CHAPTER XLII
FAREWELL, SMILER
In proof of the critical, exacting, and thankless nature of the noble Briton, my father used to tell a little story savouring perhaps of the fable. Three excellent gardeners and botanists, representative of our "three islands" – as a learned Frenchman calls them – were searching some torrid mountain slope, as travellers for a great London nursery. When ready to drop with heat and thirst, for they had missed their supply of water, they chanced upon a vine in a sheltered spot, bearing three fine bunches of ripe grapes. Like good men and just, they tossed for choice; Paddy coming last, as his destiny decrees. His bunch was gone in no time, skin, stones, and stalk, while John Bull proceeded with a calm and steady munch. Sandy, however, stood contemplating his, – the finest cluster of the three, – holding it against the burning sky, with its dewy purple glistening like amethysts of ice. "Arrah, then, why don't ye ate it?" cried Pat; "if ye can't, it's meself that knows the bhoy as can." "Hoot, toots, mon, a' was joost conseederin'," the Scotchman replied, as he held it out of reach, "what a bonny boonch she wud a' been, gin I had only had the loock to come along aboot twal' weeks bock wi' my theening scissors."
Perhaps I was not quite so hard to please as that. But instead of being grateful for the many strokes of luck vouchsafed in my present strait, I did nothing but grumble at all that went amiss and growl at the heavy roll and everlasting lurch of time. However, let every man act according to his nature, or his own perversion of it; but I was not going to be beaten thus. It would never do to leave the chance of obtaining some news from St. Petersburg to a casual traveller, like Strogue's friend. I must try to learn a little more about that. Therefore, as I would not go to Lord Fitzragon, it came into my mind that really I owed some amends to Lord Melladew; not for the peppering of his spats (for I had not even used a gun that day), but for my tolerance of such a stupid business, and the absence of wrath in my sorrow for it. The Earl had employed his lame time in writing a fine poem upon Russia, which had received a little private circulation; and a cultivated Russian, who had seen the poem, pronounced it the finest thing in the English language. Without going to that extent, I knew that his lordship was now a "Persona grata" (which means properly a welcome mask) at the Court of the Northern Universe.
When I met him at his club by appointment, for he was still in some terror of his mother, he showed himself as cordial as any young man who operates mainly with his intellect can be. "We never have mutton-chops here," he said, glancing along me, as if I were a hedgerow, with the side-look that comes from living always in a street; "but the view from the window is pleasing, George; and I can show you spots quite historical."
"Much obliged. But history is no good without age; and our own affairs are no good, when they get it."
He saw that I was going to be a plague, and he sank into a gimcrack velvet chair, which was handicapped too heavily, even with such weight as his, and he waved his hand for me to do the like; but I found a thing like a music-stool having more satisfactory understanding.
"How I have longed to be down your way!" Conversation with him reminded me always of holding a skein of tissue silk for a lady to wind while you bob your thumbs. "Any sign of spring, George? Willow catkins? Elder-leaves?"
"No, nor yet younger leaves," I answered gently. "Lots of frost to come yet, I daresay. Lovely time for fruit-growers – cut their noses off in May."
"I hope not. That bugbear must have been exploded. If I come down to see the budding year, dear George, could you – I mean, could you tell me where to go? I want to write a paper for the R.H.S. I began one on the Kentish pear and apple bloom last year, with a County Council lecturer who came down that he might be certain which was which. But the wind chopped round suddenly, and we got snowed up, and naturally all the fruit failed that season. But the year before that, there would have been a splendid crop, except for that gale on the 1st of September; I daresay you remember it. When I went to make an estimate of the saving to the country by growing its own fruit, with my usual luck I could find no proper specimens. The walks were so strewn with green fruit that my feet were too tender to get along among the heaps, without two men with brooms in front of me; and even so I could scarcely get upstairs that night. But how is our good friend Bandilow?"
