Sir John Constantine by Prosper Paleologus Constantine

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PHILOPATRI STEPHANOPOULOI.

"A tomb?" I asked.

"Yes, and a kinsman's; for the Stephanopouli were of blood the
emperors did not disdain to mate with. In the last rally the Turks
had much ado with them as leaders of the Moreote tribes around Maina,
and north along Taygetus to Sparta. Yes, and there were some who
revived the Spartan name in those days, maintaining the fight among
the mountains until the Turks swarmed across from Crete, overran
Maina and closed the struggle. Yet there was a man, Constantine
Stephanopoulos, the grandfather of this Philopater, who would buy
nothing at the price of slavery, but, collecting a thousand souls--
men, women, and children--escaped by ship from Porto Vitilo and
sailed in search of a new home. At first he had thought of Sicily;
but, finding no welcome there, he came (in the spring of 1675, I
think) to Genoa, and obtained leave from the Genoese to choose a site
in Corsica."

"And it was here he planted his colony?"

"In this very valley; but, mind you, at the price of swearing fealty
to the Republic of Genoa--this and the repayment of a beggarly
thousand piastres which the Republic had advanced to pay the captain
of the ship which brought them, and to buy food and clothing.
Very generous treatment it seemed. Yet you have heard me say before
now that liberty never stands in its worst peril until the hour of
success; then too often men turn her sword against her. So these men
of Lacedaemon, coming to an island where the rule of Genoa was a
scourge to all except themselves, in gratitude, or for their oath's
sake, took sides with the oppressor. Therefore the Corsicans, who
never forget an injury, turned upon them, drove them for shelter to
Ajaccio, and laid their valley desolate; nor have the Genoese power
to restore them.

"Fate, Prosper, has landed you on this very spot where your kinsmen
found refuge for awhile, and broke the ground, and planted orchards,
hoping for a fair continuance of peace and peaceful tillage.

"'Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum
Tendimus in Latium--'

"How will you read the omen?"

"You say," said I, "that had we found our kinsmen here we had found
them in league against freedom, and friends of the tyranny we are
here to fight?"

"Assuredly."

"Then, sir, let me read the omen as a lesson, and avoid my kinsmen's
mistake."

My father smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. "You say little, as
a rule, Prosper. It is a good fault in kings."

We walked back to the churchyard, where Mr. Fett sat up, rubbing his
eyes in the dawn, and hailed us.

"Good morning, signors! I have been dreaming that I came to a
kingdom which, indeed, seemed to be an island, but on inspection
proved to be a mushroom. What interpretation have you when a man
dreams of mushrooms?"

"Why, this," said I, "that we passed some score of them in the meadow
below. I saw them plain by the moonlight, and kicked at them to make
sure."

"I did better," said Mr. Fett; I gathered a dozen or two in my cap,
foreseeing breakfast. Faith, and while you have been gadding I might
have had added a rasher of bacon. Did you meet any hogs on your way?
But no; they turned back and took the path that appears to run up to
the woods yonder."

"Hogs?" queried my father.

"They woke me, nosing and grunting among the nettles by the wall--
lean, brown beasts, with Homeric chines, and two or three of them
huge as the Boar of Calydon. I was minded to let off my gun at 'em,
but refrained upon two considerations--the first, that if they were
tame, to shoot them might compromise our welcome here, and perhaps
painfully, since the dimensions of the pigs appeared to argue
considerable physical strength in their masters; the second, that if
wild they might be savage enough to defend themselves when attacked."

"Doubtless," said my father, "they belong to some herdsman in the
forest above us, and have strayed down in search of acorns.
They cannot belong to this village."

"And why, pray?"

"Because it contains not a single inhabitant. Moreover, gentlemen,
while you were sleeping I have taken a pretty extensive stroll.
The vineyards lie unkempt, the vines themselves unthinned, up to the
edge of the forest. The olive-trees have not been tended, but have
shed their fruit for years with no man to gather. Many even have
cracked and fallen under the weight of their crops. But no trace of
beast, wild or tame, did I discover; no dung, no signs of trampling.
The valley is utterly desolate."

"It grows mushrooms," said Mr. Fett, cheerfully, piling a heap of dry
twigs; "and we have ship's butter and a frying-pan."

"Are you sure," asked Mr. Badcock, examining one, "that these are
true mushrooms?"

"They were grown in Corsica, and have not subscribed to the
Thirty-nine Articles; still, _mutatis mutandis_, in my belief they
are good mushrooms. If you doubt, we can easily make sure by stewing
them awhile in a saucepan and stirring them with a silver spoon, or
boiling them gently with Mr. Badcock's watch, as was advised by Mr.
Locke, author of the famous 'Essay on the Human Understanding.'"

