A VOTE FOR LOVE
Next day it was known through the length and breadth of the city that
the King, so long judged as a political Dummy, had proved himself a
living, acting authority. Every journal in city and province led off
its news under the one chief heading,--‘The King’s Speech.’ The King
had spoken;--and with no uncertain voice. Cool, brilliant in wording,
concise in statement,--cuttingly correct in facts, convincing in
argument, his unexpected denouncement of Carl Pérousse, and the Pérousse
‘majority,’ swept the Government off their feet by its daring
courage, and still more daring veracity. Documentary evidence of the
dishonourable speculations with the public money which had been so
freely indulged in by the Secretary of State, aided and abetted by
the Premier, was handed by the King in person to the authorities whose
business it was to examine such proofs,--the dishonourable measures used
to retain the ‘majority’ were fully exposed, and the whole House stood
thunderstruck and mentally paralysed, under the straight accusation
and merciless condemnation launched at their own lax tolerance of such
iniquitous practices, by their reigning monarch. With perfect dignity
and impressive calm, the King quietly demanded whether M. Carl Pérousse
would be pleased to explain his actions? Whether he had anything to
say in response to the charges brought against him? To this last query,
after a dead silence, during which every eye was fixed on the defaulting
Minister, who, in the course of the Royal speech had seen every bulwark
of his own intended defence torn away from him, Pérousse, with an ashy
white countenance answered:
“Nothing!”
And the silence around him continued; a silence more expressive than any
outspoken word of scorn.
But more surprises were in store for the Ministry, which found itself
thus suddenly overthrown. The King announced the marriage of his son,
the Crown Prince, to ‘a daughter of the People’! Boldly, and with
an ardent passion of truth lighting up every feature of his handsome
countenance, he stated this overwhelming piece of news in a perfectly
matter-of-fact way, adding, that in consequence of the step taken,--a
step which he did not himself in any way regret,--the Crown Prince asked
to be allowed to resign the Throne in favour of his brother Rupert.
“Unless,” continued his Majesty, “the Nation should be proved ready to
accept the wife he has chosen. It is needless to add that my son has
married without my consent, and this is the reason of his present
absence from the country. If the Nation accepts his wife, he will return
to the Nation; if not, I am bound to say, knowing his mind, that there
is nothing to be done, but to declare Prince Rupert Heir to the Throne.
This, however, I personally desire may be left to the consideration and
vote of the people!”
And when the House rose on that astonishing afternoon, they knew
they were no longer a House,--they knew the Government was entirely
overthrown, and that there would be a new Ministry and a General
Election. They had to realise also, that their ‘Bills’ for imposing
fresh taxes on the people were mere waste paper,--and they heard
likewise with redoubled amazement that the King had decided to resign
half his revenues for the space of five years, to assist the deficit in
the National Exchequer.
At the conclusion of the whole unprecedented scene, they saw the King
received, as it were, into the arms of a frenzied crowd, numbering many
tens of thousands, which spread round all the Government buildings, and
poured itself in thick streams through every street and thoroughfare,
and they had to accept the fact that their ‘majority’ was reduced to
a minority so infinitesimal, amid the greater wave of popular resolve,
that it was not worth counting.
Carl Pérousse, leaving the House by a private door of egress, shamed,
disgraced and crestfallen as he was, dared not trust the very sight of
himself to such an overwhelming multitude, and managed by lucky chance
to escape unobserved. He was assisted in this manoeuvre by General
Bernhoff. The Chief of the Police perceived him slinking cautiously
along the side-wall of an alley where the crowd had not penetrated, and
helped him into a passing cab that he might be driven rapidly and safely
to his home.
“You will no doubt excuse me”--said the General with a slight
smile--“for not having acted more rigorously in the matter of the
suspected ‘Pasquin Leroy’! I am afraid I should never have summed up
sufficient impudence to ask the King to sign a warrant against himself!”
