"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 forests behind it the macchia will hide two lovers, and under the open sky hedge off all the world but their passion . . . In the macchia we roamed together, day after day, and forgot the world; forgot all but honour; for she, my lady, was a child of sixteen, and as her knight I worshipped her. Ah, those days! those scented days!
"But while we loved and Count Ugo wrote letters, the two Paolis were doing; and by-and-by they played the strangest stroke in all Corsica's history. That spring, at Aleria on the east coast, there landed a man of whom the Corsican's had never heard. He came out of nowhere with a single ship and less than a score of attendants—to be precise, two officers, a priest, a secretary, a major-domo, an under-steward, a cook, three Tunisian slaves, and six lackeys. He had sailed from Algiers, with a brief rest in the port of Leghorn, and he stepped ashore in Turkish dress, with scarlet-lined cloak, turban, and scimetar. He called himself Theodore, a baron of Westphalia, and he brought with him a ship-load of arms and ammunition, a thousand zechins of Tunis, and letters from half a dozen of the Great Powers promising assistance. Whether these were genuine or not, I cannot tell you.
"Led by the two Paolis—this is no fairy tale, my friends—the Corsicans welcomed and proclaimed him king, without even waiting for despatches from Count Rivarola (who had negotiated) to inform them of the terms agreed upon. They led him in triumph to Corte, and there, in their ancient capital, crowned and anointed him. He gave laws, issued edicts, struck money, distributed rewards. He put himself in person at the head of the militia, and blocked up the Genoese in their fortified towns. For a few months he swept the island like a conqueror.
"All this, as you may suppose, utterly disconcerted the Count Ugo Colonna, who saw his dreams topple at one stroke into the dust. But the chiefs found a way to reconcile him. Their new King Theodore must marry and found a dynasty. Let a bride be found for him in Colonna's daughter, and let children be born to him of the best blood in Corsica.
"The Count recovered his good temper: his spirits rose at a bound: he embraced the offer. His grandsons should be kings of Corsica. And she—my Emilia—
"We met once only after her father had broken the news to her. He had not asked her consent; he had told her, in a flutter of pride, that this thing must be, and for her country's sake. She came to me, in the short dusk, upon the terrace overlooking the Taravo. She was of heart too heroic to linger out our agony. In the dusk she stretched out both hands—ah, God, the child she looked! so helpless, so brave!—and I caught them and kissed them. Then she was gone.
"A week later they married her to King Theodore in the Cathedral of Corte, and crowned her beside him. Before the winter he left the island and sailed to Holland to raise moneys! for the promises of the Great Powers had come to nothing, even if they were genuinely given. For myself, I had bidden good-bye to Corsica and sailed for Tuscany on the same day that Emilia was married.
"Now I must tell you that on the eve of sailing I wrote a letter to the queen—as queen she would be by the time it reached her—wishing her all happiness, and adding that if, in the time to come, fate should bring her into poverty or danger, my estate and my life would ever be at her service. To this I received, as I had expected, no answer: nor did she, if ever she received it, impart its contents to her husband. He—the rascal—had a genius for borrowing, and yet 'twas I that had to begin by seeking him out to feed him with money.
"News came to me that he was in straits in Holland, and had for a year been drumming the banks in vain: also that the Genoese, whom his incursion had merely confounded, were beginning to lift their heads and take the offensive again. At first he had terrified them like a mad dog; the one expedient they could hit on was to set a price upon his head. Certainly he had gifts. He contrived—and by sheer audacity, mark you, backed by a fine presence—to drive them into such a panic that, months after he had sailed, they were petitioning France to send over troops to help them. The Corsicans sent a counter-embassy. 'If,' said they to King Louis, 'your Majesty force us to yield to Genoa, then let us drink this bitter cup to the health of the Most Christian King, and die.' King Louis admired the speech but nibbled at the opportunity. Our own Government meanwhile had either lost heart or suffered itself to be persuaded by the Genoese Minister in London. In the July after my Emilia's marriage, our late Queen Caroline, as regent for the time of Great Britain, issued a proclamation forbidding any subject of King George to furnish arms or provisions to the Corsican malcontents.
"And now you know, my dear Prosper, why I cast away the career on which I had started with some ambition. My lady lacked help, which as a British subject I was prohibited from offering. My conscience allowed me to disobey: but not to disobey and eat His Majesty's bread. I flung up my post, and as a private man hunted across Europe for King Theodore."
I ran him to earth in Amsterdam. He was in handsome lodgings, but penniless. It was the first time I had conversed with him; and he, I believe, had never seen my face. I found him affable, specious, sanguine, but hollow as a drum. For her sake I took up and renewed the campaign among the Jew bankers.
"To be short, he sailed back for Corsica in a well-found ship, with cannon and ammunition on board, and some specie—the whole cargo worth between twenty and thirty thousand pounds. He made a landing at Tavagna and threw in almost all his warlike stores. His wife hurried to meet him: but after a week, finding that the French were pouring troops into the island, and becoming (they tell me) suddenly nervous of the price on his head, he sailed away almost without warning. They say also that on the passage he murdered the man whom his creditors had forced him to take as supercargo, sold the vessel at Leghorn, and made off with the specie—no penny of which had reached his queen or his poor subjects. She—sad childless soul— driven with her chiefs and counsellors into the mountains before the combined French and Genoese, escaped a year later to Tuscany, and hid herself with her sorrows in a religious house ten miles from Florence.