Chapter XXV: The Old Love and the New

No words can adequately describe the emotions that prevailed in the great city when the news flew from mouth to mouth of the assassination of the King, followed by the almost immediate death of the murderer.

Many scores of households were already bewailing their dead and making the usual elaborate preparations to honour their remains. And now the palace itself was drowned in lamentation also, and was face to face in addition with the problem of the succession.

The latter point was very quickly settled. Fifty years had to pass before the nobility would have the right to raise one of their own order to the throne. Melanitis instantly wrote out a form of renunciation with her own hand, and placed herself entirely in Mexitli’s power. The latter took her aside, and said, in the presence of Radcliffe and of Abercromby--

“Since you have so honourably kept your faith to me which you pledged two years ago, my first act as Queen shall be to associate you with me in the sovereignty.”

“That I am firmly resolved to refuse,” she answered. “I pray that your cousin Mayana be raised to the first place below the throne. Also that Clarence may be retained in the rank of nobility along with his comrades. All I ask for myself and for him further is, that you will permit us to live in some retired spot where it will be easy for us to devote ourselves to the work we desire to do.”

“You shall rule the island of Melandria for me, as Andron’s term of office expires with my father’s death. You will not disappoint me in this, will you, Melanitis?”

“You are more than good to me,” she answered, “and if you desire it, I will undertake this work.”

“Now that I understand everything,” Mayana interposed, taking the hand of Melanitis, “I honour you as I never honoured you before, and I sympathise with you in those awful years of trial amongst us which you have so bravely spent.”

“And you, Clarence,” said the Queen, “though you can have no direct power in the ruling of this land, will find your happiness in the love of your wife, in the fulfilment of your mission, and in the knowledge of the love which we all bear to you, for you are devoting your life to the good of your adopted country. You also, Abercromby, will have your share in that love, a share which will increase, as we see that you completely identify yourself with us. As for the other two, it is _their_ fault if their share in our hearts’ affections be much less. To their own world they have decided to return, and it is doubtless well, for to it they evidently belong. I shall have a serious talk with them when the fitting time arrives. Meanwhile, you will all remain in the palace with us.”

Melanitis and Clarence spent most of that day together. Their happiness was too great to be expressed in words. They sat in one of the recesses of the palace gardens looking towards the south, and each told the other what they had suffered in the long time of separation.

“We will talk always in the dear English tongue, Clarence, when we are together. Atalantan has been to me a painfully acquired dialect. I do not speak it very much better than you.”

“When did you first hear of our coming, dearest?”

“I was standing on the palace terrace, and I saw the rockets soar into the sky. I knew it was something most unusual, and I myself urged Mayana and Cleophon (who were then visiting the palace) to go and investigate. The moment they brought back the report of their interview, I was certain, but,” she said with a shudder, “you were all of you close to death.”

“I felt sure of it at the time, dearest.”

“Mayana has often told me since that she can never bear to think about it. But is it possible that no suspicion of the truth about me ever reached you from any one?”

“Never, Melanitis.”

“You _must_ drop that detestable name. I am Lilian. But how _did_ you explain to yourself what Abercromby could have meant?”

“By the pure miraculous power of God raising you from the dead.”

“Ah! Well, of course, that would account. And yet it was something not far short of it.”

Then she asked Clarence to tell her all about his work after he had returned to Oxford, and all about the Professor and his companions.

“The most trying part of it to me was when you and your people talked away in my presence, not knowing that I could understand you. Little did you know how much I agreed with many outspoken criticisms, though they were sometimes not very politely expressed. But that song about the proctor, and your Atalantising of it, nearly did for me altogether, and then--Tom’s letter!”

“There is one thing I greatly desire to ask you. Was it true, as Parmenton asserted, that you in any way supported them in their designs upon the existing social order? He actually advised me to throw in my lot with you, and said that you were a Karamandran woman at heart. Could it have possibly been that he suspected the truth?”

“Quite impossible. He only took advantage of some words which he once heard me say in the presence of Lydon, that I did not greatly admire the way in which the women ruled everything here. But, of course, I have the right of my sex to change my mind upon this or any other subject. Certainly, now that _you_ have come, I must break altogether with any such ideas.”

“I never ruled you in the other world,” chuckled he, “so I am scarcely likely ever to attempt doing it in this.”

“Perhaps you never went the right way to work. You were sadly wanting in tact; but you have made amends here, at all events, when you saved yourself and the others from an almost certain death on the day of the trial.”

“What will be done with Medon and Parmenton?”

“Don’t ask me, Clarence. They will drop out. There will be no trial. Better would it be for them if I served them as I did Mauro Katakalon. You know that I saved the wretch Lydon himself, and how he requited it.”

Radcliffe shuddered. “I do not like these things.”

“Nor do I, though I cannot now see _everything_ through terrestrial spectacles.”

“Did you know that Lydon was going to betray your secret?”

“Not till the last moment. You and Frank were very wise in urging a private trial.”

“I only did it because I fell in with his opinion; I did not know what was going to happen. But I am troubled about another matter. Can Clieto and Arniphon be depended on not to tell Lydon’s story broadcast?”

“I shall leave that with the Queen; she will do what she thinks best for us. Do not be hard upon Mexitli or Mayana, or any others. There is much that ought to be corrected, but we must give them the fuller form of their own ancient faith, and that will work a change in many things.”

“What was your feeling towards the King?”

