Читать книгу Abeniki Caldwell - Carolyn Wells - Страница 5

Table of Contents

Sith it hath befallen that to me and none other is entrusted the record of certain momentous deeds, since Fate hath writ that the chronicling thereof shall be vested but in my unworthy self, then, as Thackeray hath it, the time is ripe, and with an eye single to one grim but grave intent will I plunge bravely and valiantly into the recital thereof, with no merry wanderings into flowery by-paths nor dallyings in pleasant gardens.

Mine is it not to detail the gory adventures of the Crusaders in their search for the Golden Fleece. Ever must I be silent regarding the weary, vain endeavors of King John to gain the governorship of Paris. And though my pen struggleth in my fingers to write of the daring deeds of Prince Griffon in his royal galleys, yet I must needs quell these leaping desires, and egg on my fitful Muse to the tale that doth more intimately concern us. As I emerged, then, from the smoke-reeking atmosphere of the grill-room of the Golden Grasshopper, I found myself beneath the starlit vault of a black and murky sky. The rain fell in torrents, but all unheeding the dampness I stalked on, with monstrous thoughts crowding my ponderous brain.

“If it be,” I reasoned all subtly to myself, “then by the rood, ‘tis not so worse. And yet were it not so,—ha! the thought maddeneth me! That were a lucky chance, and by the belt of St. Christopher ’t would save the day and evermore the black and guilty truth should shrivel and burn secretly in the depths of my oppressed soul. Ha! this martyr-like vengeance shall yet be mine; and from the accursed cell, shrouded in deep and inscrutable mystery, the ominous arrogance of a noble slave shall—”

I paused, perforce, for as my martial footsteps fell resounding on the soft green turf, I checked my right foot raised rigid in the air, lest it trample something that lay before me.

With mingled feelings of uncertainty and indecision I gazed down at the tiny face whose wide-open eyes stared up into mine own.

“Give thee good-day, mannikin,” said I, for I was ever merry and jocose of speech, “and verily thou hast but narrowly escaped my grinding heel on that fair face of thine. Another halfpace, forsooth, and I had spoiled for aye thy rosy cheeks and the grinning red mouth of thee. Art glad, small one, art glad that thy beauty wast spared the havoc of my fitful footfall?”

Still clacking thus, in flippant whimsey, I stooped and raised the inanimate little form and dandled it high in the air.

“Gadzooks!” quoth I, “but thou ’rt a gay one! Thy striped doublet and lace collarkin proclaim thee of the royal household. Wouldst thou couldst speak, and with thine own dumb lips inform me who leftest thee thus by night in the forest path.”

I shook the Bauble until all its bells tinkled, but its lips remained silent in a painted waxen grin.

“Tolderolloll and hey, troly-loly!” sang out a blithesome voice and gay, while with two bounding springs a motley figure dashed into view.

“Who art thou, man, and how yclept?” quoth I, looking with mirthter on his zany costume and his cap and bells.

“Heyday, I be Jack Pudding, the court-fool, and I pray you, fair sir, of your plenteous goodness, return back unto me my Bauble, my pretty popsey-puppet.”

“Is’t thine?” cried I. “Take it then, Scaramouch, and bless the shining Fate that betimes averted from thy treasure the iron heel of Claude Kildare.”

“Aye, aye, sweet chuck, ever heretofore shall Jack Pudding be thy sworn friend and humble minion. And may’st thou never sit down to flagon or pasty where I be not a welcome guest.”

“Tis well, ’tis well,” quoth I, awearied by his chatter. “And now, an thou lovest me, make thou thyself scarce, for I have weighty matters on my mind and I crave but a lonely solitude.”

“Now may the Devil brand me for a feather-pated fool!” exclaimed my companion; “what hath so beaddled my wits that I have erstwhile forgotten the message entrusted me for thee? Heigh-ho! a merry heart maketh an empty brain, and much laughter maketh the speech of little worth.”

“How now, Varlet,” I cried in rage, “hast a message for me yet untold? Ha! what fearful penance shalt suffice to avenge thy black misdeed? The taking of thy worthless life were all too small. But tell it me, tell me thy tale with all haste, and scarce shall the words have left thy lips ere thou shalt find thyself carrion for the roaring lion and the ranging bear. ’Sdeath! foul knave, shoot off thy miserable mouth!”

“Tira-lira, my most amiable friend, twiddle thy twaddle to fainter-hearted ears than mine. I fear not thy threats and would as lief trip away and leave thee yelping here. But hey-ding-a-day, it pleaseth my good-humor to humor thee, so will I tell thee the message. And ’tis but short, three brief words comprehendeth it: thus,—‘I await thee.’ Such, my lord, is the speech I was bidden to retail to thee.”

At the Jester’s words, my mind, ever fleet of flight, flew back to Don Giovanni Ziffkoffsky and his challenge.

“Tell the Sneaking Hound,” I exclaimed angrily, “that the message is received and that the awaiting may continue until midnight, when on the stroke o’ the hour I will face my unworthy foe.”

The court-fool bowed low.

“Now bless my bells,” he, cried, “an that be not a pretty message to send to a fair lady. But I will repeat it verbatim et infinitum to the beauteous Berenice, Queen of Love, Laughter and Song!”

“Berenice!” I cried, clutching at the fool’s striped doublet. But he danced off, leaving a yard of tinsel fringe in my hand, and ere I could speak again his voice sounded from full two blocks away.

I staggered and reeled. The sun turned black before my staring eyes, and with a piercing groan of grief, dolor, anguish, and despair, I sat me down upon a fallen yew free and buried my face in my feet.

Berenice! My love, my star! Princess of the world, enshrined forever in my faithful loyal heart! Heaven help me, I had forgotten all about her. Ah, that sweet message, “I await thee.”

