She listened with straining ears to the quick firm echo of his footsteps departing from her, and echoing down the stairs. She caught the ring of his tread on the pavement outside. She heard the grinding roll of the wheels of his carriage as he was rapidly driven away. He had gone! As she realised this, her courage suddenly failed her, and sinking down beside the chair in which he had for a moment sat, she laid her head upon it, and wept long and bitterly. Her conscience told her that she had done well, but her heart — the starving woman’s heart, — was all unsatisfied, and clamoured for its dearest right — love! And she had of her own will, her own choice, put love aside, — the most precious, the most desired love in the world! — she had sent it away out of her life for ever! True, she could call it back, if she chose with a word — but she knew that for the sake of a king, and a country’s honour, she would not so call it back! She might have said with one of the most human of poets:
“Will someone say, then why not ill for good?
Why took ye not
your pastime? To that man My word shall answer, since I knew the Right
And did it.” [Footnote: Tennyson ]
A shadowy form moving uncertainly to and fro near the corner of the street, appeared to spring forward and to falter back again, as the King, hurriedly departing, glanced up and down the street once or twice as though in doubt or questioning, and then walked to his brougham. The soft hues of a twilight sky, in which the stars were beginning to appear, fell on his face and showed it ashy pale; but he was absorbed in his own sad and bitter thoughts, — lost in his own inward contemplation of the love which consumed him, — and he saw nothing of that hidden watcher in the semi-gloom, gazing at him with such fierce eyes of hate as might have intimidated even the bravest man. He entered his carriage and was rapidly driven away, and the shadow, — no other than Sergius Thord, — stumbling forward, — his brain on fire, and a loaded pistol in his hand, — had hardly realised his presence before he was gone.
“Why did I not kill him?” he muttered, amazed at his own hesitation; “He stood here, close to me! It would have been so easy!”
He remained another moment or two gazing around him at the streets, at the roofs, at the sky, as though in a wondering dream, — then all at once, it seemed as if every cell in his brain had suddenly become superhumanly active. His eyes flashed fury, — and turning swiftly into the house which the King had just left, he ran madly up the stairs as though impelled by a whirlwind, and burst without bidding, straight into the room where Lotys still knelt, weeping. At the noise of his entrance she started up, the tears wet on her face.
“Sergius!” she cried.
He looked at her, breathing heavily.
“Yes, — Sergius!” he said, his voice sounding thick and husky, and unlike itself. “I am Sergius! Or I was Sergius, before you made of me a nameless devil! And you — you are Lotys! — you are weeping for the lover who has just parted from you! You are Lotys — the mistress of the King!”
She made him no answer. Drawing herself up to her full height, she flashed upon him a look of utter scorn, and maintained a contemptuous silence.
“Mistress of the King!” he repeated, speaking in hard gasps; “You, — Lotys, — have come to this! You, — the spotless Angel of our Cause! You! — why, — I sicken at the sight of you! Oh, you fulfil thoroughly the mission of your sex! — which is to dupe and betray men! You were the traitor all along! You knew the real identity of ‘Pasquin Leroy’! He was your lover from the first, — and to him you handed the secrets of the Committee, and played Us into his hands! It was well done — cleverly done! — woman’s work in all its best cunning! — but treachery does not always pay!”
Amazed and indignant, she boldly confronted him.
“You must be mad, Sergius! What do you mean? What sudden accusations are these? You know they are false — why do you utter them?”
He sprang towards her, and seized her roughly by the arm.
“How do I know they are false?” he said. “Prove to me they are false! Who saved the King’s life? You! And why? Because you knew he was ‘Pasquin Leroy’! How was it he gained such swift ascendancy over all our Committee, and led the work and swayed the men, — and made of me his tool and servant? Through you again! And why? Because you knew he was the King! Why have you scorned me — turned from me — thrust me from your side — denied my love, — though I have loved and cared for you from childhood! Why, I say? Because you love the King!”
She stood perfectly still, — unmoved by his frantic manner — by the glare of his bloodshot eyes, and his irrepressible agony of rage and jealousy. Quietly she glanced him up and down.
“You are right!” she said tranquilly; “I do love the King!”
A horrible oath broke from his lips, and for a moment his face grew crimson with the rising blood that threatened to choke the channels of his brain. An anxious pity softened her face.
