THE SCORN OF KINGS
Inside the tavern, from whence the singing proceeded, there was a
strange scene,--somewhat disorderly yet picturesque. Lotys, seated at
the head of a long supper-table, had been crowned by her admirers with
a wreath of laurels,--and as she sat more or less silent, with a rather
weary expression on her face, she looked like the impersonation of
a Daphne, exhausted by the speed of her flight from pursuing Apollo.
Beside her, nestling close against her caressingly, was a little
girl with great black Spanish eyes,--eyes full of an appealing,
half-frightened wistfulness, like those of a hunted animal. Lotys kept
one arm round the child, and every now and again spoke to her some
little caressing word. All the rest of the guests at the supper-board
were men,--and all of them members of the Revolutionary Committee. When
Pasquin Leroy and his friends entered, there was a general clapping of
hands, and the pale countenance of Lotys flushed a delicate rose-red, as
she extended her hand to each.
“You begin your career with us very well!” she said gently, her eyes
resting musingly on Leroy; “I had not expected to see you to-night!”
“Madame, I had never heard you speak,” he answered; and as he addressed
her, he pressed her hand with unconscious fervour, while his eloquent
eyes dilated and darkened, as, moved by some complex emotion, she
quickly withdrew her slender fingers from his clasp. “And I felt I
should never know you truly as you are, till I saw you face the people.
Now----”
He paused. She looked at him wonderingly, and her heart began to beat
with a strange quick thrill. It is not always easy to see the outlines
of a soul’s development, or the inchoate formation of a great love,--and
though everything in a certain sense moved her and appealed to her that
was outside herself, it was difficult to her to believe or to admit that
she, in her own person, might be the cause of an entirely new set of
thoughts and emotions in the mind of one man. Seeing he was silent, she
repeated softly and with a half smile.
“‘Now’?”
“Now,” continued Leroy quickly, and in a half-whisper; “I do know you
partly,--but I must know you more! You will give me the chance to do
that?”
His look said more than his words, and her face grew paler than before.
She turned from him to the child at her side--
“Pequita, are you very tired?”
“No!” was the reply, given brightly, and with an upward glance of the
dark eyes.
“That is right! Pasquin Leroy my friend! this is Pequita,--the child we
told you of the other night, the only daughter of Sholto. She will dance
for us presently, will you not, my little one?”
“Yes, indeed!” and the young face lighted up swiftly at the suggestion;
while Leroy, taking the seat indicated to him at the supper-table,
experienced a tumult of extraordinary sensations,--the chief one of
which was, that he felt himself to have been ‘snubbed,’ very quietly but
effectually, by a woman who had succeeded, though he knew not how, in
suddenly awakening in him a violent fever of excitement, to which he was
at present unable to give a name. Rallying himself, however, he glanced
up and down the board smilingly, lifting his glass to salute Sergius
Thord, who responded from his place at the bottom of the table,--and
very soon he regained his usual placidity, for he had enormous strength
of will, and kept an almost despotic tyranny over his feelings. His
companions, Max Graub and Axel Regor, were separated from him, and from
each other, at different sides of the table, and Paul Zouche the poet,
was almost immediately opposite to him. He was glad to see that he was
next but one to Lotys--the man between them being a desperado-looking
fellow with a fierce moustache, and exceedingly gentle eyes,--who, as
he afterwards discovered, was one of the greatest violinists in the
world,--the favourite of kings and Courts,--and yet for all that, a
prominent member of the Revolutionary Committee. The supper, which was
of a simple, almost frugal character, was soon served, and the landlord,
in setting the first plate before Lotys, laid beside it a knot of deep
crimson roses, as an offering of homage and obedience from himself. She
thanked him with a smile and glance, and taking up the flowers, fastened
them at her breast. Conversation now became animated and general; and
one of the men present, a delicate-looking young fellow, with a head
resembling somewhat that of Keats, started a discussion by saying
suddenly--
“Jost has sold out all his shares in that new mine that was started
the other day. It looks as if he did not think, after all his newspaper
puffs, that the thing was going to work.”
“If Jost has sold, Pérousse will,” said his neighbour; “The two are
concerned together in the floating of the whole business.”
“And yet another piece of news!” put in Paul Zouche suddenly; “For if we
talk of stocks and shares, we talk of money! What think you, my friends!
I, Paul Zouche, have been offered payment for my poems! This very
afternoon! Imagine! Will not the spheres fall? A poet to be paid for
his poems is as though one should offer the Creator a pecuniary
consideration for creating the flowers!”
His face was flushed, and his eyes deliriously bright.
“Listen, my Sergius!” he said; “Wonders never cease in this world; but
this is the most wonderful of all wonders! Out of the merest mischief
and monkeyish malice, the other day I sent my latest book of poems to
the King--”
“Shame! shame!” interrupted a dozen voices. “Against the rules, Paul!
You have broken the bond!”
Paul Zouche laughed loudly.
“How you yell, my baboons!” he cried; “How you screech about the rules
of your lair! Wait till you hear! You surely do not suppose I sent the
book out of any humility or loyalty, or desire for notice, do you? I
sent it out of pure hate and scorn, to show him as a fool-Majesty, that
there was something he could not do--something that should last when
_he_ was forgotten!--a few burning lines that should, like vitriol,
eat into his Throne and outlast it! I sent it some days ago, and got an
acknowledgment from the flunkey who writes Majesty’s letters. But this
afternoon I received a much more important document,--a letter from
Eugène Silvano, secretary to our very honourable and trustworthy
Premier! He informs me in set terms, that his Majesty the King has been
pleased to appreciate my work as a poet, to the extent of offering me a
hundred golden pieces a year for the term of my natural life! Ha-ha! A
hundred golden pieces a year! And thus they would fasten this wild bird
of Revolutionary song to a Royal cage, for a bit of sugar! A hundred
golden pieces a year! It means food and lodging--warm blankets to sleep
in--but it means something else,--loss of independence!”
“Then you will not accept it?” said Pasquin Leroy, looking at him with
interest over the rim of the glass from which he was just sipping his
wine.
