Part 38 (1/2)

”I could not love you less!” she replied slowly; ”but I cannot think of you as quite the same!”

A shadow of pain darkened his face.

”Gloria,” he said sadly; ”If your love was as great as mine you would forgive!”

She stood a moment wavering and uncertain; their eyes were riveted on each other in a strange spiritual attraction--her soft lips were a little relaxed from their gravity as she steadfastly regarded him. She was embarra.s.sed, conscious, and very pale; but he drank in gratefully the wonder and shy wors.h.i.+p of those pure eyes,--and waited. Suddenly she sprang to him and closed her arms about his neck, kissing him with simple and loving tenderness.

”I do forgive! Oh, I do forgive!” she murmured; ”Because I love you, my darling--because I love you! Whatever you wish I will do for your love's sake--believe me!--but I am frightened just now!--it is as if I did not know you--as if someone had taken you suddenly a long way off! Give me a little time to recover my courage!--and to know”--here a faint smile trembled on her beautiful curved mouth--”to know,--and to _feel_,--that you are still my own!--even though the world may try to part you from me!--still my very own!”

The warmth of pa.s.sionate feeling in her face flushed it into a rose-glow that spread from chin to brow,--and clasping her to his breast, he gave her the speechless answer that love inscribes on eyes and lips,--then, keeping his arm tenderly about her, he led her gently into the path through the pinewood, which wound down to their favourite haunt by the sea.

The moonlight had now increased in brilliancy, and illumined the landscape with all the opulence, splendour and superabundance of radiance common to the south,--the air was soft and balmy, and one great white cloud floating lazily under the silver orb, moved slowly to the centre of the heavens,--the violet-blue of night falling around it like an imperial robe of state. The two youthful figures pa.s.sed under the pine-boughs, which closed over them odorously in dark arches of shadow, and wended their slow way down to the seash.o.r.e, from whence they could see the Royal yacht lying at anchor, every tapering line of her fair proportions distinctly outlined against the sky, and all her masts s.h.i.+ning as if they had been washed with silver dew; and the Heir-Apparent to a throne was,--for once in the history of Heir-Apparents,--happy--happy in knowing that he was loved as princes seldom or never are loved,--not for his power, not for his rank, but simply for himself alone, by one of the most beautiful women in the world, who,--if she knew neither the ways of a Court, nor the wiles of fas.h.i.+on,--had something better than either of these,--the sanct.i.ty of truth and the strength of innocence.

Rene Ronsard, coming back from his pleasurable duties as host and chairman to his fishermen-friends, found the cottage deserted, and smiled, as he sat himself down in the porch to smoke, and to wait for the lover's return.

”What a thing it is to be young!” he sighed, as he gazed meditatively at the still beauty of the night around him;--”To be young,--and in love with the right person! Hours go like moments--the gra.s.s is never damp--the air is never cold--there is never time enough to give all the kisses that are waiting to be given; and life is so beautiful, that we are almost able to understand why G.o.d created the universe! The rapture pa.s.ses very quickly, unfortunately--with some people;--but if I ever prayed for anything--which I do not--I should pray that it might remain with Gloria! It surely cannot offend the Supreme Being who is responsible for our existence, to see one woman happy out of all the tortured millions of them! One exception to the universal rule would not make much difference! The law that the strong should prey on the weak, nearly always prevails,--but it is possible to hope and believe that on rare occasions the strong may be magnanimous!”

He smoked on placidly, considering various points of philosophic meditation, and by and by fell into a gentle doze. The doze deepened into a dream which grew sombre and terrible,--and in it he thought he saw himself standing bareheaded on a raised platform above surging millions of people who all shouted with one terrific uproar of unison--”Regicide! Regicide!” He looked down upon his hands, and saw them red with blood!--he looked up to the heavens, and they were flushed with the same ominous hue. Blood!--blood!--the blood of kings,--the dust of thrones!--and he, the cause! Choked and tormented with a parching thirst, it seemed in the dream that he tried to speak,--and with all his force he cried out--”For her sake I did it! For her sake!” But the clamour of the crowd drowned his voice,--and then it was as if the coldness of death crept slowly over him,--slowly and cruelly, as though his whole body were being enclosed within an iceberg,--and he saw Gloria, the child of his love and care, laid out before him dead,--but robed and crowned like a queen, and placed on a great golden bier of state, with purple velvet falling about her, and tall candles blazing at her head and feet. And voices sang in his ears--”Gloria! Gloria in excelsis Deo!”--mingling with the m.u.f.fled chanting of priests at some distant altar; and he thought he made an attempt to touch the royal velvet pall that draped her beautiful lifeless body, when he was roughly thrust back by armed men with swords and bayonets who asked him ”What do you here? Are you not her murderer?”--and he cried out wildly ”No, no!

