Читать книгу: «The King of Alsander», страница 4

"It is little we poor citizens of Alsander can refuse to the inquiring tourist," said the old man with acerbity. "And may the devil torment you for a member of a great nation that can look after itself. We, you know, are supposed to be incapable of self-government, especially since we went bankrupt a year or two ago, and actually dared to ruin some French bondholders. Since that day the Great Powers have been terrifying us with an international commission. If ever there is a free fight in a café here, or a dog-fight in the square, some foreigner writes to a European newspaper about the anarchy in Alsander. American missionaries, who believe in Noah's Ark and the historical existence of Methusalem, revile the degraded superstitions of our peasants who still hold to their immemorial festivals in honour of the water that bursts from the rock or the grape that grows dark on the vine. And now we are threatened with inspectors, all of varying nationalities, to avoid all appearance of intrigue or possibility of jealousy. You see our strategic importance is the only importance left to us – otherwise we should long ago have disappeared. So we are to have a Spanish Financial Inspector and a Swiss Sanitary Board. Our gendarmerie will be organized by a virtuous Dane. Our agriculture will be modernized by an energetic Dutchman. Our public conveniences will doubtless be improved by one of your own compatriots."

"My compatriot," said Norman, "will not be unoccupied. But I insist upon your telling me the tale of King Basilandron."

"I will tell you, milord, since you are so importunate, but forgive me if I have been impolite. These things touch me so near.

"Well, then, King Basilandron ruled in days when certain ideas from Italy, having reached Alsander, had turned the heads even of sober people and made great havoc of the Court. It was in those days that all this wood and plaster work which you so much admire was erected; it was in this garden that night after night King Basilandron held revel, to the great pleasure of those engaged therein. The Court was all crammed with fiddlers, painters, poets, dancers, barbers and buffoons. But they were quack fiddlers, feeble painters, vile poets and clumsy dancers, who would not have dared to move a leg in Italy. But the barbers and buffoons were such as the world has never seen, so dexterous and stylish. Need I tell you how the country was taxed to maintain this alien population, or how the people groaned and murmured, or how the aesthetic monarch kept them quiet and amused by diverting pageants? All sorts of pageants there were – of beggars, thieves, madmen, lovers, heretics (real heretics, subsequently burnt), queens of antiquity, widows, tigers and Turks. But a pageant was the end of the whole business, as I will tell you now.

"One day the King resolved to re-establish the worship called of Orpheus, to the great joy of his friends. He clothed himself as Bacchus, though per Bacco he looked more like Silenus (if the painters of his day did not make him more ugly than he was, which in those days was not the custom of Court painters). His escort was a troop of noble ladies clothed in forest branches and none too leafy: and one summer evening under the full moon off they went singing to the mountains. After they had danced their fill and sinned God knows what sins, the moon set and back they swooped on the city in a sort of make-believe battle line; and there at the gates was the army of Alsander mumming in Greek tunics waiting to receive their amorous attack. But at that very hour a different host was approaching Alsander – forgotten barbarians from Ulmreich – and the two hosts met. And that is all – and that has been all for the glory and power of Alsander," concluded the old man, bitterly.

"But Alsander is independent still."

"An independence handed her as a gift by Ulmreich and Gantha, her two great neighbours, is not much worth having. The day one of them is strong enough to seize us from the other, we shall go. Or if that international commission really sits, it is as good as death to our little nation. We shall never more be able to raise our heads – and chiefly through the fault of King Basilandron."

"But much might be done now," objected Norman, with a certain breeziness. "Why should Alsander have to wait for an international commission before getting her streets paved? Look at my boots."

"I would rather look at your eyes than at your feet, young Englishman. As for Alsander, she cannot be clean while she is corrupt. That would be hypocrisy, and we have never sunk so low as that. But in Bermondsey the streets are excellently paved. And, by God! Alsander, in all its poverty and decay, is not so vile a place as Bermondsey, nor are its people so brutal or so blind as yours."

"We have no sun," said Norman. "But come, you have been in England, you are a wonderful old man. Tell me your story now that you have told the story of Basilandron."

