Sir John Constantine by Prosper Paleologus Constantine

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He had seated me between the Duenna and the pretty Bianca, to both of
whom--for both talked incessantly--I gave answers at random; which
by-and-by the Columbine observed, and also that I stole a glance now
and then across the Princess, who was trying her best to listen to
the conversation of the Matamor.

"Are you newly married, you two?" asked the Columbine, slily.
"Oh, you need not blush! She puts us all in the shade. You are in
love with her, at least? Well, she scorns us and is not clever at
concealing it: but I will not revenge myself by trying to steal you
away. I am magnanimous, for my part; and, moreover, all women love a
lover."

CHAPTER XXIX.

VENDETTA.

"Have ye not seyn som tyme a pale face
Among a prees, of him that hath be lad
Toward his death, wher-as him gat no grace,
And swich a colour in his face hath had,
Men mighte knowe his face that was bistad,
Amonges alle the faces in that route."
CHAUCER. _Man of Lawe's Tale_.

"Criticism," said Mr. Fett, with his mouth full of sausage, "is the
flower of all the arts."

"For my part, I hate it," put in the melancholy Rinaldo.

"To be sure," Mr. Fett conceded, "if all men grasped this great
truth, there would be an end of artists; and in time, by consequence,
of critics, who live by them and for whom they exist. Therefore I
keep my discovery as a Platonic secret, and utter it but
occasionally, in my cups, and when"--with a severe glance at Mr.
Badcock--"the vulgar are not attending."

Mr. Badcock woke up at once. "On the contrary," he explained,
"I listen best with my eyes closed; a habit I acquired in Axminster
Parish Church. Indeed, I am all ears."

"Indeed you are. . . . Well then, as I was about to say, the secret
of success in the Arts is to make other men do the work for you.
At this obviously he will excel who has learnt to appraise other
men's work, and knows exactly of what they are capable; that is to
say, the Critic. Believe me, dear friends, the happiest moment of my
life will come when, as _impresario_ I shall have realized the
ambition of giving myself, as _capo comico_, the sack at twenty-four
hours' notice."

"A man should know his own worth," grumbled Rinaldo, "if only in
self-defence on pay-day."

"'Tis notorious, my dear Rinaldo, that your mere artist never does.
Intent upon expressing self, he misses the detachment which alone is
Olympian; whereas the critic--Tell me, why is an architect
architectonic? Because he sits in his parlour, pushing the brown
sherry and chatting with his clients, while his clerks express their
souls for him in a back office. This lesson, O Badcocchio, I learnt
from an uncle of mine, who had amassed a tidy competence by thus
vicariously erecting a quite incredible number of villa residences
for retired tradesmen in the midlands--to be precise, in and around
Wolverhampton. I say vicariously, for on his deathbed it brought him
inexpressible comfort that he himself had not designed these things.

"He was in many respects a remarkable man, and came near to being a
great one. His name originally was Lorenzo Smith, to which in later
years he added that of Desborough--partly for euphony, partly because
the initials made to his mind a pleasing combination, partly also in
pursuance of his theory of life, that he best succeeds who makes
others work for him. By annexing the Desborough patronymic--which,
however, he tactfully spelled Desboro', to avoid conflict with the
family prejudices--he added, at the cost of a trifling fee to the
Consistory Court of Canterbury, a flavour of old gentility to the
artistic promise of Lorenzo, the solid commercial assurance of Smith.
Together the three proved irresistible. He prospered. He died worth
twenty-five thousand pounds, which had indeed been fifty thousand but
for an unlucky error.

"Like many another discoverer, he pushed his discovery too far.
He reasoned--but the reasoning was not _in pari materia_--that what
he had applied to Art he could apply to Religion. In compliment to
what he understood to be the ancient faith of the Desboroughs he had
embraced the principles of Roman Catholicism--his motto, by the way,
was _Thorough_--and this landed him, shortly after middle age, in an
awkward predicament. He had, in an access of spleen, set fire to the
house of a client whose payments were in arrear. The good priest who
confessed him recommended, nay enjoined, an expiatory pilgrimage to
Rome; and my uncle, on the excuse of a rush of orders, despatched a
junior clerk to perform the pilgrimage for him.

