"You talk of it as if you were counting coppers; whereas it makes my blood run cold, cold and then hot, as if it boiled with a shudder."
"Ah, but I have seen the world," said Strogue.
"Very well, then tell me this. In the name of common-sense – if such a faculty is known among such brutes – why did not Hafer put a bullet or a dagger into Imar, as he has had fifty chances and more of doing, instead of taking a steady but unlucky pop at me? Explain that, Captain, if you can."
"Nothing is easier, friend Cranleigh. In the first place, he is not the one to do it, without ruin to their scheme; for though he might marry Dariel, after that there would always be something between them. And what would make it useless for him to do it, is that the blood must be shed, as you might say, for the sprinkling of the doorstep. To kill him in England would not count, because nobody would be sure of it. Hafer might have made a hit, but he could not have scored it, and the revenues would not have fallen in for years."
"It makes me sick to hear you talk." I had no intention of being rude; but to see this man making balance of lives, as a grocer puts chocolates into the scale, was beyond my gifts at present. "Strogue, you make me hate you."
"My dear boy, you should not do that. I admire fine British indignation; and I had a lot of it at your age. I am not free from it now, by any means. But it must be governed and guided, when we deal with inferior races. A Frenchman never discovers this, and therefore he cannot colonise. He lets out his natural ardour at brutality, while we accommodate ours, and fetch it into better purpose. You must not suppose that I sympathise with a savage, because I do not shoot him."
I begged his pardon; for I knew nothing of such things. And he made allowance for my outburst; while I thought that I would rather play the French than the English part, in such a case – which was far from my usual sentiment.
"You need not make a fuss," he said, "all these things are an allegory. The wisest of men has been young and green at some time. Bat Strogue is not the boy to sing for starch in bibs and tuckers. Cranleigh, you may look at me, and some day you will tell your grandson – 'Ah, you should have seen Bat Strogue! An Englishman of the old sort he was. Forty-six inches round the chest, and not a lie to be found in him.' Give me your hand, young man, I like you."
It occurred to me – so mean our nature is – that the brandy-and-water, which he quaffed like milk, was beginning to perturb a spirit even so ubiquitous. But his gaze was clear and bright as it had not been in the morning, and his voice impressive.
"You have only to go home, and wait. I have a friend who is on his way at this moment to St. Petersburg. I shall telegraph to him to-morrow, to keep his eye on Sûr Imar. He will have no trouble about that, the man being so conspicuous. I shall know when Imar thinks of leaving, and then we must look sharp indeed. You want to save him; so do I. And more than that, to blow to pieces the plans of this vile Hafer. He has treated me infamously; I will not bother you with that now. He little knows what Bat Strogue is. I might have starved, but for Jemmy Nickols. Just for the present I am in cash; but money never sticks to me. If the sinews of war fail, I shall not scruple to ask your help, though I know that you are not a millionaire, George Cranleigh. But I am a man of honour, sir. Though not a swell, I am no sponge. And I have some chance of a good windfall which is keeping me in London now. 'Never say die,' is my motto, sir; and if I get what I ought, I will lend you a hundred pounds as soon as look at you. Strogue is of Yorkshire family, sir, and a Yorkshireman always does what he says. But that Hafer is a cur, as mean a cur, and as fierce a cur, as was ever begotten by Cerberus. He made a scoundrel rob me of five hundred pounds, by false cards; as I found out just too late, and they split the swag between them. A burglar is a trump in comparison with them; and he has taken out young Petheril instead of me. Cranleigh, do you ask me why? Then I'll tell you in two words; because he can get him cheaper, sir, and because he has got no principle. Strogue must travel like a gentleman, as he is by birth and behaviour, and all that; Strogue maintains his rank, sir. You try to shove him into any skunky corner to save a few copeks in passage-money, and he lets you know – ay, you soon find that out, and you won't forget it in a hurry. But this fellow Petheril, that's his name, he would make any skunk's hole skunkier; and you wouldn't care to touch him with a pair of tongs. And another reason I can tell you too, Petheril doesn't know the little things about that beauty of a Marva, which have come to my ears, though I never saw her. Shows what my reputation is – 'Bartholomew Strogue, The World,' would find me from any post-office in it. Though when you send me a hundred-pound note, it would be as well to be more precise. But I am not proud of that; it is a nuisance to me. I open a hundred letters, when I find myself in the humour, and there is not a penny in one of them; but they all want me to do something."
