Illyris.
He stood in the shadows of the boughs at a little distance from her; his head was uncovered, he looked pale and tired, for he had eaten nothing all day; his ears were deaf with the noise of the crowds, his eyes were hot and dry with the dust of the streets; but he was proud of the tidings which he brought her, glad that he could prove to her his own sincerity and good faith.
‘All has passed well and with order,’ he said to her. ‘I went with the people to the mausoleum. He lies with the great men of Helianthus; the greatest of them all.’
His voice was low and broken from fatigue and from emotion.
She rose and went towards him in the warm amber light of the late sunset with a sweet and gracious look upon her face, and she put out her hand to him with a gesture of which queens might have envied the dignity and the grace.
‘I thank you, sir.’ she said, in a softer tone than he had ever heard from her. ‘I did you injustice; I ask your pardon.’
Othyris bowed very low and touched her hand timidly with his lips as though she were his suzerain and he a vassal. He did not speak. All words appeared to him too poor, too trivial.
‘I thank you, sir,’ she said again. ‘You have done a noble action.’
She sat down again on the old marble seat against the wall of the house as he remained standing; his emotion was great, and he was afraid lest by a word too warm, a glance too ardent, he might scare away, like a frightened bird, her first movement of confidence and sympathy.
‘You know the English poet’s line,’ she said:
‘“After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.” That Platon Illyris sleeps well, in honoured sepulchre, and in sight of the people, is due to you, to you alone. I thank you; I thank you infinitely.’
‘The Pantheon was his right. The instinct of the people told them that.’
‘Yes; but they could have had no power to impose their will upon the Crown had it not been for you.’
He could not contradict what was obvious.
‘I hope it has not caused dissension between you and your father?’
‘There is seldom anything else between the King and myself.’
‘Who induced the King to yield?’
‘Kantakuzene.’
‘Kantakuzene! A renegade! A turn-coat! A man all things to all men!’
‘A successful politician — yes.’
‘Is it true that you said you would not live unless your promise to the people were kept by the Crown?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Janos went down into the city, and he heard it there.’
‘I cannot tell how any one could know it. It was said only to Kantakuzene.’
‘But it is true?’
‘Yes, it is true. How could I have lived discredited and dishonoured in your sight, and in the sight of my nation?’
A radiance of admiration, of sympathy, and of comprehension lightened her face.
‘You should have been an Illyris!’ she said, in that pride of race which is so far above mere vanity or egotism.
Othyris smiled involuntarily. No other woman would have spoken of her race as greater than his own.
‘Would that I had been!’ he murmured. ‘I should be nearer to you.’
He regretted the last words as soon as he had uttered them, for they chilled and alarmed her, though she took no notice of them; but the warmer, more sympathetic, more intimate manner she had hitherto shown was frozen back into her usual reserve.
‘She thinks I take advantage of her gratitude,’ he reflected; and he regretted having thus alarmed her.
They were both silent. The sun shone on the old cream-hued marble of the house wall, the green trails of the Madonna’s herb growing in its fissures, the silvery leaves of the olives, the fair classic profile of Ilia Illyris and the sombre black folds of her gown. Othyris stood and looked at her with all his soul speaking in his eyes; but her eyes were looking downward on the rough grass at her feet and she did not see, because she did not wish to see, what his would have told her.
She was distressed though she did not show any distress. She was divided between her gratitude to him and her fear of him — gratitude for his acts, fear of his passion. What he had done appealed to her in the strongest way; to her sympathy, to her family pride, to her admiration of heroic and patriotic conduct; but she was afraid of the feeling for herself which it was impossible to ignore, even though it had been as yet scarcely crystallised into words.
‘The Gunderöde had ever been fatal to the Illyris. He who had been carried to his grave in the Pantheon had rued the day when he had trusted in the monarch by whose side he now lay in the community of death. All her heart went out to the young man who stood before her, for his devotion to the dead, for his courage in great peril, for his loyalty to his word and to the people; but in his relations to herself she doubted him, she shrank from him, she feared him, she saw in him only the treachery of his family to hers.
She rose from the seat under the house wall, and moved towards the archway of the entrance.
‘Believe me, sir,’ she said in a low tone, her eyes still looking away from him, ‘I feel most deeply, most gratefully, all that you have done for the sake of the dead and in the defence of the populace; I admire your actions, I respect them, I honour them; but, as I have told you before now, there can be no friendship between you and me. Even for you to come here, now that he is no more with me, is not possible. There is a gulf that must ever yawn between us. You have done your utmost to atone for your grandsire’s crimes; but they were written in blood, the blood of the people, and the blood of my fathers. Nothing can wash them out — for me. You regret them, but you cannot efface them by any courage or nobility of your own. I have said so to you many times.’
