SAILING TO THE INFINITE
Great calamities always come suddenly. With the swiftness of lightning
they descend upon the world, often in the very midst of fancied peace
and security,--and the farcical, grinning, sneering apes of humanity,
for whom even the idea of a God has but furnished food for lewd jesting,
are scattered into terror-stricken hordes, who are forced to realise for
the first time in their lives, that whether they believe in Omnipotence
or no, an evident Law of Justice exists, which may not be outraged with
impunity. Sometimes this Law works strangely,--one might almost say
obliquely. It sweeps away persons whom we have judged as useful to the
community, and allows those to remain whom we consider unnecessary. But
‘we,’--all important ‘we,’--are not allowed to long assert or maintain
our petty opinions against this unknown undetermined Force which makes
havoc of all our best and most carefully conceived arrangements. For
example, we are not given any practical reason why Christ,--the Divine
Man,--was taken from the world in His youthful manhood, instead of being
permitted to live to a great age for the further benefit, teaching, and
sanctification of His disciples and followers. Pure, sinless, noble, and
truly of God, He was tortured and crucified as though He were the worst
of criminals. And apart from the Church’s explanation of this great
Mystery, we may take it as a lesson that misfortune is like everything
else, two-sided;--it falls equally upon the ungodly and the godly,--with
merely this difference--that when it falls on the ungodly it is, as we
are reluctantly forced to admit, ‘the act of God’--but when it falls on
the godly, it is generally the proved and evident work of Man.
In this last way, and for no fault at all of her own, had cruel death
befallen Lotys. Such as her career had been, it was unmarked by so much
as a shadow of selfishness or wickedness. From the first day of her
life, sorrow had elected her for its own. She had never known father or
mother;--cast out as an infant in the street, and picked up by Sergius
Thord, she had secured no other protector for her infancy and youth,
than the brooding, introspective man, who was destined in the end to be
her murderer. As a child, she had been passionately grateful to him; she
had learned all she could from the books he gave her to study, and
with a quick brain, and a keen sense of observation, she had become a
proficient in literature, so much so indeed, that more than one half the
Revolutionary treatises and other propaganda which he had sent out to
different quarters of the globe, were from her pen. Her one idea had
been to please and to serve him,--to show her gratitude for his care of
her, and to prove herself useful to him in all his aims. As she grew up,
however, she quickly discerned that his affection for her was deepening
into the passion of a lover; whereupon she had at once withdrawn
from his personal charge, and had made up her mind to live alone and
independently. She desired, so she told him, to subsist on her own
earnings,--and he who could do nothing successfully without her, was
only too glad to give her the rightful share of such financial
results as accrued from the various workings of the Revolutionary
Committee,--results which were sometimes considerable, though never
opulent. And so she had worked on, finding her best happiness in
succouring the poor, and nursing the sick. Her girlhood had passed
without either joy or love,--her womanhood had been bare of all the
happiness that should have graced it. The people had learned to love
her, it is true,--but this more or less distantly felt affection was far
from being the intimate and near love for which she had so often longed.
When at last this love had come to her,--when in ‘Pasquin Leroy’ she
thought she had found the true companion of her life and heart,--when
he had constantly accompanied her by his own choice, on her errands of
mercy among the poor; and had aided the sick and the distressed by his
own sympathy and tenderness, she had almost allowed herself to dream of
possible happiness. This dream had been encouraged more than ever, after
she had saved the King from assassination. ‘Pasquin Leroy’ had then
become her closest comrade,--always at hand, and ever ready to fulfil
her slightest behest;--while from his ardent and eloquent glances,--the
occasional lingering pressure of his hand, and the hastily murmured
words of tenderness which she could not misunderstand, she knew that he
loved her. But when he had disclosed his real identity to be that of
the King himself, all her fair hopes had vanished!--and her spirit had
shrunk and fallen under the blow. Worse than all,--when she learned that
this great and exalted Personage, despite his throned dignity, did still
continue to entertain a passion for herself, the knowledge was almost
crushing in its effect upon her mind. Pure in soul and body, she would
have chosen death any time rather than dishonour; and in the recent
developments of events she had sometimes grown to consider death as
good, and even desirable. Now death had come to her through the very
hand that had first aided her to live! And so had she fulfilled the
common lot of women, which is, taken in the aggregate, to be wronged
and slain (morally, when not physically) by the very men they have most
unselfishly sought to serve!