Fearing that he was becoming inclined to go off on the rove, as great travellers must, and being in a hurry about Stoneman and Grace, I asked him to say in a few words how Prince Hafer came under his charge in London.
"Simply because of my taking a little turn into the Caucasus," Captain Strogue replied, as if he had gone off into a side-walk in some Hampstead villa garden. "I was tired of the monotony on the northern side of the Caspian, where the people are too much alike, with plenty of barbarous customs; but when you have seen one, you know them all. There is not the variety which can be found in the mountain regions only. In a very rugged land, the human race cannot get so confoundedly chummy as to take the variety out of them, like peas in a pod perhaps a thousand miles long. The Caucasus is quite a small affair, compared to the Andes, or Himalaya, or half-a-dozen other mountain-chains. But it beats them all in this, that it was peopled earlier, or at any rate more thickly. And there the fellows are; no two lots at all alike; and if it was the cradle of the human race, as the ethnologists used to tell us, it was lucky that we tumbled out of it. Mind, I don't run them down; there are some of the noblest samples, so far as the body is concerned, that you could find on the face of the earth. And many of noble intelligence too, but with little chance of increasing it. As a rule, they hate work, both of body and of mind; and without proper work, we all relapse into monkeys, or advance into devils. You say, 'Strogue, then which are you?' You were longing to ask it, but too polite. Very well, Cranleigh, I am neither. I have done as much hard work as any man living. And I hope to do more, if my life holds out, although my joints are getting rickety. But my rule is – either work, or play. And I never mix the two together."
"But," I inquired, to bring him back to the point, for he seemed to be rather fond of talking about himself, "what was the reason that Hafer, if he was sent to fetch his uncle back, was not despatched to the camp at once, the old place in the valley, I mean, where his countrymen had taken up their abode. That would have saved all the London expenses, and the need for a guide and interpreter, and a lot of other trouble, as well as kept him out of mischief."
"True, my son; but it would have ruined the whole scheme. Hafer's nature would soon have shown itself, for his temper is simply horrible; kinjals would have flashed in the Surrey sun, and no Dariel would there have been for him. Even as it was, he contrived sometimes to make himself unpleasant to her. You remember our catching your little friend Allai, and putting some strain upon his loyalty? That was to learn a few useful facts from him, especially one about the lady and her father, and some points as to your proceedings. If you had not interfered, we should very soon have succeeded, for there is no great power of endurance in them. No, no. His mother knows too well what Hafer is, to quarter him on a quiet gentleman. And he never would have stood it. He came here to have his fling, quite as much as to carry out her plot – and a jolly wild time he has had of it. There is no steady love in a man like that, any more than there was in his father Rakhan."
"Foul scum of the earth, low blackguard! How dare he come near Dariel?" For the moment I lost my self-command. "How can I wait, Strogue? Am I to sit and count the time, while Imar and his daughter are going to their doom? Why not set off for Petersburg and try to keep them there? Or at any rate warn them, and go back with them, if they must go, and face that wicked woman and her despicable son. That seems to me to be the better plan by far. It would cost a lot of money; but I would beg, borrow, steal – "
"Won't do. You must follow my directions. In the first place, you forget what a cloud you are under. Probably Sûr Imar and his daughter would refuse to see you if you followed them. Or if you got over that difficulty, would they listen to your story? You know nothing about Marva's scheme, except through me, and I have no proofs. It is all suspicion, or inference from little slips of Hafer's and so on, and what I have heard since he departed. Mind you, I know it, as well as if I saw it; but there is nothing I could lay before Imar, to convince him that his sister intends to have him murdered, and to make her son the Master of Karthlos, and Chief of that branch of the Lesghians. Be in no hurry, my good young friend. I shall prick you up quite soon enough. It is the jerking that spoils everything. We were a nobler race five hundred years ago than we are now; because we took our time to think, and mind kept time with body. These fellows also take their time. They learn it from the way the snow falls; and they know that the snow tells a deeper tale than fifty thousand thunderstorms. In the Caucasus a tragedy – and they have no such thing as comedy – goes into ten acts at least, and lasts for generations."