"I cannot tell my story," said the old man, shaking as if with sorrow. "My tragedy is so little when I think of the tragedy of my people that I can only say – Alas for Alsander!"

"You, sir, are a great patriot," said Norman, touched into respect of all this passion in all those rags.

"I, sir, am a very old man," replied the beggar, and Norman could not tell why the reply was so appropriate.

"I understand now," said Norman, "why you hate these pretty pavilions and love those old walls. And I suppose the present state of Alsander must distress you. But surely some young and vigorous ruler could still do wonders for Alsander? I have been told, to my great surprise, that the King, though young, is insane. I have heard also that he usually lives in this castle, but that the Jewish doctor who attends him, and who is said to be the cleverest man in Alsander (and some say the wickedest), has sent him to England or Ulmreich or somewhere as a last hope. If only a new and vigorous King could rule this land awhile, there is still a chance of greatness; but it is astonishing that the people seem neither to know nor care exactly who or where their King is, or what his true state of health may be. Perhaps you are better informed? I heard myself that the King had been sent to some European asylum to be cured, but no one seems to know to which one."

"As to that point, I can only assure you, my lord, that there is no hope for the King's sanity. It is pure degeneration of race."

"Then I inquired why the heir to the throne was not installed in his place. No one seemed to like to talk of that subject. But it appears she is a girl living somewhere in Ulmreich, very young, and as mad as the King."

"I do not think the young lady in question, whom I once had the honour of meeting, is exactly mad," said the beggar. "A little wild, one might say, and her guardians are wise enough to let her do as she pleases. I expect our illustrious Regent has been spreading that fable."

"You mean Duke Vorza? I understand he is virtually despot of Alsander now. I have heard a great deal of grumbling against him, but nothing very definite, though I have heard some people say that the King is not really so mad as his physician and the Regent pretend."

"Duke Vorza," said the beggar, "is a man of great talent and ambition. He does not like the people of Alsander to talk very much about anything. To have seen him kiss the peasant children in the streets on the day he raised the tax on matches was what you might call a lesson in political economy. It is marvellous, too, how he manages the city council – a rather enlightened body of merchants and professional men and opposed to his reactionary policy. He distributes invitations to dinner at exactly the right moment, and if a dinner fails he decorates. Sforelli (who is only considered a scoundrel because of his dark features and undoubted ability) is almost the only one of them man enough to withstand a title or a decoration. The consequence is he dare not venture out of his house after dark for fear of meeting one of Vorza's ruffians in the street. Oh, there are many dark stories to tell of Vorza, but such is the stupidity of popular rumour it has seized on the most improbable, Vorza and Sforelli, though outwardly amiable to each other, are in secret bitter enemies, and as for the madness of the King, I assure you he is as mad as anyone could pretend him to be."

"But no one seems to have seen him for years," objected Norman.

"I have, but few others," said the mendi cant.

"There's something terrible about a King whom his people seem never to have seen," said Norman.

"Listen to me," said the old man in a low and dramatic whisper. "I may not be quite what I seem, as you surmise, and I may have powers even you do not suspect. Would you like to see the King of Alsander and discover for yourself how terrible he is?"

"Do you mean to say he is here?" exclaimed Norman. "Is it not true that he is in Europe – and do the people really not know where he is?"

"Did you not hear that he was expected back?"

"There was a queer rumour, now I come to think of it," said Norman, thinking of his talks with Pedro the cobbler and others, "that he was coming back cured."

"Well, he has returned, not cured, and that is all," said the old man.

Norman started a little.

"I seem to recognize your voice," he said. "Surely I have met you before?"

"Don't you remember, my lord, the old tramp you met in Gantha, who told you all about the beauties of Alsander?"

"Why, that eloquent old fellow, was it you? It was you, then, persuaded me to come to this country. I have much to thank you for: it is a wonderful country indeed. But it was dark on the road that night and I could hardly see you. So you are he. But you were not talking Alsandrian but English."

"I have wandered, and you have learnt Alsandrian."

"Yes. I found the little book you left in my pocket. But tell me, who are you? Of course, I cannot believe you to be a beggar. Enough of these mysterious tricks. You are a man of eloquence and learning. You must be a person of diplomatic importance, if you can really show me the mad King of Alsander."

