Read Ebook: The Proud Prince by McCarthy Justin H Justin Huntly

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Ebook has 1372 lines and 47946 words, and 28 pages

The pity deepened on the girl's face, scattering the curiosity, and she spoke gently, hopefully:

"I have sometimes picked a wrinkled, twisted pear and found it honey-sweet at the heart."

Even the callous fool felt the tenderness in Perpetua's voice, the tender pity of the strong spirit for the weak, the evil, the unhappy. He shook his head less angrily than before.

"I am no such bird-of-paradise," he sighed. "My mind is a crooked knife in a crooked sheath. When I was a child in my Italian village, trimly built, children laughed at me for my ugliness, for my hump, for my peaked chin and my limp, and I learned to curse other children as I learned to speak. Every hand, every tongue was against the hunchback, yet my shame saved me. For my gibbosities tickled the taste of a travelling mountebank. He bought me of my parents, who were willing enough to part with their monster; he trained me to his trade, taught me to sing foul songs and to dance foul dances. I have grinned and whistled through evil days and ways. My wit was gray with iniquities when Hildebrand, the King's minion, saw me one day at a fair in Naples and picked me out for jester to Prince Robert."

The head of Diogenes drooped upon his breast. He had not talked, he had not thought, of the past for long enough, and the memory vexed him. Perpetua propped the sword against the wall of her dwelling and stood with linked hands for a little while in silence, looking out over the sea. Then she turned again to where the fool crouched, and spoke to him softly.

"Are all court folk like you?"

Diogenes lifted his head, and the old malignity glittered in his eyes.

"Ay, in the souls; but for the most part they have smooth bodies."

He watched the girl closely while her eyes again sought the sea and came back and met the fool's gaze.

"Is the King like you?" she questioned.

The fool unhuddled himself and leaped to his feet, snapping his fingers in fantastic imprecation.

"My soul is as the soul of a sucking babe by his wicked soul; but, as for his body, the imperious gods who mock us have given him a most exquisite outside, the case of an angel masking a devil."

He raged into silence, but his mouth still worked hideously, as if his hate were fumbling for words it could not find. The girl gave a great sigh.

"I did not know there were such men in the world," she said. The fool stared at her in amaze.

"Then you must have seen few men," he grunted.

"I have seen few men," the girl answered, sadly--"my father, who is old, and the timid country folk, and the holy brothers of the church. Of men from the valley, from the city, I have seen but two--you and one other." She paused for a moment, thoughtfully, and then went on with a swell of exultation in her voice--"and that other was not like you."

The fool drew nearer to her, eagerly, apish curiosity goading him. "Who was my fellow?" he asked of the girl, who, with averted head, seemed as one who dreams waking. Dreamily she answered:

"One dewy morning a week ago I met a hunter in these happy woods." She closed her eyes for a moment as if the memory was sweet to her and she wished to shut it away from the staring fool.

"Humph!" said Diogenes. "In the days of Robert the Good men might not hunt in these forests."

Perpetua looked at Diogenes again with bright eyes of scorn.

"King Robert was gentle with beast as with man. But this hunter did not seem cruel. Like you, he was tired; like you, he was thirsty. I showed him where a spring of sweet water bubbled."

"What was his outer seeming?" Diogenes asked. Somewhat of a warmer color touched the girl's cheeks.

"My father has told me tales of the ancient heroes. I think he was blessed with all the comeliness and goodliness of the Golden Age."

Diogenes jeered at her enthusiasm with his voice, with his eyes, with every curve and angle of his misshapen frame--protesting against praise of beauty.

"Did he pilfer your silly heart from your soft body?" he asked. Perpetua answered him mildly, heedless of the sneering speech.

"He spoke me fair. He was grave and courteous. I know he was brave and good." She moved a little away, with her hands clasped, speaking rather to herself, but indifferent to the presence of the fool. "When God wishes me to mate, God grant that I love such a man."

The frankness, the simplicity, the purity of this prayer seemed to sting Diogenes to a fierce irritation. Leering and lolling, he advanced upon the girl.

"Did he kiss you upon the mouth?" he whispered, mean insinuation lighting his face with an ignoble joy.

The girl turned upon him swiftly, and there was a sternness in her face that made the fool recoil involuntarily and wince as if at a coming blow. But there was little anger in the girl's clear speech as she condemned the unclean thing.

"You have a vile mind," she said, quietly. "And if I did not pity you very greatly I should change no words with you."

Diogenes, nothing dashed by her reproof, neared her in a dancing manner, smiling as some ancient satyr may have smiled at the sight of some shy, snared nymph.

"How if I chose to kiss you?" he asked, and his loose lips mouthed caressingly. To his surprise the girl met his advances as no shy nymph ever met satyr, with a hearty peal of laughter, that brought the tears into her eyes and red rage into his. She thrust towards him her strong, smooth arms.

