CHAPTER LVII
BUT NOT IN VAIN
In recounting my little adventures – as I am begged sometimes to do – upon coming to this particular part my general practice is to stop, as if I had no more to say. Whereas it is only that I want to know in which of the persons concerned my friends appear to take most interest. And to my pride, more perhaps than to my credit, their first question always is, not "What became of you, George?" but "What became of Dariel?" And that is more than I could tell for many a long day afterwards.
When the door of her cell was beaten in, she came forth as in a dream or trance, without any wonder, or fear, or question, possessed by one purpose alone, – to share the fate of her dear father. In the gloom of the tunnelled rock she glanced at the tall form of her brother, but the light even there was enough to show that this was not the one she wanted. And he, having reason from very early days to give a wide berth to the feminine form, drew aside gladly for a strange young lady to go her way without compressing him.
For this young fellow, Prince Origen, the son of Imar and Oria, the child who escaped by his fall into the drift (when Marva's genuine Hafer perished), being substituted for him, and brought up with plenty of chastisement, and strict privations, and a candid absence of affection, had never been encouraged to think, or act, or even to feel for his poor young self.
What then could be expected of him, when in a moment at one blow the whole of his world was cut from beneath him, his own identity plucked away, and not even a quiet corner left for considering who he was, or how he came to be? In such a case is it surprising that his head went round so rapidly that he might fairly be said to have lost it? Instead of attending to his new-found father, he had simply stood staring at the prostrate form, till moans of despair from that inner cell were brought to his ear by the chilly draughts of rock. Thereupon he rushed in, and while I kept the entrance, he used his great strength to such purpose that his unknown sister glided past him and hurried to their unconscious father. And truly it was a great mercy for me, as well as a glory to this grand young fellow, that, instead of waiting longer where he was not wanted, he ran out at once to obtain fresh air, and get some light shed upon so many marvels. Rapid action and muscular exertion, for which he found ample cause at once, probably saved him from congestion of the brain, and certainly saved me from perforation of the heart.
For why should I make light of my defeats, any more than extol my victories, which latter it would be hard to do by reason of their nonentity? Those Ossets had performed an exploit declared to be impracticable by all the bravest sons of Wykeham during my generation. That is to say, they had cracked my skull, which was not a piece of biscuit china, but of solid and heavy metal, sounder I trow than its contents. And those who have studied the subject tell me that the thicker the pot is, which nature has provided for our poor brains to boil in, the more ticklish the job is to make good the splinters. What tinker can patch an enamelled saucepan? And a queer saucepan must our brainpan be, if, after all the smut shed round it and the slow smoke under it, any steam of self-conceit still has a puff to lift the cover. Let any man who thinks himself a wonder get a bit of his skull (too small perhaps for a chick to pick up for the good of his gizzard) crumbled in upon the brain he is so proud of; and if he has the luck to meet with a friend who can get it out again, when he comes to know his own name once more, will he count it worth remembering?
But as for myself – because perhaps I had never thought wonders of it – trouble beyond belief was needful ever to make it sound again. When I came to know the facts – as I did at last – it may appear a singular result, but as true as I sat up in bed, the salt tears ran into my soup so fast that they had to give me another basin. Not through any weakness, as an ill-natured man might fancy, but just because I was so happy to come home to a world where loving folk were living, and people better than myself, who wished to keep me with them.
Perhaps I ought not to talk about it, and yet it seems shabby and ungrateful not to say how much they had done for me. Here was my sister Grace, together with her husband Jackson Stoneman, rushing from the honeycomb of their blue moon among the soft Italian lakes into the "horrid Caucasus;" and bringing with them by telegraph to Surrey that wonderfully clever Dr. Hopmann, to whose skill I owe it that my reason was restored as good as ever it was before, and perhaps even better, for when it came back it had slept in the dew of humility.
But the doctor's humility was not increased, neither deserved it so to be. Because the most eminent physician at Tiflis, a Frenchman of vast renown, being called in at once by my host Sûr Imar, had pronounced all surgical operation futile, and declared that the owner of that battered brain might linger on for weeks, until inflammation kindled, but could never be better than an imbecile, even if he failed to satisfy science by ending as a raving madman.
