Part 64 (2/2)
The hum of talk continued; and the good feeling of friends.h.i.+p and unity of the a.s.semblage was intensified with every cordial handshake. When the time came to break up, someone suggested that a carriage should be sent for to convey the King and his two companions to the Palace. Whereat the monarch laughed aloud and right joyously.
”By my faith!” he exclaimed; ”You, my friends, would actually pamper me already, by offering me a luxury which you yourselves do not propose to enjoy! Ah, my friends, here comes in the mischief of the monarchical system! What of your 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity'? Do I ask to have anything different to yourselves? Can I not walk, even as you do?
Have I not walked to, and from these meetings often? And even so, I purpose to walk now! If you are true Revolutionists--as I am--do not reverse your own theories! You complain,--and justly,--that a king is over-flattered; do not then flatter him yourselves by insisting on such convenience for him as he does not even demand at your hands!”
”You take us too literally, Sir,” said Louis Valdor; ”Even Revolutionists owe respect to their chief!”
”Sergius Thord is your Chief, my friend!” replied the monarch; ”And, from a Revolutionary point of view, mine! But you have never thought of sending _him_ anywhere in a carriage! Ah!--what children we are! What slaves of convention! 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity' have been the ideals of ages;--yet despite them, we are always ready to follow a Leader,--and form ourselves into one body under a Head!”
”Provided the Head has brains in it!” said Zouche. ”But otherwise--”
”You cut it off!” laughed the monarch--”and quite right too!”
They now began to separate. The hunchback Sholto explained that it was long after midnight, and that he had already put out all the lights in the bas.e.m.e.nt.
Whereupon the King, turning to Sergius Thord said: ”Farewell for the moment, Sergius! Come to me at the Palace with the whole plan of the meeting you are now organising; I shall hold myself ready to fall in with your plans! Gather your thousands, and--leave the rest to me!”
Thord clasped his extended hand,--and was moved by a curious instinct to bend down low over it after the fas.h.i.+on of a courtier, but restrained himself almost by force. The men began to move; one after the other bade good-night to the King--then to Thord, and last to Lotys, who, drawing on her cloak, prepared to leave also.
”I will see you safely down the stairs,” said the King smilingly, to her. ”It is not the first time I have done so! How now, Zouche?”
Paul Zouche stood before him, his eyes full of a strange mingled pathos and scorn.
”I have to thank your Majesty,” he said slowly, ”for something I do not in the least value,--Fame! It has come too late! Had it been my portion three years ago, the woman I loved would have been proud of me, and I should have been happy! She is dead now--and nothing matters!”
The King was silent. There was something both solemn and pitiful about this wreck of manhood which was still kept alive by the fire of genius.
”With one word you might have saved me--and her!” he went on. ”When you came to the Throne,--and all the wretched versifiers in the kingdom were scribbling twaddle in the way of 'Coronation odes' and medleys, I wrote 'The Song of Freedom' for your glory! All the people of the land know that song now!--but you might have known it then! For now it is too late!--too late to call her back;--too late to give me peace!”
He paused;--then--without another word--turned, and went out.
”Poor Zouche!” said the King gently; ”I accept his reproach and understand it! He is right! The recognition of his genius is one of the thousand chances I have missed! But, as G.o.d lives, I will miss no more!”
A great quietude fell on the house as the Revolutionary Committee dispersed. The last to leave was the King, his two friends, and Lotys.
Lotys declined all escort somewhat imperatively, refusing to allow Sergius Thord to see her to her own home.
”I must be alone!” she said; ”Do you not understand! I want to think--I want to realise our change of position. I cannot talk to you, Sergius,--no--not till to-morrow--you must let me be!”
He drew back, chilled and hurt by her tone, but forbore to press his company on her. With another farewell to the King, he stood at the top of the long dark winding stair watching the group descend,--first Von Glauben, next De Launay,--thirdly, the King,--and lastly, Lotys.
”Good-night!” he called, as her white robes vanished in the gloom.
”Good-night!” she answered tremulously, as she disappeared.
And he, returning to the empty room, stared vacantly at the table draped with black, and the funeral urn set upon it,--stared at the empty chairs and bare walls, and listened as it were, to the midnight silence,--realising that he as Chief of the Revolutionary Committee, was no longer a chief but a servant!--and that the power he sought--that power which he had endeavoured to attain in order that he might make of Lotys, as he had said, 'a queen among women!' was only to be won through,--the King! The King knew all his secret plans and his aims,--he held the clue to the whole network of his Revolutionary organisation,--and the only chance he now had of ever arriving at the highest goal of his ambition was in the King's hands! Thus was he,--Socialist and Revolutionist,--made subject to the Throne; the very rules he had drawn up for himself and his Committee making it impossible that he could be otherwise than loyal, to a monarch who was at the same time his comrade!
Meanwhile, in the thick darkness of the hall below, while Von Glauben and De Launay were groping their way to the door which was cautiously held open by Sholto, Lotys, moving with hesitating steps down the stairs, felt rather than saw a head turned back upon her,--a flash of eyes in the darkness, and heard her name breathed softly:
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