Pérousse muttered an inarticulate oath by way of reply. He realised
fully that the game for him was lost. His speech of defence, so
carefully prepared had been useless, for he could not have uttered it in
the face of the damnatory evidence against him pronounced by the King,
and verified by his own public actions. Yet his audacity had not, in the
main, deserted him. He knew that, owing to his proved defalcations
and fraudulent use of the public money, his own property would be
confiscated to the Crown,--but he had always kept himself well prepared
for emergencies, and had invested in foreign securities under various
assumed names. Turning his attention to America, he felt pretty sure he
could do something there,--but so far as his own country was concerned,
he submitted to the inevitable, feeling that his day was done.
“The Jew is always triumphant!” he said, as he opened Jost’s newspaper
next morning, and read a full account of the proceedings in the House,
described with all the ‘colour’ and gush of Jost’s most melodramatic
reporter. “There is no doubt a ‘leader’ on my ‘unhappy position’ as a
fallen, but once trusted Minister!”
He was right; there was! A gravely-reproachful, sternly-commiserating
‘leader,’ wherein the apparently impeccable and highly conscientious
writer ‘deplored’ the laxity of those who supported M. Carl Pérousse in
his ‘regrettable’ scheme of self-aggrandisement.
“The rascal!” ejaculated Pérousse, as he read. “If I ever get a fresh
start in the United States or South Africa, I’ll put him on a gridiron,
and roast him to slow music!”
Meanwhile the whole country went mad over the King. No man was ever so
idolised; no man was ever made the centre of more hero-worship. In all
the excitement of a General Election, the wave of loyalty rose to its
extremest height, and no candidate that was not ready to follow the
lines of reform laid down by the monarch, had a ghost of a chance of
being returned as a deputy. With the abolition of the tax on bread, the
popular jubilation increased; bonfires were lit on every hill,--rockets
flared up star-like from every rocky point upon the coast, and the
Nation gave itself entirely up to joy.
All the long dormant sentiment of the multitude was roused to a
fever-heat by the story of Prince Humphry’s marriage, and he too, next
to his father, became a veritable hero of romance in the eyes of the
people, for whom Love, and all pertaining to love-matters form the most
interesting part of life. Following his announcement in the House, the
King issued a ‘manifesto,’ setting forth the facts of his son’s union
with ‘One Gloria Ronsard, of The Islands,’ and requesting the vote of
the people for, or against, the Prince as Heir-Apparent to the Throne.
The result of this bold and candid reliance on the Nation was one which
could never have been foreseen by so-called ‘diplomatic’ statesmen, who
are accustomed to juggle with simple facts, and who strive to cover up
and conceal the too distinct plainness of truth. An electric thrill
of chivalrous enthusiasm pulsated through the entire country; and the
unanimous vote of the people was returned to the King in entire favour
of the Crown Prince and his chosen bride. Perhaps no one was more
astonished at this than the King himself. He had been prepared for
considerable friction; he had been quite sure of opposition on the part
of ‘Society,’ but, Society, moved for once from its usual selfishness by
the boldness and daring of a heroic king, had ranked itself entirely on
his side, and was ready and even anxious to accept in Prince Humphry a
new kind of ‘Cophetua,’ even if he had chosen to wed a beggar-maid! And
it so chanced that there were many persons who had seen Gloria,--and
among these was Sergius Thord, He had not only seen her, but known
her;--he had studied her character and qualities,--and was aware that
she possessed one of the most pure and beautiful of womanly souls;--and
though taken by surprise at the discovery that the young ‘sailor’ she
had wedded was no other than the Crown Prince, yet, after the experience
he had personally gone through with one ‘Pasquin Leroy,’ he could
scarcely feel that any news, even of the most wonderful kind, was
so wonderful after all! So that, as soon as he learned the truth, he
brought all his enormous ‘following’ into unanimity as regarded the
Prince’s romantic love-story; and ere long there was not one in the
metropolis at least, who did not consider the marriage a good thing, and
likely to weld even more closely together the harmonious relationship
between people and Throne.
