Читать книгу Hamlet had an Uncle - James Branch Cabell - Страница 7
ОглавлениеOF HAMLET: HOW HE TROUBLED PEOPLE
Hamlet was that son whom the loving endeavours of Geruth and Fengon had begotten in the bed of Horvendile. They tell of yellow-haired big Hamlet how inexpressibly was his conduct adapted to distress his parents. Almost daily he would fall into shocking seizures of epilepsy, during which he stripped many of the clothes from his body, and rolled about wherever he had tumbled down, with his tongue protruding from his mouth and bleeding where he had bitten his tongue. Arising, he would run about at random in the King's palace, or through the streets, as silent and unswerving as a mad dog.
Upon yet other occasions he would seem to talk fluently: there was no stopping him then, nor could you find in his talk any consecutive meaning. It was a mere torrent of phrases, surging and jostling and swirling endlessly, while he stamped about, scratching and digging at the ground with his feet and flapping his arms, as if they had been wings, and pausing only to crow like a cock, to grunt like a hog, or perhaps to bellow like an enraged cow. At other times he would speak curtly, with an abrupt surliness, but even then he spoke incomprehensibly. There was no end to the perturbing antics of young Hamlet.
Thus Fengon finds him standing at the fireside sharpening a stick of kindling wood with a small black-horn-handled knife.
'What play is this, my dear son?' says Fengon.
Hamlet bleated as a sheep bleats. He said afterwards:
'I make ready for the future. I prepare sharp darts and piercing arrows to revenge the death of brave Horvendile.'
This was not pleasant talk, and quiet-spoken Fengon showed his disapproval of it.
'Come, Hamlet, but let us be sensible! That I found it my duty, and indeed my highly distressing duty, to put my beloved brother out of living, is granted; it is granted freely; and your thankfulness to me for that act of self-denial ought to be extreme, inasmuch as I thus preserved your dear mother's life.'
'So it is reported, my lord King.'
'Should you but have the kindness, Hamlet, not to interrupt me, we would reach far more quickly, I believe, a mutual understanding.'
Fengon then spoke, for about three minutes, in his best public manner, concerning the omniscience, the material utility, the incessantness, the depth, and a few other unparalleled traits of maternal affection; but he concluded by saying:
'Moreover, Hamlet, I am a sea-robber of some little distinction. In my time I have sacked Gimsar and Varness and Medalhus and Skirding. I have sailed my own ship into battle upon twenty-seven occasions, with but two defeats. And so--without mentioning any names whatever, my dear son--I say only that for anybody to be planning to kill me with a stick of kindling wood, quite apart from the ingratitude and the wickedness of any such notion, appears disrespectful. It is unbecoming.'
Hamlet answered, with a frown and scraping his absurd slight sticks one against the other:
'It is yet more unbecoming, my lord King, that Horvendile, who feared nobody, should have died from a wound in his back. The wounds of the brave dead are, by ordinary, to the front of the corpse.'
Very patiently Fengon explained, still again, to this scowling tall boy, that Fengon had struck from behind because there was no other manner in which to save the life of Geruth.
'My poor brother had already wounded her, Hamlet, as the world knows. His second blow would have ended all; and his dripping sword was raised to deliver that blow. It was an appalling sight. My blood chills when I remember it. So I struck first. I had no choice.'
'And I, too,' says Hamlet, 'I have no choice.'
His eyes, which for the moment had been steadfast and coolly appraising, shifted away from the compassionate and cordial glance of Fengon. Hamlet began to stamp about the room, flapping his arms, with his big hands clenched tightly.
'I am haunted!' says Hamlet. 'There are too many whisperings at Sundby. You are friendly and honour-loving. There is no malice in you. Your good fame and your conscience are spotless. They are like the clean cool sheets which a thriving harlot makes ready against the night's traffic. That night rises. Fiends whisper in its twilight, grey limping fiends who prompt me with strange advice. They are most impudent fiends, to be talking scandal about King Fengon.'
With that pious vagueness which a majority of fathers find to be advisable when instructing their children as to continence, the King answered:
'No middle-aged sea-robber, my dear son, is immune from slander; nor is even a budding pirate safe from the evil suggestions of hell. We can but pray to Odin to defend us.'
Yet Fengon was troubled. He knew hatred when he saw it. And it was hatred which, for one calm moment, had looked down at him through the grey-blue eyes of his tall son.