"You shall really see him as I promised," said the old man, and making a trumpet of his hands he called out "Yohann! Yohann!" in a remarkably sonorous voice. Immediately there appeared from the lodge beneath the gate a sentry at whose girdle dangled two large keys. He came up to them and saluted, but made no remark, and in silence they all three went across the gardens to the vast loopholed wall opposite the gate. The sentry opened an insignificant little door half hidden in the wallflowers that dangled from the crevices between the mighty stones.

"The walls are thicker than you supposed, are they not, my lord?" said the tattered guide.

Norman gasped with astonishment. A huge corridor pierced the wall from side to side and top to bottom, – a corridor at least a hundred feet long and eighty feet high, yet only of a breadth for three men to walk side by side and lit only by a tiny window at the extreme end. Norman having walked over to it saw that the window commanded a sweeping view of the plain of Alsander, the river Ianthe, the sea, the mountains, and also noted that no one could look in through that window whoever might look out, for the wall on that side is built on the top of a sheer precipice of rock. Meanwhile the second key was being applied to another small door half-way down the corridor on the left. It opened groaning; the centre of the corridor was flooded with a shaft of light.

"Enter, my lord," said the mysterious guide. "This is the throne-room."

It was a most presentable type of disjointed majesty, this throne-room, the apotheosis of the ruined summer-house outside, a wreck of what had once been a gorgeous but not entirely tasteless mass of plaster gilding and paint in the style of the late Renaissance. Sham large windows had been let in to hide the little grills in the wall; in the intervening space the two hooks were still visible where once lamps had swung to flood the hall from without with artificial daylight. The ceiling, a false one, for the room went up of old to the height of the wall, like the corridor outside it, was painted with a device in cunning perspective, representing the apotheosis (among very pink angels) of King Basilandron, the same who christened the river Ianthe and was responsible for the disaster of the Bacchic revels. The picture, and indeed the entire room, dated from his lifetime. The wall decorations, however (according to information which Norman subsequently gathered), were added by his son – very tasteful designs of apes and Chinamen —singeries and chinoiseries. Basilandron II evidently disagreed with his father's idealistic tendencies, and held a firm belief that art should not aim at expressing any meaning, not even a lascivious one, but should rather consist of graceful and intricate designs. In this way he anticipated many of the most brilliant modern theorists. Although these panels had suffered considerably owing to the inferior quality of the paint employed, their condition was good compared with the dado, the composition columns, the settees and other accessories of the room. Dust, black, deep and ancient, had settled among those gilded lilies and plaster cupids; part of the work had fallen away, exposing the supporting wires, and part was grievously cracked. It may be because plaster cracks more irregularly than marble, but whatever the reason a noseless plaster Muse, however elegant originally, cannot reassert her loveliness like an antique torso or the armless Aphrodite.

Moreover, the spider, ubiquitous and remorseless, had woven his octagonal mesh in every crevice of the wall, and, more shamelessly still, among the pendants of the great glass chandelier, wherein were still sticking grisly and darkened stumps of candle, the same that had been lit at the requiem of the last King of Alsander twenty years ago. Since then a plain lamp (so portable and so much easier to light) had been deemed sufficient for the service of the Court.

Perhaps the most pitiable objects in the room were the two or three sofas that still remained, their gilt tarnished, their tapestries y mouldy and eaten by the moth. But the hall contained another seat of a far different aspect, impervious to such decay. Beneath the great rose window it stood, at the upper end of the room, strangely out of place, a cold and massive work, the ancient throne of the Kradendas. It was fronted by wide steps, flanked by grotesque yet grand lions, and wrought of granite rock. And if this rude and barbaric throne was anomalous in so artistic a room, still more vivid was the contrast between the majesty of its structure and the majesty of him who sat thereon.

For there sat the imbecile Andrea, with watery grey eyes, with hair and hands unkempt, arrayed in the stifling drapery of his state robes. He was a young man, but he seemed to have been alive five hundred years. His features parodied the portraits of his ancestors. With the heavy iron crown of Alsander on his head, and a great silver sceptre in his hands, he sat immobile; only his mumbling lips seemed to address a phantom and imaginary Court.