“Accept it! I have already refused it! By swift return of post!”
Shouts of “Bravo! bravo!” echoed around him on all sides; men sprang up
and shook hands with him and patted him on the back, and even over the
dark face of Sergius Thord there passed a bright illumining smile.
“Zouche, with all thy faults, thou art a brave man!” said the young man
with the Keats-like head, who was in reality confidential clerk to one
of the largest stockbrokers in the metropolis; “A thousand times better
to starve, than to accept Royal alms!”
“To your health, Zouche!” said Lotys, leaning forward, glass in hand.
“Your refusal of the King’s offered bounty is a greater tragedy than any
you have ever tried to write!”
“Hear her!” cried Zouche, exultant; “She knows exactly how to put it!
For look you, there are the true elements of tragedy in a worn coat
and scant food, while the thoughts that help nations to live or die are
burning in one’s brain! Then comes a King with a handful of gold--and
gold would be useful--it always is! But--by Heaven! to pay a poet for
his poems is, as I said before, as if one were to meet the Deity on His
way through space, scattering planets and solar systems at a touch, and
then to say--‘Well done, God! We shall remunerate You for your creative
power as long as You shall last--so much per aeon!’”
Leroy laughed.
“You wild soul!” he said; “Would you starve then, rather than accept a
king’s bounty?”
“I would!” answered Paul. “Look you, my brave Pasquin! Read back over
all the centuries, and see the way in which these puppets we call kings
have rewarded the greatest thinkers of their times! Is it anywhere
recorded that the antique virgin, Elizabeth of England, ever did
anything for Shakespeare? True--he might have been ‘graciously
permitted’ to act one of his sublime tragedies before her--by
Heaven!--she was only fit to be his scrubbing woman, by intellectual
comparison! Kings and Queens have always trembled in their shoes, and on
their thrones, before the might of the pen!--and it is natural therefore
that they should ignore it as much as conveniently possible. A general,
whose military tactics succeed in killing a hundred thousand innocent
men receives a peerage and a hundred thousand a year,--a speculator who
snatches territory and turns it into stock-jobbing material, is called
an ‘Empire Builder’; but the man whose Thought destroys or moulds a new
World, and raises up a new Civilization, is considered beneath a crowned
Majesty’s consideration! ‘Beneath,’ by Heaven!--I, Paul Zouche, may yet
mount behind Majesty’s chair, and with a single rhyme send his crown
spinning into space! Meanwhile, I have flung back his hundred golden
pieces, with as much force in the edge of my pen as there would be in
my hand if _you_ were his Majesty sitting there, and I flung them across
the table now!”
Again Leroy laughed. His eyes flashed, but there was a certain regret
and wistfulness in them.
“You approve, of course?” he said, turning to Sergius Thord.
Sergius looked for a moment at Zouche with an infinitely grave and
kindly compassion.
“I think Paul has acted bravely;” he then said slowly; “He has been true
to the principles of our Order. And under the circumstances, it must
have been difficult for him to refuse what would have been a certain
competence,--”
“Not difficult, Sergius!” exclaimed Zouche, “But purely triumphant!”
Thord smiled,--then went on--“You see, my friend,” and he addressed
himself now to Leroy; “Kings have scorned the power of the pen too
long! Those who possess that power are now taking vengeance for neglect.
Thousands of pens all over the world to-day are digging the grave of
Royalty, and building up the throne of Democracy. Who is to blame?
Royalty itself is to blame, for deliberately passing over the claims
of art and intellect, and giving preference to the claims of money. The
moneyed man is ever the friend of Majesty,--but the brilliant man
of letters is left out in the cold. Yet it is the man of letters who
chronicles the age, and who will do so, we may be sure, according to his
own experience. As the King treats the essayist, the romancist or the
historian, so will these recording scribes treat the King!”
“It is possible, though,” suggested Leroy, “that the King meant well in
his offer to our friend Zouche?”
“Quite possible!” agreed Thord; “Only his offer of one hundred gold
pieces a year to a man of intellect, is out of all proportion to the
salary he pays his cook!”
A slight flush reddened Leroy’s bronzed cheek. Thord observed him
attentively, and saw that his soul was absorbed by some deep-seated
intellectual irritation. He began to feel strangely drawn towards him;
his eyes questioned the secret which he appeared to hold in his mind,
but the quiet composure of the man’s handsome face baffled enquiry.
Meanwhile around the table the conversation grew louder and less
restrained. The young stockbroker’s clerk was holding forth eloquently
concerning the many occasions on which he had seen Carl Pérousse at
his employer’s office, carefully going into the closest questions
of financial losses or gains likely to result from certain political
moves,--and he remembered one day in particular, when, after purchasing
a hundred thousand shares in a certain company, Pérousse had turned
suddenly round on his broker with the cool remark--“If ever you breathe
a whisper about this transaction, I will shoot you dead!”
Whereat the broker had replied that it was not his custom to give away
his clients’ business, and that threats were unworthy of a statesman.
Then Pérousse had become as friendly as he had been before menacing;
and the two had gone out of the office and lunched together. And the
confidential clerk thus chattering his news, declared that his employer
was now evidently uneasy; and that from that uneasiness he augured a
sudden fluctuation or fall in what had lately seemed the most valuable
stock in the market.
“And you? Your news, Valdor,” cried one or two eager voices, while
several heads leaned forward in the direction of the fiercely-moustached
man who sat next to Lotys. “Where have you been with your fiddle? Do you
arrive among us to-night infected by the pay, or the purple of Royalty?”
Louis Valdor, by birth a Norseman, and by sympathies a cosmopolitan,
looked up with a satiric smile in his dark eyes.
“There is no purple left to infect a man with, in the modern slum of
Royalty!” he said; “Tobacco-smoke, not incense, perfumes the palaces of
the great nowadays--and card-playing is more appreciated than music! Yet
I and my fiddle have made many long journeys lately,--and we have sent
our messages of Heaven thrilling through the callous horrors of Hell!