The heavy night passed away, and all through its slow hours the murdered
creature lay weltering in her blood, and shrouded in her hair,--looked
at by the pitiless stars and the cold moon, as they shed their beams in
turn through the high attic window. Morning broke; and the sun shot its
first rays down upon the dead,--upon the fixed white countenance, and
on the little hand grown icy cold, but clenched with iron grip upon the
pistol which had been so bravely snatched in that last moment of life
with the unselfish thought of averting suspicion from the true murderer.
With the full break of day, the mistress of the house going to arouse
her lodgers, came up the stairs with a bright face, cheerfully
singing, for her usual morning chat with Lotys was one of her principal
pleasures. Knocking at the door, and receiving no answer, she turned the
handle and pushed it open,--then, with a piercing scream of horror, she
rushed away, calling wildly for help, and sending frantic cries down the
street.
“Lotys! Lotys! Lotys is dead!”
The news flew. The houses poured out their poverty-stricken occupants
from garret to basement; and presently the street was blocked with a
stupefied, grief-stricken crowd. A doctor who had been hastily summoned,
lifted the poor corpse of her whose life had been all love and pity, and
laid it upon the simple truckle-bed, where the living Lotys had slept,
contented with poverty for many years; and after close and careful
examination pronounced it to be a case of suicide. The word created
consternation among all the people.
“Suicide!” they murmured uneasily; “Why should she kill herself? We all
loved her!”
Ay! They all loved her!--and only now when she was gone did they realise
how great that love had been, or how much her thought and tenderness for
them all, had been interwoven with their lives! They had never stopped
to think of the weariness and emptiness of her own life, or of the
longing she herself might have had for the love and care she so freely
gave to others. By and by, as the terrible news was borne in upon them
more convincingly, some began to weep and wail, others to kneel and
pray, others to recall little kindnesses, thoughtful deeds, unselfish
tendernesses, and patient endurances of the dead woman who, friendless
herself, had been their truest friend.
“Who will tell Sergius Thord?” asked a man in the crowd; “Who will break
the news to him?”
There was an awe-stricken silence. No one volunteered such heart-rending
service.
“Who will tell the King?” suddenly exclaimed a harsh voice, that of Paul
Zouche, who in his habit of hardly ever going to bed, had seen the crowd
gather, and had quickly joined it. “Lotys saved his life! He should be
told!”
His face, always remarkable in its thin, eager, intellectual aspect,
looked ghastly, and his eyes no longer feverish in their brilliancy,
were humanised by the dew of tears.
“The King!”
The weeping people looked at one another. The King had now become a part
of their life and interest,--he was one with them, not apart from them
as once he had been; therefore he must have known how Lotys had loved
them. Yes,--someone should surely tell the King!
“The King must be informed of this,” went on Zouche; “If there is no one
else to take the news to him,--I will!”
And before any answer could be given, or any suggestion made, he was
gone.
Meanwhile, no person volunteered to fetch Sergius Thord. Every man
who knew him, dreaded the task of telling him that Lotys was dead,
self-slain. Some poor, but tender-hearted women sorrowfully prepared the
corpse for burial, removing the bloodstained clothes with gentle hands,
smoothing out and parting on either side the glorious waves of hair,
while with the greatest care and difficulty they succeeded by slow
degrees in removing the pistol so tightly clenched in the dead hand.
While engaged in this sad duty, they found a sealed paper marked ‘My
Last Wish,’ and this they put aside till Thord should come. Then they
robed her in white, and laid white flowers upon her breast; and so came
in turns by groups of tens and twenties to kneel beside her and kiss
her hands and say prayers, and weep for the loss of one who had never
uttered a harsh word to any poor or sorrowful person, but whose mission
had been peace and healing, love and resignation, and submission to her
own hard fate until the end!
Meantime Zouche, who had never been near any Royal precincts before,
walked boldly to the Palace. All irresolution had left him;--his step
was firm, his manner self-contained, and only his eyes betrayed the deep
and bitter sorrow of his soul. He was allowed to pass the sentinel at
the outer gates, but at the inner portico of the Palace he was denied
admittance. He maintained his composure, however, and handed in his
written name.
“If I cannot see the King, I must see Sir Roger de Launay!” he said.
At this the men in authority glanced at one another, and began to
unbend;--if this shabby, untidy being knew Sir Roger de Launay, he was
perhaps someone of importance. After a brief consultation together, they
asked him to wait while a messenger was despatched to Sir Roger.
Zouche, with a curious air of passive toleration sat quietly on the
chair they offered, and waited several minutes glancing meanwhile at the
display of splendour and luxury about him with an indifference bordering
on contempt.