CHAPTER XLI
A CROOKED BILLET
Once I saw the solid keeper of a well-known elephant (a grand mass of sagacious substance, gentle, good, and amiable) try his hand among the monkeys, creatures in their way as worthy, but of different fibre. These too knew what kindness is, and had their sense of gratitude, but could not stop to dwell upon it, and let it ripen in their hearts. The keeper, accustomed to slow ways, and leisurely though deep emotion, exerted all his charm of eye and benevolence of whistle, and offered baits to cupboard-love, and even deigned to winsome ticklings of places not too hairy to be touched by human tenderness. He gazed with zoologic pride at the manager of the monkeys, who was putting a new lash on his whip; then his glory flew into a shriek, for his thumb was bitten in twain, and a jabber of general joy endorsed it.
So it is too sure to be with any man, who drawing reason from her higher sources, applies the product of his skill, even in homœopathic doses, to that irrational creature – love. Strogue had no idea of the meaning of that word. A traveller gets too-far abroad, too loose, and large, and vague, and shifty, shallow with glancing instead of gazing, skimming the world instead of letting it cream. Therefore to me there was scarcely a crumb of comfort in all his assurances; and the only thing to stroke the long anxiety the right way of the grain, and smooth its tissue, was to keep on steadily with the labours of the day. And when these can be carried on out of doors, under the sky, and (if so I may say) with the eyes of the Lord smiling down on them, it is not to the credit of any young man, if he kicks about under his blanket and groans, when the night makes all things equal. Unless he has bodily pain, I mean – which is another pair of shoes, that can never be unlaced by any effort of our own.
Moreover, to see one's dearest friends escaping from some black distress, and coming back to their usual cheer, and jokes, and pleasure in the world around, takes or ought to take a lot of lead out of our own handicap. Although my sister had never been by any means painfully sympathetic with my misfortunes in the way of love, I was candid enough to feel that this might be because I had never asked her. Such an affection as mine was far beyond her understanding, a thing too holy to be discussed by any girl with yellow hair in love with a member of the Stock Exchange. But I quite forgave her all short-comings, the moment she fell into real trouble, and I wiped her eyes almost as softly as if they had been Dariel's. And this renewed our deep attachment, which had lost perhaps some little of its warmth, when she took to finding virtues in that marvellous Jackson Stoneman, which she had pronounced a hundred times to be sadly deficient in her brother. However they revived and flourished now; and I was not so mean as to ask how they came back, but was proud of their possession. Let us take all the credit we can get, from people who are fond of us; there will scarcely be enough to plug the holes our other brethren pick in us.
Stoneman, too, having turned the corner by the narrowest of shaves, with the paint shorn from his shaft and felly, but his box and axle as sound as ever, was much improved for the present by the increase of humility. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say, by the birth of that quality within him; for if it had existed heretofore, it had been so true to itself as to recoil from all recognition. Except of course in his first love-time; for if a man cannot be humble then, Lucifer is no match for him. It is needless to say that the losses of the firm were spread from mouth to mouth at any figure that occurred to the imagination, long before the senior partner himself could lay a loose measure along them. But he managed to stick to the Hall and the Park; though he gave up his yacht, and the hounds, and other enjoyments now too costly, and at Grace's urgent order clave to money-making all the week, and left the love for Sundays.
There was even some little talk about my throwing up the plough, and harrow, pitchfork, flail, and stable-bucket, and quitting in despair the land that had now become too honest to maintain mankind. To wit, I was to join our Jackson, not as a partner (for the solid reason that I had no capital), but as an agent, an assessor, or I forget what they called it. My father wished it, and so did my mother, and every one except myself; and I was doubting whether the sense of duty to my relatives ought not to outweigh my own tastes and wishes, when all my thoughts were upset again, and all my mind unsettled, by a letter just as follows: —
"Dear Sir, – I must seek pardon for neglect or carelessness about something. But it did not enter my thoughts at first, that the letter enclosed belongs to you, or perhaps to the lady to whom it was written. And we have been on the railway, or at sea so much, and in strange hotels, that I could not procure it from my boxes. I hope that it is of no importance; but I now perceive that I have been guilty of a sad want of attention, which may have caused blame to fall on others. If so I beg to be pardoned by them, for I had no intention of retaining what could never belong to me. – Your obedient servant,
"Dariel, daughter of Imar."