Never could I have harmed the child of my love! Never could I hurt a hair of her head, or cause her an hour's sorrow! She is all I had in the world!--I loved her!--I loved her! Let me see her!--let me touch her!--let me kiss her once again!” And then the scene suddenly changed,--and it was found that Gloria was not dead at all, but walking peacefully alone in a garden of flowers, with lilies crowning her, and all the suns.h.i.+ne about her; and that the golden bier of state had changed into a s.h.i.+p at sea which was floating, floating westward bearing some great message to a far country, and that all was well for him and his darling. The troubled vision cleared from his brain, and his sleep grew calmer; he breathed more easily, and flitting glimpses of fair scenes pa.s.sed before his dreaming eyes,--scenes in some peaceful and beautiful world, where never a shadow of sorrow or trouble darkened the quiet contentment of happy and innocent lives. He smiled in his sleep, and heaved a deep sigh of pleasure,--and so, gently awoke, to feel a light touch on his shoulder, and to see Gloria standing before him. A smile was on her face,--the fragrance of the woodlands and the sea clung about her garments,--she held a few roses in her hand, and there was something in her whole appearance that struck him as new, commanding, and more than ever beautiful.

”You have returned alone?” he said wonderingly.

”Yes. I have returned alone! I have much to tell you, dear! Let us go in!”

CHAPTER XIX

OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE STATE

The large gaunt building, which was dignified by the name of the 'People's a.s.sembly Rooms,' stood in a dim unfas.h.i.+onable square of the city which had once been entirely devoted to warehouses and storage cellars. It had originally served a useful purpose in providing temporary shelter for foreign-made furniture, which was badly constructed and intrinsically worthless,--but which, being cheaply imported and showy in appearance, was patronized by some of the upper middle-cla.s.ses in preference to goods of their own home workmans.h.i.+p.

Lately, however, the foreign import had fallen to almost less than nothing; and whether or no this was due to the secret machinations of Sergius Thord and his Revolutionary Committee, no one would have had the hardihood to a.s.sert. Foreign tradesmen, however, and foreign workmen generally had certainly experienced a check in their inroads upon home manufactures, and some of the larger business firms had been so successfully intimidated as to set up prominent announcements outside their warehouses to the effect that ”Only native workmen need apply.”

Partly in consequence of the ”slump” in foreign goods, the ”a.s.sembly Rooms,” as a mere building had for some time been shut up, and given over to dust and decay, till the owners of the property decided to let it out for popular concerts, meetings and dances, and so make some little money out of its bare whitewashed walls and comfortless ugliness.

The plan had succeeded fairly well, and the place was beginning to be known as a convenient centre where thousands were wont to congregate, to enjoy cheap music and cheap entertainment generally. It was a favourite vantage ground for the disaffected and radical cla.s.ses of the metropolis to hold forth on their wrongs, real or imaginary,--and the capacities of the largest room or hall in the building were put to their utmost extent to hold the enormous audiences that always a.s.sembled to hear the picturesque, pa.s.sionate and striking oratory of Sergius Thord.

But there were one or two rare occasions when even Sergius Thord's attractions as a speaker were thrown into the background, by the appearance of that mysterious personality known as Lotys,--concerning whom a thousand extravagant stories were rife, none of which were true.