“All this magnificence,” he mused; “all this wealth cannot purchase
back a life, or bring comfort to a stricken heart! Nor can it vie with
a poet’s rhyme, which, often unvalued, and always unpaid for, sometimes
outlasts a thousand thrones!”
Here, seeing the tall figure of Sir Roger de Launay coming between him
and the light, he rose and advanced a step or two.
“Why, Zouche,” said Sir Roger kindly, greeting him with a smile; “You
are up betimes! They tell me you want to see the King. Is it not
a somewhat early call? His Majesty has only just left his
sleeping-apartment, and is busy writing urgent letters. Will you entrust
me with your message?”
Paul Zouche looked at him fixedly.
“My message is from Lotys!” he said deliberately; “And it must be
delivered to the King in person!”
Vaguely alarmed, Sir Roger recoiled a step.
“You bring ill news?” he whispered.
“I do not know whether it will prove ill or well;” answered Zouche
wearily; “But such news as I have, must be told to his Majesty alone.”
Sir Roger paused a moment, hesitating; then he said:
“If that is so--if that must be so,--then come with me!”
He led the way, and Zouche followed. Entering the King’s private library
where the King himself sat at his writing-desk, Sir Roger announced the
unexpected visitor, adding in a low tone that he came ‘from Lotys!’
The King started up, and threw down his pen.
“From Lotys!” he echoed, while through his mind there flew a sudden
sweet hope that after all the star was willing to fall!--the flower was
ready to be gathered!--and that the woman who had sent him away from her
the day before, had a heart too full of love to remain obdurate to the
pleadings of her kingly lover!--“Paul Zouche, with a message from Lotys?
Let him come in!”
Whereupon Zouche, bidden to enter, did so, and stood in the Royal
presence unabashed, but quite silent. An ominous presentiment crept
coldly through the monarch’s warm veins, as he saw the dreary pain
expressed on the features of the man, who had so persistently scorned
him and his offered bounty,--and with a slight, but imperative sign,
he dismissed Sir Roger de Launay, who retired reluctantly, full of
forebodings.
“Now Zouche,” he said gently; “What do you seek of me? What is your
message?”
Zouche looked full at him.
“As King,” he answered, “I seek nothing from you! As comrade”--and his
accents faltered--“I would fain break bad news to you gently--I would
spare you as much as possible--and give you time to face the blow,--for
I know you loved her! Lotys----”
The monarch’s heart almost stood still. What was this hesitating
tone--these great tears in Zouche’s eyes?
“Lotys!” he repeated slowly, and in a faint whisper; “Yes, yes--go on!
Go on, comrade! Lotys?”
“Lotys is dead!”
An awful stillness followed the words. Stiff and rigid the King sat, as
though stricken by sudden paralysis, giving no sign. Minute after minute
slipped away,--and he uttered not a word, nor did he raise his eyes from
the fixed study of the carpet at his feet.
“Lotys is dead!” went on Zouche, speaking in a slow monotonous way.
“This morning, the first thing--they found her. She had killed
herself. The pistol was in her hand. And they are laying her out with
flowers,--like a bride, or a queen,--and you can go and see her at
rest so,--for the last time,--if you will! This is my message! It is a
message from the dead!”
Still the King spoke not a word; nor did he lift his eyes from his
brooding observation of the ground.
“To be a great King, as you are,” said Zouche; “And yet to be unable to
keep alive a love when you have won it, is a hard thing! She must have
killed herself for your sake!”
No answer was vouchsafed to him. He began to feel a strange pity for
that solemn, upright figure, sitting there inflexibly silent,--and he
approached it a little nearer.
“Comrade!” he said softly; “I have hated you as a King! Yes, I have
always hated you!--even when I found you had played the part of ‘Pasquin
Leroy,’ and had worked for our Cause, and had helped to make what is now
called my ‘fame’! I hated you,--because through it all, and whatever you
did for me, or for others, it seemed to me you had never known hunger
and cold and want!--never known what it was to have love snatched away
from you! I watched the growth of your passion for Lotys--I knew she
loved you!--and had you indeed been the poor writer and thinker you
assumed to be, all might have been well for you both! But when you
declared yourself to be King, what could there be for such a woman but
death? She would never have chosen dishonour! She has taken the straight
way out of trouble, but--but she has left _you_ alone! And I am sorry
for you! I know what it is--to be left alone! You have a palace here,
adorned with all the luxuries that wealth can buy, and yet you are alone
in it! I too have a palace,--a palace of thought, furnished with ideals
and dreams which no wealth can buy; and I am alone in it too! I killed
the woman who loved me best; and you have done the same, in your way!
