In whatever condition a man may be placed, under the will of Heaven, there is generally something to alleviate it, if he seek perseveringly; and always something to aggravate it, without any exertion on his part. In my present trouble I had several consolations; and the best and sweetest of them was the kindness of my sister Grace. She had leaped, without looking for any signal, or even any ground to jump from, to the solid conclusion that her poor brother George had been treated most cruelly, shamefully, shockingly, and if there be worse than this, put it on the pile. And yet she never spoke of it—never at least to me (though she may have filled the world with it to her beloved Jackson)—but let me know her sympathies by a silent lift of cover, as a large and capable ham-boiler does,—when a tin saucepan would have blown its top off. A man loathes sympathy if he is of English race; nothing irritates him more than for other fellows to come prying down into what goes on inside him. Even to his dearest friend, he does not stretch out his heart, like a washerwoman's line; what may be inside it is his own concern; and, like a gentleman, he must not be too curious about that, so long as it leads him into nothing mean. All I can say is that I never felt inclined to be savage towards the female race, because one of them had disappointed me. And the beauty of it was that I could not hold one spark of rancour against her. The great generosity of love was in me; and all the fault I had to find went abroad among her sex, but never touched herself. So do jilted poets wail about all other women, but acquit the one they love.
But Grace showed her sympathy more delicately, according to her sex and education. What pleased me most in her behaviour was that she never brought her own little whiffs of love—and lovers are always having either whiffs, or tiffs—into her placid pretty interviews with me. She even broke out against her own sect, now and then—for the women had begun to make sect of sex even then, as they feign to do now altogether—and expressed a contempt of them, which any man would have been extremely rash to acquiesce in. She meant it for the best, and I was much obliged about it; but not the faintest fibre of my heart was put in tune by it.
Then all of a sudden it became the duty of my life to comfort her. One evening, getting on for Christmas-tide, I was sitting in my beloved den, after a rather hard day's work, as glum as a Briton can wish to be, but soothed by my pipe, and the smell of saddles, when in came Grace very quietly and kindly, but without saying anything at first, as if I were too busy to notice her. She began to sweep a trifle of tobacco-dust which had dropped on the table contradictorily—for I am a wonderfully tidy fellow—into the pink cup of her palm; and then she went and put something straight that was straight enough before for any man; and then she pretended not to hear me, when I asked—"What is the matter, dear?" for I knew as well as a thousand sighs could have told me, that she was in trouble; and being up to every trick of hers, I was sure that her eyes were full of tears, although she would not let me see them.
"Butter returned on your hands again?" I suggested in a feeling tone; for there was an old lady, quite a double patent screw, at the further end of the parish, who was never tired of boasting—as old Croaker told us more than once—that her butter was made by a baronet's daughter, yet sent her such messages as no Duchess would think of sending to her dairymaid. "Returned on my own hands," Grace seemed to mutter, and I let her take her time, unable as I was to make this out. Then without caring properly where she might be in the narrow little room, she hit upon, by force of a gleam from the fireplace, that very same cracked and spotted looking-glass, in which my friendTom had admired himself. With infinitely better reason—however feminine and wavering—Grace Cranleigh might have regarded herself, and defied any one (except Dariel) to peep over the snowy shoulders. But instead of pride, what came? I know not. Only that I flung my pipe away, and had my darling sister in my arms, where she cast away all pretence, and would have spoiled any waistcoat that was not worn out.
"He—he—he," she sobbed. And I said—"What he?" and she answered "him," as if there was only one man in the world, though he might go into fifty cases. "Jackson?" I asked. But she would not have it even at such a crisis.
"My Jack," she declared, looking up at me, as if every George was rubbish; "my own Jack—will you never understand? And when I was getting so fond of him."
"Getting indeed! Why you have thought of nothing else, for at least three months. You have made too much of him; with the usual result, I daresay."
"Oh don't touch me! Don't come near me! No wonder your Dariel ran away. You have not the least sense of noble things. What have I done, to have such a brother?"
"There must be a crack in the family," I said, as she cut away into a Windsor chair, and fixed all her soul on the fire, as if it were the only warm thing left on earth.
"Wonderful, wonderful," I pursued my own reflections, till she should come round.
"And you don't even seem to care to ask what it is he has done to me!" Grace began to show her pretty nose over her left shoulder, while I snuffed the candles, and began to fill a pipe. "Though you know the high opinion I always have of your opinion."
"You had better not say a word about it," I answered in the kindest manner; "no doubt it is the usual thing. You told me that all men were alike, till you made such an idol of poor Stocks and Stones. Now you see that he is just like the rest of us."
"I have long ceased to hope for any greatness from you; but I did expect some fairness," my sister spoke as if I had not allowed her to say a word all this time: "you knowthat I cannot argue, George; or at least you pretend to think so, which comes to the very same thing with a man. Then how thoroughly ashamed of yourself you ought to be, as soon as you can spare me time to tell you the simple truth. Mr. Jackson Stoneman, the gentleman you with such admirable taste and such lofty humour call 'Stocks and Stones,' is not tired of me, as you kindly imagine. In fact he thinks more of me than ever. If you had only seen his face——"
"Don't cry, my dear child. Now don't cry any more. I am very sorry if I misunderstood you. But how could I help it? You do take such a time. What can be his reason for behaving in this manner?"
"Because he is ru—ru—ruined!" She never was much of a hand at crying; but this terrible word, and her effort at it, served as the cord that brings down the shower-bath. "Hoo—hoo—hoo!" she went, and it was no good for me to say anything. "Oh that Dariel were crying for me like that!" was the thought that came into my selfish heart. "I should not mind being ru—ru—ruined, if I could only hope for that!" Then Grace got better, as girls always do, if you let them have their cry out.
"What makes it so—so distressing, so heart-breaking, is that the whole of it has been through me—through me, whom he chose without a single penny—me, who had nothing more than poverty to bring him, poverty, and faith, and a very ordinary mind! And then, not content with that, I must do my best to rob him of every farthing of his noble fortune. Perhaps one of the wealthiest men in the world, until he set eyes upon unlucky me. Oh George, it will never be in your power to understand my pure contempt for money! Yet you ought not to rob anybody of it; and I have robbed the noblest man that ever lived of every penny, every penny!"
"In the name of the forty thieves, and Morgiana, and the man they cut into four pieces, how can you have done all this?" I asked, being certain that there never was a girl more reasonable, yet remembering how the wisest of them love a little speculation.
"To anybody but you, George, it would be too self-evident to require any explanation. Why will you driveme to a thing so painful? Do you mean to say that he does not love me?"
"Better than his life, I believe; and better even than his money. But how does that bear upon the matter? They don't quote love upon the Stock Exchange."
"Oh George! And you think you are a business man!" Grace smiled gloriously through her tears, possibly through her triumph over me, probably through the joy of my assurance. "Can anybody do two things at once? Could my Jack attend to ups and downs, keep his whole mind intent on Argentinas, contangoes, fundangoes, holdovers, and holdunders, and even unspeakable Turks with fifty wives, when the whole of his pure heart was down here? Why he only went up about once a-week, if he could get me to go out nutting with him."
"Alas, I see. Neglected business. Left understrappers, and dashing young clerks, and trusty old codgers with pens behind their ears to stick to the stools, while he made sweet hay. But there must be something more than that."
"You turn everything into vulgarity, George. And you are capable of laughing at the most sacred things. But there was more than that, and a great deal more than that. You may have heard him speak in his grand confiding manner of a man named Franks, who has been with him many years. He has promoted him from place to place, and trusted him with almost everything; and I do believe that Franks had no intention of doing anything crooked. And he spoke in the most enthusiastic terms of me, though of course they never mention such a subject in the office. And when Black Friday came, as you know it did, through some very stupid error of the Government, Jack only laughed at first, except for the sake of some dear friends of his, who were hit rather hard; it appeared so ridiculous to suppose that a firm like his could be affected. But there proved to be something, I cannot quite understand it, although I keep my books so clearly that I know every farthing owing to me, something, some involvement, some terrible affair, which will force him to give up the Hall, and the shooting, and the pedigree Butterfly cows, and even me."
