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Sir John Constantine by Prosper Paleologus Constantine

P >> Prosper Paleologus Constantine >> Sir John Constantine




Marc'antonio bore me up through the swimming air and laid me in the
shadow of the cave--_her_ cave. It was empty as she had left it, and
my back pressed the very bed of fern on which she had lain. The fern
was dry now, after long winnowing by the wind that found its way into
every crevice of this mountain summit.

How could I choose but think of her? Thinking of her, how could I
choose but weary myself in vain speculation, by a hundred guesses
attempting to force my way past the edge of the mystery, the sinister
shadow which wrapped her round, and penetrate to the heart of it?
I recalled her beauty, childlike yet sullen; her eyes, so forthright
at times and transparently innocent, yet at times so swiftly clouded
with suspicion, not merely shy, but shy with terror, like the eyes of
a wild creature entrapped; her bearing, by turns disdainful and
defiant with a guarded shame. This turf, these boulders, had made
her bower, these matted creepers her curtain. Here she had lived
secure among savage men, each one of them ready to die--so
Marc'antonio assured me, and all that I had seen confirmed it--rather
than injure a hair of her head or suffer it to be injured. She was a
king's daughter. Yet this lad of the Rocca Serras, noble, of the
best blood of the island, had turned his own gun upon himself rather
than wed with her.

I thought much upon this lad Rocca Serra. Why had he died?
Was it for loathing her? But men do not easily loathe such beauty.
Was it for love of her? But men do not slay themselves for fortunate
love. Had _her_ loathing been in some way the secret of his despair?
I recalled my words to her, and how she had answered them, turning in
the steep track among the pines "I am your hostage. Do with me as
you will." "_If I could! Ah, if I could!_" I liked to think that
the lad had loved her and been disdained; yet I pitied him for being
disdained, and half hated him for having dared to love her.
Yes, for certain he had loved her. But, if so, her secret had need
be as strange almost as that of Sara, the daughter of Raguel, whom
seven husbands married, to perish on the marriage eve--"_for a wicked
spirit loveth her, which hurteth nobody but those which come unto
her_."

In dreams I found myself travelling beyond the grave in search of
this dead lad, to question him; and not seldom would awake with these
lines running in my head, remembered as old perplexing favourites
with my father, though God knows how I took a fancy that they held
the clue--

"I long to talk with some old lover's ghost
Who dy'd before the God of Love was born.
I cannot think that he, who then loved most,
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produc'd a Destiny,
And that Vice-Nature Custom lets it be,
I must love her that loves not me.

"O, were we waken'd by this tyranny
T'ungod this child again, it could not be
I should love her who loves not me.

"Rebel and Atheist too, why murmur I
As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love may make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague--to make her love me too;
Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see:
Falsehood is worse than hate: and that must be
If she whom I love should love me."

Many wild conjectures I made and patiently built upon, which, if I
were to write them down here, would merely bemuse the reader or drive
him to think me crazy. There on my enchanted mountain summit, ringed
about day after day by the silent land, removed from all human
company but Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar
but the creeping change of the season upon the _macchia_, what wonder
if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing
solutions of a riddle which itself cried out against nature?

Marc'antonio was all the while as matter-of-fact as a good nurse
ought to be. He had fashioned me a capital pair of crutches out of
boxwood, and no sooner could I creep about on them than he began to
discourse, over the camp-fire, on the hunting excursions we were soon
to make together.

"_Pianu, pianu_; we will grow strong, and get our hand in by little
and little. At first there will be the blackbirds and the foxes--"

"You shoot foxes in Corsica?" I asked.

Marc'antonio stared at me. "And why not, cavalier? You would not
have us run after them and despatch them with the stiletto!"

I endeavoured to explain to him the craft and mystery of fox-hunting
as practised in England. He shook his head over it, greatly
bewildered.

"It seems a long ceremony for one little fox," was his criticism.

"But if we did it with less ritual the foxes would disappear out of
the country," I answered him.

"And why not?"

This naturally led me into a discourse on preserving game and on our
English game laws, which, I regret to say, gravelled him utterly.

"A peace of God for foxes and partridges! Why, what do you allow,
then, for a _man?_"

I explained that we did not shoot men in England. His jaw dropped.

"Mbe! In the name of the Virgin, whatever do you do with them?"

"We hang them sometimes, and sometimes we fight duels with them."
I expounded in brief the distinction between these processes and
their formalities, whereat he remained for a long while in a brown
study.

"Well," he admitted, "by all accounts you English have achieved
liberty; but, _per Baccu_, you do strange things with it!"