"Indeed?" said my father. "The passage must have escaped me."

"It does not occur in the 'Essay.' He gave the advice at Montpellier
to an English family of the name of Robinson; and had they listened
to him it would have robbed Micklethwaite's 'Botany of Pewsey and
Devizes' of some fascinating pages."

MR. FETT'S STORY OF THE FUNGI OF MONTPELLIER.

"About the year 1677, when Mr. Locke resided at Montpellier for the
benefit of his health, and while his famous 'Essay' lay as yet in the
womb of futurity, there happened to be staying in the same _pension_
an English family--"

"Excuse me," put in my father, "I do not quite gather where these
people lodged."

"The sentence was faultily constructed, I admit. They were lodging
in the same _pension_ as Mr. Locke. The family consisted of a Mrs.
Robinson, a widow; her son Eustace, aged seventeen; her daughter
Laetitia, a child of fourteen, suffering from a slight pulmonary
complaint; her son's tutor, whose name I forget for the moment, but
he was a graduate of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and an ardent botanist;
and a good-natured English female named Maria Wilkins, an old servant
whom Mrs. Robinson had brought from home--Pewsey, in Wiltshire--to
attend upon this Laetitia. The Robinsons, you gather, were
well-to-do; they were even well connected; albeit their social
position did not quite warrant their story being included in the late
Mr. D'Arcy Smith's 'Tragedies and Vicissitudes of Our County
Families.'

"It appears that the lad Eustace, perceiving that his sister's
delicate health procured her some indulgences, complained of
headaches, which he attributed to a too intense application upon the
'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, and cajoled his mother into packing him
off with the tutor on a holiday expedition to the neighbouring
mountains of Garrigues. From this they returned two days later about
the time of _dejeuner_, with a quantity of mushrooms, which the
tutor, who had discovered them, handed around for inspection,
asserting them to be edible.

"The opinion of Mr. Locke being invited, that philosopher took up the
position he afterwards elaborated so ingeniously, declaring that
knowledge concerning these mushrooms could only be the result of
experience, and suggesting that the tutor should first make proof of
their innocuousness on his own person. Upon this the tutor, a
priggish youth, retorted hotly that he should hope his Cambridge
studies, for which his parents had pinched themselves by many small
economies, had at least taught him to discriminate between the
_agarici_. Mr. Locke in vain endeavoured to divert the conversation
upon the scope and objects of a university education, and fell back
on suggesting that the alleged mushrooms should be stewed, and the
stew stirred with a silver spoon, when, if the spoon showed no
discolouration, he would take back his opinion that they contained
phosphorus in appreciable quantities. He was called an empiricist
for his pains; and Mrs. Robinson (who hated a dispute and invariably
melted at any allusion to the tutor's _res angusta domi_) weakly gave
way. The mushrooms were cooked and pronounced excellent by the
entire family, of whom Mrs. Robinson expired at 8.30 that evening,
the tutor at 9 o'clock, the faithful domestic Wilkins and Master
Eustace shortly after midnight, and an Alsatian cook, attached to the
establishment, some time in the small hours. The poor child, who had
partaken but sparingly, lingered until the next noon before
succumbing."

"A strange fatality!" commented Mr. Badcock.

Mr. Fett paused, and eyed him awhile in frank admiration before
continuing.

"The wonder to me is you didn't call it a coincidence," he murmured.

"Well, and so it was," said Mr. Badcock, "only the word didn't occur
to me."

"The bodies," resumed Mr. Fett, "in accordance with the by-laws of
Montpellier, were conveyed to the town mortuary, and there bestowed
for the time in open coffins, connected by means of wire attachments
with a bell in the roof--a municipal device against premature
interment. The wires also carried a number of small bells very
sensitively hung, so that the smallest movement of reviving animation
would at once alarm the night-watchman in an adjoining chamber.

"This watchman, an honest fellow with literary tastes above his
calling, was engaged towards midnight in reading M. de la Fontaine's
'Elegie aux Nymphes de Vaux,' when a sudden violent jangling fetched
him to his feet, with every hair of his head erect and separate.
Before he could collect his senses the jangling broke into a series
of terrific detonations, in the midst of which the bell in the roof
tolled one awful stroke and ceased.