"Don't let him do it. Don't hear of it for a moment. You will never get such another fellow;" I exclaimed, as she turned away to wipe her glistening cheeks. "He'll come round as right as a roach in the end. You didn't let him off on that tack, I hope?"
"As for letting him off, dear George, is he a trout that I should treat him so? He is not like a slippery fish for a moment, but a deep-hearted, true-hearted, wonderful man. Why his conversation is as different from yours—but I will not depreciate you, unless you go against me. Only I should like to know how I can help myself. When a gentleman says—'I am truly sorry, but I can't have any more to do with you'—oh dear, oh dear, what can any lady do?"
"Lay hold of his coat, and say, 'None of that nonsense! I am the best judge of that question, and I have settled it the other way; unless you put up the bans within a month, you must favor me with the address of your Solicitors.'"
"Don't laugh at me. I have never laughed at you. I did tell him over and over again that the money could never make any difference to me, and indeed that I was very glad, except for his sake, because then nobody could ever say—but he talked of the duty of a man, and so forth, and the crime of allowing me to sacrifice myself, and a Cranleigh the wife of a bankrupt, and I don't know what else, for I broke down then, and he was obliged——"
"Of course he was—any amount of physical sustentation, as the reporters call it. But leave it to me, my dear. Where is he now? Too late for him to go back to London, I should think. But I wonder he didn't come to see me."
"He did. But you were not to be found. Oh George, I am thinking of every one of us. What shall we do? The Hall will be thrown upon our hands again, at a time of year when you would as soon live in a hearse. And Harold has made another of his great hits, which always cost a hundred pounds, and never produce a penny. How often I wish that I were like old Sally, without any pedigree Butterfly blood, and allowed to go and rout my husband up, just as Mrs. Slemmick is!"
"She routed him out from the root-house, last week," said I, being glad of any frivolous turn that might bring the dry colours into the rainbow; "she believed that he was gone for ever, without leaving his wages in his Sunday waistcoat pocket, and Snowdrop Violet Hyacinth just wheezing into the whooping-cough. But no; she underrated the nobility of man. He had tucked up his legs on a big flower-pot with a pipe in his mouth; and his heart was so full that he was going without breakfast. Are women alone to be considered faithful?"
"You mean that I am worse than Mrs. Slemmick." Girls never take the moral of the proverb aright. "Very well, I daresay I am. But I will never tuck my feet upon a flower-pot, and wait to be coaxed home, when the tea is getting cold. There is something very large in the character of Slemmick, and he shows it by his confidence in feminine affection. At the same time, it does appear a little small of you, to quote Mother Slemmick against me. She is married, and cannot help herself."
"Hear, hear!" I cried, leaving her to put the point to it; which she did with a blush, and a very cheerful smile. Then she gave me a kiss, to make up for little words; and I set out to see what I could do for her.
I found the poor Stockbroker looking stock-broken, and sitting on a hard chair, with his long legs crossed.
"Off for the Mediterranean?" I asked; and he said—"Bay of Biscay, or Bay of Fundy. Going to the bottom anyhow."
"Rot!" I replied, with less elegance than terseness. "Don't try to make me think that you would ever throw the sponge up. I know you a bit better than that, Jackson Stoneman."
Rot! I replied, with less elegance than terseness
"'Rot!' I replied, with less elegance than terseness."
"Would you like me to be a thief, George Cranleigh? If I choose to be a thief, I can slip out very lightly. But if I prefer to be an honest man, there is very small chance of my doing it."
He told me in a few words what his position was, owing to a panic which had ended in a crash, through the roguery of a few, and the folly of the many; and how his own firm had become involved in thoroughly unsound transactions, mainly through his own inattention and his confidence in avery clever fellow, who had cut things a little too fine at last, as very clever fellows nearly always do.
"We must lose a quarter of a million," he said, "even if we pull through at all, which is more than doubtful. All depends upon to-morrow. But it is not for myself that I care, George. It is for your darling sister—the best, and the bravest, and the most unselfish girl—why she wanted to stick to me through everything! She behaved as if it could make no difference between us."
"I should hope so indeed. I would disown her if she did otherwise. Did you think that she was going to have you for your money, Jackson?"
"I am not quite so bad as that, you may be sure. Still you must excuse a modest fellow for thinking his money the best part of him." Here I was glad to see one of his old dry smiles. "But the point of it is this, as you know well enough without my telling—I can have nothing more to say to Grace, who was worth all my cash, and my credit, and ambitions, and everything except my conscience to me."
"That is all very fine, and very lofty in its way," I answered with a superior smile, which refreshed him, as it was meant to do; "and among City people it may hold good, or the big world of the Clubland. But no sound Englishman takes it so. You don't suppose that my father approved of your going in for our Grace, because you then were a wealthy man, I should hope." I spoke with strong confidence; but perhaps the strength of it was chiefly in my voice.
"God forbid!" he replied with horror; while I tried not to doubt that God had forbidden. "No, I am well aware that Sir Harold disliked it from the first, and Lady Cranleigh even more. It was nothing but the goodness of dear Grace. And that makes it such a frightful thing for me. Why, that Angel was ready to stick to me, like—like a brick, if I only would allow it. A man who knows the world would never believe it for a moment."
"Then he must know a very bad world, and be a worthy member of it. What do you suppose I would have done to my sister, if she had been mean enough to shy off, because of your misfortune?"
"How can I tell, George? You are one of the most pig-headed fellows going. But you could not have been angry with her, for not being quite as stubborn as you are."
"Jackson, this is what I would have done. I would have taken the mane-scissors that hang above my mantel, and shorn off her great crop of hair to her ears. No gold for her there, if her heart were all pinchbeck."
Stoneman looked at me with outraged feelings. "Not even a brother could do that," he said, "brutal as brothers by nature seem to be. But without any humbug, George, do you really mean that you wish it to go on?"
"If I did not, I should be a wretched snob. It was not for money that you wanted Grace; and you insult her by fancying that she wanted you for yours."
"All this is very pleasant doctrine, and an edifying parable for little boys and girls;" the Stockbroker had a peculiar trick of showing his keen eyes as if in a gable, when his mind was puzzled or excited; "but it would not hold water, George, either in a court of honour, or a council of wisdom. Grace is entitled, both by birth and beauty, and I am sure that I might say by intellect as well, to a position which high rank alone, or wealth on her husband's part, can secure. High rank I cannot give her. Wealth I could have given. But the prospect of that has vanished, and with it vanishes all my hope of her. Oh that she had only thrown me over! I could have got over it then. But not now."
"Now look here," I said, as a Briton always calls attention to the knock-down blow he is delivering; "all that would be worth listening to, if it had anything to do with the matter. But, as it happens, my sister Grace doesn't care a flip about position, any more than I do, or you, or anybody else with a ha'porth of common-sense. We value the opinion of good people; and we like money for the comfort of others, as well as ourselves. But as for that mysterious affair you call 'position'—the more you poke your head up, the harder cracks you get on it. Grace will be contented with whatever pleases you. That holds you together, and you never slip away. People who have only got a lawn enjoy it a thousand times as much as a lord enjoys his park. And a man who loves his wife does notwant to lose her among a thousand men and women he has never heard of, all pushing about to please themselves, and sneering at them both, by way of gratitude."