"Shorge, my poy," were the first words passed by my ears into any superior part, "now you let your tongue come – very slowly. Put a good soup at the back of him, then put him in his house quietly, and go to shleep again."
"But you haven't finished cooking the partridges yet; and I want to have the one that is over."
This cupidity might scarcely seem to prove the possession of high intellect, yet Hopmann declares that the noblest utterance has never afforded him so fine a moral. "Zat Frenchman! Vot he know, to talk so quick? No fear for a prain with a memory like zat. Shorge, they kill bairds all the year round here. Go to shleep while I cook you four bartriches."
For another week he took good care to keep me in a state of body which wanted no motion of the mind inside it, nor even any quick heart-action, except at the sight of a knife and fork. But I feel ashamed to say how long the disabled body was the lord of all, and the nobler elements of our existence were not allowed even to speak to it.
"I have dishpelled his shister and his sweetheart off," I heard Dr. Hopmann say to some one whom I could not see, after he had attended to my straps one day. "Vot they want? I tell you no. I let you help, because you not care. His leetle prain stand nothing yet."
"But I do care, because it was all through me," the reply was in a sweet low voice, as I caught a glimpse of a fair young lady, dressed in black and retiring towards the door; "you may have got rid of his sister, doctor, but there is one you will never get rid of, so you may just as well give it up. How much longer? And I am sure it would do him good. Why only yesterday I knew – "
"Ach, you be off! I am ze master here. We are not in England, where ze vimmen rule the roast."
The lady departed hastily, as if she had found that over-true, while the German bolted the heavy door, and came back with a grin on his solid ruddy face.
"Am I never to see any one again," I muttered, for gratitude does not flourish and abound with a man who has spent two months on his back, "nobody but a confounded German, who bolts everybody out?"
"Zat is shoost vot I vant to hear. Shorge, zat proves how you come round. If you say, 'Dank you, Tochtor Hopmann, you have saved my life, I shall never forget it, how can I ever hope to recompensh you?' then I know that your prain is very weak, not fit for healthy Englishman's at all. But when you call him a 'confounded Sherman,' he know, he see, that the nation have come up, which is the most obstinate of nature not to die. All the same, you lie down again. The world go on very well without you, Shorge."
It came into my head that this was not quite right, and that as an honest man I ought to try to stop it; but torpor overpowered my sense of justice, as it has a right to do, when the case is not our own. "I only want to know who that lady was," I mumbled.
"Zat gal was nothing of your concerns," Hopmann replied, as he sat down by the table, and began to rub some cake tobacco he had sliced; "little English Fräulein of the name of Pezzeril. Zat bad fe-loe you knock worse than they knock you bring her from England with a heap of lies, and make sham to marry her; then he throw her off, and drive long black stick through her brother, because he haf desire of too moosh money. Englishmans often make mishtakes zat way."
"But I want to know about some one else, somebody different altogether, somebody who never thinks of money – "
"Ach zen, what fool can it be? Sometimes leetle gal not think of money; but boys do, vimmen do, men obliged to follow zem."
"Nonsense, doctor! The men set the example. But you know well enough what I want to know. I want to know where I am, and all about it."
The German came over and looked at me, and turned up one of my eyelids, and then did the same to the other, while he blew his smoke over his shoulder; and then he said "No fear. Shorge, you are a brick, and your prain go the way to belong to him. One leetle drop I give you shoost to clear both ears, and zen I tell you everyzing."
O double-dyed villain! With my usual faith, I accepted and made the most of his kind offering; and when I awoke again where was he? Perhaps in a boat at the mouth of the Rion, listening for the mill-wheels of a paddle-steamer to grind the slow grit of distance. For a telegram had reached Karthlos that the vegetable Earl, the good Melladew, lay at the last twist of our mortal coil internal, through travail on a bicycle with a County Council lecturer who had taken crab-apples to be synonymous with crabs.
