CHAPTER VI

NOTHING is more hopelessly wearisome than descriptions of travel; even George Eliot could not make in her diaries Florence anything but dull. I shall confine myself to sketching his route, to telling one incident among the few he told me, and describing his return.

I had no more letters from him; but he has told me that he got to Spitzbergen, and in a whaler to the edge of the great arctic ice-field. He sailed to America and crossed it. From San Francisco he visited Peru and the Amazon, on which river he spent a month. Then he went to Africa, to what part I do not know, except that he came down the Nile; and then he wandered through Asia Minor, Persia, and India; he penetrated a little way into Thibet, and saw China and Japan; he went up to the mouth of the Siberian rivers, travelling for three months with a party of gipsies, who taught him many curious things, such as their own language and freemasonry, the use of

simples, the properties of water, and the strange things that can be done with even such things as docks and nettles, and other plants which we toss away as weeds. He told me that in that branch of secret knowledge, as in all others, there was a vast deal of nonsense but a solid residuum of truth; and he said, half jestingly, that they had sworn him a member of their brotherhood, and what was more, he had since discovered many members of the brotherhood in civilized nations, even in "kings' houses."

But I must suspend my account for a short time to relate the incident to which I have just referred. It took place during his stay in Teheran, while on his way home (1878), a period of about six weeks. This city is situated in a lovely climate— hot, but not unbearable for Europeans; houses, horses, and servants are extraordinarily cheap. The house that Arthur took was situated in large gardens or pleasure-grounds of the natural wilderness type that one finds in the East, shrubberies relegated to certain limits, but within those limits left absolutely to their own device and will, with the exception of arched and shaded paths cut under the thick intertwined leafage.

This whole place, with horses at his command, and seven servants, with the whole expense of boarding, cost him, he has told me, £40 for the entire six weeks that he was there; for he was very weary of

his rough tramping life, and resolutely determined to recruit his energies by some deliberate luxury, a recipe far more useful than the normal Englishman is at all inclined to admit, thinking, as he does so erroneously, that "overtasking the body is the best restorative for the overworked mind, and vice versa," as Arthur said once, "whereas the two instruments, so to speak, have but one blade though two handles."

The heat of the day was rather overpowering ; that period he usually spent dozing or reading in the court of the house, which was occupied by a cool flashing fountain in the centre of an oasis of marble pavement, streaked and veined. About seven it became cooler, and then in the light native costume he used to ride leisurely about the picturesque city or among the delightful houses scattered about in the outskirts like his own.

One evening he was riding in this fashion down a lane running between high brick walls, fringed with feathery trailing shrubs or gorgeous red and white flowers, whose fragrance literally streamed into the evening air, in that delicate dusk when the senses are lulled into acquiescence, and the mind and emotions become so vivid and lustrous in their play.

Riding along with his eyes half closed and lost in a delicious reverie, his horse turned of its own. accord to the left, and went for some distance up

an embowered road; Arthur suddenly roused himself to find that he was passing close to a large sombre house, that had evidently once been fortified, looming very impressively in the languorous air; the gate had been opened for some purpose and not closed again, and he was, in fact, trespassing in some private grounds.

He checked his horse, looking curiously about him, and was just about to return when he heard a voice apparently proceeding from the centre of one of the shrubberies, asking him his business in Persian. Looking in that direction he managed to distinguish two or three indistinct figures seated on a low seat on a kind of terrace on his left.

He rode up, and mustering up the little Persian he possessed, apologized for his unintentional intrusion, mingling a good deal of English, as he said, with his rather incoherent explanation.

He was aware that one of the figures disengaged itself from the group, and coming up close to him, regarded him with some curiosity. It was a tall man, paler in complexion than the natives are wont to be, with large dreamy eyes, and an air of indifferent lassitude that was rather fascinating.

He was amazed to hear, at the conclusion of his lame peroration, a voice of strange delicacy of intonation proceeding from the figure: “An Englishman, I presume." The accent was a

little affected, but the speaker was evidently more English than Persian by training: "Not only English," said Arthur to himself, "but London English of the best kind."

He confessed his nationality, and, again apologizing, was about to withdraw, when the stranger courteously invited him to join the party. "It is very refreshing," he said, " to hear my native tongue by chance; I cannot resist the temptation of begging you to join us for a little, that I may hear it once more; you will do me a great kindness if you will accede to my request.”

Seeing that the offer was sincere, Arthur dismounted, and walked to the terrace with the other. The figures rose at their approach, and Arthur could see that they were two boys of fifteen or sixteen, of extraordinary beauty and delicacy, and a woman of about thirty-five, as far as he could judge, evidently their mother.

His host spoke a few words in Persian, the purport of which he could not catch, and, rapidly presenting him, requested him to be seated, and produced some cigarettes of a very choice and fragrant kind.

They talked for a long time on general subjectsEngland, politics, art, and literature. The stranger seemed well acquainted with literature and events of a certain date, but not of later departures in any branch; and finally, Arthur gave a short account