Sir John Constantine by Prosper Paleologus Constantine

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My father led the way at a foot's pace, and seemed to ride pondering,
for his chin was sunk on his chest and he had pulled his hat-brim
well over his eyes (but this may have been against the July sun).
After him tramped Mr. Fett in eager converse with the little
pawnbroker, now questioning him, now halting to regard him, as a man
who has dug up a sudden treasure and for the moment can only gaze at
it and hug himself. Nat and I brought up the rear, he striding at my
stirrup and pouring forth the tale of his adventures since we parted.
A dozen times he rehearsed the scene of the parental quarrel, and
interrupted each rehearsal with a dozen anxious questions. "Ought he
to have given this answer?--to have uttered that defiance? Did I
think he had shown self-control; Had he treated the old gentleman
with becoming respect? Would I put myself in his place? Suppose it
had been my own father, now--"

"But yours, lad, is a father in a thousand," he broke off bitterly.
"I had never a notion that father and son could be friends, as are
you and he. He is splendid--splendid!"

I glanced at him quickly and turned my face aside, suspecting that he
took my father for a madman, and was kindly concealing the discovery.
Nevertheless I hardened my voice to answer--

"You will say so when you know him better. And my Uncle Gervase runs
him a good second."

"Faith, then, I wish you'd persuade your uncle to adopt me. I'm not
envious, Prosper, in a general way, but your luck gives me a duced
orphanly feeling. Have I been over-hasty? That is the question;
whether 'twas nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
accusing conscience or to up and have it out with the old man."

"Pardon me, gentlemen"--Mr. Fett wheeled about suddenly on the road
ahead of us--"but it was by accident that I overheard you, and by a
singular coincidence at that moment I happened to be discussing the
same subject with Mr. Badcock here."

"What subject?"

"Missiles, sir. It appears that, when his blood is up, Mr. Badcock
finds himself absolutely careless of missiles. He declares that,
with a sense of smell as acute as most men's, he was unaware to-day
of having been struck with a rotten egg until I, at ten paces'
distance, drew his attention to it. Now, that is a degree of
courage--insensibility--call it what you will--to which I make no
pretence. The cut and thrust, gentlemen, the couched lance, even,
within limits, the battering ram, would have, I feel confident,
comparatively few terrors for me. But missiles I abominate.
Drawing, as I am bound to do, my anticipations of the tented field
from experience gathered--I say it literally, gathered--before the
footlights, I confess to some sympathy with the gentleman who assured
Harry Percy that but for these vile guns he would himself have been a
soldier. You will not misunderstand me. I believe on my faith that
as a military man I was born out of my time. The scythed chariots of
Boadicea, for instance, must have been damned inconvenient; yet I can
conceive myself jumping 'em. But a stone, as I learnt in my
boyhood--a stone, sirs, and _a fortiori_ a bullet--"

"Hist!" broke in my father, at the same moment reining up.
"Prosper, what do you make of that noise, up yonder?"

I listened. "It sounds to me like a heavy cart--"

"Or a waggon. To my hearing there are two horses."

"And runaway ones, by the shouting."

We had reached a point of the road, not far from home, where a steep
lane cut across it: a track seldom used but scored with old ruts,
sunk between hedges full sixteen feet high, leading down from a back
gate of Constantine and a deserted lodge to a quay by the waterside.
Not once in three months, within my remembrance, did cart or waggon
pass along this lane, which indeed grew a fine crop of grass and
docks between the ruts.

"Nay," said my father, after a few seconds, "I gave you a false
alarm, gentlemen. The shouting, whatever it means, is over.
Your pardon, Mr. Fett, that I interrupted you."

"Sir," said Mr. Fett, stepping put him to reconnoitre the lane,
"I was but remarking what a number of the wise have observed before
me, that a stone which has left the hand is in the hands of the
dev--"

He ducked his head with a cry as a stone whizzed past him and within
a foot of it. On the instant the loud rattle and thunder of
cartwheels broke forth again, and now but a short distance up the
lane; also a voice almost as loudly vociferating; and, almost before
Mr. Fett could run back to us, a whole volley of stones flew hurtling
across the road.

