Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy Part 76

"Sergius!" he cried aghast.

"King!" and Thord looked scarcely human in the pale fleeting moonbeams, as he too stared in half-maddened wonder at the face and form of a companion on this dread journey such as he had never expected to see.

"What do you here in the midst of the sea and the storm? You should be at home!--playing the fool in your Palace!--giving audiences on your throne!--you--you have no right to die with Lotys, whom I loved!"

"With Lotys whom you loved!" echoed the King; "You loved her--true! But I loved her more!"

"You lie!" said Thord, furiously; "No man--no King,--no Emperor of all the world, could ever have loved Lotys as I loved her! These great waves waiting to devour us--dead and living together--are not more insatiate in their pa.s.sion for us than I in my pa.s.sion for Lotys! I loved her!--and when she scorned me--when she rejected me,--when she openly confessed that she loved you--the King--what remained for her but death!

Death, rather than dishonour at your Royal hands, Sir!" And he laughed fiercely--a laugh with the ring of madness in it. "I rescued her as a child from starvation and misery--and so I may say I gave her her life.

What I gave, I took again--I had the right to take it! I would not see her shamed by you--dishonoured by you--branded by you!--I did the only thing left to me to save her from you--I killed her!"

With a loud cry the King, no longer so much king as man, with every pa.s.sion roused, sprang at him.

"You killed her? Oh, treacherous devil! They said she killed herself!"

"Hands off!" cried Thord, suddenly pointing a pistol at him; "I will shoot you as readily as I shot her if you touch me! She killed herself you think? Oh, yes--in a strange way! Her last words were: 'Say I did it myself! Tell the King I did it myself!' A lie! All women are fond of lying. But her lie was to protect Me! Her last thought was for my defence,--not yours! Her last wish was to save Me, not you!--King though you are--lover though you craved to be! I say I murdered her! This is my Day of Fate,--the day on which it seems that Heaven itself has drawn lots with me to kill a King! Why did I ever relax my hate of you? It was inborn in me--a part of me,--my very life, the utmost portion of my work! I called you friend;--I curse myself that I ever did so!--for from the first you were my enemy--my rival in the love of Lotys! What did I care for the People? What did you? We were both at one in the love of the same woman! And now I am here to die with her alone! Alone, I say--do you hear me? I will be alone with her to the last--you shall not share with us in our sea burial! I will die beside her,--all, all alone!--and drift out with her to the darkness of the grave, to meet my fate with her--always with her,--whether her spirit lead me to h.e.l.l or to Heaven!"

His insensate frenzy was so desperate, so terrible, that by its very force the strange mental composure of the King became intensified.

Quietly folding his arms, he took his stand by the coffin of the dead in silence. The dashing spray that leaped at the masts of the vessel,--the wind that scooped up the billows into higher and higher pinnacles of emerald green, might have been soundless and powerless, for all he seemed to hear or to heed.

"Why are you with us?" cried Thord again--"How came you on this ship, where I thought I had hidden myself alone with her, voyaging to Death? Could you not have left her to me?--you who have a throne and kingdom--I, to whom she was all my life!"

"I came--as you have come"--answered the King--"to die with her--or rather not to die, but to find Life with her! She loved me!"

With a savage curse, Thord raised the pistol he held. The King looked him full in the eyes.

"Take good aim, Sergius!" he said tranquilly--"For here between us lies Lotys--the silent witness of your deed! Go hence, if you must, with two murders on your soul! There is no escape from death for either you or me, take it how we may;--and I care not at all how I meet it, whether at your hands or in the waves of the sea! Give me the same death you gave to Lotys! I ask no better end! For so at least shall we meet more quickly!"

Half choked with his fury, Thord looked at him with fixed and gla.s.sy eyes. He was jealous of death!--jealous that death should of itself seem to reunite Lotys and the man she had loved more closely together!

Standing erect by the purple pall that covered the one woman of the world to them both, the King looked 'every inch a king,'--the incarnation of pride, love, resolve and courage. With a sudden wild-beast cry, Thord sprang at him and caught his arm with one hand, the pistol grasped in the other.

"Too near!" he gasped; "You shall not stand too near her!--you shall not die so close to her!--you shall not have the barest chance of resting where she sleeps!"

He fell back, as the King's calm eyes regarded him steadfastly, imperiously, almost commandingly, without a trace of fear. He trembled.