And so it chanced, that even while the General Election was still going
on all over the country, an incessant popular clamour was made for the
instant return of the Prince to his native land. The papers teemed with
suggestions as to the ‘welcoming home’ of the young hero of romance and
his bride, and Professor von Glauben, mentally giddy with the whirl of
events, was nevertheless triumphantly elated.
“Now that you know everything,” he said to Sir Roger de Launay, “I hope
you are satisfied! My ‘jam-pot’ that you spoke of, has turned out to be
a special Sweetmeat for the whole nation!”
“I am very much surprised, I confess!” said Sir Roger slowly; “I should
hardly have thought such a love-story possible in these modern days.
And I should certainly never have given the nation credit for so much
sentiment!”
“A nation is always sentimental!” declared the Professor; “What does
a Government exist for? Merely to keep national sentiment in order.
Ministers know well enough, that despite the various ‘Bills’ brought in
for material advantage and improvement, they have always to deal with
the imaginative aspiration of the populace, rather than their conception
of logic. For truly, the masses have no logic at all; they will not stop
to count the cost of an Army, but they will shout themselves hoarse at
the sight of the Flag! The Flag is the Sentiment; the Army is the
Fact. The King has secured all the votes of the nation on a question of
Sentiment only,--but there is this pleasant scientific ‘fact underlying
the sentiment,--Gloria is fit to be the mother of kings! And that is
what I will not say of any royally-born woman I know!”
Sir Roger was silent.
“Consider our present Queen as a mother only!” he went on; “Beautiful
and impassive as a snow-peak with the snow shining upon it! What of her
sons? The Crown Prince is the best of them,--but he has only been saved
from inherited mischief by his love for Gloria. The other two boys,
Rupert and Cyprian, will probably be selfish libertines!”
Sir Roger opened his eyes in astonishment.
“Why do you say that?” he asked; “They are harmless lads enough! Cricket
and football are enough to make them happy.”
“For the present, no doubt!” agreed Von Glauben; “But it sometimes
happens that the young human animal who expends all his brains on
kicking a football, is quite likely to expend another sort of force when
he grows up, in morally kicking other things! At least, that is how I
regard it. The over-cultivation of physical strength leads to mental
callousness and brutality. These are scientific points which require
discussion,--not with you,--but with a scientist. Nothing should be
overdone. Too much enervation and lack of athleticism leads to moral
deterioration certainly,--but so does too much ‘sport’ as they call it.
There is a happy medium to be obtained on both sides, but human beings
generally miss it. Prince Humphry, born of a beautiful, introspective,
selfish--yes, I repeat it!--selfish mother, would, if he had married a
hard-natured, cold and conventional wife, probably have been the most
indifferent, casual, and careless sovereign that ever reigned; but,
united as he is to a trusting, warm-hearted, loving, womanly woman like
Gloria, he will probably make himself the idol of the Nation.”
“Not more so than his father is!” said Sir Roger, with a smile.
“Ach so! That would be difficult, I grant you!” agreed the Professor;
“As I told you, Roger, at the beginning of this drama in which we have
both played our little parts; no harm ever came undeservedly to a brave
man with a good conscience!”
“True! And no harm has come to the King--as yet!” said Sir Roger
thoughtfully. “But I sometimes fear one man----!”
“Sergius Thord?” suggested Von Glauben; “To speak honestly, so do I! But
I watch him--I watch him closely! He loves Lotys, as a tiger loves its
mate,--and if he should ever suspect----!”
“Hush!” said Roger quickly; “Do not speak of it! I assure you I am
always on guard!”
“Good! So am I! But Thord is too busy just now climbing the hill to look
either backward or aside. When he reaches the summit, it is possible he
may see the whole landscape at a glance!”
“He will reach the summit very soon!” said De Launay; “His election as
deputy for the city, is certain. From the moment he announced himself as
candidate, there has been no opposition.”