"You will make a fine domestic character, George, if you only act up to your theories. I shall never forget your true friendship and noble behaviour in this matter. I shall take my own course, however, as I always do. I know what is right: and you may talk for ever. There is only one voice that could move me, and that one shall have no chance of doing it (even if desired) for her own sweet sake. But everything will depend upon to-morrow; if things are as bad then as they have been to-day, there will be no escape for me. Grace shall never be a bankrupt's wife. If her sense of honour urges it, mine forbids. And it is not only honour, but common-sense, my friend. Your family has fallen in the world too much already. It shall not be dragged lower by any connection with a defaulting Stockbroker."
His face showed no sign of emotion now; and I owned to myself that from his point of view no other course was possible for a man of honour. Whether his point of view was right or wrong, is quite a different question; but in spite of all my reasoning, I have very little doubt that I should have done as he did.
"Jack is getting on like a house on fire," Signor Nicolo wrote in an envelope enclosing a rather grimy letter, which I received on the following morning; "he has not had a classical education, and so you can always make out what he means. Specimens to hand confirm his opinion. Perhaps I shall go out in the spring. Could not stand the cold there now. Come and see me whenever you think fit."
When this was put into my hand, I was ready to start for London, having promised to meet Stoneman outside the Exchange, at one o'clock. This had been my own proposal, for one can never be certain how a man may take great ups and downs of fortune; and although I had not much apprehension as to Stoneman's fortitude, it seemed to me that a good friend should be at hand and do his best for him. So I read the letter of young Jack Nickols, on my way to London-Bridge, and found it very straightforward and simple; and who cares for spelling after that? The rising generation gets on very well without it, and a thousand school-boards do their utmost to destroy its memory.
"Never did see a place so mountanious,"—this young fellow said, where I first began to read, for the Signor had kept the first page in his pocket, or leather bag, or steel safe, so far as I could tell—"you never get up to the jag of one knife-grinder, before you have got to fetch your wind, and grind your bones for another. The Alps is nothing to it; they goes up gradual, and is ever somuch smaller to my mind. And you don't get big chaps here to shove you up and keep you straight. These fellows cackle at you with a horrid voice, and they squat in a ring and stare at you, if you want to go up any clumsy sort of peak, and they tell one another that all Englishmen are mad. But they are as sharp about the rhino as Petticoat Lane crossed with a New Cut costermonger; and you can't bring them to book, as you can a thief at home. You have to do it all through a chap who knows their lingo; and you can't make out what he is saying to them, and you can't be sure, without your revolver ready that they won't stick their skewers, which they call jingles, into your spine, without letting you look round. I had a poor time of it at first; but they seem to be getting now to make me out."When you come to know them, you might find worse fellows; for I cannot call them treacherous exackly. They would skin you to your spare-rib, if you let them have the chance; but they won't stick a knife into you, until you aggravate them. I am getting rather thick with some of them, by making out a little of their crack-jaw words, though there seems to be no end of them. But talk about jaws, I need not tell you, as you have seen too much of them. There was a man in Yorkshire, about fifty years ago, who could get through a lamb, and then three quarters of her mother. But one of these fellows would eat the whole sheep first, and then take her little ones for desert. But you must remember that their sheep weigh less than ours, and I like to see a man make a hearty dinner. But it is hard lines to pay him for the sheep; and then let him come to dine with you, as he must do, so that you never get a taste of it."However I am not complaining. The country must be beautiful, when the snow lets a fellow look at it, and you think the more about it, because it is out of sight. Tell Rosa that the girls are not a patch upon her, and she would laugh to see how they put their hair up. The men are not refined enough to think much of the women; but make them wear swabs upon their faces, and the insects are tremenjious in the summer-time. We have got more than we can do now to keep any road clear toget at the pocket where the stones are, just a soft place between two tremenjious rocks; down comes the snow again, and you could scarcely find it out, unless you leave a black tar-pole sticking up, and then you must fix it wonderfully firm, or you won't find it in the morning, for the wind does blow, I can tell you. We shall have to knock off for three months, I am afraid, and where am I to go to all the time? The Russians are not half bad fellows, only some of them too pious when you come to know them. Only you may be glad of that sometimes, because when they go to say their prayers, you get the best place by the fire. I don't care for quite so much tea myself, and I have not tasted a good bit of tobacco for a month. But everybody says that when some great man, who has been living for several years in England, and I do believe I have heard you speak of him, when he comes back they say he will change everything, all the thieves of the mountains will begin to say their prayers, and nobody will stick his best friend for nothing. If this can be managed, it will be a true excelsior."But you remember what the people said, the year we went to Yarmouth; and it is out of the question for me to say what I would give to be there now. They said, and you could not deny it when you wanted a bloater before they came in—'Sir, we lay ourselves out to oblige all the gents that come from London, but we cannot make a red herring swim.' I could not see exactly how they meant it, but it is just the same thing in the Caucasus."For a long time I could not see my way to be sure of not being struck at any moment. But I got over that idea, as we must, if we mean to get on anywhere. I will not say that my life is sacred now, as people express it in London; but ever since the popular opinion began to identify me with the Devil, through their ignorance of English manners, I have had a much better time of it. Tell Rosa, that in spite of uncommonly rough victuals, I weigh seven pounds more than I could pull, when she came to see me off at Wood-Green station. Nobody ever weighs anybody here, for after all they are not cannibals; though I told her so, to make her kiss me. But thesteelyard I brought goes to half an ounce, and has saved me a lot of money. And tell her, if you think that it won't be too encroaching, under the peculiar circumstances, that I am not quite turned into the Devil yet, though she might say so if she could see me; and even if the climate had done it, an Angel like her need not be afraid of him. Hoping to come home with a sackful of emeralds, believe me, dear Uncle James, your most affectionate nephew,John Nickols."
"Never did see a place so mountanious,"—this young fellow said, where I first began to read, for the Signor had kept the first page in his pocket, or leather bag, or steel safe, so far as I could tell—"you never get up to the jag of one knife-grinder, before you have got to fetch your wind, and grind your bones for another. The Alps is nothing to it; they goes up gradual, and is ever somuch smaller to my mind. And you don't get big chaps here to shove you up and keep you straight. These fellows cackle at you with a horrid voice, and they squat in a ring and stare at you, if you want to go up any clumsy sort of peak, and they tell one another that all Englishmen are mad. But they are as sharp about the rhino as Petticoat Lane crossed with a New Cut costermonger; and you can't bring them to book, as you can a thief at home. You have to do it all through a chap who knows their lingo; and you can't make out what he is saying to them, and you can't be sure, without your revolver ready that they won't stick their skewers, which they call jingles, into your spine, without letting you look round. I had a poor time of it at first; but they seem to be getting now to make me out.
"When you come to know them, you might find worse fellows; for I cannot call them treacherous exackly. They would skin you to your spare-rib, if you let them have the chance; but they won't stick a knife into you, until you aggravate them. I am getting rather thick with some of them, by making out a little of their crack-jaw words, though there seems to be no end of them. But talk about jaws, I need not tell you, as you have seen too much of them. There was a man in Yorkshire, about fifty years ago, who could get through a lamb, and then three quarters of her mother. But one of these fellows would eat the whole sheep first, and then take her little ones for desert. But you must remember that their sheep weigh less than ours, and I like to see a man make a hearty dinner. But it is hard lines to pay him for the sheep; and then let him come to dine with you, as he must do, so that you never get a taste of it.