"Blackbirds, to begin with," he resumed, "and foxes, and a hare,
maybe. Then in the next valley there are boars--small, and wild, and
fierce, but our great half-tame ones have driven them off this
mountain. After them we will extend ourselves and stalk for deer."

He described the deer to me and its habits. It was, as I made out,
an animal not unlike our red deer, but smaller, and of a duller coat;
shy, too, and scarce. He gave me reasons for this. In summer the
Corsican shepherds, each armed with a gun, pasture their sheep on the
mountains, in winter along the plains and valleys; in either season
driving off the poor stag, which in summer is left to range the
parched lowlands and in winter the upper snows. Of late years,
however, owing to the unsettled state of politics, the shepherds
pastured not half the numbers of sheep that Marc'antonio remembered
in his youth, and by consequence the deer had multiplied and grown
bolder. He could promise me a stag. Nay, he even hoped that owing
to these same causes the _mufri_ were pushing down by degrees to the
seaboard from the inland mountains, which they mostly haunted.
Ah, that was sport for kings! If fortune, one of these fine days,
would send us a full-grown _mufrone_ now!

But we began upon the blackbirds. I remember yet my first, and how,
while I stood trembling a little with that excitement which only a
sick man can know who takes up his gun again, Marc'antonio held up
the bird and ripped open its crop, filled to bursting with myrtle
berries; and the exquisite violet scent they exhaled.

Already I had flung my crutches away, and three weeks later we were
after the deer in good earnest. I had lost all account of time; but
winter was upon us, with a wealth of laurestinus flower upon the
_macchia_ and a sense of stillness in the air such as we feel at home
on windless sunny mornings in December after a night of frost.
We had started before dawn, and crossed the valley by the track
leading past our deserted hut and up between the granite pinnacles on
which, when the sunset touched them, I had so often gazed.
We had followed it up beyond the pines and over a pass leading out
among a range of undulating foot-hills, which seemed to waver and
lose heart a dozen times before making up their minds to unite and
climb, and be a snowcapped mountain. But they mounted to the snows
at length, and the snows had driven down the stag which, under
Marc'antonio's guidance, I stalked for two hours, and shot before
noon-day. We left him in the track, to be recovered as we returned,
and very cautiously made our way to the crest of the next ridge.
I chose a granite boulder for my shelter, gained it, crawled under
its lee, and, peering over, had whipped my gun to my shoulder and
very nearly pulled the trigger--was, in fact, looking along the
sight--when I found that I was aiming at a man; and not only that,
but at Billy Priske!

I believe, on my faith that thenceforward he owed his life to the
shape of his legs--so unlike a deer's.

He was picking his way across the dry bed of a torrent in the dip not
fifty yards below us, leaping from slab to slab of outcropping
granite as a man crosses a brook by stepping-stones; and upon a slab
midway he halted, drew off his hat, extracted a handkerchief, and
stood polishing his bald head while he took stock of the climb before
him.

"Billy! Billy Priske!"

He tilted his head still higher, towards the ridge and the rock on
which I stood against his skyline, frantically waving.

"HOO-ROAR!"

"And to think, lad," he panted, ten minutes later, as he stretched
himself on the heath beside me--"to think of your mistaking me for a
deer!"

"Did I say so, Billy? Then I lied. It was for a _mufro_ I took you.
Marc'antonio here had as good as promised me one."

His beaming smile changed on the instant to a look of extreme
gravity.

"See you, lad," he said, "have you ever come across one of these here
wild sheep?"

"Not yet."

"I thought not. Well, I have; and I advise you not to talk
irreligious about 'em."

"I will talk about nothing," said I, "until you tell me how my father
is, and of all your adventures."

"He's well, lad--hearty, and well, and thriving. And he sends you
his love, and a paper for your friend here. 'Tis from the Princess;
and the upshot is, you're released from your word and free to come
back with me."

Marc'antonio, proud of an opportunity to display his scholarship,
broke the seal and read the letter with a magisterial frown, which
changed, however, to a pleasant, friendly smile as he handed it
across to me.

"Your captivity is at an end, cavalier. You said well, after all,
that your patience would win the day."

"_My_ patience, Marc'antonio? What, then, of yours?"

The tears sprang suddenly to his eyes, good fellow that he was, and
now my good friend. I stretched out a hand, and he grasped and held
it for a moment between his twain. We used no more words.

"So my father is with the Princess?" I asked, turning on Billy, who
stared--and excusably--at this evidence of our emotion.

