The Lion's Skin. Rafael Sabatini

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СКАЧАТЬ to give him an appetite, and further for the purpose of bespeaking in detail his dinner with the hostess. It was one of his traits that he gave the greatest attention to detail, and held that the man who left the ordering of his edibles to his servants was no better than an animal who saw no more than nourishment in food. Nor was the matter one to be settled summarily; it asked thought and time. So he sipped his Hock, listening to the landlady's proposals, and amending them where necessary with suggestions of his own, and what time he was so engaged, there ambled into the inn yard a sturdy cob bearing a sturdy little man in snuff-colored clothes that had seen some wear.

      The newcomer threw his reins to the stable-boy—a person of all the importance necessary to receive so indifferent a guest. He got down nimbly from his horse, produced an enormous handkerchief of many colors, and removed his three-cornered hat that he might the better mop his brow and youthful, almost cherubic face. What time he did so, a pair of bright little blue eyes were very busy with Mr. Caryll's carriage, from which Leduc, Mr. Caryll's valet, was in the act of removing a portmantle. His mobile mouth fell into lines of satisfaction.

      Still mopping himself, he entered the inn, and, guided by the drone of voices, sauntered into the bar. At sight of Mr. Caryll leaning there, his little eyes beamed an instant, as do the eyes of one who espies a friend, or—apter figure—the eyes of the hunter when they sight the quarry.

      He advanced to the bar, bowing to Mr. Caryll with an air almost apologetic, and to the landlady with an air scarcely less so, as he asked for a nipperkin of ale to wash the dust of the road from his throat. The hostess called a drawer to serve him, and departed herself upon the momentous business of Mr. Caryll's dinner.

      “A warm day, sir,” said the chubby man.

      Mr. Caryll agreed with him politely, and finished his glass, the other sipping meanwhile at his ale.

      “A fine brew, sir,” said he. “A prodigious fine brew! With all respect, sir, your honor should try a whet of our English ale.”

      Mr. Caryll, setting down his glass, looked languidly at the man. “Why do you exclude me, sir, from the nation of this beverage?” he inquired.

      The chubby man's face expressed astonishment. “Ye're English, sir! Ecod! I had thought ye French!”

      “It is an honor, sir, that you should have thought me anything.”

      The other abased himself. “'Twas an unwarrantable presumption, Codso! which I hope your honor'll pardon.” Then he smiled again, his little eyes twinkling humorously. “An ye would try the ale, I dare swear your honor would forgive me. I know ale, ecod! I am a brewer myself. Green is my name, sir—Tom Green—your very obedient servant, sir.” And he drank as if pledging that same service he professed.

      Mr. Caryll observed him calmly and a thought indifferently. “Ye're determined to honor me,” said he. “I am your debtor for your reflections upon whetting glasses; but ale, sir, is a beverage I don't affect, nor shall while there are vines in France.”

      “Ah!” sighed Mr. Green rapturously. “'Tis a great country, France; is it not, sir?”

      “'Tis not the general opinion here at present. But I make no doubt that it deserves your praise.”

      “And Paris, now,” persisted Mr. Green. “They tell me 'tis a great city; a marvel o' th' ages. There be those, ecod! that say London's but a kennel to't.”

      “Be there so?” quoth Mr. Caryll indifferently.

      “Ye don't agree with them, belike?” asked Mr. Green, with eagerness.

      “Pooh! Men will say anything,” Mr. Caryll replied, and added pointedly: “Men will talk, ye see.”

      “Not always,” was the retort in a sly tone. “I've known men to be prodigious short when they had aught to hide.”

      “Have ye so? Ye seem to have had a wide experience.” And Mr. Caryll sauntered out, humming a French air through closed lips.

      Mr. Green looked after him with hardened eyes. He turned to the drawer who stood by. “He's mighty close,” said he. “Mighty close!”

      “Ye're not perhaps quite the company he cares for,” the drawer suggested candidly.

      Mr. Green looked at him. “Very like,” he snapped. “How long does he stay here?”

      “Ye lost a rare chance of finding out when ye let him go without inquiring,” said the drawer.

      Mr. Green's face lost some of its chubbiness. “When d'ye look to marry the landlady?” was his next question.

      The man stared. “Cod!” said he. “Marry the—Are ye daft?”

      Mr. Green affected surprise. “I'm mistook, it seems. Ye misled me by your pertness. Get me another nipperkin.”

      Meanwhile Mr. Caryll had taken his way above stairs to the room set apart for him. He dined to his satisfaction, and thereafter, his shapely, silk-clad legs thrown over a second chair, his waistcoat all unbuttoned, for the day was of an almost midsummer warmth—he sat mightily at his ease, a decanter of sherry at his elbow, a pipe in one hand and a book of Mr. Gay's poems in the other. But the ease went no further than the body, as witnessed the circumstances that his pipe was cold, the decanter tolerably full, and Mr. Gay's pleasant rhymes and quaint conceits of fancy all unheeded. The light, mercurial spirit which he had from nature and his unfortunate mother, and which he had retained in spite of the stern training he had received at his adoptive father's hands, was heavy-fettered now.

      The mild fatigue of his journey through the heat of the day had led him to look forward to a voluptuous hour of indolence following upon dinner, with pipe and book and glass. The hour was come, the elements were there, but since he could not abandon himself to their dominion the voluptuousness was wanting. The task before him haunted him with anticipatory remorse. It hung upon his spirit like a sick man's dream. It obtruded itself upon his constant thought, and the more he pondered it the more did he sicken at what lay before him.

      Wrought upon by Everard's fanaticism that day in Paris some three weeks ago, infected for the time being by something of his adoptive father's fever, he had set his hands to the task in a glow of passionate exaltation. But with the hour, the exaltation went, and reaction started in his soul. And yet draw back he dared not; too long and sedulously had Everard trained his spirit to look upon the avenging of his mother as a duty. Believing that it was his duty, he thirsted on the one hand to fulfill it, whilst, on the other, he recoiled in horror at the thought that the man upon whom he was to wreak that vengeance was his father—albeit a father whom he did not know, who had never seen him, who was not so much as aware of his existence.

      He sought forgetfulness in Mr. Gay. He had the delicate-minded man's inherent taste for verse, a quick ear for the melody of words, the aesthete's love of beauty in phrase as of beauty in all else; and culture had quickened his perceptions, developed his capacity for appreciation. For the tenth time he called Leduc to light his pipe; and, that done, he set his eye to the page once more. But it was like harnessing a bullock to a cart; unmindful of the way it went and over what it travelled, his eye ambled heavily along the lines, and when he came to turn the page he realized with a start that he had no impression of what he had read upon it.

      In sheer disgust he tossed the book aside, and kicking away the second chair, rose lythely. He crossed to the window, and stood there gazing out at nothing, nor conscious of the incense that came to him from СКАЧАТЬ