“Grief and regret. But I was quite powerless to act; it would have killed him to have learned the truth from _me_, even if he had believed it. Mexitli must have bitterly hated the true Melanitis; but she gradually awoke to the fact that, whatever change had passed over me, it was sufficient to render me her passive instrument, and not her rival. Little by little her enmity turned to affection, and then when you came, though I had certain risks to run, I felt that I might some day tell her everything. On that night when you sang ‘Solitude,’ I betrayed myself so openly that Abercromby, who had already suspected the truth--for I knew he did by many little things--came to me and taxed me directly with it. Then I told Mexitli and Mayana. The Queen believed it; her cousin did not. Of course, the Queen saw in a moment that her succession to the throne was secured beyond hesitation; and so we all made a firm alliance, and I myself told Abercromby to pave the way towards your enlightenment. Now I think I have told you everything.”

“What effect has your experience had upon the truth of the theory of re-incarnation?”

“Don’t trouble your dear head about that. One instance does not make a rule, especially when we can see, as here, such evident meaning and reason for it. It had not to do with the earth, but with Venus. I was not reborn, but conscious from the first of what had happened. Better, in one sense, had I not been, for no one knows, nor ever will know, but I who have gone through it, what it has cost me to be such an incarnated impostor. My journeys to Aptaura, etc., were not much dictated by love of astronomy, nor even for the sake of seeing the ‘Little Queen of the Night,’ about which there was not much to learn from those wise men, or from their instruments, but chiefly to get away from people and talk English to myself, lest I should forget it entirely by the time you came.”

“Was the real Melanitis older or younger than you when your change came.”

“Older by some years, Clarence, but not very many.”

“God help me,” said Radcliffe; “I hoped that it had been otherwise. I had hoped I might have had you a few years longer.”

“You will have me as long as God wills, my dearest. We cannot tell beforehand any of these things; we have a work to do, and we shall be immortal till it is done.”

“And afterwards,” he said.

“Yes, afterwards, in the Mansions of the Blest. You were very fond of that expression; it is curious that you pitched upon the favourite phrase of Venus--‘Antillie--intânie.’”

That evening the Professor and Carysfort had a long conversation over the things which the lovers had been discussing, though in a different form.

“I perfectly believe all I have heard, Carysfort,” he said; “I do not trouble over a magical key, if it perfectly fits a magical lock.”

“Then you go in for stark miracles and supernaturalism, Carmichael,” said the engineer.

“No, my friend, I, in this case, go in for unknown law, unknown factors, unknown powers. Whether they are miraculous or not, requires me to know vastly more about them than I am likely to, on this side of the border. It is much more important to know whether a fact is true, than to know whether it is supernatural. I know _this_ is true, for it clears up everything that has puzzled us from the first; on just the same principle, I accept the resurrection of Christ, because I cannot account for what happened afterwards except on such a ground.”

In the meantime, the King’s last wish that a search should be made for poor Tom had been carried out. He was searched for all over the city and the district, but no trace of him could anywhere be discovered. Meanwhile the agitation in Atalanta continued to increase, and at last a party of loyalists, more ardent than discreet, landed on the island from an airship, and proclaimed the Queen from the terraces of the Temple.

They had found no one there, but Mexitli was not satisfied. She blamed them for going without a sufficient force, but she promised that, as soon as the King’s embalming had been completed, and that of the other illustrious dead, the Temple should be thoroughly overhauled and taken possession of in her name.

Abercromby ventured to ask the Queen as to what ceremonies would be performed at her coronation. She did not quite understand him, and accordingly he and Radcliffe gave her an account of the coronation of Queen Victoria and the ceremonies in Westminster Abbey. Her answer was that that lady was only a queen of one small country, and doubtless had many enemies who needed to be convinced that she was a true monarch; but that when a sovereign governed an entire world, it only led to gossip and cavilling to have any ceremonies at all.

“I put a star in my coronet,” she said, “and simply issue my orders, and that is all that is needed. Everybody understands; to disobey is to die. Medon and Parmenton have just found this out.”

Two days later, Abercromby said to Radcliffe: “Where in the world are Cleito and Arniphon? I have missed them entirely. Have you a guess on the subject?”

“Perhaps I have,” said Radcliffe. “Cleophon is installed in the one post, and Andron, when he comes from Melandria, is to have the other appointment. But it beats me entirely where the others are.”

Radcliffe happened to mention this to the Professor, who said shortly, “They are going to the earth with us in order to tell our terrestrial people what has happened to Mrs. Radcliffe.”

“Are you joking, or is this really serious, Professor?”

“Really serious for them, and an abominable nuisance for us.”

“Have you to take them in the Asteroid?”

“Yes; I suppose it will be like the Indians whom Columbus took back with him to Spain, an advantage to prove that we are not impostors.”

“But who the deuce contrived it?” asked Abercromby, “and what does it mean?”

“Well, they were determined to tell their story on Venus, and Mexitli thought it would make less commotion if they told it on the earth.”

“Where are they now?”

“In gaol, poor beggars,” said Carysfort, “stewing in their own juice.”

Abercromby burst out into a roar of laughter. “Well done, Mexitli! Catch a woman asleep indeed! I’m precious glad for Radcliffe’s sake and Lilian’s. Now their coast will be clear. Is not the Queen a duck?”

“She is a beast,” retorted Carmichael. “Why should she cast her rascals on us?”