‘Poor human nature must have its name for everything. You have heard of the country of Prester John, that mysterious Christian empire, rarely visited by European eye?’
‘There are legends of two such,’ said Lancelot, ‘an Ethiopian and an Asiatic one; and the Ethiopian, if we are to believe Colonel Harris’s Journey to Shoa, is a sufficiently miserable failure.’
‘True; the day of the Chamitic race is past; you will not say the same of our Caucasian empire. To our race the present belongs,—to England, France, Germany, America,—to us. Will you see what we have done, and, perhaps, bring home, after long wanderings, a message for your country which may help to unravel the tangled web of this strange time?’
‘I will,’ said Lancelot, ‘now, this moment. And yet, no. There is one with whom I have promised to share all future weal and woe. Without him I can take no step.’
‘Tregarva?’
‘Yes—he. What made you guess that I spoke of him?’
‘Mellot told me of him, and of you, too, six weeks ago. He is now gone to fetch him from Manchester. I cannot trust him here in England yet. The country made him sad; London has made him mad; Manchester may make him bad. It is too fearful a trial even for his faith. I must take him with us.’
‘What interest in him—not to say what authority over him—have you?’
‘The same which I have over you. You will come with me; so will he. It is my business, as my name signifies, to save the children alive whom European society leaves carelessly and ignorantly to die. And as for my power, I come,’ said he, with a smile, ‘from a country which sends no one on its errands without first thoroughly satisfying itself as to his power of fulfilling them.’
‘If he goes, I go with you.’