Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy Part 69

He left the room then, descending the stairs more rapidly than he had climbed them, and as he went out of the house and up the street, he stumbled against Paul Zouche.

"Whither away, brave Deputy?" cried this irresponsible being; "Whither away? To rescue the poor and the afflicted?--or to stop the King from poaching on your own preserves?"

With a force of which he was himself unconscious, he gripped Zouche by the arm.

"What do you mean?" he whispered thickly;--"Speak! What do you know?"

Zouche laughed stupidly.

"What do I know?" he echoed; "Why, what should I know, blockhead, save what all who have eyes to see, know as well as I do! Sergius, your grasp is none of the lightest; let me go!" Then as the other's hand fell from his arm, he continued. "It is you who are the blind man leading the blind! You--who like all thick-skulled reformers, can never perceive what goes on under your own nose! But what does it matter? What does anything matter? I told you long ago she would never love you; I knew long ago that she loved his Majesty, 'Pasquin Leroy!'"

"Curse you!" said Thord suddenly, in such low infuriated accents that the oath sounded more like a wild beast's snarl. "Why did you not tell me? Why did you not warn me?"

Zouche shrugged his shoulders, and began to sidle aimlessly along the roadway.

"You would not have believed me!" he said; "n.o.body believes anything that is unpleasant to themselves! If you had not some suspicion in your own mind, you would not believe me now! I am foolish--you are wise! I am a poet--you are a reformer! I am drunk--you are sober! And with it all, Lotys is the only one who keeps her head clear. Lotys was always the creature of common-sense among us; she understood you--she understood me--and better than either of us--she understood the King!"

"No, no!" whispered Thord, more to himself than his companion; "She could not--she could not have known!"

"Now you look as Nature meant you to look!" exclaimed Zouche, staring wildly at him; "Savage as a bear;--pitiless as a snake! G.o.d! What men can become when they are baulked of their desires! But it is no use, my Sergius!--you have gained power in one direction, but you have lost it in another! You cannot have your cake, and eat it!" Here he reeled against the wall,--then straightening himself with a curious effort at dignity, he continued: "Leave her alone, Sergius! Leave Lotys in peace!

She is a good soul! Let her love where she will and how she will,--she has the right to choose her lover,--the right!--by Heaven!--it is a right denied to no woman! And if she has chosen the King, she is only one of many who have done the same!"

With a smothered sound between a curse and a groan, Thord suddenly wheeled round away from him and left him. Vaguely surprised, yet too stupefied to realise that his rambling words might have worked serious mischief, Zouche gazed blinkingly on his retreating figure.

"The same old story!" he muttered, with a foolish laugh; "Always a woman in it! He has won leaders.h.i.+p and power,--he has secured the friends.h.i.+p of a King,--but if the King is his rival in matters of love--ah!--that is a worse danger for the Throne than the spread of Socialism!"

He rambled off unthinkingly, and gave the only part of him which remained still active, his poetic instinct, up to the composition of a delicate love-song, which he wrote between two taverns and several drinks.

Late in the afternoon--just after sundown--a small close brougham drove up to the corner of the street where stood the tenement house,--divided into several separate flats,--in which the attic where Lotys dwelt was one of the most solitary and removed portions. The King alighted from the carriage un.o.bserved, and ascended the stairs on which Sergius Thord's steps had echoed but a few hours gone by. Knocking at the door as Sergius had done, he was in the same way bidden to enter, but as he did so, Lotys, who was seated within, quite alone, started up with a faint cry of terror.

"You here!" she exclaimed in trembling accents; "Oh, why, why have you come! Sir, I beg of you to leave this place!--at once, before there is any chance of your being seen; your Majesty should surely know----!"

"Majesty me no majesties, Lotys!" said the King, lightly; "I have been forbidden this little shrine too long! Why should I not come to see you? Are you not known as an angel of comfort to the sorrowful and the lonely?--and will you not impart such consolation to me, as I may, in my many griefs deserve? Nay, Lotys, Lotys! No tears!--no tears, dearest of women! To see you weep is the only thing that could possibly unman me, and make even 'Pasquin Leroy' lose his nerve!"

