The lovely maiden, thus exhorted, smiled as she cast back her hair, and upon the white rise of her breast laid a musical affair of some dark wood, having divers strings and curves. Lute, zither, mandolin, tambourine, lyre, it was none of those, and I knew not, neither cared what it was, only to watch her swift white fingers dancing like snowdrops inspired by the wind, and her lips like rosebuds tremulous. The words were nothing but sounds to me; yet I knew, by the power she gave to them, that whoever could bring them home to her would have no cold-hearted wife to wed. And this is what Harold made of it: —
THE SONG OF THE STORK
"When the veil of the mountains is lifted by Spring,
And the voice of the water saith – Winter is past:
When the stork from Armenia plies her glad wing,
And the ibex lies down, without fear of the blast;
With a heart that is warm as the nest of a dove,
In the bend of the valley, I wait for my love.
"When the splendour of summer makes spangles of snow,
And lights with red lilies the gloom of the glen;
While the forest is flushed with azalea's glow,
And the melody of fountains floats through it again;
With a heart that is true to its nest as a dove,
On a lawn of sweet roses, I wait for my love.
"When the tempests of Autumn have turban'd the peak,
And the gray shadows hover above their stronghold;
Yet the fruitage still lingers – a faint purple streak,
And the ripe corn embroiders the breastland with gold;
Though my heart may be quailing at the storm-clouds above,
Like the harvest, it answers the sunshine of love.
"When the mountains are turned into caverns by snow,
And the heavens are black with the fury of cold,
When the spectre of Rakhabat stalks to and fro,
And the gaunt wolf is howling alone on the wold;
With the ice-crags around us, and the avalanche above,
My love shall not shiver in the breast of his love."
CHAPTER XXXIV
REJOICING
When I was going home that night, a very strange thing befell me, which but for the mercy of Providence would have left me nothing more to say. Although there had been very little chance of making sweet speeches to Dariel, because her father would not leave the room, yet her rich clear voice thrilled through me so that I scarcely knew what I was doing, and resolved to put all upon the cast at once, rather than flutter, and quiver, and tremble till some swaggering foreigner rushed in.
Modest I was; and think no harm to confess it, having never had chance to grow out of it, by any fat manuring while my roots were young. Humble I was; and who would not be so, unless he were fool enough not to know the difference between a mere hulking clodpole and the exquisite perfection of the Maker's finest work? Timid too I may have been; and who can be surprised, when even a stockbroker trembled at our Grace? But as for my being a jelly-fish, could any such creature have done what I did? I held the hand of my darling as long as I dared at the corner of the passage, when her father was looking for a lantern, and I said with an audacity which frightened me as soon as I had time to think of it, "To-morrow I must know my fate. Will you be in the chapel, about three o'clock? Or any time, any time; I will wait for hours."
"What can make you ask me such a thing?" she answered, and I said, "Don't you know, Dariel?" And she drew back, and whispered, "I will try – if my father has no objection."
Now it was the thought of this that sent me in a most exalted yet highly disordered condition of mind upon my homeward course. If order is heaven's first law, as some one says, the entire code must be suspended when the human race is in its most heavenly state. To me the earth was nothing; and the stars alone and the distant sublimity of the sky had any claim of kindred. Leaving Bess (who was very tired) to the care of Stepan, with a careless toss I flung my gun upon my right shoulder, and strode forth into the darkness.
Suddenly, as I was marching on a ridge of moorland about half a mile from the camp, I received a most shocking whack under the right ear, as if somebody had struck me with a big hockey-stick; and at the same moment a flash of broad fire started up, and then a roar from a clump of bushes just beneath me. How I saved myself from falling is more than I can tell, for I staggered very heavily, and my head went round.
I cannot remember at all what I did, much less what I thought in this frightful amazement, though afterwards I tried to make it out more clearly. But I must have kept hold of my gun, although my right hand was jarred and tingling with it, and then I must have leaped into the bushy hollow, without time enough to realise the peril. And I shouted, which was a most stupid thing to do; but I know that I shouted, because one of the first things that fetched me to myself was the sound of my own voice. But there was no one for me to lay hold of, or to let drive at with the butt of my gun. The place was all silent and empty, and I saw a great star shining through the naked twigs from the crown of the ridge I had been crossing, and I knew that I had been shot at by the advantage of that star.
