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Sir John Constantine by Prosper Paleologus Constantine

P >> Prosper Paleologus Constantine >> Sir John Constantine




My father frowned. "And yet this man, Mr. Knox, is an anointed
king."

"Of Corsica!" Mr. Knox shrugged his shoulders. "You may take my
word for it, he's an anointed actor."

"One can visit him, I suppose?"

"At the most the turnkey will expect five shillings. Oh dear me yes!
For a crowned head he's accessible."

My father took me by the arm. "Come along, then, child. And you,
Gervase, get your business through with Mr. Knox and follow us, if
you can, in half an hour. You"--he turned to Billy Priske--"had best
come with us. 'Tis possible I may need you all for witnesses."

He walked me out and downstairs and through the lodge gateway; and so
under Temple Bar again and down Fleet Street through the throng; till
near the foot of it, turning up a side street out of the noise, we
found ourselves in face of a gateway which could only belong to a
prison. The gate itself stood open, but the passage led to an
iron-barred door, and in the passage--which was cool but
indescribably noisome--a couple of children were playing marbles,
with half a dozen turnkeys looking on and (I believe) betting on the
game.

My father sniffed the air in the passage and turned to me.

"Gaol-fever," he announced. "Please God, child, we won't be in it
long."

He rescued Billy from the two urchins who had dropped their game to
pinch his calves, and addressed a word to one of the turnkeys, at the
same time passing a coin. The fellow looked at it and touched his
hat.

"Second court, first floor, number thirty-seven." He opened a wicket
in the gate. "This way, please, and sharp to the left."

The narrow court into which we descended by a short flight of steps
was, as I remember, empty; but passing under an archway and through a
kind of tunnel we entered a larger one crowded with men, some
gathered in groups, others pacing singly and dejectedly, the most of
them slowly too, with bowed heads, but three or four with fierce
strides as if in haste to keep an appointment. One of them, coming
abreast of us as the turnkey led us off to a staircase on the left,
halted, drew himself up, stared at us for a moment with vacant eyes,
and hurried by; yet before we mounted the stairs I saw him reach the
farther wall, wheel, and come as hastily striding back.

The stairway led to a filthy corridor, pierced on the left with a row
of tiny windows looking on the first and empty courtyard; and on the
right with a close row of doors, the most of which stood open and
gave glimpses of foul disordered beds, broken meats, and barred
windows crusted with London grime. The smell was pestilential.
Our turnkey rapped on one of the closed doors, and half-flung,
half-kicked it open; for a box had been set against it on the inside.

"Visitors for the Baron!" he announced, and stood aside to let us
enter. My father had ordered Billy to wait below. We two passed in
together.

Now, my father, as I have said, was tall; yet it seemed to me that
the man who greeted us was taller, as he rose from the bed and stood
between us and the barred dirty window. By little and little I made
out that he wore an orange-coloured dressing-gown, and on his head a
Turk's fez; that he had pushed back a table at which, seated on the
bed, he had been writing; and that on the sill of the closed window
behind him stood a geranium-plant, dry with dust and withering in the
stagnant air of the room. But as yet, since he rose with his back to
the little light, I could not make out his features. I marked,
however, that he shook from head to foot.

My father bowed--a very reverent and stately bow it was too--regarded
him for a moment, and, taking a pace backward to the door, called
after the retreating turnkey, to whom he addressed some order in a
tone to me inaudible.

"You are welcome, Sir John," said the prisoner, as my father faced
him again; "though to my shame I cannot offer you hospitality."
He said it in English, with a thick and almost guttural foreign
accent, and his voice shook over the words.

"I have made bold, sire, to order the remedy."

"'Sire!'" the prisoner took him up with a flash of spirit.
"You have many rights over me, Sir John, but none to mock me, I
think."

"As you have no right to hold me capable of it, in such a place as
this," answered my father. "I addressed you in terms which my errand
proves to be sincere. This is my son Prosper, of whom I wrote."

"To be sure--to be sure." The prisoner turned to me and looked me
over--I am bound to say with no very great curiosity, and sideways,
in the half light, I had a better glimpse of his features, which were
bold and handsome, but dreadfully emaciated. He seemed to lose the
thread of his speech, and his hands strayed towards the table as if
in search of something. "Ah yes, the boy," said he, vaguely.

The turnkey entering just then with two bottles of wine, my father
took one from him and filled an empty glass that stood on the table.
The prisoner's fingers closed over it.

"I have much to drown," he explained, as, having gulped down the
wine, he refilled his glass at once, knocking the bottle-neck on its
rim in his clattering haste. "Excuse me; you'll find another glass
in the cupboard behind you. . . . Yes, yes, we were talking of the
boy. . . . Are you filled? . . . We'll drink to his health!"