It is the usual trick of men,--to kill the women who love them best, and
then to be sorry for ever afterwards!”
He drew still nearer--then very slowly, very hesitatingly, dropped on
one knee, and ventured to kiss the monarch’s passive hand.
“My comrade! My King! I am sorry for you now!”
For answer, his own hand was suddenly caught in a fierce convulsive
grip, and the King rose stiffly erect. His features were grey and drawn,
his lips were bloodless, his eyes glittering, as with fever. Stricken to
the heart as he was, he yet forced himself to find voice and utterance.
“Speak again, Zouche! Speak those horrible, horrible words again! Make
me feel them to be true! Lotys is dead!”
Zouche, with something like fear for the visible, yet strongly
suppressed anguish of the man before him, sighed drearily as he
repeated----
“Lotys is dead! It is God’s way--to kill all beautiful things, just as
we have learned to love them! She,--Lotys,--used to talk of Justice and
Order,--poor soul!--she never found either! Yet she believed in God!”
The King’s stern face never relaxed in its frozen rigidity of woe. Only
his lips moved mutteringly.
“Dead! Lotys! My God!--my God! To rise to such a height of hope and
good--and then--to fall so low! Lotys gone from me!--and with her goes
all!”
Then a sudden delirious hurry seemed to take possession of him.
“Go now, Zouche!” he said impatiently--“Go back to the place where she
lies--and tell her I am coming! I must--I will see her again! And I will
see you again, Zouche!--you too!” He forced a pale smile--“Yes, poor
poet! I will see you and speak with you of this--you shall write for
her a dirge!--a threnody of passion and regret that shall make the whole
world weep! Poor Zouche!--you have had a hard life--well may you wonder
why God made us men! And Lotys is dead!”
He rang the bell on his desk violently. Sir Roger de Launay at once
returned,--but started back at the sight of his Royal master’s altered
countenance.
“Have the kindness, De Launay”--said the King hurriedly, not heeding
his dismayed looks--“to place a carriage at the disposal of our friend
Zouche! He has much business to do;--sad news to bear to all the
quarters of the city--he will tell you of it,--as he has just told
me! Lotys,--you know her!--Lotys, who saved my life at the risk of her
own,--Lotys is dead!”
Sir Roger recoiled with an ejaculation of horror and pity.
“It is sudden--and--and strange!” continued the King, still speaking in
the same rapid manner, and beginning to push aside the various letters
and documents on his table--“It is a kind of darkness fallen without
warning!--but--such tragedies always do happen thus--unpreparedly! Lotys
was a grand creature,--a noble and self-sacrificing woman--the poor will
miss her--yes--the poor will miss her greatly!----”
He broke off, and with a speechless gesture of agonised entreaty,
intimated that he must be left alone. De Launay hustled Zouche out of
the apartment in a kind of impotent fury.
“Why have you brought the King such news?” he demanded--“It will kill
him!”
“He has killed _her_!” returned Zouche, grimly--“If he had never crossed
her path, she would have been alive now! Why should not a King suffer
like other men? He does the same foolish things,--he has his private
loves and hatreds in the same foolish manner,--why should he escape
punishment for his follies? It is only in suffering that he grows
human,--stripped by grief and pain of his outward pomp and temporal
power, he even becomes lovable! God save us from this bauble of ‘power’!
It is what Sergius Thord has worked for all his life!--it is what this
King claims over his subjects--and yet--both monarch and reformer would
give it all for the life of one woman back again! Look you, the King has
had a dozen or more mistresses, and Heaven knows how many bastards--but
he has only loved once! And it is well that he should learn what real
love means,--Sorrow always, and Death often!”
