Project Gutenberg's Sir John Constantine, by Prosper Paleologus Constantine

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Title: Sir John Constantine
       Memoirs Of His Adventures At Home And Abroad And
       Particularly In The Island Of Corsica: Beginning With The
       Year 1756

Author: Prosper Paleologus Constantine

Editor: "Q" (A. T. Quiller-Couch)

Release Date: April 6, 2005 [EBook #15565]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE ***




Produced by Lionel Sear





SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.


MEMOIRS OF HIS ADVENTURES AT HOME AND ABROAD AND PARTICULARLY IN
THE ISLAND OF CORSICA: BEGINNING WITH THE YEAR 1756.


WRITTEN BY HIS SON PROSPER PALEOLOGUS OTHERWISE CONSTANTINE AND
EDITED BY "Q" (A. T. QUILLER-COUCH).

     "For knighthood is not in the feats of warre,
        As for to fight in quarrel right or wrong,
      But in a cause which truth can not defarre
        He ought himself for to make sure and strong
        Justice to keep mixt with mercy among:
          And no quarrell a knight ought to take
          But for a truth, or for a woman's sake."



TO THE READER


A hundred and fifty episodes, two sermons, and a number of moral
digressions, have been omitted from this story.

The late ingenious Mr. Fett (whose acquaintance you will make in the
following pages), having been commissioned by Mr. Dodsley, the
publisher, to write a conspectus of the Present State of the Arts in
Italy at two guineas the folio--a fair price for that class of work--
had delivered close upon two hundred folios before Mr. Dodsley
interposed, professing unbounded admiration of the work, its style,
and matter, but desiring to know when he might expect the end:
"For," said he, "I have other enterprises which will soon be
demanding attention, and, as a business-man, I like to make my
arrangements in good time."  To this Mr. Fett replied, that he, for
his part, being well content with the rate of remuneration, did not
propose to end the work at all!--and, the agreement, having
unaccountably failed to stipulate for any such thing as a conclusion,
Mr. Dodsley had to compound for one at a crippling price.

So this story had, in Browning's phrase, "grown old along with me,"
but for the forethought of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., in limiting
its serial flow to twelve numbers of _The Cornhill Magazine_
As it is, I have added a few chapters; but a hundred and fifty
episodes remain unwritten, with the courtships of Mr. Priske, and the
funeral oration spoken by the Rev. Mr. Grylls over the cenotaph Of
Sir John Constantine in Constantine Parish Church.  These omissions,
however, may be remedied if you will ask the publishers for another
edition.

Now, if it be objected against some of the adventures of Sir John
Constantine that they are extravagant, or against some of his notions
that they are fantastic, I answer that this book attempts to describe
a man and not one of these calculable little super men who, of late,
have been taking up so much more of your attention than they deserve.
Students who engage in psychical research, as it is called, often
confess themselves puzzled by the behaviour of ghosts, it appears to
them wayward and trivial.  How much more likely are ghosts to be
puzzled by the actions of real men?  And we are surely ghosts if we
keep nothing of the blood which sent our fathers like schoolboys to
the crusades.

Lastly, my friend, if you would know anything of the writer who has
so often addressed you under an initial, you may find as much of him
here as in any of his books.  Here is interred part, at any rate, of
the soul of the Bachelor Q, in a book which, though it tell of
adventures, I would ask you not to disdain, though you be a boy no
longer.  An acquaintance of mine near the Land's End had a
remarkably fine tree of apples--to be precise, of Cox's Orange
Pippins--and one night was robbed of the whole of them.  But what,
think you, had the thief left behind him, at the foot of the tree?
Why, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.

ARTHUR T. QUILLER-COUCH.

THE HAVEN, FOWEY, October 1st, 1906.



CONTENTS


Chapter.


I.       OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.

II.      I RIDE ON A PILGRIMAGE.

III.    I ACQUIRE A KINGDOM.

IV.     LONG VACATION.

V.      THE SILENT MEN.

VI.     HOW MY FATHER OUT OF NOTHING BUILT AN ARMY, AND IN FIVE
        MINUTES PLANNED AN INVASION.

VII.    THE COMPANY OF THE ROSE.

VIII.   TRIBULATIONS OF A MAYOR.

IX.     I ENLIST AN ARMY.

X.      OF THE DISCOURSE HELD ON BOARD THE "GAUNTLET".

XI.     WE FALL IN WITH A SALLEE ROVER.

XII.    HOW WE LANDED ON THE ISLAND.

XIII.   HOW, WITHOUT FIGHTING, OUR ARMY WASTED BY ENCHANTMENT.

XIV.    HOW BY MEANS OF HER WINE I CAME TO CIRCE.

XV.     I BECOME HOSTAGE TO PRINCESS CAMILLA.

XVI.    THE FOREST HUT.

XVII.   THE FIRST CHALLENGE.

XVIII.  THE TENDER MERCIES OF PRINCE CAMILLO.

XIX.    HOW MARC'ANTONIO NURESD ME AND GAVE ME COUNSEL.

XX.     I LEARN OF LIBERTY, AND AM RESTORED TO IT.

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

XXII.   THE GREAT ADVENTURE.

XXIII.  ORDEAL AND CHOOSING.

XXIV.   THE WOOING OF PRINCESS CAMILLA.

XXV.    MY WEDDING DAY.

XXVI.   THE FLAME AND THE ALTAR.

XXVII.  MY MISTRESS RE-ENLISTS ME.

XXVIII. GENOA.

XXIX.   VENDETTA.

XXX.    THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.

        POSTSCRIPT.





SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.




CHAPTER I.


OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.


     "I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection
      may not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man,
      that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his
      affection stands to a continuance of a noble name and house,
      and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it: and
      yet time hath his revolution, there must be a period and an end
      of all temporal things, _finis rerum_, an end of names and
      dignities and whatsoever is terrene. . . . For where is Bohun?
      Where is Mowbray?  Where is Mortimer?  Nay, which is more
      and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are intombed in the
      urns and sepulchres of mortality."--_Lord Chief Justice Crewe_.

My father, Sir John Constantine of Constantine, in the county of
Cornwall, was a gentleman of ample but impoverished estates, who by
renouncing the world had come to be pretty generally reputed a
madman.  This did not affect him one jot, since he held precisely the
same opinion of his neighbours--with whom, moreover, he continued on
excellent terms.  He kept six saddle horses in a stable large enough
for a regiment of cavalry; a brace of setters and an infirm spaniel
in kennels which had sometime held twenty couples of hounds; and
himself and his household in a wing of his great mansion, locking off
the rest, with its portraits and tapestries, cases of books, and
stands of antique arms, to be a barrack for the mice.  This household
consisted of his brother-in-law, Gervase (a bachelor of punctual
habits but a rambling head); a butler, Billy Priske; a cook, Mrs.
Nance, who also looked after the housekeeping; two serving-maids;
and, during his holidays, the present writer.  My mother (an Arundell
of Trerice) had died within a year after giving me birth; and after a
childhood which lacked playmates, indeed, but was by no means
neglected or unhappy, my father took me to Winchester College, his
old school, to be improved in those classical studies which I had
hitherto followed desultorily under our vicar, Mr. Grylls, and there
entered me as a Commoner in the house of Dr. Burton, Head-master.
I had spent almost four years at Winchester at the date (Midsummer,
1756) when this story begins.

To return to my father.  He was, as the world goes, a mass of
contrarieties.  A thorough Englishman in the virtues for which
foreigners admire us, and in the extravagance at which they smile, he
had never even affected an interest in the politics over which
Englishmen grow red in the face; and this in his youth had commended
him to Walpole, who had taken him up and advanced him as well for his
abilities, address, and singularly fine presence as because his
estate then seemed adequate to maintain him in any preferment.
Again Walpole's policy abroad--which really treated warfare as the
evil it appears in other men's professions--condemned my father, a
born soldier, to seek his line in diplomacy; wherein he had no sooner
built a reputation by services at two or three of the Italian courts
than, with a knighthood in hand and an ambassadorship in prospect, he
suddenly abandoned all, cast off the world, and retired into
Cornwall, to make a humdrum marriage and practise fishing for trout.

The reason of it none knew, or how his estate had come to be
impoverished, as beyond doubt it was.  Here again he showed himself
unlike the rest of men, in that he let the stress of poverty fall
first upon himself, next upon his household, last of all upon his
tenants and other dependants.  After my mother's death he cut down
his own charges (the cellar only excepted) to the last penny, shut
himself off in a couple of rooms, slept in a camp bed, wore an old
velveteen coat in winter and in summer a fisherman's smock, ate
frugally, and would have drunk beer or even water had not his stomach
abhorred them both.  Of wine he drank in moderation--that is to say,
for him, since his temperance would have sent nine men out of ten
under the table--and of the best.  He had indeed a large and
obstinate dignity in his drinking.  It betrayed, even as his carriage
betrayed beneath his old coat, a king in exile.

Yet while he pinched himself with these economies, he drew no
strings--or drew them tenderly--upon the expenses and charities of a
good landlord.  The fences rotted around his own park and
pleasure-grounds, but his tenants' fences, walls, roofs stood in more
than moderate repair, nor (although my uncle Gervase groaned over the
accounts) would an abatement of rent be denied, the appeal having
been weighed and found to be reasonable.  The rain--which falls alike
upon the just and the unjust--beat through his own roof, but never
through the labourer's thatch; and Mrs. Nance, the cook, who hated
beggars, might not without art and secrecy dismiss a single beggar
unfed.  His religion he told to no man, but believed the practice of
worship to be good for all men, and regularly encouraged it by
attending church on Sundays and festivals.  He and the vicar ruled
our parish together in amity, as fellow-Christians and rival anglers.

Now, all these apparent contrarieties in my father flowed in fact
from a very rare simplicity, and this simplicity again had its origin
in his lineage, which was something more than royal.

On the Cornish shore of the Tamar River, which divides Cornwall from
Devon, and a little above Saltash, stands the country church of
Landulph, so close by the water that the high tides wash by its
graveyard wall.  Within the church you will find a mural tablet of
brass thus inscribed--


     "Here lyeth the body of Theodoro Paleologvs of Pesaro in
      Italye, descended from ye Imperyall lyne of ye last Christian
      Emperors of Greece being the sonne of Camilio ye sonne of
      Prosper the sonne of Theodoro the sonne of John ye sonne of
      Thomas second brother to Constantine Paleologvs, the 8th of
      that name and last of yt lyne yt raygned in Constantinople
      vntill svbdewed by the Tvrks who married with Mary ye davghter
      of William Balls of Hadlye in Svffolke gent & had issve 5
      children Theodoro John Ferdinando Maria & Dorothy & dep'ted
      this life at Clyfton ye 21th of Ianvary 1636"

Above these words the tablet bears an eagle engraved with two heads,
and its talons resting upon two gates of Rome and Constantinople,
with (for difference) a crescent between the gates, and over all an
imperial crown.  In truth this exile buried by Tamar drew his blood
direct from the loins of the great Byzantine emperors, through that
Thomas of whom Mahomet II.  said, "I have found many slaves in
Peloponnesus, but this man only:" and from Theodore, through his
second son John, came the Constantines of Constantine--albeit with a
bar sinister, of which my father made small account.  I believe he
held privately that a Constantine, _de stirpe imperatorum_, had no
call to concern himself with petty ceremonies of this or that of the
Church's offshoots to legitimize his blood.  At any rate no bar
sinister appeared on the imperial escutcheon repeated, with
quarterings of Arundel, Mohun, Grenville, Nevile, Archdeckne,
Courtney, and, again, Arundel, on the wainscots and in the windows of
Constantine, usually with the legend _Dabit Devs His Qvoqve Finem_,
but twice or thrice with a hopefuller one, _Generis revocemvs
honores_.

