The King of Alsander. Flecker James Elroy

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СКАЧАТЬ is good enough for him where I am."

      Meanwhile Norman was feeling awkward enough. The girl, it seemed, had taken possession of him almost without asking him, though doubtless it was his own fault, for kissing lonely nymphs all in the morning of the world. There she was publicly avowing him, and making him feel very mean and foolish before her honest, if extravagant, lover, who now went on with a sort of portentous dignity:

      "I am sorry. Forgive me, Peronella. I am confused. I cannot understand what has happened. You cannot give me up after all these months for some one you do not know at all. It is absurd. It could not be. It is fantastic. It is unreal."

      "I did not know I had ever taken you," replied Peronella. "What have we ever done but go out for walks like friends?"

      "But I was going to give up everything for you. Do not blast my youth."

      "It has been blasted before, Cesano."

      "Not like this time. I cannot sleep. Come, take away your arm, last of creatures. I cannot bear it. I will go mad. I will beat you. As for you, sir" (to Norman, in a deep bass), "I will deal with you after with cold steel!"

      "Come, now," said Peronella, smoothly. "I am very sorry indeed. One cannot help the hand of Fate."

      "Hand of Fate," said Cesano, in justifiable wrath. "It has driven many women to hell, that hand of Fate. Do you kiss a new man every week? Have you a price? Was I not honourable? Did we not talk of marriage? Did I not pick you coral from the sea – violets from the meadows?"

      "Don't be poetic, Cesano, or I shall cry."

      "Cry! Can you shed tears? I have shed many for you at night beneath your window. But you have no heart!"

      "Why trouble then about so stony a young girl?"

      The affected languor of her tone irritated Norman almost as much as it was intended to irritate Cesano, but he could not well desert her now, and stood his ground. Cesano sobbed, put one hand on his breast and the other on a tableknife with which he made the most threatening gestures at Norman. The latter, who understood the hand-play more than the rhetoric, could not help laughing at the grotesque but unfortunate Alsandrian.

      "Ah! you laugh now!" said Cesano, ferociously. "Some day I will make you smile at the back of your head."

      And turning on his heel, to Norman's surprise, he went softly and quietly out of the room.

      "I am so sorry for Cesano," said Norman. "I did not mean to be rude to him; he is a good man. I am sorry you were so cruel to him. He has not deserved it of you."

      "Love is cruel! And, O, Normano, Love is divine!"

      "Love is a very good subject of conversation," said Norman, ungallantly. He was tired, and therefore had sagacious misgivings as to what he had let himself in for. "Good night," he added, and turned on his heel.

      "Is that all?" said Peronella, opening out her arms.

      But the wary Englishman had fled.

      CHAPTER IV

      INTRODUCING A GOOD BEGGAR AND A BAD KING

      Beautiful and broken fountains, keep you still your Sultan's dream?

      The Golden Journey to' Samarkand.

      Despite any irritation he might feel in finding his pretty flirtation degenerate into a sentimental romance which might end ill, for a week Norman led the golden life, and, after all, the golden life can only be led in sunny lands, by him who has a mistress on his arm and music in his soul, and it never lasts more than one week in the same place. The golden life in Alsander means swimming, sunstruck memories of old walls and young faces; it means prospects down tortuous streets of blue mountains towering to the sky or of blue skies falling into bluer seas. It means the discovery of an elegant fountain down this way, of a Roman inscription hidden in moss down that. It means the first view of the Cathedral square. For the façade of the Cathedral of Alsander, first seen of a sudden some early morning, when the square is still, seems an impossible thing – a mirage: it is so vast, so lovely, and so old.

      But for Norman in Alsander, as for many another, the chill Sunday of disappointment followed the week-days of delight. Naturally the first disappointment was Peronella. We have already hinted at Norman's disappointment. It did not vanish, that disappointment: it grew. Can beauty be boring? Ah! ye gods, it can, if one has to talk to it, and it is stupid. But was Peronella not romantic? Oh, yes, she was indeed, but romantic with a "k." She was romantick like the fair misses of a hundred years ago. But is not the romantick the same as the romantic in principle? Oh, yes, indeed, the sentiment is the same; but to be romantic requires intellect, and to be romantick requires none. But was not Peronella educated? Indeed she was, most abominably educated, quite enough to ruin all the fresh roses of her nature. She had not, could not, alas! read Ella Wheeler Wilcox, her poems, but, oh! how she would have loved them had she known them! Marie Corelli she did read; you may buy her works in Alsandrian. But was she incapable of appreciating true literature? Oh, no, she adored Shakespeare and Byron, which she read in translations. You see, her mother had ideas and considered herself a lady. Nevertheless Peronella began to bore Norman: the spell was broken!

      And once that spell broken, other enchantments lost their hold. The mirage lifted from the city of Alsander. The illusion began to disappear one day when it rained, and the next day, when Norman walked out alone after a sulky quarrel, it had utterly vanished. The rain had ceased, but the sun had revived the smells of Alsander (which were ubiquitous, insinuating, sometimes crushing) without drying the streets. Norman slipped at every step he took in the glutinous mud. The utter disrepair of the cobbled streets made walking bad enough at any time, heartrending after rain. As for driving, it was a wonder there was a carriage in the place. Across one of the narrowest but most frequented roads gaped a fabulously large hole which had perhaps been opened for some vague drainage or burial operations. The displaced cobbles formed a little circular hill all round this preposterous cavity, which looked in consequence more like the crater of Etna than an honest hole in the road, and carriages had positively to be lifted over the hill into the valley and then over the hill again. A couple of men could have put it straight in half an hour – but this was Alsander.

      The question will arise, "But what of the pavements?" In Alsander, as a rule, there are no pavements, the roads being flanked on each side by little running sewers. Where pavements do exist they are used for idle shopmen to obstruct with their chairs or pushing shopmen to bar with their merchandise. They also have a way of coming to an end in the gutter after a few yards, just as you are getting your stride in, and then tempting the foolish to wade across the road by casually sprouting up on the opposite side.

      Norman had all an Englishman's hatred of discomfort and waste; he felt that Blaindon could put Alsander to shame in the matter of public works; he feared the smells would give him typhoid, and he began to hate Alsander, and he heard the call of Roon, the God of Going, as it is written in the Gods of Pegana.

      Besides all this he was frightened and puzzled. He had fallen into a trap. He was looked upon as a prospective son-in-law by the Widow Prasko – and that was ever so largely his own fault. Englishmen were accounted fabulously rich, and this one was evidently handsome as well. Peronella was already airing her proprietorship to the envy and admiration of the other maids of Alsander. Then Cesano was a nuisance with his little tricks, for he was as sincere as he was ridiculous – the complement of Peronella with no redeeming beauty. He was only at the scowling stage at present, but would certainly advance, in accordance with the sound early Renaissance tradition of the country, to powder in the coffee, snake in the boot, or knife in the back. But for all this, Norman was chivalrous and conscientious enough, СКАЧАТЬ