At the door she turned with a proud and calm farewell to me
"At the door she turned with a proud and calm farewell to me."
"'Help, help! My lord will bleed to death! Lady Oria! Baboushka!' The voice was not Stepan's, but Kobaduk's; and I felt my boiling blood run cold.
'What dost thou here? What have I done?' I shouted, rising clumsily, for my wound had burst forth through the fall. 'Old man, thy mistress hath shot herself. What dost thou in Rakhan's service?'
"'Nought have I to do with Rakhan. Sûr Imar knows not what he saith. Baboushka and I have been with the lady, all the way from Karthlos, till I went to yon village for food for us.'
"I fell against the wall, and stared at him. Then Stepan stood also in the doorway, and his voice was like the moan of death.
"'It is true, Sûr Imar. The troika hath broken down at this gate. The Princess Oria hath never seen Rakhan; neither came she to see him.'
"I laughed, I shouted, as at some fine joke. 'I see, I see my sweet mistake. He came not from her; he came to seek her. Ah, but he met the wrong one; the wrong one it was, and yet the right.'
"What matter what I did or said? Henceforth in all my life, what matters? And when it is over, can I be saved? If so, it will be for Oria's sake. Thank God that she knew before she died, slain by the weapon which she had brought to protect her honour,—and Rakhan would have tasted cold lead, I trow, if his miscreant scheme had entrapped her,—by the mercy of God, she knew in that short hour the hellish fraud which slew her.
"The bullet had not touched her heart, and she passed away as a flower fades, drooping from some inward harm.My pistols were left in my holsters, but I loaded Oria's again, that I might not be slow to follow her, the moment she could not see it done. But she opened her eyes for the last time, when they seemed to have lost all sight of earth, and she tried to lay her hand on mine, with deep love looking back upon me through the cloud of Death.
"'For Orry's sake, for babe's, formine,' she whispered with her latest breath.
"I pledged my word; but how often was it almost beyond my power to keep! And one of my pledges was lost already; when I got home—to my desolate and wretched home—there was only my baby Dariel left, to link me to this altered world. Marva was gone back to her Osset tower, and it seemed better so; for I had brought her husband's lying letter, handed me by Kobaduk, and purporting to come from her. To wit, an urgent summons for my wife to fly to my bedside and nurse me through a dangerous wound at Patigorsk. This letter I meant to place on Marva's lap, and ask if she were privy to it. I hope not, I pray not; for it would be almost too black-hearted, too treacherous for the worst woman's revenge. I hope she believed that Oria, whom she always hated, had left home through her own desire, to meet Rakhan in that festive town. For a woman has not strong faith always in the virtue of other women. To her own faith she will be true; but she doubts about theirs too shrewdly. Women of the common sort, I mean. My Oria was too sweet for that."
"You understand from what I said, that my only son was gone as well, the eldest born of our fervent love, to whom with a pleasant conceit I had given the name of 'Origen,'—born of Oria. The other was named from the place of her own birth, arriving unexpectedly, when we went in the troika to see the great post-house just built by the Russians on their grand new road, which cuts the great mountain-chain beneath the towering peak of Kazbek.
"Unnatural it may seem, and sluggish, and even an abject thing to those who have never lost their courage; but when I was carried up the steps of Karthlos, with the body of my wife on the other litter, and the carpenter ordered to remember my length in the boards he was cutting out for her,—for we are a thrifty race, holding fast the hide when we have lost the horns,—and I managed to say at my own threshold—'Let me see my babies'; behold there was only one brought to me, and she could not walk, nor say 'Dadda,' as babies of every language do.
"Nevertheless, without excuse, she took my liking as of right, lying so, and smiling at me with the faith of baby eyes, and the beginning of a clever nose, and pink lips parted like a berry, as if I had a breast for her.
"'Sweetie, it is thy father, not thy mother,' the woman who bore her said, 'and if he hath no breast for thee, his heart shall be all the nigher. Sûr Imar, this is all the Lord hath left thee for thy home and heart. Gather thy life up, for her sake.'
"I saw the likeness of her mother in her, and she came into my helpless arms, and laid her soft face in my beard,and played with the bandage round my wound. And they say that she spoke her first word thus; but women must not be trusted, when their imaginations move them.
"As soon as I was able to think more clearly, I asked for my boy, Origen. They told me, as soon as they thought it safe, that on the second day after my departure, the very day of my fatal deeds, the poor little fellow, scarce three years old, was killed through his own high courage. My sister, who reigned in the Castle now, had given orders that he should be kept apart from her own child Hafer, and in the top rooms, where the nursery was with a separate staircase to it. Perhaps she desired that even in childhood there should be no acquaintance between the offspring of Oria and her own. But my little Orry was as strong and active as an average child of twice his years, and he could not endure to be cooped up thus. He contrived to get out of a loop-hole, and thence to the head of the outer staircase, and so upon the table-cliff behind the house, where he ran frolicking among the snow. This rock is perpendicular upon all its southern face, and the dumb child Hafer, seeing Orry's delight, ran out to share it from a lower door, while his mother was away upon some business, with only two trusty servants.
"Soon one of our women heard my boy shouting, and laughing at the other child who could not shout; and instead of tempting them in with a sweetmeat, the thoughtless girl ran after them. Of course they ran away, and before she could catch them, both vanished over the brink of the cliff, where a crest of snow obscured it; and verily she was afraid to go back to the house, and tell what she had done. She concealed herself behind the corner, and left others to find out the loss. But it was not very long unknown, for Marva was coming along the ravine upon her return to Karthlos, in the teleka which had brought her first, and which she kept at the posting-house. She saw the two children lying there after their fall of two hundred feet, her own child unhurt in a pile of snow, and my little darling on the rocky floor, with his poor head dashed to pieces.
"For her bitter turn against me, I forgave her, when I heard of her tenderness to my poor child. It is at suchtimes that the greatness of a woman's nature shows itself. Happily she knew not as yet of my encounter with her husband, which must have been taking place just then, but forgetting all her grievances against me she took both little ones into her carriage, and drove at all speed to the posting-house. There she ordered a private room, and allowed no one to come near them, except her own Baboushka, while she sent to a village five miles off for the only doctor to be heard of. He came as soon as he could, but she had abandoned all hope by that time, as any but a woman must have done long since, and there was no one to receive him. For Marva had sent her own child home in dread of the effect upon his little brain, and at night she appeared at the gate of Karthlos, with the baby heir cold as a stone in her arms. His pretty red cross, and his green velvet dress, and above all the billows of his golden hair still flowing from the linen swathes of Death—when the women saw these they bewailed the child of Imar and of Oria, almost as if they had lost their own. Before my return, he was buried in our little churchyard of the glen; and his mother lies beside him.
