Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  ‘Who is dead?’ she asked Maïa, startled and vaguely apprehensive. ‘Some one in high place.’

  ‘The eldest son of the King,’ said the woman.

  ‘He died in the night of that fungus which grows in the throat.’

  ‘The Crown Prince dead! Then!—’

  ‘It is the Prince Elim who will reign,’ said Maïa.

  The waves of deep and solemn sound joined with the anger of a wind-driven sea on the beach below.

  ‘It is a cruel fate,’ thought Ilia; she knew that to him of all others it would seem so. She remembered the words of Illyris: ‘If he lead the people or if he forsake the people, either way he will repent. To rule you must have iron in you. He has silver; but silver will not make a sword-blade.’

  All night long the bells, great and small, tolled all over the country, in cities and townships and hamlets, in lonely churches on bare hillsides, and in monasteries by lakes and streams; and in the chapels of feudal castles, and on the solitary shores by the sea, from the Mare Magnum to the Rhætian mountains, the tongues of bronze told all the land that the heir to the throne was dead. But in the silent heart of Helianthus there was no sorrow; there was only gladness, mute and timid gladness, hiding like a hunted hare, and rejoicing because the man they loved would one day or another rule over them. In their ignorance and their credulity the people believed that he would change the whole face of the country, set a barn of plenty beside every poor man’s hearth, lift the musket and the knapsack from every stripling’s back, and make the golden corn grow on every stony plain. In their ignorance they could not tell that in the kingdom of men individual character can change little in the lot of the multitude or in the burdens borne by them. Though Solomon in all his glory, or Trojan in all his justice, were to reign in this actual time, he could not alter by a hair’s breadth, by a gramme’s weight, the pressure of poverty, the disparity of fates, the irony of circumstance, the brutality of war, the satire of success, the vast misery of the majority. But the people do not know that.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  OTHYRIS had no sleep that night. He felt like a man who lies pressed down under a rock which has fallen on him, leaving him breath and brain to suffer, but with no power to rise and move.

  With the change of position went such liberty and such privacy as he had hitherto enjoyed. His life henceforward belonged entirely to others. He had never seriously feared the possibility of his own future reign. His eldest brother, risks of sport apart, had seemed a man certain of long life, as he had always been of health and strength. When he had thought of his own possible accession it had been with little apprehension of such a fate becoming ever a reality.

  It was but half a year ago that he had heard the same outcries of popular affection rise from the same square and the same surrounding streets; he could not doubt the preference of the people for himself. But to what, in its uttermost, could it lead? Only to civil war. His father was not a man to take a passage in a steamer at the first intimation to him of his own unpopularity. If fully convinced of it, he might prefer his accumulated scrip to a struggle with a hostile people; but he would not be easily convinced, and he had the temper of the bull-dog.

  The night was moonlit and serene; across the masses of foliage of his gardens he could see the distant peaks of Mount Atys, faint and ghastly against the starlit skies on the other side of the bay of Helios.

  Was Ilia sleeping under the guard of those snows as virginal as the white hills of her breast? Had she any memory in her dreams of him? Was he not farther away from her than ever, now that he was direct heir to that crown which had been seized by Theodoric?

  The overwhelming desire to be in her presence was stronger than any prudence, either for his own sake or hers. Six months had passed since he had looked upon her face. The night was the long night of October; it had been evening when he had entered Helios; and, under the plea of fatigue, he had seen only two or three of his gentlemen, the most faithful and attached. When he dismissed these and retired for the night, he said to himself: ‘She rises with the sun at all seasons; I can go there at dawn and return by eight o’clock in the forenoon.’

