Sir John Constantine Part 10

"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 s.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sage 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.

"So ended this brief reign: and you, Prosper, have met the chief actor in it. A very few words will tell the rest. The French overran the island until '41, when the business of the Austrian succession forced them to withdraw their troops and leave the Genoese once more face to face with the islanders. Promptly these rose again. Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli had fled to Naples; Hyacinth with two sons, Pascal and Clement, whom he trained there (as I am told) in all the liberal arts and in undying hatred of the Genoese.

These two lads, returning to the island, took up their father's fight and have maintained it, with fair success as I learn. From parts of the island they must have completely extruded the enemy for a while; since my lady made bold, four years ago, to settle these visitors of ours in her palace above the Taravo. It would appear, however, that the Genoese have gathered head again, and his business with them may explain why Pascal Paoli has not answered the letter I addressed to him, these eight months since, notifying my son's claim upon the succession. Or he may have reckoned it indecent of me to address him in lieu of his Queen, who had returned to the island. I had not heard of her return. I heard of it to-day for the first time, and of her peril, which shall hurry us ten times faster than our pretensions. Prosper," my father concluded, "we must invade Corsica, and at once."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed my uncle. "How!"

"In a s.h.i.+p," my father answered him as simply. "How otherwise?"

Said my uncle, "But where is your s.h.i.+p?"

Answered my father, "If you will but step outside and pick up one of these fir-cones in the gra.s.s, you can almost toss it on to her deck.

She is called the _Gauntlet_, and her skipper is Captain Jo Pomery.

I might have racked my brain for a month to find such a skipper or a s.h.i.+p so well found and happily named as this which Providence has brought to my door. I attach particular importance to the name of a s.h.i.+p."

My uncle ran his hands through his hair. "But to invade a kingdom,"

he protested, "you will need also an army!"

"Certainly. I must find one."

"But where?"

"It must be somewhere in the neighbourhood, and within twenty-four hours," replied my father imperturbably. "Time presses."

"But an army must be paid. You have not only to raise one, but to find the money to support it."

"You put me in mind of an old German tale," said my father, helping himself to wine. "Once upon a time there were three brothers--but since, my dear Gervase, you show signs of impatience, I will confine myself to the last and luckiest one. On his travels, which I will not pause to describe in detail, he acquired three gifts--a knapsack which, when opened, discharged a regiment of grenadiers; a cloth which, when spread, was covered with a meal; and a purse which, when shaken, filled itself with money."

"Will you be serious, brother?" cried my uncle.

"I am entirely serious!" answered my father. "The problem of an army and its pay I propose to solve by enlisting volunteers; and the difficulty of feeding my troops (I had forgotten it and thank you for reminding me) will be minimized by enlisting as few as possible.

Myself and Prosper make two; Priske, here, three; I would fain have you accompany us, Gervase, but the estate cannot spare you.

Let me see--" He drummed for a moment on the table with his fingers.

"We ought to have four more at least, to make a show: and seven is a lucky number."

"You seriously design," my uncle demanded, "to invade the island of Corsica with an army of seven persons?"

"Most seriously I do. For consider. To begin with, this Theodore-- a vain hollow man--brought but sixteen, including many non-combatants, and yet succeeded in winning a crown. You will allow that to win a crown is a harder feat than to succeed to one.

On what reckoning then, or by what Rule-of-Three sum, should Prosper, who goes to claim what already belongs to him, need more than seven?

"Further," my father continued, "it may well be argued that the fewer he takes the better; since we sail not against the Corsicans but against their foes, and therefore should count on finding in every Corsican a soldier for our standard.

"Thirdly, the Corsicans are a touchy race, whom it would be impolitic to offend with a show of foreign strength.

"Fourthly, we must look a little beyond the immediate enterprise, and not (if we can help it) saddle Prosper's kingdom with a standing army. For, as Bacon advises, that state stands in danger whose warriors remain in a body and are used to donatives; whereof we see examples in the turk's Janissaries and the Pretorian Bands of Rome.

"And fifthly, we have neither the time nor the money to collect a stronger force. The occasion presses: and _fronte capillata est, post haec Occasio calva_. Time turns a bald head to us if we miss our moment to catch him by the forelock."

"The Abantes," put in Mr. Grylls, "practised the direct contrary: of whom Homer tells us that they shaved the forepart of their heads, the reason being that their enemies might not grip them by the hair in close fighting. I regret, my dear Sir John, you never warned me that you designed Prosper for a military career. We might have bestowed more attention on the warlike customs and operations of the ancients."

My father sipped his wine and regarded the Vicar benevolently.

For closest friends he had two of the most irrelevant thinkers on earth and he delighted to distinguish between their irrelevancies.

"But I would not," he continued, "have you doubt that the prime cause of our expedition is to deliver my lady from the Genoese; or believe that Prosper will press his claims unless she acknowledge them."

"I am wondering," said my uncle, "where you will find your other four men."

"Prosper and I will provide them to-morrow," my father answered, with a careless glance at me. "And now, my friends, we have talked over-long of Corsica and nothing as yet of that companions.h.i.+p which brings us here--it may be for the last time. Priske, you may open another four bottles and leave us. Gervase, take down the book from the cupboard and let the Vicar read to us while the light allows."

"The marker tells me," said the Vicar, taking the book and opening it, "that we left in the midst of Chapter 8--_On the Luce or Pike_.

"Ay, and so I remember," my uncle agreed.

The Vicar began to read--

"'And for your dead bait for a pike, for that you may be taught by one day's going a-fis.h.i.+ng with me or any other body that fishes for him; for the baiting of your hook with a dead gudgeon or a roach and moving it up and down the water is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it.

And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than likely that you have a pike follow with more than common eagerness. And some affirm that any bait anointed with the marrow of the thigh-bone of a heron is a great temptation to any fish.

"'These have not been tried by me, but told me by a friend of mine, that pretended to do me a courtesy. But if this direction to catch a pike thus do you no good, yet I am certain this direction how to roast him when he is caught is choicely good--'"

"Upon my soul, brother," interrupted my uncle Gervase, removing the pipe from his mouth, "this reads like a direction for the taking of Corsica."

CHAPTER VII.

THE COMPANY OF THE ROSE.

"Alway be merry if thou may, But waste not thy good alway: Have hat of floures fresh as May, Chapelet of roses of Whitsonday For sich array ne costneth but lyte."

_Romaunt of the Rose_.

_Somerset_. "Let him that is no coward Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me."

_First Part of King Henry VI_.

Early next morning I was returning, a rosebud in my hand, from the neglected garden to the east of the house, when I spied my father coming towards me along the terraces, and at once felt my ears redden.

"Good morning, lad!" he hailed. "But where is mine?"

I turned back in silence and picked a bud for him. "So," said I, "'twas you, sir, after all, that wrote the advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"Hey?" he answered. "I? Certainly not. I noted it and sent you the news-sheet in half a hope that you had been the advertiser."

"You were mistaken, sir."