"I have told you a melancholy tale; but when the Lord has tried one child beyond His other children, and almost beyond the strength vouchsafed to the best of them to bear it, something good shall be yet in store; and happiness may spring up again, though pleasure be but a memory. And the soul that has passed through rough affliction and the long cold shadow, is led more kindly into the paths of shelter, and content with quietude.
"I have done enough of harm, my friend. I have broken up two households; I have wasted half my tribe in war, and slain a good few Russians. These you may slay by the thousand, without checking the supply of them; you are only guilty of their blood, and the tears of those who loved them. But my own losses taught me what it is to make others desolate. And the rest of my life, please God, shall go to redeem the wrongs of wrath and war."
When the Prince Imar's tale was told, and I thought of all he had been through, I could not find it in my heart, or even in good manners, to crave explanation of certain points which had not been made quite clear to me. For any such inquiry might appear to proceed from a hankering to hear more about his darling daughter. He had enjoyed, beyond our chance, a quantity of romantic love; and though he might not be hard on mine, remembering his own tender time, and allowing for like state in others, on the other hand that lesson might have taught him how to look at this, before it went too far to stop. And it is not in the gift of men, or at least of such as I am, to be certain how a brother man may take what seems so clear to self. But while I was buried in these thoughts, he spoke again quite cheerfully, and as if he had understood them all, but would not blame me for them.
"From what I have said, you will perceive that I have now two things to think of. The first, and dearest, is my own child, the daughter of the blameless wife, whom I lost through my own madness. The other is my duty towards the people who have been so true to me; who can be raised by one who knows them, to a better and more peaceful life, and the first condition of happiness the rule of Christianity. We have had the name for ages; but we have never known the meaning; of which you too must wait to learn till sorrow has washed the eyes of pride.
"That vile blood-feud, the curse of the mountains, the cause of a myriad murders, could not exist if we were more than mere ticket-porters of the cross. Therefore I am doing my best, without aid of your good societies, whichwould get into trouble with Russia at once, to print 10,000 copies of the New Testament, in the Lesghian tongue. In a short time now my period of exile, fourteen years, will expire; and the rest of my life will be given up to the spread of good-will amongst us. Thus alone can I hope to have done some good to balance my evil deeds. But the difficulty of the thing is this. Not a man in a hundred of us can read, and perhaps not a woman of all the race. To meet this I am preparing primers, horn-books, alphabets, all the rudiments; and I shall set up a school in every village. It is too much for one short life, but at least I can begin it, and when once begun, it will go on, for the Russians will not stop me. The Russians have been very good to me, and they hate the rule of Islam, which is warlike and implacable. The Commander of the Caucasus is a man of great humanity. If he could have done as he liked, I should have received at once a free pardon; and as it is, my revenues have never been confiscated. He knows that I would be the last to attempt or join in another insurrection. There never was a chance, since time began, of a great Caucasian nation. We are split into about seventy tribes, and each loathes all the others. Young as I was, when I joined Shamyl, the folly of it was clear to me; and my father perished not by a foreign but a neighbour's hand, as usual. That may be my fate also, especially when I attempt reforms. But if so, I shall have done my best to redeem a life of violence."
As I looked at him, I could wonder no more that Dariel thought so little of all other men compared with him. Here was a man, one might well believe, who never knew what fear was, suspicion, falsehood, meanness, envy, or even the love of money. It had been the sense of justice only, and no greed or jealousy, which had led him to reject the demand of Rakhan, his father's murderer; whence all the disasters of his life ensued. And it seemed to me that if ever there had lived a man of honour and kind heart, who deserved the favour of Heaven and the reverence of his fellows, it was this man long oppressed by some mysterious curse of destiny.
My voice was trembling with something more than regard for my own interests, when I fetched him back fromhis great ideas, which were ever so far above my scope, to the matter which concerned me most.
"Sûr Imar, I am quite small of mind, and would rather receive than do good things. And of all the blessings of the blessed world, you know the one that I value most." He smiled a little, for his face was always ready to yield to gentle turns.
"My friend, I know what your desire is. You want to rob me of my one delight. But I feel myself safe for a long while yet. I rely upon many obstacles. In the first place, will your own discretion and judgment bear you out in wishing, even if you had my consent, to connect yourself with a race of such dark fortunes and sad calamities, and crimes as well—for crimes they are? And perhaps there are more before us. I have told you my tale, to show you this. I believe not of course in any heathen conceptions—Até, Nemesis, Ananché, or what not? But who can deny that there is an inheritance of evil quite beyond our power to explain?"
"That may be so. But my one prayer is to be allowed to risk such penalty."
"You speak like an Englishman," he answered, looking at me very gravely; "other men equally brave would decline, through the force of superstition. But I have only begun my objections yet. For instance, what would your own friends have to say about this question? You have not mentioned it yet, I suppose, as nothing was likely to come of it. But without that, you must know pretty nearly how your friends would take it."
I answered in so many words that they left me to follow my own judgment now; that while things continued as they were, it would be wrong of me to forsake them, as they could never get on without me; but that a change for the better might be expected now with all confidence, for England was sick of that farce so ridiculously called "free-trade," and then the land might feed her sons again, instead of giving them nothing but a weedy grave.
"It is the standing joke of Europe," he replied; "there is nothing to compare with it in history. Your benevolence is of the highest order, because so purely unconscious. But it will require another generation to restore your sanity,unless you have a war that blocks your supplies; and then how simple! That man who can fast for forty days may challenge the nation, when war is declared, and outlive them all, though they eat all they can get. But let me not interrupt you."
What is the loaf compared to love? The dealers and the middlemen have the chief pull of the former. Turn me into a Radical, if the labourer gets an ounce the more for his fourpence, than he often did of old, when his right hand stood him in good stead, and his Saturday night was certain. But a foreigner is allowed to show the common-sense, which an Englishman is hooted down for hinting.
"We shall never be as we were," I said, "we shall always be poor, Sûr Imar. And I am only a younger son. If it is your duty to repel me for that reason, I have nothing more to say."
"We will not part like this," he answered, feigning, as every man should do, to be blind when another man is moved; "there are many things in your way, my friend; but I will not make the worst of them. You have my respect and liking, which I do not give to every one. But in spite of all I have gone through or perhaps by reason of it, I have some romance about me still. You say that you love my daughter, and I thoroughly believe it. But does she love you?"
"I have no reason to think so yet. What right have I to hope for it? She is far above me in every way. But if you do not forbid me—why I could try—I could try my best, you know."
It was almost more than he could do to look with becoming gravity at the sadly waning phase of hope depicted on my countenance. He smiled, because he could not help it. And I smiled, to keep time with him.
"You are honest, at any rate," he said, "and that you have been from first to last. Of English modes of wooing, I know nothing; and they are not like ours. But this strikes me as an unusual thing; though perhaps all you ask is what you would call 'a fair field and no favour.' You shall have it, as far as I am concerned; though I will not pledge myself afterwards. But remember that in a month or so, we return to our native mountains."