It was rumoured among other things as wild and strange, that she was the illegitimate child of a certain great prince, whose amours were legion--that she had been thrown out into the street to perish, deserted as an infant, and that Sergius Thord had rescued her from that impending fate of starvation and death,--and that it was by way of vengeance for the treatment of her mother by the Exalted Personage involved, that she had thrown in her lot with the Revolutionary party, to aid their propaganda by her intellectual gifts, which were many. She was known to be very poor,--she lived in cheap rooms in a low quarter of the city; she was seldom or never seen in the public thoroughfares,--she appeared to have no women friends, and she certainly mixed in no form of social intercourse or entertainment. Yet her name was on the lips of the million, and her influence was felt far beyond the city's radius.

Even among some of the highest and wealthiest cla.s.ses of society this peculiar appellation of ”Lotys,” carrying no surname with it, and spoken at haphazard had the effect of causing a sudden silence, and the interchange of questioning looks among those who heard it, and who, without knowing who she was, or what her aims in life really were, voted her ”dangerous.” Those among the superior cla.s.ses who had by rare chance seen her, were unanimous in their verdict that she was not beautiful,--”but!”--and the ”but” spoke volumes. She was known to possess something much less common, and far more potent than beauty,--and that was a fascinating, compelling spiritual force, which magnetised into strange submission all who came within its influence,--and many there were who admitted, though with bated breath that 'An' if she chose' she could easily become a very great personage indeed.

She herself was, or seemed to be, perfectly unconscious of the many discussions concerning her and her origin. She had her own secret sorrows,--her sad private history, which she shut close within her own breast,--but out of many griefs and poverty-stricken days of struggle and cruel environment, she had educated herself to a wonderful height of moral self-control and almost stoical rect.i.tude. Her nature was a broad and grand one, absolutely devoid of pettiness, and full of a strong, almost pa.s.sionate sympathy with the wrongs of others,--and she had formed herself on such firm, heroic lines of courage and truth and self-respect, that the meaner vices of her s.e.x were absolutely unknown to her. Neither vanity, nor envy, nor malice, nor spleen disturbed the calmly-flowing current of her blood,--her soul was absorbed in pity for human kind, and contemplation of its many woes,--and so living alone, and studiously apart from the more frivolous world, she had attained a finely tempered and deeply thoughtful disposition which gave her equally the courage of the hero and the resignation of the martyr. She had long put away out of her life all possibility of happiness for herself. She had, by her unwearying study of the ma.s.ses of working, suffering men and women, come to the sorrowful conclusion that real happiness could only be enjoyed by the extremely young, and the extremely thoughtless,--and that love was only another name for the selfish and often cruel and destructive instincts of animal desire. She did not resent these ugly facts, or pa.s.sionately proclaim against the gloomy results of life such as were daily displayed to her,--she was only filled with a profound and ceaseless compa.s.sion for the evils which were impossible to cure.

Her tireless love for the sick, the feeble, the despairing, the broken-hearted and the dying, had raised her to the height of an angel's quality among the very desperately poor and criminal cla.s.ses;--the fiercest ruffians of the slums were docile in her presence and obedient to her command;--and many a bold plan of robbery,--many a wicked scheme of murder had been altogether foregone and abandoned through the intervention of Lotys, whose intellectual ac.u.men, swift to perceive the savage instinct, or motive for crime, was equally swift to point out its uselessness as a means of satisfying vengeance. No preacher could persuade a thief of the practical ingloriousness of thieving, as Lotys could,--and a prison chaplain, remonstrating with an a.s.sa.s.sin after his crime, was not half as much use to the State as Lotys, who could induce such an one to resign his murderous intent altogether, before he had so much as possessed himself of the necessary weapon. Thousands of people were absolutely under her moral dominion,--and the power she exercised over them was so great, and yet so un.o.btrusive, that had she bidden the whole city rise in revolt, she would most surely have been obeyed by the larger and fiercer half of its population.

With the moneyed cla.s.ses she had nothing in common, though she viewed them with perhaps more pity than she did the very poor. An overplus of cash in any one person's possession that had not been rightfully earned by the work of brain or body, was to her an incongruity, and a defection from the laws of the universe;--show and ostentation she despised,--and though she loved beautiful things, she found them,--as she herself said,--much more in the everyday provisions of nature, than in the elaborate designs of art. When she pa.s.sed the gay shops in the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares she never paused to look in at the jewellers'

windows,--but she would linger for many minutes studying the beauty of the sprays of orchids and other delicate blossoms, arranged in baskets and vases by the leading florists; while,--best delight of all to her, was a solitary walk inland among the woods, where she could gather violets and narcissi, and, as she expressed it 'feel them growing about her feet.' She would have been an extraordinary personality as a man,--as a woman she was doubly remarkable, for to a woman's gentleness she added a force of will and brain which are not often found even in the stronger s.e.x.