"I leave to your imagination the sight that met his eyes when,
lantern in hand, he reached the mortuary door. The collected
remains, promiscuously interred next day by the municipality of
Montpellier, were, at the request of a brother-in-law of Mrs.
Robinson, and through the good offices of Mr. Locke, subsequently
exhumed and despatched to Pewsey, where they rest under a suitable
inscription, locally attributed to the pen of Mr. Locke. His
admirers will recognize in the concluding lines that conscientious
exactitude which ever distinguished the philosopher. They run--

"'And to the Memory of one
FRITZ (? Sempach)
a Humble Native of Alsace
whose remains, by Destiny commingled
with the foregoing,
are for convenience here deposited.
II. Kings iv. 39.'

"But the extraordinary part of my story, gentlemen, remains to be
told. Some six weeks ago, happening, in search of a theatrical
engagement, to find myself in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge, I fell
in with a pedestrian whose affability of accost invited me to a
closer acquaintance. He introduced himself as the Reverend Josias
Micklethwaite, a student of Nature, and more particularly of the
mosses and lichens of Wilts. Our liking (I have reason to believe)
was mutual, and we spent a delightful ten days in tracking up
together the course of the Wiltshire Avon, and afterwards in
perambulating the famous forest of Savernake. Here, I regret to say,
a trifling request--for the loan of five shillings, a temporary
accommodation--led to a misunderstanding, and put a period to our
companionship, and I remain his debtor but for some hours of
profitable intercourse.

"Coming at the close of a day's ramble to Pewsey, a small town near
the source of the Avon, we visited its parish churchyard and happened
upon the memorial to the unfortunate Robinsons. An old man was
stooping over the turf beside it, engaged in gathering mushrooms,
numbers of which grew in the grass around this stone, _but nowhere
else in the whole enclosure_. The old man, who proved to be the
sexton, assured us not only of this, but also that previous to the
interment of the Robinsons no mushrooms had grown within a mile of
the spot. He added that, albeit regarded with abhorrence by the more
superstitious inhabitants of Pewsey, the fungi were edible, and gave
no trouble to ordinary digestions (his own, for example); nor upon
close examination could Mr. Micklethwaite detect that they differed
at all from the common _agaricus campestris_. So, sirs, concludes my
tale."

Mr. Fett ended amid impressive silence.

"I don't feel altogether so keen-set as I did five minutes back,"
muttered Billy Priske.

"For my part," said Mr. Fett, anointing the gridiron with a pat of
ship's butter, "I offer no remark upon it beyond the somewhat banal
one by which we have all been anticipated by Hamlet. 'There are more
things in heaven and earth, Horatio--'."

"Faith, and so there are," broke in Nat Fiennes, catching me on a
sudden by the arm. "Listen!"

High on the forest ridge, far and faint, yet clear over the
pine-tops, a voice was singing.

The voice was a girl's--a girl's, or else some spirit's; for it fell
to us out of the very dawn, pausing and anon dropping again in little
cadences, as though upon the waft of wing; and wafted with it, wave
upon wave, came also the morning scent of the _macchia_.

We could distinguish no words, intently though we listened, or no
more than one, which sounded like _Mortu, mortu, mortu_, many times
repeated in slow refrain before the voice lifted again to the air.
But the air itself was voluble between its cadences, and the voice,
though a woman's, seemed to challenge us on a high martial note, half
menacing, half triumphant.

Nat Fiennes had sprung to his feet, musket in hand, when another and
less romantic sound broke the silence of the near woods; and down
through a glade on the slope above us, where darkness and day yet
mingled in a bluish twilight under the close boughs, came scampering
back the hogs described to us by Mr. Fett. Apparently they had
recovered from their fright, for they came on at a shuffling gallop
through the churchyard gate, nor hesitated until well within the
enclosure. There, with much grunting, they drew to a standstill and
eyed us, backing a little, and sidling off by twos and threes among
the nettles under the wall.

"They are tame hogs run wild," said my father, after studying them
for a minute. "They have lost their masters, and evidently hope we
have succeeded to the care of their troughs."

He moistened a manchet of bread from his wine-flask and flung it
towards them. The hogs winced away with a squeal of alarm, then took
courage and rushed upon the morsel together. The most of them were
lean brutes, though here and there a fat sow ran with the herd, her
dugs almost brushing the ground. In colour all were reddish-brown,
and the chine of each arched itself like a bent bow. Five or six
carried formidable tusks.

These tusks, I think, must have struck terror in the breast of Mr.
Badcock, who, as my father enticed the hogs nearer with fresh morsels
of bread until they nuzzled close to us, suddenly made a motion to
beat them off with the butt of his musket, whereupon the whole herd
wheeled and scampered off through the gateway.