"No, he bain't," said Billy; "leastways, he was with her when I left
him, at a place called Olmeta, or something of the sort. But by this
time he've a-gone north again."

"And why goes he north?"

"Because that's where the Genoese have shut up the lady."

"Meaning the Queen Emilia?"

Billy nodded.

"And you have travelled the length of Corsica alone to tell me this
and take me back with you?"

"No, I didn't. Leastways--" Billy opened his bag of provender,
selected a crust, and began to munch it very deliberately.
"There's a saying," he went on between mouthfuls, "about somebody or
other axin' more questions in one breath than a wise man can answer
in a week; and likewise, there's another saying that even a bagpipe
won't speak till his belly be full. Well, now, as for coming alone,
in the first place and in round numbers I didn't; and as for coming
to tell you this, partly it was and partly it wasn't; and as for your
going back with me, that's for you to choose."

"Well, then," said I, humouring him, "we will take you point by
point, in order. To begin with, you did not come alone--_ergo_, you
had company. What company?"

"Very poor company, lad, and by name Stephanu. That hatchet-faced
Prince Camillo chose him out for a guide to me--" Billy paused, with
his mouth open for a bite. "Why, whatever is the matter?" he asked;
for I had turned to translate this to Marc'antonio, and Marc'antonio
had started up with a growl and an oath.

"Did Stephanu come willingly?" I asked.

"As I was tellin', the Prince chose him for guide to me, and he
couldn't have chosen a worse one. If you'll believe me, there wasn't
an ounce of comfort in the man from the start; and this morning,
having put me in the road so that I couldn't miss it, he turned back
and left me--in a sweatin' hurry, too."

I glanced at Marc'antonio, who had risen and was striding to and fro
upon the ridge with his fists clenched. There was mischief here for
a certainty, and Stephanu's behaviour confirmed it. For a moment,
however, I forbore to translate further, and resumed my catechising
of Billy.

"In the second place you came with my release, and to bring me news,
and--with what purpose beside?"

"Why, with a message for the ship, to be sure."

"The ship?" I stared at him. "What ship?"

"Why, the _Gauntlet_ ketch! You don't tell me," said Billy, with a
glance westward, where, however, the hills intervened and hid the
coast from us--"you don't tell me you haven't sighted her!
But she's here, lad--she _must_ be here! Your father sent home word
by her that she was to be back wi' reinforcements by the first day of
November; and did you ever in your life know your uncle disappoint
him?"

"Marc'antonio," said I, "what is this I hear from Billy about a
ship?"

Marc'antonio gave a start, and looked from me to Billy in evident
confusion.

"Truly, cavalier, there was a ship. I spied her there three days
ago, at sunset, making for the island."

"Was she the same ship that first brought us to the island?"

"She was very like," he answered unwillingly. "Yes, indeed,
cavalier, I have no doubt she was the same ship."

"And you never told me! Nay, I see now why for these three days we
have been hunting to the east of our camp, and always where the coast
was hidden. Yes, yes, I see now a score of tricks you have played me
while I trusted to your better knowledge--Marc'antonio," I said
sternly, "did you indeed believe so ill of me as that at sight of the
ship I should forget my parole?"

"It was not that, cavalier; believe me, it was not that. I feared--"

"Speak on, man."

"I feared you might forget our talks together, and, when your release
came, forget also that other adventure on which I had hoped to bind
you. The Princess--"

"Then your fear, my friend, did me only a little less injustice.
You have heard how my father perseveres for a woman's sake; and I am
my father's son, I hope. As for the Princess--"

"She is in worse case than ever, cavalier, since they have contrived
to get rid of Stephanu."

"On the contrary, my friend, her case is hopeful at length; since
this release sets us free to help her."


We trudged back to the camp, pausing on the way while Marc'antonio
skewered the deer's legs and slung him on a pole between us.
As we started afresh Billy observed for the first time that I walked
with a limp.

"A broken leg," said I, carelessly; for it would not have done to
tell him all the truth.

"Well, well," said he, content with the explanation, "accidents will
happen to them that travel; and a broken leg, they say, is stronger
when well set."

"If that's so," said I, "I've a double excuse to be thankful"--which
he did not understand, as I did not mean him to.


Darkness fell on us a little before we reached the camp. From the
first I had recognized there could be no chance to-day of visiting
the shore and seeking the _Gauntlet_ at her anchorage. We were
weary, too, and hungry, and nothing remained to do but light the camp
fire, cook our supper, and listen to Billy's tale of his adventures,
a good part of which will be found in the following chapter. I ought
to say, rather, that Billy and I conversed, while Marc'antonio--for
we spoke in English--sat by the fire busy with his own thoughts; and,
by his face, they were gloomy ones.

