Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy Part 52

"If that be so, then he must also be aware that I am his sworn enemy!"

she said,--"And, that in accordance with the principles I hold, I cannot possibly remain under his roof! Therefore I trust, sir, you will have the kindness to provide me with a way of quick exit before my presence here becomes too publicly reported."

The Professor was slightly nonplussed. He considered for a moment; then rapidly made up his mind.

"Madame, I will do so!" he said--"That is, if you will permit me first of all to announce your intention of leaving the Palace, to the King.

Pardon me for suggesting that his Majesty can hardly regard as an enemy a lady who has saved his life at the risk of her own."

"I did not save it because he is the King," she said curtly, "And you are at liberty to tell him so. Please make haste to inform him at once of my desire to leave the Palace,--and say also, that if he considers he owes me any grat.i.tude, he will show it by not detaining me."

The Professor bowed and retired. Lotys, left alone, sat down for a moment in one of the luxuriously cus.h.i.+oned chairs, and pressed her left hand hard over her eyes to try and still their throbbing ache. Her right arm was bound up and useless,--and the pain from the wound in her shoulder caused her acute agony,--but she had a will of iron, and she had trained her mental forces to control, if not entirely to master, her physical weaknesses. She thought, not of her own suffering, but of the exciting incident in which mere impulse had led her to take so marked a share. It was by pure accident that she had joined the crowd a.s.sembled to see the King lay the foundation-stone of the proposed new Theatre.

She had been as it were, entangled in the press of the people, and had got pushed towards the centre of the scene almost against her own volition. And while she had stood,--a pa.s.sive and unwilling spectator of the pageant,--her attention had been singularly attracted towards the uneasy and restless movements of the youth who had afterwards attempted the a.s.sa.s.sination of the monarch. She had watched him narrowly; though she could not have explained why she did so, even to herself. He was a complete stranger to her, and yet, with her quick intuition, she had discerned a curious expression of anxiety and fear in his face, as though of the impending horror of a crime,--a look which, because it was so strained and unnatural, had aroused her suspicion. When she had sprung forward to s.h.i.+eld the King, only one idea had inspired her,--and that idea she would not now fully own even to herself, because it was so entirely, weakly feminine. Nevertheless, from woman's weakness has often sprung a hero's strength--and so it had proved in this case. She did not, however, allow herself to dwell on the instinctive impulse which had thrown her on the King's breast, ready to receive her own death-blow rather than that he should die; she preferred to elude that question, and to consider her action solely from the standpoint of those Socialistic theories with which she was indissolubly a.s.sociated.

"Had I not frustrated the attempt, the crime would have been set down to us and our Brotherhood," she said to herself, "Sergius--or Paul Zouche--or I myself--or even Pasquin--yes, even he!--might, and doubtless would, have been accused of instigating it. As it is, I think I have saved the situation." She rose and walked slowly up and down the room. "I wonder who is behind the wretched boy concerned in this business? He is too young to have determined on such a deed himself,--unless he is mad;--he must be a tool in the hands of others."

Here spying her long black cloak hanging across a chair, she took it up and threw it round her,--her face was reflected back upon her from a mirror set in the wall, round which a cl.u.s.ter of ivory cupids clambered,--and she looked critically at her white drawn features, and the disordered ma.s.ses of her hair. Loosening these abundant locks, she shook them down and gathered them into her one uncrippled hand, preparatory to twisting them into the usual knot at the back of her head, the while she looked at the little sculptured _amorini_ set round the mirror, with a compa.s.sionate smile.

"Such a number of mimic Loves where there is no real love!" she said half aloud,--when the opening of a door, and the swaying movement of a curtain pushed aside, startled her; and still holding her rich hair up in her hand she turned quickly,--to find herself face to face with,--the King.

There was an instant's dead silence. Dropping the silken gold weight of her tresses to fall as they would, regardless of conventional appearances, she stood erect, making all unconsciously to herself, a picture of statuesque and beauteous tragedy. Her plain black garments,--the long cloak enveloping her slight form, and the glorious tangle of her unbound hair rippling loosely about her pale face, in which her eyes shone like blue flowers, made luminous by the sunlight of the inspired soul behind them, all gave her an almost supernatural air,--and made her seem as wholly unlike any other woman as a strange leaf from an unexplored country is unlike the foliage common to one's native land. The King looked steadfastly upon her; she, meeting his gaze with equal steadfastness, felt her heart beating violently, though, as she well knew, it was not with fear. She had no thought of Court etiquette,--nor had she any reason to consider it, his Majesty having himself deliberately trespa.s.sed upon its rules by visiting her thus alone and unattended. She offered no reverence,--no salutation;--she simply stood before him, quite silent, awaiting his pleasure,--though in her eyes there shone a dangerous brilliancy that was almost feverish, and nervous tremors shook her from head to foot. The strange dumb spell between them relaxed at last. With a kind of effort which expressed itself in the extra rigidity and pallor of his fine features, the King spoke:

"Madame, I have come to thank you! Your n.o.ble act of heroism this afternoon has saved my life. I do not say it is worth saving!--but the Nation appears to think it is,--and in the name of the Nation, whose servant I am, I offer you my personal grat.i.tude--and service!"