When this abandonment was first brought home to me, my behaviour was not what it should have been. We are all too apt to suppose ourselves neglected, and doubly so when the system has been lowered, and the action of the heart restricted. To my shame I confess that a miserable pessimism – such as manhood should scorn on its own behalf, even without higher thoughts to lead it – invaded and began to vanquish me.
"What is the good of anything? All nature is cruelty; all life a curse. Every one for himself, and for none of us a God. Bitterness, and contempt of mankind, and a reckless fight for one's own hand, – those are the only solid things black destiny has left us. There is no choice before us. As for sense of duty, or the stuff we call honour, or patriotism, or the absurdity called love – "
"My dear young friend, my directions are precise and I cannot depart from them. You may talk as much as you like about flowers, or food, or sport, or the hills and valleys, or anything in fact that you know anything about. And while you do that, you may refresh yourself and grow stronger and stronger with these good things here." Sûr Imar, who had risen from behind a curtain, pointed to a table which was laden with fine import of exceedingly attractive fragrance. "On the other hand, if you insist upon wandering into difficult and unpleasant subjects, which no man has ever yet made head or tail of, my orders are to anticipate the inevitable injury to the poor head and enfeebled system by prompt administration of these two doses." My host laid his hands upon a large flat bottle nearly full, but with room below the cork to shake up a profoundity of horrors at the bottom, and a box of pills as big as bullets. But before he could approach me, my heart and stomach, and every other organ that can influence opinion underwent a fundamental change.
"I did not mean it. You must make allowance. Only think of what has been done to me. Sûr Imar, you are not a small minded man. You can see how a fellow gets driven to sing out. Emptiness must bear a great deal of the blame. I entreat you to look at the matter largely. I am ready to vow that the world is good, and everything contained in it, except – except that bottle, and that box."
"Hasty conversions are not worth much. But from you, George, we accept anything. I hope to confirm you in the better faith, with these little proofs that the world produces one or two things not entirely bad; and after that, somebody – well, never mind, unless you are inclined to be amiable."
The chief was now in full Lesghian dress, a very magnificent affair to look at, stately, and graceful, and impressive; but he proved himself worthy of apparel even grander, by putting away all disrelishing sights, and waiting upon me like a hospital nurse, until I could compass not a dainty morsel more, and then he said, "Shut your eyes, and perhaps you will have a little dream."
Was it a little dream? If so, I pray you tell me of a great one. Expecting nothing I lay back upon the quiet pillows, quite content, as young men are – for age destroys that comfort – to fancy that the world is good, and governed by a gentle Lord who waves a hand when we drop our eyes, that we may try to look up again. When the pride of strength is crushed, and violence of the will lies low, and a man is able to take himself at his proper insignificance, sometimes a little flow of calm glides in upon his nature, so that all is soft and bright, and his undulations multiply the silver and gold of heaven.
For behold, as I was gazing with a sweet and tranquil wonder, caring not to enquire even where I was, or who I was, but taking as it came to me the good-will of the time, and welcome of the friendly air – behold there came (as it were a vision, not to be enquired into, but accepted with the smiles of sleep) the form and face that had never left me, – though never could I see them clearly, – the presence without which my own presentment was all absence.
It was not for me to be certain yet, played with as I had been by visions that cry advantage of the brain, when even a pennyweight thereof is gone; neither was I clear enough to indulge in bright aerial doubt, as adolescent genius may. All I knew was "here I am;" and nature needed no more proof, when I had given myself a substantial pinch. "Is there any one here or there at all?" I seemed to say, but could not be sure of uttering or thinking anything.
Then, as sure as I am sitting here this day, the last thing that ever I could have believed was done concerning me and to me. Dariel came, and I knew nothing, except that here was Dariel. I feared to look direct, or even glance as if I meant it, being now little more than a lump of patches, with gingery tufts among them; and fool enough in my heart to think that love would be ashamed of me. I cannot say another word to teach any one who does not know, or do good to one who does. At such a time is there any man, or even any woman, who notices the tint of cheeks, the curve of lips, and eyebrows, the guidance of the breath, or even the quick and tremulous enquiries, and lingering watches of the eye? My love was looking at me thus, with a sad and piteous misgiving, whether there might be any hope that I was large of heart as she was, – for now she felt it trembling, – and yet with some cold arm of pride and maiden fear thrown round it, to hold it back from being offered till it had been asked for. And I was looking at my love, with nothing but abasement, that anything I had ever done could make her feel afraid of me; and yet with some victorious hope that it was because she loved me.