"However I am not complaining. The country must be beautiful, when the snow lets a fellow look at it, and you think the more about it, because it is out of sight. Tell Rosa that the girls are not a patch upon her, and she would laugh to see how they put their hair up. The men are not refined enough to think much of the women; but make them wear swabs upon their faces, and the insects are tremenjious in the summer-time. We have got more than we can do now to keep any road clear toget at the pocket where the stones are, just a soft place between two tremenjious rocks; down comes the snow again, and you could scarcely find it out, unless you leave a black tar-pole sticking up, and then you must fix it wonderfully firm, or you won't find it in the morning, for the wind does blow, I can tell you. We shall have to knock off for three months, I am afraid, and where am I to go to all the time? The Russians are not half bad fellows, only some of them too pious when you come to know them. Only you may be glad of that sometimes, because when they go to say their prayers, you get the best place by the fire. I don't care for quite so much tea myself, and I have not tasted a good bit of tobacco for a month. But everybody says that when some great man, who has been living for several years in England, and I do believe I have heard you speak of him, when he comes back they say he will change everything, all the thieves of the mountains will begin to say their prayers, and nobody will stick his best friend for nothing. If this can be managed, it will be a true excelsior.
"But you remember what the people said, the year we went to Yarmouth; and it is out of the question for me to say what I would give to be there now. They said, and you could not deny it when you wanted a bloater before they came in—'Sir, we lay ourselves out to oblige all the gents that come from London, but we cannot make a red herring swim.' I could not see exactly how they meant it, but it is just the same thing in the Caucasus.
"For a long time I could not see my way to be sure of not being struck at any moment. But I got over that idea, as we must, if we mean to get on anywhere. I will not say that my life is sacred now, as people express it in London; but ever since the popular opinion began to identify me with the Devil, through their ignorance of English manners, I have had a much better time of it. Tell Rosa, that in spite of uncommonly rough victuals, I weigh seven pounds more than I could pull, when she came to see me off at Wood-Green station. Nobody ever weighs anybody here, for after all they are not cannibals; though I told her so, to make her kiss me. But thesteelyard I brought goes to half an ounce, and has saved me a lot of money. And tell her, if you think that it won't be too encroaching, under the peculiar circumstances, that I am not quite turned into the Devil yet, though she might say so if she could see me; and even if the climate had done it, an Angel like her need not be afraid of him. Hoping to come home with a sackful of emeralds, believe me, dear Uncle James, your most affectionate nephew,John Nickols."
At the bottom of this very vague and disjointed, but as it proved afterwards too true description, Signor Nicolo had written in pencil: "Rosa is my eldest daughter; but I shall have to put a stop to it."
"My noble countrymen!" as Sûr Imar used to call them,—it would take a long time to fetch them up to that mark, according to this English boy's account, and the enthusiastic chief could not begin too soon. It appeared to me that as many generations as he could trace from Karthlos would scarcely be enough to restore them to the level of antediluvian "culture." No wonder that he was in a hurry to begin; and if I am doomed to wait for the completion of his task,erit altera quæ vehat Argo, there will be another ark on the top of Ararat. And sure enough, here is another Babel to begin with!
For in the absorption of the thoughts above recounted, I found myself caught in the whirl and crush and uproar of a crowd as wild as any savage land could show. A crowd not of paupers but well-dressed people roaring and raging and besieging the portals of the Stock Exchange. Battered hats, and coats in tatters, fists thrown up, but unable through crunched elbow to come down again, faces black with choking wrath, wherever the brown mud peeled from them, grinding teeth and cursing lips, and chests that groaned with the digs they took without any chance of returning them—I thought of Lord Melladew's father and the bullock compressed into his clover-hay. Only let me keep outside the pack of the central squeeze if possible; for once in there, no strength of man could get me out or let me out. So I put up my knee, which was a dangerous thing to do, for if I lost my feetgood-bye to me; when a gentleman, with whom it would have been a joy to dine—so comely, and well-liking, and well-to-do was he—being unable to get at me with his fists, let out at me with language I had never heard the like of. I attempted no retort, for he had already got the worst of it, and without any knowledge how it came to pass, except that there must be more luck than wit in shoving, here I was with my clothes still pretty sound, outside the drum of squashed figs and squealing pigs.
But another poor fellow was not so lucky. "Let him go, slide him on, he'll be dead in half a minute. Serve him right. No, no. How'd you like it? Don't tread on him, more than you can help." It was a solid man upon the ground, but likely to be hollow, before ever he could be an upright man. I had got a short knob-stick in my hand (which I always carried, since my faith in human nature had waned through that dastardly bullet) and in the most blundering and selfish manner I set the knob against my breast and the stub-end foremost, and charged into the lump of figures across me. Considerable yielding, and heads running into heads, and yellow waistcoats sloping like sheaves of wheat in shock, and big boots toeing up at me, and a hail of blows in flank—it is impossible to say how I got on. But there must have been a hollow place somewhere in the mass, for they fought into a lane, and allowed me to lay hold of a pair of yellow shoes, or at least they had been yellow, and tow out the prostrate body on its back, and feel it for the signs of life or death. "Ain't dead yet," said a hoarse and husky voice; "never fainted in my life, and don't mean to do it now."
I admired the pluck of this poor fellow; for indeed he was in a frightful mess, and another half-minute must have silenced him forever. With the help of a bystander, who only cost a shilling, I was able to get my trodden friend across the street, and into a double doorway, where a score of people came and stared at him. "Well, if he ain't a tough 'un. Cut the poor bloke's collar. Stand him on his pins, and blow to him. Give him a drop of brandy." Advice poured in on every side, more freely than assistance.
"Don't you know who I am, you fools?" The injured man sat up with the aid of one hand on the stones, and gazed defiantly. "All over the world I've been, but never saw such cursed idiots. Captain Strogue, sir, of the British Pioneers."
He glanced at me with hazy eyes, which told of many strong waters, and would tell of many more, if Heaven permitted; and then he tried to bow, but a pang in his chest took the grace from that salutation. "All right! Down the alley, three doors to the left."
He shoved away all who pressed forward to lift him, but allowed me to help him with his knees still hanging, to the place he had indicated. And sure enough everybody knew him there.
"The Captain, the Captain, the bold British Captain! He have been in the wars, and no mistake!" Out came the landlady and the barmaid, with tears in their eyes—for he had promised to marry both—and an ancient potboy with all his wits about him brought a rummer and a teaspoon, and stirred up something hot. "That's the physic, ma'am," he said; and the lady smiled and offered it, and met with no refusal.
In a word, Captain Strogue was in the right place now, and after helping to bestow him snugly upon a horse-hair sofa in a small back room, I was at the point of leaving, when he put up one hand and stopped me.
"Owe you my life," he said; "not worth much now, but has done a deal of service to civilization. Near St. Paul's, ain't we? That's where they'll put me. Know your face very well, but can't remember."
He seemed to be dropping off into a doze, having finished his strong potation; but I told him my name and where I had met him, for I was eager to be off to keep my time with Stoneman.
"Don't be in a hurry, sir; you have helped me, and I can help you. Strogue pays his debts. Somebody else will find that out." His eyes shone fiercely, and he pressed his knuckles to his side. "Widow Lazenby knows what I am—don't you, ducky?"
"Oh, Captain! And at such a crisis!" the landlady murmured, after looking round to be certain where thebarmaid was. "But, sir, he have described himself. Wonders he have done, without wondering at himself."
It is a righteous thing that men of such achievements should have their reward, where it is sweetest. Fame they may never get, for that is all a fluke; gold they scarcely ever gain, because they are no grubbers; love they cannot stop to grasp, and see but savage frames of it; rank they laugh at, having found it the chief delight of black boys; but to get his grog for glory, and his victuals for victory, is the utmost any English pioneer can hope of England.
"Cranleigh, you can go," said Strogue, for his manners were not perfect; "you are involved in this little shindy, and you want to know all about it. These thieves shut shop at one o'clock on a Saturday, some one told me. But if you will come back by two, I shall have set this rib by then, and have rump-steak and oysters. Join me, without any ceremony. I owe you a debt, and you shall have it."