"Hi, there! Halt!" My father struck spur and rode forward, in time
to catch at and check the leader of two horses slithering downhill
tandem-fashion before the weight of a heavy cart. "Confound you,
sir! What the devil d'you mean by flinging stones in this manner
across the middle of the King's highway."

The man--he was one of the seamen of the _Gauntlet_--stood up in the
cart upon a load of stones and grinned. In one hand he gripped the
reins, in the other a fistful of flints.

"Your honour's pardon," said he, lifting his forearm and drawing the
back of it across his dripping brow, "but the grey mare for'rad won't
pull, and the whip here won't reach her. I couldn't think upon no
better way."

"You mean to tell me you have been pelting that poor brute all down
the lane?"

"I couldn't think upon no better way," the seaman repeated wistfully,
almost plaintively. "She's what you might call sensitive to stones."

"Intelligent beast!" commented Mr. Fett. "And I bought that mare
only six months ago!" (In truth my father had found the poor
creature wandering the roads and starving, cast off by her owner as
past work, and had purchased her out of mere humanity for thirty
shillings.)

"But what business have you to be driving my cart and horses?" he
demanded. "And what's the meaning of these stones you're carting?"

"Ballast, your honour."

"Ballast?"

"I don't know how much of it'll ever arrive at this rate," confessed
the seaman, dropping the handful of flints and scratching his head.
"Tis buying speed at a terrible cost of jettison. But Cap'n Pomery's
last order to me was to make haste about it, if we're to catch
to-morrow's tide."

"Captain Pomery sent you for these stones?"

"Why, Lord love your honour, a vessel can't discharge two dozen
Papist monks and cattle and implements to correspond without wantin'
_something_ in their place. Nice flat stones, too, the larger-sized
be, and not liable to shift in a sea-way."

But here another strange noise drew our eyes up the lane, as an old
man in a smock-frock--a pensioner of the estate, and by name John
Worthyvale--came hobbling round the corner and down the hill towards
us, using his long-handled road hammer for a staff and uttering
shrill tremulous cries of rage.

"Vengeance, Sir John! Vengeance for my l'il heap o' stones!"

"Why, Worthyvale, what's the matter?" asked my father, soothingly.

"My l'il heap o' stones, Sir John; my poor l'il heap o' stones!
What's to become o' me, master? Where will your kindness find a
bellyful for me, if these murderin' seamen take away my l'il heap o'
stones?"

My father laid a hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Captain Pomery wants them for ballast, Worthyvale. You understand?
It appears he can find none so suitable.''

"No, I _don't_ understand!" exclaimed the old fellow, fiercely.
"This has been a black week for me, Sir John. First of all my
darter's youngest darter comes and tells me she've picked up with a
man. Seems 'twas only last year she was runnin' about in short
frocks; but, dang it! the time must ha' slipped away somehow whilst
I've a-sat hammerin' stones, an' now there'll be no person left to
mind me. Next news, I hear from Master Gervase that you be goin'
foreign, Sir John, with Master Prosper here. The world gets that
empty, I wish I were dead, I do. An' now they've a-took my l'il heap
o' stones!"

"And this old man's sires," said my father to me, but so that he did
not hear, "held land in Domesday Book--twelve virgates of land with
close on forty carucates of arable, villeins and borderers and
bondservants, six acres of wood, a hundred and twenty of pasture; and
he makes his last stand on this heap of stones. Ballast?" He turned
to the seaman. "Did I not tell Captain Pomery to ballast with wine?"

"We were carrying it all the forenoon," the seaman answered.
"There was two hogsheads of claret."

"And the hogshead of Madeira, with what remained of the brown sherry?
Likewise in bottles twelve dozen of the Hermitage and as much again
of the Pope's wine, of Avignon?"

"It all went in, sir. Master Gervase checked it on board by the
list."

