Читать книгу Hamlet had an Uncle - James Branch Cabell - Страница 13
ОглавлениеOF ORTON: HIS APPEARANCE AND HIS ADVICE AT STRAITHKELD
Orton was grey. You observed his greyness as a sort of permeating unemphasis, and as an avoidance of the vivid so painstaking as to become in itself rather remarkable. He was grey, alike in his person and his clothing, even from his hair to his shoes, in very many shades of grey, which did not contrast with one another, but blended as softly as a drifting of fogs. After this soothing greyness, you noted his exceeding kindliness; and you knew that not any unwise deed or wicked action upon your part could ever unsettle Orton's good-will into a dislike of human frailty. You could trust Orton to see the very worst side of you with a lenientness which hardly if at all fell short of approval.
He was of no age in particular. He had the indefinite seeming of a hale person who had lived with discretion, but for the most part indoors, during the last forty, or it might be the last seventy, years. In effect, Orton was not noticeable in any way except for a slight lameness of his right leg. He walked, therefore, at all times, with the aid of an orange-wood cane, upon which, as if crawling up this cane, was carved a small crocodile tinted green; and grey Orton sat now upon a grey sandbank holding this cane upright between his grey knees, as he gazed upon Hamlet, consideringly, with a compassionate benevolence.
'--For your position, my dear Prince,' Orton resumed, 'is one of extreme delicacy. This letter, as you will observe, calls for your instant death when once you have reached the court of Deira; it is the business of the Earls Haakon and Olaf to see to it that you reach Deira without delay; and we thus confront a situation in which, I submit, you cannot afford idleness.'
The two of them sat together upon the beach of Straithkeld, where the Sea-Hawk had been run ashore for the night, and between them lay Fengon's letter. This letter was now open; and over its contents young Hamlet frowned.
'I had expected mischief,' says he. 'Here is worse than mischief. Against ice-blooded malevolence there is no cure.'
'You wrong the ingenuity of virtue at bay,' replied Orton: 'for I am certain it has occurred long ago, to a person of your adroit wits, that you might permit me to forge quite another letter, which will call instead for the death of your annoying gaolers, Olaf and Haakon. You have thought, too, I make no doubt, about the ease with which you could close up this second letter, most convincingly, with the signet ring of dead Horvendile, there on your thumb. The seal of the King of Jutland, upon your ring, is the same as Fengon's own seal.'
The Prince had scooped up with half-folded fingers a quantity of beach sand, which he now spilled back on the beach. He watched the small sliding trickle as if it were an affair of importance.
'That would be neat enough, Orton, so far as it goes. But it would not explain my own presence in Britain.'
'King Edric, my Prince,' remarked Orton, 'has a daughter. She is marriageable.'
'Come,' says Hamlet, 'but the two facts are well thought of! Yes, one might ask also, in Fengon's damned name, that Edric should give me this damned daughter to be my wife. That would account for all. But I may not fancy the young tit.'
'In that event, my Prince, I refer you to the fifty-fourth law of the Gulathing. "If a man wishes to separate from his wife, he shall declare himself separated from her at a time when each of them may hear the voice of the other in the presence of witnesses." Nothing could be more simple; it is the most popular of all our laws among married men; and, in fact, King Edric himself has thus dismissed two wives.'
'Excellent!' cried Hamlet. 'You have been a good friend to me, Orton.'
'Here, then, as a yet further proof of my friendship,' said Orton, 'is your letter.'
He produced it, from out of his grey bosom. Hamlet read this letter, moving his lips to form each word, in the manner of one who did not read often. He stroked his chin, in a condition of mind which flavoured gratitude with distrust, and relief with some doubtfulness.
'So, you had ready this letter, you grey sorcerer! And in all respects it is Fengon's own writing.'
'As time goes on, hand in hand with industry,' replied Orton, 'one acquires these minor accomplishments. Let us speak of more important matters. For there still remains the further difficulty that, the more thanks to your gifted impersonation of so many birds and animals in Jutland, you are now granted to be insane everywhere. Edric will not welcome a madman as his son-in-law.'
Hamlet answered, heavily humorous: 'My lost wits have been happily recovered afloat in the North Sea. In Britain you will find me to be as conventional as anybody else.'