  His absence would probably be noticed by his household, but he knew that he could trust the most devoted of them to conceal it from the rest; they would attribute it to some amatory tryst. He did what he had often done when on less innocent errands bent: he went down into his gardens and opened a little postern gate which led into the courts at the back of the palace where the stables, coachhouses, and other buildings were situated. All was still and closed, men and animals slumbered; the sentinels stationed there challenged, then recognising him, presented arms. He opened the door of the spacious line of loose boxes, in which his riding horses were kept; awakened one of his fleetest favourites, saddled her, and led her out by one of the gates, the sentinels of course remaining immovable. He was sure of their silence. He locked the door of the courtyard behind him, holding the mare by her bridle; then mounted and rode towards the Gate of Olives on the other side of the city.

  It was scarcely daybreak; heavy mists hung over the sea, and as he went down the southern quay the air blew on him cold and refreshing as a draught from a mountain stream. Some fishermen, some men-of-war sailors, some dockyard labourers, alone passed him; the sentinels on the quay saluted as their comrades had done; there was no one else abroad in the dusk of the chilly autumn morn of which the shadows and the vapours hid Mount Atys from his sight. He rode as fast as it was possible to do on the slippery marble of the paven roads, and when he reached the barrier of the south-west gate the way to it was blocked by long strings of ox carts, and mule carts, and flocks and cattle, and laden asses, and peasants mounted and on foot, who had waited wearily there ever since the small hours of the night.

  ‘The accursed Octroi!’ thought Othyris. ‘The most brutal of all the taxes, save the blood-tax! Can they find no better way to get the money they squander than to keep the husbandman out of his bed two-thirds of the night, and make his poor animals footsore and famished before sunrise?’

  The guards, sleepy and sullen, were drawing back the huge bolts of the iron gates, swearing savagely at the throngs gathered there. With a sharp and stern rebuke to them, as they, in fear and trembling, recognised him, Othyris passed through under the ancient portcullis into the familiar country road which wound up into the hills beyond. When he had got rid of the waiting crowd of patient labourers the way was clear. The day was fully risen; the fresh scents of the fields were blown about on the changeful winds, the wreaths of mists were drifting, whiter and whiter at each moment; the great crests of the Helichrysum hills were lifted one by one out of the clouds. He rode as fast as the steepness of the path would permit, towards that hermitage which had been scarcely absent an hour from his thoughts since he had last been there on that memorable day when the people of Helios had remembered Illyris. Every knot of thyme or clump of tussock grass beside the path, all the falling waters, some broad and deep as torrents, some mere threads of rippling moisture, all the great trees leaning down over the rocks and myrtle bushes, — all were familiar and welcome to him, and as the morning light widened and the winds moderated, the repose and beauty of the place sank like balm into his soul. It was still so early that the dews were heavy and the sun had not reached these woods; only a clear and solemn light awakened the woodlarks and the redcaps, and shone, green and transparent, through the branches of the oaks and olives.

  His heart beat fast, and anxiety quickened his breath as he drew nearer and nearer to the house and passed the spot where he had met Ilia beside the old man’s bier. That shyness of the true lover, which he had never felt before, came over him and made him fear that he should have no welcome. To all others he was the heir of the throne, to her he was but her humble servant in his own sight, and less than that in hers. Had his letters made any way for him into her sympathies? He could not tell. He feared that there was no response in her to his own feelings. His soul had crossed the gulf of difference wh
ich divided them, but hers remained aloof upon a distant shore.

  It was still early in the earliest hours of morning when Othyris reached the last portion of the bridlepath up which it was possible to urge a horse. He heard the sound of plough-oxen being urged by a human voice, but they were distant, far down in the twilight of the foliage, and he saw nearer to him two little lads with wooden tubs on their shoulders — such tubs, cone-shaped, as are used to carry water in drought or grapes in vintage-time. No doubt they were the younger sons of Janos, going to gather roots or fruits that did not grow at this altitude. He called to them and they stumbled up through the rank grass, frightened but obedient, for they recognised him. He gave them the bridle of the mare to hold, and said a word in her ear which she understood, bidding her wait there; then he went up on foot to the house, standing in the deep shadows of its great trees.

  He saw Ilia on the threshold; she was throwing grain to the pigeons; the tamed dove of Illyris sat on her shoulder, and watched its wilder cousins eat and fight and flutter.

