The Dictator. McCarthy Justin Huntly

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СКАЧАТЬ in keeping with his ill-defined attire, and made an awkward bow which at once included the old lady and the Dictator, on whom the blue eyes beamed for a moment in good-natured wonder.

      'Good morning, Miss Ericson,' said the new-comer. He spoke to Miss Ericson; but it was evident that his thoughts were distracted. His vague blue eyes were fixed in benign bewilderment upon the Dictator's face.

      Miss Ericson rose; so did her nephew. Miss Ericson spoke.

      'Good morning, Mr. Sarrasin. Let me present you to my nephew, of whom you have heard so much. Nephew, this is Mr. Gilbert Sarrasin.'

      The new-comer extended both hands; they were very large hands, and very soft and very white. He enfolded the Dictator's extended right hand in one of his, and beamed upon him in unaffected joy.

      'Not your nephew, Miss Ericson—not the hero of the hour? Is it possible; is it possible? My dear sir, my very dear and honoured sir, I cannot tell you how rejoiced I am, how proud I am, to have the privilege of meeting you.'

      The Dictator returned his friendly clasp with a warm pressure. He was somewhat amused by this unexpected enthusiasm.

      'You are very good indeed, Mr. Sarrasin.' Then, repeating the name to himself, he added, 'Your name seems to be familiar to me.'

      The white gentleman shook his head with something like playful repudiation.

      'Not my name, I think; no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my name; my brother's—my brother's, I fancy.'

      'Your brother's?' the Dictator said inquiringly. There was some association in his mind with the name of Sarrasin, but he could not reduce it to precise knowledge.

      'Yes, my brother,' said the white gentleman. 'My brother, Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, whose name, I am proud to think, is familiar in many parts of the world.'

      The recollection he was seeking came to the Dictator. It was the name that Hamilton had given to him that morning, the name of the man who had written to him, and who had signed himself 'a soldier of fortune.' He smiled back at the white gentleman.

      'Yes,' he said truthfully, 'I have heard your brother's name. It is a striking name.'

      The white gentleman was delighted. He rubbed his large white hands together, and almost seemed as if he might purr in the excess of his gratification. He glanced enthusiastically at Miss Ericson.

      'Ah!' he went on. 'My brother is a remarkable man. I may even say so in your illustrious presence; he is a remarkable man. There are degrees, of course,' and he bowed apologetically to the Dictator; 'but he is remarkable.'

      'I have not the least doubt of that,' said the Dictator politely.

      The white gentleman seemed much pleased. At a sign from Miss Ericson he sat down upon a garden-chair, still slowly and contentedly rubbing his white hands together. Miss Ericson and her nephew resumed their seats.

      'Captain Sarrasin is a great traveller,' Miss Ericson said explanatorily to the Dictator. The Dictator bowed his head. He did not quite know what to say, and so, for the moment, said nothing. The white gentleman took advantage of the pause.

      'Yes,' he said, 'yes, my brother is a great traveller. A wonderful man, sir; all parts of the wide world are as familiar as home to him. The deserts of the nomad Arabs, the Prairies of the great West, the Steppes of the frozen North, the Pampas of South America; why, he knows them all better than most people know Piccadilly.'

      'South America?' questioned the Dictator; 'your brother is acquainted with South America?'

      'Intimately acquainted,' replied Mr. Sarrasin. 'I hope you will meet him. You and he might have much to talk about. He knew Gloria in the old days.'

      The Dictator expressed courteously his desire to have the pleasure of meeting Captain Sarrasin. 'And you, are you a traveller as well?' he asked.

      Mr. Sarrasin shook his head, and when he spoke there was a certain accent of plaintiveness in his reply.

      'No,' he said, 'not at all, not at all. My brother and I resemble each other very slightly. He has the wanderer's spirit; I am a confirmed stay-at-home. While he thinks nothing of starting off at any moment for the other ends of the earth, I have never been outside our island, have never been much away from London.'

      'Isn't that curious?' asked Miss Ericson, who evidently took much pleasure in the conversation of the white gentleman. The Dictator assented. It was very curious.

      'Yet I am fond of travel, too, in my way,' Mr. Sarrasin went on, delighted to have found an appreciative audience. 'I read about it largely. I read all the old books of travel, and all the new ones, too, for the matter of that. I have quite a little library of voyages, travels, and explorations in my little home. I should like you to see it some time if you should so far honour me.'

      The Dictator declared that he should be delighted. Mr. Sarrasin, much encouraged, went on again.

      'There is nothing I like better than to sit by my fire of a winter's evening, or in my garden of a summer afternoon, and read of the adventures of great travellers. It makes me feel as if I had travelled myself.'

      'And Mr. Sarrasin tells me what he has read, and makes me, too, feel travelled,' said Miss Ericson.

      'Perhaps you get all the pleasure in that way with none of the fatigue,' the Dictator suggested.

      Mr. Sarrasin nodded. 'Very likely we do. I think it was à Kempis who protested against the vanity of wandering. But I fear it was not à Kempis's reasons that deterred me; but an invincible laziness and unconquerable desire to be doing nothing.'

      'Travelling is generally uncomfortable,' the Dictator admitted. He was beginning to feel an interest in his curious, whimsical interlocutor.

      'Yes,' Mr. Sarrasin went on dreamily. 'But there are times when I regret the absence of experience. I have tramped in fancy through tropical forests with Stanley or Cameron, dwelt in the desert with Burton, battled in Nicaragua with Walker, but all only as it were in dreams.'

      'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' the Dictator observed sententiously.

      'And our little lives are rounded by a sleep,' Miss Ericson said softly, completing the quotation.

      'Yes, yes,' said Mr. Sarrasin; 'but mine are dreams within a dream.' He was beginning to grow quite communicative as he sat there with his big stick between his knees, and his amorphous felt hat pushed back from his broad white forehead.

      'Sometimes my travels seem very real to me. If I have been reading Ford or Kinglake, or Warburton or Lane, I have but to lay the volume down and close my eyes, and all that I have been reading about seems to take shape and sound, and colour and life. I hear the tinkling of the mule-bells and the guttural cries of the muleteers, and I see the Spanish market-place, with its arcades and its ancient cathedral; or the delicate pillars of the Parthenon, yellow in the clear Athenian air; or Stamboul, where the East and West join hands; or Egypt and the desert, and the Nile and the pyramids; or the Holy Land and the walls of Jerusalem—ah! it is all very wonderful, and then I open my eyes and blink at my dying fire, and look at my slippered feet, and remember that I am a stout old gentleman who has never left his native land, and I yawn СКАЧАТЬ