CHAPTER XXXV A RACE OF PLATERS

Of the 26,250 days (which, after due allowance made for the little jangles of the sun and moon, are the up-cast of our living-time according to the wise man) that sage complains that no one produces anything exactly like the produce of its brother one day old. If it were so in the almanac of Solon, what can be expected now, when every day is supposed to achieve a long stride in advance of all previous ages, clapping their laurels on its own pert head? So have I seen a pretty little dear, with her hair upon her shoulders, dash out in front of the village mile-race, at half a skip from the winning-post, and scream out, "I have won it."

To me, in my quiet slow-go pace, it would have been more than enough, if the morrow had been content with its yesterday, and backed it up in a friendly style. But instead of that, it only cared to indorse the safe corollary—"All in all, a human creature is nothing more than accident." Accident to wit, just out of luck, according to the word there used, which bears no merry meaning. Perhaps this on the whole was my disgrace; for a friend's good luck should be one's own.

But could I put Tom Erricker in the most romantic scale of friendship (such as the Romans cultivated) against the heavenly Dariel? Those Tusculans knew not such love as ours; because they had no such girls to love. However, let Tom have his say.

"Beloved George,—You are my best friend, the only one that understands me, in this smiling vale of tears. You may not have heard from me for some months, because I have had the finest shooting I have ever yet been blest with. It makes one despise all the partridges and pheasants, tame fowl of a lower order. Grouse, my dear boy, and blackcocks too, and we heard of capercailzie! Tell old Stocks and Stones, who was so stingy about his rabbits, that I blow my nail at him, as the poet says. But that is not half of it. The grub—the grub—George, you never came across the like. I am seven pounds heavier than when I came down, in spite of walking off two pounds per diem. The wind seems to blow it back into you. And you make it up at dinner-time; and then you have cigars, such as you never put between your teeth; and then half-a-dozen lovely girls, all ready to scratch one another's faces, to draw you for their pal at billiards. And did not I show them a dodge or two?

"But that reminds me that I had my choice; and I chose like the man who put the broom across the walk. I might have had beauty; I might have had fashion; I might have had wit, though I hate it in a girl, because they soon give you the worst of it. And I might have had noble birth; but that would never do, because she might be nasty about the forks and spoons, at the height of the most festive enterprise. She was very sweet upon me for as much as three days; and my aunt, who has £80,000 to leave, was wild to have a Lady Frances Erricker. But my Lady Fanny made a wicked slip about the new process, that the Governor has given five pounds for, and expects to clear five thousand by it; and it was all over with her chance. She repented with many tears, and I forgave her, but could not see my way to put her on again; for her outside value was about a thou.; and she would cost more per ann. than that to keep.

"Well, I was just putting on my blinkers for another trot in single harness, when a little thing comes round my nose, and looks at me, and strokes my ears, and, by Jove, it was all up with me. Oh, she is such a little Venus, George! Small, as all the true sort are; but no mistake about her. Every time you look at her, you say to yourself—This is a girl; not an Amazon, nor an owl, nor an owl-faced Athenè, nor even the one who changed her sex, every time she struck a serpent. I may be wrong about that; never mind, my Loo will never want to be a Louis. In plain unvarnished fact, she is a duck, and that is what you want of them. Swans are not for me, nor eagles, least of all a cormorant. Her sweet name is Louisa Box; and I said a pretty thing to her. You know my little knack that way. I said, 'Loo Box, you have boxed my compass, and fetched it all to looward.' She could not quite take in my point, for no girl ever knows north from south; but she said, 'Oh, Tom, you are so clever!' while some of them would have boxed my ears; and Lady Fanny longed to do it.

"To cut a delicious tale too short, Louisa Box—who has £20,000 on the nail, which is not to be sneezed at, with tin going down—and Thomas Erricker, of Middle Temple, are to be joined in holy matrimony, at 11 A. M. next Saturday, and the devil take the hindmost. I have been up to London for new togs, but could not get an hour to run down to you, and I know what a rumpus you are always in. This you will excuse of course. But I rely upon you, mind (and if you fail me it will not come off), to put yourself into your best array, and be best man on Saturday. You must come by the train which reaches Sheffield, 7.45 P. M. on Friday. I will meet you at the station, and we will have a blow-out at the Governor's, and I will put you up to everything. And it would be kind if you would call at old Puckerpant's before you start, and bring my vestments with you. I have paid his bill; so that you can swear at him.

"Now, my dear fellow, this is a solemn matter. I feel the vitality of holy matrimony; and I trust my old pal to back me up. Last night I had a spasm in the plaster on my chest. I am not so strong as I was at College, and I shall never pull through it without you. You are a sneak, if you desert the Tom who has done so much for you."

Any one of lofty altruistic soul, or even decent fidelity, would vote me a very paltry fellow, for doubting what to do in a case like this. It seemed an atrocious thing of Tom, and a pestilent piece of luck for me, to take me two hundred miles from home, at this very crisis of my life,—just when I meant to compel my father to call upon Sûr Imar; or if that could not be done, to bring sweet Dariel to see my mother, whose kind heart she would captivate. Then I would show her to Grace, and perhaps at some leisure to Jackson Stoneman; and look what becomes of their pride and their Saxon infatuation, after that! Was this and every other delightful plan to be put off, nobody knew how long, for the sake of a headlong cash and love-affair concocted by Tom Erricker? I was sure that my sister would agree with me, for she always had made light of Tom, and I vowed to my reluctant self, that the decision should be left to her. What then was my chagrin and wonder, when she said, "You are bound to go, George!" And I fear that she wanted me out of the way, because I would not kow-tow to her "Jack!"

The terrible results of this sudden start have strengthened me for ever in my solid judgment, which for the moment I was much inclined to slacken under the arch spell of St. Winifred. Listen deferentially to feminine opinion, but never let it go beyond your ears; until you have a good wife of your own. She will know how you look at things, and shape her wisdom to suit yours, and go beyond your own conviction in the certainty that you are right. And then she knows that she has done it all, whenever everything turns out well. But if, peradventure, it all goes amiss, she is the last one in the world to make it bad for you. It is your place then to take the blame on your own clumsy shoulders, and think scorn of outside results, while you have one true breast to comfort you.

These thoughts were far beyond me yet; for a young man believes himself wondrous clever, and airs his conclusions about womankind, as a boy blows his bubble, or a child upon the grass his ball of dandelion-seed. And this was just the very thing Tom Erricker had always done; and I had thought it very fine, until I met my Dariel. But now I felt disgusted with him, and his Loo of £20,000 and all that snobbish frippery about his togs. However, I must make the best of that and him.