CHAPTER V
OF THE KNIGHTING OF NORMAN PRICE

 
Do diddle di do,
Poor Jim Jay
Got stuck fast
In yesterday.
 

Peacock Pie.

The madman on the throne seemed to know Norman's guide, for he showed no surprise, but asked immediately:

"Whom hast thou with thee, O last courtier of the Court of the Kradendas?"

"A young squire, O my liege the King, who will devote his life to rescue the house of the Kradenda from infamy and harm," said the beggar.

"He is young, but our need is great. Above all, we need brave men. We need such men as have made Alsander what it is. Tell me," he continued, turning to Norman, "are you brave or fearful?"

"You should humour him," whispered the old man to Norman, who, astonished at the whole scene, and especially at this antiquated and abrupt form of address, did not know what to reply. "He is in the middle ages. For him this hall is still hung with cloth of gold, but he knows that his courtiers have left him, and fears treachery – and, above all, magic. He is a brave man, my liege the King," added the old man aloud.

"Let him speak for himself, then, and do not whisper so much to him in my presence. Sir stranger, are you afraid of dragons?"

"Of none," said Norman, vaguely wondering if he were telling the truth.

"O well, O very well," said the King. "I have need of the strong and resolute. Too long has my kingdom lain in ashes and ruin; too long have I been pent up in this dismal room, a powerless captive, I, the son of the Kradendas! I tell you there has been foul treachery and foul black magic. But it shall end. I will no longer be the sport of a thing who flaps his wings in my face. But his hour has come. No more scales and fins for me. Listen closely. I will whisper to you the vital secret. I had it in a dream. You have only to hit him in the fifth rib. But, whatever you do, do not let him change his shape. You can catch him this evening. Wait behind the curtain. He comes here always at seven o'clock to play chess with me, squares and squares and squares."

"I will be there in waiting."

"Will you take an oath to be bold in my cause, to fight for me, and to serve me faithfully, and my Queen?"

"I will have every care of your Majesty and of your Majesty's kingdom," said Norman, keeping up the spirit of the thing at a further hint from his companion, despite his disgust.

"I think you are not of this country," observed the King. "Come you from North or South, or from the rising or from the setting?"

"From the North, your Majesty," replied the boy.

"Fair scion of the North, I will swear you have no lies upon your lips. What is your name?"

"Norman, if it please your Majesty."

"And are you Knight?"

"I am but squire, your Majesty."

"Then, my deliverer, since for years no one has cared for my ruined Majesty, save this, my last, my oldest, my only courtier, for my leech I count not; since you alone have proffered your service to a deserted and broken King, I am filled with good intentions towards you and propose to bestow upon you now at this moment the ancient and honourable distinction of knighthood, that you may bear me homage. Once more, will you swear to serve me faithfully?"

"Oh, certainly," said Norman, the more uncomfortable in that there was something rather noble about the King's madness.

"Then kneel," said the King, rising, as he said the words, in all his battered splendour, with the deep seriousness of a young child at play. Solemnly and almost gracefully, with the wooden sword that a wise supervision allowed him, he dubbed Norman Knight, according to the famous custom of chivalry, which even in England is not quite dead.

"Rise, Sir Norman," he cried exultantly. "I have long waited for you, my deliverer and friend, for you and for this hour. I have no doubt of your valour: I have every confidence in your success. And as soon as the Dragon is killed the spell will be broken: as soon as the spell is broken my courtiers will return: as soon as my courtiers return their wives will come with them, and troops of beautiful women will kiss my hand. Every morning I will hunt to the sound of the horn – up the valley, down the valley, after the wild boar. Every evening we will eat his succulent flesh in this my ancestral hall. We will fill this room with pageantry yet, and hold such a feast as this cracked ceiling has not supervised for many a long year. And we will put cushions on this uncomfortable throne, and gild it over so as to have it more in keeping with our state and dignity. On the day you kill the Dragon, Knight of the North, all; the cathedral bells shall ring and the fountains shall run with wine, and the populace will shout and brandish flowers all day and wave lanterns all the night. But, ah…"

The voice dropped from ecstasy to fear and went on in a muddled murmur:

"But kill that Dragon soon, Knight of the North. Go out to him soon, go out this evening, before dusk. I would not pass another night like yesternight, with his eyes staring in through my head. He is a basilisk: his glance is death: go quickly. O go quickly – leave my presence – slay that dreadful beast!"

