THE RUBY CROSS
In all matters of love there is a vast amount of luck. That there is of
course in all human affairs, as far as we can interpret them; but what I
mean is a larger element of luck than in any of our other miseries;
unless it be the still finer conflict, and far more enduring one, for
money. Any one might have concluded, as I did, that it was all up now
with every little hope I might have nursed of winning the favour of
Dariel. Yielding to a sudden rush of jealousy, I had quitted her hastily
and almost rudely, and broken my appointment with her father. It was
true that her calmness and perfect indifference were enough to provoke a
saint--if he ever falls in love; but how could she know that? Though
certainly she ought to know it, if she ever thought of me in at all the
proper vein. "What a fool I am! It will serve me quite right, if she
never even condescends to glance at me again," I thought, as I wandered
about in the dark, after going home at a great pace upon the wings of
rage; "and just as I was getting on so nicely too! What is the use of my
going to see that Nickols? A rogue no doubt, almost sure to be a rogue,
for sticking a foreign tail on to his name. No doubt he cheats them of
their diamonds and rubies. That is why he wants to see this cross. Worth
a lot of money, I dare say. What an idiot I must be, to even think of
that, when I remember where it has been so often! Oh, Dariel, Dariel!
When I first saw your beautiful, enchanting, ravishing,
idolatrous--idolised I mean, confound it all--who could have imagined
that I should ever hold this badge of your faith--this symbol of your
own high-minded, lofty-souled archetype--pish, there is no word to come
near her! But, oh, shall I never come near her again?"
To cut short all discussion, I found myself in a frightful state both of
head and of heart, and ready to do anything to bring matters to the
crisis. Accordingly I said to Slemmick, who was in his right mind now,
"Just look after things to-day; I'm obliged to go to London." He
grinned, and I knew that he would be a tiger to any man lying down under
a rick.
As yet my conceptions about jewellers, diamond-merchants, and the like
were little more than a confusion of the Arabian Nights and Bond Street;
so that it seemed to be quite a mistake when the policeman in a little
dingy street pointed out a very common-looking house as the abode of
Signor Nicolo. There was nothing to show that it contained as much as a
paste shoe-buckle or a coral pin, and it struck me that if diamonds were
tested there the light must proceed from the jewel itself. But perhaps
it would be lighted up by Koh-i-noors, Stars of the South, and other
glorious luminaries.
Not only the house but the inhabitants thereof appeared to be sadly in
need of lighting up. How many times I rang, or at any rate pulled the
long handle, I will not pretend to say; but at last an old woman, not at
all too clean, showed me into a small square room, remarkable for
nothing except that one end appeared to consist of polished steel. My
card was taken upstairs, and presently Signor Nicolo himself appeared.
"Upon important business!" he said. "Ah, yes! Mr. George Cranleigh. Ah,
yes, ah, yes!" He was rather a handsome little man, about forty years
old, with dark eyes and complexion, wearing a black velvet blouse,
gathered in with a belt, and a red scarf under it. Apparently an
Englishman who desired to pass as a foreigner, and having a considerable
share of Jewish blood might do so without much trouble. Whether his
perpetual "Ah, yes"--which I shall not repeat half as much as he
did--had first been assumed in imitation of some foreigner or had struck
root into his tongue, as "You know," "Don't you see?" and other little
expletives are wont, it is beyond my power to say.
"And this you have brought me. Ah, yes, ah, yes," he proceeded when I
had explained my purpose, "to certify that the Prince desires me to
impart to you all my knowledge concerning him. The rubies are very fine,
and the trinket very ancient. They would not be set in silver
now-a-days. But I do not perceive in them, Mr. Cranleigh, you will
excuse my saying so, any message from the Prince to that effect."
