Sir John Constantine Part 60

Her voice came to a halt. "O beloved," she asked after a while, quietly, almost desperately, "why are you silent? Can you not forgive?"

"Forgive?" I echoed. "Dear, I was silent, being lost in wonder, in love. Forget that foolish crown; forget even Corsica! Soon we will take the diamond and cross the mountains together, to a kingdom better than Corsica. There," I wound up, forcing myself to speak lightly, "if ever dispute should arise between us, as king and queen we will ask my uncle Gervase to decide. He, gallant man, will say, 'Prosper, to whom do you owe your life?' . . ."

"The mountains? Ah, not yet--not yet!" She put out her hands and crept to me blindly, nestling, pressing her face against my ragged coat. "A little while," she sobbed while I held her so. "A little while!--until the child--until our child--"

How can I write what yet remains to be written?

Our child was never born. So often, hand in hand, we had climbed to the pine-woods that it escaped my notice how she, who had used to be my support, came by degrees to lean on my arm. I saw her broken by fasting and vigil, and for me, I winced at the sound of her cough.

The blood on her handkerchief accused me. "But we must wait until the child is born," I promised myself, "and the mountain air will quickly cure her." Fool! the good farm-people knew better. While I gained strength, day by day she was wasting. "Only let us cross the mountains," I prayed, "and at home all my life shall pay for her love!" Fool, again! She would never cross the mountains, now.

There came a day when I climbed the pine-wood alone. With my new strength, and because her weight was not on my arm, I climbed higher than usual; and then the noise of chopping drew me on to the upper edge of the forest, where I found Brother Polifilo with his sleeves rolled, hacking at a tree. He dropped his axe and stared at me, as at a ghost. I could not guess what perturbed him; for he had called at the farm but the day before and heard me boast of my new strength.

I sat down to watch him. But after a stroke or two his arm appeared to fail him, and he desisted. Without a word, almost without looking at me, he laid the axe over his shoulder and went up the path towards his chapel.

I gazed after him, wondering. Then, of a sudden, I understood.

Three days later she died. To the end they could not persuade me it was possible; nay at the very end, while she lay panting against my arm, I could not believe.

She died quietly--so quietly. A little before the end she had been restless, lying with a pucker on her brow, and eyes that asked pitiably for something--I could not guess what, until she turned them to the chair, over the back of which (for the day was sultry), I had tossed my coat.

I reached for the coat and slipped it on. Her eyes grew glad at once.

"Closer!" she whispered. As I bent closer, she nestled her face against it. "_La macchia! . . . la macchia!_"

With that last breath, drawing in the scent of it, she laid her head slowly back, and slept.

The Bavarelli took it for granted that I would bury her in the graveyard, down the valley. But I consulted with Brother Polifilo.

I argued that every high mountain-top by its very nature came within the definition of consecrated ground; and after a show of reluctance he accepted the heresy, on condition I allowed him first to visit the spot chosen and recite the prayer of consecration over it.

We laid her in the coffin that Brother Polifilo brought, and carried her to the summit of the mountain overlooking the pa.s.s, where the rock had allowed us to dig the shallowest of graves. Beside it, when the coffin was covered, I said good-bye to the Bavarelli and dismissed them down the hill. They understood that I had yet a word to speak to the good monk.

"One thing remains," I said, and showed him the crown with the five empty settings, and the one diamond yet glittering in its band.

"Help me to build a cairn," said I.

So he helped me. We built a tall cairn, and I laid the crown within it.

The sun was setting as we laid the last stone in place. We walked in silence down to the pa.s.s, and there I shook hands with him by the little chapel, and received his blessing before setting my face northwards.

I dare say that he stood for a long while, watching me as I descended the curves of the road. But I never once looked back until I had crossed the valley, far below. The great peak rose behind me; and it seemed to me that on its summit a diamond shone amongst the stars.

POSTSCRIPT.

BY GERVASE ARUNDEL.

July 15 (St. Swithun's), 1761.

My nephew has asked me to write the few words necessary to conclude this narrative.

The day after my brother's burial, the _Gauntlet_, in company with General Paoli's gunboat, _Il Sampiero_, weighed and left the island of Giraglia for Isola Rossa, where by agreement we were to wait one calendar month before sailing for England.

The foregoing pages will sufficiently explain why the month pa.s.sed without my nephew's putting in an appearance. For my part, albeit my arguments had been powerless to dissuade him from going to Genoa, I never expected him to return, but consoled myself with the knowledge that he had gone to his fate in a good cause, and in a spirit not unworthy of his father.

We were highly indebted during our stay at Isola Rossa to the General, who, being detained there by the business of his new fortifications, exerted himself that we should not lack a single comfort, and seemed to inspire a like solicitude in his subjects.

I call the Corsicans his subjects since (if the reflection may be permitted) I never met a man who carried a more authentic air of kingliness--and I am not forgetting my own dear brother-in-law.

Alive, these two men met face to face but once; and Priske, who witnessed the meeting, yet understood but a bare word or two of what was said, will have it that for dignity of bearing the General would not compare with his master. The honest fellow may be right; for certainly no one could speak with John Constantine and doubt that here was one of a line of kings. Nevertheless to me (a matter-of-fact man), Paoli appeared scarcely less imposing in person, and withal bore himself with a businesslike calm which, in a subtle way I cannot describe, seemed to tolerate the others, yet suggest that, beside his own purpose, theirs were something unreal.