That afternoon the whole city knew of the tragic end of Lotys. Nothing
else was thought of, nothing else talked of. Thousands gathered to look
up at the house where her body lay, stiffening in the cold grasp of
death, and a strong body of police were summoned to guard all the
approaches to the premises, in order to prevent a threatening ‘crush’
and disaster among the increasing crowd, every member of which sought
to look for the last time on the face of her who had unselfishly served
them and loved them in their hours of bitterest need. The sight of
Sergius Thord passing through their midst, with bent head, and ashy,
distraught countenance, had not pacified the clamorous grief of the
people, nor had it elicited such an outburst of sympathy for him as
one might have thought would have been forthcoming. An idea had gotten
abroad that since his election as Deputy for the city, he had either
neglected or set aside the woman who had assisted him to gain his
position. It was a wrong idea, of course,--but the trifling fact of
his having taken up his abode in a more ‘aristocratic’ part of the
metropolis, while Lotys had still remained in the ‘quarter of the poor,’
was sufficient to give it ground in the minds of the ignorant, who are
always more or less suspicious of even their best friends. Had they
made a more ominous guess,--had they imagined that Sergius Thord was the
actual murderer of the woman they had idolised, there would have been no
remembrance whatever of the work he had done to aid them in the various
reforms now being made for their benefit;--they would have torn him
to pieces without a moment’s mercy. The rough justice of the mob is a
terrible thing! It knows nothing of legal phraseology or courtesy--it
merely sees an evil deed done, and straightway proceeds to punish the
evil-doer, regardless of consequences. Happily for the sake of peace and
order, however, no thought of the truth, no suspicion of the real cause
of the tragedy occurred to any one person among the sorrow-stricken
multitude. A faint, half-sobbing cheer went up for the King, as his
private brougham was recognised, making its way slowly through the press
of people,--and it was with a kind of silent awe, that they watched his
tall figure alight and pass into the house where lay the dead. Sergius
Thord had already entered there,--the King and his new Deputy would
meet! And with uneasy movements, rambling up and down, talking of Lotys,
of her gentleness, patience and never-wearying sympathy for all the
suffering and the lonely, the crowds collected, dispersed, and collected
again,--every soul among them heavily weighted and depressed by the
grief and the mystery of death, which though occurring every day, still
seems the strangest of fates to every mortal born into the world.
Meantime, the King with slow reluctant tread, ascended into the room of
death. Sergius Thord stood there,--but his brooding face and bulky form
might have been but a mote of dust in a sunbeam for the little heed
the stricken monarch took of him. His whole sight, his whole soul were
concentrated on the white recumbent statue with the autumn-gold hair,
which was couched in front of him, strewn with flowers. That was
Lotys--or rather, that had been Lotys! It was now a very beautiful,
still, smiling Thing,--its eyes were shut, but the eyelashes lay
delicately on the pallid cheeks like little fringes of dark gold,
tenderly slumbrous. Those eyelashes matched the hair--the soft, silken
hair--so fine--so lustrous, so warm and bright!--the hair was surely
yet living! With a shuddering sigh, the King bent over the piteous
sight,--and stooping lower and lower still, touched with trembling lips
the small, crossed hands.
As he did this, his arm was caught roughly, and Thord thrust him aside.
“Do not touch her!” he muttered hoarsely--“Let her rest in peace!”
Slowly the King raised his face. It was ashen grey and stricken old.
The dark, clear, grey eyes were sunken and dim,--the light of hope,
ambition, love and endeavour, was quenched in them for ever.
“Was she unhappy, that she killed herself?” he asked, in a hushed voice.
Thord drew back, shuddering. Those sad, lustreless eyes of his Sovereign
seemed to pierce his soul! He--the murderer of Lotys--could not face
them! A vague whirl of thoughts tormented his brain,--he had heard it
said that a murdered person’s corpse would bleed in the presence of the
murderer,--would the dead body of Lotys bleed now, he wondered dully, if
he waited long enough? If so--the King would know! He started guiltily,
as once more the sad, questioning voice broke on his ears.
“Was she unhappy, think you? You knew her better than I!”
Huskily, and with dry lips, Thord forced an answer.
“Nay, it is possible your Majesty knew her best!”
Again the sunken melancholy eyes searched his face.
“She was endowed with genius,--rich in every good gift of womanhood! I
would have given my life for hers--my kingdom to spare her a
moment’s sorrow!” went on the King; “But she would have nothing from
me--nothing!”
“Nothing,--not even love!” said Thord recklessly.
“That she had, whether she would or no!”--replied the King,
slowly,--“That she will have, till time itself shall end!”
Thord was silent. A passion of mingled fury and remorse consumed
him,--his heart was beating rapidly,--there were great pulsations in his
brain like heavy hammer-strokes,--he was afraid of himself, lest on
a savage impulse he should leap like a beast of prey on this grave
composed figure,--this King,--who was his acknowledged ruler,--and
kill him, even as he had killed Lotys! And then,--he thought of the
People!--the People by whose great force and strong justice he had sworn
to abide!--the People who had worshipped and applauded him,--the People
who, if they ever knew the truth of him and his crime, would snatch him
up and tear his body to atoms, as surely as he stood branded with Murder
in God’s sight this day! With a powerful effort he rallied his forces,
and drawing from his breast the small folded paper which had been found
on the body of Lotys, and which was inscribed with the words ‘My Last
Wish,’ he held it out to the King.