"Do not look so!" he muttered; "I cannot kill you!--not if you look so!--"

Raising the pistol, he took apparent aim. The King stood unmoved, only murmuring softly to himself: 'On the other side of Death, my Lotys!--On the other side!'

There was a loud report, a crash in his ears--then--as he staggered back, stunned by the shock, he saw that he was untouched, unhurt. Thord had turned the pistol against his own breast, and reeling backward, with a last supreme effort, dragged his sinking body to the vessel's edge.

"G.o.d save your Majesty!" he cried wildly; "Tell Lotys I did it myself!

G.o.d knows that is true!"

The wild waves, clambering up over the deck rushed at him, and an enormous foam-crested billow, higher and stronger than all the rest, beat at the mast of the vessel and snapped it in twain. It came down, dragging the sail with it in a tangle of cordage, and with that sail the name of 'Lotys' inscribed upon it was whirled furiously out to sea. The body of the vessel, now netted in a ma.s.s of ropes and rigging, began to roll helplessly in the trough of the waves, and the corpse of Thord, sinking under it as it plunged, was swept away like a leaf in the storm! Gone, his wild heart and wilder brain!--gone his restless ambition,--gone his unsatisfied love--his fierce pa.s.sions, his glimmerings of a n.o.ble nature which if trained and guided, might have worked to n.o.blest ends. Like many would-be leaders of men, he could not lead himself--like many who seek to control law, and revolutionise the world, he had been unable to master his own desperate soul. He was not the first,--he will not be the last,--who for purely personal ends has sought to 'serve the People'! The disinterested, the impersonal and unselfish Leader has yet to come,--and if he ever does come, it is more than probable that those for whom he gives his life, will be the first to crucify his soul, and cry 'Thou hast a devil!'

Death was now sole commander of the ocean that night! And the King of a mere little earth-country, realised to the full that he stood irrevocably face to face with the last great Enemy of Empires. Yet never had he looked more truly imperial,--never more superbly the incarnation of life! A mighty exultation began to stir within him--a consciousness that he, despite all the terrors of the grave, would still come forth the conqueror! The waves, leaping at him, were friends, not foes,--the moon shedding ghostly glamours on the watery wilderness, smiled as though she knew that he would soon be a partaker in the secrets of all Nature, and solve the mystery of existence,--there was a singing in his ears as of voices triumphant, which swelled with the pa.s.sion of a mighty anthem,--and with the quietest mind and calmest brain he found himself musing on life and death as if he were already a witness apart, of their strange phenomena. Thord's appearance on the same ship in which he and Lotys were pa.s.sengers, seemed to him quite simple and natural,--Thord's death moved him to a certain grave compa.s.sion,--but the whole swift circ.u.mstance had been so dreamlike, that he had no time to think of it, or regret it,--and the only active consciousness his mind held was that he and Lotys were journeying to 'the other side';--that 'other side'

which he now felt so near and sure, that he could almost declare he saw the living presence of the woman he loved arisen from the dead and standing near him!

The ocean widened out interminably, and he saw, looking ahead, a great heap of gigantic billows, leaping, sparkling, tossing, climbing over each other in the fitful light of the moon, like huge sea-monsters waiting to devour and engulf him. He smiled as he felt the yielding craft on which he stood swirl towards those breakers, and begin to part asunder,--so would he have smiled on a battlefield facing his foes, and fronted with fiery cannon! The glory of Empire,--the splendour of Sovereignty,--the pride and panoply of Temporal Power! How infinitely trivial seemed all these compared with the mighty force of a resistless love! How slight the boasted 'supremacy' of man with his laws and creeds, matched against the wrath of the conflicting sea,--the sure and swift approach of inexorable Death! Under the depths of the ocean which this ruler of a kingdom traversed for the last time, lay a lost Continent,--fallen dynasties--forgotten civilisations, wonderful and endless--kings and queens and heroes once famous--and now as blotted out of memory as though they had never been!

"If thou could'st see a thousand fathoms down, Thou would'st behold 'mid rock and shingle brown-- The shapeless wreck of temple, tower and town,-- The bones of Empires sleeping their last sleep, Their names as dead as if they never bore Crown or dominion!"