“He will be returned by an overwhelming majority,” said the Professor;
“And he will gain all the power he has been working for. Also, with the
power, he will obtain all the difficulty, responsibility, disappointment
and bitterness. Power is a dangerous possession, unless it is
accompanied by a cool head; and in that our friend Sergius Thord is
lacking. He is a creature of impulse--and a savage creature too!--a
half-educated genius,--than which nothing in the shape of humanity is
more desperately difficult to manage!”
“Lotys can manage him!” said Sir Roger.
“That depends!” And the Professor rubbed his nose irritably. “Women are
excellent diplomatists up to a certain point, but their limit is reached
when they fall in love! Passion and enthusiasm transform them into quite
as absurd fools as--men!”
Sir Roger smiled, and changed the subject.
But in a few days, what had been foreshadowed in their conversation came
true. One of the chief results of the General Election was the triumphal
return of Sergius Thord as Deputy for the Metropolis by an enormous
majority; and in the evening of the day on which the polling was
declared, great crowds assembled beneath the windows of his
house,--that house so long known as the quarters of the Revolutionary
Committee,--roaring themselves hoarse with acclamation. He was,
of course, called out before them to speak,--and he yielded to the
clamorous demand, as perforce he was bound to do, but strangely enough,
with extreme reluctance.
A certain vague weariness depressed his spirits; his undisputed election
as one of the most important Government-representatives of the people,
lacked the savour of the triumph he had expected;--and like all those
who have worked for years to win a coveted post and succeed at last
in winning it, he was filled with the fatal satiety of accomplishment.
Power,--temporal power,--was after all not so great as it had seemed!
He had climbed--he had striven; but all the joy was contained in the
climbing and the striving. Now that he had gained his point there seemed
nothing left to prick afresh his flagging ambition. Nevertheless, he
succeeded in addressing his enthusiastic followers and worshippers with
something of his old fervour and fire,--sufficiently well, at any rate,
to satisfy them, and send them off with renewed shouts of exultation,
expressive of their continued reliance on his courage and ability. But,
when left alone at last, his heart suddenly failed him.
“What is the use of it!” he thought wearily; “True, I now represent the
city,--I lead its opinions--I am its mouth-piece for the State,--and
the wrongs and injuries done to the million are mine to bring before the
Government; and my business it will be to force remedial measures
for the same. But what then? There will be, there must be, constant
discussion, argument, contradiction,--for there are always conflicting
opinions in every aspect of human affairs,--and it will be my work to
put down all contradiction,--all opposition,--and to carry the People’s
Cause with a firm hand. Yet--after all, if I succeed, it will be the
King’s doing,--not mine! To him I partly owe my present power; the power
I had before, was _all_ my own!”
Sullen and silent he brooded on the changes in his fortunes with no very
satisfied mind. While he could not, as a brave man, refuse his respect
and homage to the monarch who had quietly made himself complete master
of the ‘Revolutionary’ organisation, and who had succeeded in turning
thousands of disaffected persons into ardent Loyalists, he was
nevertheless troubled by a lurking suspicion that Lotys had secretly
known and favoured the King’s scheme. Vaguely ashamed in his own mind
of the idea, he yet found himself giving way to it now and again, as he
remembered how she had defended his life,--not once but twice,--and how
she had often frankly declared her admiration for the unselfishness,
heroism, and tireless energy of the so-called ‘Pasquin Leroy.’ After
much perplexed meditation, he came at last to one resolve.
“She must be my wife!” he said, his eyes gleaming with a sudden fire
of passion and determination combined; “If,--as she says,--she does not
love me, she must learn to love me! Then, all will be well! With her,
it is possible I may reach still greater heights; without her, I can do
nothing!”