"To your health, Prosper," said my father, gravely, and drank.

"But, see here--I received your letter right enough, and it sounds
too good to be true. Only "--and into the man's eyes there crept a
sudden cunning--"I don't understand what you want of me."

"You may think it much or little; but all we want--or, rather, all my
boy wants--is your blessing."

"So I gathered; and that's funny, by God! _My_ blessing--mine--and
here!" He flung out a hand. "I've had some strange requests in my
time; but, damn me, if I reckoned that any man any longer wanted my
blessing."

"My son does, though; and even such a blessing as your own son would
need, if you had one. You understand?"--for the prisoner's eyes had
wandered to the barred window--"I mean the blessing of Theodore the
First."

"You are a strange fellow, John Constantine," was the answer, in a
weary, almost pettish tone. "God knows I have more reason to be
grateful to you than to any man alive--"

"But you find it hard? Then give it over. You may do it with the
lighter heart since gratitude from you would be offensive to me."

"If you played for this--worthless prize as it is--from the
beginning--"

Again my father took him up; and, this time, sternly. "You know
perfectly well that I never played for this from the beginning; nor
had ever dreamed of it while there was a chance that you--or _she_--
might leave a child. I will trouble you--" My father checked
himself. "Your pardon, I am speaking roughly. I will beg you, sire,
to remember first, that you claimed and received my poor help while
there was yet a likelihood of your having children, before your wife
left you, and a good year before I myself married or dreamed of
marrying. I will beg you further to remember that no payment of what
you owed to me was ever enforced, and that the creditors who sent you
and have kept you here are commercial persons with whom I had nothing
to do; whose names until the other day were strange to me. _Now_ I
will admit that I play for a kingdom."

"You really think it worth while?" The prisoner, who had stood all
this time blinking at the window, his hands in the pockets of his
dirty dressing-gown, turned again to question him.

"I do."

"But listen a moment. I have had too many favours from you, and I
don't want another under false pretences. You may call it a too-late
repentance, but the fact remains that I don't. Liberty?"--he
stretched out both gaunt arms, far beyond the sleeves of his gown,
till they seemed to measure the room and to thrust its walls wide.
"Even with a week to live I would buy it dear--you don't know, John
Constantine, how you tempt me--but not at that price."

"Your title is good. I will take the risk."

"How good or how bad my title is, you know. 'Tis the inheritance
against which I warn you."

"I take the risk," my father repeated, "if you will sign."

The prisoner shrugged his shoulders and helped himself to another
glassful.

"We must have witnesses," said my father, "Have you a clergyman in
this den?"

"To be sure we have. The chaplain, we call him Figg--Jonathan Figg's
his name; the Reverend Jonathan Figg, B.A., of Sydney Sussex College,
Cambridge; a good fellow and a moderately hard drinker. He spends
the best part of his morning marrying up thieves and sailors to
trulls; but he's usually leaving church about this time, if a
messenger can catch him before he's off to breakfast with 'em.
Half an hour hence he'll be too drunk to sign his name."

"Prosper"--my father swung round on me--"run you down to Billy and
take him off to search for this clergyman. If on your way you meet
with your uncle and Mr. Knox, say that we shall require them, too, as
witnesses."

I ran down to the courtyard, but no Billy could I see; only the
dejected groups of prisoners, and among them the one I had marked
before, still fiercely striding, and still, at the wall, returning
upon his track. I hurried out to the gate, and there, to my
amazement, found Billy in the clutches of a strapping impudent wench
and surrounded by a ring of turnkeys, who were splitting their sides
with laughter.

"I won't!" he was crying. "I'm a married man, I tell 'ee, and the
father of twelve!"

"Oh, Billy!" I cried, aghast at the lie.

"There was no other way, lad. For the Lord's sake fetch Squire to
deliver me?"

Before I could answer or ask what was happening, the damsel rounded
on me.

"Boy," she demanded, "is this man deceiving me?"

"As for that, ma'am," I answered, "I cannot say. But that he's a
bachelor I believe; and that he hates women I have his word over and
over."

"Then he shall marry me or fight me," she answered very coolly, and
began to strip off her short bodice.

"There's twelve o'clock," announced one of the turnkeys, as the first
stroke sounded from the clock above us over the prison gateway. "Too
late to be married to-day; so a fight it is."

"A ring! a ring!" cried the others.

