



Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]




[Illustration: "'My heart sank within me.'" (Page 172.) _Frontispiece_]




                            The Interpreter

                           A Tale of the War


                                   By

                          G. J. Whyte-Melville

            Author of "Digby Grand," "General Bounce," etc.



                   Illustrated by Lucy E. Kemp-Welch



                                New York
                         Longmans, Green & Co.




                                CONTENTS

CHAP.

      I. The Old Desk
     II. The Deserter
    III. "Par Nobile"
     IV. Father and Son
      V. The Zingynies
     VI. School
    VII. Play
   VIII. The Truants
     IX. Ropsley
      X. Beverley Manor
     XI. Dulce Domum
    XII. Alton Grange
   XIII. "Lethalis Arundo"
    XIV. The Picture
     XV. Beverley Mere
    XVI. Princess Vocqsal
   XVII. The Common Lot
  XVIII. Omar Pasha
    XIX. "'Skender Bey"
     XX. The Beloochee
    XXI. Zuleika
   XXII. Valerie
  XXIII. Forewarned
   XXIV. "Arcades Ambo"
    XXV. "Dark and Dreary"
   XXVI. "Surveillance"
  XXVII. Ghosts of the Past
 XXVIII. La Dame aux Camellias
   XXIX. "A Merry Masque"
    XXX. The Golden Horn
   XXXI. The Seraskerat
  XXXII. A Turk's Harem
 XXXIII. My Patient
  XXXIV. "Messirie's"
   XXXV. "The Wolf and the Lamb"
  XXXVI. "The Front"
 XXXVII. "A Quiet Night"
XXXVIII. The Grotto
  XXXIX. The Redan
     XL. The War-Minister at Home
    XLI. Wheels within Wheels
   XLII. "Too Late"
  XLIII. "The Skeleton"
   XLIV. The Gipsy's Dream
    XLV. Retribution
   XLVI. Vae Victis!
  XLVII. The Return of Spring




                            THE INTERPRETER

                          _A TALE OF THE WAR_



                               CHAPTER I

                              THE OLD DESK


Not one of my keys will fit it: the old desk has been laid aside for
years, and is covered with dust and rust.  We do not make such strong
boxes nowadays, for brass hinges and secret drawers have given place to
flimsy morocco and russian leather; so we clap a Bramah lock, that
Bramah himself cannot pick, on a black bag that the veriest bungler can
rip open in five seconds with a penknife, and entrust our notes, bank
and otherwise, our valuables, and our secrets, to this faithless
repository with a confidence that deserves to be respected.  But in the
days when George the Third was king, our substantial ancestors rejoiced
in more substantial workmanship: so the old desk that I cannot succeed
in unlocking, is of shining rosewood, clamped with brass, and I shall
spoil it sadly with the mallet and the chisel.

What a medley it holds!  Thank Heaven I am no speculative philosopher,
or I might moralise for hours over its contents.  First, out flies a
withered leaf of geranium.  It must have been dearly prized once, or it
would never have been here; maybe it represented the hopes, the wealth,
the all-in-all of two aching hearts: and they are dust and ashes now.
To think that the flower should have outlasted them! the symbol less
perishable than the faith!  Then I come to a piece of much-begrimed and
yellow paper, carefully folded, and indorsed with a date,--a receipt for
an embrocation warranted specific in all cases of bruises, sprains, or
lumbago; next a gold pencil-case, with a head of Socrates for a seal;
lastly, much of that substance which is generated in all waste places,
and which the vulgar call "flue."  How it comes there puzzles equally
the naturalist and the philosopher; but you shall find it in empty
corners, empty drawers, empty pockets, nay, we believe in its existence
in the empty heads of our fellow-creatures.

In my thirst for acquisition, regardless of dusty fingers, I press the
inner sides of the desk in hopes of discovering secret springs and
hoarded repositories: so have poor men ere now found thousand-pound
notes hid away in chinks and crannies, and straightway, giddy with the
possession of boundless wealth, have gone to the Devil at a pace such as
none but the beggar on horseback can command; so have old wills been
fished out, and frauds discovered, and rightful heirs re-established,
and society in general disgusted, and all concerned made discontented
and uncomfortable--so shall I, perhaps--but the springs work, a false
lid flies open, and I do discover a packet of letters, written on thin
foreign paper, in the free straggling characters I remember so well.
They are addressed to Sir H. Beverley, and the hand that penned them has
been cold for years.  So will yours and mine be some day, perhaps ere
the flowers are out again; _O beate Sexti!_ will you drink a glass less
claret on that account? Buxom Mrs. Lalage, shall the dressmaker
therefore put unbecoming trimmings in your bonnet?  The "shining hours"
are few, and soon past; make the best of them, each in your own way,
only try and choose the right way:--

    For the day will soon be over, and the minutes are of gold,
    And the wicket shuts at sundown, and the shepherd leaves the
            fold.



