"If I did not, I should be a wretched snob. It was not for money that you wanted Grace; and you insult her by fancying that she wanted you for yours."
"All this is very pleasant doctrine, and an edifying parable for little boys and girls;" the Stockbroker had a peculiar trick of showing his keen eyes as if in a gable, when his mind was puzzled or excited; "but it would not hold water, George, either in a court of honour, or a council of wisdom. Grace is entitled, both by birth and beauty, and I am sure that I might say by intellect as well, to a position which high rank alone, or wealth on her husband's part, can secure. High rank I cannot give her. Wealth I could have given. But the prospect of that has vanished, and with it vanishes all my hope of her. Oh that she had only thrown me over! I could have got over it then. But not now."
"Now look here," I said, as a Briton always calls attention to the knock-down blow he is delivering; "all that would be worth listening to, if it had anything to do with the matter. But, as it happens, my sister Grace doesn't care a flip about position, any more than I do, or you, or anybody else with a ha'porth of common-sense. We value the opinion of good people; and we like money for the comfort of others, as well as ourselves. But as for that mysterious affair you call 'position' – the more you poke your head up, the harder cracks you get on it. Grace will be contented with whatever pleases you. That holds you together, and you never slip away. People who have only got a lawn enjoy it a thousand times as much as a lord enjoys his park. And a man who loves his wife does not want to lose her among a thousand men and women he has never heard of, all pushing about to please themselves, and sneering at them both, by way of gratitude."
"You will make a fine domestic character, George, if you only act up to your theories. I shall never forget your true friendship and noble behaviour in this matter. I shall take my own course, however, as I always do. I know what is right: and you may talk for ever. There is only one voice that could move me, and that one shall have no chance of doing it (even if desired) for her own sweet sake. But everything will depend upon to-morrow; if things are as bad then as they have been to-day, there will be no escape for me. Grace shall never be a bankrupt's wife. If her sense of honour urges it, mine forbids. And it is not only honour, but common-sense, my friend. Your family has fallen in the world too much already. It shall not be dragged lower by any connection with a defaulting Stockbroker."
His face showed no sign of emotion now; and I owned to myself that from his point of view no other course was possible for a man of honour. Whether his point of view was right or wrong, is quite a different question; but in spite of all my reasoning, I have very little doubt that I should have done as he did.
CHAPTER XXXIX
FRANGI, NON FLECTI
"Jack is getting on like a house on fire," Signor Nicolo wrote in an envelope enclosing a rather grimy letter, which I received on the following morning; "he has not had a classical education, and so you can always make out what he means. Specimens to hand confirm his opinion. Perhaps I shall go out in the spring. Could not stand the cold there now. Come and see me whenever you think fit."
When this was put into my hand, I was ready to start for London, having promised to meet Stoneman outside the Exchange, at one o'clock. This had been my own proposal, for one can never be certain how a man may take great ups and downs of fortune; and although I had not much apprehension as to Stoneman's fortitude, it seemed to me that a good friend should be at hand and do his best for him. So I read the letter of young Jack Nickols, on my way to London-Bridge, and found it very straightforward and simple; and who cares for spelling after that? The rising generation gets on very well without it, and a thousand school-boards do their utmost to destroy its memory.
"Never did see a place so mountanious," – this young fellow said, where I first began to read, for the Signor had kept the first page in his pocket, or leather bag, or steel safe, so far as I could tell – "you never get up to the jag of one knife-grinder, before you have got to fetch your wind, and grind your bones for another. The Alps is nothing to it; they goes up gradual, and is ever so much smaller to my mind. And you don't get big chaps here to shove you up and keep you straight. These fellows cackle at you with a horrid voice, and they squat in a ring and stare at you, if you want to go up any clumsy sort of peak, and they tell one another that all Englishmen are mad. But they are as sharp about the rhino as Petticoat Lane crossed with a New Cut costermonger; and you can't bring them to book, as you can a thief at home. You have to do it all through a chap who knows their lingo; and you can't make out what he is saying to them, and you can't be sure, without your revolver ready that they won't stick their skewers, which they call jingles, into your spine, without letting you look round. I had a poor time of it at first; but they seem to be getting now to make me out.