To the life of my life I sent a line, as full of love as I could make it, with any room for common-sense behind. And then off I set for all that humbug, show, and sham, and breakfast-speeches, women up to date with tears, and men beyond it with champagne, lovely bride with lips too sweet for margarine to melt inside them, bridegroom in tepid waxwork form, and looking for courage to his mother, whose mind dwells over his weaning.

All this was there, and a great deal more; and it seemed to me that my dear friend (who had lost his wit, and his wits as well) deserved our finest sympathies; though the girl was a harmless and good little thing, who wondered how her Tom could have thought so much of me.

But if ever there were kind and warm people on the face of this cold-complexioned earth, these Yorkshire folk might fairly claim the warmest place among them. Not for hospitality alone (though in that they were beyond abundance) but also for solid good-will without sham, and a hearty power of liking any one who met them frankly. There was something about them altogether different from our Southern style; stronger and deeper, and more true in the way they stuck to what they said. Also I found them very eager to have large and liberal views of their own in abstract questions of politics; and if they made mistakes, it was—so far as I could follow suit—from contempt of shilly-shallying. I went among them, with the tags of my Tory armour tied, hooked with steel I ought to say; and though they could not pull any of it off, they made the whole suit more flexible, and airy, and elastic.

Alas, that I had so brief a chance of expanding under the broadcloth! None of them could unsettle me in what I was brought up to. But having an equitable mind, and being worsted generally in argument, I began to see that the strongest principles may go too far in their own strength. There was one old man of mighty aspect, and immense benevolence, who must have brought me beneath his mantle, in three more nights of looking at me. I felt his influence, and feel it now.

But whether for any good or harm, all this was cut short suddenly. After Tom and his bride were gone, with the usual showers after them, all the guests and many more came together at Silver Hall, the abode of the ancient Tinman, as Tom in his impudence called his father. For why; it had been arranged among them to have the wedding-dance out there, with more room for enjoyment than Sir Benjamin Box could minister. And I was beginning to count my time, for I meant to go by the midnight train; and clumsy dancer as I am, there were several very nice girls indeed, who did their best in a charming way to make me do my best as well. Especially there was Tom's younger sister, as pretty a girl as need be seen; in a formal mood of the masculine mind, "Miss Argyrophylla Erricker." Her mother had paid a poor Oxford man a guinea for invention of that name; and she was worth it, though everybody called her "Pilla."

It was a lucky thing for me that I had not seen Pilla too early in life, for I know not where I might have been. This very pretty girl was also of a very romantic tendency; which, with a little wit to quicken, and sweet brown eyes to sweeten it, stops you, in your course, like a double water-jump with a hurdle of furze between it. You pause to think; and you pause for ever. I had heard of her a hundred times from Tom, but had never imagined that she was so nice; for he spoke of her with that fond condescension which made her look up to him as a mighty hero. And now I had to take care what I said, as she always got back to him at every other breath; and a great stretch of verity was needful on my part, to respond to her view of his merits. But this made me like her all the more, and I wished more than once that my sister Grace, who certainly possessed much more occasion for it, were gifted with an equal amount of this lovely philadelphia.

How many times I danced with Pilla is a great deal more than I can say; but it was very far from being to the exclusion of everybody else, as people were found to say afterwards. She, as the daughter of the house, was bound to pay proper attention to the guest who had come so far to please her brother, and would have to leave so early. And, for my part, I could not forget the duty of warm friendship to my dear old Tom. Every time she came back to me, I thought that her rich brown eyes grew brighter, and I told her how much they resembled Tom's, although infinitely more expressive. And she found me improving so fast in my steps, which had fallen into sad neglect among the furrows, that I feared to fall off again, if I failed to make the most of so rare a chance. But as to making love to her—what love had I to make? All my rights and dues of that were signed, sealed, and delivered to another lady—of a different grade altogether.

But away went all a man's thoughts of homage to anything but humanity when, after I had said "Good-bye" to Pilla, and seen my bag come down the stairs, and was casting a wrapper around me, while the cabman thumped himself betwixt the doors, the sweet little creature ran up to me again and tried to speak, but only mumbled, and would have gone down with her chin upon the floor, if I had not stretched both arms to catch her. Upon them she lay, like a lamb upon a rail, with all her body quivering, and the helplessness of her slack head thrown against my dancing waistcoat.

"What is it, dear child?" I asked in vain. All she could do was to spread one hand towards a big door; and then that hand fell, and she was all long hair and pink muslin. "Is there a woman here?" I called out, in terror of a fit, as I kept her from the floor; and a woman of great substance rushed up and caught her, and glared at me, as if I were a villain. "Poor lamb! Poor darling! The bad wicked man!" "Did you see how he swept her off her feet?" There were half-a-dozen handmaids now; and I left poor Pilla to them.

It was strong hospitality, and quick heart now, which had brought him to this sad extreme. Throughout the day, he had been doing too much for a man of his legs, and years, and weight, as several persons told him. But the old man kept up to the height of young time; and when Sir Benjamin Box (an alderman of substantial yet melancholy order) entreated him not to dance so much, stout Mr. Erricker challenged him, though Box was ten years his junior, to jump over a dining-room chair with him! And thus he carried on for hour after hour, dancing, and slapping old friends on the back, and running about among the pretty girls, like a waiter who has to subsist upon tips; and ever so much rasher than that man is, because he was stirring up his intellect, to the same high scale as his body. What wonder then—with his doctor called away to a wealthy confinement, and his good wife too busy to frown at him—that he verified the warnings of those who knew, but could not at such a time remind him, that he had all but created a vacancy in the Town Council last Easter Monday, through juvenile impetuosity?

What an awful crash of buffers, in the midst of headlong gaiety! Even to me, so new a friend, it seemed to sweep aside all thoughts of self, and plunge it in the great tide of human fate, that pitiless gulf-stream, in which we cannot even endeavour a course of our own, but are whirled along like a dollop of froth, or a shred of pop-weed among other weeds.

Being (as a young man ought to be) entirely without experience of the sudden tragedies of life, perhaps I overdid my sense of duty in a case like this. If so, I erred on the better side; and in spite of all the sad home results I say that I would do the like again, whether others would do as much for me, or not. Right or wrong, I could not bring myself to leave these unhappy people without any friend to help them. My services were but small of course; and yet as it happened there was no one in the house to be more efficient. The family lawyer had left the town, after seeing to the marriage-settlement; the execution of the will was committed to Tom and his mother. Tom was away on his wedding-trip; and his mother, in delicate health for some years, had now broken down entirely, and left her daughter to do the best she could. Only on one point the widowed mother still had the courage to insist. Whatever came of it, her son should not be called back from his honeymoon to the coffin of his father. He had set off for Italy, or the South of France—I forgot which it was for the moment—nothing but a telegram could stop him; and no telegram should be sent.