"Why, man," cried my father, angrily, "did I not tell you they were
tame! And now you have lost us good provender!" He raised his gun.

But here Nat touched his arm. "Let me follow them, sir, and see
which way they take. Being so tame, they have likely enough some
master or herdsman up yonder--"

"Or herdswoman," I laughed. "Take me with you, Nat."

"Nay, that I won't," he answered, with a quick blush. "You have the
temper of Adonis--

"'Hunting he lov'd, but love he laughed to scorn,'

"and I fear his fate of you, one little Adonis among so many boars!"

"Then take _me_" urged Mr. Badcock. "Indeed, sir," he apologized,
turning to my father, "the movement was involuntary. I am no coward,
sir, though a sudden apprehension may for the moment flush my nerves.
I desire to prove to you that on second thoughts I am ready to face
all the boars in Christendom."

"I did not accuse you," said my father. "But go with Mr. Fiennes if
you wish."

Nat nodded, tucked his musket under his arm, and strode out of the
churchyard with Mr. Badcock at his heels. By the gateway he halted a
moment and listened; but the voice sang no longer from the ridge.

We watched the pair as they went up the glade, and turned to our
breakfast. The meal over, my father proposed to me to return to the
creek and fetch up a three days' supply of provisions from the ship,
leaving Mr. Fett and Billy Priske to guard the camp. (In our
confidence of finding the valley inhabited, we had brought but two
pounds of ship's biscuit, one-third as much butter, and a small keg
only of salt pork.)

We were absent, maybe, for two hours and a half; and on our way back
fell in with Billy, who, having suffered no ill effects from his
breakfast of mushrooms (though he had eaten them under protest), was
roaming the meadow in search of more. We asked him if the two
explorers had returned.

He answered "No," and that Mr. Fett had strolled up into the wood in
search of chestnuts, leaving him sentry over the camp.

"And is it thus you keep sentry?" my father demanded.

"Why, master, since this valley has no more tenantry than Sodom or
Gomorrah, cities of the plain--" Billy began confidently; but his
voice trailed off under my father's frown.

"You have done ill, the pair of you," said my father, and strode
ahead of us across the meadow.

At the gate of the enclosure he came to an abrupt halt.

The hogs had returned and were routing among our camp-furniture.
For the rest, the churchyard was empty. But where were Nat Fiennes
and Mr. Badcock, who had sallied out to follow them? And where was
Mr. Fett?

We rushed upon the brutes, and drove them squealing out of the
gateway leading to the woods. They took the rise of the glade at a
scamper, and were lost to us in the undergrowth. We followed,
shouting our comrades' names. No answer came back to us, though our
voices must have carried far beyond the next ridge. For an hour we
beat the wood, keeping together by my father's order, and shouting,
now singly, now in chorus. Nat, likely enough, had pressed forward
beyond earshot, and led Mr. Badcock on with him. But what had become
of Mr. Fett, who, as Billy asseverated, had promised to take but a
short stroll?

My father's frown grew darker and yet darker as the minutes wore on
and still no voice answered our hailing. The sun was declining fast
when he gave the order to return to camp, which we found as we had
left it. We seated ourselves amid the disordered baggage, pulled out
a ration apiece of salt pork and ship's bread, and ate our supper in
moody silence.

During the meal Billy kept his eye furtively on my father.

"Master," said he, at the close, plucking up courage as my father
filled and lit a pipe of tobacco, "I be terribly to blame."

My father puffed, without answering.

"The Lord knows whether they be safe or lost," went on Billy,
desperately; "but we be safe, and those as can ought to sleep
to-night."

Still my father gave no answer.

"I can't sleep, sir, with this on my conscience--no, not if I tried.
Give me leave, sir, to stand sentry while you and Master Prosper take
what rest you may."

"I don't know that I can trust you," said my father.

"'Twas a careless act, I'll allow. But I've a-been your servant, Sir
John, for twenty-two year come nest Martinmas; and you know--or else
you ought to know--that for your good opinion, being set to it, I
would stand awake till I watched out every eye in my head."

My father crammed down the ashes in his pipe, and glanced back at the
sun, now dropping into the fold of the glen between us and the sea.

"I will give you another chance," he said.

Thrice that night, my dreams being troubled, I awoke and stretched
myself to see Billy pacing grimly in the moonlight between us and the
gateway, tholing his penance. I know not what aroused me the fourth
time; some sound, perhaps. The dawn was breaking, and, half-lifted
on my elbow, I saw Billy, his musket still at his shoulder, halt by
the gateway as if he, too, had been arrested by the sound. After a
moment he turned, quite casually, and stepped outside the gate to
look.