“Sergius!” she said gently, “You are not yourself — you rave — you do not know what you say! What has maddened you? What have I done? You know my life is free — I have a right to do with it as I will, and even as my life is free, so is my love! I cannot love where I am bidden — I must love where Love itself calls!”
He stood still, staring at her. He seemed to have lost the power of speech.
“You have insulted me almost beyond pardon!” she went on. “Your accusations are all lies! I love the King, — but I am not the King’s mistress! I would no more be his mistress than I would be your wife!”
Slowly, slowly, his hand got at something in his pocket and clutched it almost unconsciously. Slowly, slowly, he raised that hand, still clutching that something, — and his lips parted in a breathless way, showing the wolfish glimmer of white teeth within.
“You — love — the King!” he said in deliberate accents. “And you dare — you dare to tell me so?”
She raised her golden head with a beautiful defiance and courage.
“I love the King!” she said— “And I dare to tell you so!”
With a lightning quickness of movement the hand that had been groping after an unseen evil now came out into the light, with a sudden sharp crash, and flame of fire!
A faint cry tore the air.
“Ah — Sergius! — Sergius! Oh — God!”
And Lotys staggered back — stunned, deafened — sick, dizzy ——
“Death, death!” she thought, wildly; “This is death!”
And, with a last desperate rallying of her sinking force, as every memory of her life swept over her brain in that supreme moment, she sprang at her murderer and wrenched the weapon from his hand, clutching it hard and fast in her own.
“Say — say I did it — myself — !” she gasped, in short quick sobs of pain; “Tell the King — I did it myself — myself! Sergius — save your own life! — I — forgive!”
She reeled, and with a choking cry fell back heavily — dead! Her hair came unbound with her fall, and shook itself round her in a gold wave, as though to hide the horror of the oozing blood that trickled from her lips and breast.
With a horrid sense of unreality Thord stared upon the evil he had done. He gazed stupidly around him. He listened for someone to come and explain to him what had happened. But up in that remote attic, there was no one to hear either a pistol-shot or a cry. There was only one thing to be understood and learnt by heart, — that Lotys, once living, was now dead! Dead! How came she dead? That was what he could not determine. The heat of his wild fury had passed, — leaving him cold and passive as a stone.
“Lotys!”
He whispered the name. Horrible! How she looked, — with all that blood! — all that golden hair!
‘Tell the King I did it myself!’ Yes — the King would have to be told — something! Stooping, he tried to detach the pistol from the lifeless hand, but the fingers, though still warm were tightened on the weapon, and he dared not unclasp them. He was afraid! He stood up again, and looked around him. His glance fell on the kno
t of regal flowers he had noticed in the morning, — the great roses, — the voluptuous orchids — tied with their golden ribbon. He took them hastily and flung them down beside her, — then watched a little trickling stream of blood running, running towards one of the whitest and purest of the roses. It reached it, stained it, — and presently drowned it in a little pool. Horrified, he covered his eyes, and staggered backward against the door. The evening was growing dark, — through the small high window he could see the stars beginning to shine as usual. As usual, — though Lotys was dead! That seemed strange! Putting one hand behind him, he cautiously opened the door, still keeping his guarded gaze on that huddled heap of clothes, and blood, and glittering hair which had been Lotys.
“I must get home,” he muttered. “I have business to attend to — as Deputy to the city, there is much to do — much to do for the People! The People! My God! And Lotys dead!”
A kind of hysteric laughter threatened him. He pressed his mouth hard with his hand to choke back this strange, struggling passion.
“Lotys! Lotys is dead! There she lies! Someone, I know not who, killed her! No, — no! She has killed herself, — she said so! There she lies, poor Lotys! She will never speak to the People — never comfort them, — never teach them any more — never hold little motherless infants in her arms and console them, — never smile on the sorrowful, or cheer the sick — never! ‘I love the King!’ she said, — and she died for saying it! One should not love kings! ‘Tell the King I did it myself!’ Yes, Lotys! — lie still — be at peace — the King shall know — soon enough!”
Still muttering uneasily to himself, he went out, always moving backwards — and with a last look at that fallen breathless form of murdered woman, shut the door stealthily behind him.
Then, stumbling giddily down the stairs, he wandered, blind and half crazed, into the darkening night.
CHAPTER XXXIII. — 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!
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 578