To the inhabitants of a lawless country this may be little to dwell upon; but never having been among such crooked lines of action, I knew not what to make of it. My blood ran cold at the enormity of the thing; but without further reasoning I pulled out a brace of cartridges, which I ought to have done before entering the hollow, and slipped them into my old breechloader. Then I found that the right hammer would not move, and began to perceive what had happened. There was no time to go into that question now. With the left hammer cocked, and the muzzle level and ready for a snap-shot – though probably my nerve would have failed me at a fellow-creature – I searched every yard of the thicket, and then the gully which led to a little watercourse below. The night, having only that big star to help it, was so dark and baffling that a dozen men might have slipped away without leaving me any the wiser; and the only trace vouchsafed to me was a rustle of some bushes at the bottom of the slope where a hedge ran along. At this I brought my gun to my shoulder, for I might just have peppered a man down there, and that would have been a caution to him. However, on second thoughts, I did not fire, for by this time I was quite cool again, and the blaze might have brought another bullet at me before I could pop another cartridge in. So I marked the spot very carefully, and hurried home with gratitude.
And truly, when I had lighted both my candles, and taken a good draught of ale to refresh me, I perceived that my escape had been marvellous, and I knelt down and thanked God for it; though I have never been able, as many persons are, to believe myself the main shareholder of Divine protection. A heavy bullet had been fired at me with accuracy undeniable. And it must have dropped me as dead as a stone, passing upward into my poor brain, if my own good trusty gun had not been on my shoulder. Happily for me the lead had struck the lock-plate just above the trigger, and failing to enter the steel of course, had glanced upward and passed through the brim of my hat, cutting a groove in the crown as well, but touching never a hair of my head. My right ear was red as a radish from the jar of the stock against it, and the spring and tumblers of the lock were jammed; but I soon put them to right again.
What cowardly and cold-blooded miscreant could thirst for the life of a harmless, quiet, and unpretentious fellow thus? No enemy had I, to the best of my knowledge, in all the wide world, for the simple reason that I never wronged, insulted, or looked down upon anybody; and whenever I could not get on with a man, I let him go his way, while I went mine – unless he brought a pole across my shins; and even then, if he was sorry, I forgave him. But one thing was very clear to my mind, when I had lighted an eager pipe, and dwelt on it (sliding along the gentle slope, where a blue cloud routs black vapours), that no Englishman ever would have crawled like that, to pot a brother Englishman.
Then I thought of the sneaking shot from the gun of Rakhan which had killed Sûr Dadian, when he was returning full of joy to his ancestral castle; and the thing became almost as plain to me as if the sunlight had been poured on it. Captain Strogue would never have done it; a bravo he might be, but not a Thug – if there is any meaning in any man's eyes. But the tall dark fellow, that son of Rakhan who would not come up to look at me, Hafer, who was come to fetch Sûr Imar, he was the miscreant who tried to shoot me.
Sometimes I have a deep vein of discretion, though nobody else perceives it, and I always feel myself below my proper level, when I work it. But a man who has just escaped foul murder by a hair's breadth, and may meet the like to-morrow with the turn of the hair against him, must – unless he is weary of his life – take some thought of his actions. And I felt by no means weary of my life, but kindly and warmly in love with it, when certain glances made it sparkle, like a dewdrop in the morning. Not a word must I say to any one about that dastardly attempt, unless it were to the faithful Stepan, who might cast some light upon it. He had warned me; perhaps he knew that some one longed to do away with me. He would take it as the natural outcome of my intimacy at the camp; and now he approved of "milord's" suit, and urged him to put more steam on. Probably he knew why those two villains had lain in wait for poor Allai, and were trying by torture to make a traitor of him. And Stepan had clearly some reason of his own for keeping his master in the dark about it. Moreover, he was struggling with the English language, manifestly for my benefit. With this resolution I went to bed, and dreamed neither of thickets, nor bullets, nor bravoes, nor anything else that was nasty; but only of sweet Dariel singing the song of the stork like a nightingale, and coming with white wings to my window, where I caught her with a pair of reins.
By this time Grace was in such a state of mind about her noble stockbroker, that brother George might have fifty holes in his hat, or in his head almost, without the loving sister coming to brush, or darn, or even poultice them. Of this I made no grievance, but went so far as to be unaware of it; and when her conscience began to work, I showed her that I had bought a thimble, and she called me a heartless molly-coddle. "Never mind. There are better girls than you who can appreciate me," I answered with a superior smile, and she flew into a passion. Such is feminine jealousy. They want to love some new-comer better, yet we are not to know it, or to feel the difference.
Most heartily I wished poor Jackson Stoneman only half as good a bargain as he fancied he had made of it; for the blindness of a man in love is to others quite ridiculous. And I knew that although Grace was blessed with many of the merits he had inspired her with, no one else could think her fit to hold a candle to Dariel. Yet for the world I did not wish to hear any one praise my darling, unless it were her father or myself; for it was our business only.
