“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 re
peated ——
“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
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 579