I had seen too many strange things now to be surprised at anything, as I might have been six months ago; and it was plain that this companion of the hateful Hafer meant to do me some good turn at a private opportunity. So I promised to return by two o'clock, and hurried to Stoneman's business place, avoiding the crowd that still was yelling at every approach to the House of Mammon. "Bless you, sir; it is nothing at all compared to what it was yesterday. Ah, that was something like a row!" a big policeman told me; "there was fifty taken to hospital, and the barriers snapped like hurdles. Why, there ain't been half-a-dozen ribs to-day. You can't call that no panic."
Neither did I find any panic at Jackson Stoneman's offices. A stolid old clerk was putting things away, and evidently anxious to get home to early dinner. He told me that his principal had been disappointed at not meeting me, and concluded (as the train had been in long enough) that something had occurred to stop me, and so had departed on his own account. When I asked how things had gone that morning, old Peppersall eyed me with some indignation, as if it were impossible foranything to go wrong with a firm so stable and majestic. "Well, how did the senior partner look?" I asked; and Peppersall replied: "He was a bit put out about a sixpence that rolled off a desk in room No. 8, till it turned up under the wainscoting."
"You'll do," I said rather rudely, for this rebuff was not too courteous, and he stared at me as if there could be any doubt about his doing. "That is the sort of fellow for a business-man, instead of any new young manager"—was my reflection, as I strode with good heart towards the rump-steak and oysters.
Captain Strogue had been sponged and darned and brushed and polished up—so far as he was capable of polish—by skilful and tender hands, and was sitting in a brown arm-chair, as bolt upright as if his ribs had thickened, as a barn-floor does, by the flail of many heels upon them. "Keep 'em like that," he said, "for about two hours, and fill up well inside, and it stands to reason that they must come right—can't help themselves. Doctors? None of them for Bat Strogue. The only doctor I ever knew was any good is down your way now, a queer German cove. Say grace for me, and carve for me, and fall to, my son. Take me for your guest; and you might have a more squeamish one."
In spite of all anxiety, it was impossible to be anxious for the moment, in the company of this extraordinary fellow. Doubt is the most hostile and hateful element to all human pleasure; and doubt was at once kicked out from the society of Captain Strogue. Certainty stood in its place, as firm as—well, I might say as firm as Strogue's own nose, for I can think of nothing firmer. Short and thick and straight it was, like a buttress to support his bulky forehead, and keep his bright and defiant eyes from glaring into one another; for they had a little cast towards it. Certainty also in the strongest point of all—that whoever you might be, or wherever you had been, never till now had you come into contact—or collision, if you liked that sort of thing—with a member of your race so far above all little weakness, and yet so ready to participate in it, if you would pay the bill for him, as your new but true friend, Bartholomew Strogue.
"Imar is an exceedingly fine chap," he said, as he lit a long clay pipe, after a dinner which impressed me with the truth that the more a man sees the more he feeds; "you are too young, friend Cranleigh, to have any powers of reflection. But you may take it from me, that there are only two ways now of being fit to consider yourself a fine chap. Of course I don't talk of nincompoops, who think themselves wonderful always. What I mean is in common-sense; and there you can only be above the ruck, by despising the human race, as I do; or loving it, as Imar does. I have found nothing in them to admire,though I have seen the inner side of many celebrated men; and as for loving them—well, I suppose the Lord puts that into you, and bungs up your eyes. The man who can do it is the happiest of his race, and a great deal too good to be left among them. No fool can do it; for a fool always goes by facts."
"Sûr Imar is the largest-minded man I ever knew," I broke in upon Strogue with some indignation. "He looks at the best side, as all good people do. He likes human nature, because he judges by himself."
"Contempt is at the bottom of it. Amiable contempt, if you like to call it so. The contempt of an equitable mind, that knows the faults of its owner, and loving them, makes allowance for the like in others. Bless your heart, Cranleigh, I like people well enough; but I despise them, because I despise myself. Come now, that is fair play. I am not argumentative; no man of action ever is. But that view of the case is a puzzle to you."
"Not a bit," I answered, with a smile of modest triumph; "you despise mankind, because you think they are like you. Sûr Imar loves them, because he thinks they are like him!"
"Bravo! I like a man who tries an honest rap at me. Bat Strogue never takes offence at truth, because he very seldom gets the chance. But I did not fetch you here to argue with you. I believe that I can be of service to you, very good service, such as you have rendered me; though perhaps you would not have pulled me out, if you had known who it was you got hold of?"
"Yes, I would; and with all the greater pleasure. I thought that you were a decent Englishman; though I saw you in very bad company, that day!"
"A decent Englishman! One of the most celebrated travellers of the age! Such is fame. Wait until my book comes out. I might have been the lion of the season, if I liked. What are S. and G. and L.? What have they done in comparison with me? However, let them have it for the moment. Bad company, Cranleigh? You are quite right there. Many scurvy tricks have I been played; but none to come near what that blackguardhas done. The fool, the besotted fool he must be. I was told you were far away in Yorkshire, and engaged to be married to a lady there. Nothing of the sort? If I had known that, I would have come down to see you. He thinks he has got everything his own way; and he has thrown me over on the strength of it. Much more than that—much worse than that. Oh, what a pretty mistake he has made! Nobody ever fooled Bat Strogue yet, without paying out for it. Things are gone far, very far, my friend; but we may be even with them yet. I see things now that I never dreamed of. But tell me first of your own share in them."
I told him briefly what had happened to myself. How after winning a pledge for life from Dariel, and the approval of her father, I had been suddenly called away to the wedding of my oldest friend, and had been kept there for several days by the sudden distress of the family. Then as soon as I could get away without inhumanity I had hastened home, and been utterly astonished to find the valley empty, and no message left for me, except that cold letter from the man who had been so kind. And then I told him also what I knew from Signor Nicolo, and his black suspicions as to Hafer's object.
"It is impossible for them to be too black," Strogue replied with an ominous smile. "Sûr Imar's life is not worth the lump of sugar melting under this glass pestle. Hafer's heart is vile enough, but a viler heart, and a brain ten times as resolute and as deep as his, are set upon poor Sûr Imar's death. I see it all now with the help of what you tell me. I took it in quite another light before. There is one thing still that I cannot understand. I fell out with that miscreant first, because I found that he wanted me to lend a hand to get you put out of the way, as if I were one of his tribesmen. What puzzles me beyond everything is that he never tried it."
"He did try it, and a very narrow shave I had. It was the very night after I saw you with him." Then I told Strogue the particulars of that cowardly and cold-blooded attempt, and Stepan's conclusion about it.
"It is impossible to doubt it. The murderous sneak! One thing I can tell you, young man; that marriage ofyour friend has saved your family the expenses of your funeral. Two days more in that part of the world would have sent you to your last account. He would never have shot at you again; such is their superstition, that he believes you invulnerable by bullet; but he would have put a long dagger into you, springing from a corner in the dark. At that game you would have no chance with him, even if you were on the outlook. You are stronger than he is, I daresay; but he is the most lissome fellow I have ever met, and I have handled a good many twisters and skippers in the way of savages. And to think that I should be almost trodden into dust, like the emmets in a hymn I used to learn, by a trumpery lot of common cockneys. It was contempt of the enemy that did it, a thing that generally ensures defeat. None of that now, that won't do now. Cranleigh, we shall have to do all we know; and the chances are that it will never be enough. It is not for Hafer, so much as that fiend of a woman, who stands behind him. One of the worst that ever walked this earth, and that is no small order, I can tell you. A bad woman is blacker than a man, as many shades as gas-tar is than Stockholm pitch."
"But who is it? Who is it? You have hinted that before. What woman in the world would hurt Sûr Imar, who looks upon them all as angels, in the reaction from his great mistake?"
"I will tell you who it is, by-and-by; and you will be surprised a little. But first a few questions; and very important. The luck has been terribly adverse. Most of all in this, that I should not have known, until it was too late to stop him, the scoundrelly schemes of this Hafer, and his abrupt cut-and-run. But if I have made a mistake, so has he. Bat Strogue is hard to beat, young man; though he thinks so little of himself. But now, first of all, is there any chance of catching Stepan? He is a thick, of course; as all faithful servants are. You could not make head or tail of him; but I know their scabby lingo. Do you know what ship he goes by?"