Upon my way to the sacred place where my destiny was to be settled, being much before my time, and longing to divert my mind (which made my legs feel trembling), I turned aside to search the covert which had so nearly proved my doom in the darkness of the night gone by. If I had been as nervous then as now, nothing could have saved me, for the shock of the blow must have thrown me down, and the enemy would have leaped up and dispatched me. Even as I had been full of glorious thoughts, and striding in full pride of strength, probably I should have lost my balance, if my left foot had been foremost. And now in the broad daylight I was half afraid to examine the dingle. But I had brought my gun, that loyal friend, now as fit for work as ever, and both barrels loaded with duck-shot. If that miscreant's gun had been loaded so – but those thundering villains are no sportsmen.
At once I discovered the place where he had crouched, and a comfortable lair he had made of it, less than twelve yards from the path by which he expected me. But the ground being strewn with leaves, wherever it was not covered with grass or tangle, no footprints could be descried, either there or further down the dingle; and I was at the point of abandoning my search, when a little brown disk, like a piece of stamped leather, attracted my attention. It was hanging on some twigs about a yard from the ground, in a line between the lurking-place and the spot where I had been when the bullet staggered me, and at first I took it for a large, thick leaf. And a leaf it was, but not of any tree or shrub that I had ever met with; and I perceived that it was streaked with black, and smelled very strongly of gunpowder. Beyond any doubt, it had been used as a patch or wrapping for the leaden ball that was meant to send me to another world, and parts of it were scorched or singed by the explosion. I could even see the impress of the iron cap belonging to the heavy ramrod, by which it had been driven down the rifle-barrel, and on the other side might be traced the convexity of the bullet which had been enclosed. What leaf could this be? It was thicker and tougher than any English leaf I knew, as well as different in shape and texture. Tearing a fibre from the cleanest part I laid it on my tongue, and was surprised by a strong and peculiar aroma. After packing it carefully in a letter from Tom Erricker which happened to be in my pocket, I went on my way towards the ruins of the chapel, having made up my mind to inquire at Kew, where I knew a noble botanist, what tree was likely to produce that leathery and spicy foliage.
But this and every other thought of things around me and of myself were far from any mind of mine, – if mind at all remained to me, – as I sat upon an ancient stone begirt with fern and lycopod, and sandalled with soft moss rosetted here and there with ivy braids. All such things are soothing; and there also seemed to be a tranquil air, proceeding from the memory of holy monks, who never pretended to be better than they were, because they saw no need of it. Hereupon I began to fear, as a few dead leaves went by me, that I should not have appointed this cold and holy spot for speaking of a turbulent affair like love. But, without another word, I was strengthened greatly; the very argument against me took my part. True love is a sacred thing, as the Lord Himself ordained it; and a place of ancient reverence, with the sky alone to roof it, suited well for that which is the loftiest of the human state.
Perhaps the maiden had some thoughts a little like my own, but better, larger, and less tumultuous. I was not in a fit condition to know exactly what she did; and I even pretended to know less than eyes and heart brought home to me. I only knew that she was there, and for a little time I felt afraid to wish for any more than that.
She, to my delight and glory, trembled, and tried to look away, as if she shared my fear, but begged me to let it go on a little longer. Then, as I caught her hand, and raised it very gently and reverently, good manners compelled her to show surprise, and to cast an inquiring glance at me. "Don't go," I said. "If you only knew – but I never shall be able to make you know."
"It would not be right for me to go, when my father ordered me to come."
"Because he knows why. And he gave me leave to say what you know already. Oh, Dariel, what is the good of talking? You know all about it. Ever since that blessed moment, when I first caught sight of you – "
"Through the bushes and across the water? Or was it when you saved Kuban's life?" She looked at me very gravely, as if the time made all the difference.
"Both, both; and a thousand times since. And it must go on for ever. You can't understand it; of course you can't. But I can understand nothing else. Oh, Dariel, don't be hard upon me. I know that you are the wonder of the world, and that I am nothing but a very common fellow, not half so worthy to look at you as the short-eared owls in your ivy – "
"I am very fond of owls," said Dariel; "they are the wisest of all birds. But I never saw them sit and look at me."
"Then they are fools, and I'll do it for them for ever. But oh, if I could only make you see for a moment how I love you! Don't laugh at me, Dariel. Don't do that."
"I am sure that I never laughed at all. How can you think that I would be so wicked? But I will confess, if that will be quite sufficient, that I think – that I have been persuaded considerably, Mr. Cranleigh, that you – that you like me."
"Like you, Dariel! what a wretched word! Can you look at me, and fancy it no more than that?" But she would not be taken at any disadvantage; though she turned one ear towards me a little – as if ears could hold no agency for heart or lips or eyes.