Knowing him to be thus descended, you could recognize in all my
father said or did a large simplicity as of the earlier gods, and a
dignity proper to a king as to a beggar, but to no third and mean
state.  A child might beard him, but no man might venture a liberty
with him or abide the rare explosions of his anger.  You might even,
upon long acquaintance, take him for a great, though mad, Englishman,
and trust him as an Englishman to the end; but the soil of his nature
was that which grows the vine--volcanic, breathing through its pores
a hidden heat to answer the sun's.  Whether or no there be in man a
faith to remove mountains, there is in him (and it may come to the
same thing) a fire to split them, and anon to clothe the bare rock
with tendrils and soft-scented blooms.

In person my father stood six feet five inches tall, and his
shoulders filled a doorway.  His head was large and shapely, and he
carried it with a very noble poise; his face a fine oval, broad
across the brow and ending in a chin at once delicate and masterful;
his nose slightly aquiline; his hair--and he wore his own, tied with
a ribbon--of a shining white.  His cheeks were hollow and would have
been cadaverous but for their hue, a sanguine brown, well tanned by
out-of-door living.  His eyes, of an iron-grey colour, were fierce or
gentle as you took him, but as a rule extraordinarily gentle.
He would walk you thirty miles any day without fatigue, and shoot you
a woodcock against any man; but as an angler my uncle Gervase beat
him.

He spoke Italian as readily as English; French and the modern Greek
with a little more difficulty; and could read in Greek, Latin, and
Spanish.  His books were the "Meditations" of the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, and Dante's "Divine Comedy," with the "Aeneis," Ariosto,
and some old Spanish romances next in order.  I do not think he cared
greatly for any English writers but Donne and Izaak Walton, of whose
"Angler" and "Life of Sir Henry Wotton" he was inordinately fond.
In particular he admired the character of this Sir Henry Wotton,
singling him out among "the famous nations of the dead" (as Sir
Thomas Browne calls them) for a kind of posthumous friendship--nay,
almost a passion of memory.  To be sure, though with more than a
hundred years between them, both had been bred at Winchester, and
both had known courts and embassies and retired from them upon
private life. . . . But who can explain friendship, even after all
the essays written upon it?  Certainly to be friends with a dead man
was to my father a feat neither impossible nor absurd.

Yet he possessed two dear living friends at least in my Uncle Gervase
and Mr. Grylls, and had even dedicated a temple to their friendship.
It stood about half a mile away from the house, at the foot of the
old deer-park: a small Ionic summer-house set on a turfed slope
facing down a dell upon the Helford River.  A spring of water, very
cold and pure, rose bubbling a few paces from the porch and tumbled
down the dell with a pretty chatter.  Tradition said that it had once
been visited and blessed by St. Swithun, for which cause my father
called his summer-house by the saint's name, and annually on his
festival (which falls on the 15th of July) caused wine and dessert to
be carried out thither, where the three drank to their common pastime
and discoursed of it in the cool of the evening within earshot of the
lapsing water.  On many other evenings they met to smoke their pipes
here, my father and Mr. Grylls playing at chequers sometimes, while
my uncle wrapped and bent, till the light failed him, new trout flies
for the next day's sport; but to keep St. Swithun's feast they never
omitted, which my father commemorated with a tablet set against the
back wall and bearing these lines--

     "Peace to this house within this little wood,
      Named of St. Swithun and his brotherhood
      That here would meet and punctual on his day
      Their heads and hands and hearts together lay.
      Nor may no years the mem'ries three untwine
      Of Grylls          W.G.
      And Arundell       G.A.
      And Constantine    J.C.      Anno 1752
           Flvmina amem silvasqve inglorivs."

Of these two friends of my father I shall speak in their proper
place, but have given up this first chapter to him alone.  My readers
maybe will grumble that it omits to tell what they would first choose
to learn: the reason why he had exchanged fame and the world for a
Cornish exile.  But as yet he only--and perhaps my uncle Gervase, who
kept the accounts--held the key to that secret.



CHAPTER II.


I RIDE ON A PILGRIMAGE.

     "_Heus Rogere! fer caballos; Eja, nunc eamus!"
                                                   Domum.


At Winchester, which we boys (though we fared hardly) never doubted
to be the first school in the world, as it was the most ancient in
England, we had a song we called _Domum_: and because our common
pride in her--as the best pride will--belittled itself in speech, I
trust that our song honoured Saint Mary of Winton the more in that it
celebrated only the joys of leaving her.

The tale went, it had been composed (in Latin, too) by a boy detained
at school for a punishment during the summer holidays.  Another fable
improved on this by chaining him to a tree.  A third imprisoned him
in cloisters whence, through the arcades and from the ossuaries of
dead fellows and scholars, he poured out his soul to the swallows
haunting the green garth--

     "Jam repetit domum
      Daulias advena,
      Nosque domum repetamus."

Whatever its origin, our custom was to sing it as the holidays--
especially the summer holidays--drew near, and to repeat it as they
drew nearer, until every voice was hoarse.  As I remember, we kept up
this custom with no decrease of fervour through the heats of June
1756, though they were such that our _hostiarius_ Dr. Warton, then a
new broom, swept us out of school and for a fortnight heard our books
(as the old practice had been) in cloisters, where we sat upon cool
stone and in the cool airs, and between our tasks watched the
swallows at play.  Nevertheless we panted, until evening released us
to wander forth along the water-meadows by Itchen and bathe, and,
having bathed, to lie naked amid the mints and grasses for a while
before returning in the twilight.

This bathing went on, not in one or two great crowds, but in groups,
and often in pairs only, scattered along the river-bank almost all
the way to Hills; it being our custom again at Winchester (and I
believe it still continues) to _socius_ or walk with one companion;
and only at one or two favoured pools would several of these couples
meet together for the sport.  On the evening of which I am to tell,
my companion was a boy named Fiennes, of about my own age, and we
bathed alone, though not far away to right and left the bank teemed
with outcries and laughter and naked boys running all silvery as
their voices in the dusk.

With all this uproar the trout of Itchen, as you may suppose, had
gone into hiding; but doubtless some fine fellows lay snug under the
stones, and--the stream running shallow after the heats--as we
stretched ourselves on the grass Fiennes challenged me to tickle for
one; it may be because he had heard me boast of my angling feats at
home.  There seemed a likely pool under the farther bank; convenient,
except that to take up the best position beside it I must get the
level sun full in my face.  I crept across, however, Fiennes keeping
silence, laid myself flat on my belly, and peered down into the pool,
shading my eyes with one hand.  For a long while I saw no fish, until
the sun-rays, striking aslant, touched the edge of a golden fin very
prettily bestowed in a hole of the bank and well within an overlap of
green weed.  Now and again the fin quivered, but for the most part my
gentleman lay quiet as a stone, head to stream, and waited for relief
from these noisy Wykehamists.  Experience, perhaps, had taught him to
despise them; at any rate, when gently--very gently--I lowered my
hand and began to tickle, he showed neither alarm nor resentment.

"Is it a trout?" demanded Fiennes, in an excited whisper from the
farther shore.  But of course I made no answer, and presently I
supposed that he must have crept off to his clothes, for some way up
the stream I heard the Second Master's voice warning the bathers to
dress and return, and with his usual formula, _Ite domum saturae,
venit Hesperus, ite capelloe!  Being short-sighted, he missed to spy
me, and I felt, rather than saw or heard, him pass on; for with one
hand I yet shaded my eyes while with the other I tickled.

Yet another two minutes went by, and then with a jerk I had my trout,
my thumb and forefinger deep under his gills; brought down my other
clutch upon him and, lifting, flung him back over me among the meadow
grass, my posture being such that I could neither hold him struggling
nor recover my own balance save by rolling sideways over on my
shoulder-pin; which I did, and, running to him where he gleamed and
doubled, flipping the grasses, caught him in both hands and held him
aloft.

But other voices than Fiennes' answered my shout over the river--
voices that I knew, though they belonged not to this hour nor to this
place; and blinking against the sun, now sinning level across
Lavender Meads, I was aware of two tall figures standing dark against
it, and of a third and shorter one between whose legs it poured in
gold as through a natural arch.  Sure no second man in England wore
Billy Priske's legs!

Then, and while I stood amazed, my father's voice and my Uncle
Gervase's called to me together: and gulping down all wonder,
possessed with love only and a wild joy--but yet grasping my fish--
I splashed across the shallows and up the bank, and let my father
take me naked to his heart.

"So, lad," said he, after a moment, thrusting me a little back by the
shoulders (while I could only sob), and holding me so that the sun
fell full on me, "Dost truly love me so much?"

"Clivver boy, clivver boy!" said the voice of Billy Priske.
"Lord, now, what things they do teach here beside the Latin!"

The rogue said it, as I knew, to turn my father's suspicion, having
himself taught me the poacher's trick.  But my uncle Gervase, whose
mind moved as slowly as it was easily diverted, answered with
gravity--

"It is hard knowing what may or may not be useful in after life,
seeing that God in His wisdom hides what that life is to be."

"Very true," agreed my father, with a twinkle, and took snuff.

"But--but what brings you here?" cried I, with a catch of the breath,
ignoring all this.

"Nevertheless, such comely lads as they be," my uncle continued,
"God will doubtless bring them to good.  Comelier lads, brother, I
never saw, nor, I think, the sun never shined on; yet there was one,
at the bowls yonder, was swearing so it grieved me to the heart."

"Put on your clothes, boy," said my father, answering me.  "We have
ridden far, but we bring no ill news; and to-morrow--I have the
Head-master's leave for it--you ride on with us to London."

"To London!"  My heart gave another great leap, as every boy's must
on hearing that he is to see London for the first time.  But here we
all turned at a cry from Billy Priske, between whose planted ankles
Master Fiennes had mischievously crept and was measuring the span
between with extended thumb and little finger.  My father stooped,
haled him to his feet by the collar, and demanded what he did.

"Why, sir, he's a Colossus!" quoted that nimble youth;

                             "'and we petty men
           Walk under his huge legs and peer about--'"

"And will find yourself a dishonourable grave," my father capped him.
"What's your name, boy?"

"Fiennes, sir; Nathaniel Fiennes."  The lad saluted.

My father lifted his hat in answer.  "Founder's kin?"

"I am here on that condition, sir."

"Then you are kinsman, as well as namesake, of him who saved our
Wykeham's tomb in the Parliament troubles.  I felicitate you, sir,
and retract my words, for by that action of your kinsman's shall the
graves of all his race and name be honoured."

