Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

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,

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."

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?"