What fonder words could an ardent lover hope for? What sweeter message could come to a devoted, adoring swain?

She awaited me, did she? the dear girl. Well, she should await no longer. Love should lend mercury-wings to my Cuban heels; Impatience should urge on my flying footsteps, and soon, ah soon, I should be with my Beloved, my bonny Berenice.

Giving way to my mad haste, I paused but to read the evening paper and smoke one or two cigars, then with heart aglow I sallied forth to keep my tryst.

As I neared the weeping-willow tree, ’neath which I had promised a rendezvous with Berenice, my heart ceased to be couchant and became rampant.

With mad haste I onward sped, and just as the cuckoo in the beech tree chirped forth his nine raucous notes, I clasped my Beloved gently but firmly to my armored breast.

As we stood there, alone in our new-found happiness, the world out-blotted, the universe forgot,—as I felt, e’en through my steel corselet and my coat of mail, the thrilling throbbing of my darling’s heart, all superfluous complications of thought and reason seemed to be swept away, and, soul to soul, we knew only the simple, elemental truth, “I love you.” And so in the plain, inornate speech for which I was justly famed I murmured:

“From the viewpoint of those controversialists, who it is thought by certain of mankind in their crass ignorance are quite reliable on matters of Love and Loving, but whom we constantly find making gratuitous allusions of an uncomplimentary nature to Love-at-first-sight, which, more than all others, deserves our leniency, and in most cases is equally as enduring as Love gradually acquired and slowly accelerated, though it be commonly signalized by the infallible earmarks of the clandestine interview and the tryst sub rosa, our love is even yet already doomed, damned, and condemned.”

“Noble Knight,” said the fair Berenice, wiping a pearly tear-drop from her blooming cheek, “thou say’st well,—but pause ere thou declarest thy love, for it is not meet that I shouldst list to thy tender of thy tender affection. Hearken to the sad secret of my heaving, grieving heart, then go thou into debate with thyself and judge if thou considerest a proposal apropos?”

Again the fierce fangs of doubt, jealousy, distrust, mistrust, and apprehension fastened themselves in the throat of my heart, and I cried out with a rising choler:

“Now the malediction of St. Winkelbrand rest on that infernal bridegroom of thine! Though thou wert his bride but for an hour, though thou sawedst him not even during that brief space by reason of his riding his snorting steed behind thy coach, yet even so, thou bearest his accursed name,—thou art a Ziffkoffsky of the Ziffkoffskieri.”

“Aye,” said Milady, “ ‘tis true, ‘tis too truly true.” And then, with a meek humility of demeanor, with an abashed, ashamed air, with downcast eyes and bated breath, Lady Berenice sank on bended knee, and dropping her sable veil over her fair, fat face, she murmured low, “Permit me to die!”

“Nay, by the Horn of the Galloping Gorgon, that fate, shall not yet be thine! But tell me, ere I divulge my secret thought, why didst thou wed with the dastardly Don?”

The Lady Berenice rose with a Delsartean grace, and throwing aside her voluminous veil, stood, a barefaced jade, with a mystic smile in her hoodoo eyes.

“An I tell thee why, wilt promise to ask no other question?”

“Aye,” quoth I, eagerly.

“Then,” said the lady, “know the truth. ’Twas but in payment of a bet”

Though consumed with a raging desirousness to know the details of so strange a wager, I curbed my curiosity and murmured idly, “I thought as much. I suspected it from the first. And now, Berenice of the Veiled Visage, wilt be mine own an that I end the life of thy churl of a husband?”

“Canst do it?” queried she, and her eyes gleamed with a dark light.

“Sapristi!” I exclaimed, “ i’ faith I can do it, and that with deftness and dexterity born of my love for thee. See?” and I bent my long, lithe, Damascus blade round until its point touched its hilt, aye, and passed beyond it in a second circle. “This sharp, shining sword shall pierce his shabby, scrubby, tuppenny-ha’penny heart, and the Valiant Victor shall return smiling, to receive his rich and rare reward.”

“So be it,” quoth the gentle Berenice, “plunge thou thy bloody blade again and again into his very vitals, and then return in triumph to thy waiting sweetheart, and learn thy fate.”

Her words fired me, but I returned, saying:

“Only one more request, fair flame of mine; give thou to me a token, that I may bind it upon my arm, and, made immortal by its blessed presence, may fare forth to the foe without fear and without approach.”

The Lady Berenice looked at the various parts of her feminine paraphernalia as who should say, “Which shall it be?”

She touched uncertainly her silken baldric, fingered her belaced crimson chasuble, and all but tore the morse from her cope.

“Nay,” said she, at the last, “not these, not these; to thee, my fair, my frumptious Knight, to thee, Pride of my Present, and Felicity of my Future, to thee do I grant a guerdon worthy of thy preposterous prowess. I bestow on thee,” and she suited the action to the word, “my hoop-skirt, and Honi soit qui mal y pense, which is to say, Honesty is the best policy.”

The Lady Berenice stood, like the Bartholdi Liberty, in her calm, uncrinolined grandeur, and outheld to me in her puny patrician hand the afore-mentioned token. A gracious light gleamed from her holy eyes, and half enamoured, half enawed of her splendid, exalted nobility, I bowed low at her feet, and kissed her velveteen skirt-binding.

“I accept the trust,” I breathed, though I could scarce speak for the awesome emotions which tumulted in my breast, “and I will return the token to thee, unscathed and unmarred by the fortunes of fierce war through which it must needs pass. Lady, I crave thy blessing.”

Binding the tender token about mine arm, I knelt gracefully before the fair maiden, and in the deepening dusk of that miasmic evening, she whispered paradoxical words of dire and blissful import above my bent and deferential head.