                                LETTER I

"Those were merry days, my dear Hal, when we used to hear the 'chimes at
midnight' with poor Brummell and Sir Benjamin;[#] very jolly times they
were, and I often think, if health and pockets could have stood it, I
should like to be going the pace amongst you all still. And yet how few
of us are left.  They have dropped off one by one, as they did the night
we dyed the white rose red at the old place; and you, and I, and stanch
old 'Ben,' were the only three left that could walk straight. Do you
remember the corner of King-street, and 'Ben' stripped 'to the buff,' as
he called it himself, 'going-in' right royally at the tall fellow with
the red head?  I never saw such right-and-lefters, I never thought he
had so much 'fight' in him; and you don't remember, Hal, but I do, how
'the lass with the long locks' bent over you when you were floored, like
Andromache over a debauched Hector, and stanched the claret that was
flowing freely from your nostrils, and gave you gin in a
smelling-bottle, which you sucked down as though it were mother's milk,
like a young reprobate as you were; nor do you remember, nor do I very
clearly, how we all got back to 'The Cottage,' and finished with burnt
curagoa, and a dance on the table by daylight.  And now you and I are
about the only two left, and I am as near ruined as a gentleman can be;
and you must have lost your pen-feathers, Hal, I should think, though
you were a goose that always could pick a living off a common, be it
never so bare.  Well, we have had our fun; and after all, I for one have
been far happier since than I ever was in those roystering days; but of
this I cannot bear to speak."


[#] The dandy's nickname for the Prince Regent.


"Nor am I so much to be pitied now.  I have got my colours and my
sketch-book, after all; and there never was such a country as this for a
man who has half an eye in his head.  On these magnificent plains the
lights and shades are glorious.  Glorious, Hal, with a little red jagged
in here and there towards sunset, and the ghostly maize waving and
whispering, and the feathery acacias trembling in the lightest air, the
russet tinge of the one and the fawn- stems of the other melting
so softly into the neutral tints of the sandy soil.  I could paint a
picture here that should be perfectly true to Nature--nay, more natural
than the old dame herself--and never use but two colours to do it all!
I am not going to tell you what they are: and this reminds me of my boy,
and of a want in his organisation that is a sad distress to me. The
child has not a notion of colour.  I was painting out of doors
yesterday, and he was standing by--bless him! he never leaves me for an
instant--and I tried to explain to him some of the simplest rudiments of
the godlike art. 'Vere,' said I, 'do you see those red tints on the tops
of the far acacias, and the golden tinge along the back of that brown ox
in the foreground?'  'Yes, papa!' was the child's answer, with a
bewildered look.  'How should you paint them, my boy?'  'Well, papa, I
should paint the acacias green, because they _are_ green, and'--here he
thought he had made a decided hit--'I should put the red into the ox,
for he is almost more red than brown.'  Dear child! he has not a
glimmering of colour; but composition, that's his forte; and drawing,
drawing, you know, which is the highest form of the art.  His drawing is
extraordinary--careless, but great breadth and freedom; and I am certain
he could compose a wonderful picture, from his singular sensibility to
beauty.  Young as he is, I have seen the tears stand in his eyes when
contemplating a fine view, or a really exquisite 'bit,' such as one sees
in this climate every day.  His raptures at his first glimpse of the
Danube I shall never forget; and if I can only instil into him the
principles of colour, you will see Vere will become the first painter of
the age.  The boy learns languages readily enough.  He has picked up a
good deal of Hungarian from his nurse.  Such a woman, Hal! magnificent!
Such colouring: deep brown tones, and masses of the richest grey hair,
with superb, solemn, sunken eyes, and a throat and forehead tanned and
wrinkled into the very ideal of a Canidia, or a Witch of Endor, or any
fine old sorceress, 'all of the olden time.'  I have done her in chalks,
and in sepia, and in oils.  I adore her in the former.  She is, I fancy,
a good, careful woman, and much attached to Vere, who promises to be an
excellent linguist; but of this I cannot see the advantage.  There is
but one pursuit, in my opinion, for an intellectual being who is not
obliged to labour in the fields for his daily bread, and that is Art.  I
have wooed the heavenly maid all my life.  To me she has been sparing of
her favours; and yet a single smile from her has gilded my path for many
a long and weary day.  She has beckoned me on and on till I feel I could
follow her to the end of the world; she shielded me _in the dark hour_;
she has brightened my lot ever since; she led me to nature, her grand
reflection--for you know my theory, that art is reality, and nature but
the embodiment of art; she has made me independent of the frowns of that
other jade, Fortune, and taught me the most difficult lesson of all--to
be content.  What is wealth?  You and I have seen it lavished with both
hands, and its possessor weary, satiate, languid, and disgusted.  What
is rank? a mark for envy, an idol but for fools.  Fame? a few orders on
a tight uniform; a craving for more and more; even when we know the
tastelessness of the food, to be still hungry for applause.  Love? a
sting of joy and a heartache for ever.  Are they not all vanity of
vanities?  But your artist is your true creator.  He can embody the
noblest aspirations of his mind, and give them a reality and a name.
You, Hal, who are the most practical, unimaginative, business-like
fellow that ever hedged a bet or drove a bargain, have had such dreams
betwixt sleeping and waking as have given you a taste of heaven, and
taught you the existence of a fairy-land of which, to such as you, is
only granted a far-away and occasional glimpse.  What would you give to
be able to embody such blissful visions and call them up at will?  Let
me have a camel's-hair brush, a few dabs of clay, and, behold!  I am the
magician before whose wand these dreams shall reappear tangibly,
substantially, enduringly: alas! for mortal shortcomings, sometimes a
little out of drawing, sometimes a little hard and cold; but still, Hal,
I can make my own world, such as it is, and people it for myself; nor do
I envy any man on earth, except, perhaps, a sculptor.  To have perfected
and wrought out in the imperishable marble the ideal of one's whole
life, to walk round it, and smoke one's cigar and say, 'This will last
as long as St. Paul's Cathedral or the National Debt, and this is mine,
I made it'--must be a sensation of delight that even we poor painters,
with our works comparatively of a day, can hardly imagine; but then,
what we lose in durability we gain in reproduction: and so once more I
repeat, let who will be statesman, warrior, stock-jobber, or voluptuary,
but give me the pallet and the easel, the _delire d'un peintre_, the
line of beauty and the brush!

