Sir John Constantine Part 3

"None the less the man is very far from being my friend," he answered quietly.

"But surely--surely, sir, you cannot be doing this in any hope to recover what he already owes you! That were indeed to throw the helve after the hatchet. Nay, sir, it were madness--stark madness!"

My father glanced at my uncle Gervase, who stood pulling his lip; then, with an abrupt motion, he turned on Mr. Knox again.

"You have seen him? You delivered my letter?"

"I did."

"What was his answer?"

Mr. Knox shrugged his shoulders. "He jumped at it, of course."

"And the boy, here! What did he say about the boy?"

"Well, to speak truth, Sir John, he seemed pa.s.sably amused by the whole business. The fact is, prison has broken him up. A fine figure he must have been in his time, but a costly one to maintain . . . as tall as yourself, Sir John, if not taller; and florid, as one may say; the sort of man that must have exercise and s.p.a.ce and a crowd to admire him, not to mention wine and meats and female society. The Fleet has broken down all that. Even with liberty I wouldn't promise him another year of life; and, unless I'm mistaken, he knows his case. A rare actor, too! It wouldn't surprise me if he'd even deceived himself. But the mask's off. Your offer overjoyed him; that goes without saying. In spite of all your past generosity, this new offer obviously struck him for the moment as too good to be true. But I cannot say, Sir John, that he made any serious effort to keep up the imposture or pretend that the security which he can offer is more than a sentimental one. Not to put too fine a point on it, he ordered in a couple of bottles of wine at my expense, and over the second I left him laughing."

My father frowned. "And yet this man, Mr. Knox, is an anointed king."

"Of Corsica!" Mr. Knox shrugged his shoulders. "You may take my word for it, he's an anointed actor."

"One can visit him, I suppose?"

"At the most the turnkey will expect five shillings. Oh dear me yes!

For a crowned head he's accessible."

My father took me by the arm. "Come along, then, child. And you, Gervase, get your business through with Mr. Knox and follow us, if you can, in half an hour. You"--he turned to Billy Priske--"had best come with us. 'Tis possible I may need you all for witnesses."

He walked me out and downstairs and through the lodge gateway; and so under Temple Bar again and down Fleet Street through the throng; till near the foot of it, turning up a side street out of the noise, we found ourselves in face of a gateway which could only belong to a prison. The gate itself stood open, but the pa.s.sage led to an iron-barred door, and in the pa.s.sage--which was cool but indescribably noisome--a couple of children were playing marbles, with half a dozen turnkeys looking on and (I believe) betting on the game.

My father sniffed the air in the pa.s.sage and turned to me.

"Gaol-fever," he announced. "Please G.o.d, child, we won't be in it long."

He rescued Billy from the two urchins who had dropped their game to pinch his calves, and addressed a word to one of the turnkeys, at the same time pa.s.sing a coin. The fellow looked at it and touched his hat.

"Second court, first floor, number thirty-seven." He opened a wicket in the gate. "This way, please, and sharp to the left."

The narrow court into which we descended by a short flight of steps was, as I remember, empty; but pa.s.sing under an archway and through a kind of tunnel we entered a larger one crowded with men, some gathered in groups, others pacing singly and dejectedly, the most of them slowly too, with bowed heads, but three or four with fierce strides as if in haste to keep an appointment. One of them, coming abreast of us as the turnkey led us off to a staircase on the left, halted, drew himself up, stared at us for a moment with vacant eyes, and hurried by; yet before we mounted the stairs I saw him reach the farther wall, wheel, and come as hastily striding back.

The stairway led to a filthy corridor, pierced on the left with a row of tiny windows looking on the first and empty courtyard; and on the right with a close row of doors, the most of which stood open and gave glimpses of foul disordered beds, broken meats, and barred windows crusted with London grime. The smell was pestilential.

Our turnkey rapped on one of the closed doors, and half-flung, half-kicked it open; for a box had been set against it on the inside.

"Visitors for the Baron!" he announced, and stood aside to let us enter. My father had ordered Billy to wait below. We two pa.s.sed in together.