A few nights since, I played at the Russian Court--before the beautiful
Empress--cold as a stone--with her great diamonds flashing on her
unhappy breast,--before the Emperor, whose furtive eyes gazed unseeingly
before him, as though black Fate hovered in the air--before women, whose
lives are steeped in the lowest intrigue--before men, whose faces are
as bearded masks, covering the wolf’s snarl,--yes!--I played before
these,--played with all the chords of my heart vibrating to the violin,
till at last a human sigh quivered from the lips of the statuesque
Empress,--till a frown crossed the brooding brow of her spouse--till the
intriguing women shook off the spell with a laugh, and the men did the
same with an oath--and I was satisfied! I received neither ‘pay,’ nor
jewel of recognition,--I had played ‘for the honour’ of appearing before
their Majesties!--but my bow was a wand to wake the little poisoned asp
of despair that stings its way into the heart under every Royal mantle
of ermine, and that sufficed me!”
“Sometimes,” said Leroy, turning towards him; “I pity kings!”
“I’ faith, so do I!” returned Valdor. “But only sometimes! And if you
had seen as much of them as I have, the ‘sometimes’ would be rare!”
“Yet you play before them?” put in Max Graub.
“Because I must do so to satisfy the impresarios who advertise me to the
public,” said Valdor. “Alas!--why will the public be so foolish as to
wish their favourite artist to play before kings and queens? Seldom,
if ever, do these Royal people understand music,--still less do they
understand the musician! Believe me, I have been treated as the veriest
scullion by these jacks-in-office; and that I still permit myself
to play before them is a duty I owe to this Brotherhood,--because it
deepens and sustains my bond with you all. There is no king on the
face of the earth who has dignity and nobleness of character enough to
command my respect,--much less my reverence! I take nothing from kings,
remember!--they dare not offer me money--they dare not insult me with
a jewelled pin, such as they would give to a station-master who sees a
Royal train off. Only the other day, when I was summoned to play before
a certain Majesty, a lord-in-waiting addressed me when I arrived with
the insolent words--‘You are late, Monsieur Valdor!--You have kept the
King waiting!’ I replied--‘Is that so? I regret it! But having kept his
Majesty waiting, I will no longer detain him; au revoir!’ And I returned
straightway to the carriage in which I had come. Majesty did without his
music that evening, owing to the insolence of his flunkey-man! Whether I
ever play before him again or not, is absolutely immaterial to me!”
“Tell me,” said Pasquin Leroy, pushing the flask of wine over to him
as he spoke; “What is it that makes kings so unloved? I hate them
myself!--but let us analyse the reasons why.”
“Discuss--discuss!” cried Paul Zouche; “Why are kings hated? Let Thord
answer first!”
“Yes--yes! Let Thord answer first!” was echoed a dozen times.
Thord, thus appealed to, looked up. His melancholy deep eyes were
sombre, yet full of fire,--lonely eyes they were, yearning for love.
“Why are kings hated?” he repeated; “Because today they are the effete
representatives of an effete system. I can quite imagine that if, as in
olden times, kings had maintained a position of personal bravery, and
personal influence on their subjects, they would have been as much
beloved as they are now despised. But what we have to see and to
recognise is this: in one land we hear of a sovereign who speculates
hand-and-glove with low-born Jew contractors and tradesmen,--another
monarch makes no secret of his desire to profit financially out of a
gambling hell started in his dominions,--another makes his domestic
affairs the subject of newspaper comment,--another is always
apostrophising the Almighty in public;--another is insane or
stupid,--and so on through the whole gamut. Is it not natural that an
intelligent People should resent the fact that their visibly governing
head is a gambler, or a voluptuary? Myself, I think the growing
unpopularity of kings is the result of their incapability for kingship.”
“Now let me speak!” cried Paul Zouche excitedly; “There is another root
to the matter,--a root like that of a certain tropical orchid, which
according to superstition, is shaped like a man, and utters a
shriek when it is pulled out of the earth! Pull out this screaming
mystery,--hatred of kings! In the first place it is because they are
hateful in themselves,--because they have been brought up and educated
to take an immeasurable and all-absorbing interest in their own
identity, rather than in the lives, hopes and aims of their subjects. In
the second--as soon as they occupy thrones, they become overbearing
to their best friends. It is a well-known fact that the more loyal and
faithful you are to a king, the more completely is he neglectful of
you! ‘Put not your trust in princes,’ sang old David. He knew how
untrustworthy they were, being a king himself, and a pious one to boot!
Thirdly and lastly,--they only give their own personal attention to
their concubines, and leave all their honest and respectable subjects to
be dealt with by servants and secretaries. Our King, for example, never
smiles so graciously as on Madame Vantine, the wife of Vantine the
wine-grower;--and he buys Vantine’s wines as well as his wife, which
brings in a double profit to the firm!”
Leroy looked up.
“Are you sure of that?”
Zouche met his eyes with a stare and a laugh.
“Sure? Of course I am sure! By my faith, your resemblance to his
Majesty is somewhat striking to-night, my bold Leroy! The same straight
brows--the same inscrutable, woman-conquering smile! I studied his
portrait after the offer of the hundred golden pieces--and I swear you
might be his twin brother!”
“I told you so!” replied Leroy imperturbably;--“It is a hateful
resemblance! I wish I could rid myself of it. Still after all, there
is something unique in being countenanced like a King, and minded as a
Socialist!”
“True!” put in Thord gently;--“I am satisfied, Pasquin Leroy, that you
are an honest comrade!”
Leroy met his eyes with a grave smile, and touched his glass by way of
acknowledgement.
“You do not ask me,” he said then, “whether I have been able to serve
your Cause in any way since last we met?”
“This is not our regular meeting,” said Johan Zegota; “We ask no
questions till the general monthly assembly.”
“I see!” And Leroy looked whimsically meditative--“Still, as we are all
friends and brothers here, there is no harm in conveying to you the fact
that I have so far moved, in the appointed way, that Carl Pérousse has
ordered the discovery and arrest of one Pasquin Leroy, supposed to be a
spy on the military defences of the city!”