A miserable time it was indeed. The lawyer's junior partner came; but he was a young man without self-reliance, regardful of nothing but legal forms, and desirous of nothing but to please Miss Pilla, who could make a flexible stalactite—if such a thing there be—of him, by every crystal tear; and she having therefore little faith in him, all he did was to cast the burden of every doubtful arrangement upon me.

"The old man will cut up finely, sir," was the most practical of his remarks to me; "no expense must be spared on his funeral. Under the widow's instructions—poor thing! you must now act as quasi-executor. The Corporation will not be pleased, unless everything is carried out A1. And if I may venture upon a private sentiment, it will all tell up, sir; it will be a sound investment, with an eye to the welfare of the business."

Then Sir Benjamin Box came in, and put his hat upon the very chair in which the Master of the house had breathed his last, and spake below breath impressively.

"Saddest thing I ever knew, in all my life! We shall never look upon his like again. My dear Sir George, what a lesson for us! But to jump over chairs, at his time of life! And eighteen stone, if he weighed an ounce. I, who am comparatively active—but we will not reproach him, when he cannot reply. Fine thing for Tom though; can you give me an idea? You are the acting Executor, I believe."

"I am not an Executor at all, Sir Benjamin. And I am no Sir George, but plain George Cranleigh. I am doing what little I can, at the request of the ladies, and their lawyer. But you are more nearly connected, and if you would only take it off my hands——"

"No, no, thank you. That wouldn't do at all. I never could stand a house of mourning. My own heart is ticklish; this has given me quite a turn. But you are young, sir, you are young. My deepest sympathies to the afflicted ladies."

He was off with so light a foot, that even the ghost of the poor deceased would have found itself too heavy, if it ever came to finish the jumping-match. And then Argyrophylla glided in, looking like a silver aspen leaf in a coil of black ivy, as she took my hand.

"Oh, Mr. George, what a hateful old man! I heard what he said, and I saw him run away. And my brother has married his daughter! Cowards, how they fly at the very thought of death; and when their time of life should make them so glad to know more about it! But you are not like that, are you? Though it must be most sadly distressing for you. To attempt to thank you would be so absurd and hopeless. How proud my brother must be of such a friend! If I live to be eighty, I shall never forget you. But I came to tell you two pieces of good news, if there can be such a thing as good news now. Dr. Golightly has called upon the Coroner, and got him to dispense with an Inquest, as the case had been medically treated before. And then Aunt Gertrude is coming to-morrow, and she will bring Selina Petheril, who was at our school at Brompton."

Of Selina Petheril I knew nothing, but this Aunt Gertrude was the relative from whom Tom had great expectations; and her arrival made things much better, and relieved me of some anxiety. She approved of all that I had done; but I found it impossible to leave the house with any security that all was right, until the third day after the funeral. I had written to my sister, and heard from her once or twice, so that there could be no uneasiness at home. But of my dear friends in the valley not a word had reached me, though among all those dismal duties my thoughts had been with them constantly.

It is not for me to pretend to say whether I acted well or ill. But to one thing I can pledge my honour, that no small motive and no tender claims of beauty in distress detained me. If Pilla had been the plainest girl in the county of many acres, my behaviour would have been just the same. I never said a word to her that was not of the purest pity and good feeling; neither did she think twice of me, except as a willing and warm friend. There is nothing in me to attract any girl; and even if there were, any man who imagines that a loving daughter in deep affliction would set up a flirtation with a stranger, the same is a bad man, and proves it by measuring women by his own low mark.

However, no more of that. Enough that when we heard by telegram that Tom would be at home that night, I took the mail-train to London, and got home at breakfast-time on Sunday morning, having thus been absent just nine days.

CHAPTER XXXVI GONE, GONE, GONE

A small and well-measured breakfast-party, with the tea and the bacon and eggs provided, to expectation and experience, should not be disturbed by the sudden irruption of a rough, unshaven, crumple-shirted, and worst of all, unfed young fellow, who cannot remember when his last meal happened. Therefore I only sent word of my arrival, and went for a swim in Stoneman's lake, as my custom was throughout the year, while Sally was preparing me some bread and milk. But while I was getting through this, and thinking of putting myself into church-going gear, my sister Grace ran in, and embraced me, as warmly as if I were on the Stock Exchange.

"Oh, George, I think you are so noble," she declared, as if she had found me at last too large for her understanding, "to stay away so many weeks"—I had not been away for a week and a half, but let her have a girl's arithmetic—"simply for the sake of other people's affairs, without even appointing anybody to look after your own, all that long while. I thought that I was almost as unselfish as anybody ought to be. But I am not sure that I could quite have done all that."

"You don't understand things, my dear girl," I replied, with that superior tone which used to have a fine effect of closure upon the large feminine parlance. "I knew that hay was going up, and that Mr. Joplin would have to put five shillings on to every pound he offered me in October."

"Hay indeed!" she exclaimed with scorn. "George, it is sweet hay—sweet hay—sour hay! And you have not made it, while the sun shone."

"Speak no more in parables. Speak plain English. What in common-sense are you driving at? There is no hay in the county to beat ours. And I defy any rain to have got into the ricks."

"But suppose the ricks are all clean gone. Oh, George, how stupid you are at metaphors! But if they are gone, without letting you know—oh, I never could believe that, of foreigners even! And after all the great things you have felt for such great people!"

"Out with it!" I said, while my spoon went dribbling. "You mean to tell me, I suppose, if plain English can ever be got from a girl, that Sûr Imar, and his people, have left the neighbourhood."

"His people indeed! Well, if you can take it in that lofty spirit, you may as well know everything. I was quite afraid of telling you. But men are all alike, at least old Sally says so—though what she can know about it, the poor old soul——"

"When did it happen?" I asked quite calmly, for I wanted no pity about it; least of all from a girl who had never entered into any proper view of the question, because I never chose to run and gush to her.

"That is more than we can tell. They must have packed up very quickly, unless they left all their dogs and diamonds behind them. But we only heard of it yesterday, through Slemmick, who had it from Farmer Ticknor. That seems a little rude, considering that you were to have taken me down so soon, to fall at the feet of the Lesghian Bandit. But of course we must not judge them by our own ideas. Perhaps, as we had never called upon them——"

"They would not have troubled their heads about that. They look at things from a higher level. But perhaps they might have sent a boy to tell me, if they had found any time to spare. My dear child, in a quarter of an hour I shall be ready; and then we will go to church together."