Mysterious as she was in her life and surroundings, enough was known of her by the people at large, to bring a goodly concourse of them to the a.s.sembly Rooms on the night when she was announced to speak on a subject of which the very t.i.tle seemed questionable, namely, ”On the Corruption of the State.” The police had been notified of the impending meeting, and a few stalwart emissaries of the law in plain clothes mixed with the in-pouring throng. The crowd, however, was very orderly;--there was no pus.h.i.+ng, no roughness, and no coa.r.s.e language. All the members of Sergius Thord's Revolutionary Committee were present, but they came as stragglers, several and apart,--and among them Paul Zouche the poet, was perhaps the most noticeable. He had affected the picturesque in his appearance;--his hat was of the Rembrandt character, and he had donned a very much worn, short velveteen jacket, whose dusty brown was relieved by the vivid touch of a bright red tie. His hair was wild and bushy, and his eyes sparkled with unwonted brilliancy, as he nodded to one or two of his a.s.sociates, and gave a careless wave of the hand to Sergius Thord, who, entering slowly, and as if with reluctance, took a seat at the very furthest end of the hall, where his ma.s.sive figure showed least conspicuous among the surging throng. Keeping his head down in a pensive att.i.tude of thought, his eyes were, nevertheless, sharp to see every person entering who belonged to his own particular following,--and a ray of satisfaction lighted up his face, as he perceived his latest new a.s.sociate, Pasquin Leroy, quietly edge his way through the crowd, and secure a seat in one of the obscurest and darkest corners of the badly lighted hall. He was followed by his comrades, Max Graub and Axel Regor,--and Thord felt a warm glow of contentment in the consciousness that these lately enrolled members of the Revolutionary Committee were so far faithful to their bond. Signed and sealed in the blood of Lotys, they had responded to the magnetism of her name with the prompt obedience of waves rising to the influence of the moon,--and Sergius, full of a thousand wild schemes for the regeneration of the People, was more happy to know them as subjects to her power, than as adherents to his own cause. He was calmly cognisant of the presence of General Bernhoff, the well-known Chief of Police;--though he was rendered a trifle uneasy by observing that personage had seated himself as closely as possible to the bench occupied by Leroy and his companions. A faint wonder crossed his mind as to whether the three, in their zeal for the new Cause they had taken up, had by any means laid themselves open to suspicion; but he was not a man given to fears; and he felt convinced in his own mind, from the close personal observation he had taken of Leroy, and from the boldness of his speech on his enrolment as a member of the Revolutionary Committee, that, whatever else he might prove to be, he was certainly no coward.

The hall filled quickly, till by and by it would have been impossible to find standing room for a child. A student of human nature is never long in finding out the dominant characteristic of an audience,--whether its att.i.tude be profane or reverent, rowdy or attentive, and the bearing of the four or five thousand here a.s.sembled was remarkable chiefly for its seriousness and evident intensity of purpose. The extreme orderliness of the manner in which the people found and took their seats,--the entire absence of all fussy movement, fidgeting, staring, querulous changing of places, whispering or laughter, showed that the crowd were there for a deeper purpose than mere curiosity. The bulk of the a.s.semblage was composed of men; very few women were present, and these few were all of the poor and hard-working cla.s.ses. No female of even the lower middle ranks of life, with any faint pretence to 'fas.h.i.+on,' would have been seen listening to ”that dreadful woman,”--as Lotys was very often called by her own s.e.x,--simply because of the extraordinary fascination she secretly exercised over men. Pasquin Leroy and his companions spoke now and then, guardedly, and in low whispers, concerning the appearance and demeanour of the crowd, Max Graub being particularly struck by the general physiognomy and type of the people present.

”Plenty of good heads!” he said cautiously. ”There are thinkers here--and thinkers are a very dangerous cla.s.s!”

”There are many people who 'think' all their lives and 'do' nothing!”