Young Fiennes bowed.  "Compliments fly, sir, when gentlemen meet.
But"--and he glanced over his shoulder and rubbed the small of his
back expressively, "as a Wykehamist, you will not have me late at
names-calling."

"Go, boy, and answer to yours; they can call no better one."
My father dipped a hand in his pocket.  "I may not invite you to
breakfast with us to-morrow, for we start early; and you will excuse
me if I sin against custom. . . . It was esteemed a laudable practice
in my time."  A gold coin passed.

"_Et in saecula saeculo--o--rum.  Amen!_"  Master Fiennes spun the
coin, pocketed it, and went off whistling schoolwards over the meads.

My father linked his arm in mine and we followed, I asking, and the
three of them answering, a hundred questions of home.  But why, or on
what business, we were riding to London on the morrow my father would
not tell.  "Nay, lad," said he, "take your Bible and read that Isaac
asked no questions on the way to Moriah."

"My uncle, who overheard this, considered it for a while, and said--

"The difference is that you are not going to sacrifice Prosper."

The three were to lie that night at the George Inn, where they had
stabled their horses; and at the door of the Head-master's house,
where we Commoners lodged, they took leave of me, my father
commending me to God and good dreams.  That they were happy ones I
need not tell.

He was up and abroad early next morning, in time to attend chapel,
where by the vigour of his responses he set the nearer boys
tittering; two of whom I afterwards fought for it, though with what
result I cannot remember.  The service, which we urchins heeded
little, left him pensive as we walked together towards the inn, and
he paused once or twice, with eyes downcast on the cobbles, and
muttered to himself.

"I am striving to recollect my Morning Lines, lad," he confessed at
length, with a smile; "and thus, I think, they go.  The great Sir
Henry Wotton, you have heard me tell of, in the summer before his
death made a journey hither to Winchester; and as he returned towards
Eton he said to a friend that went with him: 'How useful was that
advice of an old monk that we should perform our devotions in a
constant place, because we so meet again with the very thoughts which
possessed us at our last being there.'  And, as Walton tells,
'I find it,'" he said, "'thus far experimentally true, that at my now
being in that school and seeing that very place where I sat when I
was a boy occasioned me to remember those very thoughts of my youth
which then possessed me: sweet thoughts indeed--'"

Here my father paused.  "Let me be careful, now.  I should be perfect
in the words, having read them more than a hundred times.
'Sweet thoughts indeed,'" said he, "'that promised my growing years
numerous pleasures, without mixture of cares; and those to be enjoyed
when time--which I therefore thought slow-paced--had changed my youth
into manhood.  But age and experience have taught me these were but
empty hopes, for I have always found it true, as my Saviour did
foretell, _Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof_.
Nevertheless, I saw there a succession of boys using the same
recreations, and, questionless, possessed with the same thoughts that
then possessed me.  Thus one generation succeeds another, both in
their lives, recreations, hopes, fears, and death.'"

"But I would not have you, lad," he went on, "to pay too much heed to
these thoughts, which will come to you in time, for as yet you are
better without 'em.  Nor were they my only thoughts: for having
brought back my own sacrifice, which I had sometime hoped might be so
great, but now saw to be so little, at that moment I looked down to
your place in chapel and perceived that I had brought belike the best
offering of all.  So my hope--thank God!--sprang anew as I saw you
there standing vigil by what bright armour you guessed not, nor in
preparation for what high warfare."  He laid a hand on my shoulder.
"Your chapel to-day, child, has been the longer by a sermon.
There, there! forget all but the tail on't."

We rode out of Winchester with a fine clatter, all four of us upon
hired nags, the Cornish horses being left in the stables to rest;
and after crossing the Hog's Back, baited at Guildford.
A thunderstorm in the night had cleared the weather, which, though
fine, was cooler, with a brisk breeze playing on the uplands; and
still as we went my spirits sang with the larks overhead, so blithe
was I to be sitting in saddle instead of at a scob, and riding to
London between the blown scents of hedgerow and hayfield and
beanfield, all fragrant of liberty yet none of them more delicious to
a boy than the mingled smell of leather and horseflesh.  Billy Priske
kept up a chatter beside me like a brook's.  He had never till now
been outside of Cornwall but in a fishing-boat, and though he had
come more than two hundred miles each new prospect was a marvel to
him.  My father told me that, once across the Tamar ferry, being told
that he was now in Devonshire, he had sniffed and observed the air to
be growing "fine and stuffy;" and again, near Holt Forest, where my
father announced that we were crossing the border between Hampshire
and Surrey, he drew rein and sat for a moment looking about him and
scratching his head.

"The Lord's ways be past finding out," he murmured.  "Not so much as
a post!"

"Why _should_ there be a post?" demanded my uncle.  "Why, sir, for
the men of Hampshire and the men of Surrey to fight over and curse
one another by on Ash Wednesdays.  But where there's no landmark a
plain man can't remove it, and where he can't remove it I don't see
how he can be cursed for it."

"'Twould be a great inconvenience, as you say, Billy, if, for the
sake of argument, the men of Hampshire wanted to curse the men of
Surrey."

"They couldn't do it"--Billy shook his head--"for the sake of
argument or any other sake; and therefore I say, though not one to
dictate to the Lord, that if a river can't be managed hereabouts--
and, these two not being Devon and Cornwall, a whole river might be
overdoing things--there ought to be some little matter of a
trout-stream, or at the least a notice-board."

"The fellow's right," said my father.  "Man would tire too soon of
his natural vices; so we invent new ones for him by making laws and
boundaries."

"Surely and virtues too," suggested my uncle, as we rode forward
again.  "You will not deny that patriotism is a virtue?"

"Not I," said my father; "nor that it is the finest invention of
all."

I remember the Hog's Back and the breeze blowing there because on the
highest rise we came on a gibbet and rode around it to windward on
the broad turfy margin of the road; and also because the sight put my
father in mind of a story which he narrated on the way down to
Guildford.


THE STORY OF OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY.

"It is told," began my father, "in a sermon of the famous Vieyras--"

"For what was he famous?" asked my uncle.

"For being a priest, and yet preaching so good a sermon on love.  It
is told in it that in the kingdom of Valencia there lived an hidalgo,
young and rich, who fell in love with a virtuous lady, ill treated by
her husband: and she with him, howbeit without the least thought of
evil.  But, as evil suspects its like, so this husband doubted the
fidelity which was his without his deserving, and laid a plot to be
revenged.  On the pretext of the summer heats he removed with his
household to a country house; and there one day he entered a room
where his wife sat alone, turned the key, and, drawing out a dagger,
ordered her to write what he should dictate.  She, being innocent,
answered him that there was no need of daggers, but she would write,
as her duty was, what he commanded: which was, a letter to the young
hidalgo telling him that her husband had left home on business; that
if her lover would come, she was ready to welcome him; and that, if
he came secretly the next night, he would find the garden gate open,
and a ladder placed against the window.  This she wrote and signed,
seeing no escape; and, going to her own room, commended her fears and
her weakness to the Virgin.

"The young hidalgo, on receiving the letter (very cautiously
delivered), could scarcely believe his bliss, but prepared, as you
will guess, to embrace it.  Having dressed himself with care, at the
right hour he mounted his horse and rode out towards his lady's
house.  Now, he was a devout youth, as youths go, and on his way he
remembered--which was no little thing on such an occasion--that since
morning he had not said over his rosary as his custom was.
So he began to tell it bead by bead, when a voice near at hand said
'Halt, Cavalier!'  He drew his sword and peered around him in the
darkness, but could see no one, and was fumbling his rosary again
when again the voice spoke, saying, 'Look up, Cavalier!' and looking
up, he beheld against the night a row of wayside gibbets, and rode in
among them to discover who had called him.  To his horror one of the
malefactors hanging there spoke down to him, begging to be cut loose;
'and,' said the poor wretch, 'if you will light the heap of twigs at
your feet and warm me by it, your charity shall not be wasted.'
For Christian charity then the youth, having his sword ready, cut him
down, and the gallows knave fell on his feet and warmed himself at
the lit fire.  'And now,' said he, being warmed, 'you must take me up
behind your saddle; for there is a plot laid to-night from which I
only can deliver you.'  So they mounted and rode together to the
house, where, having entered the garden by stealth, they found the
ladder ready set.  'You must let me climb first,' said the knave; and
had no sooner reached the ladder's top than two or three pistol shots
were fired upon him from the window and as many hands reached out and
stabbed him through and through until he dropped into the ditch;
whence, however, he sprang on his feet, and catching our hidalgo by
the arm hurried him back through the garden to the gate where his
horse stood tethered.  There they mounted and rode away into safety,
the dead behind the living.  'All this is enchantment to me,' said
the youth as they went.  'But I must thank you, my friend; for
whether dead or alive--and to my thinking you must be doubly dead--
you have rendered me a great service.'  'You may say a mass for me,
and thank you,' the dead man answered; 'but for the service you must
thank the Mother of God, who commanded me and gave me power to
deliver you, and has charged me to tell you the reason of her
kindness: which is, that every day you say her rosary.'  'I do thank
her and bless her then,' replied the youth, 'and henceforth will I
say her rosary not once daily but thrice, for that she hath preserved
my life to-night.'"

"A very proper resolution," said my uncle.

"And I hope, sir, he kept it," chimed in Billy Priske; "good
Protestant though I be."

"The story is not ended," said my father.  "The dead man--they were
dismounted now and close under the gallows--looked at the young man
angrily, and said he, 'I doubt Our Lady's pains be wasted, after all.
Is it possible, sir, you think she sent me to-night to save your
life?'  'For what else?' inquired the youth.  'To save your soul,
sir, and your lady's; both of which (though you guessed not or forgot
it) stood in jeopardy just now, so that the gate open to you was
indeed the gate of Hell.  Pray hang me back as you found me," he
concluded, 'and go your ways for a fool.'"

"Now see what happened.  The murderers in the house, coming down to
bury the body and finding it not, understood that the young man had
not come alone; from which they reasoned that his servants had
carried him off and would publish the crime.  They therefore, with
their master, hurriedly fled out of the country.  The lady betook
herself to a religious house, where in solitude questioning herself
she found that in will, albeit not in act, she had been less than
faithful.  As for the hidalgo, he rode home and shut himself within
doors, whence he came forth in a few hours as a man from a
sepulchre--which, indeed, to his enemies he evidently was when they
heard that he was abroad and unhurt whom they had certainly stabbed
to death; and to his friends almost as great a marvel when they
perceived the alteration of his life; yea, and to himself the
greatest of all, who alone knew what had passed, and, as by
enchantment his life had taken this turn, so spent its remainder like
a man enchanted rather than converted.  I am told," my father
concluded, "though the sermon says nothing about it, that he and the
lady came in the end, and as by an accident, to be buried side by
side, at a little distance, in the Chapel of Our Lady of Succour in
the Cathedral church of Valencia, and there lie stretched--two
parallels of dust--to meet only at the Resurrection when the desires
of all dust shall be purged away."

With this story my father beguiled the road down into Guildford, and
of his three listeners I was then the least attentive.
Years afterwards, as you shall learn, I had reason to remember it.

At Guildford, where we fed ourselves and hired a relay of horses, I
took Billy aside and questioned him (forgetting the example of Isaac)
why we were going to London and on what business.  He shook his head.