"For the rest we are reduced to stones? Then, Prosper, there remains
no other course open to us."

"Than what, sir?" I asked.

"We must enlist this old man; and that fulfils our number."

"Old John Worthyvale?"

"Why not? He can sit in the hold and crack stones until I devise his
part in the campaign. Say no more. I have an inkling he will prove
not the least useful man of our company."

"As to that, sir," I answered, with a shrug of the shoulders and a
glance at Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock, "I don't feel able to contradict
you."

"Then here we are assembled," said my father, cheerfully, with the
air of one closing a discussion; "the more by token that here comes
Billy Priske. Why, man," he asked, as Billy rode up--but so
dejectedly that his horse seemed to droop its ears in sympathy--
"what ails you? Not wounded, are you?"

"Worse," answered Billy, and groaned.

"We were told you got quit of the crowd.

"So I did," said Billy. "Damn it!"

"They followed you?" I asked.

"No, they didn't, and I wish they had."

"Then what on earth has happened?"

"What has happened?" Having no hair of his own to speak of, Billy
reached forward and ran his fingers through his horse's mane.
"I've engaged to get married. That's what has happened."

"Good Lord!"

"To a female Methody, in a Quaker bonnet. I had no idea of any such
thing when I followed her. She was sittin' on the first milestone
out of Falmouth and jabbin' her heel into the dust, like a person in
a pet. First of all, when I spoke to her, she wouldn't tell what had
annoyed her; but later on it turned out she had come expectin' to be
made a martyr of, and everything was lookin' keenly that way until
Sir John came and interfered, as she put it."

"And she said," suggested Mr. Fett, "that she didn't mind what man
could do unto her?"

"The very words she used, sir!" said Billy, his brow clearing as a
prisoner's will when counsel supplies him with a defence.

"And, when you took her at her word, like a Christian woman she
turned the other cheek?"

"She did, sir, and no harm meant; but just doing it gay, as a man
will."

"But when you explained this, she wouldn't take no for an answer?"

"She would not, sir. She seemed not to understand. Then I looked at
her bonnet and, a thought striking me, I tried `nay' instead.
But that didn't work no better than the other. If you could hide me
for tonight, Sir John--"

"You had best sleep on the _Gauntlet_ to-night," said my father.
"If the woman calls, I will have a talk with her. What is her name,
by the way?"

"Martha."

"But I mean her full name."

"I didn't get so far as to inquire, Sir John. But the point is, she
knows mine."

CHAPTER X.

OF THE DISCOURSE HELD ON BOARD THE "GAUNTLET."

"The Pilot assured us that, considering the Gentleness of the
Winds and their pleasant Contentions, as also the Clearness of
the Atmosphere and the Calm of the Current, we stood neither in
Hope of much Good nor in Fear of much Harm . . . and advised us
to let the Ship drive, nor busy ourselves with anything but
making good Cheer."
--_The Fifth Book of the Good Pantagruel_.

It appeared that, unknown to me, my father had already made his
arrangements with Captain Pomery, and we were to sail with the
morning's tide. During supper--which Billy Priske had no sooner laid
than he withdrew to collect his kit and carry it down to the ship,
taking old Worthyvale for company--our good Vicar arrived, as well to
bid us good-bye as in some curiosity to learn what recruits we had
picked up in Falmouth. I think the sight of them impressed him; but
at the tale of our day's adventures, and especially when he heard of
our championing the Methodists, his hands went up in horror.

"The Methodists!" For two years past the Vicar had occupied a part
of his leisure in writing a pamphlet against them: and by "leisure" I
mean all such days as were either too inclement for fishing, or
thunderous so that the trout would not rise.

"My dear friend, while you have been sharpening the sword of Saint
Athanasius against 'em, the rabble has been beforehand with you and
given 'em bloody noses. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of
heresy--if you call the Wesleyans heretics--as well as of the
Church."

The Vicar sighed. "I have been slack of pace and feeble of will.
Yes, yes, I deserve the reproach."