‘You have,’ said Othyris, and his colour changed from red to white, and white to red, in the intensity of his emotions and his indignation. ‘But you have no right to make the living bear the burden of the faults of the dead. If you honour my actions in the last two days, you must at least respect me. You cannot admire a man’s conduct, and despise himself.’
‘I have never said that I despised you. All your public conduct would impose respect on any one. Had it not done so, he would never have received you here. But between you and me there can never be any friendship, any intimacy. If the past were not set between us, the present would render it impossible. I am poor, alone, and of no account. I cannot receive you here now that my great-grandfather is dead.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Is it necessary to say?’
‘I see no reason. You attach no importance to royalty or to rank, therefore why set them as a barrier between you and one who, equally with yourself, sets no store on them?’
‘I attach no weight to them; but the world attaches much. You are what you are; it cannot be altered. And I, being what I am, cannot, I repeat, receive you here.’
‘You mean that you will not?’
‘Well, put it so. I will not.’
‘You are cruel — and—’
He was about to say ‘ungrateful,’ but his generosity kept the reproach unspoken. She answered the unuttered thought.
‘Oh, no,’ she murmured, and the melody of her voice faltered. ‘I am not cruel, nor am I thankless. If the nation have honoured him at the last it is due to
you, to you alone. If I believed still in the God of my childish prayers, I would pray for you day and night. But you are what you are: you are a son of the King; you are Elim of Gunderöde; there are only two lives between you and the throne. I am poor and alone, though I have enough for my house and for my bread. You must see, sir, that there can be no friendship between us. If you persist in coming here you will drive me away from the only place that I can regard as home.’
There was a pathetic supplication in her voice from which the coldness and the pride had passed away, and in her eyes there was a mist as of unshed tears. He saw that she spoke in entire sincerity, and not without pain to herself; he was touched, but he was not convinced; his anger was disarmed, but his desire was only increased. He felt that he could not, at such a moment of bereavement, say all that it was upon his lips to say, but he did not for a moment accept her decision and her dismissal. It was upon his lips to cry to her: ‘I love you! I love you! I will give up everything for your sake! ‘But he held his peace. She was alone.
He had profaned love too often to be willing to speak of it in the same breath with her name. He scarcely dared to let his thoughts dwell on it, for the family of the Illyris had been already too deeply wronged by his own House for him to dream of further wrong; and what else, save wrong, could love if offered from him to her be deemed?
He had been received at that house by the hero of Argileion and Samaris with forgiveness for the offences of his race, and had come thither in frank good faith. Every law of honour and of conscience forbade him to abuse the reception given to him by one, once so great, and in old age so utterly helpless, as had been Platon Illyris.
Receiving no reply or promise from him she said, almost in supplication:
‘Sir — sir — surely you must see for yourself that you must never come here now that he can no longer receive you? Your visits were to him. They must cease now he is no more.’
He was silent and mortified. Here was the only place where his presence was not welcome, his remembrance coveted, his visit received with gratitude, pride, and emotion.
‘Why are you so harsh to me?’ he said, after waiting in vain to hear some softening word.
‘Harsh! ‘she said with some impatience. ‘There is no question of harshness or kindness that I am aware. It is obvious that you have no reason to come now that he can neither hear you nor speak to you.’
‘It was not wholly for him,’ murmured Elim, and the hesitation and timidity of a boy of eighteen came over him, and he paused in confusion.
‘Can I be of no use to you in any way? ‘he added, humbly, fearing he had offended her.
‘None, sir,’ she answered. ‘You can only do us harm.’
‘That is a cruel answer. Some power at least I have.’
‘You have too much power. You are one of the elect of the earth. You must see that now he is no more you must not cross this threshold.’
‘Why? Whatever power I possess is but your humblest servant. Whatever you might bid me do, I would do.’ ‘I bid you go, and not return. Obey me since you have promised to obey.’
‘Why? Why should we be strangers to each other? Why live as though we were enemies?’
‘Because your race and mine can have no bond of friendship. He told you so, again and again.’
‘Why am I to suffer for the sins, or the falseness, of my forefathers? The crime against Illyris was the crime of Theodoric alone.’
‘It lies on you. It lies on every member of your House.’
‘Had the nation no share in it? ‘said Othyris with reproach. ‘If the people had been true to their liberator, my family would have been powerless against him.’
‘That may be true,’ she said slowly. ‘But can a dog defend his master if the dog has been chained and muzzled? Helianthus was that dog. Who chained him? Who muzzled him?’
Othyris was silent. To reason with her was useless; to tempt, to persuade, to entreat her were equally in vain; unless her own heart turned traitor to her creed no other assailant would move her.