"What puzzles me, Billy," said I, as we parted for the night, "is who
can be aboard of the ketch. Reinforcements? Why, what
reinforcements could my uncle send?"

"The devil a one of me knows, as the Irishman said," answered Billy,
cheerfully. "But sent 'em he has, and, if I know anything of
Mr. Gervase, they're good ones."


I was up before dawn, and the sun rose over the shoulder of our
mountain to find me a mile and more on my way down the track which
led to the sea. I passed the clearing and the copse where Nat had
taken his wound, and the rock, high on my right, where I had stood
and spied him running, the _macchia-filled hollows and dingles, the
wood, the village (still desolate), the graveyard where we had first
encamped; and so came to the meadow below it, where Mr. Fett had
gathered his mushrooms. It was greener than I remembered it, owing
to the autumn rains.

I pulled up with a start. At the foot of the meadow, where the
stream ran in a curve between it and the woods, stood a man.
He held a fishing-rod in his hand, and was stepping back to make a
cast; but, at a cry from me, paused and turned slowly about.

"Uncle Gervase!"

"My _dear_ Prosper!" He dropped his rod and advanced, holding out
his hands to me. "Why lad, lad, you have grown to a man in these
months!"

"And it really is you, uncle!" I cried again, as yet scarcely
believing it, though I clasped him by both hands. "And what are
_you_ doing here?"

"Why," said he, quizzically, "'tis a monstrous confession for this
time of the year, but I was fishing for trout; and, what is more, I
have taken two, with Walton's number two June-fly, lad--Mr. Grylls's
variety--the wings, if you remember, made of the black drake's
feathers, with a touch of grey horsehair on the shank. I wished to
know, first, if a Corsican trout would answer to a Cornish fly, and,
next, if they keep the same seasons as in England. They do,
Prosper--there or thereabouts. To tell you the truth--though, as
they say an angler may catch a fish, but it takes a fisherman to tell
the truth about him--I found them woundily out of condition, and
restored them, as Mr. Grylls would put it, to their native element."

"You don't tell me that the Vicar is here, too?" I asked, prepared at
this time to be surprised at nothing.

"He is not, lad, though I pleaded with him very earnestly to come,
being, as you may guess, put to my wits' end by your father's
message."

"But how, then, have you managed?"

"Pretty well, Prosper--pretty well. But come and see for yourself.
The _Gauntlet_ lies at her old anchorage--or so Captain Pomery tells
me--and 'tis but a step down the creek to where my boat is waiting."

We walked down beside the stream, my uncle, as we went, asking a
score of questions about our adventures and about my father and his
plans--questions which I was in no state of mind to answer
coherently. But this mattered the less since he had no leisure to
listen to my answers.

I felt, as I said just now, ready to be surprised at nothing.
But in this I was mistaken, as I found when we rounded the corner by
the creek's head, and my eyes fell on a boat waiting, a stone's throw
from the landing-place, and on the crew that manned her.

"Good Lord!" I cried, and stood at a halt.

They were seven--six rowers and a coxswain--and all robed in russet
gowns that reached to their ankles. The Trappist monks!



CHAPTER XXI.


OF MY FATHER'S ANABASIS; AND THE DIFFERENT TEMPERS OF AN ENGLISH
GENTLEMAN AND A WILD SHEEP OF CORSICA.


"Bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty, and
generous honesty are the gems of noble minds; wherein
(to derogate from none) the true heroick English Gentleman hath
no peer."--SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

"La domesticite n'a eu aucune influence sur le developpement
intellectuel des _mouflons_ que nous avons possedes. . . .
Les hommes ne les effrayaient plus; il semblait meme que ces
animaux eussent acquis plus de confiance dans leur force en
apprenant a nous connaitre. Sans doute on ne peut point
conclure de quelques individus a l'espece entiere; mais on peut
assurer sans rien hasarder, que le _mouflon_ tient une des
dernieres places parmis les mammiferes quant a
l'intelligence.--"
SAINT-HILIAR ET CUVIER, _Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes_.

"You will find them very good fighters," said my uncle. "The most of
them, as I understand from Dom Basilio, were soldiers at one time or
another before they embraced their present calling."

"But the devil of it is," said I, "how you contrived to enlist 'em?"

My uncle stood still and rubbed the back of his head. "I don't know,
Prosper, that I used any arguments. I just put the case to them;
through Dom Basilio, you understand."

"In other words, you made them an eloquent speech."