My father laid a hand on his shoulder. "Tut, tut! Cannot you see
that I was not reproaching, but rather daring to commend you for an
exemplar? There is a slackness which comes of weak will; but there
is another and a very noble slackness which proceeds from the two
strongest things on earth, confidence and charity; charity, which
naturally inclines to be long-suffering, and confidence which, having
assurance in its cause, dares to trust that natural inclination.
Dissent in the first generation is usually admirable and almost
always respectable: men don't leave the Church for fun, but because
they have thought and discovered, as they believe, something amiss in
her--something which in nine cases out of ten she would be the better
for considering. But dissent in the second and third generation
usually rests on bad temper, which is not admirable at all, though
often excusable because the Church's persecution has produced it.
Believe me, my dear Vicar, that if all the bishops followed your
example and slept on their wrath against heresy, they would wake up
and find nine-tenths of the heretics back in the fold. Indeed I wish
your good lady would let you pack your nightcap and come with us.
You could hire a curate over from Falmouth."

"Could I write my pamphlet at sea?"

"No: but, better still, by the time you returned the necessity for it
would be over."

The Vicar smiled. "_You_ counsel lethargy?--you, who in an hour or
two start for Corsica, and with no more to-do than if bound on a
picnic!"

"Ay, but for love," answered my father. "In love no man can be too
prompt."

"I believe you, sir," hiccuped Mr. Fett, who had been drinking more
than was good for him. "And so, begad, does your man Priske.
Did any one mark, just now, how like a shooting star he glided in the
night from Venus' eye? Love, sir?" he turned to me. "The tender
passion? Is that our little game? Is _that_ the face that launched
a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? O Troy!
O Helen! You'll permit me to add, with a glance at our friend
Priske's predicament, O Dido! At five shillings _per diem_ I realize
the twin ambitions of a life-time and combine the supercargo with the
buck. Well, well! _cherchez la femme!_"

"You pronounce it 'share-shay?'" inquired Mr. Badcock. "Now I have
seen it spelt the same as in 'church.'"

"The same as in ch--?" Mr. Fett fixed him with a glassy but
reproachful eye. "Badcock, you are premature, premature and
indelicate."

Here my father interposed and, heading the talk back to the
Methodists, soon had the Vicar and the little pawnbroker in full
cry--parson and clerk antiphonal, "matched in mouth like bells"--on
church discipline; which gave him opportunity, while Nat and I at our
end of the table exchanged the converse and silences of friendship,
to confer with my Uncle Gervase and run over a score of parting
instructions on the management of the estate, the ordering of the
household, and, in particular, the entertainment of our Trappist
guests. Perceiving with the corner of his eye that we two were
restless to leave the table, he pushed the bottle towards us.

"My lads," said he, "when the drinking tires let the talk no longer
detain you."

We thanked him, and with a glance at Mr. Fett--who had fallen asleep
with his head on his arms--stepped out upon the moonlit terrace.
I waited for Nat to speak and give me a chance to have it out with
him, if he doubted (as he must, methought) my father's sanity.
But he gazed over the park at our feet, the rolling shadows of the
woodland, the far estuary where one moonray trembled, and stretching
out both hands drew the spiced night-air into his lungs with a sob.

"O Prosper!"

"You are wondering where to find your room?" said I, as he turned and
glanced up at the grey glimmering facade. "The simplest way is to
pick up the first lantern you see in the hall, light it, walk
upstairs, enter what room you choose and take possession of its bed.
You have five hours to sleep, if you need sleep. Or shall I guide
you?"

"No," said he; "the first is the only way in this enchanted house.
But I was thinking that by rights, while we are standing here, those
windows should blaze with lights and break forth with the noise of
dancing and minstrelsy. To such a castle, high against such a velvet
night as this, would Sir Lancelot come, or Sir Gawain, or Sir
Perceval, at the close of a hard day."

"Wait for the dawn, lad, and you will find it rather the castle
overgrown with briers."

"And, in the heart of them, the Rose!"