“Then your Majesty will perhaps grant her the burial she here demands?”
he said--“It is a strange request!--but not difficult to gratify!”
Taking the paper, the monarch touched it tenderly with his lips before
opening it. In all the blind stupefaction of his own grief, he was
struck by the fact that there was something strained and unnatural about
Thord’s appearance,--something wild and forced even in his expression
of sorrow. He studied his face closely, but to no purpose;--there was no
clue to the mystery packed within the harsh lines of those dark, fierce
features,--he seemed no more and no less than the same brooding, leonine
creature that had mercilessly planned the deaths of men in his own
Revolutionary Committee. There was no touch of softness in his eyes,--no
tears, even at the sight of Lotys smiling coldly in her flower-strewn
shroud. And now, unfolding her last message, the King beheld it thus
expressed:
“To THOSE WHO SHALL FIND ME DEAD
“I pray you of your gentle love and charity, not to bury my body in
the earth, but in the sea. For I most earnestly desire no mark, or
remembrance of the place where my sorrows, with my mortal remains, shall
be rendered back to nature; and kinder than the worms in the mould are
the wild waves of the ocean which I have ever loved! And there,--at
least to my own thoughts,--if any spiritual part of me remains to watch
my will performed,--shall I be best pleased and most grateful to be
given my last rest. LOTYS.”
This document had been written and signed some years back, and had,
therefore, nothing to do with any idea of immediate departure from
the world, or premeditated suicide. And once again the King looked
searchingly at Thord, as he returned him the paper.
“Her will shall be performed!” he said--“And in a manner befitting her
memory,--befitting the love borne to her by a People--and--a King!”
He paused,--then went on softly.
“To you Sergius, my friend and comrade!--to you will be entrusted the
task of committing this sweet casket of a sweeter soul to the mercy
of the waves!--you, the guardian of her childhood, the defender of her
womanhood, the protector of her life----”
“O God! No more--no more!” cried Thord, suddenly falling on his knees by
the couch of the dead--“No more--in mercy! I will do all--all! But leave
me with her now!--leave me alone with her, this last little while!”
And breaking into great sobs, he buried his head among the death-flowers
in an utter abandonment of despair.
Silently the King watched him for a little space. Then he turned his
eyes towards the pale form of the woman he had loved, and who had taught
him the noblest and most selfless part of love, sleeping her last sleep,
with a fixed sweet smile upon her face.
“We shall meet again, my Lotys!” he whispered--“On the other side of
Death!”
And so,--with the quiet air of one who knows a quick way out of
difficulty, he departed.
Some five days later, a strange and solemn spectacle was witnessed by
thousands of spectators from all the shores and quays of the sea-girt
city. A ship set sail for the Land of the Infinite!--a silent passenger
went forth on a voyage to the borders of the Unknown! Coffined in
state,--with a purple velvet pall trailing its rich folds over the
casket which enshrined her perished mortality,--and with flowers of
every imaginable rareness, or wildness, scattered about it,--the body of
Lotys was, with no religious or formal ceremony, placed on the deck of a
sailing-brig, and sent out to the waves for burial. So Sergius Thord had
willed it; so Sergius Thord had planned it. He had purchased the vessel
for this one purpose, and with his own hands he had strewn the deck with
blossoms, till it looked like a floating garden of fairyland. Garlands
of roses trailed from the mast,--wreaths from every former member of the
now extinct ‘Revolutionary Committee’ were heaped in profusion about
the coffin which lay in the centre of the deck,--the sails were white
as snow, and one of them bore, the name ‘Lotys’ upon it, in letters of
gold. It was arranged that the brig should be towed from the harbour,
and out to sea for about a couple of miles,--and when there, should be
cut free and set loose to the wind and tide to meet its fate of certain
wreckage in the tossing billows beyond. In strange contrast to this
floating funeral were the brilliant flags and gay streamers which were
already being put up along the streets and quays, as the first signs of
the city’s welcome to the Crown Prince and his bride, who were expected
to arrive home somewhere within the next ten days. Eager crowds watched
the unique ceremony, unknown save in old Viking days, of sending forth
a dead voyager to sail the pitiless seas; and countless numbers of small
boats attended the funeral vessel in a long flotilla,--escorting it out
to that verge where the ocean opened widely to the wider horizon, and
spread its high road of silver waves invitingly out to the approaching
silent adventurer. Comments ran freely from lip to lip,--Sergius
Thord had been seen, pale as death, laying flowers on the deck to the
last,--the King,--yes!--the King himself had sent a wreath, as a
token of remembrance, to the obsequies of the woman who had saved his
life,--the purple velvet pall, with its glittering fringes of gold,
had been the gift of the city of which Thord was the lately-elected
Deputy,--Louis Valdor had sent that garland of violets,--the great
wreath of roses which lay at the head of the coffin, was the offering of
the famous little dancer, Pequita, who, it was said, now lay sick of
a fever brought on by grief and fretting for the loss of her best
friend,--and rich and poor alike had vied with one another in assisting
the weird beauty of this exceptional and strange burial, in which no
sexton was employed but the wild wind, which would in due time scoop
a hollow in the sea, and whirl down into fathomless deeps all that
remained of a loving woman, with the offerings of a People’s love around
her!
