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Sir John Constantine, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Chapter 24. The Wooing Of Princess Camilla |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV. THE WOOING OF PRINCESS CAMILLA "Take heed of loving me, ---DONNE, The Prohibition.
She had halted, a pace or two from me, with downcast eyes. She said it very slowly, and I stared at her and answered with an unmeaning laugh. "Forgive me, Princess. I--I fancy my poor wits have been shaken and need a little time to recover. At any rate, I do not understand you." "You have conquered," she repeated in a low voice that dragged upon the words. Then, after a pause,--"You remember, once, promising me that at the last I should come and place my neck under your foot . . ." She glanced up at me and dropped her eyes again. "Yes, I see that you remember. _Eccu_--I am here." "I remember, Princess: but even yet I do not understand. Why, and for what, should you beseech me?" "In the first place for death. I am your wife . . ." She broke off with a shiver. "There is something in the name, _messere_--is there not?--that should move you to kindness, as a sportsman takes his game not unkindly to break its neck. That is all I ask of you--" "Princess!" She lifted a hand. "--except that you will let me say what I have to say. You shall think hard thoughts of me, and I am going to make them harder; but for your own sake you shall put away vile ones-if you can." I stared at her stupidly dizzied a little with the words _I am your wife_, humming in my brain. Or say that I am naturally not quick-witted, and I will plead that for once my dullness did me no discredit. At all events it saved me for the moment: for while I stared at her, utterly at a loss, a crackle of twigs warned us, and we turned together as, by the pathway leading from the high-road, the bushes parted and the face of Marc'antonio peered through upon the clearing. "Salutation, O Princess!" said he gravely, and stepped out of cover attended by Stephanu, who likewise saluted. The Princess drew herself up imperiously. "I thought, O Stephanu, that I had made plain my orders, that you two were neither to follow nor to watch me?" "Nevertheless," Marc'antonio made answer, "when one misses a comrade and hears, at a little distance, the firing of a volley . . . not to mention that some one has been burning gunpowder hereabouts," he wound up, sniffing the air with an expression that absurdly reminded me of our Vicar, at home, tasting wine. "I warn you, O Marc'antonio," said the Princess, "to be wise and ask no more questions." "I have asked none, O Princess," he answered again, still very gravely, and after a glance at me turned to Stephanu. "But it runs in my head, comrade, that the time has come to consider other things than wisdom." "For example?" I challenged him sharply. "For example, cavalier, that I cannot reconcile this smell with any Corsican gunpowder." "And you are right," said I. "Nay, Princess, you have sworn not long since to obey me, and I choose that they shall know. That salvo, sirs, was fired, five minutes ago, by the Genoese." "A 'salvo' did you say, cavalier?" "For our wedding, Marc'antonio." I took the Princess's hand--which neither yielded nor resisted--and lifting it a little way, released it to fall again limply. So for a while there was silence between us four. "Marc'antonio," said I, "and you, Stephanu--it is I now who speak for the Princess and decide for her; and I decide that you, who have served her faithfully, deserve to be told all the truth. It is truth, then, that we are married. The priest who married us was Fra Domenico, and with assent of his master the Prince Camillo. I can give you, moreover, the name of the chief witness: he is a certain Signor or General Andrea Fornari, and commands the Genoese garrison in Nonza." "Princess!" Marc'antonio implored her. "It is true," said she. "This gentleman has done me much honour, having heard what my brother chose to say." "But I do not comprehend!" The honest fellow cast a wild look around the clearing. "Ah, yes-the volley! They have taken the Prince, and shot him . . . But his body--they would not take his body--and you standing here and allowing it--" "My friends," I interrupted, "they have certainly taken his body, and his soul too, for that matter; and I doubt if you can overtake either on this side of Nonza. But with him you will find the crown of Corsica, and the priest who helped him to sell it. I tell you this, who are clansmen of the Colonne. Your mistress, who discovered the plot and was here to hinder it, will confirm me." Their eyes questioned her; not for long. In the droop of her bowed head was confirmation. "And therefore," I went on, "you two can have no better business than to help me convey the Princess northward and bring her to her mother, whom in this futile following after a wretched boy you have all so strangely forgotten. By God!" said I, "there is but one man in Corsica who has hunted, this while, on a true scent and held to it; and he is an Englishman, solitary and faithful at this moment upon Cape Corso!" "Your pardon, cavalier," answered Marc'antonio after a slow pause. "What you say is just, in part, and I am not denying it. But so we saw not our duty, since the Queen Emilia bade us follow her son. With him we have hunted (as you tell us) too long and upon a false scent. Be it so: but, since this has befallen, we must