As an Englishman I should say that he felt the weight of public opinion behind him all the while, without which in these days the kingliest nature must miss something of gravity. Yet he has proved more than once that no public man can be more quixotic, upon occasion.

It distressed me to find that the Queen Emilia would have none of his courtesies; as I think it distressed him, though he comported himself perfectly. She rejected, and not too graciously, his offer to restore her to her palace at Casalabriva and secure her there against all enemies. From the first she had determined, failing her son's return, to sail with us to England; and sail she did.

But from the first I doubted her reaching it alive. Her sufferings had worn her out, and it is a matter of dispute between Dom Basilio (who administered the last sacrament), and me whether or no her eyes ever saw the home to which we carried her. They were open, and she was certainly breathing, when we made the entrance of Helford river; for we had lifted her couch upon deck and propped her that she might catch the earliest glimpse of Constantine above the trees. They were open when we dropped anchor, but she was as certainly dead. She lies buried in the private chapel of the house, disused during my brother-in-law's lifetime, but since restored and elaborately decorated by our Trappist guests. A slab of rose-pink Corsican granite covers her, and is inscribed with the words, "Orate pro anima Emiliae, Corsicorum Reginae," the date of her death, and beneath it a verse which I took to be from the Vulgate until Parson Grylls quarrelled with Dom Basilio over it--

"CRAS AMET QVI NVNQVAM AMAVIT QVIQVE AMAVIT CRAS AMET."

As I have said, I had parted with all hope to see my nephew again: and it but confirmed my despair when I received a letter from General Paoli with news that the Prince Camillo had been a.s.sa.s.sinated; for neither his sister nor Prosper had said word to me of the young man's treachery, and I concluded that they had bound themselves to rescue him, an unwilling prisoner. In our last brief leave-taking on the island, Prosper had confided to me certain wishes of his concerning the house at Constantine, and the disposal of his estate; wishes of which I need only say here that they obliged me after a certain interval to get his death "presumed" (as the phrase is), and for that purpose to ride up to London and seek counsel with our lawyer, Mr.

Knox.

I arrived in London early in the second week of November, 1760--a few days after the decease of our King George II.; and, my business with Mr. Knox drawing to a conclusion, it came into my head to procure a ticket and go visit the Prince's chamber, near the House of Peers, where his Majesty's body lay in state. This was on the very afternoon of the funeral, that would start for the Abbey after nightfall, and at Westminster I found a throng already gathered in the mud and murk. In the _chambre ardente_, which was hung with purple, a score of silver lamps depended from the roof around a tall purple canopy, under which the corpse reposed in its open coffin, flanked with six immense silver candelabra. Between the candelabra and at the head and foot of the coffin stood six gigantic soldiers of the guard, rigid as statues, with bowed heads and arms reversed.

Only their eyes moved, and I dare say that I stared at them in something like terror. Certainly a religious awe held me as the pressure of the sightseers carried me forth from the doors again and into the street, where I wedged myself into the crowd, and waited for the procession. By this time a fog had rolled up from the river, and the foot-guards who lined the road had begun to light their torches.

Behind them were drawn up the horse-guards, their officers erect in saddle, with naked sabres and heavy scarves of c.r.a.pe. There amid the sounds of minute guns, and of bells tolling I must have waited a full hour before the procession came by--the fifes, the m.u.f.fled drums, the yeomen of the guard staggering with the great coffin, the pall-bearers and peers walking two and two, with pages bearing their heavy trains. All this I watched as it went by, and with a mind so shaken that a hand from behind had plucked twice or thrice at my elbow before I was aware that any one claimed my attention.

Then, turning with a moisture in my eyes--for the organ had begun to sound within the abbey--I found myself staring past the torch of a foot-guard and into the face of my nephew, risen from the dead!

He was haggard, unkempt in his hair and dress, and (I think) had been fasting for a long while without being aware of his hunger. He drew me back and away from the crowd; but when I had embraced him, it seemed that to all my eager questions he had nothing to answer.

"I was starting for Cornwall, to-morrow," he said. "Shall we travel together?" And then, as though painfully recollecting, he pa.s.sed a hand over his forehead and added, "I have walked half-way across Europe. I am a good walker by this time."

"We will hire horses, to be sure," said I, finding nothing better to say.

The age, the lines in his young face cut me to the heart, and I longed to ask concerning the Princess, but dared not.

"Horses? Ah, yes, to be sure, I come back to riches. Nay, my dear uncle, you are going to tell me that the estates are mortgaged deep as ever--I know. But allow me to tell you there is all the world's difference between poverty that is behindhand with its interest, and poverty that has to trust G.o.d for its next meal."

At the eating-house to which I carried him he held out his scarred palms to me across the table.

"They have worked my way for me from the Alps," said he. "I left my crown there, and"--he laughed wearily--"I come back to find another monarch in the act of laying aside a greater one. My G.o.d!

The vanity of it!"

He drank off a gla.s.s of wine. "Find me a bed, Uncle Gervase," said he. "I feel that I can sleep the clock round."

We rode out of London next day. He started in a fret to be home, but this impatience declined by the way, and by the time we crossed Tamar had sunk to a lethargy. Sore was I to mark the dull gaze he lifted (by habit) at the corner of the road where Constantine comes into view; and sorer the morning after, when, having put gun into his hand and packed him off with Diana, the old setter, at his heel, I met him an hour later returning dejectedly to the house. For the next three or four months he went listless as a man dragging a wounded limb.