"Becoming rather nervous, I am afraid. His family did their best to keep it from him about that other poor grower towards Godalming, who made that frightful application of his gooseberry-knife. But poor Bandilow had a sharpish tiff with his mother-in-law, as he could not see his way to keep her; and the cruel woman sent him full account of the inquest, with the lunatic doctor's evidence, and the balance-sheet of several years' jam-boiling, underlined in crimson ink. He told all the parish at the Bell-tap on Friday, that the only plantation he should ever make now must be in a box, and grow up into a stone."
"I hope not, I trust not most heartily," said the Earl, brushing his eyes, for he was very tender-hearted. "But let us turn to more cheerful subjects. I feel sadly upset about it. Let us have a glass of port."
After that he appeared a little stronger, and gladly undertook to forward any letter of mine to a friend of his who was attached to our embassy in Russia, and he felt no doubt that as soon as Sûr Imar appeared in that capital, it would be placed in his hands. Without losing an hour I wrote my letter, and left it in his charge, for there could be no harm in being too early, whereas it would be fatal to all my hopes, if I were even an hour too late.
My letter was short, and not too cordial; for really, when one came to reflect upon all the circumstances, my Lesghian friends had scarcely allowed me fair play, or so much as a chance to right myself. No man can be sure what he would have done, in a case which has not hit him in the breast, although we are very fond of talking so. Nevertheless, when I put a bit of spirit into my own consideration of myself, I could not help thinking that I would have given any one who fell into a sudden cloud of dust with me, more opportunity to clear the dirt away, and a fairer chance of asking from whose chimney it had come.
For weeks and weeks, I kept on waiting, looking out for anything that might throw light on the whereabouts of my wandering friends, but obtaining disappointment only. The mildness of the winter continued here; but a bitter frost prevailed in Eastern Europe, and the Danube was frozen over at the Iron Gates. Strogue heard from his friend at St. Petersburg that the ice on the Neva was six feet thick, and they could scarcely keep the railways open. And Signor Nicolo was compelled to hope all he could about his nephew Jack, and comfort his daughter Rosa with tales of a cat who lived three months in a snow-drift, and the horse who got into a hay-rick near Durham, and ate his way out again when the thatch began to drip. But he told me in confidence that he never was more pleased to have a bad leg than when Jack's mother came to see him. For sweethearts, being young, may shortly take up with another; but a widow with one child has locked up all her reason in him.
However, there was this advantage in the long suspense and waiting, that it gave me time to make all preparations leisurely, and get the money ready for a costly expedition. The cash I could have had from several quarters; Nickols, Strogue, Tom Erricker, and Stoneman, now beginning to recover from his troubles, all in the kindest manner offered to advance me a good round sum. But wonders, when they once set in, are like boys playing leap-frog. Over each other's back they vault, and then down they drop with hand on knee for a taller one to top them. And surely now came the tallest one that ever rolled in at a tithe-barn door, or struck the lintel of a giraffe-house.
Hitherto I have felt throughout that every word must be believed exactly as I tell it, not on the faith of my character only, but from internal evidence. This has made me careless perhaps; but now I mean to be very strict, confining every vocable to its first intention, and every numeral to its precise notation. For if any other person had related as follows, my interjections probably would have made him knock me down!
The days were beginning to pull out a little, and the wind was gone round to the east – as it always does, when too late to be of service for skates, or wild ducks, or golden plovers, but in good time to kill all bloom and foliage – and having had my bit of bacon in my Privy Council Office (as Grace now called the harness-room), I was dwelling on my bad luck; than which there is no messuage more insanitary for any man to inhabit. When in came my brother Harold, with his hands in his pockets, and his usual slouch, and soft melodious whistle. I had wanted him many times, when I could not find him, especially to show him to Sûr Imar; but now I could see little chance of turning him into any value.
"Not fool enough to want a fiver, I suppose," he said without offering to shake hands, for if ever there was a careless fellow about forms, here you had him.
"To have one to spare is what you mean to say. If a man is a fool who wants a fiver, I know a very clever fellow, who is a great fool always. But he can't get it out of me. Nulla bona."
"George," said my brother in that slurring tone, which means that any care of pronunciation would be wasted on the muff before you; "you can have some, if you like. But don't let me force it upon you, George. There are several other fellows after me."