"Squire knows," said he.  "As for me, a still tongue keeps a wise
head, and moreover I know not.  Bain't it enough for 'ee to be quit
of school and drinking good ale in the kingdom o' Guildford?
Very well, then."

"Still, one cannot help wondering," said I, half to myself; but Billy
dipped his face stolidly within his pewter.

"The last friend a man should want to take up with is his Future,"
said he, sagely.  "I knows naught about en but what's to his
discredit--as that I shall die sooner or later, a thing that goes
against my stomach; or that at the best I shall grow old, which runs
counter to my will.  He's that uncomfortable, too, you can't please
him.  Take him hopeful, and you're counting your chickens; take him
doleful, and foreboding is worse than witchcraft.  There was a
Mevagissey man I sailed with as a boy--and your father's tale just
now put me in mind of him--paid half a crown to a conjurer, one time,
to have his fortune told; which was, that he would marry the ugliest
maid in the parish.  Whereby it preyed on his mind till he hanged
hisself.  Whereby along comes the woman in the nick o' time, cuts him
down, an' marries him out o' pity while he's too weak to resist.
That's your Future; and, as I say, I keeps en at arm's length."

With this philosophy of Billy I had to be content and find my own
guesses at the mystery.  But as the afternoon wore on I kept no hold
on any speculation for more than a few minutes.  I was saddle-weary,
drowsed with sunburn and the moving landscape over which the sun,
when I turned, swam in a haze of dust.  The villages crowded closer,
and at the entry of each I thought London was come; but anon the
houses thinned and dwindled and we were between hedgerows again.
So it lasted, village after village, until with the shut of night,
when the long shadows of our horses before us melted into dusk, a
faint glow opened on the sky ahead and grew and brightened.
I knew it: but even as I saluted it my chin dropped forward and I
dozed.  In a dream I rode through the lighted streets, and at the
door of our lodgings my father lifted me down from the saddle.



CHAPTER III.


I ACQUIRE A KINGDOM.


     "_Gloucester_.  The trick of that voice I do well remember:
                     Is't not the king?"
     "_Lear_.                      Ay, every inch a king."
                                                _King Lear_.

From our lodgings, which were in Bond Street, we sallied forth next
morning to view the town; my father leading us first by way of St.
James's and across the Park to the Abbey, and on the way holding
discourse to which I recalled myself with difficulty from London's
shows and wonders--his Majesty's tall guards at the palace gates, the
gorgeous promenaders in the Mall, the swans and wild fowl on the
lake.

"I wish you to remark, my dear child," said he, "that between a
capital and solitude there is no third choice; nor, I would add, can
a mind extract the best of solitude unless it bring urbanity to the
wilderness.  Your rustic is no philosopher, and your provincial
townsman is the devil: if you would meditate in Arden, your company
must be the Duke, Jaques, Touchstone--courtiers all--or, again,
Rosalind, the Duke's daughter, if you would catch the very mood of
the forest.  I tell you this, child, that you may not be misled by my
example (which has a reason of its own and, I trust, an excuse) into
shunning your destiny though it lead and keep you in cities and among
crowds; for we have it on the word of no less busy a man than the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius that to seek out private retiring-rooms for
the soul such as country villages, the sea-shore, mountains, is but a
mistaken simplicity, seeing that at what time soever a man will it is
in his power to retire into himself and be at rest, dwelling within
the walls of a city as in a shepherd's fold of the mountain.  So also
the sainted Juan de Avila tells us that a man who trusts in God may,
if he take pains, recollect God in streets and public places better
than will a hermit in his cell; and the excellent Archbishop of
Cambrai, writing to the Countess of Gramont, counselled her to
practise recollection and give a quiet thought to God at dinner times
in a lull of the conversation, or again when she was driving or
dressing or having her hair arranged; these hindrances (said he)
profited more than any _engouement_ of devotion.

"But," he went on, "to bear yourself rightly in a crowd you must
study how one crowd differs from another, and how in one city you may
have that great orderly movement of life (whether of business or of
pleasure) which is the surrounding joy of princes in their palaces,
and an insensate mob, which is the most brutal and vilest aspect of
man.  For as in a thronged street you may learn the high meaning of
citizenship, so in a mob you may unlearn all that makes a man
dignified.  Yet even the mob you should study in a capital, as
Shakespeare did in his 'Julius Caesar' and 'Coriolanus;' for only so
can you know it in its quiddity.  I conjure you, child, to get your
sense of men from their capital cities."

He had something to tell of almost every great house we passed.
He seemed--he that had saluted no one as we crossed the Mall, saluted
of none--to walk this quarter of London with a proprietary tread; and
by and by, coming to the river, he waved an arm and broke into
panegyric.

"Other capitals have had their turn, and others will overtake and
outstrip her; but where is one in these times to compare with London?
Where in Europe will you see streets so well ordered, squares so
spacious, houses so comfortable, yet elegant, as in this mile east
and south of Hyde Park?  Where such solid, self-respecting wealth as
in our City?  Where such merchant-princes and adventurers as your
Whittingtons and Greshams?  Where half its commerce? and where a
commerce touched with one tithe of its imagination?  Where such a
river, for trade as for pageants?  On what other shore two buildings
side by side so famous, the one for just laws, civil security,
liberty with obedience, the other for heroic virtues resumed, with
their propagating dust, into the faith which sowed all and, having
reaped, renews?"

In the Abbey--where my Uncle Gervase was forced to withdraw behind a
pillar and rub Billy Priske's neck, which by this time had a crick in
it--my father's voice, as he moved from tomb to tomb, deepened to a
regal solemnity.  He repeated Beaumont's great lines--

     "Mortality, behold and fear!
      What a change of flesh is here!"

laying a hand on my shoulder the while; and in the action I
understood that this and all his previous discourse was addressed to
me with a purpose, and that somehow our visit to London had to do
with that purpose.

     "Here they lie had realms and lands
      Who now want strength to stir their hands;
      Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust
      They preach 'In greatness is no trust' . . .
      Here are sands, ignoble things,
      Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings. . . ."

I must have fallen a-wondering while he quoted in a low sonorous
voice, like a last echo of the great organ, rolling among the arches;
for as it ceased I came to myself with a start and found his eyes
searching me; also his hold on my shoulder had stiffened, and he held
me from him at arm's length.

"And yet," said he, as if to himself, "this dust is the strongest man
can build with; and we must build in our generation--quickly,
trusting in the young firm flesh; yes, quickly--and trusting--though
we know what its end must be."

These last words he muttered, and afterwards seemed to fall into a
meditation, which lasted until we found ourselves outside the Abbey
and in the light again.

From Westminster we took boat to Blackfriars, and, landing there,
walked up through the crowded traffic to a gateway opening into
Clement's Inn.  I did not know its name at the time, nor did I regard
the place as we entered, being yet fascinated with the sight of
Temple Bar and of the heads of four traitors above it on poles,
blackening in the sun; but within the courtyard we turned to the
right and mounted a staircase to the head of the second flight and to
a closed door on which my father knocked.  A clerk opened, and
presently we passed through an office into a well-sized room where,
from amid a pile of books, a grave little man rose, reached for his
wig, and, having adjusted it, bowed to us.

"Good morning!  Good morning, gentlemen!  Ah--er--Sir John
Constantine, I believe?"

My father bowed.  "At your service, Mr. Knox.  You received my
letter, then?  Let me present my brother-in-law and man of affairs,
Mr. Gervase Arundel, who will discuss with you the main part of our
business; also my son here, about whom I wrote to you."

"Eh?  Eh?"  Mr. Knox, after bowing to my uncle, put on his
spectacles, took them off, wiped them, put them on again, and
regarded me benevolently.  "Eh? so this is the boy--h'm--Jasper, I
believe?"

"Prosper," my father corrected.

"Ah, to be sure--Prosper--and I hope he will, I'm sure." Mr. Knox
chuckled at his mild little witticism and twinkled at me jocosely.
"Your letter, Sir John?  Yes, to be sure, I received it.  What you
propose is practicable, though irregular."

"Irregular?"

"Not legally irregular--oh no, not in the least.  Legally the thing's
as simple as A B C.  The man has only to take the benefit of the Act
of Insolvency, assign his estate to his creditors, and then--
supposing that they are agreed--"

"There can be no question of their agreement or disagreement.
His creditors do not exist.  As I told you, I have paid them off,
bought up all their debts, and the yes or no rests with me alone."

"Quite so; I was merely putting it as the Act directs.  Very well
then, supposing _you_ agree, nothing more is necessary than an
appearance--a purely formal appearance--at the Old Bailey, and your
unfortunate friend--"

"Pardon me," my father put in; "he is not my friend."

"Eh?" . . .  Mr. Knox removed his spectacles, breathed on them, and
rubbed them, while he regarded my father with a bewildered air.
"You'll excuse me . . . but I must own myself entirely puzzled.
Even for a friend's sake, as I was about to protest, your conduct,
sir, would be Quixotic; yes, yes, Quixotic in the highest degree, the
amount being (as you might say) princely, and the security--"
Mr. Knox paused and expressed his opinion of the security by a
pitying smile.  "But if," he resumed, "this man be not even your
friend, then, my dear sir, I can merely wonder."

For a moment my father seemed about to argue with him, but checked
himself.

"None the less the man is very far from being my friend," he answered
quietly.

"But surely--surely, sir, you cannot be doing this in any hope to
recover what he already owes you!  That were indeed to throw the
helve after the hatchet.  Nay, sir, it were madness--stark madness!"

My father glanced at my uncle Gervase, who stood pulling his lip;
then, with an abrupt motion, he turned on Mr. Knox again.

"You have seen him?  You delivered my letter?"

"I did."

"What was his answer?"

Mr. Knox shrugged his shoulders.  "He jumped at it, of course."

"And the boy, here!  What did he say about the boy?"

"Well, to speak truth, Sir John, he seemed passably amused by the
whole business.  The fact is, prison has broken him up.  A fine
figure he must have been in his time, but a costly one to maintain
 . . . as tall as yourself, Sir John, if not taller; and florid, as
one may say; the sort of man that must have exercise and space and a
crowd to admire him, not to mention wine and meats and female
society.  The Fleet has broken down all that.  Even with liberty I
wouldn't promise him another year of life; and, unless I'm mistaken,
he knows his case.  A rare actor, too!  It wouldn't surprise me if
he'd even deceived himself.  But the mask's off.  Your offer
overjoyed him; that goes without saying.  In spite of all your past
generosity, this new offer obviously struck him for the moment as too
good to be true.  But I cannot say, Sir John, that he made any
serious effort to keep up the imposture or pretend that the security
which he can offer is more than a sentimental one.  Not to put too
fine a point on it, he ordered in a couple of bottles of wine at my
expense, and over the second I left him laughing."

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."

"A pity but what you inherited some of it, then," said Nat, crossly.

"Tell you what, Nat"--I slewed about in my chair--"Come you down to
Cornwall and we'll stick each a rose in our hats and help this Master
Engenio, whoever he is.  I've a curiosity to discover him: and if he
be my father--he has not marked the passage, by the way--we'll have
rare fun in smoking him and tracking him unbeknown to the
_rendezvous_.  Come, lad; and if I know the Falmouth mob, you shall
have a pretty little turn-up well worth the journey."