Let any man tell me what else he would have done, and I shall be much obliged to him. Not that it could help me very much, for such a thing can scarcely happen twice to any fellow; but that I should like to compare his view of it with what went on in my own mind. Nothing is easier than to talk, when you see the thing a long way off, or (which is even better) only read about it, or give a bold verdict without a glance; which is the wisest course of all.

All that I can say about my part, is that reason did not count for a halfpenny in the business. Pride (which is often a matter of temper, or self-esteem set up to crow, but when it arises in a modest nature is the proper power to keep it sweet)—pride said to me: "I am well aware that you never stuck up for being humble. You hate any fellow that goes in for that, because you believe him a hypocrite. And so he is, ninety-nine times per cent; the one per cent being a true Christian, a quantity altogether negligible. You are not up to that mark. But you are a self-respecting Englishman. Show it, my fine fellow, by whistling at people, who have not known you better than to snub you."

I listened to this, and it all seemed true, as beyond all doubt it ought to be. And I went through everything so well that Grace (who was watching me with tender interest, to learn perhaps how the Stockbroker would take it if she vanished out of his investments) did her best to be pleased for my dear sake; and yet for joint-stock sake afforded me as cold a kiss, when she said good-night, as any man insisting on the abstract woman can hope to receive from the concrete.

This alone was enough to show me that I was on the wrong tack altogether. Women are delightful in their talk, if nobody contradicts them, about their finer nature, and purer standard, and higher mission to ennoble us. All this we acknowledge, and should feel it more if they said less concerning it. But the worst of it is, that if any man regards them as they demand to be regarded, he may stand with his back to the wall while they go by.

Now a man, however dull-witted he may be, has sense enough to know that in any nice point touching his behaviour to the better half of life, a member of that half can show him what to do far better than he can discover it. Nothing could be clearer than that Grace despised the haughtiness and the hardness which she herself would have shown in her own case. "How her eyes would have flashed!" thought I—and then came a vision of other eyes, gentle, true, deep-hearted eyes, sad with some dark mystery perhaps, compelled to keep their tears unseen; but wavering, jiltish, deceitful—never. And then I began to recall her kindly, and found it very comforting.

For when the sweet face came before me, with the soft radiance of those eyes, and the play of those lips that trembled lest they should open themselves unduly, and the movement of a heart that wondered whether it wanted itself to be understood, and a multitude of other little waverings which a man is too dull to interpret,—when all this came home to me with unknown power (because I wanted it and nothing else)—

"Away with this stupid pride!" said Love, clinging to my breast, and whispering; "the Power that made mankind made me, and ordered me never to be far off in the worst of your tribulations. But I must have faith, as even He requires in all His dealings with you. I have offered you as fair a chance as ever was given to a clumsy mortal,—the loveliest creature, a child of my own, as much too good for you as I am. Because the Wicked One has raised a mist, in his loathing of human happiness, are you fool enough to be untrue to me, and shut your blear eyes, and never open them, until nothing is left worth looking at? Go your own way. I have plenty of finer fellows to stand by me."

Though he may not have said it so distinctly—and he is not the fellow anyhow that should talk about a mist—it produced the same effect upon me. I felt myself, after a little thinking, very many cuts above Jackson Stoneman and his slippery stuff among the pats of butter. His love was as sound as a roach, and as merry as a grig; and he was welcome to it: a thing like a bleak that flits under a film of the water, and jumps at a midget, and so becomes fit to make pearl of Paris.

When the striking-weight of a clock is too heavy, it slurs the hours with such a tug that you cannot even count the strokes; and to me, with that heavy weight upon my heart, time went by untimely: slowly, heavily, and sluggishly, if ever I began to count the ticks; but out of all proper chronology, at periods when I kept no eye upon it. Moreover, I had a number of little things to see to, which had been neglected in my absence, so that it was Tuesday afternoon when I stood at the door of St. Winifred, and wondered whether she had fallen back into rust and ruin once again. The old wall fringed with ivy looked like a billow with a ruffled crest before the white comb breaks from it, and the slumber of the valley was not shaken by groan or shudder of the water-wheel. No smoke was rising from the buttressed chimneys which had been repaired and pointed, neither was there any sign of life, or sound of the harsh Caucasian gabble in which many idle souls delighted.

In short, the settlement (which had been so long the puzzle of the neighbourhood, and the blessing of the rate-collectors, for Sûr Imar paid always every penny put upon him) was gone, vanished, a vision of the distance; a pleasant resource for the memory, when not too conceptive at dinner-time; a fact that would fade into a legend soon, and find matter-of-fact disproving it.

If I had not been reduced by this time to a meritorious humility—which I meant to keep up, let it suffer as it might—it would have gone hard with our language to forego one of its strongest and briefest words, which the weaker tongues try to pronounce against us, but condemn themselves by the effort. Being of the purest English birth, and therefore (as even our enemies admit) an embodiment of justice, I stood still, and made allowance for all of lesser privilege. They have quite as much right to their own ideas as the largest of us have to ours. And it is our power of perceiving that which has made us beloved throughout the world, or at least by as many as can understand us. Or if they be few, whose fault is that?

While I was full of these quick thoughts, and exceedingly sorrowful over them, lo, two streaks of yellow on the dark-green grass, and the self-possession of Albion was wellnigh rolled over in its own tricks. Kuban and Orla, as mad as March hares, threw all their wild welcome upon me: kisses, and licks, and the hairiest embraces, and the most lunatic yells of delight; if ever there has been true love, here was the prime of it to knock me off my legs.

Any one may laugh at me and all my pride; for the whole of it went to the dogs in a jiffy. I am blest if I could help a gleam of moisture that made it difficult for me to see the loyal love in eyes that never told a lie. "You dears!" I cried, "you faithful dears!" and they would scarcely let me say it before they were smothering me again, and then they rolled on the ground as if they had got no legs, and then they jumped up and looked at one another to be certain of their facts; and then with one accord they made the valley ring with glorious shouts of joy, and the dead leaves tremble on the lonely trees. And behold, they had roused a great figure of a man, who came from a door where I had trembled like a leaf, and put his hand over his eyes, and gazed at me, as if he had never seen a man before. And then a little figure ran almost between his legs, and I halloed to Stepan and Allai.

Stepan showed a warm desire to embrace me, which proved that to him I was guiltless as yet, while Allai put both hands on his head, and bowed almost to my gaiters. Now if I could only make these fellows understand, and then get them to do the like to me, I should learn all about this sudden flitting, for the smallest of the Lesghians had always seemed to be in partnership with the greatest.