"You mistake me, Signor," I answered with some warmth, for the man's
affectation annoyed me, and I longed to call him "Jemmy Nickols," as his
God-fathers and God-mothers meant him to be called; "I said nothing
about Sûr Imar, who makes no pretence to be called a Prince,"--that was
a little rap at Jemmy,--"it is his daughter who has sent me to you,
because she is most anxious and miserable about her father. What she
wants to know is this--can he return to his native land, from which he
has been so long banished, without incurring very great danger? You can
tell me or not, just as you please. The question lies between you and
her. She has always believed you to be her true friend. She cannot come
to see you herself, of course, and her father might be angry if she
tried to do so; and he would know your hand if you wrote to her. It
appears to me that she has a right to ask."
"Ah, yes. She has a right to ask; and more than that, it is her place to
ask, that she may know how to act about it. On the other hand, the point
for me is--have I any right to tell?"
I began to respect the man more, as I perceived that he really wished to
do what was right, but scarcely saw the way to it, through some little
complication. "Signor, I am not in any hurry," I observed.
"Ah, you cannot understand," he said, as if I had no power, even if I
had a right, to put my tongue in; "it is no reproach to you; but a young
man who has never been among such things ought to thank his good stars,
and keep out of them. You English are so stiff, you can allow for no
ideas. You think that all the world must have the same right and wrong
as you have."
"Now, Signor Nicolo," I replied, with admirable self-control, for I
began to know all about him now, by the lights that break in as we go
on in the dark, "if ever there was an Englishman, you are one." He
looked at me steadily with eyes almost too dark for a pure-bred
Englishman, and then seeing that I meant to make him proud he became
proud, as he ought to be.
"Ah, yes!" he said first, from the force of habit, and then he went on,
as became his birth-right. "Sir, I am an Englishman, and as proud of it
as you are. But we are not popular among the smaller nations, because
they have a lower standard. We give them everything in the way of trade,
and they have not the calibre yet to enter into it. And I am very much
afraid that they won't have that, till they have taken every farthing
out of us. In spite of all lessons, we carry on still, as if all the
world were full of our own ideas. And what comes of that? They believe
through thick and thin that our only ambition is to rob them. My
business lies chiefly on the Continent, and therefore I am Signor
Nicolo."
Feeling the truth of this sad state of things, I took the hand he
offered me. It was not his fault, but that of our blind rulers, that to
do any business he must be of foreign blood. Still it was a new light
shed upon me, for hitherto my belief had been that people unlucky enough
to have to live upon the land, had to bear the brunt of that British
suicide endowed with the catch-penny name Free-trade.
"Now, I am in this difficulty," continued the Signor, still employing
the gesticulation he had learned; "on no account would I offend Prince
Imar,--a Prince he is, whether he likes it not,--while on the other
hand, I may be guilty of his death, if I stand upon scruples. And that
would be a very poor requital, for I owe him my life, and am proud to
owe it to a man so great and magnanimous. Crotchety perhaps, as all
great men are, and sometimes even more than that; but take him all
round, such a man as you won't see in a long day's ride, Mr. Cranleigh."
"That is the opinion I have formed of him. A man of the first magnitude
in body, mind, and character. As yet I know very little of him; but one
is struck with such a rarity at once, just as----"
"As I might be with an enormous diamond. But I am surprised to hear you
say that you know him so little. I suppose he keeps himself very much
to himself, down there. It was I who arranged that place for him."
"I do not even know whether he has any visitors. None from our part of
the country I believe. But I saw no signs of secrecy about the place. It
is naturally very lonely and secluded, and out of the line of the more
important roads. And he has as good as told me that he was busy about
something that he did not wish to talk about. It is suspected in some
quarters that his business is the forgery of Russian rouble-notes."
"No, you don't say that! What a people we are! Ah, yes, ah, yes! I have
been on the Continent for some weeks, or certainly I must have heard
that grand joke. And they will make a raid upon him soon with a
search-warrant I dare say. Oh, I would give something to see that! Tell
them to keep the dogs in. I know what they are. And the policemen would
shoot them as soon as look, for doing the very duty they have to do
themselves, only doing it with a little more sagacity. Don't forget
that, Mr. Cranleigh. I wouldn't have those dogs killed for a thousand
pounds. There is not a dog to compare with them in England. I knew their
grandfathers in the Caucasus."
