Читать книгу Majesty - Louis Couperus - Страница 10

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The downpour ceased during the night; but it was raining again in the morning. It was seven o'clock; a sultry moisture covered the colossal glass roof of the station, as though it had been breathed upon from end to end. The special train stood waiting; the engine gave short, powerful snorts, like a discontented, tired beast. A great multitude, a buzzing accumulation of vague people filled the glass hall; a detachment of infantry—two files, to right and left; the uniforms, dark-red and pale-grey; above, a faint glitter of bayonets—drew two long stripes of colour diagonally through the sombre station, cut the crowd into two and kept a broad space clear in front of the imperial waiting-room.

Dissatisfaction hovered over the crowd; angry glances flashed; rough words crackled sharply through the air, mingled with curses; a contemptuous laugh sounded in a corner.

There was a long wait; then a cheer was heard outside: the prince had arrived in front of the station. The waiting-room became filled with uniforms, glistening faintly in the morning light; brief sentences were exchanged in a low voice.

Othomar entered with Herman and the Marquis of Dazzara, the governor of the capital, the highest military authority, whose rich uniform stood out against the simpler ones of the others, even against those of the princes; they were followed by adjutants, Liparian and Gothland equerries, aides-de-camp. The mayor of the town and the managing director of the railway stepped towards Othomar and saluted him; the mayor stumbled through long phrases before the two princes.

"Why wasn't the approach to the platform closed to the public?" asked General Ducardi of the director, after the adjutant-general had glanced at the platform through the lace curtains, curious about the humming outside.

The director shrugged his shoulders:

"That was our first intention; it was done in that way when the emperor left," he replied. "But a special message was received from the Imperial, urgently requesting us not to shut off the platform; it was the Duke of Xara's wish."

"And how about all those soldiers?"

"By command of the governor of the capital. An aide-de-camp came and told us that a detachment of infantry was coming as a guard-of-honour."

"Was that aide-de-camp also from the Imperial?"

"No, from the governor's palace...."

Ducardi shrugged his shoulders; an angry growl fluttered his great, grey moustache. He walked straight up to the crown-prince:

"Is your highness aware that there is a detachment of infantry outside?" he said, interrupting the mayor's long sentences.

The governor heard him and drew nearer.

"A detachment?... No," said Othomar, in astonishment.

"Did your highness not command it, then?" Ducardi continued.

"I? No," Othomar repeated.

The governor bowed low; the general's loud, gruff voice unnerved him.

"I thought," said the governor, urbanely, but mumbling, stammering—and he tried to be at once humble before the prince and haughty towards the general—"I thought it would be well to safeguard your highness against possible ... possible unpleasantness, especially as your highness desired ... desired that the platform should remain open to the public...."

Othomar looked out as Ducardi had done; he saw the infantry drawn up and the crowd behind; angry, murmuring, drab, threatening:

"But, excellency," he said, aloud, to the governor, "in that case it would have been better to shut off the platform entirely. This is quite wrong. The police would have been sufficient to prevent any crowding."

"I was afraid of ... of unpleasantness, highness. Troubled times, the people so discontented," he whispered, fearing to be overheard by the equerries.

"Quite wrong," repeated Othomar, angrily, nervously excited. "Let the infantry march off."

"That's out of the question now," Ducardi hastened to say, with an unhappy smile. "You understand that that can't be done."

The conversation had been carried on aside, in a half-whispering tone; yet everybody seemed to listen. All eyes were gazing on the group surrounding the princes; the others were silent.

"Then let us prolong this regrettable situation as little as possible; we may as well go," said Othomar; and his voice quivered high, young and nervous in his clear throat.

The doors were opened; Othomar, in his hurry, stepped out first; the equerries and aides-de-camp did not follow him at once, as they had to make way for Prince Herman, who happened to be a little behind. Herman hurried up to Othomar; the others followed.

The princes made a movement of the head to left and right as though to bow; but their eyes met the fixed, round eyes of the soldiers, who had presented arms with a flash; they saluted and walked on to their compartment a little quickly, with an unpleasant feeling in their backs.

Under the colossal glass roof of the station, behind the files of soldiers, the crowd stood as still as death, for the humming had almost ceased; there was no curse nor scornful word heard, but also no cheer, no loud, loyal hurrah sweet to the ears of princes.