This was awful news to me; and I seemed to have no fair chance left. Moreover I felt very deep alarm concerning that Prince Hafer, Dariel's cousin, about whom I had heard so much, and of whom I had seen too much already. Was he the son of that terrible woman, Marva—Sûr Imar's sister—and that hateful man, and horrible plotter, Rakhan, Prince of the Ossets? I had longed to ask his Uncle Imar for more particulars, about him, and especially what he was doing here, but my courage had failed me on that point. Alas that he was no longer dumb; and if he had fallen 200 feet in his childhood, no wonder that he could jump 10 now; for Nature always strives towards a balance. And if he could not jump 10 feet in height (which perhaps is more than any man even of the mountains has achieved), it was plain enough that he would prove a very awkward customer, whenever my sense of the gross injustice inflicted by his presence should urge me to attempt by hand or foot his desirable removal. But one thing I might ask, as I thought, without showing any impertinence, or reviving painful memories.
"Your sister, the Princess Marva, sir? I hope she continued to show good-will, and afforded you some comfort before you were banished from Daghestan. She herself remains there, I suppose?"
"Not in Daghestan, but in Ossetia, which lies to the west of the great Russian road that marks the division of the Mountain-range. No, I cannot say that she showed any sisterly feeling towards me, except the true sorrow for my child of which I spoke; and perhaps no woman who witnessed a scene of such distress could have helped being touched. But when I heard of her tender behaviour, and remembered that old scruples were partly removed by the death of the offender, I sent her all that she could claim, and much more, of her inheritance in goods and chattels. But it is impossible for her, as long as she continues Rakhan's widow, to show much affection for me, though I may hope that she has it in her heart. For unhappily that most fiendish and accursed institution, which I hope to begin to extirpate, by the spread of the Gospel and of education—the blood-feud is set up between us. By marriage she is an Osset, and among the Ossets sheholds sway, like a petty Queen almost. Although she cannot have any vindictive feelings against me, after all her husband's behaviour to both of us, she must respect their customs, and not show herself too friendly. Therefore I take it as unusually kind and good on her part, that knowing how soon my time expires, she has sent her only son, Prince Hafer, to congratulate me, and to offer an ancient residence or Court-house of the Ossets, which stands very conveniently, for us to occupy on our return, till Karthlos (which is in a sad condition) can be put into good repair. That I call a true extension of the olive-branch; and it is the more remarkable to one who knows as I do that this infernal code, for I can call it nothing else, is supposed to be doubly binding when it inures betwixt near relatives. Blessed are they that never heard of it. No flight of time, no acts of kindness, no natural affections avail against it."
"It is horrible indeed," I said, "and nothing can be more un-English. We are the most sensible race in the world, as well as the most straightforward. 'Have it out and be done with it,' is our rule; no steel, no lead, no poison; but a fight with what the Lord has made."
"You also have your brutality, I fear. But it is not my place to talk of that, after all the kindness I have received among you. And you are wide awake to all your own virtues, so that I need not insist upon them. Is there anything more you would ask me?"
"Nothing, Sûr Imar. And I may have seemed to trespass already on your patience. But I have a brother who is wonderfully clever in all mechanical and chemical affairs. May I bring him to see your type-stamping process, and other beautiful devices? They are out of my line altogether; but he would appreciate all of them. And more than that he is gifted, as you are, with the faculty of languages. He is the genius, and I the dunce. May he come? He has nothing to do with the Press, and will not even talk of what he sees."
"It will give me great pleasure to see such a man;" my host replied most courteously. "There is no secrecy about my work, beyond this—if your journals spoke of it—and they speak of even smaller matters—it mightget into some Russian paper, and my little ideas would be quenched at once. Russia does not encourage education, outside her own narrow grooves. But if I could only begin unforbidden, probably I might go on for years. You see how sanguine I am still."
"And your nephew will be of great service, no doubt, as his mother is so friendly. In his early days he had no power of speech I think you told me. But that comes sometimes rather late in life."
"I do not think that I spoke about it; because I had no knowledge. His father mentioned it in that fatal letter. But before I left the mountains I was told that an operation at Tiflis had relieved the child of the tongue-tie; and now he seems to be in many ways a fine specimen of the Caucasus. He cannot speak your language well, though he has picked up a little of it, and he is not very fond of your nation. But if your brother is a linguist, possibly he might get on with him. And I should like to try the experiment. When will you bring your brother? But tell him not the story of my life, as I have told it to you. It is a thing I never speak of, without a special reason."
"You may depend upon me, Sûr Imar; I know the favour you have done me, and the reason for it. There are few who would have gone through so much pain, for the sake of almost a stranger. But I know not when I can bring Harold. He is a most uncertain fellow. Nobody can ever tell where to find him. He says it is the beauty of his character. But I hope that I may come before he does; or it will be a bad look-out for me."
"You may come to see me every day, my friend, and I shall be pleased to see you. But if you meet Hafer, be on your guard. He has the rough manners of the mountains still, and has not seen the world, as I have."
Thus I was obliged to leave it. Not at all to my liking; yet with no right to complain of any one. This Lesghian Chief had laid me under a very great obligation, by overcoming for my sake his natural reluctance to recall a past so full of pain, and in such bitter contrast with the present conditions of his life. As a nation we make little of the debt which a foreigner incurs to the hospitality ofEngland. The guest, moreover, is too graceful ever to inflict on us the pain of seeing him overwhelmed with gratitude. But this Lesghian Chief had formed what was perhaps a romantic view of the greatness of our policy, and a liking for us which is, I fear, by no means universal. This I hoped to work with diligence for my own advantage; as our Government used to do, as long as it still subsisted.
Sûr Imar had spoken of happiness as resembling a mountain-eagle in the brevity of its visits, and the speed of its flight away from us, rather than the gentle dove whose nest is always near our roof, while the cooing of her soft content pervades the summer evening. And probably he was right enough as regards his own race and country, where all is rugged, strong, and fierce, and a pious life too often means pure impotence for robbery.
But if he only could have seen my father of a sunny morning, sitting in his little room, with the red cloth on the table, and the drawers of his cabinet pulled out, and his choicest coins laid gingerly with their faces tilted towards the light, and a chamois leather, and a box of powder, and a tiny bottle of acid to be used most sparingly—that Chief of great stature, and still greater mind, would have perceived that bliss may come with the downy plume of the dove, as well as the swoop of the eagle's pinion. For here was an ancient gentleman, who had never known flash and clash of steel, or the rush of hot blood upon frozen snow; but had only been damaged by the rapid fall of grain, and no longer had the spirit to cry out at that; yet in the evening of his days found pleasure in the coinage of the past, when the currency failed so painfully. Often he shouted for his wife or daughter, to share some great discovery, some new interpretation of his magnifying glass, or the lens of imagination, over some battered disc, resembling the plate which our blacksmith clamps red-hot on the nose of a vainly squealing porker.