Meantime, while the results of the Election to what was now called ‘The
Royal Government,’ were being daily recorded in all parts of the
world, and the King himself, from a selection of the ablest and most
honourably-proved men of the time, was forming a new Ministry, the news
of these radical changes in the kingdom’s affairs, spreading rapidly
everywhere by cable, as news always spreads nowadays, reached a certain
far corner in one of the most beautiful provinces of India,--a corner
scarcely known to the conventional traveller,--where, in a wondrous
palace, lent to them by one of the most civilised and kindly of Oriental
potentates,--a palace surrounded by gardens that might have been a true
copy of the fabled Eden, Prince Humphry and the fair ‘Gloria’ of his
life, were passing a happy, ‘hidden-away’ time of perfect repose.
The evening on which they learned that their own nation demanded their
return was ‘like the night of Al-Kadir, better than a thousand months.’
All day long the heat had been intense,--and they had remained indoors
enjoying the coolness of marble courts and corridors, and plashing
fountains,--but with the sunset a soft breeze had sprung up, and Gloria,
passing into the shadiest corner of the gardens, had laid herself down
in a silken hammock swung between two broad sycamore trees, and there,
gently swaying to and fro, she watched her husband reading the various
European journals that had arrived for his host by that day’s mail.
Beautiful always, she had grown lovelier than ever in these halcyon days
of rest, when ‘Love took up the harp of Life and smote on all the chords
with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music
out of sight.’ To her native grace she now united a distinctive dignity
which added to her always gracious and queenly charm, and never had she
looked more exquisite than now, when rocking gently in the suspended
network of woven turquoise silk fringed with silver, she rested her head
against cushions of the same delicate hue, and turned her expressive
eyes enquiringly towards her husband,--wondering what kept him so
silent, and what was the cause of the little line of anxiety which
furrowed his brow. Clad in a loose diaphanous robe of white, with a
simple band of silver clasping it round her supple form, her rich hair
caught carelessly back with a knot of scarlet passion-flowers, she
looked a creature too fair for earth, a being all divine; and the Prince
presently turning his glances towards her, evidently thought so, from
the adoring tenderness with which he bent over her and kissed the
ripe, red, smiling lips which pouted so deliciously to take the offered
caress.
“They want us back, my Gloria!” he said; “The Nation asks for me--and
for _you_!”
She raised herself a little on one arm.
“Do they know all?”
“Yes! The King, my father, has announced everything concerning our
marriage, not only to the Government, but by special ‘manifesto’ to the
People. I did not think he would be so brave!”
“Or so true!” said Gloria, her eyes darkening and deepening with the
intensity of her thought. “Let me read this strange news, Humphry!”
He gave her the papers,--and a few tears sparkled on her lashes like
diamonds and fell, as with a beating heart she read of the complete
triumph of the King over the Socialist and Revolutionary party,--of
his march with the multitude to the Government House,--of his bold
denunciation of Carl Pérousse, ending in the utter overthrow of a
fraudulent Ministry,--and of his determination to renounce for five
years, one half his royal revenues in order to personally assist the
deficit in the National Exchequer.
“He is, in very truth a King!” she said, looking up with flushed cheeks
and sparkling eyes,--“Surely the noblest in the world!”
Prince Humphry’s face expressed wonderment as well as admiration.
“I have been utterly mistaken in him,”--he confessed,--“Or else,
something has greatly changed his ideas. I should never have deemed him
capable of running so much risk of his position, or of showing so much
heroism, candour and self-sacrifice. All my life I have been accustomed
to see him more or less indifferent to everything but his own pleasure,
and more or less careless of the griefs of others; but now it seems
as if he had kept himself back on purpose, only to declare his true
character more openly and boldly in the end!”
Gloria read on, with eagerness and interest, till she came to the
King’s ‘manifesto’ regarding his son’s marriage with ‘a daughter of the
People.’ She pointed to this expression with the tapering, rosy point of
her delicate little finger.
“That is me!” she said; “I _am_ a daughter of the People! I am proud of
the name!”
“You are my wife!” said the Prince; “And you are Crown Princess of the
realm!”
She looked meditative.