follow on the chase a little farther. For you, you have now the right to protect our well-beloved; not only to the end of Cape Corso, but to the end of the world. But for us, who are two men used to obey, the Princess your wife must suffer us to disobey her now for the first time. The road to the Cape, avoiding Nonza, is rough and steep and must be travelled afoot; yet I think you twain can accomplish it. At the Cape, if God will, we will meet you and stand again at your service. But we travel by another road--the road which does not avoid Nonza." He glanced at Stephanu, who nodded. "Farewell then, O Princess; and if this be the end of our service, forgive what in the past has been done amiss. Farewell, O cavalier, and be happy to protect her in perils wherein we were powerless." The Princess stretched out both hands. "Nay, mistress," said Marc'antonio, with another glance at Stephanu; "but first cross them, that there be no telling the right from the left: for we are two jealous men." She crossed them obediently, and the two took each a hand and kissed it. Now all this while I could see that she was struggling for speech, and as they released her hands she found it. "But wherefore must you go by Nonza, O Marc'antonio? And how many will you take with you?" Marc'antonio put the first question aside. "We go alone, Princess. You may call it a reconnaissance, on which the fewer taken the better." "You will not kill him! Nay, then, O Marc'antonio, at least--at least you will not hurt him!" "We hope, Princess, that there will be no need," he answered seriously, and, saluting once more, turned on his heel. Stephanu also saluted and turned, and the pair, falling into step, went from us across the clearing. I watched them till their forms disappeared in the undergrowth, and turned to my bride. "And now, Princess, I believe you have something to say to me. Shall it be here? I will not suggest the cottage, which is overfull maybe of unpleasant reminders; but here is a tree-trunk, if you will be seated." "That shall be as my lord chooses." I laughed. "Your lord chooses, then, that you take a seat. It seems (I take your word for it) that there must be hard thoughts between us. Well, a straight quarrel is soonest ended, they say: let us have them out and get them over." "Ah, you hurt! Is it necessary that you hurt so?" Her eyes no less than her voice sobered me at once, shuddering together as though my laugh had driven home a sword and it grated on the bone. I remembered that she always winced at laughter, but this evident anguish puzzled me. "God knows," said I, "how I am hurting you. But pardon me. Speak what you have to speak; and I will be patient while I learn." "'A lifetime of dishonour,' you said, and yet you laugh . . . A lifetime of dishonour, and you were blithe to be shot and escape it; yet now you laugh. Ah, I cannot understand!" "Princess!" I protested, although not even now did I grasp what meaning she had misread into my words. "But you said rightly. It is a lifetime of dishonour you have suffered them to put on you: and I--I have taken more than life from you, cavalier--yet I cannot grieve for you while you laugh. O sir, do not take from me my last help, which is to honour you!" "Listen to me, Princess," said I, stepping close and standing over her. "What do you suppose that I meant by using those words? They were your own words, remember." "That is better. It will help us both if we are frank--only do not treat me as a child. You heard what my brother said. Yes, and doubtless you have heard other things to my shame? Answer me." "If your brother chose to utter slanders--" "Yes, yes; it was easy to catch him by the throat. That is how one man treats another who calls a woman vile in her presence. It does not mean that he disbelieves, and therefore it is worthless; but a gallant man will act so, almost without a second thought, and because it is _dans les formes_." She paused. "I learned that phrase in Brussels, cavalier." I made no answer. "In Brussels, cavalier," she repeated, "where it was often in the mouths of very vile persons. You have heard, perhaps, that we--that my brother and I--lived our childhood in Brussels?" I bent my head, without answering; but still she persisted. "I was brought to Corsica from Brussels, cavalier. Marc'antonio and Stephanu fetched us thence, being guided by that priest who is now my brother's confessor." "I have been told so, Princess. Marc'antonio told me." "Did he also tell you where he found me?" "No, Princess." "Did he tell you that, being fetched hither, I was offered by my brother in marriage to a young Count Odo of the Rocca Serra, and that the poor boy slew himself with his own gun?" I stuffed my hands deep in my pockets, and said I, standing over her-- "All this has been told me, Princess, though not the precise reason for it: and since you desire me to be frank I will tell you that I have given some thought to that dead lad--that rival of mine (if you will permit the word) whom I never knew. The mystery of his death is a mystery to me still; but in all my blind guesses this somehow remained clear to me, that he had loved you, Princess; and this (again I ask your leave to say it), because I could understand it so well, forbade me to think unkindly of him." "He loved his honour better, sir." Her face had flushed darkly. "I am sorry, then, if I must suffer by comparison." "No, no," she protested. "Oh, why will you twist my words and