"We will go and slay him at once," replied the old man. "Come, young Englishman," he added in an aside, "I am willing enough to take the hint. I have no taste for this spectacle."

"Above all," the King cried after them, "bring me his head." As they turned and looked back from the door they saw that the King had again collapsed into his throne, and was again working his lips in silence.

Not till they were out in the garden again did Norman speak.

"What does it all mean? Who are you, and what have you shown me?" asked the lad. "This morning the world was as ordinary as a sixpenny magazine: and now my head is turning, and I am walking not like a man in a dream, but, what is worse, like a man in a painted picture. Those flowers are fatal and those walls fantastic. Quick, tell me, what does it all mean? The sunshine is grimacing."

"You have seen," said the stranger, "the Secret of the Picturesque. For now we must talk up on a higher plane."

"Damn the higher plane: tell me who you are. But there, do you think I didn't know it all the time? You can be none other but that…"

"Not a word," said his companion, cutting him dead short. "You did not know it till now, when I intended to let you know. By 'it' I mean either the Secret of the Picturesque or what you meant by 'it.' Besides, it's not true that I am this or am that; that depends on what I am."

"Puzzle me no longer: talk plain sense," implored Norman.

"Surely my words are plain enough. What is it you want to know?"

"Your name and history."

"I have no name, but my friends are allowed to call me the Old Man. My history is a dead secret. But if you are in earnest and willing to talk on the higher plane, I will explain to you the meaning of my remark about the Secret of the Picturesque."

"I am willing," said Norman in desperate bewilderment, and eager to hear any explanation about anything.

His guide seemed as mad as the King and needed humouring no less.

"Come to this bench then," said the Old Poet, "and I will illustrate my meaning with a fable of my own composition."

And taking a manuscript from his pocket, without waiting for a word of acquiescence from Norman, who was getting very hungry, he read as follows:

"There was a man (so majestically made that I knew him at once to be the type of Man) walking along a narrow pathway that led from the valley up towards the hills, following a stream. As he strode along two enchanting girls came flying from the South, poised on dragonfly wings; one of them had a lyre in her hand, which she played merrily, and the other an antique scroll painted over with a multitude of amusing and delicate figures. The man was obviously pleased at the arrival of these spirits; he rejoiced in their companionship (as who would not?), and they all three sang and laughed together on the way. So intent was he on their diverting frolics that while crossing a narrow bridge of planks he nearly fell over into the river, and as time went on, and the pathway began to ascend the hillside more abruptly, I wondered if he was not beginning to find their company a little tedious. For while one of them buffeted him over the eyes with her playful wings, the other flung her robe, for amusement, round his naked body, and embarrassed his movements. However, he got rid of their teasing very soon, and at a point where the path entered a dense forest and they had no room to spread their wings I saw him laugh at their discomfiture. The track grew no better upon leaving the forest, for it was cut in the side of a precipice. The two maidens flew with weary and trembling wings over the horrible gulf, or else tore their dresses and bruised their feet trying to follow over the rocks. The man was hindered by them still, for he had to help them, and to judge by his slow progress and perpetual stumbling he was no skilled mountaineer. I wondered what miracle had preserved him as I watched his perilous ascent; and finally I saw that his right hand was grasping another hand, which had no visible body.

"Very naturally, when they arrived at a little dell very high up in the mountain, where there was a withered tree and a little moss, the girls implored the man to take a little refreshment. But the man's attention was fixed on the last portion of the ascent, a steep snow slope, at the top of which a black rock rose sheer out of the snow; let into the rock was a glittering brass door. So he refused to dawdle, and, gripping the hand, he began climbing at once. The women summoned all their courage and followed on foot: they were too tired to fly any more; and now one, and now the other, was glad of their companion's free left arm. At last they came to the door; the mysterious hand touched a spring; the door flew open to divine music and some one bade the traveller enter.