He bowed low as he said these words gravely and courteously. Her eyes still searched his face wistfully, with the eager plaintive expression of a child looking for some precious treasure it has lost. She strove to calm her throbbing pulses,--to quiet the hurrying blood in her veins,--to brace herself up to her usual impervious height of composure and self-control.

"I need no thanks!" she answered briefly--"I have only done my duty!"

"Nay, Madame, is it quite consistent with your duty to s.h.i.+eld from death one so hated by your disciples and followers?" he asked, with a tinge of melancholy in his accents--"You--as the famous Lotys--should have helped to kill, not to save!"

She regarded him fearlessly.

"You mistake!" she said--"As King, you should learn to know your subjects better! We are not murderers. We do not seek your life,--we seek to make you understand the need there is of honesty and justice. We live our lives among the poor; and we see those poor crushed down into the dust by the rich, without hope and without help,--and we endeavour to rouse them to a sense of this Wrong, so that they may, by persistence, obtain Right. We do not want the death of any man! Even to a traitor we give warning and time, ere we punish his treachery. The unhappy wretch who attempted your life to-day was not of our party, or our teaching, thank G.o.d!"

"I am sure of that!" he said very gently, his face brightening with a kind smile,--then, seeing her swerve, as though about to fall, he caught her on one arm--"You are faint! You must not stand too long. I fear you are suffering from the pain of that cruel wound inflicted on you for my sake!"

"A little--" she managed to say, with white lips--"But it is nothing--it will soon pa.s.s----"

She sank helplessly into the chair he placed for her, and mutely watched him as he walked to the window and threw it open, admitting the sweet, fresh, sea-scented air, and a flood of crimson radiance from the setting sun.

"I am informed that you wish to quit the Palace at once," he said, averting his gaze from hers for a moment;--"Need I say how much I regret this decision of yours? Both I and the Queen had hoped you would have remained with us, under the care of our own physician, till you were quite recovered. But I owe you too great a debt already to make any further claim upon you--and I will not command you to stay, if you desire to go."

She lifted her head;--the faint colour was returning to her cheeks.

"I thank you!" she said simply;--"I do indeed desire to go. Every moment spent here is a moment wasted!"

"You think so?"--and, turning from the window where he stood, he confronted her again;--"May I venture to suggest that you hardly do justice to me, or to the situation? You have placed me under very great obligations--surely you should endure my company long enough to tell me at least how I can in some measure show my personal recognition of your brave and self-sacrificing action!"

She looked at him in musing silence. A strange glow came into her eyes,--a deeper crimson flushed her cheek.

"You can do nothing for me!" she said, after a long pause, "You are a King--I, a poor commoner. I would not be indebted to you for all the world! I am prouder of my 'common' estate than you are of your royalty!

What are 'royal' rewards? Jewels, money, place, t.i.tle! All valueless to me! If you would serve anyone, serve the People;--do something to deserve their trust! If you would show _me_ any personal recognition, as you say, for saving your life, make that life more n.o.ble!"

He heard her without offence, holding himself mute and motionless. She rose from her seat, and approached him more closely.

"Perhaps, after all, it is well that I was,--unconsciously and against my own volition,--brought here," she said; "Perhaps it is G.o.d's will that I should speak with you! For, as a rule none of your unknown subjects can, or may speak with you!--you are so much hemmed in and ringed round with slaves and parasites! In so far as this goes, you are to be pitied; though it rests with you to shake yourself free from the toils of vulgar adulation. Your flatterers tell you nothing. They are careful to keep you shut out of your own kingdom--to hide from you things that are true,--things that you ought to know; they fool you with false a.s.surances of national tranquillity and content,--they persuade you to play, like an over-grown child, with the toys of luxury,--they lead you, a mere puppet, round and round in the clockwork routine of a foolish and licentious society,--when you might be a Man!--up and doing man's work that should help you to regenerate and revivify the whole country! I speak boldly--yes!--because I do not fear you!--because I have no favours to gain from you,--because to me,--Lotys,--you,--the King--are nothing!"

Her voice, perfectly tranquil, even, and coldly sweet, had not a single vibration of uncertainty or hesitation in it--and her words seemed to cut through the stillness of the room with clean incisiveness like the sweep of a sword-blade. Outside, the sea murmured and the leaves rustled,--the sun had sunk, leaving behind it a bright, pearly twilight sky, flecked with pink clouds like scattered rose-petals.

