Strogue had shown in very early days the quick force of his genius by running away from school, and defying pursuit, and beginning earnest life in a wherry. "You are picking up the lingoes very smart," he said, as we churned the muddy waters; "but I can't stand affectation, George, and I won't have the old Ark called the Argo. Besides, she never came here in her life; she drew a deal too much water. She went to pieces on Ararat, I tell you, and Satan took her upper deck and put it on top of Elbruz. Why? Why, that people might go against the Bible, as they are only too glad to get an excuse to do. And he put about a story that she grounded upon Elbruz, which she could not have done from the shape of it. No, no. Holy Writ is what I stick to, and as long as I do that, the Lord will always stick to me. I won't hear another word about it."
However, though he would not have the Argo even mentioned, he made no objection to the golden fleece; in fact he confirmed it, having seen some gold in the upper waters of the Rion; and as for Medea, when I told him all her story, her treachery, incantations, murder of her brother and even her own babes, he became quite excited, and vowed that she must have come to life again as the Princess Marva. Upon that I begged him to tell me all he knew about that extraordinary lady, for I had never understood from her brother's description that her nature was particularly fierce and unforgiving, though she certainly behaved in a cold and distant manner, when she informed him that his wife was gone. But that might arise from nothing more than the sense of the wrong she herself had received through her faithless husband Rakhan. And would a ruthless woman feel such emotion at the casualty to another person's child?
"Not knowing, can't say," the Captain answered in his favourite short style; "but you must remember that I have not heard that story as he told it. And another thing, he was not there to see it; for he was far away settling that other fellow's hash,—and his own too by being in such a blessed hurry. But I have got a very shrewd suspicion, my boy; you will laugh at it, I dare say, and there certainly are some things that pretty nearly knock it on the head. What do you say to this? Suppose it was her own child that was killed, and that she contrived to change them, fearing that she would never have another, and so would lose her position altogether. For among those Ossets, as I have been told, the childless wife of the chief must eat humble-pie at every corner, and is apt to be superseded after six or seven years. And she might have other motives too for getting Imar's heir into her possession."
"The idea is ingenious, but most improbable," I replied after thinking for a moment. "Not that she could not have done it, for there was no one to observe her, except her own nurse, whom she could easily silence. But her own conduct now proves that it cannot have been so. Shows that she had not gone for that game, I mean. They may be a lawless lot, everybody says so; but even your Medea would never send a man to marry his own sister."
"I hope not. It is too horrible to think of. Though it might be part of her hideous scheme for revenge. I tell you, Cranleigh, it is but a very stale thing to say, that a woman of the lowest depth of woman's wickedness is as far beneath any man's deepest pitch, as a good woman is above his highest stretch. I don't go by what they tell you in the books. I have seen a big lot of men and women—civilized as they call themselves, and savage; the latter on the whole more trustworthy; and you know that I never dogmatise. Only a fool does that: and though I am an ass very often, especially when I yield to my feelings about right and wrong, you can't call me altogether a fool—now can you?"
"Captain Strogue," I answered warmly, perceiving that he asked for it, "fools are always numerous enough. But if you are one, I wish that they were universal." And in saying this I was no hypocrite.
"There is not such a thing as a wise man now," he proceeded, after one quick glance, which showed that he liked my testimony. "We don't want them. They would never suit the age; and so the Lord abstains from sending them. The two or three last, who pretended to come, spent all their energy in scolding, which shows that they were not the proper stuff. But about this Medea—is that all you have got to say, to show that she is not trying on this little game?"
"No. I have a much stronger argument than that. No one could imagine for a moment that Sûr Imar, the most benevolent man on earth, could be the father of a hateful, spiteful, low-minded scoundrel, such as Hafer is."
"You have put it fairly. No one would imagine it; and therefore it is the very thing that may be true. I am not a scholar; but such things have been, and will be again, while the world endures. From bodily likeness you may reason more than from the greater things you cannot see. I have never seen Imar close at hand; but they are both tall, strong men, straight, well-built, and active. Imar is fair you say, and Hafer dark. That proves nothing."