The Project Gutenberg Etext of New Arabian Nights

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"Your Highness will be careful not to over-reach," said Colonel
Geraldine.

"Geraldine," returned the Prince, "did you ever know me fail in a
debt of honour? I owe you this man's death, and you shall have
it."

The President at last satisfied himself with one of the rapiers,
and signified his readiness by a gesture that was not devoid of a
rude nobility. The nearness of peril, and the sense of courage,
even to this obnoxious villain, lent an air of manhood and a
certain grace.

The Prince helped himself at random to a sword.

"Colonel Geraldine and Doctor Noel," he said, "will have the
goodness to await me in this room. I wish no personal friend of
mine to be involved in this transaction. Major O'Rooke, you are a
man of some years and a settled reputation - let me recommend the
President to your good graces. Lieutenant Rich will be so good as
lend me his attentions: a young man cannot have too much
experience in such affairs."

"Your Highness," replied Brackenbury, "it is an honour I shall
prize extremely."

"It is well," returned Prince Florizel; "I shall hope to stand your
friend in more important circumstances."

And so saying he led the way out of the apartment and down the
kitchen stairs.

The two men who were thus left alone threw open the window and
leaned out, straining every sense to catch an indication of the
tragical events that were about to follow. The rain was now over;
day had almost come, and the birds were piping in the shrubbery and
on the forest trees of the garden. The Prince and his companions
were visible for a moment as they followed an alley between two
flowering thickets; but at the first corner a clump of foliage
intervened, and they were again concealed from view. This was all
that the Colonel and the Physician had an opportunity to see, and
the garden was so vast, and the place of combat evidently so remote
from the house, that not even the noise of sword-play reached their
ears.

"He has taken him towards the grave," said Dr. Noel, with a
shudder.

"God," cried the Colonel, "God defend the right!"

And they awaited the event in silence, the Doctor shaking with
fear, the Colonel in an agony of sweat. Many minutes must have
elapsed, the day was sensibly broader, and the birds were singing
more heartily in the garden before a sound of returning footsteps
recalled their glances towards the door. It was the Prince and the
two Indian officers who entered. God had defended the right.

"I am ashamed of my emotion," said Prince Florizel; "I feel it is a
weakness unworthy of my station, but the continued existence of
that hound of hell had begun to prey upon me like a disease, and
his death has more refreshed me than a night of slumber. Look,
Geraldine," he continued, throwing his sword upon the floor, "there
is the blood of the man who killed your brother. It should be a
welcome sight. And yet," he added, "see how strangely we men are
made! my revenge is not yet five minutes old, and already I am
beginning to ask myself if even revenge be attainable on this
precarious stage of life. The ill he did, who can undo it? The
career in which he amassed a huge fortune (for the house itself in
which we stand belonged to him) - that career is now a part of the
destiny of mankind for ever; and I might weary myself making
thrusts in carte until the crack of judgment, and Geraldine's
brother would be none the less dead, and a thousand other innocent
persons would be none the less dishonoured and debauched! The
existence of a man is so small a thing to take, so mighty a thing
to employ! Alas!" he cried, "is there anything in life so
disenchanting as attainment?"

"God's justice has been done," replied the Doctor. "So much I
behold. The lesson, your Highness, has been a cruel one for me;
and I await my own turn with deadly apprehension."

"What was I saying?" cried the Prince. "I have punished, and here
is the man beside us who can help me to undo. Ah, Dr. Noel! you
and I have before us many a day of hard and honourable toil; and
perhaps, before we have none, you may have more than redeemed your
early errors."

"And in the meantime," said the Doctor, "let me go and bury my
oldest friend."

(And this, observes the erudite Arabian, is the fortunate
conclusion of the tale. The Prince, it is superfluous to mention,
forgot none of those who served him in this great exploit; and to
this day his authority and influence help them forward in their
public career, while his condescending friendship adds a charm to
their private life. To collect, continues my author, all the
strange events in which this Prince has played the part of
Providence were to fill the habitable globe with books. But the
stories which relate to the fortunes of THE RAJAH'S DIAMOND are of
too entertaining a description, says he, to be omitted. Following
prudently in the footsteps of this Oriental, we shall now begin the
series to which he refers with the STORY OF THE BANDBOX.)

