Читать книгу Hamlet had an Uncle - James Branch Cabell - Страница 9
ОглавлениеCONTINUED MISADVENTURE IN GERUTH'S BEDROOM
'Well, but after all,' says Fengon, 'it is in his mother, alone of women, that a young man may confide utterly so long as he does not know any better.'
The next morning, when day broke, and the chamberlains came to serve King Fengon, they equipped him with a green hunting-coat and tight-fitting boots. His gilt spurs were fastened on; he mounted his racing steed, he hung his horn about his neck, and he seized in his hand his boar spear, now that the King of Jutland made ready to hunt in the forest of Sundby attended by his earls, his hunters, and ten traces of dogs.
At this time Corambus went into the bedchamber of Geruth, so that he might report to King Fengon as to the doings and words of Hamlet. The Queen hid Corambus of Elling behind the tapestry at the foot of which Horvendile had found death; and upon which were represented, in lively colours, the still more picturesque departures, from out of human flesh towards heavenly judgment, of Högni the Brave and of King Gunnar.
Geruth sent for Hamlet. He came clucking and crowing and scratching at the ground with his feet.
'My son,' says the Queen, 'such conduct disturbs me. It is calculated to provoke remark. It compels me to point out you are not in a chicken-run.'
Hamlet answered that by quacking and hissing like an incensed gander; then he began to bray, and to moo, and to bleat, and to whinny.
'Nor a barn, either,' the Queen returned. 'I do wish you would not be so silly.'
'Bow-wow,' says Hamlet, sniffing at the tapestry by the doorway and lifting up his left leg.
'--Although, of course, my dear boy, if it does at all amuse you to play at being a chicken or a dog or anything of that kind, why, a large number of young men do spend their spare time a great deal more viciously. That much I would be the very last person in the world to deny.'
Hamlet said, 'Miaow,' as he leaped about the room, scratching at the tapestries, first here, then there, with his finger-nails. He thus felt the body of Corambus behind the tapestry at the farther end of the apartment.
'A rat, Grimalkin! poor Tybalt has caught a rat!' cried Hamlet, as he whipped out his sword.
He grasped the hilt of it with both hands, and he so dug with the point of his heavy sword into the tapestry.
Corambus screamed. But Hamlet, still miaowing and spitting like an enraged cat, pulled out the old quaking wounded man into the open. In front of the tapestry which represented the last hours of the last Nibelungs, and in precisely the same place where Fengon had aided Horvendile's going up into Valhalla, the Prince murdered Corambus.
Hamlet removed the body, and he disposed of it in a fashion which was afterwards criticized more or less unfavourably. The Prince returned to speak with his mother; and in regard to this speaking (so the tale tells) Geruth was not utterly candid with Fengon, later on, when a little after sunset the King came back from his day's outing in the forest of Sundby.