I looked in Billy's face, and in all my life (as I have since often
reminded him) I never saw a man worse scared. The woman had actually
thrown off her jacket and stood up in a loose under-bodice that left
her arms free--and exceedingly red and brawny arms they were.
How he had come into this plight I could guess as little as what the
issue was like to be, when in the gateway there appeared my uncle and
Mr. Knox, and close at their heels a rabble of men and women
arm-in-arm, headed by a red-nosed clergyman with an immense white
favour pinned to his breast.

"Hey? What's to do--what's to do!" inquired Mr. Knox.

The clergyman thrust past him with a "Pardon me, sir," and addressed
the woman. "What's the matter, Nan? Is the bridegroom fighting
shy?"

"Please your reverence, he tells me he's the father of twelve."

"H'm." The priest cocked his head on one side. "You find that an
impediment?"

"_And_ a married man, your reverence."

"Then he has the laughing side of you, this time," said his
reverence, promptly, and took snuff. "Tut, tut, woman--down with
your fists, button up your bodice, and take disappointment with a
better grace. Come, no nonsense, or you'll start me asking what's
become of the last man I married ye to."

"Sir," interposed my uncle, "I know not the head or tail of this
quarrel. But this man Priske is my brother's servant, and if he told
the lady what she alleges, for the credit of the family I must
correct him. In sober truth he's a bachelor, and no more the father
of twelve than I am."

This address, delivered with entire simplicity, set the whole company
gasping. Most of all it seemed to astonish the woman, who could not
be expected to know that my uncle's chivalry accepted all her sex,
the lowest with the highest, in the image in which God made it and
without defacement.

The priest was the first to recover himself. "My good sir," said he,
"your man may be the father of twelve or the father of lies; but I'll
not marry him after stroke of noon, for that's my rule. Moreover"--
he swept a hand towards the bridal party behind him--"these turtles
have invited me to eat roast duck and green peas with 'em, and I hate
my gravy cold."

"Ay, sir?" asked my uncle. "Do you tell me that folks marry and give
in marriage within this dreadful place?"

"Now and then, sir; and in the liberties and purlieus thereof with a
proclivity that would astonish you; which, since I cannot hinder it,
I sanctify. My name is Figg, sir--Jonathan Figg; and my office,
Chaplain of the Fleet."

"And if it please you, sir," I put in, "my father has sent me in
search of you, to beg that you will come to him at once."

"And you have heard me say, young sir, that I marry no man after
stroke of noon; no, nor will visit him sick unless he be in _articulo
mortis_."

"But my father neither wants to be married, sir, nor is he sick at
all. I believe it is some matter of witnessing an oath."

"Hath he better than roast duck and green peas to offer, hey? No?
Then tell him he may come and witness _my_ oath, that I'll see him
first to Jericho."

"Whereby, if I mistake not," said Mr. Knox, quietly, "your pocket
will continue light of two guineas; and I may add, from what I know
of Sir John Constantine, that he is quite capable, if he receive such
an answer, of having your blood in a bottle."

"'Sir John Constantine?' did I hear you say. _Sir_ John
Constantine?'" queried the Reverend Mr. Figg, with a complete change
of manner. "That's _quite_ another thing! Anything to oblige Sir
John Constantine, I'm sure--"

"Do you know him?" asked my uncle.

"Well--er--no; I can't honestly declare that I _know_ him; but, of
course, one knows _of_ him--that is to say, I understand him to be a
gentleman of title; a knight at least."

"Yes," my uncle answered, "he is at least that. What a very
extraordinary person!" he added in a wondering aside.

Oddly enough, as we were leaving, I heard the woman Nan say pretty
much the same of my uncle. She added that she had a great mind to
kiss him.

We found my father and the prisoner seated with the bottle between
them on the rickety liquor-stained table. Yet--as I remember the
scene now--not all the squalor of the room could efface or diminish
the majesty of their two figures. They sat like two tall old kings,
eye to eye, not friends, or reconciled only in this last and lonely
hour by meditation on man's common fate. If I cannot make you
understand this, what follows will seem to you absurd, though indeed
at the time it was not so.

My father rose as we entered. "Here is the boy returned," said he;
"and here are the witnesses."

The prisoner rose also. "I did not catch his name, or else I have
forgotten it," he said, fixing his eyes on me and motioning me to
step forward; which I did. His eyes--which before had seemed to me
shifty--were straight now and commanding, yet benevolent.

"His name is Prosper; in full, John Prosper Camilio Paleologus.
Never more than one of us wears the surname of Constantine, and he
not until he succeeds as head of our house."

"One name is enough for a king." The prisoner motioned again with
his hand. "Kneel, boy," my father commanded, and I knelt.