Then was Sir Harold's pleasure at the acme and the apex. What delight is perfect without something to findfault with? And the fonder one is of the poor short-comer, the sweeter it becomes to correct the loose idea.
"This indeed is frightful, my dear Grace! Will you never know an old L from a T? And how often must I tell you, that they run the other way? There's a tangle of your hair coming in the light again! If you want to be of any use, which you never can be, do go and cut off at least three quarters of it. One would think that girls were made of nothing else but hair. Show me any mops and frizzles, on a feminine obverse. Look at this fascia! I'll get you one to-morrow. You fetch it round tightly, and then you cut off all the rest. Unless you like to bunch it, as a jockey does a horse, I shall speak to your mother about it. Nothing shall be done that you dislike. But you see for yourself how becoming it is?"
"Lovely, oh, lovely! I am wild about it, father. But the lady has no nose. Is mine to come off too?"
"She has had a nose, and as good a one as yours. It is the mere accident of attrition. But here comes George! What can George want now? He knows that I never should be interrupted, with all these drawers open. If any rival Numismatist—I am sorry to say there is no honesty among them. Even the people at the British Museum, when I lent them for comparison, kept back three most valuable—the gems, the gems of my whole collection!"
"Well, sir, I don't blame them. It was for the instruction of the nation." I knew that my father was even more proud than indignant at this fact—if fact it was, and he had long ago made it one, by telling it at least twice a-day. "But I don't want to disturb you, sir, and I don't often do it. Only there are two things that I am bound to consult you about immediately, if you can spare me a few minutes, without having to put more important work aside."
My father sighed; for he hated business, as he had good cause to do, while Grace walked away with a lofty air, like a lady denied the franchise. Finding myself rather nervous, I began in a craven manner with other people's business.
"Bandilow wants to know, sir, whether he may break up half-moon meadow, and plant it with apple- and pear-trees. He says it is the only chance of his being able to pay his rent, next Lady day."
"But, my dear George," Sir Harold replied, while he spread a silk handkerchief over his coins, lest the atmosphere of business should corrode them, "does the silly fellow expect to realise a fruit-crop betwixt this and then?"
"Very likely he does, for he has found an apple on a tree he planted not more than two years ago; and the Society for the Promotion of British Fructiculture has sent him a coloured print of apples bigger than turnips and brighter than prize carnations. And you know what Lord Melladew did for him; they would not advance him any money,—in fact, he had to subscribe to them,—but for a 'nominal price' they supplied him with a list of fifteen hundred kinds——"
"Oh, I don't want to hear any more about that! I should have some faith in it, if they put their own money into it, instead of being paid for persuading other people to invest in it. However, it is no concern of mine."
"Excuse me, sir, but I think it is. In a sort of sideway, at any rate. You would not like an old tenant, whose family has held under ours for at least three centuries, to be robbed by private folly of the little the public mania has left him. I know the climate of Surrey pretty well, and there are very few better in England. Last May, the mercury stood below freezing point at six in the morning, no less than eight times; and twice it was eight degrees below. Have we any fruit-bloom that can laugh at that? You would not like an elderly man like Bandilow, with a large family dependent upon him, to be ruined, would you now? And he is already in arrears of rent?"
"Certainly I should grieve at that, and throw him off every farthing, little as we can afford it. But my dear boy, you make the worst of things, and you are sadly obstinate; which, perhaps, is a family failing. Men of tenfold your knowledge have proved that the only remedy, and a very easy one, offered by Providence itself, for thepresent starvation of agriculture, is to take to horticulture. If wheat will not pay at 30s. per quarter, fall back upon apples at a pound a bushel. And then there is jam, a glorious scheme."
I saw that all reason was in vain. Lord Melladew had got hold of my good father, and tip-top prices upon West-end counters had been quoted for orchard average. It was useless to say another word. But who ever ceased on that account?
"If the wheat crop is precarious, I should like to know what the fruit crop is. Two years in three give a fair crop of grain; scarcely one in three of fruit. If we turned every field into a broom of trees, would even the present low prices hold, in the years when there was anything on them? The fruit might roll on the ground and rot, whenever the season was plentiful. Englishmen cannot live on apples; and jam is only fit for children. But do as you like, sir. Do as you like."
"George, I am guided too much sometimes by the way in which you look at things. You have formed very strong opinions, and there may be something in them. Nothing is more wonderful to me than the difference in character betwixt you and Harold. Harold looks at a thing all round, and is never quite sure about it. But you make up your mind without looking at all, and I defy anybody to move you."
"I have made up my mind, sir, about another matter, which I came to put before you. And though I am not to be moved from it, I do hope that you will take my view. But is Bandilow to have his way?"
"Certainly," my father answered with a pleasant smile, for he had formed the most erroneous opinions about me; "is no one to have his way, but my son George? It is only fair to let a tenant crop his land as he thinks best, unless he injures it permanently; and especially such a man as Bandilow, who has stuck to us, when all the others dropped off. And there is another reason. Many of the newspapers, loving, as some of them seem to do, to stir up ill-will among Englishmen, keep on declaring that the landlords form the chief obstacle to the improvement of land. The thing is absurd. You might just as well saythat if you borrow a hundred pounds of me, I must long for your bankruptcy, lest you should repay me. What landlord would not be delighted if his tenant could make £50 an acre, as these people say? I only wish this fruit-craze could last."
"Father, you are right. What a blessing it would be, if they could only fetch it round! Let us hope for the best, as they do. And now for the other question, all about myself; and I hope you will take the same liberal views. But it is a long story. Have your easy chair, and your little glass of mead that stops the cough. Well, Harold did some good in recommending that. You never get the cough as you used to have it."
"Harold is a very clever fellow," my father said, after a sip or two; "if that boy would only stick to something—or if I could make a blend of you two—well, well, we can't have everything."
"That is a righteous law for us; but it ought not to apply to you, sir, whose wishes are so moderate. For instance, I want a thing that I shall never get. May I call Mother in, to hear what it is?"
In this there was wisdom, gracious wisdom, such as we are inspired with sometimes, however foolish we may generally be. For whatever opinion my father might form, he would have my mother looking at him, and then she would be sure to give a glance at me, and the experience of years would be belied unless she gave utterance to a conclusion not directly counter, but sub-contrary, hypenantious—if such a word is pardonable—to the view which her husband had ventured to form without waiting for her suggestion. For they had grown so much alike, that both of them doubted about the joint-stock wisdom; as we all despise home-produce.
Seeing myself in the right way thus, while indulging in all due deference, I did my very best to let them know that I had striven after things above me. My father was ready to concede that point; but my mother could not conceive it; and was eager to branch out into a long discourse, about all the great people akin to us in body, but in mind not as yet awake to it. My father joined me in abbreviating that—though at such a time it was hard measure—but he heard the old Grandfather Clock strike one; and if mother got wound up on that chain, the hour-hand might go round the dial before he got any luncheon! Therefore he spoke decisively.