Hereupon I told him, just to help my case, how lucky I had been by a
very simple stratagem in saving the life of that glorious _Kuban_ from a
low beast of a bull-dog, and he laughed, and said "Capital! I should
never have thought of that. By the by, I know something of your brother,
Mr. Cranleigh. He has very nearly made a diamond, and he came to me
about it. Upon my word, I thought at first that he had succeeded, until
I threw my test-light on it. It was the nearest approach that has been
accomplished yet. I dare say he told you all about it."
"Not a syllable. He never does, unless it is to try the effect upon me.
He has the lowest possible opinion of my intellect. He has monopolised
the brains of the family. But he is glad enough to come to me for more
substantial things."
"Ah, yes! I see. But he will astonish the world some day. What amazed me
about him was not his inventive power--though that must be very great,
of course--so much as the quantity of pluck he showed, at any rate I
should call it so. You would have thought it the turning-point in a
young man's life, to know whether he had solved the great problem, or
failed; but his hand never shook, it was as steady as mine now, and his
colour never changed, he was as cool as any cucumber--the last one I
bought was as hot as ginger. And when I said, 'No, sir. Not quite yet,'
he made me the most beautiful bow I ever saw, and walked off, leaving
the work of months with me."
"That is Harold all over. But he will never do any good. He is always on
the brink of success, but never in it. And if he ever does succeed, all
he'll say will be just this--'Oh, any fool can do that,' and never think
of it again. However, I must not go on about him. Time is getting on,
and I ought to be at home again. What answer shall I take to Miss--Miss
Prince Imar?"
"Do you know what Dariel is?" Nicolo was smiling in a genial manner at
my levity. And then he said, to crush it in a truly British manner,
"Dariel is the heiress to the throne of Georgia. She has the pink eagle
on her left shoulder."
"But there is no throne of Georgia now," I answered, quite uncrushed,
for she might have been heiress to the throne of all the stars, without
mounting any higher than she already was with me; "the Russians have got
Georgia, and who shall ever turn them out?"
This will show how I had got up my subject. A month ago Georgia, for all
I knew or cared, might have been the property of our former George the
Fourth, or still the prize of victory for Saint-George and the Dragon.
"You take things as quietly as your brother Harold does. Ah, yes! it
must be in the family, no doubt. But I give you my word that it is true,
Mr. Cranleigh. Not that her father is a Georgian though, he belongs to a
higher race, the Lesghians, and the highest tribe of the Lesghians. All
the others, such as Shamyl, are Mohammedans. Dariel's mother was the
Princess Oria, the last representative of Tamara, the celebrated Queen
of Georgia; and she was carried off from Tiflis--it is a most romantic
story; I can't tell you a quarter of it. But there was some frightful
tragedy--bless you, they are always having tragedies there--and the long
and the short of it is, that Imar has incurred the blood-feud. You may
be sure that he never ran away from it. He has the greatest contempt and
loathing for all such horrible heathenism. After the capture of Shamyl
all hope of resistance was over, for the Mohammedan tribes fell away, at
once. Shamyl's chief hold over those fierce races had been his position
as Imaum, which confers divine command over those who belong to Islam.
Ah, he was a gallant Chieftain, but cruel sometimes, ah, yes, ah, yes!"
"And your share in these adventures, Signor? You must have carried your
life in your hands. It seems as if there can be no danger in the world,
without some brave Englishman being in the thick of it."
Jemmy Nickols threw his blouse open and showed a fine broad chest, which
he patted. "You are right there," he said, "it generally happens so. Ah,
I was an active fellow in those days, and afraid of nobody but the
Devil. And you may be sure, there was plenty of Him there. Ah, yes, our
nation is always on about its sailors; but to my mind the landsmen are
every bit as good. However, it was business that took me there, and not
any pleasure in hardship.
