The King of Alsander

"It is a little Latin book I brought with me from England."

"In Latin? What's it all about? Is it very dull?"

"Sit on my knee and I will tell you all about it. No, don't ruffle my hair, but attend to lessons. I was reading about a great goddess who rose up from the sea, whose robe was so black that it shone…"

"But I thought she was quite naked."

"Who?"

"The goddess who came out of the foam."

"Why, who has been telling about the goddess who rose from the foam?"

"Father Algio in one of his Lent sermons told us a great deal about her."

Father Algio was an old monk with whom Norman had talked once or twice: a gentle soul, but with an odd fire lurking about his eyes. One realized that if roused by the trumpet of the Church he would have marched like a Crusader to uttermost Taprobane, fighting for the Lord.

"What had he to say about the Lady Aphrodite?"

"Aphrodite, yes, that was her name. How clever you are! Oh, the priest said that he thought the reason why we were so given to the sins of the flesh was that we were of the old Greek blood, and had never forgotten the worship of this lady who came from the sea."

"What an intelligent priest it is! O Peronella, you are a true daughter of Aphrodite."

"Tell me about her, Normano. She was the goddess of Love!"

"Yes, and she has a son called Cupid and is drawn in a chariot by violet-throated doves. Also, Peronella, she has a little silver broom, with which she drives away the cobwebs from a man's soul when he has read too many books."

"And when did she wear the shining black?"

"O! this book is not about Aphrodite, it is about Isis, an Egyptian goddess."

"Egyptian? That must be interesting. Was she as beautiful as Aphrodite? Tell me all about her."

"There are different sorts of beauty. Aphrodite was a graceful, careless and happy woman, rather like you to look at, and very much like you in character."

"How charming of you to say so!"

"While Isis had all Nature to manage, and the moon and the sea. She was a terrible goddess, with snakes in her hair, and a great disc between her breasts. Men loved her none the less; she was the spirit of all Nature, and required purity and endurance from her worshippers."

"Purity and endurance! And snakes in her hair! Aphrodite must have been far more pleasant, especially if she was like me. She was the patroness of our city, the Father said; and Dr Sforelli wrote to the papers once to say that the image of the Virgin in the Cathedral Church was a heathen statue that some King put up there and that clothes had been made for it later. I know that because Father Algio was so furious at the time that he preached three sermons against the Jews. But why do you read such rubbish?"

Norman was irritated by the naïveness of the remark, and still more irritated with himself for being irritated.

"What an ass I am," he said to himself, "to talk to a pretty girl about the Classics, and what a much larger ass to trouble what she thinks!"

Norman had to learn that education makes prigs of all of us, whether we will or no. Of wise and learned men only the truly great can keep their characters free of priggishness, and even then, what of Marcus Aurelius and William Wordsworth and John Ruskin? What even of Olympian Goethe?

And there she was, shining, shining.

"You mean," said Norman, "why do I read such rubbish when I have you to look at?"

And still Peronella shone.

"The book of your eyes is the best book," said Norman.

Romance even in her moment could not so fool him that he did not wish he could have said "the book of your soul."

Peronella shone, and, by an instinct, shone in silence.

"You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen," said Norman.

And the sun shone on Peronella.

Then though indeed for a moment more Norman heard the voice of caution, it was but a voice fading far away. Some arguments against caution ran through his mind – pompous self-depreciation and some inverted snobbery about "good enough for a grocer boy." Then the petty arguments were needed no longer: his mind faded and went out, and he leapt upon her like a god from Olympus on some not reluctant spirit of wood or water. He pressed her to him till he felt as if every inch of the fiery contact were complete, and he forgot whole oceans of civilization in a moment. That is what education is made for, some might say, it gives us more to forget and more to abandon in crucial moments of love or heroism.

He kissed her all round her burning face. He kissed the soft skin behind her ear where first he kissed her in the dawn – in the best and earliest hour of all the golden days. He kissed her smooth and naked arms that bound his neck like a silver chain. He set all the snow of her shoulder afire with kisses, and on her mouth he forgot the wise advice of Browning and gave her the bee's kiss first.

The maddening sun still shone on Peronella, on her soft dishevelled robe whence gleamed what a man might take for a red rosebud; on her dark hair with the hyacinthine shadows where a man might see all the stars that shine in a Syrian night – on her cheek and throat and her silver arms – but not on her eyes, for, heavy with passion, they were all but closed.