"You will find no Sleeping Beauty, though you hunt through all its
rooms. She lies yonder, Nat, somewhere out beyond the sea there."

"In a few hours we sail to her. O Prosper, and we will find her!
This is better than any dream, lad: and this is life!"

He gazed into my eyes for a moment in the moonlight, turned on his
heel, and strode away from me toward the great door, which--like
every door in the house--stood wide all the summer night. I was
staring at the shadow of the porch into which he had disappeared,
when my father touched my elbow.

"There goes a good lad," said he, quietly.

"And my best friend."

"He has sobered down strangely from the urchin I remember on
Winchester meads; and in the sobering he has grown exalted.
A man might almost say," mused my father, "that the imp in him had
shed itself off and taken flesh in that Master Fett I left snoring
with his head on my dining-table. An earthy spirit, that Master
Fett; earthy and yet somewhat inhuman. Your Nat Fiennes has the clue
of life--if only Atropos do not slit it."

Here the Vicar came out to take his leave, winding about his neck and
throat the comforter he always wore as a protective against the
night-air. It appeared later that he was nettled by Mr. Badcock's
collapsing beneath the table just as they had reached No. XX. of the
Thirty-nine Articles and passed it through committee by consent.

"God bless you, lad!" said he, and shook my hand. "In seeking your
kingdom you start some way ahead of Saul the son of Kish. You have
already discovered your father's asses."

He trudged away across the dewy park and was soon lost in the
darkness. In the dim haze under the moon, having packed Mr. Badcock
and Mr. Fett in a hand-cart, we trundled them down to the shore and
lifted them aboard. They resisted not, nor stirred.

By three o'clock our dispositions were made and Captain Pomery
professed himself ready to cast off. I returned to the house for the
last time, to awake and fetch Nat Fiennes. As I crossed the wet
sward the day broke and a lark sprang from the bracken and soared
above me singing. But I went hanging my head, heavy with lack of
sleep.

I tried five rooms and found them empty. In the sixth Nat lay
stretched upon a tattered silk coverlet. He sprang up at my touch
and felt for his sword.

"Past three o'clock and fine clear mornin'!" sang I, mimicking the
Oxford watch, and with my foot the tap of his staff as he had used to
pass along Holy well.

"Hey! now the day dawis,
The jolly cock crawis--"

"The wind will head us in the upper reach: but beyond it blows fair
for Corsica!"

He leapt to his feet and laughed, blithe as the larks now chorussing
outside the window. But my head was heavy, and somehow my heart too,
as we walked down to the shore.

My Uncle Gervase stood on the grass-grown quay; my father on the
deck. They had already said their goodbyes. With his right hand my
uncle took mine, at the same time laying his left on my shoulder; and
said he--

"Farewell, lad. The rivers in Corsica be short and eager, as I hear;
and slight fishing in them near the coast, the banks being overgrown.
But it seems there are good trout, and in the mountain pools.

"Whether they be the same as our British trout I cannot discover.
I desire you to make certain. Also if the sardines of those parts be
the same as our Cornish pilchards, but smaller. Belike they start
from the Mediterranean Sea and reach their full size on our coasts.

"The migrations of fishes are even less understood than those of the
birds. Yet both (being annual) will teach you, if you consider them,
to think little of this parting. God knows, lad, how sorely I spare
you.

"Do justice, observe mercy, and walk humbly before thy God. This if
they should happen to make you king, as your father promises.

"They have an animal very like a sheep, but wilder and fiercer.
If you have the luck to shoot one, I shall be glad of his skin.

"'Twill be a job here, making two ends meet. But as our Lord said,
Sufficient for the day is its evil. I have put a bottle of tar-water
in your berth.

"I have often wished to set eyes on the Mediterranean Sea.
A sea without tides must be but half a sea--speaking with all respect
to the Almighty, who made it.

"You will pick up the wind in the lower reach.

"There was a trick or two of fence I taught you aforetime.
I had meant to remind you of 'em. But enough, lad. Shake hands.
. . . The Lord have you in His keeping!"