"I ask you, gentlemen," said the prisoner, facing them and lifting
his voice, "to hear and remember what I shall say; to witness and
remember what I shall do; and by signature to attest what I shall
presently write. I say, then, that I, Theodore, was on the fifteenth
of April, twenty years ago, by the united voice of the people of
Corsica, made King of that island and placed in possession of its
revenues and chief dignities. I declare, as God may punish me if I
lie, that by no act of mine or of my people of Corsica has that
election been annulled, forfeited, or invalidated; that its revenues
are to-day rightfully mine to receive and bequeath, as its dignities
are to-day rightfully mine to enjoy or abdicate to an heir of my own
choosing. I declare further that, failing male issue of my own body,
I resign herewith and abdicate both rank and revenue in favour of
this boy, Prosper Paleologus, son of Constantine, and heir in descent
of Constantine last Emperor of Constantinople. I lay my hands on him
in your presence and bless him. In your presence I raise him and
salute him on both cheeks, naming him my son of choice and my
successor, Prosper I., King of the Commonwealth of Corsica. I call
on you all to attest this act with your names, and all necessary
writings confirming it; and I beseech you all to pray with me that he
may come to the full inheritance of his kingdom, and thrive therein
as he shall justly and righteously administer it. God save King
Prosper!"

At the conclusion of this speech, admirably delivered, I--standing
with bent head as he had raised me, and with both cheeks tingling
from his salutation--heard my father's voice say sonorously, "Amen!"
and another--I think the parson's--break into something like a
chuckle. But my uncle must have put out a hand threatening his
weasand, for the sound very suddenly gave place to silence; and the
next voice I heard was Mr. Knox's.

"May I suggest that we seat ourselves and examine the papers?" said
Mr. Knox.

"One moment." King Theodore stepped to the cupboard and drew out a
bundle in a blue-and-white checked kerchief, and a smaller one in
brown paper. The kerchief, having been laid on the table and
unwrapped, disclosed a fantastic piece of ironwork in the shape of a
crown, set with stones of which the preciousness was concealed by a
plentiful layer of dust. He lifted this, set it on my head for a
moment, and, replacing it on the table, took up the brown-paper
parcel.

"This," said he, "contains the Great Seal. To whose keeping "--he
turned to my father--"am I to entrust them, Sir John?"

My father nodded towards Billy Priske, who stepped forward and tucked
both parcels under his arm, while Mr. Knox spread his papers on the
table.


We walked back to our lodgings that afternoon, with Billy Priske
behind us bearing in his pocket the Great Seal and under his arm, in
a checked kerchief, the Iron Crown of Corsica.

Two mornings later we took horse and set our faces westward again;
and thus ended my brief first visit to London. Billy Priske carried
the sacred parcel on the saddle before him; and my uncle, riding
beside him, spent no small part of the way in an exhortation against
lying in general, and particularly against the sin of laying false
claim to the paternity of twelve children.

Now, so shaken was Billy by his one adventure in London that until we
had passed the tenth milestone he seemed content enough to be rated.
I believe that as, for the remainder of his stay in London, he had
never strayed beyond sight, so even yet he took comfort and security
from my uncle's voice; "since," said he, quoting a Cornish proverb,
"'tis better be rated by your own than mated with a stranger."
But, by-and-by, taking courage to protest that a lie might on
occasion be pardonable and even necessary, he drew my father into the
discussion.

"This difficulty of Billy's," interposed my father, "was in some sort
anticipated by Plato, who instanced that a madman with a knife in his
hand might inquire of you to direct him which way had been taken by
the victim he proposed to murder. He posits it as a nice point.
Should one answer truthfully, or deceive?"

"For my part," answered my uncle, "I should knock him down."



CHAPTER IV.


LONG VACATION.


"In a harbour grene aslope whereas I lay,
The byrdes sang swete in the middes of the day,
I dreamed fast of mirth and play:
In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure."
Robert Wever.

A history (you will say) which finds a schoolboy tickling trout, and
by the end of another chapter has clapped a crown on his head and
hailed him sovereign over a people of whom he has scarcely heard and
knows nothing save that they are warlike and extremely hot-tempered,
should be in a fair way to move ahead briskly. Nevertheless I shall
pass over the first two years of the reign of King Prosper, during
which he stayed at school and performed nothing worthy of mention:
and shall come to a summer's afternoon at Oxford, close upon the end
of term, when Nat Fiennes and I sat together in my rooms in New
College--he curled on the window-seat with a book, and I stretched in
an easy-chair by the fireplace, and deep in a news-sheet.

"By the way, Nat," said I, looking up as I turned the page,
"where will you spend your vacation?"

A groan answered me.

"Hullo!" I went on, making a hasty guess at his case. "Has the
little cordwainer's tall daughter jilted you, as I promised she
would?"