On Norman, too, shone that great and primitive Ball of Fire – on Norman, as bright an Adonis as ever ran riot in a gallant tale.

But when they paused for breath, as even the bravest lovers must, and sat together on the little blue divan that graced the barren room; when Peronella's lips were free to speak, and Norman's mind was free to meditateif only for a brief, sharp, cruel moment – how swiftly went the sun behind a cloud!

"When will you marry me?" said Peronella, "and will you take me to England? O, say you will take me to England, Normano, and when you drive me round in your carriage all the world will say, 'That woman cannot be of our town; she is the most beautiful woman that we have ever seen.'"

"Darling," said Norman, "let me think of this moment, of nothing but this moment, and always of this moment," and he kissed her again.

But the sun shone no more on Peronella! And her lover was not thinking only of the moment. He was thinking of his life. Her pretty words pierced him like little darts of ice, and all the comminations of the sages could not have frightened him more than the maiden's innocent speech.

He saw in his clear-sighted panic that here was an end of all bright dreams save this one: and he knew how soon this dream would fade. He saw Peronella unhappy – a Peronella who could not be afforded a carriage – sulking behind the counter of the Bon Marché, in the rain. He saw how her beauty would fade away in England, swiftly, in a few years – and all in a moment she seemed as she sat there to grow old and tired before him, wasting away beneath the low, dark northern skies. He judged her character with Minoan rightness. He knew she would always be a child, always be silly, querulous, unfaithful, passionate: he knew, above all, how soon she would kill that spark in him that made him different from other men – that spark the poet bade him cherish. And he feared she would bore him at breakfast every morning of his life.

Ah! Peronella was good enough – nay, a prize beyond all dreams! – for a Blaindon grocer: he knew that. But all the brilliant fantasies and conquering ambitions which his heart kept so secret that he would not have spoken of them to his old friend (are there not wild miracles which we all, even the sanest of us, hope will happen for our benefit and glory?), all these hidden desires and insane fancies came beating upon the doors of his soul.

Had he been a southerner himself, of course he would have taken the girl and left her at his pleasure, the moment the love-glow faded and the romance grew stale. Her body was his for a kiss, for a smile, at the worst for a traitor promise ora roseleaf he. But he was an Englishman – and perhaps only Englishmen can fully understand why Norman, for all that the thought quivered in his mind, withstood, as we say in our canting phrase, temptation.

For my part, I think the phrases we use, specially in books, are canting enough, and the foreigners rightly scorn us. In no tale since Tom Jones have we had an honest Englishman who makes love because it is jolly and because he doesn't care. With what a pompous gravity and false seriousness do we talk, we English men of letters, of a little lovemaking which in France they pass with a jest and a smile. Think how our just and righteous novelists fulminate against the miscreants of their own creation. Think of Becky Sharp and her devilish intrigues, of Seaforth and his vile deceitfulness. For Thackeray, the Irregular Unionist (if so we may style those easy livers) is a scourge of high society: for Dickens, he is an ungodly scoundrel, a scourge of low society; for Thomas Hardy, he is a noble fellow disregarding the shackles of convention; while the late George Meredith invariably punishes the amorous by describing them as intellectual failures. To-day Mr Shaw would consider Lovelace disreputable owing to his lack of interest in social problems, while the pale Nietzscheans would worship him with ecstatic gasps as a monstrous fine blonde beast. Our popular novelists are entirely unaware that such horrible scoundrels exist, and our legislators will shortly pass a law which will enable all offenders against monogamy to be flogged. Their agitation will be called a "revival of the old Puritan spirit," and their law will be applied with rigour to the lower classes. The French, I say, call us filthy hypocrites.