But alas! what a conflict of languages we had! I think it is St. James who dwells with great eloquence upon the many miseries we suffer from the tongue; he has not, however, described for us one of its most diabolical conditions, when it cannot hit upon the word it wants, and flies into a fury of perplexity with itself, and indignation at the stupid ear that keeps it so in limbo. Stepan tried English, and that was very bad; then I tried Lesghian, but that was much worse. He could see that I wanted to know why his master had broken up their English home so suddenly, and without so much as a word of farewell; but all that he could do towards telling me was to shake his head, and make a great noise in his throat, and box the boy's ears for laughing at him. Then something not altogether devoid of true insight occurred to him, for he shouted in a mighty voice, "Stepan dam fool!" and gave Allai some order, which sent him to the buildings like an arrow.

Something had occurred to me also, so often are ideas simultaneous, and while the messenger was gone, I took that leaf of which I have spoken, from my pocket-book, and handed it to Stepan. He looked at it with great surprise, and then put it to his lips and on his forehead, and then tore off a fibre and tasted it. "Adul! Adul!" or some word that sounded like that, he repeated frequently, and did his utmost to show me that he felt great curiosity about it. Upon this I pulled out a pencil and drew a rough sketch of myself being shot at, taking poetic licence to show the bullet in the air and the leaf dropping from it. Also I tried to represent a man crouching in a bush and popping at me, and although not a glimpse had been vouchsafed me of the villain on that occasion, I allowed imagination to indue him with the plumed hat of Prince Hafer. This I had no right to do; but surely a little liberty is pardonable with a gentleman who has taken a shot at one in the dark. At any rate Stepan fell in most briskly with the inference of this costumiery, and seemed rather pleased at the confirmation of his own moral estimate and foresight.

Until I began to think, I was surprised that he should be so calm about that black attempt to annihilate me; but remembering what he had been through, I let him take it according to his nature. He liked me, he approved of me, he thought me a good Englishman; and yet it would have been no more than the finish of a bear-hunt to him to have carried me home on the hurdle I jumped, when I went to the rescue of Allai. And I looked at him, with some disappointment.

"Enemy!" he said; it was the word that had long been hanging in his windcrop; and now he was so delighted with it that he said it three times over. "Good Englisk; dam enemy. Stepan see all—all right, dam enemy!"

His wondrous baldric (better smocked with cartridge-loops than a parish-clerk could show of plaiting on his Sunday front, in the days when his wife was proud of him) bulged on his mighty chest with the elation of this grand discovery. And then he said, "Bad man, bad man!" in a manner which appeared to me too abstract and philosophical. "No doubt you consider it very fine fun," I replied with some warmth of feeling, but the knowledge that he was no wiser.

Then up ran Allai, at a speed which made him resemble a hunted grasshopper, and I took from his claws a sealed letter, and looked at them both, in disdain of any hurry. "This will keep," I said very quietly; for though they knew not the meaning of my words, they might be asked afterwards how I received it, and they should have no flurry to report. So I put it in my pocket, like a Briton.

Stepan, and Allai, and one other man not equally well known to me, had evidently been left to finish the packing of some of the heavier goods, and the bales of books which had been printed, and to take them, as well as the beloved dogs, perhaps by some slower route, and rejoin their master by arrangement. I knew that Sûr Imar had long been preparing to move, when his period of banishment expired, but I was sure that he had no intention of departing so suddenly, when I had seen him last. Stepan contrived to let me know that the luggage was going by a smoker in a day or two from London pond, as he called it; and having no further business there, I took leave of him and Allai. The Lesghian giant was dignified and impressive in his long farewell, and gave me his blessing—as I supposed—and his invitation to the Caucasus. Also this comfort—"Enemy gone. No more shoot good Englisk," which was some relief to a heavy mind. But little Allai, and the two dogs—I could scarcely get away from them, so loving and so sad were they. The short November day was darkening, as I left the valley, where I had found so much wild happiness, and so much deep sorrow to humble me.

CHAPTER XXXVII LOVERS MAKE MOAN

Now when I had read Sûr Imar's letter, which I hastened to do by the light from the west at the very spot where he had told his tale, there was nothing (at least to a clay-headed fellow) affording definite answer to the questions which concerned me most. The first of these was—why on earth had my friends broken up and departed so hastily? And the second—no less of a puzzle to me—what had I done to give fatal offence? All Sûr Imar wrote was this, wherein I found that although he spoke our language so well and fluently and with better command of it than I have, he was not quite so familiar with the mysteries of our spelling. But let that pass unheeded.

My dear young Friend,—So I desire to call you still, because I am old, and an old man has learned that he must not listen to everything, neither yield without proof to assertions which contradict his own experience. My belief is that you are as full of honour as I was at your time of life; and it is always most hot in the young, until they are taught that justice is the first thing to be aimed at. And I have a firm belief from my observation of you, that any mistake you may have made was caused by the influence of the moment, and without any intention to do wrong.

I am grieved that I shall have no opportunity of meeting you again in England. We are obliged to depart at once, having heard of an adverse incident, which threatens all my prospects of success. Probably we shall never meet again; and perhaps you will not desire it. But Englishmen go everywhere, even to the inhospitable Caucasus; and I would try to prove to you that the epithet is undeserved, if you would afford me the chance, and show that you still think kindly of your old friend,

Imar, the Lesghian.

Vexed as I was with painful wonder as to the charge against me, I could not help admiring the large and peaceful nature of this man. He thought that I had wronged his child, the hope of his days, and the heart of his life; and yet not a bitter word did he employ, nor even show a sign of scorn. Not in vain had he passed through the mill of tribulation. By loss of faith in woman's goodness, he had lost all the delights of love, of family bliss, and home, and comfort for the residue of his time on earth. And the lesson it had taught him was to doubt of evil in mankind, or at least in those whom his friendly nature led him to approve and like. Oh! why was not his daughter of an equal trust and largeness? Not a word had she sent me, not even one reproach, which might have told me that her heart was sore. If after all her knowledge of me, all the proof which her eyes alone must have rendered to her mind, one lying tale, whatever it was, had been enough to scatter to the wind all her faith and all her love, then none of it was worth having. So I reasoned, and yet in vain. The stronger my conviction grew, the less was I convinced of it. My heart was all with Dariel still; and let the mind argue as it would, had logic ever looked at her? Any cold dribble may be crystal clear; but the current in the veins of man should be warm and red and glowing.