"For a time all went well. The young man (whom my uncle had promoted
from the painting of public-house sign-boards) made his way to Rome,
saluted the statue of the Fisherman, climbed on his knees up the
Scala Sancta, laid out the prescribed sum on relics, beads,
scapulars, medals, and what-not, and, in short, fulfilled all the
articles of my uncle's vow. On the second evening, after an
exhausting tour of the churches, he sat down in a tavern, and
incautiously, upon an empty stomach, treated himself to a whole flask
of the white wine of Sicily. It produced a revulsion, in which he
remembered his Protestant upbringing; and the upshot was, a Switzer
found him, late that night, supine in the roadway beneath the Vatican
gardens, gazing up at the moon and damning the Pope. Behaviour so
little consonant with his letters of introduction naturally awoke
misgivings. He was taken to the cells, where he broke down, and with
crapulous tears confessed the imposture; which so incensed His
Holiness that my uncle only bought himself off excommunication by
payment of a crippling sum down, and an annual tribute of his own
weight (sixteen stone twelve) in candles of pure spermaceti.
O Badcock, fill Donna Julia's glass, and pass the bottle!"

We spent the next five days in company with these strange
fellow-lodgers, and more than once it gave me an uncanny feeling to
turn in the midst of Mr. Fett's prattle and, catching the eye of
Marc'antonio or Stephanu as they sat and listened with absolute
gravity, to reflect on the desperate business we were here to do.
We went about the city openly, no man suspecting us. On the day
after our arrival we discovered the Prince Camillo's quarters.
The Republic had lodged him, with a small retinue, in the Palazzo
Verde, a handsome building (though not to be reckoned among the
statelier palaces of the city), with a front on the Via Balbi, and a
garden enclosed by high walls, around which ran the discreetest of
_vicoli_. One of the Dorias, so tradition said, had built it to
house a mistress, early in the seventeenth century. I doubt not the
Prince Camillo found comfortable quarters there. For the rest, he
had begun to enjoy himself after the fashion he had learnt in
Brussels, returning to dissipation with an undisguised zest.
The Genoese--themselves a self-contained people, and hypocritical, if
not virtuous--made less than a nine days' wonder of him, he was so
engagingly shameless, so frankly glad to have exchanged Corsica for
the fleshpots. There was talk that in a few days he would make
formal and public resignation of his crown in the great hall of the
Bank of Saint George. Meanwhile, he flaunted it in the streets, the
shops, the theatres. His very publicity baulked us. We tracked him
daily--his sister and I, in our peasant dress; but found never a
chance to surprise him alone. His eyes, which rested nowhere, never
detected us.

We hunted him together, not consulting Marc'antonio and Stephanu, but
rather agreeing to keep them out of the way. Indeed I divined that
the Princess's anxiety to hold him in sight was due in some degree to
her fear of these two and what they might intend. For my part, I
watched them of an evening, at Messer' Fazio's board, expecting some
sign of jealousy. But it appeared that they had resigned her to me,
and were content to be excluded from our counsels.

Another thing puzzled me. Public as the Prince made himself, he was
never accompanied by his evil spirit (as I held him) the priest
Domenico. Yet--_ame damnee_, or master devil, whichever he might
be--I felt sure that the key of our success lay in unearthing him.
So, while the Princess tracked her brother, I begged off at whiles to
haunt the purlieus of the Palazzo Verde--for three days without
success. But on the fourth I made a small discovery.

The rear of the Palazzo Verde, I have said, was surrounded by narrow
alleys, of which that to the south was but a lane, scarcely five feet
in width, dividing its garden from the back wall of another palace
(as I remember, one of the Durazzi). Halfway up this lane a narrow
door broke the wall of the Palazzo Verde's garden. I had tried this
door, and found it locked.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, as I turned into this lane, a
middle-aged man met and passed me at the entrance, walking in a
hurry. I had no proof that he came from the garden-door of the
Palazzo Verde, but I thought it worthwhile to turn and follow him;
which I did, keeping at a distance, until he entered a goldsmith's
shop in the Strada Nuova, where presently, through the pane, I saw
him talking with a customer across the counter. I retraced my steps
to the lane. The door (needless to say) was closed; but behind it,
not far within the garden, I heard a gentle persistent tapping, as of
a hammer, and wondered what it might mean.

It spoke eloquently for the Prince Camillo's zest after pleasure that
he pursued it abroad in spite of the weather, which was abominable.
A searching mistral blew through the streets for four days, parching
the blood, and on the night of the fourth rose to something like a
hurricane. Our players fought their way against it to the theatre,
only to find it empty; and returned in the lowest of spirits.
The pretty Bianca was especially disconsolate.

Before dawn the gale dropped, and between eleven o'clock and noon, in
a flat calm, the snow began, freezing as it fell.