"In that case," I answered, simply for his benefit not my own – for I did not expect to see anything worth counting; "that old tobacco-jar is empty; out with it, and let me put the top on. Is it from the sneezers, and the Local Board?"
"Who ever got a penny from a Local Board? If I could invent a machine to do that, I should beat the great man in America. My sneezers, as you call them, will be household words, when reason has a voice in sanitation. But this new discovery is of a million times the value, because it is for the destruction of mankind. It will kill a thousand men, before they can call upon the Lord; and there will be no pieces left for the Devil. I had scruples at first, because of the wholesale carnage, and some of the victims might deserve to live; but the kindest-hearted man alive, and the chairman of five or six humane societies, ridicules that objection, and has taken shares. At the first blush it may seem too strong a measure; but when you know that it puts an end to war, you are reconciled to a few harsh moments."
There is a certain sound, enjoyed more often by bankers and brewers than by delvers of the earth, a silken harmony of thoughtful notes, silvery and sensitive, suggestive also of golden tones yet mellower. Seldom, alas! do we find it thrilling through the music of our spheres. Once heard, it is never forgotten; and now I heard it murmuring in my tobacco-jar, as it flowed from the lyre of my brother's fingers.
"Hold hard!" I shouted. "What the deuce are you about? You villain, you have been forging! I was sure you'd come to that. But I doubt whether even Free-Trade makes it honest."
"Nice gratitude," he answered, "when it is all for you. One would think that you alone had the gift of making money. But it would take you a long time to make that, my boy. Now help yourself. Don't be shy."
"Harold, you have worked hard for this." As I spoke, I regarded my elder brother with respectful sympathy, such as he never had inspired until now; "and I cannot perceive that I have any right to make a hole in your hard earnings. Do you think that I would do anything so mean? But how much do you suppose you have dropped into that jar? If you heartily desire to make me a little present – "
"Perhaps there may be about two-fifty there. They got up a company, you see, to work my patent Slaughter-ball. That makes everything straightforward. The investors throw in, to get other people's money, and it is their own look-out about keeping their own. But peg away, George; peg away."
"You are indeed a noble fellow." I spoke heartily and generously; when the facts come to this, between two brothers, how can there be either grudge or greed? "But you would only run through every penny, my dear brother. The wisest thing probably would be for me to secure for you some five-and-twenty."
"You had better take larger views. But I leave you altogether to your own devices." He jerked a chair over, and put his heels upon the hob, and whistled to the modest fire, with his back toward me.
"Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five," I said, "thank you heartily, my dear fellow, I call it very kind of you." He gave me a nod, without stopping his whistle, and that made me look into the jar again.
"Well, there does seem to be a jolly lot. I have a great mind to go a little further down. In all probability, you would only waste it, Harold." He gave me two nods this time, as if to say – "I will not deny it, if you take that view."
"Fifty would be quite as well, while one is about it. Forty, forty-five, fifty. Ah! you may not see me again for months, my dear fellow; even if I ever come back alive. I am going to the most dangerous part of the world, where they stick a thing into you they call a kinjal. Harold, we have always been fond of one another, although we are so different. Well, fifty then; but only as a loan, mind."
"I tell you what," he said, turning round and looking at me with resolute authority, "I am your elder brother, George, and know more of the world than you do. In fact, you are nothing but a farmer; and even the Government, stupid as it is, can make game of a farmer. Now if you don't take a hundred pounds, as a gentleman and a brother should, you may go to the Devil, and how shall I ever see you again, while you are there? So take your choice, and have done with it."
How could I part with him on such terms? And it struck me suddenly, that if he were going to knock over all the human race, or at least the non-British branches of it, nothing could stand him in better stead than to be able to say that the first-fruits of his discovery had been used to set a true Briton upon his legs. With a grateful heart I left him at least a hundred and fifty pounds of his money, reminding him at the same time of that duty towards our parents, which he alone now would have the privilege of fulfilling. He promised to leave at least fifty pounds for that; and then he went into particulars about his "astrapebolia," as he called his discovery for visiting mankind with a human touch from heaven. This I could not understand, and therefore make no pretence to remember it; for my brain is not mathematical. Only I know that he pleased me by a promise that he would always keep behind the guns, when he sent them into action.