The letter enclosed, or rather the note, was one of several little billets, in which I had answered questions from Tom Erricker's sister, Argyrophylla, during that most melancholy time, when there was no one else to support her. She behaved, all through that terrible period, in a faultless manner; such as even Dariel herself would have found it hard to equal. Argyrophylla was just as mournful, just as trustful in the Lord and the depth of heartfelt sympathy, just as determined to overcome her own feelings for the sake of others, as the nicest girl that was ever born, and therefore has to deal with death, could be. Any man who could be cold to her (with her father just dead, and her mother scarcely more than alive enough to moan) deserved to be screwed down, I say, and find no one at his funeral. But I never care to defend myself. It is clear enough what any one must think of this, being told that it was all about some crayfish soup, which was more for the lawyer's delectation than for mine: —
"My most kind and thoughtful Pilla, – What matter for such trifles now? Remember that all I care about is to be of service to you. It would have been a weary day but for that consideration. Do exactly as you feel inclined, but how happy I should be if you would come down to dinner. [This I only wrote that I might try to make her eat a bit, because she would not even take her gruel.] For the sake of the many who love you, think a little of yourself, if a heart so unselfish has the power. You must never speak as if I wished to be elsewhere, unless your desire is to grieve me. You shall hear what the lawyer has done for us by-and-by; but his chief wish is to please us. You know quite well what mine is. – Ever yours, George Cranleigh.
"P. S. – The canon most readily promised to officiate."
Now that such a simple letter, written when the cloth was laying, and the room grown shadowy, yet full of thoughts of dinner-time – for Pilla through her tears took care to keep the kitchen-jack alive – that a few kind words like these of mine should start up as wilful enemies, is a proof of that which men like Strogue might take into some dry coil of brain, having filled it more with the study of mankind than with converse of their Maker. To wit, that whenever any human being yields to the goodwill towards his fellows which has been implanted in him, he is making a fool of himself, without doing a bit of good to his brethren. Let Strogue think so, if he likes, and prove it by a thousand instances; he will not get me to believe it, or at any rate to act as if I did.
And here you will find, if you go on, that it was not so even in my own case. At first it looked very bad indeed, and I made a grievance of it, as any but a perfect man must do; and him I have still to meet with. How on earth could that hasty note, written only for comfort in profound distress, and with the warmth one feels for affliction, have fallen into the hands of some vile enemy, who had used it to destroy my Dariel's faith in me? Over and over again I read the words I had scrawled in a hurry; and the more I pored over them the more distinctly I saw what they might mean to Dariel. One most unlucky reference too would quench any doubt she might try to cherish. In my brief account of that sad affair at Sheffield, I mentioned, or should have done so, that Mr. Erricker's old and trusted solicitor was gone from home at the time of the sudden calamity, and his place had been supplied by a junior partner, a peaceful young man, who would never take the lead. His only anxiety was to keep within the possibility of mistake; and this (as the widow was so ill, and entreated me to act for her) compelled me to be content with legal sanction rather than counsel. But Dariel knowing nought of that, or of the affliction in the house, would naturally conclude that the lawyer was come to arrange for my marriage with poor Pilla. "Well, this is a kettle of fish, and a kettle of devil-fish," I thought; "but one great joy there is – my darling has not thrown me over through a toss-up."
All my love (which had never been away, longer than I could live without my heart) came back with a rush of double power, and a wild condition prevailed with me. That cold letter of dismissal bore no date of time or place, and afforded not a trace of the writer's whereabouts or intentions, except that it bore the post-mark of Dresden, and a date now four days old. Sûr Imar had told me more than once of his love for art, and deep regret that his stormy life had allowed him no acquaintance with it. Also he had shown me a very ancient – daub I should have called it, but for the subject – supposed to be a portrait of our Lord on panel, which according to legend had been brought by St. Peter when he came to preach in the Caucasus. Although he was not sure of that tradition, the Lesghian chief attached no small importance to this heirloom, and was anxious to compare the face, or as much of it as could be descried, with some of the first presentments, or conceptions, to be found in Europe. He was gifted very richly, as all great men are, with the power of moving slowly, not only abstaining from all attempt to rob Time of his forelock, but also offering that old robber plenty of leisure to tug his own. Thus the father of Dariel might stray through many a gallery, museum, and cathedral, before he reached the Russian capital; and wherever he was, there beyond a doubt would be his beloved daughter.