"But he turned away his eyes resolutely from the superb enchantments of the cave, and swore he would go back unless he could take with him the girls of the dragonfly wings, for the sake and memory of their old and sweet companionship. The poor fairies were bedraggled and muddy, their pretty wings hung limply down their backs; they could hardly smile when the man kissed them.

"'They cannot be admitted without initiation,' said the person to whom the hand belonged, 'and they will not endure.'

"'We will endure any pain, if we may only come in with the Man,' they cried both together, and bent forward trying to pass in and to penetrate the depths of the cavern with longing looks.

"The hand persuaded the traveller to go inside the cave, and promised that his friends should follow. He obeyed, but taking no notice of its beauties stood listening behind the door. He heard the whistling of a scourge and gasps of pain. Then quiet; the door opened, and there appeared his two companions, yet changed, and with a deep fire in their eyes: and they had eagle pinions in the place of dragonfly wings."

"That is very charming indeed," said Norman. "But does it quite explain your remark?"

"If you were to read Plato with attention," said the old man, "you would acquire the habit of seizing the point of a parable."

"I have read the New Testament."

"But this is philosophy."

"And I am sure," said Norman, "that had Plato written that story you have told me, it would have acquired a great reputation. But as for the connexion of the parable and your remark, I conceive that in both you show a dislike of the picturesque, or pretty considering it the foe of beauty."

"The picturesque, my son, is the beautiful but only a section thereof. In this fable I have represented it as miniature beauty. The other fable of the picturesque I have no need to write; it is written over the world from the columns of Baalbek to the arches of Tintern and blazed on every stone of Alsander."

"You mean the picturesque which is decaying beauty?"

"I do," said the old man.

"I understand you, venerable Sir, but why are you so passionate about it all?"

"Don't you see, boy, I love Alsander with a love a little different from the love of the tourist who comes to photograph the ruins. Oh! I have worked for her; but she is dying, dying, dying like a rose on a sapless tree."

"I am afraid you are right," said Norman, sadly. "After what you have shown me I have no hope for unfortunate Alsander."

"Impudent tourist! Do not dare blaspheme against the Queen of cities!" growled the old man. There is more hope radiating from a wayside shrine of Alsander than from all the ten-million heretic barns of your greedy North.

But Norman was used by now to these intermittent bursts of fury. "At all events," he rejoined, "Alsander is no place for an Englishman. I have had enough of it. I have to-day seen its last and most tragic secret. To-morrow I will go."

"You are not going so soon?" There was real dismay in the old man's voice.

"By the first train to-morrow."

"Oh no, no, no! You must stay. I did not mean to speak so soon as this, but I must tell you now. I have great plans for you – a fine work – a whole future. Come: sit on this bench a moment, let me talk to you in earnest. O you cannot possibly be allowed to go at once. Do you not realize the deep seriousness that lies beneath all my mannerisms? Do you think that it was to satisfy a traveller's curiosity that I showed you that poor, miserable madman seated on his throne?"

"I do not know why you showed me the King or why you ever disturbed my life or why you ever do anything you do. But as for work, I prefer to find it for myself. And without wishing to offend you, I want to leave this place. I do not want to be involved in your mysterious schemes." Norman spoke stiffly. The old man alarmed him.

"I will thicken the mysteries round your head like clouds before I permit you to leave Alsander, Norman Price."

"Then it is you," said Norman, startled at the sound of his name. "You are the old fellow who bought the tin of Menodoron off me months ago at Blaindon. You are the tramp who sent me to Alsander. And now you have got me to Alsander you want to drive me to perdition. But I am not going to have my life upset by you any more."

And Norman rose from the bench and confronted the old man with folded arms.

"Indeed, are you not?" was the reply. "Come, I promise you a rare adventure."

"What adventure?"

"I'm not going to spoil the first chapter of the story by looking up the last page. Trust and obey me as you trusted and obeyed me before – the greybeard with the blue eyes. Did my advice turn out so badly? Do you presume to tell me that you are sorry I drove you to Alsander?"

"Oh, as for that, I've had a glorious journey. But the time has come for me to go. I have no money left. And I have personal reasons."

"I know, I know." The old man tapped with his stick. "Some pretty wench, is that the matter? Has it come to this so soon?"