He went away suddenly as he came, being always of the comet order, but as lovable as the evening-star, whenever you could get hold of him. And when I had clapped a patent padlock on the first product of his genius, a dark terror seized me that my only brother, so endeared to small people like me, by his largeness, might be tempting Providence too far, and meddle too freely with fulminates, just as they began to pay. I longed to write to him upon the subject; but no post ever knew where to find him.
Then I was suddenly called away from vague apprehensions to perils at arm's-length, and even closer than that – blows eye to eye, and cheek by jowl, and tooth to tooth, such as a peaceful Englishman would never face, if he could help it; but must take as the will of the Lord, when they come. Sith it will no better be; he is sorry for himself, and does his best to make his enemies share his dejection.
In token I need only say that when I was going on peacefully, sore at heart with outraged love, but too proud to allow it to be mentioned, and girding myself for the work of the spring and that duty to the earth which a farmer must discharge even in despair of recompense – a dirty yellow envelope was put into my hand, as I came home with two faithful horses as tired with dragging as I was with guiding, but all of us ready for the manger. I leaned against Smiler's sweaty chest, which looked as if lathered for shaving, and read the words which took me away from all smiling operations, almost forever.
"Sudden news. Fear to be too late. All gone crooked. Tidal train to-morrow. Meet me at Charing, 12.30, all packed. Bat Strogue."
Short notice indeed for so long a journey, and not a word said about passports. But I concluded that the old traveller would see to that matter for both of us; and having long since prepared my friends, and arranged home-affairs for a sudden departure, I was almost glad to exchange suspense for even headlong action. My father was kind enough to say that he would do the best he could without me; and Stoneman would even have come with me, if his business could have done without him. My mother was just what a mother should be, faithful, tearful, hopeful, and my sister Grace implored me to forgive sayings and doings on her part, which I had long ago forgotten. Everybody went on as if I had no chance of being seen alive again, and yet expressed a world of confidence in the care which Heaven would take of me.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE LAND OF MEDEA
In the days of yore, whenever any new pestilence or distemper fell from heaven upon the sons of men, the first thing to agitate the human mind was a strong and bitter controversy. Chiron, the son of Philyra, and Melampus of Amythaon, instead of attacking the common foe, fell pell-mell upon one another, maintaining or spurning their various doctrines – contagion, infection, epidemism, conduction by water, by earth, by wind – until they were driven to run away headlong, or lie down forever. Such questions surpass our understanding. But one malady there is, contagious, infectious, endemic also as well as epidemic, grandly contemptuous of pill and bolus, sticky as a limpet, while as slimy as a slug, and the name of this blessed disease is – "The Blues." And the beauty of it is, that everybody who has got it believes that he alone of all the people in the neighbourhood is free from every atom of a symptom of it.
As his luck, or perhaps mine, would have it, Strogue was in the blues, when he came to Charing Cross. He received me with a grunt, and would say nothing, except to be down upon the cabman, and the porters, and shove his way along as if there were no English language. This is a very useful way to go to work, whenever you can be quite certain that you are the biggest fellow in the place, with no one to try to think otherwise. But unless there is money right and left behind it, at a big railway station it does not succeed.
"You are not among the niggers yet," I said, being always polite to everybody, and indignant at not being allowed to speak, while his voice rang along the glazing. But he deigned me no answer, not even a glance, but shouted out "Third Class! Where the devil are you driving to? Have you never seen the Chairman of this Line?" The porters were too wide-awake to do anything but grin, and touch their caps ironically, and then he said "First Class," whereupon they all believed him.