And yet the accusation, if levelled against our race and not only against our writers, is not a true one, however plausible. We are more restrained than other races, and that neither because we are less passionate nor because we are more timorous. Our athletic youths are purer – do not merely say they are purer, than the diminutive young men abroad. It is really true there is a special kind of nobility-and generosity in the way our gentlemen treat women. There is something in our race that makes us different from other nations. Call our severe principles a fear of convention, an outworn chivalry, if you like; you have not accounted for all cases; perhaps it is true that an Englishman is more likely than any other European to love a woman deeply enough to be content with her for ever. At all events, it should be remarked how those Englishmen who through education or travel have most tolerance for the sins of others and most opportunity for sinning themselves seldom lose their own traditional scruples. And that is why (to come back to our hero) Norman, who would never have dreamed of blaming Tom Jones for his jolly conduct, and who had read with zeal and appreciation novelists of France who held the most scandalous theories concerning the unimportance of it all, was nevertheless unable to make love to a girl whom he intended to desert. Besides, it struck him, the girl had never yet yielded to a lover. For him the dilemma was clear: he must marry this girl or leave her, and the thought came over him like that

One clear niceCool squirt of water o'er the bust,The right thing to extinguish lust.

Now had he accepted this dilemma bravely, and fled that very hour from the siren presence, he would have had only a flirtation and a few kisses to store up against the hour of remorse. But he fought shy of drastic measures and sought to gain time like a Turkish diplomat. Perhaps, too, he wanted to stay in Alsander yet a little longer to inquire into the mystifications of his tramp guide, and await instructions as to the promised "career of good works." At all events, there is no doubt that as far as the procrastination business went, he found suddenly a great inspiration in the curious parting command which the old poet had given him. He would weave a mystery about himself. He would thus not only obey the fantastic injunction of the poet, but find a most practical means of escape from a perilous position.

He shook himself free of the twining arms, roughly and suddenly, as though he had just remembered something, and paced up and down the room as one lost in thought.

"Why, what is it?" said Peronella. She was always alarmed at seeing a man meditate. Such is the profound instinct of women!

But Norman, intent now on playing his part with thoroughness and efficiency, made no answer, and going over to the window frowned gloomily and began to mutter to himself.

"Tell me what is the matter," cried the girl, running over to him. "Are you ill?"

"Ah!" said Norman. "I wish I could tell you what is the matter. There is more the matter than you know of, dear, and my heart is as heavy as lead."

"Why, what ever has happened?" said the girl, and her face grew longer still.

"Forgive me, Peronella. I should not have spoken."

"You say your heart is heavy as lead. Tell me what is troubling you!"

"Oh! a little secret trouble, that is all."

"What trouble can be secret between you and me?"

"Do not speak of it again, dear. Forget it. I am sorry I hinted that anything was wrong."

"You are not deceiving me, Normano? You do not love an English girl?"

"No, it is not that."

"Then what is it? You must tell me."

Norman sat on the table and put his hands on the girl's shoulders.

"Well, then, who do you suppose I am?" he asked, with a half-smile.

"Why, an Englishman, of course."

"An Englishman. But what Englishman? And why should I come to Alsander and live in Alsander?"

"But why not? Other Englishmen have come to Alsander."

"Yes, but to buy and sell."

This crude artifice was quite enough to trouble the wits of Peronella.

"It is very strange," she said, musing, "and Cesano said it was strange, but who are you, then, by all the Saints?"

"That I cannot tell you, Peronella."

"Well, what have you come for if not to buy and sell? Besides," added Peronella, passionately, "I love you, and that is enough. What do I care who you are?"

"If your love were deep, perhaps you would care who I was."

The saying of this sentence was the worst thing Norman ever did in his life. His conscience haunted him for years and never let him forget those dozen careless words and their cynical hypocrisy.

Peronella did not understand him, nor attempt to, but blazed out in a fury, "How dare you come and tell lies and pretend to be what you aren't and deceive us all? It's all lies, you don't care for me one bit, and I am a little fool!" cried Peronella, on the brink of tears and truth.

"How have I deceived you?" said Norman, lamely.

"You never told me who you were. You come and pretend to be what you are not. You make love to me, and now I see you want to run away."

"You never-asked me. I am not running away," said Norman, breathlessly, seeing this card-house toppling.

"I ask you now."

"Look here," said the hypocrite. "Listen to me and trust me. No, you know I am not lying to you. Look into my eyes and see. I ask just one thing of you. Wait three months and you shall have an answer and know who I am."

"Don't tell more lies and talk more nonsense, species of brute," said the girl, savagely.

"Ah, Peronella, I wish I were talking nonsense."

And the infernal fellow put on an air of sorrow and nobility.

