“Did the King,” I asked, “increase your salary?”
“Yes. He doubled it.”
“And what do they say in Sunch’ston about our father’s second visit?”
George laughed, and showed me the newspaper extract which I have already given. I asked who wrote it.
“I did,” said he, with a demure smile; “I wrote it at night after I returned home, and before starting for the capital next morning. I called myself ‘the deservedly popular Ranger,’ to avert suspicion. No one found me out; you can keep the extract, I brought it here on purpose.”
“It does you great credit. Was there ever any lunatic, and was he found?”
“Oh yes. That part was true, except that he had never been up our way.”
“Then the poacher is still at large?”
“It is to be feared so.”
“And were Dr. Downie and the Professors canonized after all.”
“Not yet; but the Professors will be next month—for Hanky is still Professor. Dr. Downie backed out of it. He said it was enough to be a Sunchildist without being a Sunchild Saint. He worships the jumping cat as much as the others, but he keeps his eye better on the cat, and sees sooner both when it will jump, and where it will jump to. Then, without disturbing anyone, he insinuates himself into the place which will be best when the jump is over. Some say that the cat knows him and follows him; at all events when he makes a move the cat generally jumps towards him soon afterwards.”
“You give him a very high character.”
“Yes, but I have my doubts about his doing much in this matter; he is getting old, and Hanky burrows like a mole night and day. There is no knowing how it will all end.”
“And the people at Sunch’ston? Has it got well about among them, in spite of your admirable article, that it was the Sunchild himself who interrupted Hanky?”
“It has, and it has not. Many of us know the truth, but a story came down from Bridgeford that it was an evil spirit who had assumed the Sunchild’s form, intending to make people sceptical about Sunchildism; Hanky and Panky cowed this spirit, otherwise it would never have recanted. Many people swallow this.”
“But Hanky and Panky swore that they knew the man.”
“That does not matter.”
“And now please, how long have you been married?”
“About ten months.”
“Any family?”
“One boy about a fortnight old. Do come down to Sunch’ston and see him—he is your own nephew. You speak Erewhonian so perfectly that no human being would suspect you were a foreigner, and you look one of us from head to foot. I can smuggle you through quite easily, and my mother would so like to see you.”
I should dearly have liked to have gone, but it was out of the question. I had nothing with me but the clothes I stood in; moreover I was longing to be back in England, and when once I was in Erewhon there was no knowing when I should be able to get away again; but George fought hard before he gave in.
It was now nearing the time when this strange meeting between two brothers—as strange a one as the statues can ever have looked down upon—must come to an end. I showed George what the repeater would do, and what it would expect of its possessor. I gave him six good photographs, of my father and myself—three of each. He had never seen a photograph, and could hardly believe his eyes as he looked at those I showed him. I also gave him three envelopes addressed to myself, care of Alfred Emery Cathie, Esq., 15 Clifford’s Inn, London, and implored him to write to me if he could ever find means of getting a letter over the range as far as the shepherd’s hut. At this he shook his head, but he promised to write if he could. I also told him that I had written a full account of my father’s second visit to Erewhon, but that it should never be published till I heard from him—at which he again shook his head, but added, “And yet who can tell? For the King may have the country opened up to foreigners some day after all.”
Then he thanked me a thousand times over, shouldered the knapsack, embraced me as he had my father, and caressed the dog, embraced me again, and made no attempt to hide the tears that ran down his cheeks.
“There,” he said; “I shall wait here till you are out of sight.”
I turned away, and did not look back till I reached the place at which I knew that I should lose the statues. I then turned round, waved my hand—as also did George, and went down the mountain side, full of sad thoughts, but thankful that my task had been so happily accomplished, and aware that my life henceforward had been enriched by something that I could never lose.
For I had never seen, and felt as though I never could see, George’s equal. His absolute unconsciousness of self, the unhesitating way in which he took me to his heart, his fearless frankness, the happy genial expression that played on his face, and the extreme sweetness of his smile—these were the things that made me say to myself that the “blazon of beauty’s best” could tell me nothing better than what I had found and lost within the last three hours. How small, too, I felt by comparison! If for no other cause, yet for this, that I, who had wept so bitterly over my own disappointment the day before, could meet this dear fellow’s tears with no tear of my own.
But let this pass. I got back to Harris’s hut without adventure. When there, in the course of the evening, I told Harris that