Lotys gave a little cry.
“Not possible! So soon!”
“Quite possible, Madame,” said Leroy inclining his head towards her
deferentially. “I have lost no time in doing my duty!” And his eyes
flashed upon her with a passionate, half-eager questioning. “I must
carry out my Chief’s commands!”
“But you are in danger, then?” said Sergius Thord, bending an anxious
look of enquiry upon him.
“Not more so than you, or any of my comrades are,” replied Leroy; “I
have commenced my campaign--and I have no doubt you will hear some
results of it ere long!”
He spoke so quietly and firmly, yet with such an air of assurance and
authority, that something of an electric thrill passed through the
entire company, and all eyes were fixed on him in mingled admiration and
wonderment.
“Of the ‘Corruption of the State,’ concerning which our fair teacher
has spoken to-night,” he continued, with another quick glance at
Lotys--“there can be no manner of doubt. But we should, I think, say the
‘Corruption of the Ministry’ rather than of the State. It is not because
a few stock-jobbers rule the Press and the Cabinet, that the State is
necessarily corrupt. Remove the corruptors,--sweep the dirt from the
house--and the State will be clean.”
“It will require a very long broom!” said Paul Zouche. “Take David Jost,
for example,--he is the fat Jew-spider of several newspaper webs,--and
to sweep him out is not so easy. His printed sheets are read by the
million; and the million are deluded into believing him a reliable
authority!”
“Nothing so easy as to prove him unreliable,” said Leroy composedly;
“And then----”
“Then the million will continue to read his journals out of
sheer curiosity, to see how long a liar can go on lying!” said
Zouche;--“Besides a Jew can turn his coat a dozen times a day; he has
inherited Joseph’s ‘coat of many colours’ to suit many opinions. At
present Jost supports Pérousse, and calls him the greatest statesman
living; but if Pérousse were once proved a fraud, Jost would pen a
sublimely-conscientious leading article, beginning in this strain;--’
We are now at liberty to confess that we always had our doubts of M.
Pérousse!’”
A murmur of angry laughter went round the board.
“There was an article this evening in one of Jost’s off-shoot journals,”
went on Zouche, “which must have been paid for at a considerable cost.
It chanted the praises of one Monsignor Del Fortis,--who, it appears,
preached a sermon on ‘National Education’ the other day, and told all
the sleepy, yawning people how necessary it was to have Roman Catholic
schools in every town and village, in order that souls might be saved.
The article ended by saying--‘We hear on good authority that his Majesty
the King has been pleased to grant a considerable portion of certain
Crown lands to the Jesuit Order, for the necessary building of a
monastery and schools’----”
“That is a lie!” broke in Pasquin Leroy, with sudden vehemence. “The
King is in many respects a scoundrel, but he does not go back on his
word!”
Axel Regor looked fixedly across at him, with a warning flash in the
light of his cold languid eyes.
“But how do you know that the King has given his word?”
“It was in the paper,” said Leroy, more guardedly; “I was reading about
it, as you know, on the very night I encountered Thord.”
“Ah! But you must recollect, my friend, that a statement in the papers
is never true nowadays!” said Max Graub, with a laugh; “Whenever I read
anything in the newspaper, unless it is an official telegram, I know it
is a lie; and even official telegrams have been known to emanate from
unofficial sources!”
By this time supper was nearly over, and the landlord, clearing the
remains of the heavier fare, set fruit and wine on the board. Sergius
Thord filled his glass, and made a sign to his companions to do the
same. Then he stood up.
“To Lotys!” he said, his fine eyes darkening with the passion of his
thought. “To Lotys, who inspires our best work, and helps us to retain
our noblest ideals!”
All present sprang to their feet.
“To Lotys!”
Pasquin Leroy fixed a straight glance on the subject of the toast,
sitting quietly at the head of the table.
“To Lotys!” he repeated; “And may she always be as merciful as she is
strong!”
She lifted her dark-blue slumbrous eyes, and met his keen scrutinizing
look. A very slight tremulous smile flickered across her lips. She
inclined her head gently, and in the same mute fashion thanked them all.
“Play to us, Valdor!” she then said; “And so make answer for me to our
friends’ good wishes!”
Valdor dived under the table, and brought up his violin case, which he
unlocked with jealous tenderness, lifting his instrument as carefully as
though it were a sleeping child whom he feared to wake. Drawing the bow
across the strings, he invoked a sweet plaintive sound, like the first
sigh of the wind among the trees; then, without further preliminary
wandered off into a strange labyrinth of melody, wherein it seemed that
the voices of women and angels clamoured one against the other,--the
appeals of earth with the refusals of Heaven,--the loneliness of life
with the fulness of immortality,--so, rising, falling, sobbing, praying,
alternately, the music expostulated with humanity in its throbbing
chords, till it seemed as if some Divine interposition could alone
end the heart-searching argument. Every man sat motionless and mute,
listening; Paul Zouche, with his head thrown back and eyes closed as in
a dream,--Johan Zegota’s hard, plain and careworn face growing softer
and quieter in its expression,--while Sergius Thord, leaning on one
elbow, covered his brow with one hand to shade the lines of sorrow
there.
When Valdor ceased playing, there was a burst of applause.
“You play before kings,--kings should be proud to hear you!” said Leroy.
“Ah! So they should,” responded Valdor promptly; “Only it happens that
they are not! They treat me merely as a _laquais de place_,--just as
they would treat Zouche, had he accepted his Sovereign’s offer. But
this I will admit,--that mediocre musicians always get on very well with
Royal persons! I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a
common little American woman’s abominable singing, as though she were
a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur
pianist, whose fingers rattled on the keyboard like bones on a tom-tom.
