He put her gently from him, and stood for a moment irresolute. All the hope he had indulged in of a sweeter joy than any he had ever known, was lost,--and yet--he knew he had no right to press upon her a love which, to her, could only mean dishonour.
"Good-bye, Lotys!" he said, huskily; "My one love in this world and the next! Good-bye!"
She gazed at him with her whole soul in her eyes,--then suddenly, and with the tenderest grace in the world, dropped on her knees and kissed his hand.
"G.o.d save your Majesty!" she said, with a poor little effort at smiling through her tears; "For many and many a long and happy year, when Lotys is no more!"
With a half cry he s.n.a.t.c.hed her up in his arms and pressed her to his heart, showering kisses on her lips, her eyes, her hair, her little hands!--then, with a movement as abrupt as it was pa.s.sion-stricken, put her quickly from him and left her.
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 s.e.x!--which is to dupe and betray men! You were the traitor all along! You knew the real ident.i.ty 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--G.o.d!"
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 pa.s.sed,--leaving him cold and pa.s.sive 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 knot 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 G.o.d! And Lotys dead!"
A kind of hysteric laughter threatened him. He pressed his mouth hard with his hand to choke back this strange, struggling pa.s.sion.
"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.