Whether they be right or wrong, is what you, and such as you, have to find out at this day."
Silent and thoughtful, Lancelot walked on by his side.
"What is become of your friend Tregarva? I met him this morning after he parted from you, and had some talk with him. I was sorely minded to enlist him. Perhaps I shall; in the meantime, I shall busy myself with you."
"In what way," asked Lancelot, "most strange sir, of whose name, much less of whose occupation, I can gain no tidings."
"My name for the time being is Barnakill. And as for business, as it is your English fashion to call new things obstinately by old names, careless whether they apply or not, you may consider me as a recruiting-sergeant; which trade, indeed, I follow, though I am no more like the popular red-coated ones than your present "glorious const.i.tution" is like William the Third"s, or Overbeck"s high art like Fra Angelico"s. Farewell! When I want you, which will be most likely when you want me, I shall find you again."
The evening was pa.s.sed, as Claude had promised, in a truly Horatian manner. Sabina was most piquante, and Claude interspersed his genial and enthusiastic eloquence with various wise saws of "the prophet."
"But why on earth," quoth Lancelot, at last, "do you call him a prophet?"
"Because he is one; it"s his business, his calling. He gets his living thereby, as the showman did by his elephant."
"But what does he foretell?"
"Oh, son of the earth! And you went to Cambridge--are reported to have gone in for the thing, or phantom, called the tripos, and taken a first cla.s.s! . . . Did you ever look out the word "prophetes" in Liddell and Scott?"
"Why, what do you know about Liddell and Scott?"
"Nothing, thank goodness; I never had time to waste over the crooked letters. But I have heard say that prophetes means, not a foreteller, but an out-teller--one who declares the will of a deity, and interprets his oracles. Is it not so?"
"Undeniably."
"And that he became a foreteller among heathens at least--as I consider, among all peoples whatsoever--because knowing the real bearing of what had happened, and what was happening, he could discern the signs of the times, and so had what the world calls a shrewd guess--what I, like a Pantheist as I am denominated, should call a divine and inspired foresight--of what was going to happen."
"A new notion, and a pleasant one, for it looks something like a law."
"I am no scollard, as they would say in Whitford, you know; but it has often struck me, that if folks would but believe that the Apostles talked not such very bad Greek, and had some slight notion of the received meaning of the words they used, and of the absurdity of using the same term to express nineteen different things, the New Testament would be found to be a much simpler and more severely philosophic book than "Theologians" ("Anthropo-sophists" I call them) fancy."
"Where on earth did you get all this wisdom, or foolishness?"
"From the prophet, a fortnight ago."
"Who is this prophet? I will know."
"Then you will know more than I do. Sabina--light my meerschaum, there"s a darling; it will taste the sweeter after your lips." And Claude laid his delicate woman-like limbs upon the sofa, and looked the very picture of luxurious nonchalance.
"What is he, you pitiless wretch?"
"Fairest Hebe, fill our Prometheus Vinctus another gla.s.s of Burgundy, and find your guitar, to silence him."
"It was the ocean nymphs who came to comfort Prometheus--and unsandalled, too, if I recollect right," said Lancelot, smiling at Sabina. "Come, now, if he will not tell me, perhaps you will?"
Sabina only blushed, and laughed mysteriously.
"You surely are intimate with him, Claude? When and where did you meet him first?"
"Seventeen years ago, on the barricades of the three days, in the charming little pandemonium called Paris, he picked me out of a gutter, a boy of fifteen, with a musket-ball through my body; mended me, and sent me to a painter"s studio. . . . The next sejour I had with him began in sight of the Demawend. Sabina, perhaps you might like to relate to Mr. Smith that interview, and the circ.u.mstances under which you made your first sketch of that magnificent and little-known volcano?"
Sabina blushed again--this time scarlet; and, to Lancelot"s astonishment, pulled off her slipper, and brandishing it daintily, uttered some unintelligible threat, in an Oriental language, at the laughing Claude.
"Why, you must have been in the East?"
"Why not! Do you think that figure and that walk were picked up in stay-ridden, toe-pinching England? . . . Ay, in the East; and why not elsewhere? Do you think I got my knowledge of the human figure from the live-model in the Royal Academy?"
"I certainly have always had my doubts of it. You are the only man I know who can paint muscle in motion."
"Because I am almost the only man in England who has ever seen it.
Artists should go to the Cannibal Islands for that. . . . J"ai fait le grand tour. I should not wonder if the prophet made you take it."
"That would be very much as I chose."
"Or otherwise."
"What do you mean?"
"That if he wills you to go, I defy you to stay. Eh, Sabina!"
"Well, you are a very mysterious pair,--and a very charming one."
"So we think ourselves--as to the charmingness. . . . and as for the mystery . . . "Omnia exeunt in mysterium," says somebody, somewhere- -or if he don"t, ought to, seeing that it is so. You will be a mystery some day, and a myth, and a thousand years hence pious old ladies will be pulling caps as to whether you were a saint or a devil, and whether you did really work miracles or not, as corroborations of your ex-supra-lunar illumination on social questions. . . . Yes . . . you will have to submit, and see Bogy, and enter the Eleusinian mysteries. Eh, Sabina?"
"My dear Claude, what between the Burgundy and your usual foolishness, you seem very much inclined to divulge the Eleusinian mysteries."
"I can"t well do that, my beauty, seeing that, if you recollect, we were both turned back at the vestibule, for a pair of naughty children as we are."
"Do be quiet! and let me enjoy, for once, my woman"s right to the last word!"
And in this hopeful state of mystification, Lancelot went home, and dreamt of Argemone.
His uncle would, and, indeed, as it seemed, could, give him very little information on the question which had so excited his curiosity. He had met the man in India many years before, had received there from him most important kindnesses, and considered him, from experience, of oracular wisdom. He seemed to have an unlimited command of money, though most frugal in his private habits; visited England for a short time every few years, and always under a different appellation; but as for his real name, habitation, or business, here or at home, the good banker knew nothing, except that whenever questioned on them, he wandered off into Pantagruelist jokes, and ended in Cloud-land. So that Lancelot was fain to give up his questions and content himself with longing for the reappearance of this inexplicable sage.
CHAPTER XVI: ONCE IN A WAY
A few mornings afterwards, Lancelot, as he glanced his eye over the columns of The Times, stopped short at the beloved name of Whitford.
To his disgust and disappointment, it only occurred in one of those miserable cases, now of weekly occurrence, of concealing the birth of a child. He was turning from it, when he saw Bracebridge"s name.
Another look sufficed to show him that he ought to go at once to the colonel, who had returned the day before from Norway.
A few minutes brought him to his friend"s lodging, but The Times had arrived there before him. Bracebridge was sitting over his untasted breakfast, his face buried in his hands.
"Do not speak to me," he said, without looking up. "It was right of you to come--kind of you; but it is too late."
He started, and looked wildly round him, as if listening for some sound which he expected, and then laid his head down on the table.