Under that sudden cloud could I rest without looking up to inquire what it was? All I could do was to guess and guess; but I had no guilty conscience, which is the quickest of all conjecturers. If for one moment of charm, or caprice, any lure of the eye, or bewitchment of a smile, I had gone astray from my one true love, the memory would have come up at once, and suggested to my shame that I was served aright. But there had been nothing of the kind. I had only done what seemed at first the simple duty of friendship, and after that sunk my own delights in the stress of deep affliction. If for this, and no more than this, I was to be treated as a scoundrel, I had a right to know who had put that twist upon it.

Therefore, on the following day, I took an early train to London, and a cab from the terminus to Hatton Garden, and found Signor Nicolo finishing at leisure a delicate and skilful breakfast. He received me very kindly, and unpinned the napkin from his Italian velvet coat, and offered me a glass of something fine, which proved a great deal too fine for me. My impatience seemed to please him, and he was in no hurry to allay it. And his first words seemed to me to contain some rather impertinent assumption.

"The great point is to be calm, Mr. Cranleigh. To be quite calm, and look at things quietly—ah, yes!"

"I scarcely know what you refer to, Mr. Nickols. What is there to prevent my being calm? I am simply come to ask about some friends, as a—as a matter of business. You were kind enough when I was here before——"

"Come, come now. This won't do. We are not having a deal for a diamond. I know all about it, as well almost as if I had been in the thick of it. Ah, yes! But you find yourself bothered, don't you?"

"Certainly, I don't like it much," I answered, as his black eyes flashed at me, and a merry smile lifted his long moustache. "I did not expect to be treated thus. And I was strongly attached to Sûr Imar."

"And to Kuban and Orla. Ah, yes, I see! And to Stepan and Allai, and all the rest. What a pity there were no ladies there! You might have become attached to them as well."

"I call it very kind of you to spare me so much time," I answered rather stiffly, for I would have no vulgar chaff about Dariel; "I was almost afraid of encroaching upon business."

"Duke of K—— at eleven o'clock, Serene Highness of L—— at twelve, King of the Malachites at half-past; and a bigger swell than all of them put together to a devilled bone at 1.30. Therefore we must touch the point. You want to know why our interesting friends have bolted so suddenly; and still more, why they did it without ta-ta to you. That last point I am not clear about, though I have some shrewd suspicions. But I think I can tell you why they made a brief adieu to the neighbours who never came near them. You will acknowledge that they could not be expected to stand on ceremony there."

"You have got the stick by the wrong end altogether," I broke in, for the sake of justice; "we let them alone, for the excellent reason that we knew they wished to be let alone. No Englishman ever endeavours to push through a gate that is always bolted. Our neighbourhood took no notice of them, because it was known from the very first that they came there for that purpose. And living in a wilderness of ivied ruins——"

"You appear to have turned against them, even more than their behaviour warrants. But for all that, Sûr Imar is a really great man. He looks at things differently from you and me; and it is not for us to judge him. For, like all men who go in for what we don't care about, he is set down as a crank, a dreamer, a man with a tile off, a fellow you would like to toss for sovereigns with, and everything else that a cad of the gutter pities and sucks up to. But I can tell you that the Lesghian old man, as the idiots would call him at forty-five, may defy a Polish Jew to cheat him. For I don't call it cheating a man, when he knows it, and lets you do it, because he scorns you and the cash alike. When you cheat him you are like a man who steals his house-water from a horse-trough, and you deserve to get glanders for it. But what I call fine cheating is to get twice the value of a thing out of a wiry old screw, whose money is his life, and his life all money. Oh, yes! There is some joy in that."

Signor Nicolo rubbed his hands, and then put them into the feeling of his pockets, with a warmth of some rich memory—not very old, I daresay.

"But you would never do such a thing as that?" I asked, with a little doubt quivering in the question. "You would be far above all such ideas?"

"Would I? Of course I would, when I couldn't get the chance. And I would never get the better of a real friend, beyond twenty-five per cent at maximum. And he would make seventy-five on that at the West End. But when a man I hate with a fine religious strength, comes here to get the best of me, screwing up his mouth, and looking righteous, and as cordial as a stewed Spanish onion—'oh, dear, how lovely! A little flat in the culet—would be perfect but for that milky spot below the zone,' and so on; for what did the Almighty make a man except to chisel such a curmudgeon? Ah, yes, I have done it a hundred times, and hope I may be spared to do it a thousand more. It is not for the money, it is the intellectual triumph. Everybody knows what I am. Come to me fairly, and I treat you fairly. Must have my living wage, of course. But no more, unless you try to rob me. Then you have got the wrong pig by the ear. And it's the very same thing in love, Mr. Cranleigh. Have you tried to take a rise out of Dariel?"

This would have made me very angry with at least nine people out of ten. But I knew that I had a queer character to deal with, and that he meant no harm, but only to get to the bottom of the matter. So I told him that if there was anything of that sort, I thought it was rather the other way. And then I was quite in a fury with myself, for putting it as if she could have done a shabby thing. And I praised her ninefold, and could have gone on for an hour.

"You are all right," he said, "that is clear enough; you are as infatuated as a Goddess could require. We have all been so, some time or other. But you should have seen her mother, ah, yes, ah, yes! Signora Nicolo cannot bear to hear her name, though she ought to be grateful, for it kept me good, and plunged me, I do believe, into matrimony. A sweet woman never knows the good she does, any more than an impudent flippant one can measure her own mischief. For the sake of that noble Oria, as well as of Sûr Imar, who saved, my life, I would go anywhere and do anything, to be of service to Dariel. And for her own sake too, I can tell you, for she is a most charming creature, though a little too soft, like her father. Ah, that's where the mischief will come in! How can you save a man from himself? After all the lies he has suffered from, and the wreck of his life—I know all about it now, though I didn't when I saw you—would you believe that he is spoonier than ever about doing good to those cursed fellows? Saving their souls! Why, they've got none; or if they have, what are ours to be called? As different as quartz from opal, which are much the same thing though in different form. And as for their bodies, they are big enough already, and dirty enough, and as hard as nails. Let them all kill one another, is what the Lord intended, and Nature does her best to help him. Why, the country ought to belong to us; we could do some good with it. It should have been ours long ago."

"No doubt of that," I replied, for that seems to be the duty of every land; "I knew that Sûr Imar meant to go, and for years he has been preparing to civilise his people; but what has made him go so suddenly?"