From the Palace windows the Queen watched the weird pageant, with
straining eyes, and a sense of relief at her heart. This unknown rival
of hers,--this Lotys--was dead! Her body would soon be drifting out on
the wild waste of waters, to be caught by the first storm and sunk in
the depths of eternal silence. She was glad!--almost she could have sung
for joy! The colour mantled on her fair cheeks,--she looked younger
and more beautiful than ever. She had learned her long-neglected
lesson,--the lesson of, ‘how to love.’ And to herself she humbly
confessed the truth--that she loved no other than her husband! The King
had now become the centre of her heart, as he had become the centre of
his People’s trust. And she watched the vessel bearing the corpse
of Lotys, gliding, gliding over the waves--she tracked the circling
concourse of boats that went with it--and waited, with quickened breath
and eager eyes, till she saw a sudden pause in the procession--when,
riding lightly on a shining wave, the funeral-ship seemed to stop for an
instant--and then, with a bird-like dip forward, scurried out with full,
bulging sails to the open sea! The crowding spectators began to break up
and disperse--the flotilla of attendant boats turned back to shore--the
dead woman who had held such magnetic influence over the King, was
gone!--gone for ever into the watery caverns of endless death!
It was with a light heart that the Queen at last rose from her watch
at the window, and prepared to array herself for the return of her
sovereign lord. Her eyes sparkled, her lips smiled; she looked the very
incarnation of love and tenderness. The snow-peak had melted at last,
and underneath the ice, love’s late violets had begun to bloom! She
glanced once more out at the sea, where the vanishing death-ship now
seemed but a speck on the far horizon, and saw a bank of solemn purple
clouds darkening the golden sunset line,--clouds that rose up thickly
and swiftly, like magic mountains conjured into sudden existence by
some witch in a fairy tale. A gust of wind shook the lattice--and moaned
faintly through the chinks of the door.
“There will be a storm to-night!” she said musingly, her eyes following
the dispersing crowds, as they poured along the terrace from the shore,
or climbed up from the quays to the higher streets of the town:--“There
will be a storm!--and the woman who was called Lotys, will know nothing
of it! The vessel she sails in will be crushed like a shell in the teeth
of the blast, and her body will sink like a stone in the angry sea! So
will she sleep--so does her brief power over the King come to an end!”
Turning, she smiled at her lady-in-waiting, Teresa de Launay, who
had also watched the sea funeral of Lotys with wondering and often
tear-filled eyes.
“How the people must have loved her!” the girl murmured softly; “No poor
person or child came to these strange obsequies without flowers!--many
wept--and some swear there is no happiness at all for them now, without
Lotys! She must have been a sweet, unselfish woman!”
The Queen was silent.
“Since she saved the life of our lord the King, I have often thought
of her!” went on Teresa--“I have even hoped to see her! Dearest Madam,
would you not have been glad to thank her once before she died?”
The Queen’s face hardened.
“She only did her duty!” was the cold answer--“Every subject in the
realm would be proud to have the chance of being the King’s defender!”
At that moment the door opened, and Sir Roger de Launay entered,--then
drew back in some surprise and hesitation.
“I crave your pardon, Madam!” he said, bowing low--“I thought the King
was here!”
“Truly the King should be here by now,”--replied the Queen gently--“But
he is doubtless detained among the people, who wait upon his footsteps,
as though he were a demi-god!” She smiled happily. “He went out to see
yonder strange funeral pageant--and left no word of the hour of his
return.”
Sir Roger looked perplexed. The Queen noticed his expression of anxiety.
“Stay but a moment, Sir Roger,” she added--“Now I remember, he bade me
at sunset, go to my own room and fetch a packet I would find from him
there,--he may be waiting for me now!”
