XI.
The next day dawned in brilliant sunshine; the sea was as smooth as a lake, and the air pleasantly warm and still. Dr. Kremlin’s servant Karl got up in a very excellent humour,—he had slept well, and he awoke with the comfortable certainty of finding his eccentric master in better health and spirits, as this was always the case after one of El-Râmi’s rare visits. And Karl, though he did not much appreciate learning, especially when the pursuit of it induced people, as he said, to starve themselves for the sake of acquiring wisdom, did feel in his own heart that there was something about El-Râmi that was not precisely like other men, and he had accordingly for him not only a great attraction, but a profound respect.
“If anybody can do the Herr Doctor good, he can—” he thought, as he laid the breakfast-table in the little dining-room whose French windows opened out to a tiny green lawn fronting the sea,—“Certainly one can never cure old age,—that is an ailment for which there is no remedy; but however old we are bound to get, I don’t see why we should not be merry over it and enjoy our meals to the last. Now let me see—what have I to get ready—” and he enumerated on his fingers—“Coffee—toast—rolls,—butter—eggs—fish,—I think that will do;—and if I just put these few roses in the middle of the table to tempt the eye a bit,”—and he suited the action to the word—“There now!—if the Herr Doctor can be pleased at all——”
“Breakfast, Karl! breakfast!” interrupted a clear cheerful voice, the sound of which made Karl start with nervous astonishment. “Make haste, my good fellow! My friend here has to catch an early train.”
Karl turned round, stared, and stood motionless, open-mouthed, and struck dumb with sheer surprise. Could it be the old Doctor who spoke? Was it his master at all,—this hale, upright, fresh-faced individual who stood before him, smiling pleasantly and giving his orders with such a brisk air of authority? Bewildered and half afraid, he cast a desperate glance at El-Râmi, who had also entered the room, and who, seeing his confusion, made him a secret sign.
“Yes—be as quick as you can, Karl,” he said. “Your master has had a good night, and is much better, as you see. We shall be glad of our breakfast; I told you we should, last night. Don’t keep us waiting!”
“Yes, sir—no, sir!” stammered Karl, trying to collect his scattered senses and staring again at Dr. Kremlin,—then, scarcely knowing whether he was on his head or his heels, he scrambled out of the room into the passage, where he stood for a minute stupefied and inert.
“It must be devils’ work!” he ejaculated amazedly. “Who but the devil could make a man look twenty years younger in a single night? Yes—twenty years younger,—he looks that if he looks a day. God have mercy on us!—what will happen next—what sort of a service have I got into?—Oh, my poor mother!”
This last was Karl’s supremest adjuration,—when he could find nothing else to say, the phrase “Oh, my poor mother!” came as naturally to his lips as the familiar “D——n it!” from the mouth of an old swaggerer in the army or navy. He meant nothing by it, except perhaps a vague allusion to the innocent days of his childhood, when he was ignorant of the wicked ways of the wicked world, and when “Oh, my poor mother!” had not the most distant idea as to what was going to become of her hopeful first-born.
Meantime, while he went down into the kitchen and bustled about there, getting the coffee, frying the fish, boiling the eggs, and cogitating with his own surprised and half-terrified self, Dr. Kremlin and his guest had stepped out into the little garden together, and they now stood there on the grass-plot surveying the glittering wide expanse of ocean before them. They spoke not a word for some minutes,—then, all at once, Kremlin turned round and caught both El-Râmi’s hands in his own and pressed them fervently—there were tears in his eyes.