Part 76 (1/2)
”Sergius!” he cried aghast.
”King!” and Thord looked scarcely human in the pale fleeting moonbeams, as he too stared in half-maddened wonder at the face and form of a companion on this dread journey such as he had never expected to see.
”What do you here in the midst of the sea and the storm? You should be at home!--playing the fool in your Palace!--giving audiences on your throne!--you--you have no right to die with Lotys, whom I loved!”
”With Lotys whom you loved!” echoed the King; ”You loved her--true! But I loved her more!”
”You lie!” said Thord, furiously; ”No man--no King,--no Emperor of all the world, could ever have loved Lotys as I loved her! These great waves waiting to devour us--dead and living together--are not more insatiate in their pa.s.sion for us than I in my pa.s.sion for Lotys! I loved her!--and when she scorned me--when she rejected me,--when she openly confessed that she loved you--the King--what remained for her but death!
Death, rather than dishonour at your Royal hands, Sir!” And he laughed fiercely--a laugh with the ring of madness in it. ”I rescued her as a child from starvation and misery--and so I may say I gave her her life.
What I gave, I took again--I had the right to take it! I would not see her shamed by you--dishonoured by you--branded by you!--I did the only thing left to me to save her from you--I killed her!”
With a loud cry the King, no longer so much king as man, with every pa.s.sion roused, sprang at him.
”You killed her? Oh, treacherous devil! They said she killed herself!”
”Hands off!” cried Thord, suddenly pointing a pistol at him; ”I will shoot you as readily as I shot her if you touch me! She killed herself you think? Oh, yes--in a strange way! Her last words were: 'Say I did it myself! Tell the King I did it myself!' A lie! All women are fond of lying. But her lie was to protect Me! Her last thought was for my defence,--not yours! Her last wish was to save Me, not you!--King though you are--lover though you craved to be! I say I murdered her! This is my Day of Fate,--the day on which it seems that Heaven itself has drawn lots with me to kill a King! Why did I ever relax my hate of you? It was inborn in me--a part of me,--my very life, the utmost portion of my work! I called you friend;--I curse myself that I ever did so!--for from the first you were my enemy--my rival in the love of Lotys! What did I care for the People? What did you? We were both at one in the love of the same woman! And now I am here to die with her alone! Alone, I say--do you hear me? I will be alone with her to the last--you shall not share with us in our sea burial! I will die beside her,--all, all alone!--and drift out with her to the darkness of the grave, to meet my fate with her--always with her,--whether her spirit lead me to h.e.l.l or to Heaven!”
His insensate frenzy was so desperate, so terrible, that by its very force the strange mental composure of the King became intensified.
Quietly folding his arms, he took his stand by the coffin of the dead in silence. The das.h.i.+ng spray that leaped at the masts of the vessel,--the wind that scooped up the billows into higher and higher pinnacles of emerald green, might have been soundless and powerless, for all he seemed to hear or to heed.
”Why are you with us?” cried Thord again--”How came you on this s.h.i.+p, where I thought I had hidden myself alone with her, voyaging to Death? Could you not have left her to me?--you who have a throne and kingdom--I, to whom she was all my life!”
”I came--as you have come”--answered the King--”to die with her--or rather not to die, but to find Life with her! She loved me!”
With a savage curse, Thord raised the pistol he held. The King looked him full in the eyes.
”Take good aim, Sergius!” he said tranquilly--”For here between us lies Lotys--the silent witness of your deed! Go hence, if you must, with two murders on your soul! There is no escape from death for either you or me, take it how we may;--and I care not at all how I meet it, whether at your hands or in the waves of the sea! Give me the same death you gave to Lotys! I ask no better end! For so at least shall we meet more quickly!”
Half choked with his fury, Thord looked at him with fixed and gla.s.sy eyes. He was jealous of death!--jealous that death should of itself seem to reunite Lotys and the man she had loved more closely together!
Standing erect by the purple pall that covered the one woman of the world to them both, the King looked 'every inch a king,'--the incarnation of pride, love, resolve and courage. With a sudden wild-beast cry, Thord sprang at him and caught his arm with one hand, the pistol grasped in the other.
”Too near!” he gasped; ”You shall not stand too near her!--you shall not die so close to her!--you shall not have the barest chance of resting where she sleeps!”
He fell back, as the King's calm eyes regarded him steadfastly, imperiously, almost commandingly, without a trace of fear. He trembled.
”Do not look so!” he muttered; ”I cannot kill you!--not if you look so!--”
Raising the pistol, he took apparent aim. The King stood unmoved, only murmuring softly to himself: 'On the other side of Death, my Lotys!--On the other side!'
There was a loud report, a crash in his ears--then--as he staggered back, stunned by the shock, he saw that he was untouched, unhurt. Thord had turned the pistol against his own breast, and reeling backward, with a last supreme effort, dragged his sinking body to the vessel's edge.
”G.o.d save your Majesty!” he cried wildly; ”Tell Lotys I did it myself!