  She looked so serene, so content, so wholly satisfied with these simple things, with only that shadow of sadness which the death of Illyris had left her, that Othyris could not think that he had been remembered or regretted. He paused on the edge of the rough grass and the wild rose-bushes.

  His shadow fell across the turf, and the dog Ajax came towards him with welcome and recognition. She looked up and let fall the boxwood bowl of grain. She did not speak. She stood still in the shock of surprise; she had not known that he had arrived in Helios.

  ‘Have I done wrong? ‘he said, as he stood with uncovered head. ‘May I hope for welcome? Or, if that is too much, for pardon?’

  She was silent still; he could not see on her countenance any expression of her emotions, any reflection of her mind; she stood with the flock of pigeons at her feet; the dove had flown on to the ivy of the roof. Was she indifferent? Was she angered? Was she thinking of the change in his position, or of the confessions of his letters? He could not tell. With his hand on the dog’s head he stood before her.

  ‘Have you no word for me?’ he said humbly.

  ‘What would you have me say?’ she murmured.

  ‘What have I to do with you? You are to rule in Helianthus.’

  ‘In some far-off future — or more likely never. Such a change was always possible. What has it to do with you and me? Will you not let me enter? Enter at least into his chamber?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  She drew back and signed to him to pass her. Emotion, embarrassment, astonishment, were all so unusual in her life, so alien to her temperament, that they confused her; she could not either welcome or repulse him. All he had done for her forbade the one; all he had written to her, and all that circumstance made him and gave him, forbade the other.

  ‘I cannot pass before you,’ he said with a smile.

  She understood; he might be what he would to the rest of the world; there at Aquilegia he chose to be only the scholar, the disciple, the pilgrim, who had stood before the hero of Argileion and Samaris.

  She entered the house and opened the door of the book-room, in which the hundreds of volumes, the great leather chair, the elmwood table, laden with papers and old manuscripts, were all as they had been in the lifetime of the Master.

  Othyris stood silent a few moments in respectful memory as men may stand beside a tomb.

  Then he turned to Ilia.

  ‘You received my letters?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you read them?’

  A faint colour rose over her face. ‘Yes, and then I destroyed them.’

  ‘Why? Do you think me a coward, or what they said untrue?’

  ‘No, neither.’

  ‘Could you not have answered them?’

  ‘Silence answered them.’

  ‘Silence means many things.’

  ‘I thought you would understand — between you and me there can be no correspondence, there can be no sympathy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? I have often told you. Now it is more impossible than ever. You are the heir to the throne.’

  ‘No one, no law, no nation, can make me accept that position unless I choose. I can say nothing more than I have in those letters. I am yours in any way, by any bond, you choose.’ His words broke down in an impatient sigh. ‘But nothing that I can say moves you more than a marble mask is moved. And yet—’

  He was about to say: ‘I have suffered for your sake, I have lost a part of my life!’

  But he checked the words unuttered. He would not remind her of her debt to him.

  Ilia did not answer.

  She stood by the great leather chair against the casement, through which a green light fell through the leaves of the ivy. She was prepared for his words by his letters; but she was unprepared for his presence, and for the effect it had on herself. In the well without, those letters of his had perished, soaked in the deep, cold water of the subterranean spring; but many of their lines had been burnt into her memory before she had dropped them into their tomb. Their recollection made her nervous, timid, self-conscious, ashamed, all that she had never been before; the weakness of sex awoke in her.

  She leaned her hand on the back of the old black chair as if to gain courage and strength from its contact; the green cool light falling through the ivy leaves flickered on her face. She felt the passion of his gaze burn into her inmost being. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt; that he might become dear to her she felt with terror. She heard the stern and haughty voice of Platon Illyris saying: ‘What have you, my daughter, to do with the House of Gunderöde?’

  ‘Listen, sir,’ she said, gently but with firmness, to Othyris, ‘I am sensible of all we owe to you.