THE RAJAH'S DIAMOND

STORY OF THE BANDBOX

UP to the age of sixteen, at a private school and afterwards at one
of those great institutions for which England is justly famous, Mr.
Harry Hartley had received the ordinary education of a gentleman.
At that period, he manifested a remarkable distaste for study; and
his only surviving parent being both weak and ignorant, he was
permitted thenceforward to spend his time in the attainment of
petty and purely elegant accomplishments. Two years later, he was
left an orphan and almost a beggar. For all active and industrious
pursuits, Harry was unfitted alike by nature and training. He
could sing romantic ditties, and accompany himself with discretion
on the piano; he was a graceful although a timid cavalier; he had a
pronounced taste for chess; and nature had sent him into the world
with one of the most engaging exteriors that can well be fancied.
Blond and pink, with dove's eyes and a gentle smile, he had an air
of agreeable tenderness and melancholy, and the most submissive and
caressing manners. But when all is said, he was not the man to
lead armaments of war, or direct the councils of a State.

A fortunate chance and some influence obtained for Harry, at the
time of his bereavement, the position of private secretary to
Major-General Sir Thomas Vandeleur, C.B. Sir Thomas was a man of
sixty, loud-spoken, boisterous, and domineering. For some reason,
some service the nature of which had been often whispered and
repeatedly denied, the Rajah of Kashgar had presented this officer
with the sixth known diamond of the world. The gift transformed
General Vandeleur from a poor into a wealthy man, from an obscure
and unpopular soldier into one of the lions of London society; the
possessor of the Rajah's Diamond was welcome in the most exclusive
circles; and he had found a lady, young, beautiful, and well-born,
who was willing to call the diamond hers even at the price of
marriage with Sir Thomas Vandeleur. It was commonly said at the
time that, as like draws to like, one jewel had attracted another;
certainly Lady Vandeleur was not only a gem of the finest water in
her own person, but she showed herself to the world in a very
costly setting; and she was considered by many respectable
authorities, as one among the three or four best dressed women in
England.

Harry's duty as secretary was not particularly onerous; but he had
a dislike for all prolonged work; it gave him pain to ink his
lingers; and the charms of Lady Vandeleur and her toilettes drew
him often from the library to the boudoir. He had the prettiest
ways among women, could talk fashions with enjoyment, and was never
more happy than when criticising a shade of ribbon, or running on
an errand to the milliner's. In short, Sir Thomas's correspondence
fell into pitiful arrears, and my Lady had another lady's maid.

At last the General, who was one of the least patient of military
commanders, arose from his place in a violent access of passion,
and indicated to his secretary that he had no further need for his
services, with one of those explanatory gestures which are most
rarely employed between gentlemen. The door being unfortunately
open, Mr. Hartley fell downstairs head foremost.

He arose somewhat hurt and very deeply aggrieved. The life in the
General's house precisely suited him; he moved, on a more or less
doubtful footing, in very genteel company, he did little, he ate of
the best, and he had a lukewarm satisfaction in the presence of
Lady Vandeleur, which, in his own heart, he dubbed by a more
emphatic name.

Immediately after he had been outraged by the military foot, he
hurried to the boudoir and recounted his sorrows.

"You know very well, my dear Harry," replied Lady Vandeleur, for
she called him by name like a child or a domestic servant, "that
you never by any chance do what the General tells you. No more do
I, you may say. But that is different. A woman can earn her
pardon for a good year of disobedience by a single adroit
submission; and, besides, no one is married to his private
secretary. I shall be sorry to lose you; but since you cannot stay
longer in a house where you have been insulted, I shall wish you
good-bye, and I promise you to make the General smart for his
behaviour."

Harry's countenance fell; tears came into his eyes, and he gazed on
Lady Vandeleur with a tender reproach.

"My Lady," said he, "what is an insult? I should think little
indeed of any one who could not forgive them by the score. But to
leave one's friends; to tear up the bonds of affection - "

He was unable to continue, for his emotion choked him, and he began
to weep.