He approached her, and sought to take her hand, but she turned away from him, and he saw her bosom heave with a pa.s.sion of repressed weeping.

"Lotys!" he then said, with exceeding gentleness; "What is this? Why are you unhappy? I have written to you every day since that night when your lips clung to mine for one glad moment,--I have poured out my soul to you with more or less eloquence, and surely with pa.s.sion!--every day I have prayed you to receive me, and yet you have vouchsafed no reply to one who is by your own confession 'the only man you love'! Ah, Lotys!--you will not now deny that sweet betrayal of your heart! Do you know that was the happiest day of my life?--the day on which I was threatened by Death, and saved by Love!"

His mellow voice thrilled with its underlying tenderness;--he caught her hand and kissed it; but she was silent.

With all the yearning pa.s.sion which had been pent up in him for many months, he studied the pure outlines of her brow and throat--the falling sunlight glow of her hair--the deep azure glory of the pitying eyes, half veiled beneath their golden lashes, and just now sparkling with tears.

"All my life," he said softly, still holding her hand; "I have longed for love! All my life I have lacked it! Can you imagine, then, what it was to me, Lotys, when I heard you say you loved my Resemblance,--the poor Pasquin Leroy!--and even so I knew you loved me? When you praised me as Pasquin, and cursed me as King, how my heart burned with desire to clasp you in my arms, and tell you all the truth of my disguise! But to hear you speak as you did of me, so unconsciously, so tenderly, so bravely, was the sweetest gladness I have ever known! I felt myself a king at last, in very deed and truth!--and it was for the love of you, and because of your love for me, that I determined to do all I could for my son Humphry, and the woman of his choice! For, finding myself loved, I swore that he should not be deprived of love. I have done what I could to ensure his happiness; but after all, it is your doing, and the result of your influence! You are the sole centre of my good deeds, Lotys!--you have been my star of destiny from the very first day I saw you!--from the moment when I signed my bond with you in your own pure blood, I loved you! And I know that you loved me!"

She turned her eyes slowly upon him,--what eyes!--tearless now, and glittering with the burning fever of the sad and suffering soul behind them.

"You forget!" she said in hushed, trembling accents; "You are the King!"

He lifted her hand to his lips again, and pressed its cool small palm against his brows.

"What then, my dearest? Must the King, because he is King, go through life unloved?"

"Unless the King is loved with honour," said Lotys in the same hushed voice; "He must go unloved!"

He dropped her hand and looked at her. She was very pale--her breath came and went quickly, but her eyes were fixed upon him steadily,--and though her whole heart cried out for his sympathy and tenderness, she did not flinch.

"Lotys!" he said; "Are you so cold, so frozen in an ice-wall of conventionality that you cannot warm to pa.s.sion--not even to that pa.s.sion which every pulse of you is ready to return? What do you want of me? Lover's oaths? Vows of constancy? Oh, beloved woman as you are, do you not understand that you have entered into my very heart of hearts--that you hold my whole life in your possession? You--not I--are the ruling power of this country! What you say, that I will do! What you command, that will I obey! While you live, I will live--when you die, I will die! Through you I have learned the value of sovereignty,--the good that can be done to a country by honest work in kings.h.i.+p,--through you I have won back my disaffected subjects to loyalty;--it is all you--only you! And if you blamed me once as a worthless king, you shall never have cause to so blame me again! But you must help me,--you must help me with your love!"

She strove to control the beating of her heart, as she looked upon him and listened to his pleading. She resolutely shut her soul to the persuasive music of his voice, the light of his eyes, the tenderness of his smile.

"What of the Queen?" she said.

He started back, as though he had been stung.

"The Queen!" he repeated, mechanically--"The Queen!"

"Ay, the Queen!" said Lotys. "She is your wife--the mother of your sons!

She has never loved you, you would say,--you have never loved her. But you are her husband! Would you make me your mistress?"