"Well, I think it was through a tall young fellow, who has been prowling about for a long time. 'Prince Hafer' he calls himself, Prince of the Ossets, who are next-door neighbours to these Lesghians, when they have any door at all, I mean. I won't pretend to know much about him, but what I have heard is rather shady. He bore a most wonderful reputation among his own niggers, if I may call them so, for the Ossets are rather a dusky lot—never had there been such an Angel seen; too good, too benevolent, too holy. But Apollyon, the Prince of this village of ours, has been too many for our Mountain-Chief; and he has carried on rarely at the Hotel Celestial, and other sparkling places. If he had not been a Prince, they would have had him up at Bow Street; but he talked about Russia, and they thought he was too big. Moreover, our noble Policemen saw that there was nobody likely to interpret him; so they took it out in coin, according to the custom of the Country. He paid for a mirror and three electro-plated pots; and with mutual esteem they parted. But what a fiend of a temper he must have! For he never gets drunk to make us sponge him with our tears."

"That is most unjust on his part. I have seen him twice, and nearly felt him once. But never mind that. I shall square it up, some day. I beg pardon for interrupting. But how can Sûr Imar ever listen to him?"

"When you are as old as I am, Mr. Cranleigh, one thing alone will surprise you. To wit, that you were ever surprised at the folly of the wisest of mankind. But I have no time for a homily. You want to know how I have learned these things. Have you ever heard of a certain Captain Strogue?"

"Yes, and I have seen him. And I formed a strong opinion, though all my impressions seem worthless now, that Captain Strogue is a man of honour. In his own way, I mean, and according to his views."

"Not a man who would try to pot you in the dark? I believe that you are quite right so far. Strogue is a man of honour, according to his lights. But, alas, an inveterate gambler; and that saps the foundations of honesty. God made honesty, and man makes honour, and shapes it according to the fashion of the day. Strogue has been here, he has sat in that chair, with his head in his hands, and shivering; for he is also a very hard drinker. I am well known all over Europe, as a purchaser of fine diamonds. Strogue had given an I. O. U. the night before for £500, which he could not redeem. He had been fleeced, and he knew it too well, by paltry little all-round dealers, hucksters at the very bottom of the trade, who have only one test for gem from paste. If your brother Harold were a bit of a rogue he might have a fine game with them. But Strogue had the wisdom at last to come to me. Poor fellow! He has a very fine nature. He absolutely burst into tears, when he saw all the value he had thrown away. 'Signor, I am very hard up,' he said—which is just the right way to begin with me, though the very worst with any other in the trade; 'this is the last and the best of my jewels. A good judge has told me it is very fine. Unless I can raise £500 to-day, I shall have to put a pistol to my head. How much will you give me for this affair?'

"I examined it well, though a glance was enough. Then I tested him as to his ownership, to keep him on the tenterhooks, as he richly deserved; and then I said, 'Captain, I will take it, at a thousand pounds. But only upon one condition.' You should have seen his eyes. It was a lamentable sight to discover such joy in the face of a man, who had done such wonders in his better days. 'My condition,' I proceeded, for he could not speak, 'is that you shall sign a pledge prepared by me.' 'Anything, anything you like,' he answered; and in two minutes he had signed an undertaking upon his honour to abandon every form of gambling. Whether he will keep it is another question; but so far he has kept it, and I think he will hold fast. That is what I call doing good. And the stone was well worth the money."

I thought that it would have been still more beneficent, if the stone had not been worth the money. But who could expect that, and of whom? Signor Nicolo looked for praise, and I gave it warmly.

"But you did not pump him, on the strength of it?" I asked; and meeting an indignant glance, I qualified my question. "What I mean is, you did not exactly endeavour—your duty towards Sûr Imar, and your desire to protect him from the schemes of that other fellow did not induce you to inquire, I suppose, what this pair of rogues could be driving at? I am not sure that I should have let him go without that."

"To a limited extent perhaps I did," Signor Nicolo answered with a candid smile; "not that I put any temptation in his way to make him turn traitor to his master. But simply that casually, as things came about, he cast away in some degree that cowardly veil of caution, which is always so abhorrent to our better feelings. Nine people out of ten would have cross-examined him. But I did nothing of the sort. Only from some things he let slip I gathered a fair general idea of the game those two are playing. Or rather that other fellow; for to Strogue it can make no difference, unless the bargain is—no play, no pay. Hafer's game is to get possession of the lovely Dariel, as you must have suspected long ago; not for her beauty—those fellows out there pitch-and-toss for that kind of thing—but for the start it will give him, in the universal race of robbery. You must not be mild enough, Mr. Cranleigh, to suppose that you have seen any sample of the Caucasus in the noble Sûr Imar, and his sensitive daughter, or even in the model henchman Stepan. If the camp in your valley had been of the general type, you would not have had a sheep left long ago, much less a cock with a crow in his throat. 'Ragamuffins' is the proper name for most of them. And although these Lesghians, take them all in all, are about the pick of the basket, you would be in the wrong box altogether, if you took them for sweet innocents. They are simply under their chieftain's thumb; and by ancient tribal law, he can chop off their heads when he pleases. This keeps them in order; and they pay for their milk, instead of lifting cattle. Prince Hafer, however, is not under any fealty to Sûr Imar. So far from that, his great aim is to be Lord of the Ossets, and the Kheusurs too, and Karthlos Tower, which is a noble place, and might defy an army for a twelvemonth. Hafer is cunning, but has too much temper; and worst of all, he has not steered clear of the many traps set by civilisation for a young savage with his pockets full. He has fallen among a bad lot, a company of young rakes, contemptuous of women, and yet thoroughly in their power."

"What! would he venture near Dariel, after being in such vile company? We have heard that he was almost too good to live. She gave me so grand an account of him, that I thought it was all up with my poor chance. But what a falling off is here! The Prince of all virtues, the paragon of modesty, the hero of all chivalry—and now he won't even sham! Can you explain it, Mr. Nickols?"

"No; that's no business of mine. Nature does it. But I shall hear more about it soon, and get a flood of light let in. In London you never know anything well, from hearing such a lot about everything. But it is not quite the same in the Caucasus. You don't hear much there; but you attend to it. And now you will be surprised to be told, that after so many years of hearing next to nothing of that part of the world, and never seeing one of their celestial peaks, except in a dream, I am likely to know more about them than when I lived there. Ah, if I hadn't got a wife, and three daughters,—and I have let out so much, like a jolly fool, that they won't have French stuff on their birthdays,—I should be ready to be off again; though I could never do the djedje now; and the love of sport is not in me, as it is in all true-born Englishmen."

He looked regretful, and perhaps remorseful against his mingled parentage; for there was a vein of the Israelite in him, which saddens and deepens the outlook, without showing any sport, except a gold disc to shoot at.