"Wait three months," he repeated, "and then see if you want to marry me, or dare to want to marry me," he added with magniloquence, thoroughly ashamed of himself but too deep in the mire to get free.

"O, Normano, what do you mean? Shall I kill you or believe you?"

"Wait a little while, dear," he said, bending over her with a not feigned tenderness. "Wait a little while and you shall see."

Steps were heard on the stair.

"Here is Cesano," said Peronella, and forthwith Cesano came in with an ineffable air of being on his best behaviour. Norman took his opportunity and went, and with a bow which his fuming rival took for supercilious generosity bade them both good-night.

In the loneliness of his bedroom he fell on his bed like a penitent child and cursed himself for a mean scoundrel. As for Peronella, the first words she said to Cesano were:

"There is a mystery about my Englishman, I wonder who he is," and thereupon she repeated to him the whole conversation. True, he had not told her to keep the secret, but in any case she could not have kept one. It was to be the first thing Cesano was to tell Petro the cobbler when he saw him later that evening, and the first thing Petro the cobbler told Father Algio when he came in for a cup of coffee towards midnight, and the first thing Father Algio told to all his numerous acquaintance. Norman woke up next morning famous and a mystery, and was stared at in the street even more than before. Peronella was perhaps pleased to pass for the mistress of a mystery, Cesano's hopes revived and all seemed for the best in the best of all possible worlds – for three spacious months to come, at least. So thought Norman.

CHAPTER VII

THE SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF ALSANDER

This impossible story of a mad king and a throne going begging.

An anticipated critic.

The unfortunate indisposition of the old King of Bavaria…

The Prince of Wied is spoken of as a likely candidate for the throne of Albania.

The Daily Papers.

There is a King in a Tragedy of Maeterlinck who woefully exclaims, "Wherever I am, nothing happens." But the old fellow was accustomed to uneventfulness; Norman had reason to expect something better of life, and the mysterious words of the old poet had led him to hope for thrills and sensations. The four days succeeding the day of the interview with Peronella, described in the last chapter, drew blanks in the game of his destiny. On the fifth day he was walking moodily about, trying to extract amusement from the inquisitive glances with which a subtly deceived populace already eyed him, when he heard a voice at his shoulder saying in good English, "Keep it up," but though he turned quickly he could see no one in the street who appeared at all guilty of the observation, which might have been ventriloquial.

Another week passed, and the old resolve to leave Alsander again took possession of Norman's mind. Remorse at his hypocrisy, and longings for Peronella, gnawed his heart: while he felt that if he did not speedily retire from the scene startling harm would come of what was really a loveless passion. He decided, however, not to leave her without getting her a present, which he shrewdly (but I think unjustly) suspected would compensate the girl for the loss of a lover. And of course he remembered that the old Poet, whom by now he had almost given up as a fraud, had given special advice in this matter too. Well, he could but follow it, and see if there was anything to be found for Peronella in the little dark shop the Poet had recommended, and which he himself had discovered almost his first day in Alsander. He therefore invited her to come with him and choose herself a present.

When they arrived in front of the little shop it looked more fascinating than ever. It had evidently been rearranged, and seemed to Norman to exhibit more amusing things in its narrow frontage than all the other shops in Alsander set on end. For it contained snuff-boxes, shawls, dirty old silver, tattered bits of embroidery, carved walking sticks, some worm-eaten books, last century oak settees, Turkish zarfs, Hittite cylinders, Chinese saucers full of Greek and Roman coins, real stones and bits of glass, animals in beaten bronze ware from Damascus, very old leather bottles from England, some forged Egyptian antiquities, some very horrible cameos, some rather pretty intaglios, about three quarters of what had been a fine Persian rug, and boxes of things and cases of things and bales of things and trays of things, and all of them finely powdered with a most pestilential dust.

They entered. Peronella, spitting and sneezing without restraint, exclaimed loudly and bitterly (with utter disregard to the feelings of the shopkeeper, a pretty, slender, dark-eyed, young fellow, who seemed quite out of place among his musty surroundings) that there was nothing to be found there and what he had dragged her there for she couldn't imagine when there was that nice new shop where they sold wonders from Ulmreich ever so much nearer home. Norman, undaunted, was preparing to turn the shop upside down to show Peronella what marvels were to be found there if one only knew, when he was surprised to hear the shopkeeper exclaim quietly and rapidly in English, "Send her away, I want to talk to you." Now this was indeed startling, for it was only an accident that had led him to the shop on that particular day. However, at all events, Norman, eager to fathom the mystery, rose to the occasion. Perhaps this was the poet's hand and he had recommended the shop on purpose.

