Part 58 (1/2)

Silently Sir Roger bent his head in a.s.sent.

”A man's love leads only one way--to one woman! And in this particular case that woman is--Lotys!” she said, with a little musing scorn, as of herself,--”Strange!”

She laid her hand on the bell which at a touch would summon back her lady-in-waiting. ”You have served me well, Sir Roger, albeit somewhat roughly----”

He gave a low exclamation of regret.

”Roughly, Madam?”

A smile, sudden and sweet, which transfigured her usually pa.s.sionless features into an almost angelic loveliness, lit up her mouth and eyes.

”Yes--roughly! But no matter! I pardon you freely! Good-night!”

”Good-night to your Majesty!” And as he stepped backward from her presence, she rang for Teresa, who at once entered.

”Our excommunication from the Church sits lightly upon us, Sir Roger, does it not?” said the Queen then, almost playfully; ”You must know that we say our prayers as of old, and we still believe G.o.d hears us!”

”Surely, Madam,” he replied, ”G.o.d must hear all prayers when they are pure and honest!”

”Truly, I think so,” she responded, laying one hand tenderly on Teresa's hair, as the girl caressingly knelt beside her. ”And--so, despite lack of priestcraft,--we shall continue to pray,--in these uncertain and dangerous times,--that all may be well for the country,--the people, and--the King! Good-night!”

Again Sir Roger bowed, and this time altogether withdrew. He was strung up to a pitch of intense excitement; the brief interview had been a most trying one for him,--though there was a warm glow at his heart, a.s.suring him that he had done well. His suspicion that the King had admired, and had sought out Lotys since the day she saved him from a.s.sa.s.sination, had a very strong foundation in fact;--much stronger indeed than was at present requisite to admit or to declare. But the whole matter was a source of the greatest anxiety to De Launay, who, in his strong love for his Royal master, found it often difficult to conceal his apprehension,--and who was in a large measure relieved to feel that the Queen had guessed something of it, and shared in his sentiments. He now re-entered his room, and on doing so at once perceived that the King had returned. But his Majesty was busy writing, and did not raise his head from his papers, even when Sir Roger noiselessly entered and laid some letters on the table. His complete abstraction in his work was a sign that he did not wish to be disturbed or spoken to;--and Sir Roger, taking the hint, retired again in silence.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE SONG OF FREEDOM

Revolution! The flame-winged Fury that swoops down on a people like a sudden visitation of G.o.d, with the movement of a storm, and the devastation of a plague in one! Who shall say how, or where, the seed is sown that springs so swiftly to such thick harvest! Who can trace its beginnings--and who can predict its end! Tragic and terrible as its work has always seemed to the miserable and muddle-headed human units, whose faults and follies, whose dissoluteness and neglect of the highest interests of the people, are chiefly to blame for the birth of this Monster, it is nevertheless Divine Law, that, when any part of G.o.d's Universe-House is deliberately made foul by the dwellers in it, then must it be cleansed,--and Revolution is the burning of the rubbish,--the huge bonfire in which old abuses blazon their destruction to an amazed and terror-stricken world. Yet there have been moments, or periods, in history, when the threatening conflagration could have been stayed and turned back from its course,--when the useless shedding of blood might have been foregone--when the fierce pa.s.sions of the people might have been soothed and pacified, and when Justice might have been n.o.bly done and catastrophe averted, if there had been but one brave man,--one only!--and that man a King! But in nearly all the convulsive throes of nations, kings have proved themselves the weakest, tamest, most cowardly and ineffectual of all the heads of the time--ready and willing enough to sacrifice the lives of thousands of brave and devoted men to their own cause, but never prepared to sacrifice themselves. Hence the cause of the triumph of Democracy over effete Autocracy. Kings may not be more than men,--but, certes, they should never be less. They should not practise vices of which the very day-labourer whom they employ, would be ashamed; nor should they flaunt their love of sensuality and intrigue in the faces of their subjects as a 'Royal example' and distinctive 'lead'

to vulgar licentiousness. The loftier the position, the greater the responsibility;--and a monarch who voluntarily lowers the social standard in his realm has lost more adherents than could possibly be slain in his defence on the field of honour.

The King who plays his part as the hero of this narrative, was now fully aware in his own mind and conscience of the thousands of opportunities he had missed and wasted on his way to the Throne when Heir-Apparent.

Since the day of his 'real coronation,' when as he had expressed it to his thoughts, he had 'crowned himself with his own resolve,' he had studied men, manners, persons and events, to deep and serious purpose.

He had learned much, and discovered more. He had been, in a moral sense, conquered by his son, Prince Humphry, who had proved a match for him in his determined and honourable marriage for love, and love only,--though born heir to all the conventions and hypocrisies of a Throne. He,--in his day,--had lacked the courage and truth that this boy had shown.

And now, by certain means known best to himself, he had fathomed an intricate network of deception and infamy among the governing heads of the State. He had convinced himself in many ways of the unblus.h.i.+ng dishonesty and fraudulent self-service of Carl Perousse. And--yet--with all this information stored carefully up in his brain he, to all appearances, took no advantage of it, and did nothing remarkable,--save the one act which had been so much talked about--the refusal of land in his possession to the Jesuits for a 'religious' (and political) settlement. This independent course of procedure had resulted in his excommunication from the Church. Of his 'veto' against an intended war, scarcely anything was known. Only the Government were aware of the part he had taken in that matter,--the Government and--the Money-market! But the time was now ripe for further movement; and in the deep and almost pa.s.sionate interest he had recently learned to take in the affairs of the actual People, he was in no humour for hesitation.