"Yes, I do, I do," she said, as if she saw the very thing I wanted to be sure of. "With all my heart I do. But how shall I make you believe it? After all that I have done, how can you ever believe it?"
This made me look about and wonder; for all I wanted was her voice, – to listen to its soft sweet tones, and feel that it was full of kindness, and know that it was meant for me; and then to see the smile perhaps that came so often with her words, and never failed to follow them if ever they forgot themselves.
"You are not to me as you were; you think me of no value now, because I have not been as true, and obstinate of truth against all signs and symptoms and testimony, as an English lady would have been. If you have in your mind decided so to estimate me, there is nothing more for me to say. Only that you must not think, because you will not let me show it, that I am base enough not to feel the wonderful things you have done for us. For me it is nothing, for I am not worth it; but for my father, and my brother, and for stopping cruel wickedness, – and now they have nearly killed you, so that you do not even know me."
She had tried to make her meaning clear, by keeping herself a good way off, and looking at the mountains more than me, and speaking as if her words came one by one from some type-writer; until the thought of my mishap and long disablement brought her near. Then I saw how she was trembling, and withdrawing her hands to hide it, and striving to make her eyelids proof against the shower inside them. With that the power of my love arose, and I said, "Dariel, look at me."
"It is impossible any more, after all that I have done."
Even while she spoke she did the impossible thing to such effect that I partook of the miracle. It seemed to me, as I met that soft deep gaze of boundless love and hope, as if Heaven had now so gifted and endowed me with the richest wealth, that humble as my powers were, henceforth I could do anything.
"I am afraid, I am afraid," she whispered, as she saw my joy. "Love of my heart, it is not right that you should care for me any more. It is right for me to love you, and to be your slave for ever. But for you to hate me, to hate the Dariel you loved once, because she so requited you. Here you have been worse than dead, worse than dead for weeks and weeks, after saving all our lives! Through whom? Through me, that could not trust you, but measured you by my paltry self. But now I know all from that sly traitor who sent the letter to her wicked brother. Alas, how wicked I am, too, when he is dead, and she – oh, George, I ought to hate her, but I cannot, because of her misfortunes! Tell me, George, do you feel like that? Do you feel that you ought to hate me, because I have destroyed your poor, poor mind?"
"Well, perhaps I shall, when you have done it. But not till then, my Dariel. And I think that Dariel owes me something for her compliment to my intellect."
"Hush! My orders are to keep you perfectly quiet and stupid. I like that very much, because it appears so soft and easy. But I must not take advantage, – hush! You want to talk; it is not right."
She laid one sweet soft finger on my lips, and when I closed them, obedience had its due reward; such as is well known to those who have been true and faithful, through every doubt and trouble, to the one they love better than themselves.
"I am the master now," she said, "and I shall make the love to you, and you will have to put up with it; because you are so helpless, and because I have robbed you of all chance of doing it to me, when you could. But one thing I shall insist upon, – you must not want to know anything about yourself, or even me, or anything that you can think of, until your poor mind restores itself."
Then I said a thing worthy of Tom Erricker, "I will leave myself in Dariel's hands, if she will take me into her arms sometimes."
* * * * * * * * *
Being so treated I should have shamed England among races who think well of her, if I had allowed a mere knock on the head to dwell too much upon my mind. Strogue came to look at me, and spoke with his usual lofty confidence.
"My son, you have done well and wisely. I fell among a tribe on the borders of Thibet, who make a point of taking out a piece about the size of half a crown from the skull of every strong male infant. The folly of the earth goes out, and the wisdom of the air comes in, according to their traditions. But I was not allowed to verify their views, and I found more vigour than wisdom there, for they kicked me over their border. But you may hope the best. Who knows? You may begin to say something good at last, and we shall know how you got it."