"Look here, Peronella," he said, immediately. "If you don't like the dust (and it is dusty here) why don't you go home without me? I'll stay here and find something. Besides, I would much rather bring you home a surprise."

"But suppose I don't like it," she objected. "You told me I might choose, and I'm sure there is nothing in this dusty, musty rat cupboard of a place."

"I'll arrange that it can be changed. Or I'll get something you do like as well," he added, with ridiculous vainglory, for his hundred pounds were ebbing faster than the sands of time.

"Very well," said Peronella, half convinced and pouting. "If you don't want me, I'll go." And more in pique than compliance she left him alone with the fine young shopman, who was really a remarkably graceful young man, and one who obviously had no doubts as to his own good looks. Indeed he had ostentatiously set them off by wearing the national costume of Alsander – puffed breeches, pleated silk shirt, and a short loose coat with wing-like sleeves, of dark blue gracefully lined with gold. This costume appeared all the more striking to Norman, as he had never seen one before; for it is rarely worn by the Alsandrians except on ceremonial occasions.

"What service can I be to you, sir?" said Norman. Himself a shopkeeper, he knew the value of a gentlemanly treatment, and did not allow his curiosity to get the better either of his self-control or of his manners.

"The question," replied the dealer in antiques, in a very soft and gentle voice, "is not so much what you can do for me as what you can do for yourself."

"And what can I do for myself?" inquired Norman, wondering at the fine but feminine beauty of the young man.

"The question is not really so much what you can do for yourself as what you can do for Alsander."

"The question is," retorted Norman, with some heat, "exactly how long the pantomime season is going to last?"

"The reply in general is for as long as woman gives birth to child: in particular, for as long as the A.A.A. is uncertain of your devotion."

"And what is the A.A.A.?"

"It is," replied the shopman, "the Association for the Advancement of Alsander."

"I am sure that it is an admirable society."

"Like all earthly institutions," observed the dandified young shopman, with a sententiousness ill befitting his years, "it has its defects, but want of precaution is not one of them."

"And where does it meet?"

"Here," said the shopman, briefly.

"And when does it meet?"

"Now," was the reply, followed almost immediately by a clatter and a crash as if all the machinery of a steam-mill had started with a jerk. Norman had just time to see the shutters going down; then he found himself in total darkness.

"What in Hell do you mean by this?" he cried out, thunderstruck: but the shopman gave no answer or other sign of existence, and Norman suddenly realized with dismay that he was alone and a prisoner. For a moment or two he groped and fumbled in the dark. Then he remembered his matches. He found three and lit them one by one. They cast all sorts of curious and flickering shadows from odd-shaped objects like crocodile gods and water-skins; one by one they went out. Norman was only the wiser in as far as the little light had lasted long enough for him to find out that the end of the shop had no exit and that his interloctuor had certainly disappeared, and he therefore spared himself the trouble of stumbling about in the dark for a means of escape. "This is fun," he thought boyishly, and sat down on what he had seen to be a horribly dusty and cracked Chippendale chair to await proceedings. When ten minutes had passed he began to scratch his head; after twenty minutes the room had grown insufferably stifling and the philosophic mood had passed: after half-an-hour he had formulated a scheme in accordance with which he would use the hindquarters of a large brass elephant, probably Indian, which he had noticed faintly glimmering on a shelf, as a battering ram. His idea was that with so heavy an implement he could break a hole in the shutters, which seemed to have closed automatically, or at least by hammering attract the attention of some passers by in the street outside. He was about to act on this ingenious plan and had already grasped the elephant firmly by one leg when his ear was attracted by a noise of heavy breathing from behind the shop, and a fumbling sound which suggested the turning of keys. The next instant a sort of panel-door opened at the back of the shop, flooding the place with a light that made Norman blink, and a butler, who, with his side whiskers, livery and portly presence looked so like a butler that he positively made Norman gasp, said in the most servile and insinuating English, "Would you step this way, sir?"