"What we have heard from George is not altogether what I expected. Everybody knows, though he seems to imagine that nobody ever dreamed of it, that he had found some attraction among those very strange people that live in the dell. Who they are, or what they do there, it has never concerned me to inquire. When strangers come into a neighbourhood, and desire to keep themselves to themselves, no English gentleman would ever think of obtruding himself upon them. They may be very estimable, and even of very high rank in a foreign way, as George supposes. But when they pack themselves up inside a wall, without even a bell, or if they have one with only fierce dogs to answer it, all we can do is to leave them to the Police, or the Government, or the Newspapers. The right of asylum is sacred in England. Of Continental intrigues we know nothing, and we refuse to be mixed up with them. Even with a Radical Government in power—my dear, you quite agree with me?"
"In every word that you have said, my dear. But when our George, without asking his mother, goes out of his way to make strange acquaintance, and people who pretend to look down upon us——"
"You have no right to say that, my dear. We must not think that they are so absurd. They have the highest opinion of this Country, as of course they are bound to have, except as to our one great mistake. And there, if I understand George aright, Prince—what's his name, Mari? It sounds like New Zealand, but at any rate his views do him very high credit. He spoke of Free Trade with very fine contempt; I think you told me so, George?"
"Sir, he could not find any word strong enough to describe our folly. And the testimony of an outsider—but you never use such language, sir."
"No, I leave that to younger people, who may live to see the worst of it. But this gentleman must have great perception, as well as much integrity. You think that hedraws a large revenue, and this young lady is his only child."
"My dear, you forget how they live out there," said my mother, who was above lucre, and my father as well too superior to show it. "Who can tell how many wives they have? And their laws not too respectable, I am half afraid, upon such points."
"I was very well up in Geography once," my father replied with a smile at her, "I could construe some of Prometheus vinctus, and I have a coin, with the rock and the chain and the vulture, but the Titan has been eaten to nothing by time. It is extremely valuable; yet the British Museum failed to steal it. That Prince comes from the very same spot. It may have been struck by his ancestors. George says that they come in a direct line from Noah's own great-grandson."
"In that case, indeed, who are we to talk of our own children? Who, indeed, are we?" My mother glanced upward, as if to watch the whole of creation sliding. "Although to a reasonable mind the Heptarchy is as much as one requires to be sure of. But I should like to see that girl, George."
"Stop," said my father, "I am not a sceptic; Mama, you must not set a bad example. I had my little doubts about the Ark, I must confess, until so many people attacked it, among them a Bishop of our Church, who continued to enjoy his income. If he was in earnest, he scarcely could be honest, and in that case, who would listen to him? And if the Ark rested upon Ararat, that would be the neighbourhood to know all about it. I will not contradict Prince Maori."
"But it is the girl I care about;" my mother made a great point of the tempers of young women. "George is so peaceable, and he never argues. I cannot risk his happiness with a wife who may be descended from—from even the females mentioned in the Bible."
"My dear mother, what a hurry you are in. The young lady does not care a fig about me yet. And I am very much afraid that she never, never will. Only I thought that I had better let you know."
"This sort of thing has never happened to you before,and that is very greatly to your credit, George." My father looked stealthily at my mother, lest her conscience should involve her in some misconstruction here. "But we must talk it over first, your mother and myself. We could have no idea that such a thing was happening on our property, I mean—of course, what used to be ours. It seems to be departing from the proper way so much, and the practice of the family. I am sure there are plenty of nice girls round here."
"I am not so sure of that," said my mother, rather quickly, and giving me a signal to leave the rest to her; "English girls are not at all as they were in my time. They have dropped all their modest looks and delicacy. They talk slang, and they speak without being introduced, and they call one another Jack and Jemmy, and they let young men give them pairs of gloves, and they come into a room with both arms swinging; and as for their dresses, and the way they do their hair——"
"Your opinion upon all these points, dear mother, has influenced me beyond all doubt, even more than I was aware of. But you must remember that Dariel is also of the most ancient English lineage, gone by quite as much as you could wish—Crusaders, probably our Richard the first, and some of his devoted paladins. What can be nobler than to carry on a peaceful crusade of education, literature, Christianity——"
"They could never do that without plenty of money," said my father, a man as free from mercenary views as ever tried to raise a shilling. "And you spoke of some emerald mines, I think. But we must be careful, very careful, and insist upon verifying everything, quite independently of their reports. Let me see! I have met the Russian ambassador—but no, there have been two more since then. However I am not without influence altogether."
He waved his hand for me to go, and I slipped off, after a good kiss from my mother, who always gave way to the sentimental vein, when my father fell into the financial. And sure enough our finances were of a pensive character just now. My duty was clearly to allow my dear parents plenty of time to discuss me from my birth up to the present moment; and finding myself just a little in the fidgetsand unfit for steady work, off I set through the park to our old house, to inquire whether Stoneman happened to be at home. For he had taken his holiday, and was come back; and so far as one could judge him by his looks and walk, he found himself better suited in his native land than elsewhere.
"Gone to the City, sir," said the man, who opened the door which I knew so well, and it had a few reasons for remembering my childhood, impressed or indented upon its lower panels; "but he wanted to see you particular, Master George; and he will be home by two o'clock. I was to send down, and ask you to step this way by two o'clock, if you could any way spare the time, for he thinks to have a bit of a treat for you."
How small are our natures! I was pleased with Biddles for making a "he" of his master; when at every breath it would have been "Sir Harold," while we could afford his livery. A fine old Englishman was this, full of pure feeling, and in heart disdainful of gold in comparison with rank; though compelled by his stomach to coerce the higher organ. "How is your little Bob, Biddles?" I asked; and it was better than half-a-crown to him.
Before I had time to pick more than fifty holes in the stockbroker's taste as compared with our own, in came the man himself, full of high spirits, and alive with that vigour which the sparkling metal gives. Any man must be a cur who can snarl at a good friend, for enjoying the marrow-bone, which has dropped betwixt his paws. Jackson Stoneman was not without his faults; but it would have been mean to make them greater than they were, just because he was able to pay for them.
"Just the man I wanted—the very man," he said, as if I was worth all the Stock Exchange; "what luck I have had all day! And you are come to crown it. Here, you shall have my new Dougall, and I shall shoot with my old Lancaster."
"What a deuce of a hurry you are in!" I answered, for his mind could give me ten yards from scratch at any time. "I am not come here to shoot. I have no time for such trifles. I want to have a serious talk with you."
"Who do you think looked at me over the palings?" he spoke as if he had quaffed a fine Magnum of Champagne, although he was a man of very great discretion. "Over the palings, my boy; and after putting me down so the other day! I assure you it has quite set me up again; though I am afraid it was only an accident."
"You may be quite certain of that," I replied, for he wanted a little quenching; "she went to get the last of the globe-artichokes, and of course when she heard a horse she looked up. Old Sally looks up whenever any one goes by."