The Prince Camillo did not show himself in the streets that day.
But towards dusk, as we passed down the Via Roma, he drove by in an
improvised sleigh with bells jingling on the necks of his horses.
He was bound for the theatre, which stood at the head of the street.
The Princess turned with me, and we were in time to see him alight
and run up the steps, radiant, wrapped in furs, and carrying a great
bouquet of pink roses, such as grow in the Genoese gardens throughout
the winter.

But it appeared that, if we kept good watch on him, others had been
keeping better; for, five minutes later, as we stood debating whether
to follow him into the theatre, Marc'antonio and Stephanu emerged
from its portico and came towards us.

"O Princess," said Marc'antonio, "we have seen him at length and had
word with him. When we told him that you were here in Genoa, he
looked at us for a moment like a man distraught--did he not,
Stephanu?"

"One would have said he was going to faint," Stephanu corroborated.

"I think, with all his faults, he is terrified for your sake, for the
risk you run. He implored us to get you away from the city; and when
we told him it was impossible, he sent word that he would come to you
after the play, and himself try to persuade you. We dared not let
him know where we lodged, for fear of treachery; so, being hurried,
we appointed the street by the Weavers' Gate, where, if you will meet
him, masked, a little after nine o'clock, Stephanu and I will be
near--in case of accidents--and doubtless the Cavalier also."

"Did he say anything of the crown, O Marc'antonio?"

"No, Princess, for we had not time. The crowd was all around us, you
understand; and he drew up and talked to us, forcing himself to
smile, like a nobleman amusing himself with two peasants. For the
crown, we shall leave you to deal with him."

"And I shall hold you to that bargain, O Marc'antonio," said she.
"But what will you two be doing with yourselves meanwhile?"

"With permission, Princess, we return to the theatre. We shall watch
the play, and keep our eyes on him; and at half-past seven o'clock
the girl Bianca dances in the ballet. Mbe! I have not witnessed a
ballet since my days of travel."

"And I will run home, then, and fetch my mask. At nine o'clock, you
say?"

"At nine, or a little after--and by the Weavers' Gate."

"And you will leave him to me? You understand, you two, that there
is to be no violence."

"As we hope for Heaven, Princess."

"Farewell, then, until nine o'clock!" She dismissed them, and they
returned to the portico and passed into the theatre. "That is good,"
said she, turning to me with a sigh that seemed to lift a weight from
her heart. "For, to tell the truth, I was afraid of them."

For me, I was afraid of them still, having observed some constraint
in Marc'antonio as he told his story, and also that, though I tried
him, his eyes refused to meet mine. To be sure, there was a natural
awkwardness in speaking of the Prince to his sister. Nevertheless
Marc'antonio's manner made me uneasy.

It continued to worry me after I had escorted the Princess back to
our lodgings. Across the court, in the chamber over the archway,
some one was playing very prettily upon a mandolin. In spite of the
cold I stepped to the outer door to listen, and stood there gazing
out upon the thick-falling snow, busy with my thoughts.
Yes, decidedly Marc'antonio's manner had been strange. . . .

While I stood there, a clock, down in the city, chimed out the
half-hour. Its deep note, striking across the tinkle of the
mandolin, fetched me out of my brown study. Half-past seven. . . .
I had an hour and a half to spare; ample time to step down to the
Palazzo Verde and reconnoitre. If only I could hit upon some scent
of the priest Domenico!

I started at a brisk pace to warm my blood, which had taken a chill
from the draught of the doorway. The snow by this time lay
ankle-deep, and even deeper in the pitfalls with which the ill-lit
streets abounded; but in twenty minutes I had reached the Via Balbi.
The wind was rising; in spite of the snow driven against my face I
had not noticed until I heard it humming in the alley which led under
the shadow of the garden wall. I had scarcely noticed it before my
ears caught the jingle of bells approaching swiftly down the Via
Balbi.

"Eh?" thought I, "is the Prince returning, then, to change his dress?
Or has he sent home his carriage, meaning to pursue the adventure on
foot?"

There was no time to run back to the street corner and satisfy my
curiosity. The horses went clashing past the head of the alley at a
gallop, and presently I heard the front gates of the palace grind
open on their great hinges. Half a minute later they were closed
again with a jar, and almost immediately the clocks of the city began
to toll out the hour.

Was it my fancy? Or did the last note die away with a long-drawn
choking sound, as of some one struggling for breath? . . .
And, last time, it had been the tap-tap of a hammer. . . .
Surely, strange noises haunted this alley. . . .