This was all very well for him, who had not received a single scratch, and was living now in clover. Let good friends try things for themselves, and comfort us with their own distress. "Optimism" is a lovely gift, and comes direct from Heaven, chiefly when the sun shines on ourselves. But Strogue never listened to argument. "You are the luckiest fellow," he proceeded, "that I have ever come across. Here you have had your sister crying over you for days and days, putting her husband on the shelf, although he is made of money; and then the best doctor in the world, the only one that ever did any good; and now you have the loveliest girl ever seen waiting upon you hand and foot; and more than all without a bit of pain, without even knowing it, you are made a wise man for the rest of your life, at the age of six-and-twenty. Stop out here, my boy, stop out here. Your father will have heaps of money now, from your brother's grand discovery. Sûr Imar has made up his mind to keep 'Farmer George' for the coffee-growing; you can shoot all sorts of mountain game, and people the Terek and the Kur with salmon, and winter at Tiflis or Patigorsk."
As yet I was not in a clear condition to care where I was, or even to enquire at all about it, so long as the one my whole heart looked for came for it to dwell with every day. But gradually (I know not how, and probably none can tell me) a power, almost as strong as love of the finest and sweetest of our kind, began to grow in my heavy nature. Everything is now explained, even when a man knocks his brother on the head, as a piece of hereditary tendency. To enter that plea appears to me to cast an ungraceful reproach upon those who have gone before us and done their best according to their lights which we disparage, and without receiving any credit for the wonderful goodness we derive from them. Let me blame no one but myself for that unreasonable pining and hankering for my native land.
"Look at the glory of the sky, look at the mountains and the woods," several people said to me, who never looked twice at them when they could smell their dinner; "look at the grand peaks robed with snow! Can you see anything like that in England?"
"No. But I can feel the things I see there," I used to answer meekly; "there may be little grandeur in them, but I love the things I know."
Moreover it came into my jarred and worried mind, that the gentle satisfaction – the only solid form ever taken by human happiness – is seldom or perhaps never to be found, when nature is too great around us. We see perpetual change of form and colour, and a fleeting majesty, and possibly our puny selves are incited to hopeless rivalry. Or even if there be nought in that, the sense of danger and wild elements and powers altogether beyond our control is at enmity with placid thought and the quiet course of duties; so that it is a sweeter thing, at any rate for an Englishman, to watch the plough on a gentle slope, or the cows in a meadow with their hind legs spread ready for the milking-pail, or the harvest-waggon coming to the rick, than to gaze at all the rugged grandeur of the Alps or Caucasus.
"My dear friend," Sûr Imar said, when I tried to make him see it so, "you were not born here, but I was; and that makes all the difference. I see no more of majesty, or menace, or sublime oppression, when I look at a peak growing up against the sky, than you find in a tall poplar-tree. And behold how calm is your Captain Strogue, a man of the world, who takes nothing amiss."
"Because he has no strict sense of right. He will do what he thinks honourable, which every man judges by his own side-lights. Forgive me, Sûr Imar, for speaking so. You have your own standard, and you keep to it; and it is as much higher than mine, as Kazbek is than a Surrey hill."
"There you are wrong," he answered gently; "the proof is always in the practice. And I am proving myself as selfish, and as thoroughly ungrateful, as if I had always been prosperous. George, you know too well what I mean. Through you alone, and your wonderful" – it would not become me to repeat all he said – "I now have not only my life and my rights, but also a very grand son of my own, whose nature is that of the sweet one I destroyed; and soon he will help me in the work I hope to do. Yet I am so mean and small, that I grudge you the one love of your life, if you insist upon taking her away."
For a moment, as I looked at him, and perceived the sparkle of tears in his eyes, although his voice was clear and firm, it came home to my heart that here was a contest of generosity, wherein it would be ignoble of me not to show some valiance. But a sense of yearning, and perpetual loneliness, and an empty life, coupled with a doubt of my duty to the Power which has ordained true love, proved too much for my nobility.