"I tell you there was no looking up about it. Globe-artichokes are as high as any woman's head. You are not going to put me down about that. And she kissed her hand to me. What do you think of that?"
"If you took off your hat, she could do no less to a kind friend of her mother. My affairs in that line are not flourishing. But I don't want another fellow to be made a fool of, Jackson. Can't you try to show a little common-sense?"
"Grapes sour, George? Well, I am sorry. But I fear you have not invested well, my son. What are those foreign girls? Do you think I would ever look at them, with a ghost of a chance of a thorough English maiden? When it comes to an English girl, you know where you are, and no mistake."
"All this is below contempt," I answered, for he had taken altogether the wrong tone with me. "Let me hear no more of such stuff; we are not boys. What is it you want me to shoot?"
"Well, that is a gracious way of putting it, when I offer you a chance anybody else would jump at. Guy Fawkes' day not come, and behold three woodcocks marked down in the Pray-copse!"
"I don't believe a word of it. They never come here yet. The earliest I ever shot was on the fifteenth. But if you can swallow it, I don't mind going with you."
"Well said. And back to dine with me at six o'clock. No scruple about certificate in this, though to my mind the woodcock is the best of British game. We'll call for the spaniels at Ponder's cottage. Best foot foremost!"
It was a bright autumnal afternoon, after a touch of white frost, and against the sky every here and there some bronzy leaf would swing and glisten like the pendulum of a clock at winding time. But most of the foliage now had finished its career of flaunt and flutter, and was lying at our feet in soft brown strewage, or pricking its last crispage up, where a blade of grass supported it. While at every winding of the meadow path (which followed the hedge like a selvage), how pleasant it was to see afar the wavering sweeps of gentle hill, and plaits of rich embosomed valley, with copse, and turnip-field, and furzy common patched with shadow. It made me bless the Lord at heart for casting my lines in a quiet land, where a man beholds no craggy menace, black rush of blind tempests, bottomless gulfs, unfathomed forests, and peaks that would freeze him into stone. For the people that live there must be in a wild condition always; to tremble at Nature's fury, or to shudder at her majesty, or look around on all that wraps them up, with desolate indifference.
I glanced at Stoneman walking briskly with his gun upon his shoulder, and death to at least a dozen woodcocks in the keen flash of his eyes; and I said to myself—"Please God, I will take a game-certificate, next August; there is nothing like a good day's shooting to save one from blood-thirstiness."
"Jackson, my boy!" I said, with the refrain of a fine old Yankee song arising in my memory, "you have been over half the world; but have you ever been in the Caucasus?"
"No, and don't want;" he answered shortly, "get robbed enough in London village. But they strip you naked there, I hear, and send you down a waterfall. Shamyl did it to some young chap, who might have set up against him."
"That is a fiction of his enemies. The Avar Chief was dry in his manner to strangers; and who can wonder at it? But he never harmed one of his own race. I wish we had a few such patriots."
"Very well. You start the band. You are qualifying well, with all those Egyptian fellows in the valley. But George, you are much too good for that. There are pretty girls in every caravan; but we don't jump over the broom-stick with them."
Dariel and a broom-stick! Indignation may flash as fast in the meadows as in the mountains. "You idiot! You talk like an utter cad," I cried; and he being quick of temper too, stood his gun against a tree, and looked at me. I set my gun by the side of his. "Let us have it out," was all I said.
But a gleam of reason came across him. He might have polished me off, perhaps, though he would not have found it very easy, for I was the heavier of the two, and in tidy rural condition. "What rot this is!" he said, lowering his hands. "If you like to have a good smack at me, you can. But I won't hit a fellow with Grace's eyes." I knew that he had meant business, and that there was no white feather in his nature.
He begged my pardon, and we shook hands; and I felt just a little ashamed of myself, although when I think of what he said, I see no misbehaviour on my part.
Without another word, we dropped the question, and went on to look after the woodcocks. We crossed the long "pray," with the keeper and three spaniels coming after us, and whether it was that Jackson's hand shook after menacing "the eyes of Grace," or that mine was extra steady through that firm assertion of Dariel, it came to pass that I knocked over both of the birds that we put up, when they were sailing away from Jackson's gun. The other longbill saved his bacon, by keeping it out of human eyes. These lucky shots, and the pleasant walk, and very fine behaviour of the dogs—who were children of the animals I had loved and chastened, in the better days both for them and me—put me into so noble a frame of mind, that after an excellent dinner and a glass or two of Port wine with the violet bouquet in it, I up and told Stoneman my own love-story; for I knew that the whole of it must come out now.
He, being pretty much in the same condition, though without anything like my excuse for it, listened as if hehad never heard anything half so surprising and engrossing, and inspiriting. In fact, he seemed to take the whole of it as applicable to his own case, though it was beyond my power to perceive even the faintest analogy. His was an ordinary love-affair with nothing remarkable about it, unless it were that money, which is the usual obstacle by its absence, was the obstacle here by its presence. But in my case money was the last thing thought of. Sûr Imar had never mentioned it; and as for me, I only hoped that Dariel might never own a shilling, because then she would appreciate my few half-crowns. And I still possessed her ruby cross, and meant to keep it, until it should be mine by legal right. Ah, who can spy any chance of that through all the gloom impending?
"She didn't say that she could never care about me," replied the stockbroker, when I asked him what he thought. "If she had, you wouldn't see me here now. I should have been off to the real Rialto; for I've got a first-rate fellow in the Avenue now."
"Jackson, my inquiry was about my own affair. I want to know what you think of my chance there." I looked at him severely, for this inattention was too bad.
"Well, and I gave you a parallel. We are almost in the same boat, I should say; though yours is a sort of savage canoe, full of Oriental fish-tails, no doubt, and liable to Vendetta, and many other frightful nuisances. To your young mind all that too probably increases the attraction. But to my mature views, there's romance enough and to spare, in a quiet English maiden,—sweet, gentle, affectionate, firm-principled, and not too sure of her own mind. Are they to be despised, because you can speak a civil word to them, without having a bullet through you? George, there is more romance really, where you know how to behave, than where you don't."
"Can't see it," I answered, "can't see it at all. Is it poetry to take up your spoon for pea-soup?"
"Poetry be hanged!" cried Jackson. And as it was only my brother who went in for it, when I never could make a blessed rhyme, why should I stand up for the Muses, who had never deigned a glance at me? Nevertheless, I was slightly shocked, for every man is, or ought to try to be, a little above the common mark, when he thinks he loves something even better than himself. And to be above the common mark is getting on for poetry.
"You go your own way, and leave me to go mine." I spoke with that elbow-lift of the mind which resembles what coachmen used to do to one another, when they met on the highroad, and did not want to raise the whip. "You will see, Jackson, if you live long enough, that I shall have a better time than you will." For I knew that Grace needed a very light hand; though girls had not got their mouths just yet, half as much as they have now.