He looked straight at her,--his clear dark grey eyes were filled with the glowing fire of strongly suppressed feeling. Some hasty e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n sprang to his lips, but he checked it, and pacing once or twice up and down, suddenly wheeled round, and again confronted her.

"If, as a king, I fall so far short of kingliness, and am nothing to you,"--he said deliberately; "Why did you s.h.i.+eld me from the a.s.sa.s.sin's dagger a while ago? Why not have let me perish?"

She shook back her gold hair, and regarded him almost defiantly.

"I did not save you because you are the King!" she replied--"Be a.s.sured of that!"

He was vaguely astonished.

"Merely a humane sentiment then?" he said--"Just as you would have saved a dog from drowning!"

A little smile crept reluctantly round the corners of her mouth.

"There was another reason," she began in a low tone,--then paused--"But--only a woman's reason!"

Something in her changing colour,--some delicate indefinable touch of tenderness and pathos, which softened her features and made them almost ethereal, sent a curious thrill through his blood.

"A woman's reason!" he echoed; "May I not hear it?"

Again she hesitated,--then, as if despising herself for her own irresolution she spoke out bravely.

"You may!"--she said--"There is nothing to conceal--nothing of which I am ashamed! Besides, it is the true motive of the action which you are pleased to call 'heroic.' I saved your life simply because--because you resemble in form and feature, in look and manner, the only man I love!"

A curious silence followed her words. The faint far whispering of the leaves on the trees outside seemed almost intrusively loud in such a stillness,--the placid murmur of the sea against the cliff below the Palace became well-nigh suggestive of storm. Lotys was suddenly conscious of an odd strained sense of terror,--she had spoken as freely and frankly as she would have spoken to any one of her own a.s.sociates,--and yet she felt that somehow she had been over-impulsive, and that in a thoughtless moment she had let slip some secret which placed her, weak and helpless, in the King's power. The King himself stood immovable as a figure of bronze,--his eyes resting upon her with a deep insistence of purpose, as though he sought to wrest some further confession from her soul. The tension between them was painful,--almost intolerable,--and though it lasted but a minute, that minute seemed weighted with the potentialities of years. Forcing herself to break the dumb spell, Lotys went on hurriedly and half desperately:--

"You may smile at this," she said--"Men always jest with a woman's heart,--a woman's folly! But folly or no, I will not have you draw any false conclusions concerning me,--or flatter yourself that it was loyalty to you, or honour for your position that made me your living s.h.i.+eld to-day. No!--for if you were not the exact counterpart of him who is dearer to me than all the world beside, I think I should have let you die! I think so--I do not know! Because, after all, you are not like him in mind or heart; it is only your outward bearing, your physical features that resemble his! But, even so, I could not have looked idly on, and seen his merest Resemblance slain! Now you understand! It is not for you, as King, that I have turned aside a murderer's weapon,--but solely because you have the face, the eyes, the smile of one who is a thousand times greater and n.o.bler than you,--who, though poor and uncrowned, is a true king in the grace and thought and goodness of his actions,--who, all unlike you, personally attends to the wants of the poor, instead of neglecting them,--and who recognises, and does his best to remedy, the many wrongs which afflict the people of this land!"

Her sweet voice thrilled with pa.s.sion,--her cheeks glowed,--unconsciously she stretched out her uninjured hand with an eloquent gesture of pride and conviction. The King's figure, till now rigid and motionless, stirred;--advancing a step, he took that hand before she could withhold it, and raised it to his lips.

"Madame, I am twice honoured!" he said, in accents that shook ever so slightly--"To resemble a good man even outwardly is something,--to wear in any degree the lineaments of one whom a brave and true woman honours by her love is still more! You have made me very much your debtor"--here he gently relinquished the hand he had kissed--"but believe me, I shall endeavour most faithfully to meet the claim you have upon my grat.i.tude!"

Here he paused, and drawing back, bowed courteously. "The way for your departure is clear," he continued;--"I have ordered a carriage to be in waiting at one of the private entrances to the Palace. Professor von Glauben, my physician, who has just attended you, will escort you to it.

You will pa.s.s out quite unnoticed,--and be,--as you desire it--again at full liberty. Let the memory of the King whose life you saved trouble you no more,--except when you look upon his better counterpart!--as then, perchance, you may think more kindly of him! For he has to suffer!--not so much for his own faults, as for the faults of a system formulated by his ancestors."

Her intense eyes glowed with a fire of enthusiasm as she lifted them to his face.

"Kings.h.i.+p would be a grand system," she said, "if kings were true! And Autocracy would be the best and n.o.blest form of government in the world, if autocrats could be found who were intellectual and honest at one and the same time!"

He looked at her observantly.

"You think they are neither?"