"Not I. The fact is that I was quite upset, and felt that being so thrown over I had no right to pry into their arrangements. All the heavy goods were going by somecargo-steamer. Blackwall was on the canvas-wrappings. That is all I know about it."
"Then we are too late for that. Those heavy boats sail on a Thursday. But the one point in our favour is that Sûr Imar goes first to Petersburg. He has good friends there; but in spite of that, if I know anything of Russian ways, it will take at least three months for him to get a stroke of business done. And he will not want to take his daughter to her new surroundings, when the furious winter rages there. His enemies thought to settle him, this side of Christmas, and have three months to gorge him and hide the spoil, while all the passes are blocked with snow. But they have overplayed their game, and they never dreamed of that stroke of his, which may give us time to save him. He has no idea of their plot, of course, but has acted with his usual simplicity. One more question—can we obtain any idea of what goes on there, through Nickols, or any of his jolly miners? I am sorry for them. What a dance they will have on Kazbek, with frost-bitten toes! But they can't get away now, that's one comfort."
"How can I tell? I know nothing about communication with those deserts. That is more in your line, and you know the country."
"There are not many countries beyond my knowledge," the British Pioneer replied, with a gaze as if the whole world lay before it; "but even I cannot always quote all the breaks and jerks of wire and post. However, I can easily find out. They were laying a line to Kutais, I know; but I don't know whether it is working, and if it is it won't help us much, when all the tracks are impassable. One more question; young man, excuse it, but are you still nuts upon that lovely girl, who is too good for any but an Englishman? I don't hold with matrimony, mind. So you need not mind saying if you have slipped off."
"I wish she were equally nuts upon me," I replied with a glance of contempt, which should have pricked him. "But she has vanished without even a good word. I shall never hear anything more of her."
"Stuff! Remember—'faint heart,' etc. She has been humbugged with lies about you. And I know thepride of all that race. You shall have her yet, if you show pluck; and you won't be like yourself, if you fail there. But you want to know who the dark enemy is, the one who is resolved to have Sûr Imar's life, as well as everything else that belongs to him. Very well, it is his own twin sister, Marva."
"What! Marva, the widow of Rakhan, that rascally Prince of the Ossets, whom Imar very justly slew! So justly, that even he felt no compunction. Marva, who knew of her husband's falseness!"
"That's the woman, and a nice specimen she is. I know one or two fine things about her, from what Hafer, her own son, let out. Ah, she is a deep one. It is a lucky thing for Imar that she sent Hafer, instead of coming to manage the whole affair herself."
"You forget one thing, Captain Strogue," I interrupted, for this view of the Princess did not tally well with Sûr Imar's own account. "She pitied him, there can be no doubt about that, after his terrible calamity, though as yet she did not know the worst. She pitied him, and proved it by her distress at the death of his little boy Origen. And when a woman once lets pity in, there is no room for malice in her breast. I read that the other day, in a very great writer."
"I don't know anything about that. I only know that she hates him. All the wreck of her life she ascribes to him, because he would not pay her portion. She has been brought up very differently from him, you must remember. And when she was so kind about that poor little devil, she had not the least idea that her husband that very day had fallen by the hand of Imar. Very likely she loved her husband all the more, without knowing it herself, for his behaviour to her. Some women do, there is no question about that; and there is queer morality in the Caucasus. She hates Imar, with all the power of her heart, which is anything but a weak one; and even if she loved him, she would be bound to kill him; for the blood-feud is between them."
"You talk of it as if you were counting coppers; whereas it makes my blood run cold, cold and then hot, as if it boiled with a shudder."
"Ah, but I have seen the world," said Strogue.
"Very well, then tell me this. In the name of common-sense—if such a faculty is known among such brutes—why did not Hafer put a bullet or a dagger into Imar, as he has had fifty chances and more of doing, instead of taking a steady but unlucky pop at me? Explain that, Captain, if you can."
"Nothing is easier, friend Cranleigh. In the first place, he is not the one to do it, without ruin to their scheme; for though he might marry Dariel, after that there would always be something between them. And what would make it useless for him to do it, is that the blood must be shed, as you might say, for the sprinkling of the doorstep. To kill him in England would not count, because nobody would be sure of it. Hafer might have made a hit, but he could not have scored it, and the revenues would not have fallen in for years."
"It makes me sick to hear you talk." I had no intention of being rude; but to see this man making balance of lives, as a grocer puts chocolates into the scale, was beyond my gifts at present. "Strogue, you make me hate you."
"My dear boy, you should not do that. I admire fine British indignation; and I had a lot of it at your age. I am not free from it now, by any means. But it must be governed and guided, when we deal with inferior races. A Frenchman never discovers this, and therefore he cannot colonise. He lets out his natural ardour at brutality, while we accommodate ours, and fetch it into better purpose. You must not suppose that I sympathise with a savage, because I do not shoot him."
I begged his pardon; for I knew nothing of such things. And he made allowance for my outburst; while I thought that I would rather play the French than the English part, in such a case—which was far from my usual sentiment.
"You need not make a fuss," he said, "all these things are an allegory. The wisest of men has been young and green at some time. Bat Strogue is not the boy to sing for starch in bibs and tuckers. Cranleigh, you may look at me, and some day you will tell your grandson—'Ah,you should have seen Bat Strogue! An Englishman of the old sort he was. Forty-six inches round the chest, and not a lie to be found in him.' Give me your hand, young man, I like you."
It occurred to me—so mean our nature is—that the brandy-and-water, which he quaffed like milk, was beginning to perturb a spirit even so ubiquitous. But his gaze was clear and bright as it had not been in the morning, and his voice impressive.
"You have only to go home, and wait. I have a friend who is on his way at this moment to St. Petersburg. I shall telegraph to him to-morrow, to keep his eye on Sûr Imar. He will have no trouble about that, the man being so conspicuous. I shall know when Imar thinks of leaving, and then we must look sharp indeed. You want to save him; so do I. And more than that, to blow to pieces the plans of this vile Hafer. He has treated me infamously; I will not bother you with that now. He little knows what Bat Strogue is. I might have starved, but for Jemmy Nickols. Just for the present I am in cash; but money never sticks to me. If the sinews of war fail, I shall not scruple to ask your help, though I know that you are not a millionaire, George Cranleigh. But I am a man of honour, sir. Though not a swell, I am no sponge. And I have some chance of a good windfall which is keeping me in London now. 'Never say die,' is my motto, sir; and if I get what I ought, I will lend you a hundred pounds as soon as look at you. Strogue is of Yorkshire family, sir, and a Yorkshireman always does what he says. But that Hafer is a cur, as mean a cur, and as fierce a cur, as was ever begotten by Cerberus. He made a scoundrel rob me of five hundred pounds, by false cards; as I found out just too late, and they split the swag between them. A burglar is a trump in comparison with them; and he has taken out young Petheril instead of me. Cranleigh, do you ask me why? Then I'll tell you in two words; because he can get him cheaper, sir, and because he has got no principle. Strogue must travel like a gentleman, as he is by birth and behaviour, and all that; Strogue maintains his rank, sir. You try to shove him into anyskunky corner to save a few copeks in passage-money, and he lets you know—ay, you soon find that out, and you won't forget it in a hurry. But this fellow Petheril, that's his name, he would make any skunk's hole skunkier; and you wouldn't care to touch him with a pair of tongs. And another reason I can tell you too, Petheril doesn't know the little things about that beauty of a Marva, which have come to my ears, though I never saw her. Shows what my reputation is—'Bartholomew Strogue, The World,' would find me from any post-office in it. Though when you send me a hundred-pound note, it would be as well to be more precise. But I am not proud of that; it is a nuisance to me. I open a hundred letters, when I find myself in the humour, and there is not a penny in one of them; but they all want me to do something."