With keen and watchful eyes he measured the swiftly lessening distance between him and the glittering, tumbling whirlpool of waves--he felt the weight of the wind bearing against the drifting vessel--the end was very near! Standing by the dead Lotys, he prayed silently--prayed strangely,--in words borrowed from no Church formula, but as they came, straight from his heart--prayed that G.o.d might not be a Dream--that Love might not be a Snare--and Death might not be an End! So do we all pray when the last dread moment of dissolution comes--when no priest's can comfort us--and when the greatest King in the world is but a poor ordinary human soul, ignorant and forlorn, shuddering on the verge of eternal Judgment!

A mountainous billow broke over the deck, half stunning him with the shock of its cold onslaught, and sweeping the coffin of Lotys almost over the edge of the vessel. He threw himself beside that dreary casket, fastening his own body with strong rope knotted many times, to its heavy leaden ma.s.s, resolved to sink with it painlessly, and without a struggle. So,--in perfect pa.s.siveness,--he awaited his end.

Suddenly,--as if a bell had chimed in the distance, or a voice had sung some old familiar song in his ears,--he saw, clearly visioned in all the flying spray of the tempest a face!--not the face of Lotys--but a soft, childish, piteous little countenance, framed in curling tendrils of hair, with trusting sweet eyes, raised to his own in holiest, simplest confidence! So pure, so fair a face!--so pathetically loving!--where had he seen it before? All at once he remembered,--and sprang up with a sharp cry of pain. Why, why had this frail ghost of the past flown out of the darkness of sea and storm to confront him now? The ghost of his first young love!--the clinging, fond, credulous creature who had gone to her death uncomplainingly for his sake--with only the one little cry of farewell--'My love! Forgive me!' Why should he think of her?--why should he see her before him at this supreme moment when Death stared him in the face, and his spirit hovered on the edge of Infinity?

"Vengeance is mine!--I will repay, saith the Lord!" His first love!--so lightly won--so cruelly betrayed! Tears rushed to his eyes,--he thought of the wrong done to a perfectly pure and blameless life--a wrong he had forgotten in all these years--till now!

"Oh G.o.d!" he cried aloud--"Forgive me! Forgive my weakness, my selfishness, my many wasted years! Let not her face forever come between thy redeeming Angel, Lotys, and my soul!"

The tumultuous breakers rushing now with a great swoop at the vessel, s.n.a.t.c.hed and tore at him. He nerved himself to look again,--once again, and for the last time, across the great wilderness of warring waters!

The moon now shone brightly,--the clouds were parting on either side of her, rolling up in huge ma.s.ses, white and glistening as Alpine peaks of snow--the wind had not lessened, and the fury of the sea was still unabated. But the fair childish face had vanished,--and only the clear salt spray dashed in his eyes and blinded them,--only the salt waves clambered round him, drawing him towards them in a cold embrace!

"'On the other side,' my Lotys!" he said--"G.o.d be merciful to us both!--'on the other side'!"

For one moment the breaking vessel paused shudderingly on the edge of the seething whirlpool of waves, which, meeting in a centre of tidal commotion, leaped at her, and began steadily to suck her down. For one moment the moonbeams fell purely on the calm upturned face of the King, who like others allied to him in kingship throughout history, had esteemed mere sovereignty valueless at the cost of Love! For kings,--though surrounded with flatterers and sycophants who seek to make them imagine themselves somewhat more than human,--are but men, with all men's vain sins and pa.s.sions, mad weaknesses and wild dreams; and when they love, they love as foolishly as commoners,--and when they die, as die they must, there is no difference in the actual way of death than is known to a pauper. More gold and purple on the one side,--more straw and sackcloth on the other,--but the solemnity and equality of Death itself, is the same in both. And as this dying King well knew, the People care little who governs them, provided bread is cheap, and labour well paid. He is greatest who gives them most,--and he is the most applauded who allows them the most liberty of action! The personality, the complex nature, the character, the temptations, the mind-sufferings of a King, as man merely, are less than nothing to the mult.i.tude who run to follow and to cheer him. If he were once to complain, he would be condemned;--and if he asked from his crowding flatterers the bread of sympathy, they would give him but a stone!