He had mapped out in his brain a certain plan of action, and he was determined to go through with it. The more so, as now a new and close interest had incorporated itself with his life,--an emotion so deep and tender and overwhelming, that he scarcely dared to own it to himself,--scarcely ventured to believe that he, deprived of true love so long, should now be truly loved for himself, at last! But on this he seldom allowed his mind to dwell,--except when quite alone,--in the deep silences of night;--when he gave his soul up to the secret sweetness which had begun to purify and enn.o.ble his innermost nature,--when he saw visioned before him a face,--warm with the pa.s.sion of a love so grand and unselfish that it drew near to a likeness of the Divine;--a love that asked nothing, and gave everything, with the beneficent glory of the sunlight bestowing splendour on the earth. His lonely moments, which were few, were all the time he devoted to this brooding luxury of meditation, and though his heart beat like a boy's, and his eyes grew dim with tenderness, as in fancy he dreamed of joy that might be, and that yet still more surely might never be his,--his determined mind, braced and bent to action, never faltered for a second in the new conceptions he had formed of his duty to his people, who, as he now considered, had been too long and too cruelly deceived.

Hence, something like an earthquake shock sent its tremor through the country, when two things were suddenly announced without warning, as the apparent results of the various Cabinet Councils held latterly so often, and in such haste. The first was, that not only had his Majesty accepted the resignation of the Marquis de Lutera as Premier, but that he had decided--provided the selection was entirely agreeable to the Government--to ask M. Carl Perousse to form a Ministry in his place. The second piece of intelligence, and one that was received with much more favour than the first, by all cla.s.ses and conditions of persons, was that the Government had issued a decree for the complete expulsion of the Jesuits from the country. By a certain named date, and within a month, every Jesuit must have left the King's dominions, or else must take the risk of a year's imprisonment followed by compulsory banishment.

Much uproar and discussion did this mandate excite among the clerical parties of Europe,--much indignation did it breed within that Holy of Holies situate at the Vatican,--which, having launched forth the ban of excommunication, had no further thunderbolts left to throw at the head of the recreant and abandoned Royalty whose 'temporal power' so insolently superseded the spiritual. But the country breathed freely; relieved from a dangerous and mischievous incubus. The educational authorities gave fervent thanks to Heaven for sparing them from long dreaded interference;--and when it was known that the excommunicated King was the chief mover in this firm and liberating act, a silent wave of pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude and approval ran through the mult.i.tudes of the people, who would almost have a.s.sembled under the Palace walls and offered a grand demonstration to their monarch, who had so boldly carried the war into the enemy's country and won the victory, had they not been held back and checked from their purpose by the counter-feeling of their disgust at his Majesty's apparently forthcoming choice of Carl Perousse as Prime Minister.

Swayed this way and that, the people were divided more absolutely than before into those two sections which always become very dangerous when strongly marked out as distinctly separated,--the Cla.s.ses and the Ma.s.ses. The comfortable wedge of Trade, which,--calling itself the Middle-cla.s.s,--had up to the present kept things firm, now split asunder likewise,--the wealthy plutocrats clinging w.i.l.l.y-nilly to the Cla.s.ses, to whom they did not legitimately belong; and the men of moderate income throwing in their lot with the Ma.s.ses, whose wrongs they sympathetically felt somewhat resembled their own. For taxation had ground them down to that particularly fine powder, which when applied to the rocks of convention and usage, proves to be of a somewhat blasting quality. They had paid as much on their earnings and their goods as they could or would pay;--more indeed than they had any reasonable right to pay,--and being sick of Government mismanagement, and also of what they still regarded as the King's indifference to their needs, they were prepared to make a dash for liberty. The expulsion of the Jesuits they naturally looked upon as a suitable retaliation on Rome for the excommunication of the Royal Family; but beyond the intense relief it gave to all, it could not be considered as affecting or materially altering the political situation. So, like the dividing waves of the Red Sea, which rolled up on either side to permit the pa.s.sage of Moses and his followers--the Cla.s.ses and the Ma.s.ses piled themselves up in opposite billowy sections to allow Sergius Thord and the Revolutionary party to pa.s.s triumphantly through their midst, adding thousands of adherents to their forces from both sides;--while they were prepared to let the full weight of the billows engulf the King, if, like Pharaoh and his chariots, he a.s.sumed too much, or proceeded too far.

Professor von Glauben, seated in his own sanctum, and engaged in the continuance of his ”Political History of Hunger,” found many points in the immediate situation which considerably interested him and moved him to philosophical meditation.

”For,--take the feeling of the People as it now is,” he said to himself; ”It starts in Hunger! The taxes,--the uncomfortable visit of the tax-gatherer! The price of the loaf,--concerning which the baker, or the baker-ess, politely tells the customer that it is costly, because of the Government tax on corn; then from the bread, it is marvellous how the little clue winds upward through the spider-webs of Trade. The butcher's meat is dearer,--for says he--'The tax on corn makes it necessary for me to increase the price of meat.' There is no logical reason given,--the fact simply _is_! So that Hunger commences the warfare,--Hunger of Soul, as well as Hunger of body. 'Why starve my thought?' says Soul. 'Why tax my bread?' says Body. These tiresome questions continue to be asked, and never answered,--but answers are clamoured for, and the people complain--and then one fierce day the G.o.ds hear them grumble, and begin to grumble back! Ach! Then it is thunder with a vengeance! Now in my own so-beloved Fatherland, there has been this double grumbling for a long time. And that the storm will burst, in spite of the so-excellently-advertising Kaiser is evident! Hoch!--or _Ach_? Which should it be to salute the Kaiser! I know not at all,--but I admit it is clever of him to put up a special h.o.a.rding-announcement for the private view of the Almighty G.o.d, each time he addresses his troops! And he will come in for a chapter of my history--for he also is Hungry!--he would fain eat a little of the loaf of Britain!--yes!--he will fit into my work very well for the instruction of the helpless unborn generations!”