"When you come to know them, you might find worse fellows; for I cannot call them treacherous exackly. They would skin you to your spare-rib, if you let them have the chance; but they won't stick a knife into you, until you aggravate them. I am getting rather thick with some of them, by making out a little of their crack-jaw words, though there seems to be no end of them. But talk about jaws, I need not tell you, as you have seen too much of them. There was a man in Yorkshire, about fifty years ago, who could get through a lamb, and then three quarters of her mother. But one of these fellows would eat the whole sheep first, and then take her little ones for desert. But you must remember that their sheep weigh less than ours, and I like to see a man make a hearty dinner. But it is hard lines to pay him for the sheep; and then let him come to dine with you, as he must do, so that you never get a taste of it.
"However I am not complaining. The country must be beautiful, when the snow lets a fellow look at it, and you think the more about it, because it is out of sight. Tell Rosa that the girls are not a patch upon her, and she would laugh to see how they put their hair up. The men are not refined enough to think much of the women; but make them wear swabs upon their faces, and the insects are tremenjious in the summer-time. We have got more than we can do now to keep any road clear to get at the pocket where the stones are, just a soft place between two tremenjious rocks; down comes the snow again, and you could scarcely find it out, unless you leave a black tar-pole sticking up, and then you must fix it wonderfully firm, or you won't find it in the morning, for the wind does blow, I can tell you. We shall have to knock off for three months, I am afraid, and where am I to go to all the time? The Russians are not half bad fellows, only some of them too pious when you come to know them. Only you may be glad of that sometimes, because when they go to say their prayers, you get the best place by the fire. I don't care for quite so much tea myself, and I have not tasted a good bit of tobacco for a month. But everybody says that when some great man, who has been living for several years in England, and I do believe I have heard you speak of him, when he comes back they say he will change everything, all the thieves of the mountains will begin to say their prayers, and nobody will stick his best friend for nothing. If this can be managed, it will be a true excelsior.
"But you remember what the people said, the year we went to Yarmouth; and it is out of the question for me to say what I would give to be there now. They said, and you could not deny it when you wanted a bloater before they came in – 'Sir, we lay ourselves out to oblige all the gents that come from London, but we cannot make a red herring swim.' I could not see exactly how they meant it, but it is just the same thing in the Caucasus.
"For a long time I could not see my way to be sure of not being struck at any moment. But I got over that idea, as we must, if we mean to get on anywhere. I will not say that my life is sacred now, as people express it in London; but ever since the popular opinion began to identify me with the Devil, through their ignorance of English manners, I have had a much better time of it. Tell Rosa, that in spite of uncommonly rough victuals, I weigh seven pounds more than I could pull, when she came to see me off at Wood-Green station. Nobody ever weighs anybody here, for after all they are not cannibals; though I told her so, to make her kiss me. But the steelyard I brought goes to half an ounce, and has saved me a lot of money. And tell her, if you think that it won't be too encroaching, under the peculiar circumstances, that I am not quite turned into the Devil yet, though she might say so if she could see me; and even if the climate had done it, an Angel like her need not be afraid of him. Hoping to come home with a sackful of emeralds, believe me, dear Uncle James, your most affectionate nephew, John Nickols."
At the bottom of this very vague and disjointed, but as it proved afterwards too true description, Signor Nicolo had written in pencil: "Rosa is my eldest daughter; but I shall have to put a stop to it."
"My noble countrymen!" as Sûr Imar used to call them, – it would take a long time to fetch them up to that mark, according to this English boy's account, and the enthusiastic chief could not begin too soon. It appeared to me that as many generations as he could trace from Karthlos would scarcely be enough to restore them to the level of antediluvian "culture." No wonder that he was in a hurry to begin; and if I am doomed to wait for the completion of his task, erit altera quæ vehat Argo, there will be another ark on the top of Ararat. And sure enough, here is another Babel to begin with!