I listened. I knew that I must be standing near the small door in
the wall, though in the darkness I could not see it. The sinister
sound was not repeated. I could be sworn, though, that my eyes had
heard it; and still, for two minutes perhaps, I stood listening, my
face lifted towards the wall's coping. Then indeed I heard
something--not at all that for which I strained my ears, but a soft
muffled footfall on the snow behind me--and faced about on it,
clutching at the sailor's knife I wore in my belt.

It was a woman. She had almost blundered into me as I stood in the
shadow of the wall, and now, within reach of my arm, drew back with a
gasp of terror. Terror indeed held her numb while I craned forward,
peering into her face.

"Signorina Bianca!"

"But what--what brings you?" she stammered, still between quick gasps
for breath.

In the darkness, close by, a door slammed.

"Ah!" said I, drawing in my breath. Stretching out a hand, I laid it
on her shoulder, from which the cloak fell away, disclosing a frosty
glint of tinsel. "So it was for _you_ the Prince drove home early
from the theatre! But why is the door left open?"

Pretty Bianca began to whimper. "I--I do not know; unless some one
has stolen my key." She put a hand down to fumble in the pocket of
her cloak.

"Then we had best discover," said I, and drew her (though not
ungently) to the door. I found it after a little groping and,
lifting the latch--for the gust of wind had fastened it--thrust it
open upon a light which, though by no means brilliant, dazzled me
after the darkness of the alley.

I had counted on the door's opening straight into the garden.
To my dismay I found myself in a narrow vestibule floored with
lozenges of black and white marble and running, under the wall to my
left, towards an archway where a dim lamp burned before a velvet
curtain. For a moment I halted irresolute, and then, slipping a hand
under Bianca's arm, led her forward to the archway and drew aside the
curtain.

Again I stood blinking, dazzled by the light of many candles--or were
they but two or three candles, multiplied by the mirrors around the
walls and the gleams from the gilded furniture? And what--merciful
God, _what!_--was that foul thing hanging from the central
chandelier?--hanging there while its shadow, thrown upward past the
glass pendants, wavered in a black blot that seemed to expand and
contract upon the ceiling?

It was a man hanging there, with his neck bent over the curtain's
rope that corded it to the chandelier; a man in a priest's frock,
under which his bare feet dangled limp and hideous.

As the unhappy Bianca slid from under my arm to the floor, I tiptoed
forward and stared up into the face. It was the face of the priest
Domenico, livid, distorted, grinning down at me. With a shiver I
sprang past the corpse for a doorway facing me, that led still
further into this unholy pavilion. The curtain before it had been
wrenched away from the rings over the lintel--by the hand, no doubt,
of the poor wretch as he had been haled to execution--since, save for
a missing cord, the furniture of the room was undisturbed. The room
beyond was bare, uncarpeted, and furnished like a workshop.
A solitary lamp burned low on a bracket, over a table littered with
tools, and in the middle of the room stood a brazier, the coals in it
yet glowing, with five or sick steel-handled implements left as they
had been thrust into the heart of the fire. Were they, then, also
torturers, these murderers?

My eyes turned again to the work-table. On it, among the tools,
rested a crown--the crown of Corsica! Nay, there were two--two
crowns of Corsica! . . . In what new art of treachery had the man
been surprised? Treachery to Genoa, on top of treachery to Corsica.
. . . The crowns were surprisingly alike, even to the stones around
the band--and I bethought me of the jeweller I had met in the alley.
But, feeling around the rim of each, I recognized the true one by a
dent it had taken against the _Gauntlet's_ ballast. Quick as
thought, then, I whipped it under my arm, ran back to Bianca, and
thrust it under her cloak as I bent over her.

She lay in a cold swoon. I could not leave her in this horrible
place. . . .

I was lifting her to carry her out into the alley, when--in the
workshop or beyond it--a key grated in a lock; and I raised myself
erect as the Prince Camillo came through the pavilion, humming a
careless tune of opera.

"Hola!" he broke off and called, "Hola, padre, where the devil are
you hiding? And where's the pretty Bianca? . . . O, confusion seize
your puss-in-the-corner! I shall be jealous, I tell you--and br-r-h!
what a mistral of a draught!"

He came into the room rubbing his hands, half scolding, half
laughing, with the drops of melted snow yet shining on his furred
robe from his walk across the garden. I saw him halt on the
threshold and look about him, prepared to call "Hola!" once again.
I saw his eyes fall on the corpse dangling from the chandelier, fix
themselves on it, and slowly freeze. I saw him take one tottering
step forward; and then, from an alcove, Marc'antonio and Stephanu
stepped quietly out and posted themselves between him and retreat.