Lady Vandeleur looked at him with a curious expression. "This
little fool," she thought, "imagines himself to be in love with me.
Why should he not become my servant instead of the General's? He
is good-natured, obliging, and understands dress; and besides it
will keep him out of mischief. He is positively too pretty to be
unattached." That night she talked over the General, who was
already somewhat ashamed of his vivacity; and Harry was transferred
to the feminine department, where his life was little short of
heavenly. He was always dressed with uncommon nicety, wore
delicate flowers in his button-hole, and could entertain a visitor
with tact and pleasantry. He took a pride in servility to a
beautiful woman; received Lady Vandeleur's commands as so many
marks of favour; and was pleased to exhibit himself before other
men, who derided and despised him, in his character of male lady's-
maid and man milliner. Nor could he think enough of his existence
from a moral point of view. Wickedness seemed to him an
essentially male attribute, and to pass one's days with a delicate
woman, and principally occupied about trimmings, was to inhabit an
enchanted isle among the storms of life.

One fine morning he came into the drawing-room and began to arrange
some music on the top of the piano. Lady Vandeleur, at the other
end of the apartment, was speaking somewhat eagerly with her
brother, Charlie Pendragon, an elderly young man, much broken with
dissipation, and very lame of one foot. The private secretary, to
whose entrance they paid no regard, could not avoid overhearing a
part of their conversation.

"To-day or never," said the lady. "Once and for all, it shall be
done to-day."

"To-day, if it must be," replied the brother, with a sigh. "But it
is a false step, a ruinous step, Clara; and we shall live to repent
it dismally."

Lady Vandeleur looked her brother steadily and somewhat strangely
in the face.

"You forget," she said; "the man must die at last."

"Upon my word, Clara," said Pendragon, "I believe you are the most
heartless rascal in England."

"You men," she returned, "are so coarsely built, that you can never
appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious,
violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least
thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience
with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the
imbecility that you expect to find in us."

"You are very likely right," replied her brother; "you were always
cleverer than I. And, anyway, you know my motto: The family
before all."

"Yes, Charlie," she returned, taking his hand in hers, "I know your
motto better than you know it yourself. 'And Clara before the
family!' Is not that the second part of it? Indeed, you are the
best of brothers, and I love you dearly."

Mr. Pendragon got up, looking a little confused by these family
endearments.

"I had better not be seen," said he. "I understand my part to a
miracle, and I'll keep an eye on the Tame Cat."

"Do," she replied. "He is an abject creature, and might ruin all."

She kissed the tips of her fingers to him daintily; and the brother
withdrew by the boudoir and the back stair.

"Harry," said Lady Vandeleur, turning towards the secretary as soon
as they were alone, "I have a commission for you this morning. But
you shall take a cab; I cannot have my secretary freckled."

She spoke the last words with emphasis and a look of half-motherly
pride that caused great contentment to poor Harry; and he professed
himself charmed to find an opportunity of serving her.

"It is another of our great secrets," she went on archly, "and no
one must know of it but my secretary and me. Sir Thomas would make
the saddest disturbance; and if you only knew how weary I am of
these scenes! Oh, Harry, Harry, can you explain to me what makes
you men so violent and unjust? But, indeed, I know you cannot; you
are the only man in the world who knows nothing of these shameful
passions; you are so good, Harry, and so kind; you, at least, can
be a woman's friend; and, do you know? I think you make the others
more ugly by comparison."

"It is you," said Harry gallantly, "who are so kind to me. You
treat me like - "

"Like a mother," interposed Lady Vandeleur; "I try to be a mother
to you. Or, at least," she corrected herself with a smile, "almost
a mother. I am afraid I am too young to be your mother really.
Let us say a friend - a dear friend."

She paused long enough to let her words take effect in Harry's
sentimental quarters, but not long enough to allow him a reply.

"But all this is beside our purpose," she resumed. "You will find
a bandbox in the left-hand side of the oak wardrobe; it is
underneath the pink slip that I wore on Wednesday with my Mechlin.
You will take it immediately to this address," and she gave him a
paper, "but do not, on any account, let it out of your hands until
you have received a receipt written by myself. Do you understand?
Answer, if you please - answer! This is extremely important, and I
must ask you to pay some attention."

Harry pacified her by repeating her instructions perfectly; and she
was just going to tell him more when General Vandeleur flung into
the apartment, scarlet with anger, and holding a long and elaborate
milliner's bill in his hand.