"Can you wonder that I should wish my boy to tread the same path?  Had I
but begun at his age, and worked as I _should_ have worked, what might I
have been now? Could I but make amends to him by leading him up the path
to real fame, and see Vere the regenerator of modern art, I should die
happy.

"And now, Hal, I must ask you of your own pursuits and your own
successes.  I do not often see an English paper; but these are a fine
sporting people, with a dash of our English tastes and love of
horseflesh; and in a small pothouse where we put up last week, in the
very heart of the Banat, I found a print of Flying Childers, and a
_Bell's Life_ of the month before last.  In this I read that your
Marigold colt was first favourite for the Derby, and I can only say that
I hope he will win, as fervently as I should have done some years back,
when he would have carried a large portion of my money, or at least of
my credit, on his back.  I have also gathered that your shorthorns won
the prize at the great cattle-show.  'Who drives fat oxen must himself
be fat.'  I trust, therefore, that you are flourishing and thriving;
also, that Constance, the most stately little lady I ever beheld at two
years old, still queens it at the Manor-house.  I will write again
shortly, but must leave off now, as my boy is calling me to go out.  He
grows more like his poor mother every day, especially about the
eyes.--Adieu, Hal; ever yours,

"PHILIP EGERTON."



LETTER II

"The longer I linger here the more I become wedded to the land in which,
after all, I have known the few hours of real happiness I ever spent.
Yes, Hal, with all its guilt, with all its anxieties, with everything
and everybody battling against me--that was my golden year, such as I
shall never see again.  She was so generous, so gentle, and so true; she
sacrificed all so willingly for me, and never looked back.  Such
courage, such patience, and oh! such beauty; and to lose her after one
short year. Well, it is my punishment, and I bear it; but if it had to
be done again I would do it.  Surely I was not so much to blame.  Had
she but lived I would have made her such amends.  And after all she is
mine--mine in her lonely grave under the acacias, and I shall meet her
again. If the universe holds her I shall meet her again.  Wearily the
years have dragged on since I lost her, but every birthday is a
milestone nearer home; and in the meantime I have Vere and my art.  And
we wander about this wild country, and scamper across its boundless
plains, and I paint and smoke, and try to be happy.

"We arrived here last night, and I need scarcely tell you that Edeldorf
is as English as any place out of England can be, and my old friend but
little altered during the last twenty years.  You remember De Rohan at
Melton and Newmarket, at Rome and at Paris. Wherever he lived he was
quite the Englishman, and always rode a thoroughbred horse.  It would
indeed be ungrateful on your part to forget him.  Need I remind you of
the dinner at the old Club, and the procession afterwards, with some
fourteen wax candles, to inspect The Switcher in your stables, at the
risk of burning down the greater part of the town, and converting some
of the best horses in England into an exceedingly tough grill.  I can
see the Count