Good man! For a long while after we had thrust off from the quay,
the two seamen in the cock-boat towing us, he stood there and waved
farewells; but turned before we reached the river bend, and went his
way up through the woods--since in Cornwall it is held unlucky to
watch departing friends clean out of sight.

Almost at once I went below in search of my hammock, and there slept
ten solid hours by the clock; a feat of which I never witted until,
coming upon deck, I rubbed my eyes to find no sight of land, but the
sea all around us, and Captain Pomery at the helm, with the sun but a
little above his right shoulder. The sky, but for a few fleeced
clouds, was clear; a brisk north-westerly breeze blew steady on our
starboard quarter, and before it the ketch ran with a fine hiss of
water about her bluff bows. My father and Nat were stretched with a
board between them on the deck by the foot of the mizzen, deep in a
game of chequers: and without disturbing them I stepped amidships
where Mr. Fett lay prone on his belly, his chin propped on both
hands, in discourse with Billy and Mr. Badcock, who reclined with
their backs against the starboard bulwark.

"Tut, man!" said Mr. Fett, cheerfully, addressing Billy. "You have
taken the right classical way with her: think of Theseus and Ariadne,
Phaon and Sappho. . . . We are back in the world's first best age;
when a man, if he wanted a woman to wife, sailed in a ship and
abducted her, as did the Tyrian sea-captain with Io daughter of
Inachus, Jason with Medea, Paris with Helen of Greece; and again,
when he tired of her, left her on an island and sailed away.
There was Sappho, now; she ran and cast herself off a rock.
And Medea, she murdered her children in revenge. But we are over
hasty, to talk of children."

Billy groaned aloud, "I meant no harm to the woman."

"Nor did these heroes. As I was saying, on board this ship I find
myself back in the world's dawn, ready for any marvels, but
responsible (there's the beauty of it) only to my ledger.
As supercargo I sit careless as a god on Olympus. My pen is trimmed,
my ink-pot filled, and my ledger ruled and prepared for miracles.
_Item_, a Golden Fleece. _Item_, A king's runaway daughter, slightly
damaged:

"Whatever befel the good ship _Argo_
It didn't affect the supercargo,"

who whistled and sat composing blank verse, having discovered that
Jason rhymed most unheroically with bason:

"Neglecting the daughter of Aeson
Sat Jason, a bason his knees on--"

"You don't help a man much, sir, so far as I understand you,"
grumbled Billy, with a nervous glance around the horizon.

"Well, then I'll prescribe you another way. Nobody believes me when
I tell the following story: but 'tis true nevertheless. So listen--

MR. FETT'S STORY OF THE INTERRUPTED BETROTHAL.

"To the south of the famous city of Oxford, between it and the town
of Abingdon, lies a neat covert called Bagley Wood: in the which, on
a Sunday evening a bare two months ago, I chose to wander with my
stage copy of Mr. Otway's _Orphan_--a silly null play, sirs, if not
altogether the nonsense for which Abingdon, two nights later,
condemned it. While I wandered amid the undergrowth, conning my
part, my attention was arrested by a female voice on the summer
breeze, most pitiably entreating for help. I closed my book and bent
my steps in the direction of the outcries. Judge of my amazement
when, parting the bushes in a secluded glade, I came upon a
distressed but not uncomely maiden, buried up to her neck in earth
beneath the spreading boughs of a beech. To exhume and release her
cost me, unprovided as I was with any tool for the purpose, no little
labour. At length, however, I disengaged her and was rewarded with
her story; which ran, that a faithless swain, having decoyed her into
the recesses of the wood, had pushed her into a pit prepared by him;
and that but for the double accident of having miscalculated her
inches and being startled by my recitations of Otway into a terror
that the whole countryside was after him with hue and cry, he had
undoubtedly consummated his fell design. After cautioning her to be
more careful in future I parted from the damsel (who to the last
protested her gratitude) and walked homeward to my lodgings, on the
way reflecting how frail a thing is woman when matched against man
the libertine."

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