But Nat, still staring out of window, shook his head.  He was in one
of his perverse moods--and they had been growing frequent of late--
in which nothing I could say or do seemed to content him; and for
this I chiefly accused the cordwainer's daughter, who in fact was a
decent merry girl, fond of strawberries, with no more notion of
falling in love with Nat than of running off with her father's
apprentice.  Whatever the cause of it, a cloud had been creeping over
our friendship of late.  He sought companions--some of them serious
men--with whom I could not be easy.  We kept up the pretence, but
talked no longer with entirely open hearts.  Yet I loved him; and now
in a sudden urgent desire to carry him off to Cornwall with me and
clear up all misunderstandings, I caught his arm and haled him down
to our college garden, which lies close within the city wall; and
there, pacing the broken military terrace, plied him with a dozen
reasons why he should come.  Still he shook his head to all of them;
and presently, hearing four o'clock strike, pulled up in his walk and
announced that he must be going--he had an engagement.

"And where?" I asked.

He confessed that it was to visit the poor prisoners shut up for debt
in Bocardo.

I pulled a wry mouth, remembering the dismal crew in the Fleet
Prison.  But though, the confession being forced from him, he ended
wistfully and as if upon a question, I did not offer to come.
It seemed a mighty dull way to finish a summer's afternoon.
Moreover I was nettled.  So I let him go and watched him through the
gate, thinking bitterly that our friendship was sick and drooping by
no fault of mine.

The truth was--or so I tried to excuse him--that beside his plaguey
trick of falling in and out of love he had an overhanging quarrel
with his father, a worthy man, tyrannous when crossed, who meant him
for the law.  Nat abhorred the law, and, foreseeing that the tussel
must come, vexed his honest conscience with the thought that while
delaying to declare war he was eating his father's bread.
This thought, working upon the ferment of youth, kept him like a colt
in a fretful lather.  He scribbled verses, but never finished so much
as a sonnet; he flung himself into religion, but chiefly, I thought,
to challenge and irritate his undevout friends; and he would drop any
occupation to rail at me and what he was pleased to call my phlegm.

He had some reason too, though at the time I could not discover it.
Now, looking back, I can see into what a stagnant calm I had run.
My boyhood should have been over; in body I had shot up to a great
awkward height; but for the while the man within me drowsed and hung
fire.  I lived in the passing day and was content with it.
Nat's gusts of passion amused me, and why a man should want to write
verses or fall in love was a mystery at which I arrived no nearer
than to laugh.  For this (strange as it may sound) I believe the
visit to London was partly to blame.  Nothing had come of it, except
that the unhappy King Theodore had gained his release and improved
upon it by dying, a few weeks later, in wretched lodgings in Soho;
where, at my father's expense, the church of St. Anne's now bore a
mural tablet to his memory with an epitaph obligingly contributed by
the Hon. Horace Walpole, since Earl of Orford.


                  Near this place is interred
                   THEODORE KING OF CORSICA
                   who died in this parish
                        Dec. 11, 1756
                  immediately after leaving
                   The King's Bench Prison by
               the benefit of the Act of Insolvency
                    in consequence of which
               he registered his kingdom of Corsica
                 for the use of his creditors.

            The grave, great teacher, to a level brings
            Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings;
            But Theodore this moral learned ere dead:
            Fate poured his lesson on his living head,
            Bestow'd a kingdom, and denied him bread.

My father, who copied this out for me, had announced in few words
poor Theodore's fate, but without particular allusion to our
adventure, which, as he made no movement to follow it up, or none
that he confided, I came in time to regard humorously as an escapade
of his, a holiday frolic, a piece of midsummer madness.  The serious
part was that he had undoubtedly paid away large sums of money, and
for two years my Uncle Gervase had worn a distracted air which I set
down to the family accounts.  By degrees I came to conclude, with the
rest of the world, that my father's brain was more than a little
cracked, and sounded my uncle privately about this--delicately as I
thought; but he met me with a fierce unexpected heat.  "Your father,"
said he, "is the best man in the world, and I bid you wait to
understand him better, taking my word that he has great designs for
you."  Sure enough, too, my father seemed to hint at this in the
tenor of his conversation with me, which was ever of high politics
and the government of states, or on some point which could be
stretched to bear on these; but of any immediate design he forbore--
as it seemed, carefully--to speak.  Thus I found myself at pause and
let my youth wait upon his decision.

Yet I had sense enough to feel less than satisfied with myself,
albeit sorer with Nat as I watched the dear lad go from me across
the turf and out at the garden gate.  Nor will I swear that my eyes
did not smart a little.  I was but a boy, and had set my heart on our
travelling down to Cornwall together.

To Cornwall I rode down alone, a week later, and fell to work to idle
my vacation away; fishing a little, but oftener sailing my boat;
sometimes alone, sometimes with Billy Priske for company.
  Billy--whose duties as butler were what he called a _sine qua non_,
pronounced as "shiny Canaan" and meaning a sinecure--had spent some
part of term time in netting me a trammel, of which he was
inordinately proud, and with this we amused ourselves, sailing or
rowing down to the river's mouth every evening at nightfall to set
it, and, again, soon after daybreak, to haul it, and usually
returning with good store of fish for breakfast--soles, dories,
plaice, and the red mullet for which Helford is famous above all
streams.

Now, during these lazy weeks I had not forgotten Eugenio's
advertisement, which, on returning to my rooms that evening after
Nat's rebuff, I had clipped from the newspaper and since kept in my
pocket.  For the fun of it, and to find out who this Eugenio might
be--I had given over suspecting my father--my mind was made up to
ride over to Falmouth on the 16th of July; but whether with or
without a rose in my hat I had not determined.  Therefore on the
morning of the 15th, when Billy, after hauling the trammel, began to
lay our plans for the morrow, I cut him short, telling him that
to-morrow I should not fish.

"What's matter with 'ee to-all?" he asked, smashing a spider-crab and
picking it out piecemeal from the net.  "Pretty fair catch to-day,
id'n-a? spite of all the weed; an' no harm done by these varmints
that a man can't put to rights afore evenin'."

I took the paddles without answering and pulled towards the river's
mouth, while he sat and smoked his pipe over the business of clearing
the net of weed.  Around his feet on the bottom boards lay our
morning's catch--half a dozen soles and twice the number of plaice, a
brace of edible crabs, six or seven red mullet, besides a number of
gurnard and wrass worth no man's eating, an ugly-looking monkfish and
a bream of wonderful rainbow hues.  A fog lay over the sea, so dense
that in places we could see but a few yards; but over it the tops of
the tall cliffs stood out clear, and the sun was mounting.  A faint
breeze blew from the southward.  All promised a hot still day.

The tide was making, too, and with wind and tide to help I pulled
over the river bar and towards the creek where daily, after hauling
the trammel, I bathed from the boat; a delectable corner in the eye
of the morning sunshine, paved fathoms deep with round, white
pebbles, one of which, from the gunwale, I selected to dive for.

The sun broke through the sea-fog around us while I stripped; it
shone, as I balanced myself for the plunge, on the broad wings of a
heron flapping out from the wood's blue shadow; it shone on the
scales of the fish struggling and gasping under the thwarts.
Divine the river was, divine the morning, divine the moment--the last
of my boyhood.

Souse I plunged and deep, with wide-open eyes, chose out and grasped
my pebble, and rose to the surface holding it high as though it had
been a gem.  The sound of the splash was in my ears and the echo of
my own laugh, but with it there mingled a cry from Billy Priske, and
shaking the water out of my eyes I saw him erect in the stern-sheets
and astare at a vision parting the fog--the vision of a tall
fore-and-aft sail, golden-grey against the sunlight, and above the
sail a foot or two of a stout pole-mast, and above the mast a gilded
truck and weather-vane with a tail of scarlet bunting.  So closely
the fog hung about her that for a second I took her to be a cutter;
and then a second sail crept through the curtain, and I recognized
her for the _Gauntlet_ ketch, Port of Falmouth, Captain Jo Pomery,
returned from six months' foreign.  I announced her to Billy with a
shout.

"As if a man couldn' tell that!" answered Billy, removing his cap and
rubbing the back of his head.  "What brings her in here, that's what
I'm askin'."

"Belike," said I, scrambling over the gunwale, "the man has lost his
bearings in this fog, and mistakes Helford for Falmouth entrance."

"Lost his bearin's!  Jo Pomery lost his bearin's!"  Billy regarded me
between pity and reproach.  "And him sailing her in from Blackhead
close round the Manacles, in half a capful o' wind an' the tides
lookin' fifty ways for Sunday!  That's what he've a-done, for the
weather lifted while we was hauling trammel--anyways east of south a
man could see clear for three mile and more, an' not a vessel in
sight there.  There's maybe three men in the world besides Jo Pomery
could ha' done it--the Lord knows how, unless 'tis by sense o' smell.
And he've a-lost his bearin's, says you!"

"Well then," I ventured, "perhaps he has a fancy to land part of his
cargo duty-free."

"That's likelier," Billy assented.  "I don't say 'tis the truth, mind
you: for if 'tis truth, why should the man choose to fetch land by
daylight?  Fog?  A man like Jo Pomery isn' one to mistake a little
pride-o'-the-mornin' for proper thick weather--the more by token it's
been liftin' this hour and more.  But 'tis a likelier guess anyway,
the _Gauntlet_ being from foreign.  'Lost his bearin's,' says you,
and come, as you might say, slap through the Manacles; an' by
accident, as you might say!  Luck has a broad back, my son, but be
careful how you dance 'pon it."

"Where does she come from?" I asked.

"Mediterranean; that's all I know.  Four months and more she must ha'
took on this trip.  Iss; sailed out o' Falmouth back-along in the
tail-end o' February, and her cargo muskets and other combustibles."

"Muskets?"

"Muskets; and you may leave askin' me who wants muskets out there,
for in the first place I don't know, an' a still tongue makes a wise
head."

I had slipped on shirt and breeches.  "We'll give him a hail,
anyway," said I, "and if there's sport on hand he may happen to let
us join it."

The ketch by this time was pushing her nose past the spit of rock
hiding our creek from seaward.  As she came by with both large sails
boomed out to starboard and sheets alternately sagging loose and
tautening with a jerk, I caught sight of two of her crew in the bows,
the one looking on while the other very deliberately unlashed the
anchor, and aft by the wheel a third man, whom I made out to be
Captain Pomery himself.

"_Gauntlet_ ahoy!" I shouted, standing on the thwart and making a
trumpet of my hands.

Captain Pomery turned, cast a glance towards us over his left
shoulder and lifted a hand.  A moment later he called an order
forward, and the two men left the anchor and ran to haul in sheets.
Here was a plain invitation to pull alongside.  I seized a paddle,
and was working the boat's nose round, to pursue, when another figure
showed above the _Gauntlet's_ bulwarks: a tall figure in an
orange-russet garment like a dressing-gown; a monk, to all
appearance, for the sun played on his tonsured scalp as he leaned
forward and watched our approach.



CHAPTER V.


THE SILENT MEN.