Now, my father, as I have said, was tall; yet it seemed to me that the man who greeted us was taller, as he rose from the bed and stood between us and the barred dirty window. By little and little I made out that he wore an orange-coloured dressing-gown, and on his head a Turk's fez; that he had pushed back a table at which, seated on the bed, he had been writing; and that on the sill of the closed window behind him stood a geranium-plant, dry with dust and withering in the stagnant air of the room. But as yet, since he rose with his back to the little light, I could not make out his features. I marked, however, that he shook from head to foot.

My father bowed--a very reverent and stately bow it was too--regarded him for a moment, and, taking a pace backward to the door, called after the retreating turnkey, to whom he addressed some order in a tone to me inaudible.

"You are welcome, Sir John," said the prisoner, as my father faced him again; "though to my shame I cannot offer you hospitality."

He said it in English, with a thick and almost guttural foreign accent, and his voice shook over the words.

"I have made bold, sire, to order the remedy."

"'Sire!'" the prisoner took him up with a flash of spirit.

"You have many rights over me, Sir John, but none to mock me, I think."

"As you have no right to hold me capable of it, in such a place as this," answered my father. "I addressed you in terms which my errand proves to be sincere. This is my son Prosper, of whom I wrote."

"To be sure--to be sure." The prisoner turned to me and looked me over--I am bound to say with no very great curiosity, and sideways, in the half light, I had a better glimpse of his features, which were bold and handsome, but dreadfully emaciated. He seemed to lose the thread of his speech, and his hands strayed towards the table as if in search of something. "Ah yes, the boy," said he, vaguely.

The turnkey entering just then with two bottles of wine, my father took one from him and filled an empty gla.s.s that stood on the table.

The prisoner's fingers closed over it.

"I have much to drown," he explained, as, having gulped down the wine, he refilled his gla.s.s at once, knocking the bottle-neck on its rim in his clattering haste. "Excuse me; you'll find another gla.s.s in the cupboard behind you. . . . Yes, yes, we were talking of the boy. . . . Are you filled? . . . We'll drink to his health!"

"To your health, Prosper," said my father, gravely, and drank.

"But, see here--I received your letter right enough, and it sounds too good to be true. Only "--and into the man's eyes there crept a sudden cunning--"I don't understand what you want of me."

"You may think it much or little; but all we want--or, rather, all my boy wants--is your blessing."

"So I gathered; and that's funny, by G.o.d! _My_ blessing--mine--and here!" He flung out a hand. "I've had some strange requests in my time; but, d.a.m.n me, if I reckoned that any man any longer wanted my blessing."

"My son does, though; and even such a blessing as your own son would need, if you had one. You understand?"--for the prisoner's eyes had wandered to the barred window--"I mean the blessing of Theodore the First."

"You are a strange fellow, John Constantine," was the answer, in a weary, almost pettish tone. "G.o.d knows I have more reason to be grateful to you than to any man alive--"

"But you find it hard? Then give it over. You may do it with the lighter heart since grat.i.tude from you would be offensive to me."

"If you played for this--worthless prize as it is--from the beginning--"

Again my father took him up; and, this time, sternly. "You know perfectly well that I never played for this from the beginning; nor had ever dreamed of it while there was a chance that you--or _she_-- might leave a child. I will trouble you--" My father checked himself. "Your pardon, I am speaking roughly. I will beg you, sire, to remember first, that you claimed and received my poor help while there was yet a likelihood of your having children, before your wife left you, and a good year before I myself married or dreamed of marrying. I will beg you further to remember that no payment of what you owed to me was ever enforced, and that the creditors who sent you and have kept you here are commercial persons with whom I had nothing to do; whose names until the other day were strange to me. _Now_ I will admit that I play for a kingdom."

"You really think it worth while?" The prisoner, who had stood all this time blinking at the window, his hands in the pockets of his dirty dressing-gown, turned again to question him.

"I do."

"But listen a moment. I have had too many favours from you, and I don't want another under false pretences. You may call it a too-late repentance, but the fact remains that I don't. Liberty?"--he stretched out both gaunt arms, far beyond the sleeves of his gown, till they seemed to measure the room and to thrust its walls wide.

"Even with a week to live I would buy it dear--you don't know, John Constantine, how you tempt me--but not at that price."

"Your t.i.tle is good. I will take the risk."

"How good or how bad my t.i.tle is, you know. 'Tis the inheritance against which I warn you."

"I take the risk," my father repeated, "if you will sign."

The prisoner shrugged his shoulders and helped himself to another gla.s.sful.