force me to seem ungrateful? He died rather than have me to wife: you took me on the terms that within a few minutes you must die. For both of you the remedy was at hand, only _you_ chose to save me before taking it. On my knees, sir, I could thank you for that. The crueller were they that, when you stood up claiming your right to die, they broke the bargain and cheated you." "Princess," I said, after musing a moment, "if my surviving seemed to you so pitiable, there was another way." I pointed to her musket. "Yes, cavalier, and I will confess to you that when, having fired wide, they turned to go and the cheat was evident, twice before you pulled the bandage away I had lifted my gun. But I could not fire it, cavalier. To make me your executioner! Me, your wife--and while you thought so vilely of me!" "Faith," said I grimly, "it was asking too much, even for a Genoese! Yet again I think you overrate their little trick, since, after all"--I touched my own gunstock--"there remains a third way--the way chosen by young Odo of Rocca Serra." She put out a hand. "Sir, that way you need not take--if you will be patient and hear me!" "Lady," said I, "you may hastily despise me; but I am neither going to take that way, nor to be patient, nor to hear you. But I am, as you invited me, going to be very frank and confess to you, risking your contempt, that I am extremely thankful the Genoese did not shoot me, a while ago. Indeed, I do not remember in all my life to have felt so glad, as I feel just now, to be alive. Give me your gun, if you please." "I do not understand." "No, you do not understand. . . . Your gun, please . . . nay, you can lay it on the turf between us. The phial, too, that you offered your brother. . . . Thank you. And now, my wife, let us talk of your country and mine; two islands which appear to differ more than I had guessed. In Corsica it would seem that, let a vile thing be spoken against a woman, it suffices. Belief in it does not count: it suffices that a shadow has touched her, and rather than share that shadow, men will kill themselves--so tender a plant is their honour. Now, in England, O Princess, men are perhaps even more irrational. They, no more than your Corsicans, listen to the evidence and ask themselves, 'Is this good evidence or bad? Do I believe it or disbelieve?' They begin father back, Princess--Shall I tell you how? They look in the face of their beloved, and they say, 'Slander this, not as you wish for belief, but only as you dare; for here my faith is fixed beforehand.' "And therefore, O Princess," I went on, after a pause in which we eyed one another slowly, "therefore, I disbelieve any slander concerning you; not merely because your brother's confessor was its author--though that, to any rational man, should be enough--but because I have looked in your face. Therefore also I, your husband, forbid you to speak what would dishonour us both." "But, cavalier--if--if it were true?" "True?"--I let out a harsh laugh. "Take up that phial. Hold it in your hand, so. Now look me in the face and drink--if you dare! Look me in the face, read how I trust you, and so, if you can say the lie to me say it--and drink!" She lifted the phial steadily, almost to her lips, keeping her eyes on mine--but of a sudden faltered and let it fall upon the turf: where I, whose heart had all but stood still, crushed my heel upon it savagely. "I cannot. You have conquered," she gasped. "Conquered?" I swore a bitter oath. "O Princess, think you _this_ is the way I promised to conquer you? Take up your gun again and follow me. . . . Eh? You do not ask where I lead?" "It is enough that I follow you, my husband," she said humbly. "It is something, indeed; but before God it is not enough, nor half enough. I see now that 'enough' may never come: almost I doubt if I, who swore to you it should come, and since have desired it madly, desire it any longer; and until it comes you are still the winner. 'Enough' shall be said, Princess--for my price rises--not when (as I promised) you come to me without choosing to be loved or hated, only beseeching your master, but when you shall come to me having made your choice. . . . But so far, so good," said I, cheerfully, changing my tone. "You do not ask where I lead. I am leading you, if I can to Cape Corso, to my father; and by his help, if it shall serve, to your mother." "I thank you, cavalier," she said, still in her restrained voice. "You are a good man; and for that reason I am sorry you will not hearken to me." "The mountains are before us," said I, shouldering my gun. "Listen, Princess: let us be good comrades, us two. Let us forget what lies at the end of the journey--the convent for you, may be, and for me at least the parting. My life has been spared to-day, and I tell you frankly that I am glad of the respite. For you, the mountains hold no slanders, and shall hold no evil. Put your hand in mine on the compact, and we will both step it bravely. Forget that you were ever a Princess or I a promised king of this Corsica! O beloved, travel this land, which can never be yours or mine, and let it be ours only for a while as we journey." I turned and led the way up the path between the bushes: and she followed my stride almost at a run. On the bare mountain-spur above the high-road she overtook and fell into pace with me: and so, skirting Nonza, we breasted the long slope of the range. _ |
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