Читать книгу The King of Alsander - James Elroy Flecker - Страница 10

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You, sweet, have the power

To make me passionate as an April day;

Now smile, then weep; now pale, then crimson red;

You are the powerful moon of my blood's sea.

The Witch of Edmonton

Norman followed, through the crumbling gateway, past an old fountain half buried in roses, up narrow tortuous ways at the back of a huge cathedral. Then he came to a street of steps. The town was beginning to awake. Little boys and girls had begun to play on the thresholds with portentous solemnity; half-naked men were washing their brown bodies at the pumps; and from the newly opened shutters many a glittering eye marvelled at the fair-haired stranger, as though he were some adventurous prince from the fantastic North, where it snows one half the year and rains the other, and red devils dance and moan in the perpetual fog.

Norman saw Peronella disappear inside a house in the distance; he came up to it and entered. The staircase was a long one, and there were innumerable doors. However, he proceeded up the very dirty steps as long as the splashings from the pail guided him onwards. "She cannot have much water left in that pail," thought Norman. At last the splashing ceased by a door whereon hung the notice:

"VIDVINO PRASKO

CAMBRI PRO LUI,"

signifying, as even Norman apprehended, that the lady of the house, a widow, would let rooms. Behind the door he heard Peronella chattering with exaggerated vigour. He rang, and the girl opened, scanned him up and down with mild astonishment (a piece of delicate acting, for which there was no reason whatever, as her mother, the widow Prasko, was busy clanking pans in the kitchen), and asked him what he wanted.

"I want to live here in a room," was the muddled reply.

"Wait a minute then, sir; I will speak to mother about it."

She shut the door in his face with a crashing slam, and ran into the kitchen.

"Mother," she said, in an impartial voice, as soon as there was a lull in the clanking of the kettles, "here is a foreign gentleman wanting a room."

"An Ulmreicher?"

"I don't know where he comes from; but I am sure he is not from Ulmreich."

"Because, you know," said the old lady, "however poor we may be, I could not stand having one of those people in the house: I simply hate them. They want all the floors cleaned with petroleum every day, and if there's a flea in the bed they curse one as if one were a beggar. It's no good, Peronella. I don't want any foreigners here, male or female. I never met a foreigner who was not much more interested in the way his room was dusted than in the style his food was cooked. Tell him to go away."

"You had really better look at him first, mother. He looks such a very nice foreigner, and not a bit like an Ulmreicher. And though he is very dusty, I noticed he had a gold watch chain."

"Well, well, girl, wait a bit and I'll come and see him. But I won't have one of those dirty Ulmreich pigs coming here and fussing about the fleas."

Norman, waiting outside the door, heard, even understood, the widow's remarks, for she nearly always spoke at the top of her voice, and invariably acted on the assumption, usually justifiable, that no foreigner could speak more than three words of Alsandrian. Yet he observed that the old lady's screech was not altogether unpleasant; it was, at all events, a peculiarly powerful noise. When the widow at length appeared at the door, a gigantesque apparition, he felt her to be striking enough to have a superior voice, or even to be the mother of Peronella. True, her face was wrinkled like an old lemon, or like a raised map of some uncharted country on the invisible side of the moon; and the vast cylinder of blue apron that she wore was not calculated to palliate either the rugosity of her face or the extreme fatness of her body. Yet for all her monstrous appearance she walked well, and had regular features, which suggested that neither her intelligence nor her will had disappeared, and had once been wedded to beauty.

"Do you come from Ulmreich?" she said to Norman in the language of that country, scanning him up and down.

Norman, though he knew enough Ulmreichan to master the import of her question, pretended not to understand, and stood dumb.

"Where do you come from?" the widow pursued in Alsandrian.

"From England."

"Ah, from England. I never knew anyone from England, but when I was in Ulmreich I met an American whose name I have forgotten, but he was a nice man, in a good line of business, till he died. And how long have you been in Alsander?"

"I have only just arrived."

"You have only just arrived. And you talk the language?"

"I learnt it on my way."

"And how did you find out my house, if you have only just arrived? We do not advertise: we are not a regular pension. Only it happens we sometimes let a room."

"I was wandering round looking for a room, and some one directed me here."

"Now who could that be?"

"Oh, I don't know. A little man round the corner."

"I wonder who it was. Was it a little cobbler with red hair? That would be Simone. Did you notice if he had red hair?"

"I don't know," said Norman, inwardly consigning the old girl to perdition. "He wore a felt hat."

"Ah, Simone has no hat," said the Widow Prasko. "And have you any luggage?"

"It is coming on by train."

"Did you not come by train yourself?"

"No," said Norman, crossly. "I have walked all night, from Braxea, and I am very tired. Please give me a room or refuse a room and send me away, at once."

"Ah, forgive me," said the widow, quite courteously, "but I have a daughter in the house, and I must ask questions. And, of course, you must be either very mad or very poor or you would not have walked from Braxea, and if you had walked you would have gone to the hotel."

"Do I look like the sort of man who would misbehave with your daughter?" said Norman, stiffly.

"Oh, I don't mind how you behave with per. But you might want to marry her, and I should not like her to marry a poor man."

"I am fairly rich," said Norman, "but I have not seen your daughter long enough to decide about marriage."

"You are rich and you want to find a room here?"

"Yes, please."

"And food?"

"Yes, food, too."

"You will find it rather simple living. You would live much better at the hotel."

"I would rather be here," said Norman. "I like to have people to talk to; I do not like hotels."

"Well, you might as well come in and see the room."

She showed him a small bedroom, almost entirely filled by an enormous curtained bed. It was a pretty room, papered in pale blue, ornamented with cuttings from French illustrated papers, a statuette of a nakedish lady apparently eight feet high, called Mignon, an oleograph representing a romantic northern castle surrounded by impossible waterfalls, and a clock which had been for many years too tired to work. Peronella it was who drew up the sunblinds and let in the pure air, for which the room thirsted. There was a view over the red roofs right out to sea.