"We'll soon put that to rights. You should wear arabas. Come into this passage, and Stepan will see to it, and bring you a pair of my sandals. I will be with you again in a minute."
While the faithful henchman was pulling off my boots, which was no small tug for even his great arms, his mind was evidently in a condition of still more strenuous exertion. She—if the higher portion of our composition lays claim to the higher half of gender—was struggling and rolling and flopping about (being over-bulky for lighter process) in quest of some fugitive English word, earnestly courted, but wickedly coy.
"Milord, put on more smoke, more smoke. Yes, yes, more smoke, else be too late. Me good friend to milord now. Wicked mens come every day. But milord smoke, smoke, smoke."
He puffed with his lips and panted, as if to impress me with the need for a vast fumigation. "I want a pipe sadly, my friend," I replied; "but how can I have it in a lady's room?"
The Lesghian stared at me, and stroked his beard, and shook his head angrily, as if he had found it empty. "Stepan fool. No say, no say," he exclaimed as he made off to fetch the slippers; but I am afraid that I heard him mutter, as he turned the corner, "Inglese, dam languidge; dam languidge, Inglese!" In a minute, however, he returned, with a broad smile lighting up all his battered countenance, as if he had found what he wanted in the sandals.
"Me know now. Stepan big fool. Milord put on shteam, shteam, shteam! Go ahead! Who's afeard? Won't go home till mornin'? The gal I left behind me. Nancy is my darlin'! Milord know now."
"I am blest if I do," I endeavoured to reply; but he would have no more quenching. In the triumph of philology his dignity was lost; and I saw that he must have spent at least a day in London. "Is the Caucasus come to this?" I asked, and was glad to see my host return.
Stepan stood up, and shut his mouth in the curtain of his beard, like a casement closed under the ivy, and looked at me, as if there had never been less than a mile of moral distance between us. In the name of the Lord, where does sham end? But I had to do a little on my own account.
Dariel's room! I had never been in the shrine of my divinity till now; and when I was there I could look at nothing except her entrancing presence. She was resting upon something—it might have been a cloud, for all that I could tell about it. The soft light fell upon the sweetest face that heaven itself ever shone upon; and I tried to speak, but no words came; neither could I look upon her as I longed to do. If she had been too much for me out of doors, what possibility was left me here?