     "Seamen, seamen, whence come ye?
     _Pardonnez moy, je vous en prie_."
                                   _Old Song_.

A monk he was too.  A second and third look over my shoulder left me
no doubt of it.  He gravely handed us a rope as we overtook the ketch
and ran alongside, and as gravely bowed when I leapt upon deck; but
he gave us no other welcome.

His russet gown reached almost to his feet, which were bare; and he
stood amid the strangest litter of a deck-cargo, consisting mainly--
or so at first glance it seemed to me--of pot-plants and rude
agricultural implements: spades, flails, forks, mattocks, picks,
hoes, dibbles, rakes, lashed in bundles; sieves, buckets, kegs, bins,
milk-pails, seed-hods, troughs, mangers, a wired dovecote, and a
score of hen-coops filled with poultry.  Forward of the mainmast
stood a cart with shafts, upright and lashed to the mast, that the
headsails might work clear.  The space between the masts was occupied
by enormous open hatchways through which came the lowing of oxen, and
through these, peering down into the hold, I saw the backs of cattle
and horses moving in its gloom, and the bodies of men stretched in
the straw at their feet.

So much of the _Gauntlet's_ hugger-mugger I managed to discern before
Captain Pomery left the helm and hurried forward to give us welcome
on board.

"Mornin', Squire Prosper!  Mornin', Billy!  You know _me_, sir--Cap'n
Jo Pomery--which is short for Job, and 'tis the luckiest chance, sir,
you hailed me, for you'm nearabouts the first man I wanted to see.
Faith, now, and I wonder how your father (God bless him) will take
it?"

"Why, what's the matter?" asked I, with a glance at the monk, who had
drawn back a pace and stood, still silent, fingering his rosary.

"The matter?  Good Lord! isn't _this_ matter enough?"  Captain Jo waved
an arm to include all the deck-cargo.  "See them pot-plants, there,
and what they'm teeled [1] in?"

"Drinking-troughs?" said I.  "Or . . . is it coffins?"

"Coffins it is.  I'd feel easier in mind if you could tell me what
your father (God bless him) will say to it."

"But what has all this to do with my father?" I demanded, and,
seeking Billy's eyes, found them as frankly full of amaze as my own.

"Not but what," continued Captain Jo, "they've behaved well, though
dog-sick to a man from the time we left port.  Look at 'em!"--he
caught me by the arm and, drawing me to the hatchway, pointed down to
the hold.  "A round score and eight, and all well paid for as
passengers; but for the return journey I won't answer.  It depends on
your father, and that"--with a jerk of his thumb towards the tall
monk--"I stippilated when I shipped 'em.  'Never you mind,' was the
answer I got; 'take 'em to England to Sir John Constantine.'
And here they be!"

"But who on earth are they?" I cried, staring down into the gloom,
where presently I made out that the men stretched in the straw at the
horses' feet were monks all, and habited like the monk on the deck
behind me.  To him next I turned, to find his eyes, which were dark
and quick, searching me curiously; and as I turned he made a step
forward, put out a hand as if to touch me on the shirt-sleeve, and
anon drew it back, yet still continued to regard me.

"You are a son, signor, of Sir John Constantine?" he asked, in soft
Italian.

"I am his only son, sir," I answered him in the same language.

"Ah!  You speak my tongue?"  A gleam of joy passed over his grave
features.  "And you are his son?  So!  I should have guessed it at
once, for you bear great likeness to him."

"You know my father, sir?"

"Years ago."  His hands, which he used expressively, seemed to grope
in a far past.  "I come to him also from one who knew him years ago."

"Upon what business, sir!--if I am allowed to ask."

"I bring a message."

"You bring a tolerably full one, then," said I, glancing first at the
disorder on deck and from that down to the recumbent figures in the
hold.

"I speak for them," he went on, having followed the glance.
"It is most necessary that they keep silence; but I speak for all."

"Then, sir, as it seems to me, you have much to say."

"No," he answered slowly; "very little, I think; very little, as you
will see."

Here Captain Jo interrupted us.  He had stepped back to steady the
wheel, but I fancy that the word _silenzio_ must have reached him,
and that, small Italian though he knew, with this particular word the
voyage had made him bitterly acquainted.

"Dumb!" he shouted.  "Dumb as gutted haddocks!"

"Dumb!" I echoed, while the two seamen forward heard and laughed.

"It is their vow," said the monk, gravely, and seemed on the point to
say more.

But at this moment Captain Pomery sang out "Gybe-O!"  At the warning
we ducked our heads together as the boom swung over and the
_Gauntlet_, heeling gently for a moment, rounded the river-bend in
view of the great house of Constantine, set high and gazing over the
folded woods.  A house more magnificently placed, with forest, park,
and great stone terraces rising in successive tiers from the water's
edge, I do not believe our England in those days could show; and it
deserved its site, being amply classical in design, with a facade
that, discarding mere ornament, expressed its proportion and symmetry
in bold straight lines, prolonged by the terraces on which tall rows
of pointed yews stood sentinel.  Right English though it was, it bore
(as my father used to say of our best English poetry) the stamp of
great Italian descent, and I saw the monk give a start as he lifted
his eyes to it.

"We have not these river-creeks in Italy," said he, "nor these woods,
nor these green lawns; and yet, if those trees, aloft there, were but
cypresses--"  He broke off.  "Our voyage has a good ending," he
added, half to himself.

The _Gauntlet_ being in ballast, and the tide high, Captain Pomery
found plenty of Water in the winding channel, every curve of which he
knew to a hair, and steered for at its due moment, winking cheerfully
at Billy and me, who stood ready to correct his pilotage.  He had
taken in his mainsail, and carried steerage way with mizzen and jib
only; and thus, for close upon a mile, we rode up on the tide,
scaring the herons and curlews before us, until drawing within sight
of a grass-grown quay he let run down his remaining canvas and laid
the ketch alongside, so gently that one of the seamen, who had cast a
stout fender overside, stepped ashore, and with a slow pull on her
main rigging checked and brought her to a standstill.

"_Aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum_," said the monk at my shoulder quietly;
and, as I stared at him, "Ah, to be sure, this is your Tarentum, is
it not?  Yet the words came to me for the sound's sake only and their
so gentle close.  Our voyage has even such an ending."

"I had best run on," I suggested, "and warn my father of your
coming."

"It is not necessary."

"Nevertheless,"  I urged,  "they can be preparing breakfast for you,
up at the house, while you and your friends are making ready to come
ashore."

"We have broken our fast," he answered; "and we are quite ready, if
you will be so good as to guide us."

He stepped to the hatchways and called down, announcing simply that
the voyage was ended: and in the dusk there I saw monk after monk
upheave himself from the straw and come clambering up the ladder;
tall monks and short, old monks and young and middle-aged, lean monks
and thickset--but the most of them cadaverous, and all of them yellow
with sea-sickness; twenty-eight monks, all barefoot, all tolerably
dirty, and all blinking in the fresh sunshine.  When they were
gathered, at a sign from one of them--by dress not distinguishable
from his fellows--all knelt and gave silent thanks for the voyage
accomplished.

I could see that Billy Priske was frightened: for, arising, they
rolled their eyes about them like wild animals turned loose in an
unfamiliar country, and the whites of their eyes were yellow (so to
speak) with seafaring, and their pupils glassy with fever and from
the sea's glare.  But the monk their spokesman touched my arm and
motioned me to lead; and, when I obeyed, one by one the whole troop
fell into line and followed at his heels.

Thus we went--I leading, with him and the rest in single file after
me--up by the footpath through the woods, and forth into sunshine
again upon the green dewy bracken of the deer-park.  Here my
companion spoke for the first time since disembarking.

"Your father, sir," said he, looking about him and seeming to sniff
the morning air, "must be a very rich signor."

"On the contrary," I answered, "I have some reason to believe him a
poor man."

He stared down for a moment at his bare feet, and the skirts of his
gown wet to the knees with the grasses.

"Ah? Well, it will make no difference," he said; and we resumed our
way.

As we climbed the last slope under the terraces of the house, I
caught sight of my father leaning by a balustrade high above us, at
the head of a double flight of broad stone steps, and splicing the
top joint of a trout-rod he had broken the day before.  He must have
caught sight of us almost at the moment when we emerged from the
woods.

He showed no surprise at all.  Only as I led my guests up the steps
he set down his work and, raising a hand, bent to them in a very
courteous welcome.

"Good morning, lad!  And good morning to those you bring,
whencesoever they come."

"They come, sir," I answered "in Jo Pomery's ketch _Gauntlet_, I
believe from Italy; and with a message for you."

"My father turned his gaze from me to the spokesman at my elbow.
His eyebrows lifted with surprise and sudden pleasure.

"Hey?" he exclaimed.  "Is it my old friend--"

But the other, before his name could be uttered, lifted a hand.

"My name is the Brother Basilio now, Sir John: no other am I
permitted to remember.  The peace of God be with you, and upon your
house!"

"And with you, Brother Basilio, since you will have it so: and with
all your company!  You bear a message for me?  But first you must
break your fast."  He turned to lead the way to the house.

"We have eaten already, Sir John.  As soon as your leisure serves, we
would deliver our message."

My father called to Billy Priske--who hung in the rear of the monks--
bidding him fetch my uncle Gervase in from the stables to the State
Room, and so, without another word, motioned to his visitors to
follow.  To this day I can hear the shuffle of their bare feet on the
steps and slabs of the terrace as they hurried after him to keep up
with his long strides.

In the great entrance-hall he paused to lift a bunch of rusty keys
off their hook, and, choosing the largest, unlocked the door of the
State Room.  The lock had been kept well oiled, for Billy Priske
entered it twice daily; in the morning, to open a window or two, and
at sunset, to close them.  But it is a fact that I had not crossed
its threshold a score of times in my life, though I ran by it, maybe,
as many times a day; nor (as I believe) had my father entered it for
years.  Yet it was the noblest room in the house, in length
seventy-five feet, panelled high in dark oak and cedar and adorned
around each panel with carvings of Grinling Gibbons--festoons and
crowns and cherub-faces and intricate baskets of flowers.  Each panel
held a portrait, and over every panel, in faded gilt against the
morning sun, shone an imperial crown.  The windows were draped with
hangings of rotten velvet.  At the far end on a dais stood a porphyry
table, and behind it, facing down the room, a single chair, or
throne, also of porphyry and rudely carved.  For the rest the room
held nothing but dust--dust so thick that our visitors' naked feet
left imprints upon it as they huddled after their leader to the dais,
where my father took his seat, after beckoning me forward to stand on
his right.

But of all bewildered faces there was never a blanker, I believe,
since the world began than my uncle Gervase's; who now appeared in
the doorway, a bucket in his hand, straight from the stables where he
had been giving my father's roan horse a drench.  Billy's summons
must have hurried him, for he had not even waited to turn down his
shirt-sleeves: but as plainly it had given him no sort of notion why
he was wanted and in the State Room.  I guessed indeed that on his
way he had caught up the bucket supposing that the house was afire.
At sight of the monks he set it down slowly, gently, staring at them
the while, and seemed in act of inverting it to sit upon, when my
father addressed him from the dais over the shaven heads of the
audience.