For in the absorption of the thoughts above recounted, I found myself caught in the whirl and crush and uproar of a crowd as wild as any savage land could show. A crowd not of paupers but well-dressed people roaring and raging and besieging the portals of the Stock Exchange. Battered hats, and coats in tatters, fists thrown up, but unable through crunched elbow to come down again, faces black with choking wrath, wherever the brown mud peeled from them, grinding teeth and cursing lips, and chests that groaned with the digs they took without any chance of returning them – I thought of Lord Melladew's father and the bullock compressed into his clover-hay. Only let me keep outside the pack of the central squeeze if possible; for once in there, no strength of man could get me out or let me out. So I put up my knee, which was a dangerous thing to do, for if I lost my feet good-bye to me; when a gentleman, with whom it would have been a joy to dine – so comely, and well-liking, and well-to-do was he – being unable to get at me with his fists, let out at me with language I had never heard the like of. I attempted no retort, for he had already got the worst of it, and without any knowledge how it came to pass, except that there must be more luck than wit in shoving, here I was with my clothes still pretty sound, outside the drum of squashed figs and squealing pigs.
But another poor fellow was not so lucky. "Let him go, slide him on, he'll be dead in half a minute. Serve him right. No, no. How'd you like it? Don't tread on him, more than you can help." It was a solid man upon the ground, but likely to be hollow, before ever he could be an upright man. I had got a short knob-stick in my hand (which I always carried, since my faith in human nature had waned through that dastardly bullet) and in the most blundering and selfish manner I set the knob against my breast and the stub-end foremost, and charged into the lump of figures across me. Considerable yielding, and heads running into heads, and yellow waistcoats sloping like sheaves of wheat in shock, and big boots toeing up at me, and a hail of blows in flank – it is impossible to say how I got on. But there must have been a hollow place somewhere in the mass, for they fought into a lane, and allowed me to lay hold of a pair of yellow shoes, or at least they had been yellow, and tow out the prostrate body on its back, and feel it for the signs of life or death. "Ain't dead yet," said a hoarse and husky voice; "never fainted in my life, and don't mean to do it now."
I admired the pluck of this poor fellow; for indeed he was in a frightful mess, and another half-minute must have silenced him forever. With the help of a bystander, who only cost a shilling, I was able to get my trodden friend across the street, and into a double doorway, where a score of people came and stared at him. "Well, if he ain't a tough 'un. Cut the poor bloke's collar. Stand him on his pins, and blow to him. Give him a drop of brandy." Advice poured in on every side, more freely than assistance.
"Don't you know who I am, you fools?" The injured man sat up with the aid of one hand on the stones, and gazed defiantly. "All over the world I've been, but never saw such cursed idiots. Captain Strogue, sir, of the British Pioneers."
He glanced at me with hazy eyes, which told of many strong waters, and would tell of many more, if Heaven permitted; and then he tried to bow, but a pang in his chest took the grace from that salutation. "All right! Down the alley, three doors to the left."
He shoved away all who pressed forward to lift him, but allowed me to help him with his knees still hanging, to the place he had indicated. And sure enough everybody knew him there.
"The Captain, the Captain, the bold British Captain! He have been in the wars, and no mistake!" Out came the landlady and the barmaid, with tears in their eyes – for he had promised to marry both – and an ancient potboy with all his wits about him brought a rummer and a teaspoon, and stirred up something hot. "That's the physic, ma'am," he said; and the lady smiled and offered it, and met with no refusal.
In a word, Captain Strogue was in the right place now, and after helping to bestow him snugly upon a horse-hair sofa in a small back room, I was at the point of leaving, when he put up one hand and stopped me.
"Owe you my life," he said; "not worth much now, but has done a deal of service to civilization. Near St. Paul's, ain't we? That's where they'll put me. Know your face very well, but can't remember."
He seemed to be dropping off into a doze, having finished his strong potation; but I told him my name and where I had met him, for I was eager to be off to keep my time with Stoneman.
"Don't be in a hurry, sir; you have helped me, and I can help you. Strogue pays his debts. Somebody else will find that out." His eyes shone fiercely, and he pressed his knuckles to his side. "Widow Lazenby knows what I am – don't you, ducky?"
"Oh, Captain! And at such a crisis!" the landlady murmured, after looking round to be certain where the barmaid was. "But, sir, he have described himself. Wonders he have done, without wondering at himself."