But then the common little American woman invited his Majesty’s ‘chères
amies’ to her house; and the amateur pianist was content to lose money
to him at cards! Wheels within wheels, my friend! In a lesser degree
the stock-jobber who sets a little extra cash rolling on the Exchange is
called an ‘Empire Builder.’ It is a curious world! But kings were
never known to be ‘proud’ of any really ‘great’ men in either art or
literature; on the contrary, they were always afraid of them, and always
will be! Among musicians, the only one who ever got decently honoured
by a monarch was Richard Wagner,--and the world swears that _his_ Royal
patron was mad!”
Paul Zouche opened his eyes, filled his glass afresh, and tossed down
the liquor it contained at a gulp.
“Before we have any more music,” he said, “and before the little Pequita
gives us the dance which she has promised,--not to us, but to Lotys--we
ought to have prayers!”
A loud laugh answered this strange proposition.
“I say we ought to have prayers!” repeated Zouche with semi-solemn
earnestness,--“You talk of news,--news in telegram,--news in
brief,--official scratchings for the day and hour,--and do you take no
thought for the fact that his Holiness the Pope is ill--perhaps dying?”
He stared wildly round upon them all; and a tolerant smile passed over
the face of the company.
“Well, if that be so, Paul,” said a man next to him, “it is not to be
wondered at. The Pope has arrived at a great age!”
“No age at all!--no age at all!” declared Zouche. “A saint of God
should live longer than a pauper! What of the good old lady admitted to
hospital the other day whose birth certificate proved her beyond doubt
to be one hundred and twenty-one years old? The dear creature had not
married;--nor has his Holiness the Pope,--the real cause of death is
in neither of them! Why should he not live as long as his aged sister,
possessing, as he does the keys of Heaven? He need not unlock the little
golden door, even for himself, unless he likes. That is true orthodoxy!
Pasquin Leroy, you bold imitation of a king, more wine!”
Leroy filled the glass he held out to him. The glances of the company
told him Zouche was ‘on,’ and that it was no good trying to stem the
flow of his ideas, or check the inconsequential nature of his speech.
Lotys had moved her chair a little back from the table, and with both
arms encircling the child, Pequita, was talking to her in low and tender
tones.
“Brethren, let us pray!” cried Zouche; “For all we know, while we sit
here carousing and drinking to the health of our incomparable Lotys, the
soul of St. Peter’s successor may be careering through Sphere-Forests,
and over Planet-Oceans, up to its own specially built and particularly
furnished Heaven! There is only one Heaven, as we all know,--and the
space is limited, as it only holds the followers of St. Peter, the good
disciple who denied Christ!”
“That is an exploded creed, Zouche,” said Thord quietly; “No man of
any sense or reason believes such childish nonsense nowadays! The most
casual student of astronomy knows better.”
“Astronomy! Fie, for shame!” And Zouche gave a mock-solemn shake of the
head; “A wicked science! A great heresy! What are God’s Facts to the
Church Fallacies? Science proves that there are millions and millions
of solar systems,--millions and millions of worlds, no doubt
inhabited;--yet the Church teaches that there is only one Heaven,
specially reserved for good Roman Catholics; and that St. Peter and
his successors keep the keys of it. God,--the Deity--the Creator,--the
Supreme Being, has evidently nothing at all to do with it. In fact,
He is probably outside it! And of a surety Christ, with His ideas of
honesty and equality, could never possibly get into it!”
“There you are right!” said Valdor; “Your words remind me of a
conversation I overheard once between a great writer of books and a
certain Prince of the blood Royal. ‘Life is a difficult problem!’ said
the Prince, smoking a fat cigar. ‘To the student, it is, Sir,’ replied
the author; ‘But to the sensualist, it is no more than the mud-stye
of the swine,--he noses the refuse and is happy! He has no need of the
Higher life, and plainly the Higher life has no need of him. Of course,’
he added with covert satire, ‘your Highness believes in a Higher life?’
‘Of course, of course!’ responded the Royal creature, unconscious of any
veiled sarcasm; ‘We must be Christians before anything!’ And that same
evening this hypocritical Highness ‘rooked’ a foolish young fellow of
over one thousand English pounds!”
“Perfectly natural!” said Zouche. “The fashionable estimate of
Christianity is to go to church o’ Sundays, and say ‘I believe in God,’
and to cheat at cards on all the other days of the week, as active
testimony to a stronger faith in the devil!”
“And with it all, Zouche,” said Lotys suddenly; “There is more good in
humanity than is apparent.”
“And more bad, beloved Lotys,” returned Paul. “Tout le deux se disent!
But let us think of the Holy Father!--he who, after long years of
patient and sublime credulity, is now, for all we know, bracing himself
to take the inevitable plunge into the dark waters of Eternity! Poor
frail old man! Who would not pity him! His earthly home has been so
small and cosy and restricted,--he has been taken such tender care
of--the faithful have fallen at his feet in such adoring thousands,--and
now--away from all this warmth and light and incense, and colour of
pictures and stained-glass windows, and white statuary and purple
velvets, and golden-fringed palanquins,--now--out into the cold he
must go!--out into the darkness and mystery and silence!--where all the
former generations of the world, immense and endless, and all the old
religions, are huddled away in the mist of the mouldered past!--out into
the thick blackness, where maybe the fiery heads of Bel and the
Dragon may lift themselves upward and leer at him!--or he may meet the
frightful menace of some monstrous Mexican deity, once worshipped with
the rites of blood!--out--out into the unknown, unimaginable Amazement
must the poor naked Soul go shuddering on the blast of death, to face he
truly knows not what!--but possibly he has such a pitiful blind trust
in good, that he may be re-transformed into some pleasant living
consciousness that shall be more agreeable even than that of Pope of
Rome! ‘Mourir c’est rien,--mais souffrir!’ That is the hard part of it!
Let us all pray for the Pope, my friends!--he is an old man!”
“When you are silent, Zouche,” said Thord with a half smile; “We may
perhaps meditate upon him in our thoughts,--but not while you talk thus
volubly! You take up time--and Pequita is getting tired.”
“Yes,” said Lotys; “Pequita and I will go home, and there will be no
dancing to-night.”