“I am not sure I like that title so well!” she said surveying him archly
under the shadow of her long lashes; “Indeed--if _you_ were not Crown
Prince,--I should not like it at all!”
Prince Humphry smiled, and tenderly touched the scarlet passion-flowers
in her hair.
“But as I am Crown Prince, you will try to put up with it, my Gloria!”
and he kissed her again. “We must return home, Sweetheart!--and as
speedily as possible,--though I am sorry our restful honey-time is
over!”
Gloria looked wistfully around her,--over the long smooth undulating
lawns, the thickets of myrtle and orange, the lovely deep groves of
trees, and away to the peaks of the distant dark blue hills, over which
a great golden moon was slowly rising.
“I am sorry too!” she said; “I could live always like this, in peace
with you, far, far away from all the world! Hark!”
She held up her hand to invite attention, as the delicious warble of a
nightingale, or ‘bul-bul’ broke the heated silence into liquid melody.
Her lover-husband took that little uplifted hand, and drawing it in his
own, kissed it fondly,--and so for a moment they were very quiet, while
the little brown bird of music poured from its palpitating throat a
cadence of heart-moving song. Gradually, the golden splendour of the
Indian moonlight widened through the trees, enveloping them in its clear
luminous radiance; and the two beautiful human creatures, gazing into
each other’s eyes with all the unspeakable rapture of a perfect love,
touched that wondrous height of pure mutual passion which makes things
temporal seem very far off, and things eternal very near.
“If life could always be like this,” murmured Gloria; “We should surely
understand God better! We should feel that He truly loved us, and wished
us to love each other! Ah, if only all the world were as happy as I am!”
“You will help to make a great part of it so, my beloved!” said the
Prince; “You will bring with you into our kingdom, comfort for the
sorrowful, aid to the poor, sympathy for the lonely, thought for all!
You will forget nothing that calls for your remembrance, my Sweet! And
one nation at least, will know what it is to have a true woman’s love to
light up the darkness of a Throne!”
That night a cable message was sent by the Prince to his father, stating
his intention to return home immediately. The Oriental potentate who
had generously placed his palace at the Royal lovers’ disposal, and
had religiously preserved the secret of their identity and whereabouts,
being himself much fascinated and interested by the romance of their
story, now commanded festivals and illuminations for their entertainment
before their departure, and within a fortnight of the despatch of his
message, the Prince’s yacht had left the mystic shores of the East, and
started on its homeward journey.
The news that the Crown Prince was returning with his bride, set all
the country in a flutter of excitement, and the General Election being
concluded, and the meeting of the new Government being deferred until
after the Heir-Apparent’s return, the people of every city and town and
province set themselves busily to work to prepare suitable festivities
for the homecoming of the Royal pair. At The Islands especially the
spirit of enthusiasm was complete--all sorts of ideas for fêtes and
sports, and bonfires and illuminations, exercised the minds of the
simple fisher-folk, who were wild with joy at the singular destiny
that had befallen their ‘waif of the sea’ as they were wont to call the
beautiful girl who had grown up among them,--and the aged Réné Ronsard
was made the centre of their interest and attention,--even of their
adulation. But Ronsard had grown very listless of late. His age began
to tell heavily upon him, and the news that Gloria was returning in all
triumph as Crown Princess, moved him but little.
“She would have been happier as a simple sailor’s wife!” he averred,
when Professor von Glauben, who visited him constantly, sought to rouse
him from the apathy into which he appeared to have sunk. “The greater
the position, the heavier the burden!--the more outwardly brilliant the
appearance of life, the deeper its secret bitterness!”
“But Gloria has Love with her, my friend!” urged the Professor; “And
Love makes the bitterest things sweet!”
Ronsard’s aged eyes sparkled faintly.
“Ay, Love!” he echoed; “A dream--a delusion--and a snare! Unless it be
a love strong enough to drag one down to death!--and then it is the
strongest power in the world! It is a terror and a martyrdom,--and in
nothing shall its desire be thwarted! If It calls--even kings obey!”