"To a limited extent perhaps I did," Signor Nicolo answered with a candid smile; "not that I put any temptation in his way to make him turn traitor to his master. But simply that casually, as things came about, he cast away in some degree that cowardly veil of caution, which is always so abhorrent to our better feelings. Nine people out of ten would have cross-examined him. But I did nothing of the sort. Only from some things he let slip I gathered a fair general idea of the game those two are playing. Or rather that other fellow; for to Strogue it can make no difference, unless the bargain is—no play, no pay. Hafer's game is to get possession of the lovely Dariel, as you must have suspected long ago; not for her beauty—those fellows out there pitch-and-toss for that kind of thing—but for the start it will give him, in the universal race of robbery. You must not be mild enough, Mr. Cranleigh, to suppose that you have seen any sample of the Caucasus in the noble Sûr Imar, and his sensitive daughter, or even in the model henchman Stepan. If the camp in your valley had been of the general type, you would not have had a sheep left long ago, much less a cock with a crow in his throat. 'Ragamuffins' is the proper name for most of them. And although these Lesghians, take them all in all, are about the pick of the basket, you would be in the wrong box altogether, if you took them for sweet innocents. They are simply under their chieftain's thumb; and by ancient tribal law, he can chop off their heads when he pleases. This keeps them in order; and they pay for their milk, instead of lifting cattle. Prince Hafer, however, is not under any fealty to Sûr Imar. So far from that, his great aim is to be Lord of the Ossets, and the Kheusurs too, and Karthlos Tower, which is a noble place, and might defy an army for a twelvemonth. Hafer is cunning, but has too much temper; and worst of all, he has not steered clear of the many traps set by civilisation for a young savage with his pockets full. He has fallen among a bad lot, a company of young rakes, contemptuous of women, and yet thoroughly in their power."
"What! would he venture near Dariel, after being in such vile company? We have heard that he was almost too good to live. She gave me so grand an account of him, that I thought it was all up with my poor chance. But what a falling off is here! The Prince of all virtues, the paragon of modesty, the hero of all chivalry—and now he won't even sham! Can you explain it, Mr. Nickols?"
"No; that's no business of mine. Nature does it. But I shall hear more about it soon, and get a flood of light let in. In London you never know anything well, from hearing such a lot about everything. But it is not quite the same in the Caucasus. You don't hear much there; but you attend to it. And now you will be surprised to be told, that after so many years of hearing next to nothing of that part of the world, and never seeing one of their celestial peaks, except in a dream, I am likely to know more about them than when I lived there. Ah, if I hadn't got a wife, and three daughters,—and I have let out so much, like a jolly fool, that they won't have French stuff on their birthdays,—I should be ready to be off again; though I could never do the djedje now; and the love of sport is not in me, as it is in all true-born Englishmen."
He looked regretful, and perhaps remorseful against his mingled parentage; for there was a vein of the Israelite in him, which saddens and deepens the outlook, without showing any sport, except a gold disc to shoot at.
"Never mind," I answered him, though sorry to have to do it; "you get your little excitements, in your way. And although they are not like ours altogether, they pay ever so much better in the end."
"Let us come back," he said, thinking in his heart, perhaps, that he could do very well without my sympathy; "my proceedings only bear upon your case in an odd sort of way, which may come to nothing. You remember that I told you of my Russian friend, whom I met at Odessa, twenty years ago, or more. Through him I first went into those savage parts, where he lost his life; and it was a narrow shave that I survived to tell of it, for which I have to thank Sûr Imar. You may have forgotten, but I think I must have told you that my Russian had a brother, an officer in the army then closing round the forces of Shamyl. Very well, who should call upon me a few days after I told you about that, but the very same Russian officer, now second in command of the Caucasus Division, General Stranglomoff himself. He was in London, about some military business, and knowing my intimacy with his poor brother, he did me the honour of calling to hear some particulars of the sad occurrence. I described it as well as I could; and then he said, brushing up his English, as I brushed up my Russian, whenever there was a gap between us—'I am not a jeweller, Signor, and of precious stones I have not any knowledge; but place thine eyes upon this, is it good?" He wore a white glove of soft rat-skin, and upon it was the rich green light of the finest emerald I have seen since I was at Warsaw.
"'Plenty, plenty, twenty, fifty—ten, a thousand! I pray you to accept this pebble, Signor, for my brother's sake,' he said with a very graceful bow; 'he was taken away through these, and I desire no advantage of them.' And with that he shed a tear, which made me think how much we undervalue that fine race. There is no kinder-hearted man on earth, and no more perfect gentleman, than a Russian of the highest order.
"Well, sir, I sent my own nephew out—Jack Nickols, a wonderfully plucky fellow; not much eye for a stone; but sure to stick to his orders, and tell you the truth. If you can't be satisfied with that, good-bye to your chance of keeping anybody very long; for the sharp ones will soon begin to rogue you. Jack is as good a bit of English Metal as you could pick up from the lias to the granite. And not too clever. In fact, Mr. Cranleigh, you remind me of him, at every turn."
I bowed very deeply at this lovely compliment, with a glance which I meant to be ironical. But Signor Nicolo was too busy with his thoughts to perceive the stern justice he had done me.