"Brother, I am sorry to have disturbed you: but here is a business in
which I may need your counsel.  Will it please you to step this way?
These guests of ours, I should first explain, have arrived from over
seas."

My uncle came forward, still like a man in a dream, mounted the dais
on my father's left, and, turning, surveyed the visitors in front.

"Eh?  To be sure, to be sure," he murmured.  "Broomsticks!"

"Their spokesman here, who gives his name as the Brother Basilio,
bears a message for me; and since he presents it in form with a whole
legation at his back, I think it due to treat him with equal
ceremony.  Do you agree?"

"If you ask me," my uncle answered, after a pause full of thought,
"they would prefer to start, maybe, with a wash and a breakfast.
By good luck, Billy tells me, the trammel has made a good haul.
As for basins, brother, our stock will not serve all these gentlemen;
but if the rest will take the will for the deed and use the pump,
I'll go round meanwhile and see how the hens have been laying."

"You are the most practical of men, brother: but my offer of
breakfast has already been declined.  Shall we hear what Dom Basilio
has to say?"

"I have nothing to say, Sir John," put in Brother Basilio, advancing,
"but to give you this letter and await your answer."

He drew a folded paper from his tunic and handed it to my father, who
rose to receive it, turned it over, and glanced at the
superscription.  I saw a red flush creep slowly up to his temples and
fade, leaving his face extraordinarily pale.  A moment later, in face
of his audience, he lifted the paper to his lips, kissed it
reverently, and broke the seal.

Again I saw the flush mount to his temples as he read the letter
through slowly and in silence.  Then after a long pause he handed it
to me; and I took it wondering, for his eyes were dim and yet bright
with a noble joy.

The letter (turned into English) ran thus--

     "_To Sir John Constantine, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the
      Star, at his house of Constantine in Cornwall, England_.

     "MY FRIEND,

     "The bearer of this and his company have been driven by the
      Genoese from their monastery of San Giorgio on my estate of
      Casalabriva above the Taravo valley, the same where you will
      remember our treading the vintage together to the freedom of
      Corsica.  But the Genoese have cut down my vines long since,
      and now they have fired the roof over these my tenants and
      driven them into the _macchia_, whence they send message to me
      to deliver them.  Indeed, friend, I have much ado to protect
      myself in these days: but by good fortune I have heard of an
      English vessel homeward bound which will serve them if they can
      reach the coast, whence numbers of the faithful will send them
      off with good provision.  Afterwards, what will happen?
      To England the ship is bound, and in England I know you only.
      Remembering your great heart, I call on it for what help you
      can render to these holy men.  _Addio_, friend.  You are
      remembered in my constant prayers to Christ, the Virgin, and
      all the Saints.

     "EMILIA."

At a sign from my father--who had sunk back in his chair and sat
gripping its arms--I passed on this epistle to my uncle Gervase, who
read it and ran his hand through his hair.

"Dear me!" said he, running his eye over the attentive monks, "this
lady, whoever she may be--"

"She is a crowned queen, brother Gervase," my father interrupted;
"and moreover she is the noblest woman in the world."

"As to that, brother," returned my uncle, "I am saying nothing.
But speaking of what I know, I say she can be but poorly conversant
with your worldly affairs."

My father half-lifted himself from his seat.  "And is that how you
take it?" he demanded sharply.  "Is that all you read in the letter?
Brother, I tell you again, this lady is a queen.  What should a queen
know of my degree of poverty?"

"Nevertheless--" began my uncle.

But my father cut him short again.  "I had hoped," said he,
reproachfully, "you would have been prompt to recognize her noble
confidence.  Mark you how, no question put, she honours me.
'Do this, for my sake'--Who but the greatest in the world can appeal
thus simply?"

"None, maybe," my uncle replied; "as none but the well-to-do can
answer with a like ease."

"You come near to anger me, brother; but I remember that you never
knew her.  Is not this house large?  Are not four-fifths of my rooms
lying at this moment un-tenanted?  Very well; for so long as it
pleases them, since she claims it, these holy men shall be our
guests.  No more of this," my father commanded peremptorily, and
added, with all the gravity in the world, "You should thank her
consideration rather, that she sends us visitors so frugal, since
poverty degrades us to these economies.  But there is one thing
puzzles me."  He took the letter again from my uncle and fastened his
gaze on the Brother Basilio.  "She says she has much ado to protect
herself."

"Indeed, Sir John," answered Brother Basilio, "I fear the queen, our
late liege-lady, speaks somewhat less than the truth.  She wrote to
you from a poor lodging hard by Bastia, having ventured back to
Corsica out of Tuscany on business of her own; and on the eve of
sailing we heard that she had been taken prisoner by the Genoese."

"What!"  My father rose, clutching the arms of his chair.  Of stone
they were, like the chair itself, and well mortised: but his great
grip wrenched them out of their mortises and they crashed on the
dais.  "What!  You left her a prisoner of the Genoese!"  He gazed
around them in a wrath that slowly grew cold, freezing into contempt.
"Go, sirs; since she commands it, room shall be found for you all.
My house for the while is yours.  But go from me now."

[1] Tilled, planted.



CHAPTER VI.


HOW MY FATHER OUT OF NOTHING BUILT AN ARMY, AND IN FIVE MINUTES
PLANNED AN INVASION.


      Walled Townes, stored Arcenalls and Armouries, Goodly Races of
      Horse, Chariots of Warre, Elephants, Ordnance, Artillery, and
      the like: All this is but a Sheep in a Lion's Skin, except the
      Breed and disposition be stout and warlike.  Nay, Number it
      selfe in Armies importeth not much where the People is of weake
      courage: For (as _Virgil_ saith) It never troubles a Wolfe, how
      many the sheepe be."--BACON.

For the rest of the day my father shut himself in his room, while my
uncle spent the most of it seated on the brewhouse steps in a shaded
corner of the back court, through which the monks brought in their
furniture and returned to the ship for more.  The bundles they
carried were prodigious, and all the morning they worked without halt
or rest, ascending and descending the hill in single file and always
at equal distances one behind another.  Watching from the terrace
down the slope of the park as they came and went, you might have
taken them for a company of ants moving camp.  But my uncle never
wholly recovered from the shock of their first freight, to see man by
man cross the court with a stout coffin on his back and above each
coffin a pack of straw: nor was he content with Fra Basilio's
explanation that the brethren slept in these coffins by rule and
saved the expense of beds.

"For my part," said my uncle, "considering the numbers that manage
it, I should have thought death no such dexterity as to need
practice."

"Yet bethink you, sir, of St. Paul's words.  'I protest,' said he,
'I die daily.'"

"Why, yes, sir, and so do we all," agreed my uncle, and fell silent,
though on the very point, as it seemed, of continuing the argument.
"I did not choose to be discourteous, lad," he explained to me later:
"but I had a mind to tell him that we do daily a score of things we
don't brag about--of which I might have added that washing is one:
and I believe 'twould have been news to him."

I had never known my uncle in so rough a temper.  Poor man!
I believe that all the time he sat there on the brewhouse steps, he
was calculating woefully the cost of these visitors; and it hurt him
the worse because he had a native disposition to be hospitable.

"But who is this lady that signs herself Emilia?" I asked.

"A crowned queen, lad, and the noblest lady in the world--you heard
your father say it.  This evening he may choose to tell us some
further particulars."

"Why this evening?" I asked, and then suddenly remembered that to-day
was the 15th of July and St. Swithun's feast; that my father would
not fail to drink wine after dinner in the little temple below the
deer-park; and that he had promised to admit me to-night to make the
fourth in St. Swithun's brotherhood.

He appeared at dinner-time, punctual and dressed with more than his
usual care (I noted that he wore his finest lace ruffles); and before
going in to dinner we were joined by the Vicar, much perturbed--as
his manner showed--by the news of a sudden descent of papists upon
his parish.  Indeed the good man so bubbled with it that we had
scarcely taken our seats before the stream of questions overflowed.
"Who were these men?"  "How many!"  "Whence had they come, and why?"
etc.

I glanced at my father in some anxiety for his temper.  But he
laughed and carved the salmon composedly.  He had a deep and tolerant
affection for Mr. Grylls.

"Where shall I begin!" said he.  "They are, I believe, between twenty
and thirty in number, though I took no care to count; and they belong
to the Trappistine Order, to which I have ever been attracted; first,
because I count it admirable to renounce all for a faith, however
frantic, and secondly for the memory of Bouthillier de Rance, who a
hundred years ago revived the order after five hundred years of
desuetude."

"And who was he?" inquired the Vicar.

"He was a young rake in Paris, tonsured for the sake of the family
benefices, who had for mistress no less a lady than the Duchess de
Rohan-Montbazon.  One day, returning from the country after a week's
absence and letting himself into the house by a private key, he
rushed upstairs in a lover's haste, burst open the door, and found
himself in a chamber hung with black and lit with many candles.
His mistress had died, the day before, of a putrid fever.
But--worse than this and most horrible--the servants had ordered the
coffin in haste; and, when delivered, it was found to be too short.
Upon which, to have done with her, in their terror of infection, they
had lopped off the head, which lay pitiably dissevered from the
trunk.  For three years after the young man travelled as one mad, but
at length found solace in his neglected abbacy of Soligny-la-Trappe,
and in reviving its extreme Cistercian rigours."

"I had supposed the Trappists to be a French order in origin, and
confined to France," said the Vicar.

"They have offshoots: of which I knew but one in Italy, that settled
some fifty years back in a monastery they call Buon-Solazzo, outside
Florence, at the invitation of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.  But I have
been making question of our guests through Dom Basilio, their
guest-master and abbot _de facto_ (since their late abbot, an old man
whom he calls Dom Polifilo, died of exposure on the mountains some
three days before they embarked); and it appears that they belong to
a second colony, which has made its home for these ten years at
Casalabriva in Corsica, having arrived by invitation of the Queen
Emilia of that island, and there abiding until the Genoese burned the
roof over their heads."

The Vicar sipped his wine.

"You have considered," he asked, "the peril of introducing so many
papists into our quiet parish?"

"I have not considered it for a moment," answered my father,
cheerfully.  "Nor have I introduced them.  But if you fear they'll
convert--pervert--subvert--invert your parishioners and turn 'em into
papists, I can reassure you.  For in the first place thirty men, or
thirty thousand, of whom only one can open his mouth, are, for
proselytizing, equal to one man and no more."

"They can teach by their example if not by their precept," urged the
Vicar.

"Their example is to sleep in their coffins.  My good sir, if you
will not trust your English doctrine to its own truth, you might at
least rely on the persuasiveness of its comforts.  Nay, pardon me, my
friend," he went on, as the Vicar's either cheekbone showed a red
flush, "I did not mean to speak offensively; but, Englishman though I
am, in matters of religion my countrymen are ever a puzzle to me.
At a great price you won your freedom from the Bishop of Rome and his
dictation.  I admire the price and I love liberty; yet liberty has
its drawbacks, as you have for a long while been discovering; of
which the first is that every man with a maggot in his head can claim
a like liberty with yourselves, quoting your own words in support of
it.  Let me remind you of that passage in which Rabelais--borrowing,
I believe, from Lucian--brings the good Pantagruel and his
fellow-voyagers to a port which he calls the Port of Lanterns.
'There (says he) upon a tall tower Pantagruel recognized the Lantern
of La Rochelle, which gave us an excellent clear light.  Also we saw
the Lanterns of Pharos, of Nauplia, and of the Acropolis of Athens,
sacred to Pallas,' and so on; whence I draw the moral that
coast-lights are good, yet, multiplied, they complicate navigation."