Not a word however would he say to me, though we had all the carriage to ourselves at starting; so I took him at his humour, and went to the other window, and drowned all my anxieties in "The Money Market." Possibly his heart was heavy about the landlady of the "London Rock," or the barmaid thereof, or the daughter of the Boots, if a maiden there were in that capacity; or perhaps a traveller even so well-seasoned could not bid adieu to his native land once more, without emotions honourable to his head and heart alike. Then the contagion of his low spirits began to spread around me, like the influenza vapour; and if he had tried to talk, I should not have cared to answer.
Such tacit respect and mutual affability of silence do more to endear two heavy-witted Britons to one another, than a folio of flippant words. Strogue was kindly pleased with me, and I thought well of Strogue, when our lofty regard for the sea-sick passengers, as we had a rolling time of it, opened, as with one accord, the valves of communication. "Give us a light, old chap," said the Captain, as he clapped me on the back; "come out of the sulks, and talk a bit."
After all the temper he had shown, this was rather ludicrous; but I let him put his own interpretation on it, for he was in this predicament for my sake, quite as much as to please himself. But strange as it may seem, we both avoided all important subjects, until the question of route compelled us to consider them. Then I told him that money need not stop us, only mine must be put into proper form in Paris; and then we discussed the whole question.
It seems that he had ordered this sudden start by reason of something that came to his knowledge only on the previous afternoon. In St. Paul's churchyard he encountered quite by chance, according to his view of it, a man well known through his travels in Central Asia, and most interesting account of them. Strogue took him back to the "London Rock," and there entertained him hospitably, for a traveller has generally acquired the power of feeding upon any wayside bench. By and by the two great wanderers came to a subject pretty sure to be handled by them, but never with unanimity. Strogue thought highly of the classic charms of the fair Ionian ladies; but Sir Robert B. called them a brown and skinny lot, and declared that there was not a girl of any Hellenic race fit to walk beside a maiden he had seen at Athens, not more than a month ago, and who was said to be of old Caucasian lineage. Knowing that the ladies of the Caucasus are not much addicted to travel, the Captain began to enquire into this, and although he had never met Dariel, and had seen Sûr Imar at a distance only, his friend's account left him in no doubt whatever that the pair he had been so vainly seeking, by letters to half the capital towns of Europe, were in Athens at the end of February. Not only did the description tally with all he heard from me and Nickols, and that scoundrel of a Hafer, but also Sir Robert, while making enquiries about the beautiful stranger, had been told by some facetious Greek that she was worthily named indeed, the daughter of Himeros, of love, of passion, of delight, and yearning. And again he had learned at the hotel, where they were staying, that their journey to St. Petersburg had been prevented, or at any rate deferred, through the extreme severity of the winter surpassing any season within memory. This I could well understand, for I knew Sûr Imar's dread of bad weather, not on his own account but lovely Dariel's.
Father and daughter were still at the ancient centre of civilization, when Sir Robert left it, and their intentions were unknown to him. But he was inclined to think, from certain purchases which he saw them making, that they were more likely to be on their way home than to proceed to Russia now, and if so there could be little doubt that they would make their way first to Constantinople. Therefore it seemed to be our proper course, though beset with much doubt and perplexity, to betake ourselves at the utmost speed to the Turkish capital, and try to intercept them there, or if too late for that, to follow them. For everything now would depend upon time. In a few more weeks the golden sun would have captured the mountain parapets, and begin to swing open with summer light the bars of the steepest citadels; and then if Sûr Imar were a day before us, what chance of overtaking him? And his foes were not likely to hold much parley, when once they found him in their hands.
Out upon it! Who could imagine such a crime overlooked by the Power that rules the world? A loyal confidence possessed me for a while, that Heaven would protect its noblest produce, the few who ever think of looking up to it, from the venom of its abject spawn.
"It will never do to take it in that light," said Strogue, though he always attributed his own escapes, which had been manifold as well as narrow, to celestial perception of his merits; "no, you must never trust to that cock's fighting. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't. And where are you then without your revolver? And one thing you overlook altogether; setting aside all holy motives – which those fellows take revenge to be – when a savage wants your property, does he dwell upon your character?"
"Then they ought to be all exterminated. What are the lives of a thousand savages, in comparison with that of one great good man, who lives only for their benefit?"