But Orton shook his benevolent grey head, as he sat there nursing his cane of orange-wood.
'My Prince,' he said pleadingly, 'I am a romanticist who is not satisfied by the ordinary drab run of affairs. It was that trait indeed which caused my lameness, through a fall I had rather early in life. However! as a philanthropist, I have not ever lamented over-selfishly a mishap but for which the police and the clergy might to-day be out of employment. So let us humour my foible for the surprising, the picturesque, even for the pyrotechnic! Let us contrive this matter of your wits' recovery in a fashion more truly striking; and permit the seeming lunatic to stand revealed, of a sudden, as a subtle and omniscient person! That, to my judgment, would be far more worthy of Prince Hamlet than a tame downfall, from the high-hearted histrionics of insanity, into the humdrum tediousness of everyday common sense.'
'I admit,' said Hamlet, still prodding with his thick stumpy hair-grown fingers in the grey sand, 'what this letter well shows. For me to continue crowing and bleating and grunting, in the fashion of a village idiot, will not any longer protect me against Fengon. I admit also that I do not understand what you mean.'
'I mean only, my dear Prince, to speak with you concerning the cornfields and the bacon and the drinking water, as well as the parentage, of King Edric.'
--Whereafter Orton did speak of these matters. And handsome slow-witted Hamlet listened, with painstaking attention, biting at his finger-nails, with his light-coloured eyes narrowed. He said by and by:
'I see. But I do not see, Orton, why you should thus continually aid me without asking for any compact between us. Before to-day you have shown me how to pretend madness; and how to denounce Fengon, for my mother's benefit, most nobly. You have taught me with what kind of balderdash to check itching Ingrid from yet further pawings at me. You have promised me my desires----'
'Eh, but yes! for you desired merely to revenge Horvendile's death, and to become King of Jutland, and to leave behind you a name'--here Orton chuckled--'eternally famous. What are such trifles between princes?'
'You,' Hamlet said, 'I believe to be a prince of darkness.'
'Now, my dear Prince, but in this enlightened age who puts faith in mere priestly fables? Would any demon be giving you, at no cost at all, such friendly advice as I have afforded? or be at pains to write out, for you to memorize, the exalted sentiments with which you have favoured Dame Ingrid and Dame Geruth? Even granting me to be some fiend or another, how need it matter to you who worship Odin?'
'Well----' Hamlet said conditionally.
'Upon the faith of a proverbially famous gentleman,' Orton continued, 'I assure you that I have not any place in your Scandinavian mythology.'
Says Hamlet, somewhat puzzled: 'Your words run glibly. But I do not understand what you are talking about.'
Orton dismissed that not unexampled circumstance with a gesture of all-embracing benevolence; and he said furthermore:
'Nor have I offered to purchase your soul. I have drawn you into no entangling alliances, nor have I prompted you in any ill-doing. I have merely, out of my natural kindness, aided you to preserve your own life until you could fulfil your moral duty, as a loving son, by taking the life of King Fengon. With that obligation discharged, you have my free leave to enter Valhalla or whatsoever other paradise you may then find open. Ah, no, my dear Prince: my interest in the affairs of your family is philosophic. Your uncle Wiglerus paused to confer a few idle compliments upon Earl Sigmund's wife because she had a pleasingly tinted hide; and it entertains me to follow out the results.'
'In fact, Wiglerus is now in Britain,' Hamlet conceded, scratching his proud flaxen puzzled head. 'But I do not see what my affairs have to do with the affairs of that strutting windbag.'
'You will perceive the connection a great deal more clearly,' Orton assured him, 'by and by.'
'But where and when?' says Hamlet.
'Ah, my Prince, before any long while--and as it so happens, here, upon this same beach of Straithkeld.'
'Very well, then,' said Hamlet, as he removed from his thumb the signet-ring of dead Horvendile. 'I hail the omen. This place favours me. It is here that, at no cost whatever, I profit by your excellent advice. I infer that upon the beach of Straithkeld I shall meet with no adversary more hard to get the better of than is my vagabond uncle.'
'And I--still, out of my natural kindness,' returned Orton, caressing meditatively the small green crocodile on his cane--'I assure you of that.'
