"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.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
BLACK FRIDAY
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 friend Tom 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 know that 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 drive me 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."
"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 a very 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?"