The moon smiled--the stars flashed fitfully through the clouds,--and all through the length and breadth of ocean there seemed to come the sound of a great psalmody, rising and filling the air. It surged on the King's ears, as with hands clasped on the drenched lilies strewn over the sleeping Lotys, he welcomed the coming Unveiling of the Beyond! And then--the waters rose up, and caught living and dead together, and dragged them down with a triumphal rush and roar,--down, down to that grand Unconsciousness,--that sublime Pause in the chain of existence,--that longer Sleep, from which we shall wake refreshed and strong again,--ready to learn Where we have failed, Why we have loved, and How we have lost. But of things temporal there shall be no duration,--neither Sovereignty nor Supremacy, nor Power; only Love, which makes weak the strongest, and governs the proudest;--and of things eternal we know naught save that Love, always Love, is still the centre of the Universe, and that even to redeem the sins of the world, G.o.d Himself could find no surer way than through Love, born of Woman into Life.

Days pa.s.sed,--and angry Ocean gradually smoothed out its frowning furrows, spreading a surface darkly-blue and peaceful, under a cloudless arch of sky. And one night,--when the moon, like a golden cup in heaven, emptied her sparkling wine of radiance over the gently heaving waves, a fair ship speeding swiftly with all the force of steam and sail, with flags fluttering from every mast, and sounds of music echoing from her lighted saloons, came flying over the billows like a glorious white-winged bird soaring to its home on an errand of joy. On her deck stood Gloria,--happily ignorant of all calamity,--watching with dreamy, thoughtful eyes the lessening lengths of sea between her and the land she loved. The Crown Prince, her husband,--now King, though he knew it not,--stood beside her;--his handsome face brightened by a smile which expressed his heart's elation, his soul's deep peace and inward content.

Naught knew these wedded lovers of the strange reception awaiting them; of the half-mourning, half-rejoicing people,--of national flags suddenly veiled in c.r.a.pe,--of black funeral-streamers set distractedly amidst gay bridal garlands;--of a widowed Queen, broken-hearted and despairing, weeping vainly for the love she had so long misprized, and had learned too late to value,--of a Crown resigned,--of the lost Majesty and hero of a nation's idolatry;--of the death of Ronsard, and the inexplicable disappearance of the famous Socialist leader, Sergius Thord,--and of all the strange and tragic history of vanished lives, even to that of Sir Roger de Launay whom no man ever saw again,--which it fell to their faithful friend, Heinrich von Glauben to relate, with pa.s.sionate grief and many tears. They knew nothing. They only saw home and the future before them, shining in bright hues of hope and promise; for Love was with them,--and through Love alone--love for the nation, love for the people, love for each other,--they purposed, G.o.d willing, to faithfully fulfil whatever destiny might be theirs, whether fortunate or disastrous! Thus minded, they could see no evil in the world,--no mischief,--no ominous crossings of Fate,--they had all earth and all heaven in each other! And the gay ship bearing them onward, danced over the smiling, singing, siren waves, as if she too had a human heart to feel and rejoice!--and in her swift course swept lightly over the very spot, now tranquil and radiant, where but a short while since, the body of Lotys had gone down, companioned by the King. Gloria leaning over the deck-rail looked dreamily into the sparkling water.

"The storm we met has left no trace!" she said; "It was but a pa.s.sing hurricane!"

Her husband came to her side, and they stood together in silence. Sweet harmonies floating upwards from the saloon below, where a company of musicians and singers were stationed to charm the evenings of the Royal pair with 'sounds more dulcet than Heaven's own dulcimers' held them attentive. The tender tones of an undetermined melody rose and fell on the quiet air,--they listened, drawing closer and closer to each other, till it seemed as if but one heart beat between them,--as if but one Soul aspired,--Archangel-like,--from their two lives to Heaven! And Gloria, with a sigh of perfect happiness, murmured softly,--

"How beautiful the night! How calm the sea!"

So sped they onward,--with Love to steer them; with Love to bring them safely through the brief cloud of sorrow and wonder hanging over the kingdom to which they wended,--with Love to guide their lives through all difficulty and danger, and to give them all the good that Love alone can give! For whether the days be dark or bright,--whether tempest fills the air, or sunshine illumines the sky,--whether we are followed with fair blessing from friends, or pursued with the hate, envy and slander of injurious foes,--whether we drown by choice in tempestuous waters of pa.s.sion, or float securely to the sh.o.r.es of peace,--whether our ships are bound for Death or for Life, we are safe in the hands of Love! And in the midst of what the world deems storm and wreckage, we can gaze into the deeper depths of G.o.d's meaning with trustful eyes, and sail on our voyage fearlessly,--on, even to the Grave and beyond it!--for with Love at the helm, how beautiful is the Night!--how calm the Sea!

THE END