“No, Lotys! You will not be so cruel!” said Zouche, pushing his grey
hair back from his brows, while his wild eyes glittered under the
tangle, like the eyes of a beast in its lair; “Think for a moment! I do
not come here and bore you with my poems, though I might very well do
so! Some of them are worth hearing, I assure you;--even the King--curse
him!--has condescended to think so, or else why should he offer me pay
for them? Kings are not so ready to part with money, even when it is
Government money! In England once a Premier named Gladstone, gave two
hundred and fifty pounds a year pension to the French Prince, Lucien
Buonaparte, ‘for his researches into Celtic literature’! Bah! There were
many worthier native-born men who had worked harder on the same subject,
to choose from,--without giving good English money to a Frenchman! There
is a case of your Order and Justice, Lotys! You spoke to-night of these
two impossible things. Why will you touch on such subjects? You know
there is no Order and no Justice anywhere! The Universe is a chance
whirl of gas and atoms; though where the two mischiefs come from nobody
knows! And why the devil we should be made the prey of gas and atoms is
a mystery which no Church can solve!”
As he said this, there was a slight movement of every head towards
Lotys, and enquiring eyes looked suggestively at her. She saw the look,
and responded to it.
“You are wrong, Zouche!--I have always told you you are wrong,” she said
emphatically, “It is in your own disordered thoughts that you see no
justice and no order,--but Order there is, and Justice there is,--and
Compensation for all that seems to go wrong. There is an Intelligence at
the core of Creation! It is not for us to measure that Intelligence,
or to set any limits to it. Our duty is to recognize it, and to set
ourselves as much as possible in harmony with it. Do you never, in sane
moments, study the progress of humanity? Do you not see that while the
brute creation remains stationary, (some specimens of it even becoming
extinct), man goes step by step to higher results? This is, or should
be, sufficient proof that death is not the end for us. This world is
only one link in our chain of intended experience. I think it depends on
ourselves as to what we make of it. Thought is a great power by which we
mould ourselves and others; and we have no right to subvert that power
to base uses, or to poison it by distrust of good, or disbelief in the
Supreme Guidance. You would be a thousand times better as a man, Zouche,
and far greater as a poet, if you could believe in God!”
She spoke with eloquence and affectionate earnestness, and among all the
men there was a moment’s silence.
“Well, _you_ believe in Him;” said Zouche at last, “and I will catch
hold of your angel’s robe as you pass into His Presence and say to
Him;--’ Here comes poor Zouche, who wrote of beautiful things among ugly
surroundings, and who, in order to be true to his friends, chose poverty
rather than the gold of a king!’”
Lotys smiled, very sweetly and indulgently.
“Such a plea would stand you in good stead, Zouche! To be always true
to one’s friends, and to persistently believe in beauty, is a very long
step towards Heaven!”
“I did not say I _believed_ in beauty,” said Zouche suddenly and
obstinately;--“I dream it--I think it--but I do not see it! To me the
world is one Horror--nothing but a Grave into which we all must fall!
The fairest face has a hideous skull behind it,--the dazzling blue of
the sea covers devouring monsters in its depths--the green fields, the
lovely woodlands, are full of vile worms and noxious beetles,--and
space itself swarms with thick-strewn worlds,--flaming comets,--blazing
nebulae,--among which our earth is but a gnat’s wing in a huge flame!
Horrible!--horrible!” And he spoke with a kind of vehement fury. “Let us
not think of it! Why should we insist on Truth? Let us have lies!--dear,
sweet lies and fond delusions! Let us believe that men are all honest,
and women all loving!--that there are virgins and saints and angels,
as well as bishops and curates, looking after us in this wild world of
terror,--oh, yes!--let us believe!--better the Pope’s little private
snuggery of a Heaven, than the crushing truth which says ‘Our God is a
consuming fire’! Knowledge deepens sorrow,--truth kills!--we must--we
must have a little love, and a few lies to lean upon!”
His voice faltered,--and a sudden ashy paleness overspread his
features,--his head fell back helplessly, and he seemed transfixed and
insensible. Leroy and one or two of the others rose in alarm, thinking
he had swooned, but Sergius Thord warned them back by a sign. The little
Pequita, slipping from the arms of Lotys, went softly up to him.
“Paul! Dear Paul!” she said in her soft childish tones.
Zouche stirred, and stretching out one hand, groped with it blindly in
the air. Pequita took it, warming it between her own little palms.
“Paul!” she said; “Do wake up! You have been asleep such a long time!”
He opened his eyes. The grey pallor passed from his face; he lifted his
head and smiled.
“So! There you are, Pequita!” he said gently; “Dear little one! So brave
and cheerful in your hard life!”
He lifted her small brown hand, and kissed it. The feverish tension
of his brain relaxed,--and two large tears welled up in his eyes, and
rolled down his cheeks. “Poor little girl!” he murmured weakly; “Poor
little hard-working girl!”
All the men sat silent, watching the gradual softening of Zouche’s
drunken delirium by the mere gentle caress of the child; and Pasquin
Leroy was conscious of a curious tightening of the muscles of his
throat, and a straining compassion at his heart, which was more like
acute sympathy with the griefs and sins of humanity than any emotion he
had ever known. He saw that the thoughtful, pitiful eyes of Lotys were
full of tears, and he longed, in quite a foolish, almost boyish fashion,
to take her in his arms and by a whispered word of tenderness, persuade
those tears away. Yet he was a man of the world, and had seen and known
enough. But had he known them humanly? Or only from the usual standpoint
of masculine egotism? As he thought this, a strain of sweet and solemn
music stole through the room,--Louis Valdor had risen to his feet, and
holding the violin tenderly against his heart, was coaxing out of its
wooden cavity a plaintive request for sympathy and attention. Such
delicious music thrilled upon the dead silence as might have fitted
Shelley’s exquisite lines.