It is a righteous thing that men of such achievements should have their reward, where it is sweetest. Fame they may never get, for that is all a fluke; gold they scarcely ever gain, because they are no grubbers; love they cannot stop to grasp, and see but savage frames of it; rank they laugh at, having found it the chief delight of black boys; but to get his grog for glory, and his victuals for victory, is the utmost any English pioneer can hope of England.
"Cranleigh, you can go," said Strogue, for his manners were not perfect; "you are involved in this little shindy, and you want to know all about it. These thieves shut shop at one o'clock on a Saturday, some one told me. But if you will come back by two, I shall have set this rib by then, and have rump-steak and oysters. Join me, without any ceremony. I owe you a debt, and you shall have it."
I had seen too many strange things now to be surprised at anything, as I might have been six months ago; and it was plain that this companion of the hateful Hafer meant to do me some good turn at a private opportunity. So I promised to return by two o'clock, and hurried to Stoneman's business place, avoiding the crowd that still was yelling at every approach to the House of Mammon. "Bless you, sir; it is nothing at all compared to what it was yesterday. Ah, that was something like a row!" a big policeman told me; "there was fifty taken to hospital, and the barriers snapped like hurdles. Why, there ain't been half-a-dozen ribs to-day. You can't call that no panic."
Neither did I find any panic at Jackson Stoneman's offices. A stolid old clerk was putting things away, and evidently anxious to get home to early dinner. He told me that his principal had been disappointed at not meeting me, and concluded (as the train had been in long enough) that something had occurred to stop me, and so had departed on his own account. When I asked how things had gone that morning, old Peppersall eyed me with some indignation, as if it were impossible for anything to go wrong with a firm so stable and majestic. "Well, how did the senior partner look?" I asked; and Peppersall replied: "He was a bit put out about a sixpence that rolled off a desk in room No. 8, till it turned up under the wainscoting."
"You'll do," I said rather rudely, for this rebuff was not too courteous, and he stared at me as if there could be any doubt about his doing. "That is the sort of fellow for a business-man, instead of any new young manager" – was my reflection, as I strode with good heart towards the rump-steak and oysters.
Captain Strogue had been sponged and darned and brushed and polished up – so far as he was capable of polish – by skilful and tender hands, and was sitting in a brown arm-chair, as bolt upright as if his ribs had thickened, as a barn-floor does, by the flail of many heels upon them. "Keep 'em like that," he said, "for about two hours, and fill up well inside, and it stands to reason that they must come right – can't help themselves. Doctors? None of them for Bat Strogue. The only doctor I ever knew was any good is down your way now, a queer German cove. Say grace for me, and carve for me, and fall to, my son. Take me for your guest; and you might have a more squeamish one."
CHAPTER XL
TWAIN MORE THAN TWIN
In spite of all anxiety, it was impossible to be anxious for the moment, in the company of this extraordinary fellow. Doubt is the most hostile and hateful element to all human pleasure; and doubt was at once kicked out from the society of Captain Strogue. Certainty stood in its place, as firm as – well, I might say as firm as Strogue's own nose, for I can think of nothing firmer. Short and thick and straight it was, like a buttress to support his bulky forehead, and keep his bright and defiant eyes from glaring into one another; for they had a little cast towards it. Certainty also in the strongest point of all – that whoever you might be, or wherever you had been, never till now had you come into contact – or collision, if you liked that sort of thing – with a member of your race so far above all little weakness, and yet so ready to participate in it, if you would pay the bill for him, as your new but true friend, Bartholomew Strogue.
"Imar is an exceedingly fine chap," he said, as he lit a long clay pipe, after a dinner which impressed me with the truth that the more a man sees the more he feeds; "you are too young, friend Cranleigh, to have any powers of reflection. But you may take it from me, that there are only two ways now of being fit to consider yourself a fine chap. Of course I don't talk of nincompoops, who think themselves wonderful always. What I mean is in common-sense; and there you can only be above the ruck, by despising the human race, as I do; or loving it, as Imar does. I have found nothing in them to admire, though I have seen the inner side of many celebrated men; and as for loving them – well, I suppose the Lord puts that into you, and bungs up your eyes. The man who can do it is the happiest of his race, and a great deal too good to be left among them. No fool can do it; for a fool always goes by facts."