Fearing that he was becoming inclined to go off on the rove, as great travellers must, and being in a hurry about Stoneman and Grace, I asked him to say in a few words how Prince Hafer came under his charge in London.
"Simply because of my taking a little turn into the Caucasus," Captain Strogue replied, as if he had gone off into a side-walk in some Hampstead villa garden. "I was tired of the monotony on the northern side of the Caspian, where the people are too much alike, with plenty of barbarous customs; but when you have seen one, you know them all. There is not the variety which can be found in the mountain regions only. In a very rugged land, the human race cannot get so confoundedly chummy as to take the variety out of them, like peas in a pod perhaps a thousand miles long. The Caucasus is quite a small affair, compared to the Andes, or Himalaya, or half-a-dozen other mountain-chains. But it beats them all in this, that it was peopled earlier, or at any rate more thickly. And there the fellows are; no two lots at all alike; and if it was the cradle of the human race, as the ethnologists used to tell us, it was lucky that we tumbled out of it. Mind, I don't run them down; there are some of the noblest samples, so far as the body is concerned, that you could find on the face of the earth. And manyof noble intelligence too, but with little chance of increasing it. As a rule, they hate work, both of body and of mind; and without proper work, we all relapse into monkeys, or advance into devils. You say, 'Strogue, then which are you?' You were longing to ask it, but too polite. Very well, Cranleigh, I am neither. I have done as much hard work as any man living. And I hope to do more, if my life holds out, although my joints are getting rickety. But my rule is—either work, or play. And I never mix the two together."
"But," I inquired, to bring him back to the point, for he seemed to be rather fond of talking about himself, "what was the reason that Hafer, if he was sent to fetch his uncle back, was not despatched to the camp at once, the old place in the valley, I mean, where his countrymen had taken up their abode. That would have saved all the London expenses, and the need for a guide and interpreter, and a lot of other trouble, as well as kept him out of mischief."
"True, my son; but it would have ruined the whole scheme. Hafer's nature would soon have shown itself, for his temper is simply horrible; kinjals would have flashed in the Surrey sun, and no Dariel would there have been for him. Even as it was, he contrived sometimes to make himself unpleasant to her. You remember our catching your little friend Allai, and putting some strain upon his loyalty? That was to learn a few useful facts from him, especially one about the lady and her father, and some points as to your proceedings. If you had not interfered, we should very soon have succeeded, for there is no great power of endurance in them. No, no. His mother knows too well what Hafer is, to quarter him on a quiet gentleman. And he never would have stood it. He came here to have his fling, quite as much as to carry out her plot—and a jolly wild time he has had of it. There is no steady love in a man like that, any more than there was in his father Rakhan."
"Foul scum of the earth, low blackguard! How dare he come near Dariel?" For the moment I lost my self-command. "How can I wait, Strogue? Am I to sit and count the time, while Imar and his daughter are going totheir doom? Why not set off for Petersburg and try to keep them there? Or at any rate warn them, and go back with them, if they must go, and face that wicked woman and her despicable son. That seems to me to be the better plan by far. It would cost a lot of money; but I would beg, borrow, steal—"
"Won't do. You must follow my directions. In the first place, you forget what a cloud you are under. Probably Sûr Imar and his daughter would refuse to see you if you followed them. Or if you got over that difficulty, would they listen to your story? You know nothing about Marva's scheme, except through me, and I have no proofs. It is all suspicion, or inference from little slips of Hafer's and so on, and what I have heard since he departed. Mind you, I know it, as well as if I saw it; but there is nothing I could lay before Imar, to convince him that his sister intends to have him murdered, and to make her son the Master of Karthlos, and Chief of that branch of the Lesghians. Be in no hurry, my good young friend. I shall prick you up quite soon enough. It is the jerking that spoils everything. We were a nobler race five hundred years ago than we are now; because we took our time to think, and mind kept time with body. These fellows also take their time. They learn it from the way the snow falls; and they know that the snow tells a deeper tale than fifty thousand thunderstorms. In the Caucasus a tragedy—and they have no such thing as comedy—goes into ten acts at least, and lasts for generations."
Once I saw the solid keeper of a well-known elephant (a grand mass of sagacious substance, gentle, good, and amiable) try his hand among the monkeys, creatures in their way as worthy, but of different fibre. These too knew what kindness is, and had their sense of gratitude, but could not stop to dwell upon it, and let it ripen in their hearts. The keeper, accustomed to slow ways, and leisurely though deep emotion, exerted all his charm of eye and benevolence of whistle, and offered baits to cupboard-love, and even deigned to winsome ticklings of places not too hairy to be touched by human tenderness. He gazed with zoologic pride at the manager of the monkeys, who was putting a new lash on his whip; then his glory flew into a shriek, for his thumb was bitten in twain, and a jabber of general joy endorsed it.
So it is too sure to be with any man, who drawing reason from her higher sources, applies the product of his skill, even in homœopathic doses, to that irrational creature—love. Strogue had no idea of the meaning of that word. A traveller gets too-far abroad, too loose, and large, and vague, and shifty, shallow with glancing instead of gazing, skimming the world instead of letting it cream. Therefore to me there was scarcely a crumb of comfort in all his assurances; and the only thing to stroke the long anxiety the right way of the grain, and smooth its tissue, was to keep on steadily with the labours of the day. And when these can be carried on out of doors, under the sky, and (if so I may say) with the eyes of the Lord smiling down on them, it is not to the creditof any young man, if he kicks about under his blanket and groans, when the night makes all things equal. Unless he has bodily pain, I mean—which is another pair of shoes, that can never be unlaced by any effort of our own.
Moreover, to see one's dearest friends escaping from some black distress, and coming back to their usual cheer, and jokes, and pleasure in the world around, takes or ought to take a lot of lead out of our own handicap. Although my sister had never been by any means painfully sympathetic with my misfortunes in the way of love, I was candid enough to feel that this might be because I had never asked her. Such an affection as mine was far beyond her understanding, a thing too holy to be discussed by any girl with yellow hair in love with a member of the Stock Exchange. But I quite forgave her all short-comings, the moment she fell into real trouble, and I wiped her eyes almost as softly as if they had been Dariel's. And this renewed our deep attachment, which had lost perhaps some little of its warmth, when she took to finding virtues in that marvellous Jackson Stoneman, which she had pronounced a hundred times to be sadly deficient in her brother. However they revived and flourished now; and I was not so mean as to ask how they came back, but was proud of their possession. Let us take all the credit we can get, from people who are fond of us; there will scarcely be enough to plug the holes our other brethren pick in us.
Stoneman, too, having turned the corner by the narrowest of shaves, with the paint shorn from his shaft and felly, but his box and axle as sound as ever, was much improved for the present by the increase of humility. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say, by the birth of that quality within him; for if it had existed heretofore, it had been so true to itself as to recoil from all recognition. Except of course in his first love-time; for if a man cannot be humble then, Lucifer is no match for him. It is needless to say that the losses of the firm were spread from mouth to mouth at any figure that occurred to the imagination, long before the senior partner himself could lay a loose measure along them. But hemanaged to stick to the Hall and the Park; though he gave up his yacht, and the hounds, and other enjoyments now too costly, and at Grace's urgent order clave to money-making all the week, and left the love for Sundays.