"The Lord only grant me the chance of it!" he replied, with the happy rashness of young men. It was not for me to speak against my sister; but I knew all her little ins and outs, and I daresay she thought that she knew mine.
"Let me come down to your happy valley," he continued, with that contempt of my ideas, which I always leave Time to redress, and have seldom found him fail to do it. "I want to see this perfect wonder. Why, Shakespeare himself can have never created any heroine to compare with her. It is out of possibility, my dear George. Bless my heart—Imogen, Portia, Miranda, Rosalind, Juliet, Ophelia—no, she was weak—Sylvia, Helena, half a dozen others rolled into one, down in that little hole! I want to see her, that I may learn to despise the best English girl ever born; or try to pretend to do it, if she won't have me. Do you suppose I was born yesterday?"
When a man carries on like this, you may say what you like—though you are Solomon's Mahatma—without getting a spark of wisdom into him. I longed for Tom Erricker, who could always float on the top of a flood, because he was so light; and in a weak sort of way I had wanted him often, not to unload my mind upon him—for you might as well trust your watch to a floating bladder—but to see him look buoyant, when my mouth was full of brine. But Tom had been summoned by his electroplating parent to fall in love with a very nice young lady, whose father made dish-covers fluted in the rough. Those people had some shooting, and Tom thought that he could shoot. At any rate, it was better for him than the Bar.
"You shall not come near my happy valley,"—it would never have done for me to encourage this,—"remember what you said of the hero who lives there. You took him for a forger, or a ticket-of-leave man."
"Well, I don't care a fig what he is, so long as he gives you satisfaction. But about Grace—I tell you I won't wait. If she kissed her hand to me, is not that enough to show—I shall be there to-morrow; but you must not let her know."
"Not to-morrow, Jackson. Why, it is her butter-day. And if she could ever cut up rough, I believe it would be the butter, at this time of year."
"Not a bit of it. Nothing would ever make her peppery. And she is sure to be at home, and up in your part of the premises. That is where she looks the most enthralling. But don't let her know, for the world, that I am coming."
It was fair that he should have his own way at last, after giving Grace a luxury of time to think about him, since his offer was made about ten days ago, when she put all the blame of her shilly-shally upon me! See how differently I did everything.
The following morning I gave her a hint—for my duty was to her first, and long afterwards to Jackson—that peradventure somebody in the course of the morning might turn up, to have a look at me in the harness-room; but she took the greatest pains not to understand me, and even put a particularly simple jacket on, of buff-coloured linen smocked with blue, and a delicate suggestion of retiring fronds—almost like a landscape of forget-me-not and lady-fern. But the shade of it was nothing in comparison with the shape, inasmuch as the latter was our Gracie's own; and everybody knows what that means. Only she herself had not the least idea about any part of it. All she cared for was to get on with her work; so she kept all her body and arms in motion, as if she were intent upon throwing shadows.
When the butter was coming forth, crowned with glory,—which the cleverest dairymaid may doubt about, as she has to do sometimes with a little pat or two inside her,—and the long slab of enamelled stuff (for we could not afford white marble) was tilted so that every golden patin could crisp itself without encroachment, and Grace, like a miser telling his moidores, was entering the upshot upon a white slate hanging by a scarlet ribbon, and pondering in her heart with the scales behind her, whether she had tried tocheat any one more than the good of the family demanded, suddenly a riding-glove was waved inside the door, and its fingers went about like bananas on a string, because there was no flesh inside them.
"Can't have you now, Joe," Miss Grace cried, with a presence of mind that could only be surpassed by the colour presented on her cheeks; "come again in half an hour. I am calculating now." As if old Joe Croaker had ever even seen a glove!
"I won't say a word, if I may come in. Oh, do let me come in and be calculated too. If I may only sit upon a pan upside down, or anyhow, quite out of sight in the corner. Oh, what a sweet place! I could live upon the smell of it. But I won't even go near the lace-edging of a pat."
"Mr. Stoneman! Is it possible? This is one of my brother's proceedings. That I cannot even finish a few pounds of butter! George has done many inconsiderate things—but this seems beyond even his temerity!"
"Miss Cranleigh, I give you my word of honour that I have not even seen him for the day. In fact I came to look for him, to say 'Good-bye,' before I start for Venice. One never knows when one may come back again, you see."
"Of course not. There are so many lovely things out there. The only surprising thing to me is, that any Englishman who can afford to travel spends so much of his time in this commonplace country."
"But you don't mean that! I do hope, Miss Cranleigh, that you have not so low an opinion of your own dear countrymen. And the dearer ones still, your own countrywomen! Foreign girls are all very well in their way. But who with a pair of eyes in his head——"
"You have seen more of them than I have, Mr. Stoneman. But everybody seems to say that they are most delightful. And even my poor brother George,—but I forgot,—forgive me, I am not supposed to know anything of that."
"But I do. I know everything about it," that treacherous stockbroker whispered: can any man be loyal to his best friend, when in love? "What a lucky chance that you should speak of that!"
"Excuse me, Mr. Stoneman; but I never spoke of anything. Only when a mystery is dwelling in one's mind, about one of those who naturally are the dearest to one, and when one's parents do not condescend—you see what I mean; though I really mean nothing."
"Precisely. And with such swift intelligence as yours! It is not for me to hint at my own weak ideas—such a thing as that I never do. And when no one in the family cares a fig for my opinion——"
"It is not at all fair of you to say that." Grace cast down her eyes, and then turned away in the most bewitching manner. The stockbroker jumped up from his brown milk-pan; but she looked at him, and he sat down again.
"Be careful, Mr. Stoneman, for I am afraid it has a crack. Sally says they cannot make them, as they used to do! But as I was saying, both my father and my mother are thoroughly aware of all your good-will. And there is not a tenant on the property, I am sure——"
"How can I think about the blessed tenants? Though of course I try to do my duty to them. But oh, do give me a little taste of butter after that."
"Am I a rogue, that I should dare do such a thing? Twenty-two pounds there, and not a pennyweight to spare. And old Mrs. Ramshorn made a fuss last time. After a cigar, how can you taste? Your taste must be very far from perfect."
"My taste is absolute perfection; and that is why—what I mean is, why I enjoy this most exquisite result. But a coward is ever so much worse than a rogue; and to shrink from the test is cowardly. I could never have believed it of Miss Cranleigh."
"Very well. But you shall pay for what you eat. I will take it from one of your own pats, that are going to the Hall in half an hour. But you must not blame me if it is not first-rate. Slemmick, the cleverest man we have, says that there is a leaf coming down now, which gets between the blades of grass, and it is useless for the cows to blow at it, for it makes a point of getting into their very finest butter. George calls it nonsense. But what right has he, when Slemmick was brought up so much more out of doors?"
"Slemmick is sure to know most about it. A man who has never heard the names of things, always knows most about them. Therefore do let me give true judgment on the butter."
