Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

"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."

1

Probably the Agate.