Part 74 (1/2)
”Roger, Roger!” cried Teresa in an anguish, as the sound of his footsteps died away--”Come back! Come back!”
And falling on her knees by the Queen's side, she burst into wild weeping.
”If the King has gone for ever, my brother is gone too,” she sobbed--”Oh, dearest Majesty, have you no heart?”
”None!” said the Queen with a strained smile, while the slow, hot tears began to fall from her aching eyes--”None! What heart I had is gone! It follows the King!”
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
ABDICATION
A great storm was gathering. The heavy purple clouds which had arisen in the west at sunset, when all that was mortal of Lotys had been sent forth to a lonely burial in the sea, had gradually spread over the whole sky, darkening in hue as they moved, and rolling together in huge opaque ma.s.ses, which presently began to close in and become denser as the night advanced. By and by a wild wind awoke, as it were, from the very cavities of ocean, and the waves began to hiss warnings all along the coast, and to rise higher and higher over each other's shoulders as the gale steadily increased. Rene Ronsard, sitting in his cottage, feeble and somewhat ailing, heard the beginnings of the tempest with long-accustomed ears. He was depressed in spirit, yet not altogether solitary, for he had with him a kindly companion in Professor von Glauben. The Professor had been one of the many who had attended the strange funeral-pageant of the afternoon, not only out of interest in, and regret for, the fate of the woman whose unique character he had admired, and whose difficult position he had pitied; but also because he had suffered from an unpleasant presentiment to which he could give no name. If he could have described his forebodings at all, he would have said they were more or less connected with the King,--but how or why, he would not have been able to explain, save that since the death of Lotys, his Sovereign master had no longer looked the same man. Stricken as with a blight, and grown suddenly old, his manner and appearance were as of one devoured by a secret despair,--a corroding disease,--of which the end could only be disastrous. Overcome by the pain and distress of being the constant witness of a sorrow which he felt to the heart, yet could not relieve, the Professor, on returning from the scene of Lotys's impressive funeral, had put ash.o.r.e on The Islands, instead of going back to the mainland. He had sought permission from the King to remain with Ronsard for the night,--and the permission had been readily, almost eagerly granted. The King, indeed, had seemed glad to be relieved of the too anxious solicitude of his physician, who, he knew, was well aware of the concealed agony of mind which tortured and well-nigh maddened him,--and the Professor, keenly observant, was equally conscious that, under the immediate circ.u.mstances, his attendance might seem more of an intrusion than a duty.
”De Launay was not far wrong when he prophesied danger for the King as the result of his beginning to think for himself;” he mused--”Yet it has come--this danger--in a different way to that in which we expected it! It is a bold move for the ruler of a country to make personal examination into the needs of his people,--but it is seldom that, while engaged in such a task, the ruler himself becomes ruled, by a stronger force than even his own temporal power!”
And now, sitting with old Rene Ronsard, by a fire which had been kindled on this somewhat chilly night for his better comfort, he was, despite the impression of sadness and disaster which hung upon his mind as darkly as the clouds were hanging in heaven, doing his best to rouse both himself and his companion to greater cheerfulness. The wind, shaking the lattice, and now and then screaming dismally under the door, did not inspire him to gaiety, but his thoughts were princ.i.p.ally for Ronsard, who was inclined to yield to an overpowering despondency.
”This will never do, Ronsard!” he said after a pause, during which he had noticed a tear or two steal slowly down the old man's furrowed cheek; ”What sort of a welcome will such a face as yours be to our Crown Princess Gloria? She will soon be here; think of it! And what a triumphant entry she will make, acclaimed by the whole nation!”
”I shall not be wanted in her life!” said Ronsard, slowly. ”After all, I am nothing to her, and have no claim upon her. I found her, as a poor man may by chance find a rare jewel,--that the jewel is afterwards found worthy to be set in a king's crown, is not the business of that same poor man. He who merely hews a diamond out of the mine, is not the maker of the diamond!”
”Gloria loves you!” said the Professor; ”And she will love you always!”
Ronsard smiled faintly.
”My friend, I understand, and I accept the law of change!” he said. ”To me, as to all, it must come! The old must die, and the young succeed them. As for me, I shall be glad to go--the sooner the better, I truly think, for then none will taunt my Gloria with the simple manner of her bringing up;--none will remember aught, save her exceeding beauty, or blame her that the sun and sea were her only known parents. And if we credit legend, hers is not the first birth of loveliness from the bosom of the waves!”
Here the wind, tearing round the rafters, rattled and roared for a s.p.a.ce like a demon threatening the whole construction of the house, and then went galloping away with a shriek among the pines down to the sh.o.r.e.
”A wild night!” said the Professor, with a slight s.h.i.+ver. ”Alas! poor Lotys!--poor 'Soul of an Ideal' as Sergius Thord called her,--her frail mortal tenement will soon be drawn down to the depths in such a storm as this!”
”I never saw her!” said Ronsard musingly; ”Thord I have seen often.
Lotys was to me a name merely,--but I knew it was a name to conjure with--a name beloved of the People. Gloria longed to see her,--she had heard of her often.”
”She was a psychological phenomenon,” said the Professor slowly; ”And I admit that her composition baffled me. No one have I ever seen at all like her. She was beautiful without any of the accepted essentials of beauty--and it is precisely such a woman as that who possesses the most dangerous fascination over men--not over boys--but over men. She had a loving, pa.s.sionate, feminine heart, with a masculine brain,--the two together are bound to const.i.tute what is called Genius. The only thing I cannot understand is the unexpected weakness she displayed in committing suicide. That I should never have thought of her. On the contrary, I should have imagined, knowing as much of her as I did, that the greater the sorrow, the greater the fight she would have made against it.”
A silence fell between them, filled by the thundering noise of the wind.
”Where is Thord?” asked Ronsard presently.
”I do not know. The last I saw of him was on board the vessel that bore her coffin;--he was laying flowers on the deck. He was not, I think, in any of the smaller boats that accompanied it; he must have returned with the crowd on sh.o.r.e. He has his duties as Deputy for the city now, we must remember!”
Ronsard's eyes flashed with a glimmer of satire in the firelight.
”If it had not been for Lotys, he would not be a Deputy, or anything else,--save perchance a Communist or an Anarchist!” he said; ”he used to be one of the fiercest malcontents in all the country when I first came here. Many and many is the time I have heard him threaten to kill the King!”
”Ah!” said the Professor meaningly, the while he bent his eyes on the flickering fire.
Again a silence fell. The wind roared and screamed around the building, and in the pauses of the gale, the minutes seemed weighted with a strange dread. Every tick of the clock sounded heavy and long, even to the equable-minded Professor. The storm outside was growing louder and even louder, and his thoughts, despite himself, turned to the ocean-wildernesses over which Prince Humphry's home-returning vessel must be now on its way--while that other solitary barque, unhelmed and unmanned, whose sail bore the name of 'Lotys' was also voyaging, but in a darker direction, down to death and oblivion, carrying with it, as he feared, all the love and heart of a King! Suddenly a loud knocking at the door startled them; and as Ronsard rose from his chair, amazed at the noise and Von Glauben did the same with more alacrity, a man with wind blown hair and excited gestures burst into the little room.