As to the other man, although he had not presented himself distinctly, what other could he be than Hafer, the son of Imar's sister Marva, and now the Chief of the Osset tribe? Although I had not seen his face that night when he left Dariel weeping (neither had I seen it plainly now), the figure and carriage and style of dress were quite enough to convince me. Even in the dark there had been something about that fellow—or Prince, as some would call him—and about the moral smell of his nature, unpleasant, to use the mildest word that I can think of, to my plain and simple elements. He might be the better man of the two, more kindly, more trusty, more lovable, and of a higher stamp in every way. Never mind; I had not the least desire, though he were all that, to resemble him. And Providence, having made us as we are, cannot take it amiss if we are satisfied.
"I shall have a good look at him some day," I thought, "and then I am sure to feel that I was right. I can have no prejudice against him, merely because he has dared to look at Dariel. She, who takes so long to see what I am, is not at all likely to be carried by storm by this fellow's olive complexion, and fine nose, and black eyes, and sable moustache, and all the rest of it. Why, he is a brute, and nothing else, however handsome he may try to look! I can scarcely believe him to be that noble man's own nephew."
CHAPTER XXXIII TREMBLING
However, these great reflections did not save me from being in a rather nervous state when Stepan, who was most obsequious now,—if such a word may be used of such a steadfast hero,—showed me into Sûr Imar's room. And before he raised the curtain, he whispered in best English, "Milord, me good friend to milord now. Allai worth dogs, dogs, all right a hundred dogs." I pressed his hand, because he was thus cultivating our dear language.
"It is long since I have seen you," Sûr Imar began, with his kind and cheerful but never joyful smile. "I began to fear that you had taken amiss something of what I said the other day. It is difficult at such times to consider one another. But all right, as Stepan says. He is becoming quite an Englishman. Did you notice the fogle, as you call it, this child of the Caucasus has picked up somewhere? It is the envy of all our encampment. What a simple-minded race we are! But that is a material to work upon for good. And soon we shall be among the heart of it again. What will my daughter think of her native mountains?"
"But surely," I answered in a melancholy voice,—"surely you will not take her to that frightful place—I beg your pardon, to all that world of grandeur—when everything is frozen, and there is not a place to sit upon. When there is not a flower, not a blade of green grass, nor even a tree that is not a hump of snow. You may find it very nice; but young ladies—Sûr Imar, have you thought about her constitution?"
"My young friend, I have; and it is as sound as mine. There will not be much society; but has she any here? From all that I have seen of it, and I lived some time in London, society means pretence, affectation, jealousy, littleness, stale slang instead of humour, slavish imitation, contempt of fellow-creatures, and cowardly blindness to the afflictions of this earth. My daughter has no taste for such a life as that."
He appeared to me to speak too strongly, and too much from a primitive point of view; and all who set up such a standard as that are impatient, and apt to exaggerate. But it was not for a country Lubin to vindicate the ladies, and I was in haste to deal with nearer considerations.