"If you kill them, what good can he do them?" Strogue asked, being always more captious than logical. "Imar is in front of his age; and the age makes martyrs of fellows of that kind and leaves the future to make saints of them, if their ghosts turn up, within memory. Our business is to act, and not to argue. Now look to your luggage, my boy, and the most important part of it is firearms."
So we took our course along the chord of Europe by abominably slow lines, whenever there were any; and at last without any line at all. It gave an Englishman the tingles to see everybody crawling, as if time were a tortoise with the gout, and the hours the produce of a coprite beetle, which he slowly travels backward to bury. The slowest man on our farm, after eating two days' dinner, was a swallow with a nest to feed, compared to any one I saw throughout the east of Europe.
There was a little more vigour at Constantinople, and plenty of fellows with fine pegs to stir, if they could only see the use of it. But as for any briskness, and punctuality, and eagerness to get a job and do it, the loafer who stands by the horse-trough on the green in any Surrey village would have his hands out of his pockets and stand on his head, before their eyes were open. And yet we are told every day of our lives that it serves the British farmer right to starve, because he has no activity!
We had spent two days without any possibility of avoiding it in Paris, and but for Strogue it would have taken me twice as long to make the needful arrangements; and now we lost four days in the City of the Sultan, making search for our friends in all probable quarters, and procuring what was indispensable. Without obtaining any further clue, we set forth on the 10th of April, by a poor little steamer very badly found, for a place called Poti at the mouth of the Rion, one of the four chief rivers of the Caucasus, formerly known as the Phasis, whence the bird, whose lustre shames the glories of the golden fleece.
Strogue had shown in very early days the quick force of his genius by running away from school, and defying pursuit, and beginning earnest life in a wherry. "You are picking up the lingoes very smart," he said, as we churned the muddy waters; "but I can't stand affectation, George, and I won't have the old Ark called the Argo. Besides, she never came here in her life; she drew a deal too much water. She went to pieces on Ararat, I tell you, and Satan took her upper deck and put it on top of Elbruz. Why? Why, that people might go against the Bible, as they are only too glad to get an excuse to do. And he put about a story that she grounded upon Elbruz, which she could not have done from the shape of it. No, no. Holy Writ is what I stick to, and as long as I do that, the Lord will always stick to me. I won't hear another word about it."
However, though he would not have the Argo even mentioned, he made no objection to the golden fleece; in fact he confirmed it, having seen some gold in the upper waters of the Rion; and as for Medea, when I told him all her story, her treachery, incantations, murder of her brother and even her own babes, he became quite excited, and vowed that she must have come to life again as the Princess Marva. Upon that I begged him to tell me all he knew about that extraordinary lady, for I had never understood from her brother's description that her nature was particularly fierce and unforgiving, though she certainly behaved in a cold and distant manner, when she informed him that his wife was gone. But that might arise from nothing more than the sense of the wrong she herself had received through her faithless husband Rakhan. And would a ruthless woman feel such emotion at the casualty to another person's child?
"Not knowing, can't say," the Captain answered in his favourite short style; "but you must remember that I have not heard that story as he told it. And another thing, he was not there to see it; for he was far away settling that other fellow's hash, – and his own too by being in such a blessed hurry. But I have got a very shrewd suspicion, my boy; you will laugh at it, I dare say, and there certainly are some things that pretty nearly knock it on the head. What do you say to this? Suppose it was her own child that was killed, and that she contrived to change them, fearing that she would never have another, and so would lose her position altogether. For among those Ossets, as I have been told, the childless wife of the chief must eat humble-pie at every corner, and is apt to be superseded after six or seven years. And she might have other motives too for getting Imar's heir into her possession."
"The idea is ingenious, but most improbable," I replied after thinking for a moment. "Not that she could not have done it, for there was no one to observe her, except her own nurse, whom she could easily silence. But her own conduct now proves that it cannot have been so. Shows that she had not gone for that game, I mean. They may be a lawless lot, everybody says so; but even your Medea would never send a man to marry his own sister."