"Sûr Imar is the largest-minded man I ever knew," I broke in upon Strogue with some indignation. "He looks at the best side, as all good people do. He likes human nature, because he judges by himself."
"Contempt is at the bottom of it. Amiable contempt, if you like to call it so. The contempt of an equitable mind, that knows the faults of its owner, and loving them, makes allowance for the like in others. Bless your heart, Cranleigh, I like people well enough; but I despise them, because I despise myself. Come now, that is fair play. I am not argumentative; no man of action ever is. But that view of the case is a puzzle to you."
"Not a bit," I answered, with a smile of modest triumph; "you despise mankind, because you think they are like you. Sûr Imar loves them, because he thinks they are like him!"
"Bravo! I like a man who tries an honest rap at me. Bat Strogue never takes offence at truth, because he very seldom gets the chance. But I did not fetch you here to argue with you. I believe that I can be of service to you, very good service, such as you have rendered me; though perhaps you would not have pulled me out, if you had known who it was you got hold of?"
"Yes, I would; and with all the greater pleasure. I thought that you were a decent Englishman; though I saw you in very bad company, that day!"
"A decent Englishman! One of the most celebrated travellers of the age! Such is fame. Wait until my book comes out. I might have been the lion of the season, if I liked. What are S. and G. and L.? What have they done in comparison with me? However, let them have it for the moment. Bad company, Cranleigh? You are quite right there. Many scurvy tricks have I been played; but none to come near what that blackguard has done. The fool, the besotted fool he must be. I was told you were far away in Yorkshire, and engaged to be married to a lady there. Nothing of the sort? If I had known that, I would have come down to see you. He thinks he has got everything his own way; and he has thrown me over on the strength of it. Much more than that – much worse than that. Oh, what a pretty mistake he has made! Nobody ever fooled Bat Strogue yet, without paying out for it. Things are gone far, very far, my friend; but we may be even with them yet. I see things now that I never dreamed of. But tell me first of your own share in them."
I told him briefly what had happened to myself. How after winning a pledge for life from Dariel, and the approval of her father, I had been suddenly called away to the wedding of my oldest friend, and had been kept there for several days by the sudden distress of the family. Then as soon as I could get away without inhumanity I had hastened home, and been utterly astonished to find the valley empty, and no message left for me, except that cold letter from the man who had been so kind. And then I told him also what I knew from Signor Nicolo, and his black suspicions as to Hafer's object.
"It is impossible for them to be too black," Strogue replied with an ominous smile. "Sûr Imar's life is not worth the lump of sugar melting under this glass pestle. Hafer's heart is vile enough, but a viler heart, and a brain ten times as resolute and as deep as his, are set upon poor Sûr Imar's death. I see it all now with the help of what you tell me. I took it in quite another light before. There is one thing still that I cannot understand. I fell out with that miscreant first, because I found that he wanted me to lend a hand to get you put out of the way, as if I were one of his tribesmen. What puzzles me beyond everything is that he never tried it."
"He did try it, and a very narrow shave I had. It was the very night after I saw you with him." Then I told Strogue the particulars of that cowardly and cold-blooded attempt, and Stepan's conclusion about it.
"It is impossible to doubt it. The murderous sneak! One thing I can tell you, young man; that marriage of your friend has saved your family the expenses of your funeral. Two days more in that part of the world would have sent you to your last account. He would never have shot at you again; such is their superstition, that he believes you invulnerable by bullet; but he would have put a long dagger into you, springing from a corner in the dark. At that game you would have no chance with him, even if you were on the outlook. You are stronger than he is, I daresay; but he is the most lissome fellow I have ever met, and I have handled a good many twisters and skippers in the way of savages. And to think that I should be almost trodden into dust, like the emmets in a hymn I used to learn, by a trumpery lot of common cockneys. It was contempt of the enemy that did it, a thing that generally ensures defeat. None of that now, that won't do now. Cranleigh, we shall have to do all we know; and the chances are that it will never be enough. It is not for Hafer, so much as that fiend of a woman, who stands behind him. One of the worst that ever walked this earth, and that is no small order, I can tell you. A bad woman is blacker than a man, as many shades as gas-tar is than Stockholm pitch."