"A curse on this age!" swore Nat, who ever carried his heart on his
sleeve.

I began to hum--

"I loved a lass, a fair one,
As fair as e'er was seen;
She was indeed a rare one,
Another Sheba queen.
Her waist exceeding small,
The fives did fit her shoe;
But now alas! sh' 'as left me,
Falero, lero, loo!"

"Curse the age!" repeated Nat, viciously. "If these were Lancelot's
days now, a man could run mad in the forest and lie naked and chew
sticks; and then she'd be sorry."

"In summer time to Medley
My love and I would go;
The boatmen there stood read'ly
My love and me to row,"

sang I, and ducked my head to avoid the cushion he hurled.
"Well then, there's very pretty forest land around my home in
Cornwall, with undergrowth and dropped twigs to last you till
Michaelmas term. So why not ride down with me and spend at least the
fore-part of your madness there?"

"I hate your Cornwall."

"'Tis a poor rugged land," said I; "but hath this convenience above
your own home, that it contains no nymphs to whom you have yet sworn
passion. You may meet ours with a straight brow; and they are fair,
too, and unembarrassed, though I won't warrant them if you run bare."

"'Tis never I that am inconstant."

"Never, Nat; 'tis she, always and only--" she, she, and only she"--
and there have been six of her to my knowledge."

"If I were a king, now--"

"T'cht!" said I (for as my best friend, and almost my sole one, he
knew my story).

"If a fellow were a king now--instead of being doomed to the law--
oh, good Lord!"

"You are incoherent, dear lad," said I; "and yet you tell me one
thing plainly enough; which is that in place of loving this one or
that one, or the cordwainer's strapping daughter, you are in love
with being in love."

"Well, and why not?" he demanded. "Were I a king, now, that is even
what I would be--in love with being in love. Were I a king, now, so
deep in love were I with being in love, that my messengers should
compass earth to fetch me the right princess. Yes, and could they
not reach to her, if I but heard of one hidden and afar that was
worth my loving, I would build ships and launch them, enlist crews
and armies, sail all seas and challenge all wars, to win her.
If I were king, now, my love should dwell in the fastnesses of the
mountains, and I would reach her; she should drive me to turn again
and gather the bones of the seamen I had dropped overboard, and I
would turn and dredge the seas for them; for a whim she should demand
to watch me at the task, and gangs of slaves should level mountains
to open a prospect from her window; nay, all this while she should
deny me sight of her, and I would embrace that last hardship that in
the end she might be the dearer prize, a queen worthy to seat beside
me. Man, heave your great lubberly bones out of that chair and
salute a poor devil whom, as you put it, a cordwainer's daughter has
jilted."

"Hullo!" cried I, who had turned from his rhapsody to con the news
again, and on the instant had been caught by a familiar name at the
foot of the page.

"What is it?"

"Why," said I, reading, "it seems that you are not the only such
madman as you have just proclaimed yourself. Listen to this: it is
headed "'Falmouth.'

"'A Gentleman, having read that the Methodist Preachers are to
pay a visit to Falmouth, Cornwall, on the 16th, 17th, and 18th
of next month; and that on the occasion of their last visit
certain women, their sympathizers, were set upon and brutally
handled by the mob; hereby announces that he will be present on
the Market Strand, Falmouth, on these dates, with intent to put
a stop to such behaviour, and invites any who share his
indignation to meet him there and help to see fair play.
The badge to be a Red Rose pinned in the hat.'"
"'EUGENIO.'"

"What think you of that?" I asked, without turning my head.

"The newspaper comes from Cornwall?" he asked.

"From Falmouth itself. My father sent it. . . . Jove!" I cried after
a moment, "I wonder if he's answerable for this? 'Twould be like his
extravagance."

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A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

He said he decided to stick to type and formatting that could have been created on a typewriter, with the first ten pages duplicating shots of Torrance's work from the film. "I thought 'if he continues to get crazier, what would those pages look like?'" he said. "I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film, became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie, and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.

He's included a spoof review from the blog OverThinkingIt.com on the book's back jacket, which compares it to "the best of Beckett" in its "lack of forward momentum", and considers the struggles of the author, "heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence". "It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power," the review says. "Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint."

So far, Buehler says that around 1,000 people have viewed the book, for sale on Blurb.com for $8.95 in paperback, or $22.95 in hardback, and he's sold "a few" copies, with sales now starting to pick up steam. "A few people have asked me to sign it - they're looking it as a piece of art rather than a funny thing to give to a Kubrick fan," he said. "If you're not a Kubrick or King fan, you might not even get it."

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