Her voice was calm. She put the plain question point-blank, without a note of hesitation. His face paled suddenly.

"Lotys!" he said, and stretched out his hands towards her; "Lotys, I love you!"

A change pa.s.sed over her,--rapid and transfiguring as a sudden radiance from heaven. With an impulsive gesture, beautiful in its wild abandonment, she cast herself at his feet.

"And I love you!" she said. "I love you with every breath of my body, every pulse of my heart! I love you with the entire pa.s.sion of my life!

I love you with all the love pent up in my poor starved soul since childhood until now!--I love you more than woman ever loved either lover or husband! I love you, my lord and King!--but even as I love you, I honour you! No selfish thought of mine shall ever tarnish the smallest jewel in your Crown! Oh, my beloved! My Royal soul of courage! What do you take me for? Should I be worthy of your thought if I dragged you down? Should I be Lotys,--if, like some light woman who can be bought for a few jewels,--I gave myself to you in that fever of desire which men mistake for love? Ah, no!--ten thousand times no! I love you! Look at me,--can you not see how my soul cries out for you? How my lips hunger for your kisses--how I long, ah, G.o.d! for all the tenderness which I know is in your heart for me,--I, so lonely, weary, and robbed of all the dearest joys of life!--but I will not shame you by my love, my best and dearest! I will not set you one degree lower in the thoughts of the People, who now idolise you and know you as the brave, true man you are! My love for you would be poor indeed, if I could not sacrifice myself altogether for your sake,--you, who are my King!"

He heard her,--his whole soul was shaken by the pa.s.sion of her words.

"Lotys!" he said,--and again--"Lotys!"

He drew her up from her kneeling att.i.tude, and gathering her close in his arms, kissed her tenderly, reverently--as a man might kiss the lips of the dead.

"Must it be so, Lotys?" he whispered; "Must we dwell always apart?"

Her eyes, beautiful with a pa.s.sion of the highest and holiest love, looked full into his.

"Always apart, yet always together, my beloved!" she answered; "Together in thought, in soul, in aspiration!--in the hope and confidence that G.o.d sees us, and knows that we seek to live purely in His sight! Oh, my King, you would not have it otherwise! You would not have our love defiled! How common and easy it would be for me to give myself to you!--as other women are only too ready to give themselves,--to take your tenderness, your care, your admiration,--to demand your constant attendance on my lightest humour!--to bring you shame by my persistent companions.h.i.+p!--to cause an open slander, and allow the finger of scorn to be pointed at you!--to see your honour made a mockery of, by base, persons who would judge you as one, who, notwithstanding his brave espousal of the People's Cause, was yet a slave to the caprice of a woman! Think something more of me than this! Do not put me on the level of such women as once brought your name into contempt! They did not love you!--they loved themselves! But I--I love you! Oh, my dearest lord, if self were concerned at all in this great love of my heart, I would not suffer your arms to rest about me now!--I would not let your lips touch mine!--but it is for the last time, beloved!--the last time! And so I put my hands here on your heart--I kiss your lips--I say with all my soul in the prayer--G.o.d bless you!--G.o.d keep you!--G.o.d save you, my King! Though I shall live apart from you all my days, my spirit is one with yours! G.o.d will know that truth when we meet--on the other side of Death!"

Her tears fell fast, and he bent over her, torn by a tempest of conflicting emotions, and kissing the soft hair that lay loosely ruffled against his breast.

"Then it shall be so, Lotys!" he murmured, at last. "Your wish is my law!--it shall be as you command! I will fulfil such duties as I must in this world,--and the knowledge of your love for me,--your trust in me,--shall keep me high in the People's honour! Old follies shall be swept away--old sins atoned for;--and when we meet, as you say, on the other side of Death, G.o.d will perchance give us all that we have longed for in this world--all that we have lost!"

His voice shook,--he could not further rely on his self-control.

"I will not tempt you, Lotys!" he whispered--"I dare not tempt myself!

G.o.d bless you!"