With this belief, I lost no time in going to see Strogue again, at least to hear what he had to say, though I expected little comfort. The place to which he now belonged, though it seemed more truly to belong to him, was that ancient tavern "The London Rock," so called perhaps in transcendence of the London Stone, which was not far off. An old-fashioned, overhanging house, with windows like the stern-galleries of a veteran three-decker, and a double door with big brass fittings, and glass panels glancing; the whole withdrawn as with an inner meaning, and prim sense of private rights, even from the organ-grinder, who dictates to the alley, and the babies who tripudiate, with tongues that can keep time, whenever dirty feet are weary. Strogue had seen all the world almost, and was come back to the beginning of it, smiling at the glee of childhood through the majesty of a placid smoke.
You never could take that man aback; perhaps because that sort of thing had been done to him once too often. He sat in a hooded chair of state, with a long pipe casting garlands of the true Nicotine forget-me-not, like a floral crown for his emerit head; but his legs were in front of him as they ought to be, and the day being still in its youth, no car of Bacchus had begun to jingle through the calm realms of baccy. Or at least, there was only one cool tankard, and the crown of froth was gone from that.
"How is the rib?" I asked in my usual stupid way, for all enquiry was out of place in a paradise so tranquil. And then I proceeded still more ineptly by begging him not to be disturbed.
"What rib?" enquired Strogue, with as much surprise as he could reconcile with his dignity.
"Why, the rib that was broken the other day," I answered, with some sense of trespass on his constitution.
"I remember now; and I call it very kind of you to think of it. But I understand my own inside, and can very soon put it right again. How are you getting on with your love-affair, my boy?"
I did not see my way (as people always put it now, when they don't want to do what you want of them) – I did not see the fitness of discussing Dariel in this draught of echo, and with the bar in the background clinking pots and mumbling chaff.
"Hold my pipe, while I get up," the Captain said magnanimously, for his feet were on a leg-rest, and it was very good of him to move; "I never take anything so early in the day; but I don't judge the juniors. Come along, and bring my pewter."
When he had led me to an inner room, which appeared to be his sanctum, I told him what had happened, but could not by any means bring myself to show him Dariel's letter. And he did not ask for it; with all his bluffness, at heart he was a gentleman.
"Cut up rough, of course," he said; "would not have been worth her salt, if she hadn't. Only two things are added to our knowledge. One that they have been at Dresden, and the other that Hafer has been at work with that musk-rat of a Petheril. He sent him to Sheffield after you; that is plainer than a pikestaff. He could not have gone on his own hook; for he knows nothing of English ways, and very little of the language. He found that I would not do his dirty work, and so he took up with that blackguard. And cleaned me out, sir, cleaned me out! That is where I shall never forgive myself, until I cry evens with him. Would you look for any green lines in Bat Strogue, a tyke who has been round the world?"
He stared at me so fiercely that I could scarce help laughing. Then he laughed at himself, and said, "All right, by-and-by. You go and see if Jemmy Nickols has heard anything. I can tell you one piece of good news. I told you what I was in London about. It has turned out ever so much better than I thought. Those confounded lawyers would not let me have a copper. But I put the enemy's lawyer at them; and by Jove, sir, I expect to get five thousand pounds. Not in a lump, mind; that would be too good for an unlucky son of a gun like me; but a thousand by the end of January, and the rest when some business in Yorkshire is wound up. So I need not come down upon you for a penny; and more than that, my boy, I will pay the piper, and you can pay your share, when your ship comes in. We will have a grand time among the niggers. Don't thank me, or I'll never forgive you. You have done me a good turn, and I'll repay it. Bat Strogue is a Christian, because he backs his friends up. But he doesn't hold with forgiving his enemies. He will have Hafer by the hip, and you shall see it. Stop a moment; you know some great swells, don't you?"
"One or two people of title I know. But none of them are in London yet. I could write to them, of course, if that would do as well."