"I have a man's strength to prop my woman's pity," she said, as she broke off her laughter, "and, believe me, you would fare ill."

Diogenes eyed her with a dubiousness that soon became certainty. That well-fashioned, finely poised creature, with the firm flesh and the clean lines of an athlete, was of very different composition from the court minions who swam in the sunshine of Robert's favor, of late at Naples and now in Sicily. He had strength enough to tease them and hurt them sometimes when it pleased Robert to suffer him to maltreat them; but here was a different matter. He gave ground sullenly, the girl still laughing, with her strong arms lying by her sides.

"You seem a stalwart morsel," he grunted. "I will leave you in peace if you will tell me where to hide from the King's anger. Indeed, I do not greatly grieve to leave the city, for they say a seaman died of the plague there last night, one of those that came with us out of Naples." He shivered as he spoke, and his bird-like claws fumbled at his breast in an attempt to make the unfamiliar sign of the cross. But the face of the girl showed no answering alarm.

"Neither the plague nor the King's rage need be feared in these forests," she said. "The pure breezes here bear balsam. As for the King's rage, there are caves in these woods where a man might hide, snug and warm, for a century. Bush and tree yield fruits and nuts in plenty, for a simple stomach."

"I will keep myself alive, I warrant you," Diogenes responded, "and to pay for your favor I will sing you a song." So he began to sing, or rather to croak, to a Neapolitan air, the words of the Venus-song of the light women of Naples:

"Venus stretched her arms, and said, 'Cool Adonis, fool Adonis, Hasten to my golden bed--'"

Perpetua's face flamed, and she put her fingers in her ears. "Away with you! away with you!" she commanded.

The fool stopped in his measure; it was no use piping to deaf ears. "Farewell, fair prudery," he chuckled, and in a series of fantastic hops and bounds he reached the edge of the pine wood and soon was lost to sight within its sheltering depths.

THE COMING OF THE KING

When the last gleam of the fool's parti-colored habit had disappeared in the sanctuary of the wood, Perpetua took her hands from her ears and seated herself on a fragment of a fallen column that had formerly made part of the colonnade of the Temple of Venus. Here she sat for a while with her hands listlessly clasped, trying to disentangle the puzzling web of her thoughts. Her most immediate sensation was delight at the departure of Diogenes. The warm, fair day seemed to have grown old and cold with his world wisdom, a wisdom so different from all that she had ever been taught to venerate as wise.

"If I were a bird," she sighed aloud, "I could not sing while he was near. If I were a flower, I should fade at his coming."

She rose from her throne and blew kisses on her finger-tips to the birds that sang about her, to the flowers that flamed beneath her feet. "Be happy, birds," she whispered; "be happy, flowers, for the withered fool has gone."

She spoke to the birds, she spoke to the flowers as she would have spoken to human friends if she had any; they were her friends, and she loved them dearly, and she believed with all her heart that they understood her speech. She bent tenderly over one tall plant and touched its golden crest. Diogenes had passed from her thoughts as she stooped and made the flower her confidant. "I wonder when the hunter will come again."

She turned and stretched out her hands in pretty appeal towards the woodland.

"Dear forest beasts," she whispered, "forgive me, for I think I shall rejoice at his coming."

She drew her hand across her forehead, as if she sought to banish distracting thoughts, thoughts that had no place before in the simple order of her life. Then, as one who seeks distraction in the fulfilment of an appointed task, she moved to take the great sword and dedicate herself to its service. Holding it surely and firmly in her strong grasp, she carried it to where the grindstone stood, and carefully laid the edge of the blade to the shoulder of the stone wheel, while she worked the treadle with her foot. As the wheel spun and the sword hissed on the stone, she sang to herself the old, old sword-song that her father had taught her, the song that men who made swords had sung in some form or other from the dawn of war:

"Out of the red earth The sword of sharpness; Blue as the moonlight, Bright as the lightning."

The song wavered on her lips to the merest thread of music and then faded into silence. Her body was still busy with the sword, but her mind had drifted away from the place where she was to the place where she had been a week ago, to that cool, green hollow in the wood where she had met the tired hunter. He came upon her through the cracking brush, through the parting leaves; he stood before her, the sunlight touching him through the branches, with a smile on his young, fair face; he saluted her with simplicity and grace, and as she gazed at him dim legends of Greek heroes crowded upon her and she could well have believed that she beheld Perseus the dragon-slayer or Theseus the redresser of mortal wrongs. Their speech had been scanty, but it still sounded sweet to her ears. He had said he was thirsty, and she gave him to drink from a familiar spring; he had asked for guidance, and she had shown him the way out of the forest.

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