And the faces of those vague people, separated by uniforms and bayonets from their future ruler, remained gazing fixedly with dull, hostile eyes, with firmly-closed lips, full of forced restraint, as though to stare him out of existence in the imperial compartment.

The princes waved their hands from the windows to the dignitaries, who stood on the platform bowing, saluting. The engine whistled, shrieked, tore the close atmosphere of humidity under the dome; the train left the station, drove into the early morning, which was lighter outside the glass roof, glided as it were over the rainy town upon viaducts, with canals, streets, squares beneath it; farther on, the pinnacles and spires of the palaces and churches; the two marble towers of the cathedral, with the doves nestling in the renascence tracery of the lace-work of its steeples, standing out pale-white against the sky, which was now turning blue; then, in the centre of the town—green and wide, one oasis—the Elizabeth Parks, the white mass of the Imperial and, behind that, the gigantic bend of the quays, the harbour with its forest of masts, the oval curve of the horizon of the sea, all wet, glittering, raining in the distance.

Othomar looked sombrely before him. Herman smiled to him:

"Come, don't think about it any more," he advised him, adding with a laugh, "Our poor governor has had his appetite spoilt for to-day."

General Ducardi muttered an inward curse:

"Monstrously stupid," Herman heard him mumbling.

"I wanted to show them," said Othomar, suddenly.... He had intended to say, "that I am not afraid of them." He threw a glance around him, saw the eyes of Prince Dutri, his equerry, fixed upon him like a basilisk's and let his voice change from proud to faint-hearted; sadly he concluded, "that I love them and trust them so completely. Why need it have happened like this?..."

His voice had sounded faint, to please Prince Dutri; but it displeased the general. He first glanced aside at his crown-prince and then at the Prince of Gothland; he drew a comparison; his eye continued to rest appreciatively, in soldierly approval, on the smart naval lieutenant, broad and strong, sitting with his hands on his thighs, bending forward a little, looking back at the white capital as it receded before his eyes through the slanting rainbeams....

After four hours' travelling, Novi, in the province of Xara. The train stops; the princes and their suite alight, consult clocks, watches. They express surprise, they walk up and down the platform for half an hour, for an hour. Prince Herman engages in a busy conversation with the station-master. It is still raining.

At last the special from Altara is signalled. The train glides in and stops; the Emperor Oscar alights from the imperial compartment. He is followed by generals and aides-de-camp: their uniforms, the emperor's included, have lost something of their smartness and hang in tired creases from their shoulders, like clothes worn a long time. The emperor, still young, broad and sturdy and only just turning grey, walks with a firm step; he embraces his son, his nephew, brusquely, hastily. The imperial party disappear into the waiting-room; Ducardi and one of the Gothlandic officers follow them. The interview, however, is a short one: in ten minutes they reappear on the platform; brief words and handshakes are exchanged; the emperor steps back into his compartment, the crown-prince into his. The prince's train waits until his father's passes it—a last wave of the hand—then it too steams away....

Care lies like a cloud upon Othomar's forehead. He remembers his father's words: in a desperate condition, our fine old city. The Therezia Dyke may be giving way; so little energy in the municipal council; thousands of people without a roof to cover them, fleeing, spending the night in churches, in public buildings. And his last word:

"Send some of them to St. Ladislas...."

Othomar reflects; all are silent about him, depressed by the after-sound of the emperor's words, which have painted the disaster anew, brought it afresh before their eyes: the eyes of Ducardi, who knows himself to be more ready with sword in war than with sympathy in cases of inundation; the eyes of Dutri, still filled with the mundane glamour of the incomparable capital. Some part of their self-concentration falls silent; a thought of what they are about to see crosses their minds.

And Othomar reflects. What shall he do, what can he do? Is it not too much that is asked of him? Can he, can he combat the stress of the waters?

"Oh, this rain, this rain!" he mutters, secretly clenching his fist.

Five hours' more travelling. The towers of the city, the crenulated outline and Titanic plateaus of St. Ladislas, with its bastions, shoot up on the horizon, shift to one side when approached. The train stops, in the open country, at a little halting-place; the princes know that the Central Station is flooded; the whole railway-management has been transferred to this halt. And suddenly they stand in the presence of the smooth, green, watery expanse of the Zanthos, which has spread itself into one sea of water, broad and even, hardly rippled, like a wrath appeased. A punt is waiting and carries them through ruins of houses, through floating household goods. A dead horse catches on to the punt; a musty odour of damp decay hovers about. At an over-turned house, men in a punt are busied fishing up a corpse; it hangs on their boat-hooks with slack arms and long, wet hair, the pallid, dead head drooping backwards; it is a woman. Herman sees Othomar's lips quiver.