"But who is it? Who is it? You have hinted that before. What woman in the world would hurt Sûr Imar, who looks upon them all as angels, in the reaction from his great mistake?"
"I will tell you who it is, by-and-by; and you will be surprised a little. But first a few questions; and very important. The luck has been terribly adverse. Most of all in this, that I should not have known, until it was too late to stop him, the scoundrelly schemes of this Hafer, and his abrupt cut-and-run. But if I have made a mistake, so has he. Bat Strogue is hard to beat, young man; though he thinks so little of himself. But now, first of all, is there any chance of catching Stepan? He is a thick, of course; as all faithful servants are. You could not make head or tail of him; but I know their scabby lingo. Do you know what ship he goes by?"
"Not I. The fact is that I was quite upset, and felt that being so thrown over I had no right to pry into their arrangements. All the heavy goods were going by some cargo-steamer. Blackwall was on the canvas-wrappings. That is all I know about it."
"Then we are too late for that. Those heavy boats sail on a Thursday. But the one point in our favour is that Sûr Imar goes first to Petersburg. He has good friends there; but in spite of that, if I know anything of Russian ways, it will take at least three months for him to get a stroke of business done. And he will not want to take his daughter to her new surroundings, when the furious winter rages there. His enemies thought to settle him, this side of Christmas, and have three months to gorge him and hide the spoil, while all the passes are blocked with snow. But they have overplayed their game, and they never dreamed of that stroke of his, which may give us time to save him. He has no idea of their plot, of course, but has acted with his usual simplicity. One more question – can we obtain any idea of what goes on there, through Nickols, or any of his jolly miners? I am sorry for them. What a dance they will have on Kazbek, with frost-bitten toes! But they can't get away now, that's one comfort."
"How can I tell? I know nothing about communication with those deserts. That is more in your line, and you know the country."
"There are not many countries beyond my knowledge," the British Pioneer replied, with a gaze as if the whole world lay before it; "but even I cannot always quote all the breaks and jerks of wire and post. However, I can easily find out. They were laying a line to Kutais, I know; but I don't know whether it is working, and if it is it won't help us much, when all the tracks are impassable. One more question; young man, excuse it, but are you still nuts upon that lovely girl, who is too good for any but an Englishman? I don't hold with matrimony, mind. So you need not mind saying if you have slipped off."
"I wish she were equally nuts upon me," I replied with a glance of contempt, which should have pricked him. "But she has vanished without even a good word. I shall never hear anything more of her."
"Stuff! Remember – 'faint heart,' etc. She has been humbugged with lies about you. And I know the pride of all that race. You shall have her yet, if you show pluck; and you won't be like yourself, if you fail there. But you want to know who the dark enemy is, the one who is resolved to have Sûr Imar's life, as well as everything else that belongs to him. Very well, it is his own twin sister, Marva."
"What! Marva, the widow of Rakhan, that rascally Prince of the Ossets, whom Imar very justly slew! So justly, that even he felt no compunction. Marva, who knew of her husband's falseness!"
"That's the woman, and a nice specimen she is. I know one or two fine things about her, from what Hafer, her own son, let out. Ah, she is a deep one. It is a lucky thing for Imar that she sent Hafer, instead of coming to manage the whole affair herself."
"You forget one thing, Captain Strogue," I interrupted, for this view of the Princess did not tally well with Sûr Imar's own account. "She pitied him, there can be no doubt about that, after his terrible calamity, though as yet she did not know the worst. She pitied him, and proved it by her distress at the death of his little boy Origen. And when a woman once lets pity in, there is no room for malice in her breast. I read that the other day, in a very great writer."
"I don't know anything about that. I only know that she hates him. All the wreck of her life she ascribes to him, because he would not pay her portion. She has been brought up very differently from him, you must remember. And when she was so kind about that poor little devil, she had not the least idea that her husband that very day had fallen by the hand of Imar. Very likely she loved her husband all the more, without knowing it herself, for his behaviour to her. Some women do, there is no question about that; and there is queer morality in the Caucasus. She hates Imar, with all the power of her heart, which is anything but a weak one; and even if she loved him, she would be bound to kill him; for the blood-feud is between them."