I saw him step outside. I was but half-awake, and drowsily my eyes
closed and opened again with a start, expecting to see him back at
his sentry-go. He had not returned.

I closed my eyes again, in no way alarmed as yet. I would give him
another minute, another sixty seconds. But before I had counted
thirty my ears caught a sound, and I leapt up, wide awake, and
touched my father's shoulder.

He sat up, cast a glance about him, and sprang to his feet.
Together we ran to the gateway.

The voice I had heard was the grunting of the hogs. They were
gathered about the gateway again, and, as before, they scampered from
us up the glade.

But of Billy Priske there was no sign at all. We stared at each
other and rubbed our eyes; we two, left alone out of our company of
six. Although the sun would not pierce to the valley for another
hour, it slanted already between the pine-stems on the ridge, and
above us the sky was light with another day.

And again, punctual with the dawn, over the ridge a far voice broke
into singing. As before, it came to us in cadences descending to a
long-drawn refrain--_Mortu, mortu, mortu!_

"Billy! Billy Priske!" we called, and listened.

"_Mortu, mortu, mortu!_" sang the voice, and died away behind the
ridge.

For some time we stood and heard the hogs crashing their way through
the undergrowth at the head of the glade, with a snapping and
crackling of twigs, which by degrees grew fainter. This, too, died
away; and, returning to our camp, we sat among the baggage and stared
one another in the face.

CHAPTER XIV.

HOW BY MEANS OF HER SWINE I CAME TO CIRCE.

"So saying I took my way up from the ship and the sea-shore.
But on my way, as I drew near through the glades to the home of
the enchantress Circe, there met me Hermes with his golden rod,
in semblance of a lad wearing youth's bloom on his lip and all
youth's charm at its heyday. He clasped my hand and spake and
greeted me. 'Whither away now, wretched wight, amid these
mountain-summits alone and astray? And yonder in the styes of
Circe, transformed to swine, thy comrades lie penned and make
their lairs!'"--_Odyssey, bk. X_.

"Prosper," said my father, seriously, "we must return to the ship."

"I suppose so," I admitted; but with a rising temper, so that my tone
contradicted him.

"It is most necessary. We are no longer an army, or even a
legation."

"Nothing could be more evident. You may add, sir, that we are badly
scared, the both of us. Yet I don't stomach sailing away, at any
rate, until we have discovered what has happened to the others."
I cast a vicious glance up at the forest.

"Good Lord, child!" my father exclaimed. "Who was suggesting it?"

"You spoke of returning to the ship."

"To be sure I did. She can work round to Ajaccio and repair.
She will arrive evidently from the verge of total wreck, an ordinary
trader in ballast, with nothing suspicious about her. No questions
will be asked that Pomery cannot invent an answer for off-hand.
She will be allowed to repair, refit, and sail for reinforcements."

"Reinforcements? But where will you find reinforcements?"

"I must rely on Gervase to provide them. Meanwhile we have work on
hand. To begin with, we must clear up this mystery, which may oblige
us to camp here for some time."

"O-oh!" said I.

"You do not suggest, I hope, that we can abandon our comrades,
whatever has befallen them?"

"My dear father!" I protested.

"Tut, lad! I never supposed it of you. Well, it seems to me we are
more likely to clear up the mystery by sitting still than by beating
the woods. Do you agree?"

"To be sure," said I, "we may spare ourselves the trouble of
searching for it."

"I propose then, as our first move, that we step down to the ship
together and pack Captain Pomery off to Ajaccio with his orders--"

"Excuse me, sir," I interrupted. "_You_ shall step down to the ship,
while I wait here and guard the camp."

"My dear Prosper," said he, "I like the spirit of that offer: but,
upon my word, I hope you won't persist in it. These misadventures,
if I may confess it, get me on the raw, and I cannot leave you here
alone without feeling damnably anxious."

"Trust me, sir," I answered, "I shall be at least as uncomfortable
until you return. But I have an inkling that--whatever the secret
may be, and whether we surprise it or it surprises us--it will wait
until we are separated. Moreover, I have a theory to test. So far,
every man has disappeared outside the churchyard here and somewhere
on the side of the forest. The camp itself has been safe enough, and
so have the meadow and the path down to the creek. You will remember
that Billy was roaming the meadow for mushrooms at the very time we
lost Mr. Fett: yet Billy came to no harm. To be sure, the enemy,
having thinned us down to two, may venture more boldly; but if I keep
the camp here while you take the path down to the creek, and nothing
happens to either, we shall be narrowing the zone of danger, so to
speak."

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