"That never does as well. But they will soon come back. Parliament meets rather early this year. And we must not expect to stir a stump till March. My friend at Petersburg is not a great gun; of about my own mark, but not of my distinction. Bless you, I can go to Court anywhere, and plenty of bowing and scraping; but a tankard of malt is worth all of it. If you could get a line under cover from a friend to our Ambassador at Petersburg, he would pass it on to Sûr Imar when he gets there, and you might make it right with your lady-love. I suppose that never occurred to you. Strogue knows the way to go to work. What do you think of that, my friend?"
"I think it is a very good suggestion, and very kind of you to think of it. If I had not been in such a hurry, I daresay it would have occurred to me."
"Not likely; but Nickols might have thought of it. And I daresay he knows great guns too. All those diamond-mongers do. You will manage it easily one way or another, and the sooner you do it the better. It will put a spoke in Hafer's wheel, but not the one I mean to put. Ask Nickols what sort of a winter they are having out that way. It might make a great difference to us. They very seldom have it as ours is, generally the very opposite. We are having it mild, so the chances are that they have got a stinger. All Azof was frozen up, and a good bit of the Black Sea, the last time I came that way, and in London and Paris there had not been one day's skating. However, you keep ready."
This was the very thing I meant to do, as soon as ever I could get the chance, and pick a little money up, for it was not likely that I would let the Captain bear the charges. With many thanks to him, I took an omnibus, and had a short conversation with Nickols. As soon as he had heard my story, he approved of Strogue's suggestion, and quite agreed with him that we should both be ready to start as soon as we could do any good. At the same time he said that there was not much chance of any mischief for the present, and he doubted whether Hafer had even returned to his native country yet. It was much more likely that after his taste of the sins of high civilization, which must have gone far to destroy the zest for dull Caucasian villainies, he would hanker for another sparkling draught, before going home to be frozen up. And now he had Petheril with him, to guide and interpret all sweet baseness.
"Petheril! where have I heard that name? Not only from Strogue, but somewhere else," I exclaimed, but could not remember.
For the rest, Signor Nicolo knew little, except that his nephew Jack was getting the rough side of British enterprise. His last note was short without any sweetness, unless it were a waft for Rosa, to whom he was all the more faithful, while frozen.
"All been snowed up ever so long," he was tersely graphic with his middle finger blue; "nothing to do, and less to eat. How I wish I had only stopped away! Saved our lives with a goat that was frozen to death, but had to eat him stiff, for the fire was frozen too. Tried to think of mutton at Simpson's in the Strand; but imagination not warm enough. Snow is white, and emeralds green. Shall never see anything green again, unless it is gangrene in my toes. But you know that I never do complain."
"True enough," said the Signor, as he warmed the letter that he might not take a chill from it, "my nephew never does complain. But sometimes he exaggerates, and that made my daughter like him. I shall not let her know a word of this, or she might put some of the blame on me. I know that it is sure to be cold out there, when you go too far up the hillside. However, let us poke the fire up. You look rather chilly, Mr. Cranleigh. Rosa knitted him two pairs of mittens; but perhaps he put them by for keepsakes. Boys are so confoundedly romantic. But the wind has changed since yesterday. Strogue is the only man I know who understands the weather. He would warm poor Jack in no time."
"You had better send him out with another pair of mittens," I said, with some natural indignation. But the Signor had a pleasant gift of deafness to anything that twined against his twist.
"I shall see Strogue from time to time," he continued very comfortably; "there is a great deal of good in that man, when you get over his little oddities. And I am heartily glad to hear of his coming into property. Probably he will not drink now so freely; because it would be his place to pay for it. I know a fine fellow who was saved like that, when you would not have given twopence for his life. However, your course is clear, Mr. Cranleigh. Patience – what is it about the mulberry leaf? You should certainly write to St. Petersburg at once. Your brother-in-law, the Earl of Fitzragon, is sure to know some one who will do the needful for you. Or if not, I think I could manage it. You have been very lucky in falling in with Strogue, a man of great natural powers in his way, and very wide observation. Allow me; your coat is a little on the twist. You shall hear from me, if anything turns up. Ah, we want a little frost to kill the slugs, though we don't want to live upon frozen goat."