"I did nothing of the sort," he corrected me hastily. "In the first
place because I have never made a speech and couldn't manage one if I
tried; and next, because it is against their rules. I just put the
case to Dom Basilio. All the credit belongs to him."

Dom Basilio--for the coxswain of the boat proved to be he and no
other--gave me a different account as we pulled toward the
_Gauntlet_. Yet it agreed with my uncle's in the main.

"In faith," said he, "if there be any credit in what we have done or
are about to do, set it down to your uncle. Against goodness so
simple no man can strive, though he bind himself by vows.
Gratitude may have helped a little; but you can say, and you will not
be far out, that for very shame we are here."

Captain Pomery who hailed me over the ship's side, proudly invited me
to row around and inspect the repairs in her--particularly her new
stern-post--before climbing on board. For my part, while
congratulating him upon them and upon his despatch, I admired more
the faces of Mike Halliday and Roger Wearne, grinning welcome to me
over the bulwarks. They, too, called my attention to the repairs; to
the new rudder, fitted with chains in case of accident to the helm,
to the grain of the new mizzen-mast (a beautiful spar, and without a
knot), to the teak hatch-coverings which had replaced those shattered
by the explosion. They desired me to marvel at everything; but that
they themselves after past perils should be here again and ready, for
no more than seamen's pay, to run their heads into perils yet
unhandselled, was to these honest fellows no matter worth
considering.

"But whither be we bound, Master Prosper?" demanded Captain Jo.
"For 'tis ill biding for orders after cracking on to be punctual; and
tho' I say naught against the anchorage _as_ an anchorage, the wind,
what with these hills and gullies, is like Mulligan's blanket, always
coming and going; and by fits an' starts as the ague took the goose;
and likewise backwards and forwards, like Boscastle fair: so that our
cables be twisted worse than a pig's tail."

"As for that," said I, "your next rendezvous, I hear, is the island
of Giraglia; but, for the whole plan of campaign, you must come and
hear it from Billy Priske, who will tell you what my father has done
and what he intends."

Accordingly, after breakfasting aboard, we were landed again and went
up the mountain together--my uncle Gervase, Captain Pomery, Dom
Basilio and I: and on the slope below the Princess's cave we sat and
listened to Billy's story, the Trappist translating it to
Marc'antonio, who sat with his gun across his knees and his eyes
fastened on my uncle's gentle venerable face.


BILLY PRISKE'S STORY OF MY FATHER'S CAMPAIGN.

"As Master Prosper has told you, gentlemen all, we left him sitting
alongside poor Mr. Fiennes, and took the path that leads down and
across the valley yonder and out again on the north side. There were
four of us--my master, myself, and the creatures Fett and Badcock--
each man with his gun and good supply of ammunition. Besides this
Sir John carried his camp-stool and spy-glass, and in his pocket a
map along with his Bible and tobacco pouch; I the wine and his spare
gun: Fett the bag of provisions; and Badcock his flute and a
gridiron."

"Why a gridiron?" asked my uncle.

"The reason he gave, sir, was that it's just these little things that
get left behind, on a picnic; which Sir John, when I reported it,
pronounced to be a very good reason. 'And, as it happens,' said he,
''tis the very reason why Mr. Badcock himself goes with us: for my
son, when he becomes king, will need a Fool, and I have brought a
couple in case of accidents.'

"We started then, as Master Prosper will remember, a little before
dark; and having lanterns to light the track, and now and then the
north star between the tree-tops to give us our bearings, we crossed
the valley and came out through a kind of pass upon a second slope, a
little nor'-west of the spot where I happened yesterday on Master
Prosper. By this, Sir John's watch marked ten o'clock and finding us
dead-beat by the roughness of the track, he commanded us to lie down
and sleep.

"The next morning, after studying his map, he started afresh, still
holding northward in the main but bearing back a little to the left--
that is, toward the sea, which before noon we brought in sight at a
place he called La Piana, where, he said, was a fishing village; and
so no doubt there was, for we spied a two-three boats moored a little
way out from the shore--looking down upon them through a cleft in the
rocks. The village itself we did not see, but skirted it upon high
ground and came down to the foreshore a short two miles beyond it;
where we found a beach and a spit of rock, and on the spit a
tumble-down tower standing, as lonely as a combed louse. Above the
beach ran a tolerable coast road, which divided itself into two,
after crossing a bridge behind the tower; the one following the
shore, the other striking inland up the devil of a gorge.
This inland road we took, for two reasons; the first, that by the map
it appeared to cut off a corner of our journey; the second, because
the map showed a village, not three miles up the gorge, where we
might get advice.

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