Читать книгу Sir John Constantine - Arthur Quiller-Couch - Страница 17

At a sign from my father—who had sunk back in his chair and sat gripping its arms—I passed on this epistle to my uncle Gervase, who read it and ran his hand through his hair.

"Dear me!" said he, running his eye over the attentive monks, "this lady, whoever she may be—"

"She is a crowned queen, brother Gervase," my father interrupted; "and moreover she is the noblest woman in the world."

"As to that, brother," returned my uncle, "I am saying nothing. But speaking of what I know, I say she can be but poorly conversant with your worldly affairs."

My father half-lifted himself from his seat. "And is that how you take it?" he demanded sharply. "Is that all you read in the letter? Brother, I tell you again, this lady is a queen. What should a queen know of my degree of poverty?"

"Nevertheless—" began my uncle.

But my father cut him short again. "I had hoped," said he, reproachfully, "you would have been prompt to recognize her noble confidence. Mark you how, no question put, she honours me. 'Do this, for my sake'—Who but the greatest in the world can appeal thus simply?"

"None, maybe," my uncle replied; "as none but the well-to-do can answer with a like ease."

"You come near to anger me, brother; but I remember that you never knew her. Is not this house large? Are not four-fifths of my rooms lying at this moment un-tenanted? Very well; for so long as it pleases them, since she claims it, these holy men shall be our guests. No more of this," my father commanded peremptorily, and added, with all the gravity in the world, "You should thank her consideration rather, that she sends us visitors so frugal, since poverty degrades us to these economies. But there is one thing puzzles me." He took the letter again from my uncle and fastened his gaze on the Brother Basilio. "She says she has much ado to protect herself."

"Indeed, Sir John," answered Brother Basilio, "I fear the queen, our late liege-lady, speaks somewhat less than the truth. She wrote to you from a poor lodging hard by Bastia, having ventured back to Corsica out of Tuscany on business of her own; and on the eve of sailing we heard that she had been taken prisoner by the Genoese."

"What!" My father rose, clutching the arms of his chair. Of stone they were, like the chair itself, and well mortised: but his great grip wrenched them out of their mortises and they crashed on the dais. "What! You left her a prisoner of the Genoese!" He gazed around them in a wrath that slowly grew cold, freezing into contempt. "Go, sirs; since she commands it, room shall be found for you all. My house for the while is yours. But go from me now."

[1] Tilled, planted.