"Now listen to me for a moment," I said, creeping close to that ear, which was a masterpiece of shell-work, and filigree curves, and chasing; "tell me – just say – have a little kindness, say whether you think you could ever like me."
"Yes, I will say; I will not conceal. I think that I could like you very well; because – because – "
"Because what, Dariel? That I may do it again, and go on doing it for ever."
"Because, because – it is just for this reason," all the glory of her eyes flashed on me, "because you are so much afraid of me."
"Am I?" In a moment she was in my arms, and I had the sweetest revenge ever known for an imputation of cowardice. And she, whether carried away by my love, or by her own sweet gratitude, looked at me with a glow of light, like the gates of heaven opening, and drew me into fresh ecstasy, and whispered, "Do you love me?"
Such a time is the date of life, for ever to be dwelt upon; but never spoken of, unless it be with the only one who shared it. And I would never have touched upon it, but left all those to take it home, who in their time have been so blessed; unless I were bound to let them see how much I had to go upon, in my obstinacy afterwards. Dariel loved me! Who was I, to be rapt by such a miracle? And who of mankind should take it from me, as long as the heavens continued?
"Let us kneel, and thank the Lord," my darling said, with coy reproach of my impetuous transport; "here where first you saw me, George. If He has meant us for one another, He will be vexed if we do not thank Him."
I followed her to the place that once had been of holy rite, and there she took my hand, and knelt upon the plinth of the old sanctuary, and made the sign of the Cross upon her breast and forehead, and spoke some words in some sweet language, and then arose and offered me both hands, and I kissed her lovely brow, and met her loving eyes bedewed with tears, and said, "You are mine for ever."
She bowed her head, as if to say, "I am well contented with it;" but when I drew forth that ruby cross of hers which I had kept so long, and offered to place it on her breast, as it was when I first beheld her, she shrank away, and her cheeks grew pale, and she trembled so that I felt compelled to throw both arms around her. "What is it, my darling? My own love, what has scared you so?" I asked, drawing the red flash from her sight.
"You know that I am not too wise. You do not want me to be wise; oh, George, I have no strength of mind; I cannot bear to be taken from you."
"I should like to see anybody do it," said I, guiding her craftily to a less exalted place; "but why has this little thing frightened you so, when you must have worn it a hundred times?"
"Because there is a most sad tale about it, which I will tell you some day. But even without that I must not wear it, according to the rules of the family; unless – unless – a thing that would grieve you heartily, I hope, George – unless I cease to care for you. No maiden must have this on her heart, when her heart has ceased to be her own. Shall I tell you a little secret? That was why I lent it to you and never asked for it back again, as soon as ever I began to fancy – not to be too sure – but to be uncertain whether – oh, you know my signification, George!"
"When you doubted, sweetest sweet, whether you might not be beginning to think in your angelic heart of a worthless fellow, whose name is George."
"What language to use of such a pair! If you abuse one, you abuse the other. Do you see what English I speak now? I could not talk like this, when first I met you. How do you think I learned to do it?"
"Dariel, how should I know? Your voice would make any language sweet. Your father has the gift of tongues. He speaks better English than I do. No doubt it has come down to you. And you have been with English teachers."
"Yes. But they made me speak French more than this. They thought that the air would teach me English. And my father always talked to me in our own language, such as I sang to you last night. But when I began to have George in my mind, and to fancy that he was getting fond of me, I changed all that. Comprehend you now? I made my darling father speak nothing to me but the English. And I shall be angry with myself, if you have not observed the improvement."
At this proof of her lovely love, I said and did – no matter what. Never since the world began has any man been so beyond himself. Such things are not to be described. And I never would have gone back thus, to give any one else an idea of them, if I could have won that glory, with no anguish afterwards. Every man must be in glory, when his true love loves him. He knows that he is not worthy of it; and that makes the triumph nobler.
She might lead me where she liked. A man is never like a flower – unless it be a tobacco-flower, which only blooms in the evening – but he has always been like grass; and grass (if you watch it carefully, and mow it very seldom) has a gift of turning to the sun, like most of us who manage it. My sense of beauty was so vast that I could not get to the end of it, and strove to teach her every item of her own perfections. But she arose, and took my hand, and said, "Let us go to father. A little bit of wisdom will be good among all these wonders. But I only wish that I owned them all; because they would all belong to you."
Sûr Imar received us with a loving smile. I thought that he had never looked more grand. Dariel knelt to him, while I held her hand; and if I could have knelt to any man, I would have done so then to him. But the knee of an Englishman goes down to none except his Maker.
"So be it," he said, as he kissed her forehead; "may the Lord bless both my children."