She looked at him with her clear, calm, meditative eyes, and there was no emotion in them; no timidity — none of the fear of a virginal passion. She was always the goddess of those classic groves, aloof from all mortal weakness.
‘Go! ‘she said to him, not harshly but with firmness. ‘Go, sir. You have many duties, many interests, many friends. Forget Aquilegia. Remember only that you have done a noble action in defence of a great memory. Your own conscience should be enough reward. Farewell.’
She would not have been human had she been wholly insensible to the power she possessed; but she was without vanity, she was unspoiled by contact with other women, and her antagonism to the reigning race was far stronger in her than any personal feeling. She hated their past: she hated their present.
A great offence rose up in Othyris for a moment; caste, usage, privilege, consciousness of pure purpose, and inherited instincts of command, all flushed his veins with anger, and made him for one instant ready to turn his back on her for ever: to leave her to any fate, to tear his adoration of her out of his heart and memory. Was it possible that any woman could dare speak so to him, a Prince of Helianthus?
She did not even look at him or wait to see the effect of her words. She went up the narrow wooden stairs in the light of the morning, opened the door of her chamber, and went within. She did not draw the bolt, for she knew that he would not follow her. He held her in too high esteem. He was too true a gentleman.
He was very pale and his breath came fast and painfully; he had been dismissed and wounded; he felt lower than the lowest of the naked men crawling through the surf below on the shore, with the creels of rotted seaweed on their bowed backs.
A woman’s unkindness penetrates, hurts, rankles, festers in the heart of a man, as no outrage from one of his own sex can do; and Ilia was the one living being out of the whole multitudes of earth who had the power to wound Othyris!
Ilia that evening sat at the barred casement of her chamber and looked at the moon, nearly at its full rise beyond the olive-trees. The solitude and the solemnity of death were still in the silence of the house. The sense of a vanished presence, of something for ever lost and gone, were in the quiet place; the scent of the old books blent with the odour of the wild-flowers; if men spared the place, the books would last and the flowers bloom through centuries; Illyris alone was gone, never to return.
A great sense of loneliness was upon her. She had leaned on his wisdom as on a staff which would never fail; and now the staff was broken.
CHAPTER XXV
WHEN Othyris reached his palace that evening he found himself under arrest, and confined to his rooms. He was not surprised. Arrest had been a frequent punishment, received by him for lesser offences than his had been that day. The guard had been doubled round his palace, and the troops were still confined to barracks.
The governor of the city and other great functionaries, civil and military, were perpetually exchanging consultations with each other and passing to and from the Soleia.
One Ministry had fallen; another had not yet been formed; it was such an interregnum as the King would willingly have had continued indefinitely, since it left him sole lord and arbiter of current events, within the limits of that Constitution which galled and fretted him so sorely in the free exercise of his will.
That under his rule, during his reign, a popular victory such as the day had seen should have been possible was the most acute mortification to him. The cypher telegrams of Julius’s on the event, in their sarcastic condolence and their ironical sympathy, were like gad-flies in a raw wound. Julius was no doubt wondering why Helios was not placed in a state of siege. John of Gunderöde knew that he must seem a poor creature to his dominant nephew.
When the population of Helios became aware of Elim’s arrest it was indignant, and willing, had it known how, to rescue and revenge him. The city was in ferment. Angry groups discussed and condemned the arrest until far into the night. Work was ne
glected; in the docks and many other places it was entirely suspended. Strong measures were taken by the authorities to prevent any violence or harangues, or meetings of any sort. Most of the shops and places of refreshment or of amusement were closed. The palaces of the aristocracy and plutocracy were shuttered and their iron gates were bolted and locked. The guard around and within the Soleia was doubled, and the troops were, as on the previous day, confined to barracks ready for any emergency. The aspect of Helios was that of a city in a state of siege or on the eve of revolution.
But John of Gunderöde was not alarmed; he knew the Hélianthines. They were like women, loud and excessive in their emotions, but in action weak and hesitating. Their stomachs knew not the beef and beer of the Guthones. It was a wave of remembrance, of reverence, of repentance, which swept through the land from the Mare Magnum to the alps of Rhætia. It might die down like a fire of straw; it might live on till it burnt all that was opposed to it. No one could say; but it was alight, and the King’s son had held the torch to the tow. The King consulted no one. He was the father of the offender, the sovereign of the country, the head of the army. Othyris was in a triple sense guilty towards him. He caused a court-martial to be held pro forma, but its sentence was a foregone conclusion — a foreseen and dictated condemnation. The crime of the King’s second son was, in the judgment of the King himself, of the military caste, of the conservative party, of the Court at home and all other Courts abroad, utterly unmentionable and unpardonable.