"Will you look at this, madam?" cried he. "Will you have the
goodness to look at this document? I know well enough you married
me for my money, and I hope I can make as great allowances as any
other man in the service; but, as sure as God made me, I mean to
put a period to this disreputable prodigality."

"Mr. Hartley," said Lady Vandeleur, "I think you understand what
you have to do. May I ask you to see to it at once?"

"Stop," said the General, addressing Harry, "one word before you
go." And then, turning again to Lady Vandeleur, "What is this
precious fellow's errand?" he demanded. "I trust him no further
than I do yourself, let me tell you. If he had as much as the
rudiments of honesty, he would scorn to stay in this house; and
what he does for his wages is a mystery to all the world. What is
his errand, madam? and why are you hurrying him away?"

"I supposed you had something to say to me in private," replied the
lady.

"You spoke about an errand," insisted the General. "Do not attempt
to deceive me in my present state of temper. You certainly spoke
about an errand."

"If you insist on making your servants privy to our humiliating
dissensions," replied Lady Vandeleur, "perhaps I had better ask Mr.
Hartley to sit down. No?" she continued; "then you may go, Mr.
Hartley. I trust you may remember all that you have heard in this
room; it may be useful to you."

Harry at once made his escape from the drawing-room; and as he ran
upstairs he could hear the General's voice upraised in declamation,
and the thin tones of Lady Vandeleur planting icy repartees at
every opening. How cordially he admired the wife! How skilfully
she could evade an awkward question! with what secure effrontery
she repeated her instructions under the very guns of the enemy! and
on the other hand, how he detested the husband!

There had been nothing unfamiliar in the morning's events, for he
was continually in the habit of serving Lady Vandeleur on secret
missions, principally connected with millinery. There was a
skeleton in the house, as he well knew. The bottomless
extravagance and the unknown liabilities of the wife had long since
swallowed her own fortune, and threatened day by day to engulph
that of the husband. Once or twice in every year exposure and ruin
seemed imminent, and Harry kept trotting round to all sorts of
furnishers' shops, telling small fibs, and paying small advances on
the gross amount, until another term was tided over, and the lady
and her faithful secretary breathed again. For Harry, in a double
capacity, was heart and soul upon that side of the war: not only
did he adore Lady Vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband, but
he naturally sympathised with the love of finery, and his own
single extravagance was at the tailor's.

He found the bandbox where it had been described, arranged his
toilette with care, and left the house. The sun shone brightly;
the distance he had to travel was considerable, and he remembered
with dismay that the General's sudden irruption had prevented Lady
Vandeleur from giving him money for a cab. On this sultry day
there was every chance that his complexion would suffer severely;
and to walk through so much of London with a bandbox on his arm was
a humiliation almost insupportable to a youth of his character. He
paused, and took counsel with himself. The Vandeleurs lived in
Eaton Place; his destination was near Notting Hill; plainly, he
might cross the Park by keeping well in the open and avoiding
populous alleys; and he thanked his stars when he reflected that it
was still comparatively early in the day.

Anxious to be rid of his incubus, he walked somewhat faster than
his ordinary, and he was already some way through Kensington
Gardens when, in a solitary spot among trees, he found himself
confronted by the General.

"I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas," observed Harry, politely falling
on one side; for the other stood directly in his path.

"Where are you going, sir?" asked the General.

"I am taking a little walk among the trees," replied the lad.

The General struck the bandbox with his cane.

"With that thing?" he cried; "you lie, sir, and you know you lie!"

"Indeed, Sir Thomas," returned Harry, "I am not accustomed to be
questioned in so high a key."

"You do not understand your position," said the General. "You are
my servant, and a servant of whom I have conceived the most serious
suspicions. How do I know but that your box is full of teaspoons?"

"It contains a silk hat belonging to a friend," said Harry.

"Very well," replied General Vandeleur. "Then I want to see your
friend's silk hat. I have," he added grimly, "a singular curiosity
for hats; and I believe you know me to be somewhat positive."

"I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas, I am exceedingly grieved," Harry
apologised; "but indeed this is a private affair."

The General caught him roughly by the shoulder with one hand, while
he raised his cane in the most menacing manner with the other.
Harry gave himself up for lost; but at the same moment Heaven
vouchsafed him an unexpected defender in the person of Charlie
Pendragon, who now strode forward from behind the trees.