"Never mind," I answered him, though sorry to have to do it; "you get your little excitements, in your way. And although they are not like ours altogether, they pay ever so much better in the end."

"Let us come back," he said, thinking in his heart, perhaps, that he could do very well without my sympathy; "my proceedings only bear upon your case in an odd sort of way, which may come to nothing. You remember that I told you of my Russian friend, whom I met at Odessa, twenty years ago, or more. Through him I first went into those savage parts, where he lost his life; and it was a narrow shave that I survived to tell of it, for which I have to thank Sûr Imar. You may have forgotten, but I think I must have told you that my Russian had a brother, an officer in the army then closing round the forces of Shamyl. Very well, who should call upon me a few days after I told you about that, but the very same Russian officer, now second in command of the Caucasus Division, General Stranglomoff himself. He was in London, about some military business, and knowing my intimacy with his poor brother, he did me the honour of calling to hear some particulars of the sad occurrence. I described it as well as I could; and then he said, brushing up his English, as I brushed up my Russian, whenever there was a gap between us—'I am not a jeweller, Signor, and of precious stones I have not any knowledge; but place thine eyes upon this, is it good?" He wore a white glove of soft rat-skin, and upon it was the rich green light of the finest emerald I have seen since I was at Warsaw.

"'Plenty, plenty, twenty, fifty—ten, a thousand! I pray you to accept this pebble, Signor, for my brother's sake,' he said with a very graceful bow; 'he was taken away through these, and I desire no advantage of them.' And with that he shed a tear, which made me think how much we undervalue that fine race. There is no kinder-hearted man on earth, and no more perfect gentleman, than a Russian of the highest order.

"Well, sir, I sent my own nephew out—Jack Nickols, a wonderfully plucky fellow; not much eye for a stone; but sure to stick to his orders, and tell you the truth. If you can't be satisfied with that, good-bye to your chance of keeping anybody very long; for the sharp ones will soon begin to rogue you. Jack is as good a bit of English Metal as you could pick up from the lias to the granite. And not too clever. In fact, Mr. Cranleigh, you remind me of him, at every turn."

I bowed very deeply at this lovely compliment, with a glance which I meant to be ironical. But Signor Nicolo was too busy with his thoughts to perceive the stern justice he had done me.

"Emeralds are going up," he proceeded, as if I were one of them, "and I should not be surprised if the true grass-green became the rage for the next few years. There are only three gems that will always hold their own, diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. The rest go up and down, according to the fashion; and emeralds have been unduly in the shade. But now they are worth looking after again; and my nephew is the boy to do it. Hit or miss, he will do his best; and we have made an arrangement with the Russian General, under which he is bound to back him up. Jack is not very strong at letter-writing, and the post is not too brisk out there. But he has been on the spot for some time now, and he has made a very good beginning."

All this to me was little more than cold and cloudy comfort. Here was the winter close at hand, the winter of the frosty Caucasus; the friends I loved become strangers to me, and lost to my sight among savages; my own fair fame in some mysterious manner assailed and blasted; and the only hope of further tidings, or redress, yet visible lay in the chances of a roving jeweller's commission! Nickols might take it all quite calmly. His heart was set, and cemented—as one might almost say—upon precious stones, and hard enough, as it seemed to me, to grind them for trade purposes. But in my impatience I wronged him there.

"You must try to make the best of it, Mr. Cranleigh," he went on, as if he understood my thoughts. "You have been horribly slandered, no doubt; and the sweet young lady has swallowed wicked lies, all the more readily because she is a sweet young lady, and for that reason credulous and jealous. But there are a lot of things in your favour still, if you will let me set them before you. I have not the least idea what you are charged with, any more than you have. But whatever it may be, the charge will grow fainter, and the faith in it weaker, as time goes on; and the inventor of it will become more hateful. Probably Hafer has invented it; and even while she listens to it, her heart will turn against him. I know what a good woman is, because I have had to deal with them. A man who runs women down, is either a bad lot himself, or a most unlucky fellow. Moreover, she dislikes that cousin of hers, if he is her cousin, for his violence, and roughness, and haughty ways. All that will increase, when he gets home again, and contrasts all their hard and uncivilised life with the luxuries and joys of London. She will turn against him more and more; and her father will never compel her to marry against her wishes. Moreover, there is likely to be some time yet before his schemes come to a head. My young savage has overthrown his cast, or that of his mother Marva. In his urgency to get them back straightway to the land of the mountain without the flood, he has sent them round by St. Petersburg. He insisted so much on the peril they were in of losing all their Lesghian rights, that Sûr Imar resolved, very wisely as I thought, to assert them at headquarters. So Stepan and others were left behind to take the heavy goods straight to Poti perhaps. This was a floorer for Prince Hafer, and he gnashed his teeth, which he dyes yellow; for he is the Devil, and no mistake, when he can't have his own way. You don't consider me a suspicious man, Mr. Cranleigh, do you?"

"A little too much the other way; as is the case with all fine natures," I replied, according to my thoughts; for he was evidently taking my part now.

"In that case, listen to my firm belief. I am not at all up to the tone and style of what those mountaineers do now. And of course I may be as much behind the age, as Sûr Imar wants to be in front of it. But to my mind men are men always, and you can't improve them suddenly. A lot of sham comes in with some races; but not with stubborn chaps like these. Sûr Imar may print a million copies of the Sermon on the Mount; but it won't go down with them. Or it goes down, and never comes up again. You may as well pour gold into a cesspool. My firm belief is that this Prince Hafer intends to get our noble friend out there, marry his daughter, and then shoot him, and combine that heritage with his own. Ah, yes!"

Nickols had a very quiet and even pleasant manner of imparting the most atrocious thoughts, that could ever drive another man out of his mind. I looked at him to ask whether he could mean it; and he smiled and answered, "You may take it for a fact."

"But his own sister, his twin sister, the darling of his childhood—Marva! How could all such wickedness go on without her knowledge? It is impossible to imagine that she would allow it."

"She sent her son to England for that very purpose," Mr. Nickols replied, in a tone of deep conviction. "It may not sound sisterly; but it is true. There is the blood-feud between them. That they have been in the womb together only makes it deadlier. I know what I am talking of."

If he did—and he spoke as if it were an ordinary matter—I can only be certain that I did not. My brain was quite stunned with such horrible ideas; and I almost felt as if Dariel herself would be too dear, at the price of any connection with such vile and blood-thirsty savages. Then I felt bitter reproach at blaming a sweet, gentle darling for what she could not help; and after providing for quick communication, I hurried away, with my heart in a whirl.