“There the voluptuous nightingales,
Are awake through all the broad noon-day,
When one with bliss or sadness fails,
And through the windless ivy-boughs
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
On its mate’s music-panting bosom;
Another from the swinging blossom,
Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain; then lifts on high
The wings of the weak melody,
Till some new strain of feeling bear
The song, and all the woods are mute;
When there is heard through the dim air
The rush of wings, and rising there
Like many a lake-surrounded flute
Sounds overflow the listener’s brain,
So sweet that joy is almost pain.”
“Thank God for music!” said Sergius Thord, as Valdor laid aside his bow;
“It exorcises the evil spirit from every modern Saul!”
“Sometimes!” responded Valdor; “But I have known cases where the evil
spirit has been roused by music instead of suppressed. Art, like virtue,
has two sides!”
Zouche was still holding Pequita’s hand. He looked ill and exhausted,
like a man who had passed through a violent paroxysm of fever.
“You are a good child, Pequita!” he was saying softly; “Try to be always
so!--it is difficult--but it is easier to a woman than to a man! Women
have more of good in them than men!”
“How about the dance?” suggested Thord; “The hour is late,--close on
midnight--and Lotys must be tired.”
“Shall I dance now?” enquired Pequita.
Lotys smiled and nodded. Four or five of the company at once got up, and
helped to push aside the table.
“Will you play for me, Monsieur Valdor?” asked the little girl, still
standing by the side of Zouche.
“Of course, my child! What shall it be? Something to suggest a fairy
hopping over mushrooms in the moonlight?--or Shakespeare’s Ariel
swinging on a cobweb from a bunch of may?”
Pequita considered, and for a moment did not reply, while Zouche, still
holding her little brown hand, kissed it again.
“You are very fond of dancing?” asked Pasquin Leroy, looking at her dark
face and big black eyes with increasing interest.
She smiled frankly at him.
“Yes! I would like to dance before the King!”
“Fie, fie, Pequita!” cried Johan Zegota, while murmurs of laughter and
playful cries of ‘Shame, Shame’ echoed through the room.
“Why not?” said Pequita; “It would do me good, and my father too! Such
poor, sad people come to the theatre where I dance,--they love to see
me, and I love to dance for them--but then--they too would be pleased if
I could dance at the Royal Opera, because they would know I could then
earn enough money to make my father comfortable.”
“What a very matter-of-fact statement in favour of kings!” exclaimed Max
Graub;--“Here is a child who does not care a button for a king as king;
but she thinks he would be useful as a figure-head to dance to,--for
idiotic Fashion, grouping itself idiotically around the figure-head,
would want to see her dance also--and then--oh simple conclusion!--she
would be able to support her father! Truly, a king has often been put to
worse uses!”
“I think,” said Pasquin Leroy, “I could manage to get you a trial at the
Royal Opera, Pequita! I know the manager.”
She looked up with a sudden blaze of light in her eyes, sprang towards
him, dropped on one knee with an exquisite grace, and kissed his hand.
“Oh!--you will be goodness itself!” she cried;--“And I will be
grateful--indeed I will!--so grateful!”
He was startled and amazed at her impulsive action, and taking her
little hand, gently pressed it.
“Poor child!” he said;--“You must not thank me till I succeed. It is
very little to do--but I will do all I can.”
“Someone else will be grateful too!” said Lotys in her rich thrilling
voice; and her eyes rested on him with that wonderful magnetic sweetness
which drew his soul out of him as by a spell; while Zouche, only
partially understanding the conversation said slowly:--
“Pequita deserves all the good she can get; more than any of us. We do
nothing but try to support ourselves; and we talk a vast amount about
supporting others,--but Pequita works all the time and says nothing. And
she is a genius--she does not know it, but she is. Give us the Dagger
Dance, Pequita! Then our friend Leroy can judge of you at your best, and
make good report of you.”
Pequita looked at Lotys and received a sign of assent. She then nodded
to Valdor.
“You know what to play?”
Valdor nodded in return, and took up his violin. The company drew back
their seats, and sat, or stood aside, from the centre of the room.
Pequita disappeared for a moment, and returned divested of the plain
rusty black frock she had worn, and merely clad in a short scarlet
petticoat, with a low white calico bodice--her dark curls tumbling in
disorder, and grasping in her right hand a brightly polished, unsheathed
dagger. Valdor began to play, and with the first wild chords the
childish figure swayed, circled, and leaped forward like a young Amazon,
the dagger brandished aloft, and gleaming here and there as though it
were a snaky twist of lightning. Very soon Pasquin Leroy found himself
watching the evolutions of the girl dancer with fascinated interest.
Nothing so light, so delicate or so graceful had he ever seen as this
little slight form bending to and fro, now gliding with the grace of a
swan on water--now leaping swiftly as a fawn,--while the attitudes she
threw herself into, sometimes threatening, sometimes defiant, and often
commanding, with the glittering steel weapon held firmly in her tiny
hand, were each and all pictures of youthful pliancy and animation.
As she swung and whirled,--sometimes pirouetting so swiftly that her
scarlet skirt looked like a mere red flower in the wind,--her bright
eyes flashed, her dark hair tangled itself in still richer masses, and
her lips, crimson as the pomegranate, were half parted with her panting
breath.
“Brava! Brava!” shouted the men, becoming more and more excited as their
eyes followed the flash of the dagger she held, now directed towards
them, now shaken aloft, and again waved threateningly from side to side,
or pointed at her own bosom, while her little feet twinkled over
the floor in a maze of intricate and perfectly performed steps;--and
“Brava!” cried Pasquin Leroy, as breathless, but still glowing and
bright with her exertions, she suddenly out of her own impulse, dropped
on one knee before him with the glittering dagger pointed straight at
his heart!
“Would that please the King?” she asked, her pearly teeth gleaming into
a mischievous smile between the red lips.
“If it did not, he would be a worse fool than even I take him for!”
replied Leroy, as she sprang up again, and confronted him. “Here is a
little souvenir from me, child!--and if ever you do dance before his
Majesty, wear it for my sake!”
He took from his pocket a ring, in which was set a fine brilliant of
unusual size and lustre.
She looked at it a moment as he held it out to her.