Now they float through a street of tall, deserted houses in a poor suburb. This part has been flooded for days. They alight in a square; the people are there; they cheer. Louder and louder they cheer, moved by the sight of their prince, who has come across the water to save them. A group of students shout, call out his name and cheer and wave their coloured caps.

Othomar shakes hands with the mayor, the minister for waterways, the governor of Altara and other dignitaries. His heart is full; he feels a sob welling up from his breast.

From among the group of students one steps forward, a big, tall lad:

"Highness!" he cries. "May we be your guard-of-honour?"

Etiquette hardly exists here, though the dignitaries look angry. Othomar, remembering his own student days, not yet so long ago, presses the student's hand; Prince Herman does the same; and the students grow excited and once more shout and clamour:

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Othomar for ever! Gothland for ever!"

Behind this square the city is perceived to be in distress, a silent distress from yet greater danger threatening: the old coronation-city, the city of learning and tradition, the sombre monument of the middle ages; she looks grey compared with white Lipara, which lies laughing yonder and is beautiful with new marble on her blue sea, but which does not love her sovereigns so well as she does, the dethroned capital, with her gigantic Romanesque cathedral, where the sacred imperial crown with the cross of St. Ladislas is pressed on the temples of every emperor of Liparia. Though her masters are faithless to her and have for centuries lived in their white Imperial over yonder and no longer in the old castellated fortress of the country's patron saint, she, the old city, the mother of the country, remains faithful to them with her maternal love and not because of her oath, but because of her blood, of her heart, of all her life, which is her old tradition....

But, like his father, Othomar was not this time to go to the Castle of St. Ladislas: the fortress lay too high and too far from the town, too far from the scene of disasters. Open carriages stood in waiting; they stepped in, the students flung themselves on horseback; the princes were to take up their residence in the palace of the cardinal-archbishop, the primate of Liparia, in the Episcopal, which, together with the cathedral and the Old Palace, formed one colossal, ancient, grey mass, a town in itself, the very heart of the city.

They rode quickly on. The people cheered; they look upon them as a train of deliverers who, they thought, would at last bring them safety. Between the departure of the emperor and the arrival of the prince a depression had reigned which, at the sight of Othomar, changed into morbid enthusiasm.

It became suddenly dark, but not through the sun's setting—it was only five o'clock in the month of March in the south—it became dark because of the clouds, the ships in the sky carrying in their tense, bowl-shaped, giant sails water which already was beginning to trickle down again in drops. Under that grey sky the cheering of the people rose in a minor key, when suddenly, as though the swollen clouds were bursting open with one rent, a flood dashed down in a solitary, perpendicular sheet of water.

Othomar was sitting with Herman and Ducardi in the first carriage.

"Would not your highness prefer to have the carriage closed?" asked the old general, helping the prince on with his cape.

Othomar hesitated; he had no time to answer the general; the crowd increased, became thicker, cheered; and he bowed in acknowledgement, saluted, nodded. The heavy rain clattered straight down. The hard rainbeams ran down the princes' and the general's necks, down their backs, soaked their knees. The crowd stood sheltered under an irregular roof of umbrellas, as though grouped under wet, black stars, filled the narrow streets of the old city, pressed in between the outriders and the carriage: the coachman had to drive more slowly.

"Won't you have the carriage shut?" Herman repeated after Ducardi.

Othomar still hesitated. Then—and he himself thought his words a little theatrical and did not know how they would sound—he answered aloud:

"No, do not let us be afraid of the water; they have all suffered from the water here."

But Ducardi looked at him; he felt something quiver inside him for his prince....

The carriage remained open. In one of the landaus following, Prince Dutri looked round furiously to see how much longer the Duke of Xara meant to let himself be saturated with rain and his suite with him. In the narrow, high streets near the cathedral they had to drive almost at a walking-pace, right through the cheering of the crowding populace. Soaked to the skin, the Crown-prince of Liparia with his following arrived at the cardinal-archbishop's; they left a trail of water behind them on the staircases and in the corridors of the Episcopal.