“Yes, you. I have not studied you for two years for nothing. I have
known for some time that I could not last, and since I realised the
fact I have been searching for some one to whom I could confide the boy
and this,” and he tapped the iron box. “You are the man, Holly; for,
like a rugged tree, you are hard and sound at core. Listen; the boy
will be the only representative of one of the most ancient families in
the world, that is, so far as families can be traced. You will laugh at
me when I say it, but one day it will be proved to you beyond a doubt,
that my sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth lineal ancestor was an Egyptian
priest of Isis, though he was himself of Grecian extraction, and was
called Kallikrates.[1] His father was one of the Greek mercenaries
raised by Hak-Hor, a Mendesian Pharaoh of the twenty-ninth dynasty, and
his grandfather or great-grandfather, I believe, was that very
Kallikrates mentioned by Herodotus.[2] In or about the year 339 before
Christ, just at the time of the final fall of the Pharaohs, this
Kallikrates (the priest) broke his vows of celibacy and fled from Egypt
with a Princess of Royal blood who had fallen in love with him, and was
finally wrecked upon the coast of Africa, somewhere, as I believe, in
the neighbourhood of where Delagoa Bay now is, or rather to the north
of it, he and his wife being saved, and all the remainder of their
company destroyed in one way or another. Here they endured great
hardships, but were at last entertained by the mighty Queen of a savage
people, a white woman of peculiar loveliness, who, under circumstances
which I cannot enter into, but which you will one day learn, if you
live, from the contents of the box, finally murdered my ancestor
Kallikrates. His wife, however, escaped, how, I know not, to Athens,
bearing a child with her, whom she named Tisisthenes, or the Mighty
Avenger. Five hundred years or more afterwards, the family migrated to
Rome under circumstances of which no trace remains, and here, probably
with the idea of preserving the idea of vengeance which we find set out
in the name of Tisisthenes, they appear to have pretty regularly
assumed the cognomen of Vindex, or Avenger. Here, too, they remained
for another five centuries or more, till about 770 A.D., when
Charlemagne invaded Lombardy, where they were then settled, whereon the
head of the family seems to have attached himself to the great Emperor,
and to have returned with him across the Alps, and finally to have
settled in Brittany. Eight generations later his lineal representative
crossed to England in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and in the
time of William the Conqueror was advanced to great honour and power.
From that time to the present day I can trace my descent without a
break. Not that the Vinceys—for that was the final corruption of the
name after its bearers took root in English soil—have been particularly
distinguished—they never came much to the fore. Sometimes they were
soldiers, sometimes merchants, but on the whole they have preserved a
dead level of respectability, and a still deader level of mediocrity.
From the time of Charles II. till the beginning of the present century
they were merchants. About 1790 my grandfather made a considerable
fortune out of brewing, and retired. In 1821 he died, and my father
succeeded him, and dissipated most of the money. Ten years ago he died
also, leaving me a net income of about two thousand a year. Then it was
that I undertook an expedition in connection with _that_,” and he
pointed to the iron chest, “which ended disastrously enough. On my way
back I travelled in the South of Europe, and finally reached Athens.
There I met my beloved wife, who might well also have been called the
‘Beautiful,’ like my old Greek ancestor. There I married her, and
there, a year afterwards, when my boy was born, she died.”
[1] The Strong and Beautiful, or, more accurately, the Beautiful in
strength.
[2] The Kallikrates here referred to by my friend was a Spartan,
spoken of by Herodotus (Herod. ix. 72) as being remarkable for his
beauty. He fell at the glorious battle of Platæa (September 22, B.C.
479), when the Lacedæmonians and Athenians under Pausanias routed the
Persians, putting nearly 300,000 of them to the sword. The following
is a translation of the passage, “For Kallikrates died out of the
battle, he came to the army the most beautiful man of the Greeks of
that day—not only of the Lacedæmonians themselves, but of the other
Greeks also. He when Pausanias was sacrificing was wounded in the side
by an arrow; and then they fought, but on being carried off he
regretted his death, and said to Arimnestus, a Platæan, that he did
not grieve at dying for Greece, but at not having struck a blow, or,
although he desired so to do, performed any deed worthy of himself.”
This Kallikrates, who appears to have been as brave as he was
beautiful, is subsequently mentioned by Herodotus as having been
buried among the ἰρένες‚ (young commanders), apart from the other
Spartans and the Helots.—L. H. H.
He paused a while, his head sunk upon his hand, and then
continued—
“My marriage had diverted me from a project which I cannot enter
into now. I have no time, Holly—I have no time! One day, if you
accept my trust, you will learn all about it. After my wife’s
death I turned my mind to it again. But first it was necessary,
or, at least, I conceived that it was necessary, that I should
attain to a perfect knowledge of Eastern dialects, especially
Arabic. It was to facilitate my studies that I came here. Very
soon, however, my disease developed itself, and now there is an
end of me.” And as though to emphasise his words he burst into
another terrible fit of coughing.