“Oh, no,” she faltered, “I cannot take it--I cannot! Lotys dear, you
know I cannot!”
Lotys, thus appealed to, left her seat and came forward. Taking the ring
from Leroy’s hand, she examined it a moment, then gently returned it.
“This is too great a temptation for Pequita, my friend,” she said
quietly, but firmly. “In duty bound, she would have to sell it in order
to help her poor father. She could not justly keep it. Let me be the
arbiter in this matter. If you can carry out your suggestion, and obtain
for her an engagement at the Royal Opera, then give it to her, but not
till then! Do you not think I am right?”
She spoke so sweetly and persuasively, that Leroy was profoundly
touched. What he would have liked would have been to give the child a
roll of gold pieces,--but he was playing a strange part, and the time to
act openly was not yet.
“It shall be as you wish, Madame!” he said with courteous deference.
“Pequita, the first time you dance before the King, this shall be
yours!”
He put aside the jewel, and Pequita kissed his hand impulsively,--as
impulsively she kissed the lips of her friend Lotys--and then came the
general dispersal and break-up of the assembly.
“Tell me;” said Sergius Thord, catching Leroy’s hand in a close and
friendly grasp ere bidding him farewell; “Are you in very truth in
personal danger on account of serving our Cause?”
“No!” replied Leroy frankly, returning the warm pressure; “And rest
assured that if I were, I would find means to elude it! I have managed
to frighten Carl Pérousse, that is all--and Jost!”
“Jost!” echoed Sergius; “The Colossus of the Press? Surely it would take
more than one man to frighten him!”
Leroy laughed.
“I grant you the Jewish centres of journalism are difficult to shake!
But they all depend on stocks and shares!”
A touch on his arm caused him to turn round,--Paul Zouche confronted
both him and Thord, with a solemn worn face, and lack-lustre eyes.
“Good-night, friends!” he said; “I have not kicked at a king with my
boot, but I have with my brain!--and the effort is exhausting! I am
going home to bed.”
“Where is your home?” asked Leroy suddenly.
Zouche looked mysterious.
“In a palace, dear sir! A palace of golden air, peopled with winged
dreams! No money could purchase it;--no ‘Empire Builder’ could build
it!--it is mine and mine alone! And I pay no taxes!”
“Will you put this to some use for me?” said Leroy, holding out a gold
piece; “Simply as comrade and friend?”
Zouche stared at him.
“You mean it?”
“Of course I mean it! Zouche, believe me, you are going to be the
fashion! You will be able to do _me_ a good turn before long!”
Zouche took the gold piece, and as he took it, pressed the giver’s hand.
“You mean well!” he said tremulously; “You know--as Sergius does, that
I am poor,--often starving--often drunk--but you know also that there
is something _here_!”--and he touched his forehead meaningly. “But to be
the ‘fashion’! Bah! I do not belong to the Trade-ocracy! Nobody becomes
the ‘fashion’ nowadays unless they have cheated their neighbours by
short weight and falsified accounts! Good-night! You might be the King
from your looks;--but you have something better than kingship--Heart!
Good-night, Pequita! You danced well! Good-night, Lotys! You spoke well!
Everyone does everything well, except poor Zouche!”
Pequita ran up to him.
“Good-night, dear Paul!”
He stooped and kissed her gently.
“Good-night, little one! If ever you show your twinkling feet at the
Opera, _you_ will be the ‘fashion’--and will you remember Paul then?”
“Always--always!” said Pequita tenderly; “Father and Lotys and I will
always love you!”
Zouche gave a short laugh.
“Always love me! Me! Well!--what strange things children will say, not
knowing in the least what they mean!”
He gave a vague salute to the entire company, and walked out of the
tavern with drooping head. Others followed him,--every man in going,
shook hands with Lotys and Sergius Thord,--the lamps were extinguished,
and the landlord standing in the porch of his tavern watched them all
file out, and bade them all a cordial farewell. Pequita’s home was with
her father in the house where Sergius Thord dwelt, and Lotys kissing her
tenderly good-night, left her to Thord’s care.
“And who will see you home, Lotys?” enquired Thord.
“May I for once have that honour?” asked Pasquin Leroy. His two
companions stared in undisguised amazement, and there was a moment’s
silence.
Then Lotys spoke.
“You may!” she said simply.
There was another silence while she put on her hat, and wrapped herself
in her long dark cloak. Then Thord took Pequita by the hand.
“Good-night, Lotys!”
“Good-night, Sergius!”
Leroy turned to his two friends and spoke to them in a low tone.
“Go your ways!” he said peremptorily; “I will join you later!”
Vain were their alarmed looks of remonstrance; and in another moment all
the party had separated, and only Max Graub and Axel Regor remained on
the pavement outside the tavern, disconsolately watching two figures
disappearing in the semi-shadowed moonlight--Pasquin Leroy and
Lotys--walking closely side by side.
“Was there ever such a drama as this?” muttered Graub, “He may lose his
life at any moment!”
“If he does,” responded Regor, “It will not be our fault. We do our best
to guard him from the consequence of one folly,--and he straightway runs
into another! There is no help for it; we have sworn to obey him, and we
must keep our oath!”
They passed slowly along the street, too absorbed in their own
uncomfortable reflections for the interchange of many words. By the
rules of the Revolutionary Committee, they were not allowed ‘to follow
or track any other member’ so they were careful to walk in a reverse
direction to that taken by their late comrades. The great bell of the
Cathedral boomed midnight as they climbed towards the citadel, and the
pale moon peeping whitely through piled-up fleecy clouds, shed a silver
glare upon the quiet sea. And down into the ‘slums,’ down, and ever
deeper, into the sad and cheerless ‘Quarter of the Poor’ Pasquin Leroy
walked as though he trod lightly on a path of flowers,--his heart
beating high, and his soul fully awakened within him, thrilled, he knew
not why, to the heart’s core by the soft low voice of Lotys,--and glad
that in the glimpses of the moonlight her eyes were occasionally lifted
to his face, with something of a child’s trust, if not of a woman’s
tenderness.