"If you really think, Sûr Imar," I began with a dismal voice, "if you can reconcile it with your duty as a father to keep your dear child all to yourself – for she has vowed, I may tell you that, fifty times she has pledged herself never to have any one but me – and of course I know that I am poor." This was very mean of me, and I never meant to say it; but love is mean, as well as grand.
"Then let us settle it this way," he answered, with a proud paternal smile: "I have been so long in England that I will follow English usages. Let us leave it to the lady. I will send for Dariel, and she shall choose between us."
"I pray you not. It would be such a pain and trial to her."
As I spoke, he looked at me with a warmth of true affection.
"George, you love her even more than her own father does," he said; "you deserve a decision in your favour. But I doubt whether you will get it. If you do, I resign without conditions. But poverty there need be none, unless you insist upon it. Mr. Stoneman, your brother-in-law, entreats me to accept £10,000 for the valley of St. Winifred. Three railway companies there are, according to his account of it, railing and raving at one another for the possession of that part of Surrey. They all declare that such a line can never pay for making, but they would spend their last shilling upon it, rather than see either of the others there. Mr. Stoneman is in what you call the bench, the chair, the throne of the wealthiest of the three; and if he can make purchase of that track, the rivals will have no chance to pass. I have felt much scruple about accepting so much for land that cost me so little; the justice of the matter is not clear to me as a stranger to the English equity."
"Oh, Sûr Imar," I exclaimed with great surprise, "the largest and noblest of all the Angels, if he got the whip-hand of a Railway Company, would be compelled by self-respect to take it out of them, to their last penny."
"So I have been told on every side," the Lesghian chief replied with calm decision; "but I waited for you to confirm it, George. I perceive that they are the civilised form of the bandit. Well, that sum which seems considerable to us, though in England you think nothing of it, will pass at once to my Dariel, as the strict justice of the case demands. Of that she knows nothing, and if she knew it, her decision would be just the same. But here she comes, as I arranged."
The chief window of the sitting-room to which I was now promoted faced westward over the table-rock on which the great house stood; and further to the west, beyond deep chasms and dark precipices, arose a mighty Tau, the rival of Kazbek in this eastern range, and mantled with perpetual snow. This being flushed with ruddy thrills from the glances of the evening sun shed a rich tint through the room, as if the rugged mountains vied with heaven to bring their sweet Princess a tribute of bright roses. Then as she passed the black walnut panels, which looked as old as the ark itself, I took it for a good omen that she wore a dress which I had praised; not such a thing as we see here, but graceful, elegant, flowing softly, docile, ductile, and yet expressive, simple though full of harmonious contrasts, zealous – if there were any hope of that – to enhance the beauty it contained, as a great poet's thoughts are clothed sometimes in language that transcends themselves.
She glanced at me as I rose, for now I could stand once more without giddiness, and by that passing glance she told me that she knew the time was come, when her long choice must be made. Then she went on to her father's side, and took both his hands and looked at him, as if there was nobody else to look at.
Over her bowed head he gave me a smile, which I interpreted – "Behold the vanity of human wishes! Be satisfied with Nature's laws. A dear child loves her father best. Young men may long to rob him; but the Lord forbids it. I grieve for you. But how could it be otherwise?"
There was nothing more for me to say. I made the best bow of which a true-born British back is capable; and with all the dignity left in me by the beating of my foolish heart, I walked away from both of them towards a little door which opened on a quiet gallery, where I might sit down and think it over with myself alone.
But before I could turn the handle, trembling arms were round my neck, and a quivering breast arose to mine, and a face that shone with rolling tears looked up for me to comfort it, and sweet lips whispered close to mine – "My love, could you believe it?"
Then I felt myself all right again. The strength that had been shattered by big Osset clubs, and long prostration, lonely wanderings of bloodless brain, feeble doubts of woman's truth, and the crush of furious doctors, all flowed back, and filled my heart and life with the joy of this great love.
I led his beautiful daughter back to Sûr Imar, and I said – "You see."
"Yes, I see," he answered softly. "And there is no more to be said."