"And apply your moral by erecting yet another!"

"Fairly retorted.  Yet how can you object without turning the sword
of Liberty against herself?  Have you never heard tell, by the way,
of Captain Byng's midshipman?"

"Who was he?"

"I forget his name, but he started his first night aboard ship by
kneeling down and saying his prayers, as his mother had taught him."

"I commend the boy," said my uncle.

"I also commend him: but the crowd of his fellow-midshipmen found it
against the custom of the service and gave him the strap for it.
This, however, raised him up a champion in one of the taller lads,
who protested that their conduct was tyrannous: 'and,' said he, very
generously, 'to-morrow night I too propose to say my prayers.
If any one object, he may fight me."  Thus, being a handy lad with
his fists, he established the right of religious liberty on board.
By-and-by one or two of the better disposed midshipmen followed his
example: by degrees the custom spread along the lower deck, where the
dispute had happened in full view of the whole ship's company, seamen
and marines; and by the time she reached her port of Halifax she
hadn't a man on board (outside the ward-room) but said his prayers
regularly."

"A notable Christian triumph," was the Vicar's comment.

"Quite so.  At Halifax," pursued my father, "Captain Byng took aboard
out of hospital another small midshipman, who on his first night no
sooner climbed into his hammock than the entire mess bundled him out
of it.  'We would have you to know, young man,' said they, 'that
private devotion is the rule on board our ship.  It's down on your
knees this minute or you get the strap.'

"I leave you," my father concluded, "to draw the moral.  For my part
the tale teaches me that in any struggle for freedom the real danger
begins with the moment of victory."

Said my uncle Gervase after a pause, "Then these Corsicans of yours,
brother, stand as yet in no real danger, since the Genoese are yet
harrying their island with fire and sword."

"In no danger at all as regards their liberty," answered my father,
poising his knife for a first cut into the saddle of mutton, "though
in some danger, I fear me, as regards their queen.  They have,
however, taken the first and most important step by getting the news
carried to me.  The next is to raise an army; and the next after
that, to suit the plan of invasion to our forces.  Indeed," wound up
my father with another flourish of his carving-knife, "I am in
considerable doubt where to make a start."

"I hold," said my uncle, eyeing the saddle of mutton, "that you save
the gravy by beginning close alongside the chine."

"I was thinking for my part that either Porto or Sagone would serve
us best," said my father, meditatively.


Dinner over, the four of us strolled out abreast into the cool
evening and down through the deer-park to the small Ionic temple,
where Billy Priske had laid out fruit, wine, and glasses; and there,
with no more ceremony than standing to drink my health, the three
initiated me into the brotherhood of St. Swithun.  It gave me a
sudden sense of being grown a man, and this sense my father very
promptly proceeded to strengthen.

"I had hoped," said he, putting down his glass and seating himself,
"to delay Prosper's novitiate.  I had designed, indeed, that after
staying his full time at Oxford he should make the Grand Tour with me
and prepare himself for his destiny by a leisured study of cities and
men.  But this morning's news has forced me to reshape my plans.
Listen--

"In the early autumn of 1735, being then at the Court of Tuscany, I
received sudden and secret orders to repair to Corte, the capital of
Corsica, an island of which I knew nothing beyond what I had learnt
in casual talk from the Count Domenico Rivarola, who then acted as
its plenipotentiary at Florence.  He was a man with whom I would
willingly have taken counsel, but my orders from England expressly
forbade it.  Rivarola in fact was suspected--and justly as my story
will show--of designs of his own for the future of the island; and
although, as it will also show, we had done better to consult him,
Walpole's injunctions were precise that I should by every means keep
him in the dark.

"The situation--to put it as briefly as I can--was this.  For two
hundred years or so the island had been ruled by the Republic of
Genoa; and, by common consent, atrociously.  For generations the
islanders had lived in chronic revolt, under chiefs against whom the
Genoese--or, to speak more correctly, the Bank of Genoa--had not
scrupled to apply every device, down to secret assassination.
_Uno avolso non deficit alter_: the Corsicans never lacked a leader
to replace the fallen: and in 1735 the succession was shared by two
noble patriots, Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli.

"Under their attacks the Genoese were slowly but none the less
certainly losing their hold on the island.  Their plight was such
that, although no one knew precisely what they would do, every one
foresaw that, failing some heroic remedy, they must be driven into
the sea, garrison after garrison, and lose Corsica altogether; and of
all speculations the most probable seemed that they would sell the
island, with all its troubles, to France.  Now, for France to acquire
so capital a _point d'appui_ in the Mediterranean would obviously be
no small inconvenience to England: and therefore our Ministers--who
had hitherto regarded the struggles of the islanders with
indifference--woke up to a sudden interest in Corsican affairs.

"They had no pretext for interfering openly.  But if the Corsicans
would but take heart and choose themselves a king, that king could at
a ripe moment be diplomatically acknowledged; and any interference by
France would at once become an act of violent usurpation.  (For let
me tell you, my friends--the sufferings of a people count as nothing
in diplomacy against the least trivial act against a crown.)
The nuisance was, the two Paolis, Giafferi and Hyacinth, had no
notion whatever of making themselves kings; nor would their devoted
followers have tolerated it.  Yet--as sometimes happens--there was a
third man, of greater descent than they, to whom at a pinch the crown
might be offered, and with a far more likely chance of the Corsicans'
acquiescence.  This was a Count Ugo Colonna, a middle-aged man,
descended from the oldest nobility of the island, and head of his
family, which might more properly be called a clan; a patriot, in his
way, too, though lacking the fire of the Paolis, to whom he had
surrendered the leadership while remaining something of a
figure-head.  In short my business was to confer with him at Corte,
persuade the Corsican chiefs to offer him the crown, and persuade him
to accept it.

"I arrived then at the capital and found Count Ugo willing enough,
though by no means eager, for the honour.  He was, in fact, a
mild-mannered gentleman of no great force of character, and
frequently interrupted our conference to talk of a bowel-complaint
which obviously meant more to him than all the internal complications
of Europe: and next to his bowel-complaint--but some way after--he
prized his popularity, which ever seemed more important than his
country's welfare: or belike he confused the two.  He was at great
pains to impress me with the sacrifices he had made for Corsica--
which in the past had been real enough: but he had come to regard
them chiefly as matter for public speaking, or excuse for public
bowing and lifting of the hat.  You know the sort of man, I dare say.
To pass that view of life, at his age, is the last test of greatness.

"Still, the notion of being crowned King of Corsica tickled his
vanity, and would have tickled it more had he begotten a son to
succeed him.  It opened new prospects of driving through crowds and
bowing and lifting his hat: and he turned pardonably sulky when the
two Paolis treated my proposals with suspicion.  They had an immense
respect for England as the leader of the free peoples: but they
wanted to know why in Tuscany I had not taken their Count Rivarola
into my confidence.  In fact they were in communication with their
plenipotentiary already, and half way towards another plan, of which
very excusably they allowed me to guess nothing.

"The upshot was that my interference threw Count Ugo into a pet with
them.  He only wanted them to press him; was angry at not being
pressed; yet believed that they would repent in time.  Meanwhile he
persuaded me to ride back with him to one of his estates, a palace
above the valley of the Taravo.

"I know not why, but ever the vow of Jephthah comes to my mind as I
remember how we rode up the valley to Count Ugo's house in the hour
before sunset.  'And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with
timbrels and with dances, and she was his only child.'  He had made
no vow and was incapable, poor man, of keeping any so heroic; and she
came out with no timbrel or dance, but soberly enough in her
sad-coloured dress of the people.  Yet she came out while we rode a
good mile off, and waited for us as we climbed the last slope, and
she was his only child.

"How shall I tell you of her?  She helped my purpose nothing, for at
first she was vehemently opposed to her father's consenting to be
king.  Her politics she derived in part from the reading of
Plutarch's Lives and in part from her own simplicity.  They were
childish, utterly: yet they put me to shame, for they glowed with the
purest love of her country.  She has walked on fiery ploughshares
since then; she has trodden the furnace, and her beautiful bare feet
are seared since they trod the cool vintage with me on the slopes
above the Taravo. . . . Priske, open the first of those bottles,
yonder, with the purple seal!  Here is that very wine, my friends.
Pour and hold it up to the sunset before you taste.  Had ever wine
such a royal heart?  I will tell you how to grow it.  Choose first of
all a vineyard facing south, between mountains and the sea.  Let it
lie so that it drinks the sun the day through; but let the protecting
mountains carry perpetual snow to cool the land breeze all the night.
Having chosen your site, drench it for two hundred years with the
blood of freemen; drench it so deep that no tap-root can reach down
below its fertilizing virtue.  Plant it in defeat, and harvest it in
hope, grape by grape, fearfully, as though the bloom on each were a
state's ransom.  Next treat it after the recipe of the wine of Cos;
dropping the grapes singly into vats of sea water, drawn in stone
jars from full fifteen fathoms in a spell of halcyon weather and left
to stand for the space of one moon.  Drop them in, one by one, until
the water scarcely cover the mass.  Let stand again for two days, and
then call for your maidens to tread them, with hymns, under the new
moon.  Ah, and yet you may miss!  For your maidens must be clean, and
yet fierce as though they trod out the hearts of men, as indeed they
do.  A king's daughter should lead them, and they must trample with
innocence, and yet with such fury as the prophet's who said 'their
blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my
raiment: for the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my
redeemed is come.' . . ."

My father lifted his glass.  "To thee, Emilia, child and queen!"

He drank, and, setting down his glass, rested silent for a while, his
eyes full of a solemn rapture.

"My friends," he went on at length, with lowered voice, "know you
that old song?

     "'Methought I walked still to and fro,
       And from her company could not go--
       But when I waked it was not so:
           In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.'

"All that autumn I spent under her father's roof, and--my leave
having been extended--all the winter following.  The old Count had
convinced himself by this time that by accepting the crown he would
confer a signal service on Corsica, and had opened a lengthy
correspondence with the two Paolis, whose hesitation to accept this
view at once puzzled and annoyed him.  For me, I wished the
correspondence might be prolonged for ever, for meanwhile I lived my
days in company with Emilia, and we loved.

"I was a fool.  Yet I cannot tax myself that I played false to duty,
though by helping to crown her father I was destroying my own hopes,
since as heiress to his throne Emilia must be far removed from me.
We scarcely thought of this, but lived in our love, we two.
So the winter passed and the spring came and the _macchia_ burst into
flower.

"Prosper, you have never set eyes on the _macchia_, the glory of your
kingdom.  But you shall behold it soon, lad, and smell it--for its
fragrance spreads around the island and far out to sea.  It belts
Corsica with verdure and a million million flowers--cistus and myrtle
and broom and juniper; clematis and vetch and wild roses run mad.
Deeper than the tall fo