She retired, the radiant smile still upon her face, and Sir Roger looked
at his sister with concern for her tearful eyes.
“Weeping, Teresa?” he said--“What is the trouble?”
“Nothing!” she answered quickly--“Only a presentiment of evil! That
funeral-ship has made me sad!”
Sir Roger said nothing for the moment. He was too preoccupied with his
own forebodings to give much heed to hers. He walked to the window.
“There will be a storm to-night!” he said. “Look at those great clouds!
They are big with thunder and with rain!”
“Yes!” murmured Teresa--“There will be a storm--Madam!”
She turned with a cry to feel the Queen’s grip on her shoulder--to
see the Queen, white as marble, with blazing eyes, possessed by a very
frenzy of grief and terror. A tragic picture of despairing Majesty, she
confronted the startled De Launay with an open paper in her hand.
“Where is the King?” she demanded, in accents that quivered with fear
and passion. “From you, Sir Roger de Launay, must come the answer! To
you, his friend and servant, I trusted his safety! And of you I ask
again--Where is the King?”
Stupefied and stunned, Sir Roger stared helplessly at this enraged
splendour of womanhood, this embodied wrath of royalty.
“Madam!” he stammered,--“I know nothing--save that the King has been
sorely stricken by a great sorrow--”
She looked at him with flashing eyes.
“Sorrow for what?--for whom?”
De Launay gazed at her amazedly;--why did she ask of what she knew so
well?
“Madam, to answer that is not within my province!”
She was silent, breathing quickly. Great tears gathered on her lashes,
but did not fall.
“When saw you his Majesty last?”
“But three hours since, Madam! He bade me leave him alone, saying he
would walk a while in the further grounds away from the sight of the
sea. He had no mind, he said, to look upon the passing away of Lotys!”
A strange grey pallor crept over the Queen’s face. She stood proudly
erect, yet tottered as though about to fall. Teresa de Launay ran to her
in terror.
“Dearest Madam!” cried the trembling girl--“Be comforted! Be patient!
The King will come!”
“He will never come!” said the Queen in a low choked voice;--“Never
again--never, never again! I feel--I know--that I have lost him for
ever! He has gone--but where?--O God!--where!”
“Madam!” said Sir Roger, shaken to the soul by the sight of her
suppressed agony--“That paper in your hand--”
“This paper,” she said, with a convulsive effort at calmness, “makes
me Regent till the return of my son, the Crown Prince--and--at the
same time--bids me farewell! Farewell!--and why farewell? Oh, faithless
servant!” and she advanced a step, fixing her burning eyes on the
stricken De Launay--“I thought you loved me!”
His face flushed--his lips quivered.
“As God lives, Madam, I yield to no one in my love and service of you!”
“Then find the King!” and she stretched out her arm with a gesture of
authority--“Bring back to me my husband!--the one man of the world!--the
one man I have learned to love! Follow the King!--whether on land or
sea, whether alive or dead,--in heaven or hell, follow him! Your place
is not with me--but by your master’s side! If you know not whither he
has fled, make it your business to learn!--and never let me see your
face again till _his_ face shines beside yours, like sunshine against
darkness!--till his eyes, his smile make gladness where your presence
without him is a mocking misery! Out of my sight! And nevermore return
again, save in your duty and attendance on the King!”
“Madam,--Madam!” exclaimed Teresa--“Would you condemn my brother to a
lasting banishment? What if the King were dead?”
“Dead!” The word left the Queen’s lips in a sharp sob of pain--“The King
cannot die!--he is too strong--too bold and brave! He has met death ere
now and conquered it! Dead? No--that is not possible--that could not
be!”
She turned again upon Sir Roger, standing mute and pale, a very statue
of despair.
“I give you a high mission!” she said--“Fulfil it!”
He started from his unhappy reverie.
“Be sure that I will do so!” he said--“I will--as your Majesty bids
me--follow the King! And--till the King returns with me--I also say
farewell!”
Catching his sister in his arms, he kissed her with a murmured
blessing--and profoundly saluting the woman for whose love’s sake his
very life was now demanded, he left the room.
“Roger, Roger!” cried Teresa in an anguish, as the sound of his
footsteps died away--“Come back! Come back!”
And falling on her knees by the Queen’s side, she burst into wild
weeping.
“If the King has gone for ever, my brother is gone too,” she
sobbed--“Oh, dearest Majesty, have you no heart?”
“None!” said the Queen with a strained smile, while the slow, hot tears
began to fall from her aching eyes--“None! What heart I had is gone! It
follows the King!”