"I had to make my own way in the world, and was tired of sitting on a
stool in London. So I got a commission from the firm to Amsterdam, my
father being one of the partners, and there I heard of something which
sent me across Europe to meet a Russian merchant at Odessa. I found him
quite a young man and very enterprising, which was not very often the
case with them in those days. We became good friends, and he told me
that he had heard from a brother of his, a Russian officer then serving
against Shamyl, of a wonderful discovery of emeralds they had made among
the mountains of Daghestan. My knowledge of jewels was greater than his,
and he made me an offer which I could not resist, to pay all expenses,
and give me all benefit of Russian protection, if I would join him in
the search for this treasure; and if we found it, 25 per cent of all net
proceeds.
"This was a wild-goose chase, you will say, but what young man of spirit
is not a wild goose? We had a rough time of it and repented every day of
our folly, but still went on with it. The Russians had an enormous
army, spread far and wide, and whenever we could keep near them we got
on well enough, but where we had to trust ourselves to native guides,
with the help of some interpreter, it was scarcely ever safe to close
our eyes. Let me see, it must have been in 1858, towards the close of
Shamyl's long defence. It has often been said that the allies should
have landed a large force in Western Caucasus, to help him during our
Russian war. But it would not have done a bit of good. He was far away
in the Eastern chain, and it would have been a stiffish march to get
near him, I can tell you, and when we were there, we could have done no
good. People talk of Caucasia as if it were a nation. I cannot tell you
how many tribes there are; but for the most part they hate one another,
and they speak about seventy languages, and cannot write any one of
their own. How could you ever make a Nation of them? Russia might have
conquered them a century ago, if she had been in earnest about it; and
it is the best thing that could possibly happen to them now. Some little
law and honesty, without any real oppression, is ever so much better
than a lot of murderous freedom. And pretty freedom! Why, in many of the
tribes, the women have to do all the work, while the men lounge about,
or rob their neighbours. My opinion is, Mr. Cranleigh, that we talk a
lot of rot about civilization. Nature won't have it everywhere; and she
shows what she means, by the way she marks the places. And the worse
they are in all common sense, the closer the natives stick to them.
"Well, we got a taste of the country, and the people that therein do
dwell. My poor friend did not live to tell of it, neither should I, but
for Prince Imar. It was in a rocky hole where you said to yourself,
'Never shall I get out of this, and it must have been the Devil that got
me into it,'--when suddenly a score or two of thundering savages jumped
out from the solid crag almost, and blocked all the horrible place both
ways. I am not at all sure that they meant to hurt us; and I dare say
they would have been satisfied to strip us, and rob us of our arms and
money, and send our guides to the right about. But unluckily my Russian
friend lost his head, and sent a bullet into the crowd in front. I
cannot tell you, any more than he could now, what happened in the rush
that was made on us. Only that my dear friend lay dead upon his back,
with his eyes upon the little blink of sky above the chasm, and that I
like a fool fell upon him to protect him, when nobody could harm him any
more, and a big fellow was going to give me my quietus when another man
twice his size sent him spinning. All the others fell away, for he had
come among them suddenly, and I heard them muttering 'Sûr Imar.'
"'No Englishman shall come to harm, when I can help it. This gentleman
looks like an Englishman,' he said, and I never was more ready in my
life to acknowledge that. The rest of the lot could not make out what he
meant, but they put down their weapons and looked at him. To cut a long
story short, he took me to his own mountain-castle, and treated me as if
I had been an invited guest, and I never knew such hospitality in all my
life. I stayed there a long time, for it was not safe to travel; and
there I saw the most beautiful lady that ever trod this earth. Her
daughter is very beautiful; but you should have seen the Princess Oria,
if you want to know the utmost that the Lord can do in the construction
of the human race."