"Come, come, General, hold your hand," said he, "this is neither
courteous nor manly."

"Aha!" cried the General, wheeling round upon his new antagonist,
"Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I
have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself
to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine
like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away
all my appetite for the other members of her family."

"And do you fancy, General Vandeleur," retorted Charlie, "that
because my sister has had the misfortune to marry you, she there
and then forfeited her rights and privileges as a lady? I own,
sir, that by that action she did as much as anybody could to
derogate from her position; but to me she is still a Pendragon. I
make it my business to protect her from ungentlemanly outrage, and
if you were ten times her husband I would not permit her liberty to
be restrained, nor her private messengers to be violently
arrested."

"How is that, Mr. Hartley?" interrogated the General. "Mr.
Pendragon is of my opinion, it appears. He too suspects that Lady
Vandeleur has something to do with your friend's silk hat."

Charlie saw that he had committed an unpardonable blunder, which he
hastened to repair.

"How, sir?" he cried; "I suspect, do you say? I suspect nothing.
Only where I find strength abused and a man brutalising his
inferiors, I take the liberty to interfere."

As he said these words he made a sign to Harry, which the latter
was too dull or too much troubled to understand.

"In what way am I to construe your attitude, sir?" demanded
Vandeleur.

"Why, sir, as you please," returned Pendragon.

The General once more raised his cane, and made a cut for Charlie's
head; but the latter, lame foot and all, evaded the blow with his
umbrella, ran in, and immediately closed with his formidable
adversary.

"Run, Harry, run!" he cried; "run, you dolt! Harry stood petrified
for a moment, watching the two men sway together in this fierce
embrace; then he turned and took to his heels. When he cast a
glance over his shoulder he saw the General prostrate under
Charlie's knee, but still making desperate efforts to reverse the
situation; and the Gardens seemed to have filled with people, who
were running from all directions towards the scene of fight. This
spectacle lent the secretary wings; and he did not relax his pace
until he had gained the Bayswater road, and plunged at random into
an unfrequented by-street.

To see two gentlemen of his acquaintance thus brutally mauling each
other was deeply shocking to Harry. He desired to forget the
sight; he desired, above all, to put as great a distance as
possible between himself and General Vandeleur; and in his
eagerness for this he forgot everything about his destination, and
hurried before him headlong and trembling. When he remembered that
Lady Vandeleur was the wife of one and the sister of the other of
these gladiators, his heart was touched with sympathy for a woman
so distressingly misplaced in life. Even his own situation in the
General's household looked hardly so pleasing as usual in the light
of these violent transactions.

He had walked some little distance, busied with these meditations,
before a slight collision with another passenger reminded him of
the bandbox on his arm.

"Heavens!" cried he, "where was my head? and whither have I
wandered?"

Thereupon he consulted the envelope which Lady Vandeleur had given
him. The address was there, but without a name. Harry was simply
directed to ask for "the gentleman who expected a parcel from Lady
Vandeleur," and if he were not at home to await his return. The
gentleman, added the note, should present a receipt in the
handwriting of the lady herself. All this seemed mightily
mysterious, and Harry was above all astonished at the omission of
the name and the formality of the receipt. He had thought little
of this last when he heard it dropped in conversation; but reading
it in cold blood, and taking it in connection with the other
strange particulars, he became convinced that he was engaged in
perilous affairs. For half a moment he had a doubt of Lady
Vandeleur herself; for he found these obscure proceedings somewhat
unworthy of so high a lady, and became more critical when her
secrets were preserved against himself. But her empire over his
spirit was too complete, he dismissed his suspicions, and blamed
himself roundly for having so much as entertained them.

In one thing, however, his duty and interest, his generosity and
his terrors, coincided - to get rid of the bandbox with the
greatest possible despatch.

He accosted the first policeman and courteously inquired his way.
It turned out that he was already not far from his destination, and
a walk of a few minutes brought him to a small house in a lane,
freshly painted, and kept with the most scrupulous attention. The
knocker and bell-pull were highly polished; flowering pot-herbs
garnished the sills of the different windows; and curtains of some
rich material concealed the interior from the eyes of curious
passengers. The place had an air of repose and secrecy; and Harry
was so far caught with this spirit that he knocked with more than
usual discretion, and was more than usually careful to remove all
impurity from his boots.

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