"Then you have never heard the name of butter!"
"Oh dear, oh dear! you leave one less than a shred of the soundest argument," was the reply of the infatuated stockbroker. "Reason" would have been the noun to use, after a twelvemonth of matrimony.
"Now you must understand," said Grace, in the flush of that triumph of intellect, "that nothing ever tastes its best, when taken out of its proper course. No metal should ever be used with fresh butter. This is a blade of hard white wood, I quite forget the name of it. But I can easily find out. Let me run and ask old Sally. You can't wait? Very well, then I must cut it short, and tell you when you come back from Venice. But to think that I made all of those, and the ready money they will fetch!"
She dropped her eyelids just a little, and spread one palm above them, as if the dance of pleasure in her eyes required veiling; and then she finished her sentence. "It is a lovely place, I hear. How nice it will be, to be there! How much you will enjoy yourself!"
"You are quite wrong there," replied Stocks and Stones. "I expect to have a most wretched time. What do I care for the Stones of Venice? I am not going to please my very miserable self. You know why I am going, Miss Cranleigh."
"Mr. Stoneman! How should I know? I have not the very smallest idea!" Oh, what a dreadful story, Grace! And did you make it better or worse, by a blush, and quick palpitation of the guilty breast that harboured it?
"Then I am going for this cause. There is somebody in this country who has got me entirely underfoot, and tramples on me every day. There is no cure for it, but to run away. I have no spirit left. My eyes are always on the ground."
"Indeed! Well, I have not perceived that. But if you have no will of your own, what else is there for you to do? But it seems so un-English to run away. You are not weak, Mr. Stoneman. My brother says that you arevery strong. And he would be only too glad to help you. He is too fond of what the reporters love to describe as personal violence."
"If it were a man, I might have some hope, even without such a champion. But when the tyrant is a lady, and the most perfect of her sex, one against whom it is impossible to rebel——"
"This does you the very highest credit. And it is so unusual. A great friend of mine, and such a sweet girl, quite adores her stepmother. But men—though I know so little of them—but I fancied that they were apt to feel a kind—a kind of prejudice. Narrow, no doubt, but violent."
"It is worse than fifty stepmothers. My step is a quiet, sweet-tempered woman; and I wish that I saw more of her; but she seems to prefer her own relatives. Now, as if you did not know what I mean! What did I tell you the other day?"
"A variety of things. And what did I tell you? And didn't you say very clearly that you liked me all the better for my objections?"
"No, no. Come, that is a twist! I said that I respected your objections, but thought them extremely romantic, and would live in the hope of your trying to get over them. May I sit upon this tub, and reason with you? Oh, how I wish I was a dairyman!"
"My brother George is in love with a lady," said Grace, who never saw the way to miss the very worst of jokes, "who will want a lot of practice before she can sit down. What on earth will he do with her when he gives a dinner-party?" This was a thoroughly vulgar error, as I have shown most distinctly above.
"Poor George, what a fool he is making of himself! But no brother of yours could ever be a fool. Forgive me: for the moment I was forgetting the great mental powers of your family, Miss Cranleigh."
"You need not call me that, unless you wish it. I mean at least—you need not call me that, so often. After all that you have done for us, it sounds so formal."
"Bless your kind heart! what have I ever done for you? But Grace is what I should love to call you; Grace, Grace,and nothing else. Unless I might add another word, beginning with a d——"
"All words beginning with a d are bad. But there can't be much harm in Grace, that I know of. Only you shouldn't say it very often."
"Oh dear, no! Not more than every time I breathe. Very often is superlative. And so are you. And therefore I am to say it, every time I say you. So I will; am I not a worshipper of the Graces?"
"You must not say it, every time you say me. And I made a dreadful slip, as you must perceive. I wasn't thinking for the moment. And surely you would never dream of taking an advantage——"
"Now come all they that wish me evil; all they that against me have imagined a vain thing——"
"What else are you doing yourself, if you please? If you would only allow me one moment to explain——"
"In the name of the Lord will I destroy them."
"Oh, Mr. Jackson Stoneman!"
She looked at him in doubt of his ferocity, or sanity; and he, in high spirits, clapped his heels on the floor and sprang up, and began to draw nearer. "No tub will do for me. I must have a throne. I am the King of the City, and of Surrey. Grace Cranleigh has proclaimed it."
"Truly you are in a great haste to crown yourself. She has never done anything of the kind. But if to make an ell out of half an inch is kingly——"
"If I did that, I will soon put it right. Let me make half an inch out of the ell now."
"No, no! I insist upon your staying where you are. There is a little door going out, between these two pans; and unless you are quite sensible, you will see no more of me."
"How can I be quite sensible, when I see any? Oh, Grace, Grace, you cannot conceive what a relief to me it is, to be able to utter your name, with a joy, with a pride, with an ecstasy inconceivable!"
"Mr. Stoneman, you are upon the Stock Exchange, and a certified dealer—is not that the proper term? Very well then; you don't deal with any property, until you get it."
"Don't we, though? Oh, Grace, if we did not, where in the world would our business be? But I don't want to talk shop now at all. I want to talk something far outside of that."
"Shop-windows, perhaps." And then her heart reproached her, as it ought to do with one who has made a flippant stroke. But he had overdone his hit with her as well, and had the sagacity to wait for her remorse.
"I did not mean anything rude," she said, edging her own tub a little nearer, while the forget-me-nots on her bosom danced like flowers on a river, when the mill-stream lifts; "I say things I ought not to say—what I mean is, I say things without meaning them."
"Whatever you say is the sweetest of the sweet," he answered with a sigh, that made his waistcoat keep the tune; "and it is right to remind me of my distance, Miss Cranleigh; because I was taking liberties."
"I defy you to say such a thing to me again. You have not the least idea what I am like, when—when I feel that I have been unkind."
"Let me know what it is like," he whispered, "when—when you feel that you are getting kind again. O Grace, Grace, how I do love you!" She looked at him softly, and her blue eyes fell; and then she spoke submissively.
"Now don't pretend to say it; you must not pretend to say it—unless you are quite certain. Shall I tell you why?"
"I say it a thousand times, and I will spend my life in saying it. You know it as well as I do. Certain indeed! But tell me why?"
"Only that I should feel it very much indeed, if I were not sure that it is perfectly true."
There were tears on her cheeks—the true playground of smiles; neither did they look out of place, for there was not much sorrow in them.
To reassure herself, she whispered something altogether repugnant to the spirit of the Stock Exchange, silver, and gold, and even jewels. But that blessed stockbroker knew the quickest way to close transactions. He swept back a mint-worth of ductile gold from the sapphires whose lustre was tremulous with dew, and he gazed at them gently,tenderly, triumphantly, yet not without fear and diffidence. "All this committed to my charge?" he asked, with the other arm defining the flexuous circuit of his future realm.