"Don't talk to me," I said, for I could not quite stand this; "you are
like the rest who always talk of the past as superior to the present.
But I beg your pardon, pray go on."
"I have seen a great deal of the world. Ah, yes!" continued my new
friend Nicolo; "and I have come to this conclusion, from all the
instances within my knowledge--no very beautiful woman ever lives a life
of happiness. I don't mean pretty girls of course, and all the fair
women of ordinary charms. I mean the exceptional, the wonderful
creatures, of perfect and enthralling loveliness, of whom there are not
six in a century. They are as rare as a brilliant of three hundred
carats; as yet I have only seen one, and that one was the Princess
Oria."
"Then how can you argue about them all?" I enquired very reasonably.
"You mean from history, and all that, I suppose. But what became of that
wonder of the world?"
I should have known better than so to speak, when he was inclined to be
pathetic. But absurd as it may seem, I was jealous of Dariel's own
mother, when quoted against her.
"Alas, that is more than I can tell," he replied without heeding my
flippancy. "I only know that it was pitiful, pitiful, something to make
all who heard of it shudder. Prince Imar was a most cheerful man, full
of life and spirit, even in the thick of blows and danger, when I had
the honour of being his guest. Not a sign of jealousy about him,
introducing all friends to his lovely wife,--which is not the custom
with the Moslem tribes, of course,--pleased that a comrade should share
her sweet smile, and proud that she should be admired. And as for her, I
believe she adored him. Insignificant as I was, I believe that she
preferred me to many grander people, simply because I was never tired of
singing his praises, and because I owed my life to him. They cannot have
quarrelled, at least I should have thought so; neither can she have
betrayed him. One never can be certain, where a woman is concerned;
otherwise I should have thought it utterly impossible. And yet what else
is there that can at all account for it? She perished most sadly, there
is no doubt of that. And I dare not even mention the subject before him.
Even Dariel knows not a word about it."
I could well understand that a man's most intimate friend would shrink
from such a subject, and Nickols was not at all likely to be very
intimate with Sûr Imar, though he might have proved a valuable agent.
"Was there any Dariel in those days?" I enquired, though I might have
concluded from her age that there was not.
"No, there was not any Dariel yet. But there was a fine little chap,
about a year old, and how well he could run! I have had him on my lap,
many a time. What was his name? Oh, Origen. Those people save their
friends a world of trouble by being contented with one name. But now I
have told you all I know, Mr. Cranleigh, or all that can be of
importance. And of course you will not speak about it to any one. Every
one has a right to his own privacy, and our friend insists upon a
private life. He might have been the lion of a season if he had liked,
with his romantic history and noble appearance. Ah, yes, ah, yes! but I
fear I must hurry you, or ask you to call again. We hold a meeting at 3
o'clock, of a Syndicate they call it--horrible word--about a big find in
South Africa. In return for my information, I beg you to let me know if
anything is threatened down there; and to do your utmost, if you have
any influence, to keep them from returning to the Caucasus. He has
plenty of money. Why can't he stop here, and have the sweet Dariel
introduced at Court? There is a very great man indeed who would be only
too proud to manage it."
"Plague them all!" I cried, as he began to fidget, "how many more great
men, I wonder? But did you ever get those emeralds?" The "plenty of
money" made me think of this.
"Never saw one of them. Never got so far. And what could I do, when my
friend was killed? Very likely they are there though. I shall look them
up some day, perhaps, if I can hear of that Russian officer. But most
likely not worth finding. Pale emeralds fetch very little. Good-bye,
good-bye! Don't forget one thing. Have the dogs chained up, for fear of
the police making holes in them."
"Oh, you are not afraid of the dogs making holes in the police?" I said,
while shaking hands with him. "I should be sorry to have to fight
_Kuban_ and _Orla_, with a police-staff."
"So should I. But you may depend upon it, when they make a raid of that
sort, expecting a big capture, and stout resistance, they will not come
down without fire-arms."