There was even some little talk about my throwing up the plough, and harrow, pitchfork, flail, and stable-bucket, and quitting in despair the land that had now become too honest to maintain mankind. To wit, I was to join our Jackson, not as a partner (for the solid reason that I had no capital), but as an agent, an assessor, or I forget what they called it. My father wished it, and so did my mother, and every one except myself; and I was doubting whether the sense of duty to my relatives ought not to outweigh my own tastes and wishes, when all my thoughts were upset again, and all my mind unsettled, by a letter just as follows:—
"Dear Sir,—I must seek pardon for neglect or carelessness about something. But it did not enter my thoughts at first, that the letter enclosed belongs to you, or perhaps to the lady to whom it was written. And we have been on the railway, or at sea so much, and in strange hotels, that I could not procure it from my boxes. I hope that it is of no importance; but I now perceive that I have been guilty of a sad want of attention, which may have caused blame to fall on others. If so I beg to be pardoned by them, for I had no intention of retaining what could never belong to me.—Your obedient servant,"Dariel, daughter ofImar."
"Dear Sir,—I must seek pardon for neglect or carelessness about something. But it did not enter my thoughts at first, that the letter enclosed belongs to you, or perhaps to the lady to whom it was written. And we have been on the railway, or at sea so much, and in strange hotels, that I could not procure it from my boxes. I hope that it is of no importance; but I now perceive that I have been guilty of a sad want of attention, which may have caused blame to fall on others. If so I beg to be pardoned by them, for I had no intention of retaining what could never belong to me.—Your obedient servant,
"Dariel, daughter ofImar."
The letter enclosed, or rather the note, was one of several little billets, in which I had answered questions from Tom Erricker's sister, Argyrophylla, during that most melancholy time, when there was no one else to support her. She behaved, all through that terrible period, in a faultless manner; such as even Dariel herself would have found it hard to equal. Argyrophylla was just as mournful, just as trustful in the Lord and the depth of heartfelt sympathy, just as determined to overcome her own feelings for the sake of others, as thenicest girl that was ever born, and therefore has to deal with death, could be. Any man who could be cold to her (with her father just dead, and her mother scarcely more than alive enough to moan) deserved to be screwed down, I say, and find no one at his funeral. But I never care to defend myself. It is clear enough what any one must think of this, being told that it was all about some crayfish soup, which was more for the lawyer's delectation than for mine:—
"My most kind and thoughtful Pilla,—What matter for such trifles now? Remember that all I care about is to be of service to you. It would have been a weary day but for that consideration. Do exactly as you feel inclined, but how happy I should be if you would come down to dinner. [This I only wrote that I might try to make her eat a bit, because she would not even take her gruel.] For the sake of the many who love you, think a little of yourself, if a heart so unselfish has the power. You must never speak as if I wished to be elsewhere, unless your desire is to grieve me. You shall hear what the lawyer has done for us by-and-by; but his chief wish is to please us. You know quite well what mine is.—Ever yours,George Cranleigh."P. S.—The canon most readily promised to officiate."
"My most kind and thoughtful Pilla,—What matter for such trifles now? Remember that all I care about is to be of service to you. It would have been a weary day but for that consideration. Do exactly as you feel inclined, but how happy I should be if you would come down to dinner. [This I only wrote that I might try to make her eat a bit, because she would not even take her gruel.] For the sake of the many who love you, think a little of yourself, if a heart so unselfish has the power. You must never speak as if I wished to be elsewhere, unless your desire is to grieve me. You shall hear what the lawyer has done for us by-and-by; but his chief wish is to please us. You know quite well what mine is.—Ever yours,George Cranleigh.
"P. S.—The canon most readily promised to officiate."
Now that such a simple letter, written when the cloth was laying, and the room grown shadowy, yet full of thoughts of dinner-time—for Pilla through her tears took care to keep the kitchen-jack alive—that a few kind words like these of mine should start up as wilful enemies, is a proof of that which men like Strogue might take into some dry coil of brain, having filled it more with the study of mankind than with converse of their Maker. To wit, that whenever any human being yields to the goodwill towards his fellows which has been implanted in him, he is making a fool of himself, without doing a bit of good to his brethren. Let Strogue think so, if he likes, and prove it by a thousand instances; he will not get me to believe it, or at any rate to act as if I did.
And here you will find, if you go on, that it was not so even in my own case. At first it looked very bad indeed, and I made a grievance of it, as any but a perfect man must do; and him I have still to meet with. How on earth could that hasty note, written only for comfort in profound distress, and with the warmth one feels for affliction, have fallen into the hands of some vile enemy, who had used it to destroy my Dariel's faith in me? Over and over again I read the words I had scrawled in a hurry; and the more I pored over them the more distinctly I saw what they might mean to Dariel. One most unlucky reference too would quench any doubt she might try to cherish. In my brief account of that sad affair at Sheffield, I mentioned, or should have done so, that Mr. Erricker's old and trusted solicitor was gone from home at the time of the sudden calamity, and his place had been supplied by a junior partner, a peaceful young man, who would never take the lead. His only anxiety was to keep within the possibility of mistake; and this (as the widow was so ill, and entreated me to act for her) compelled me to be content with legal sanction rather than counsel. But Dariel knowing nought of that, or of the affliction in the house, would naturally conclude that the lawyer was come to arrange for my marriage with poor Pilla. "Well, this is a kettle of fish, and a kettle of devil-fish," I thought; "but one great joy there is—my darling has not thrown me over through a toss-up."
All my love (which had never been away, longer than I could live without my heart) came back with a rush of double power, and a wild condition prevailed with me. That cold letter of dismissal bore no date of time or place, and afforded not a trace of the writer's whereabouts or intentions, except that it bore the post-mark of Dresden, and a date now four days old. Sûr Imar had told me more than once of his love for art, and deep regret that his stormy life had allowed him no acquaintance with it. Also he had shown me a very ancient—daub I should have called it, but for the subject—supposed to be a portrait of our Lord on panel, which according to legend had been brought by St. Peter when he came to preach in the Caucasus. Although he was not sure of that tradition,the Lesghian chief attached no small importance to this heirloom, and was anxious to compare the face, or as much of it as could be descried, with some of the first presentments, or conceptions, to be found in Europe. He was gifted very richly, as all great men are, with the power of moving slowly, not only abstaining from all attempt to rob Time of his forelock, but also offering that old robber plenty of leisure to tug his own. Thus the father of Dariel might stray through many a gallery, museum, and cathedral, before he reached the Russian capital; and wherever he was, there beyond a doubt would be his beloved daughter.
With this belief, I lost no time in going to see Strogue again, at least to hear what he had to say, though I expected little comfort. The place to which he now belonged, though it seemed more truly to belong to him, was that ancient tavern "The London Rock," so called perhaps in transcendence of the London Stone, which was not far off. An old-fashioned, overhanging house, with windows like the stern-galleries of a veteran three-decker, and a double door with big brass fittings, and glass panels glancing; the whole withdrawn as with an inner meaning, and prim sense of private rights, even from the organ-grinder, who dictates to the alley, and the babies who tripudiate, with tongues that can keep time, whenever dirty feet are weary. Strogue had seen all the world almost, and was come back to the beginning of it, smiling at the glee of childhood through the majesty of a placid smoke.
You never could take that man aback; perhaps because that sort of thing had been done to him once too often. He sat in a hooded chair of state, with a long pipe casting garlands of the true Nicotine forget-me-not, like a floral crown for his emerit head; but his legs were in front of him as they ought to be, and the day being still in its youth, no car of Bacchus had begun to jingle through the calm realms of baccy. Or at least, there was only one cool tankard, and the crown of froth was gone from that.
"How is the rib?" I asked in my usual stupid way, for all enquiry was out of place in a paradise so tranquil.And then I proceeded still more ineptly by begging him not to be disturbed.
"What rib?" enquired Strogue, with as much surprise as he could reconcile with his dignity.
"Why, the rib that was broken the other day," I answered, with some sense of trespass on his constitution.
"I remember now; and I call it very kind of you to think of it. But I understand my own inside, and can very soon put it right again. How are you getting on with your love-affair, my boy?"