  I am conscious of what you have suffered for our sakes. I grieve for it. I cannot repay you all you have done for us. It is impossible to put into words my sense of it. But do not come here. You only pain me, and compromise yourself. You belong to the people of Helianthus. You are not free to do what you choose or what you wish. You are theirs: at once their lord and their servant.’

  ‘But if I will not be either?’

  ‘You cannot escape your obligations.’

  ‘Why not? It is a yoke laid on me by the accident of birth. I have the right to reject it if I choose.’ ‘You could not change yourself if you did,’ she said sadly. ‘You could not wash the blood of Theodoric out of your veins. You could not be otherwise than one of the princes of his House though you beggared yourself or swept the streets. We are what we are born, till death releases us.’

  ‘Those are ideas of a world that is dead,’ he said, with anger and impatience. ‘Ideas of the days of blood-feud, of inherited hatreds, of Capulet and Montagu, of Monteuki and Salimbeni. Surely we belong to a calmer and colder time when the sins of the father are not visited on the children. We have lost much, but we have gained something. The chief of our gains is surely the temperate spirit of ‘ modern feeling.’

  ‘It is indifference, it is often even mere cynicism, that which you praise. There are wrongs which cannot die, which should not die, as long as memory lives.’

  ‘If you had any regard for me, you would have no memory but that.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  She spoke almost sorrowfully, almost regretfully. What she had felt for him in his absence died away in his presence.

  He felt that it did so. It filled him with despair.

  ‘Is there any one living fitter to reign in Helianthus than you — fitter in body, in mind, in race?’

  ‘Oh, sir, you are mad! ‘she said in mingled anger and fear. ‘Quite mad! I! False to all the creeds and traditions I have inherited? Apostate to all the religion of my people? Could I be so, the women of Helios would have a right to stone me in their streets.’

  ‘They would fling the roses of Helianthus under your feet. Would to God I could prove it to you! You have the blood in your veins of the liberator of this country.’

  ‘Whom t
hey allowed to live thirty years above their seashore, poor, alone, forgotten! They scarcely knew that he was amongst them. Who buried him where the great dead lie? You; not they.’

  ‘Yes, it was they, not I, whom my father feared.’

  ‘Would your father admit that he feared them?’

  ‘I know not; I know that he did so.’

  She was silent; she felt that she must seem to him thankless, callous, unworthy of all that he had done, and was ready to do; and her own heart trembled within her; she was afraid of it, afraid of its weakness, afraid of its betrayal of herself.

  ‘If I had any feeling for you,’ she said, with more passion than had been ever in her voice, ‘if — what would it be? An insult to my race, a curse to myself. You? You and I? It would be sacrilege!’

  ‘Wherefore? Mutual love has healed the wounds of feuds before now in many a human history.’

  ‘It was not a feud. It was the betrayal of an Iscariot that which your forefather did to Platon Illyris.’

  ‘Perhaps, but it was not my sin.’

  ‘You cannot cleanse yourself from it. You may be called to ascend the throne to-morrow.’

  ‘And I would refuse the throne unless you shared it.’

  ‘I? My people would rise from their graves to strike me. How can you say such things to me?’

  Some consciousness of the immense force of a great passion dawned on her; some sense that it was irresistible as a forest fire. She rose, and threw her veil about her head.

  ‘These are all useless words,’ she said to him. ‘ Between you and me there is a great gulf fixed; it is as deep as the Hellespont, and I will drown in it like Helle.’

  She entered the house, and his heart sank within him.

  Othyris found the mare chafing restlessly at her inaction, and rode her at dangerous speed down the steep road back to Helios and through the Gate of Olives. He was in time to enter by the back courts of his palace, and regained his apartments seen by few of his household, and confident that of those few none were likely to be indiscreet enough to talk of his absence in those early morning hours. His life had been erratic and adventurous; his courtiers knew well that no quality in them was so favourably seen by him as that of discretion. They knew him too well to anger him by prying into his amorous secrets.