"It will be best done quietly," said Marc'antonio. "The Cavalier,
there"--he pointed to me--"has the true crown, and will carry it to
good keeping. You will pardon us, O Cavalier, that we were forced to
tell the Princess an untruth this evening; but right is right, and we
could not permit her to interfere."

In all my life I have never seen such a face as the Prince turned
upon us, knowing that he must die. The face grinning from the
chandelier was scarcely less horrible.

He put up a hand to it. "Not here!" he managed to say. "In the next
room--not here!"

"As your highness wishes." Marc'antonio let him pass into the
workshop and he stood before the brazier, stretching out his palms as
though to warm them.

"These!" he whispered hoarsely, pointing to the instruments on the
brazier.

"Your Highness misunderstands. We are not torturers, we of the
Colonne," answered Marc'antonio, gravely.

A clock on the mantelpiece tinkled out the hour of nine.

"No, nor shall be murderers," I interposed. "The Princess is yet
your mistress, O Marc'antonio, and I am her husband. In the
Princess's name I command you both that you do not harm him."

To my amazement the wretched youth drew himself up, his cowardice
gone, his face twisted with sudden venomous passion.

"_You? You_ will protect me? Dog, I can die, but not owe _that!_"

I leapt forward, disregarding him, seeing that Marc'antonio's hand
was lifted, and that in it a dagger glittered. But before I could
leap the Prince had snatched one of the steel rods from the brazier--
a charcoal rake. And as I struck up Marc'antonio's arm, the rake
crashed down on my skull, tearing the scalp with its white-hot teeth.

I staggered back with both hands held to my head. I did not see the
stroke itself; but between my spread fingers I saw the Prince sink to
the floor with the handle of Marc'antonio's dagger between his
shoulder-blades. I saw the blood gush from his mouth. And with that
I heard scream after scream from the doorway where Bianca stood
swaying, and shouts from the garden answering her screams.

"Foolish girl!" said Marc'antonio, quietly. "And yet, perhaps, so
best!"

He stepped over the Prince's body, and taking me by both shoulders,
hurried me through the room where the priest hung, and forth into the
vestibule. Stephanu did the same with Bianca, halting on his way to
catch up the crown and wrap it carefully in the girl's cloak. At the
garden gate he thrust the bundle into my hands, even as Marc'antonio
pushed us both into the lane.

Outside the door I caught at the wall and drew breath, blinking while
the hot blood ran over my eyes. I looked for them to follow and help
me, for I needed help. But the door was closed softly behind us, and
a moment later I heard their footsteps as they ran back along the
vestibule, back towards the shouting voices; then, after a long
silence, a shot; then a loud cry, "CORSICA!" and another shot.

"They have killed him?"

I turned feebly to Bianca; but Bianca had not spoken. She leaned,
dumb with fright, against the wall of the alleyway, and stared at the
Princess, who faced us, panting, in the whirls of snow.

"I tried"--it was my own voice saying this--"yes, indeed, I tried to
save him. He would not, and they killed him . . . and now they also
are killed."

"Yes--yes, I heard them." She peered close. "Can you walk? Try to
think it is a little way; for it is most necessary you should walk."

I had not the smallest notion whether I could walk or not.
It appeared more important that my head was being eaten with red-hot
teeth. But she took my arm and led me.

"Go before us, foolish girl, and make less noise," she commanded the
sobbing Bianca.

"But you must try for _my_ sake," she whispered, "to think it but a
little way."

And I must have done so with success; for of the way through the
streets I remember nothing but the end--a light shining down the
passage of Messer' Fazio's house, a mandolin still tinkling over the
archway behind us, and a door opening upon a company seated at table,
the faces of all--and of Mr. Fett especially--very distinct under the
lamp-light. They rose--it seemed, all at once--to welcome us, and
their faces wavered as they rose.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.

"Aucassins, biax amis doux
En quel terre en irons nous?
--Douce amie, que sai jou?
Moi ne caut u nous aillons,
En forest u en destor,
Mais que je soie aveuc vous!"
_Aucassin and Nicolete.

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."
_Dante_.

I awoke to a hum of voices . . . but when my eyes opened, the
speakers were gone, and I lay staring at an open window beyond which
the sky shone, blue and deep as a well. On a chair beside the window
sat the Princess, her hands in her lap. . . . While I stared at her,
two strange fancies played together in my mind like couples crossing
in a dance; the first, that she sat there waiting for something to
happen, and had been waiting for a very long, an endless, while; the
other that her body had grown transparent. The sunlight seemed to
float through it as through a curtain.

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