JERNINGHAM HAD MUCH of the same sort of annoyance to bear during the first month or two of his service with the mysterious Prince. He was made the purse-bearer, which was some slight compensation (indeed on that first never forgotten Saturday night he was called to pay for the barrow of winkles, and thus smooth down the tumult of the moment between the costermonger and his wife). His master showed a singular indifference to money, which he never touched or had any dealings in, bidding Jerningham do what was necessary whenever there was any question of payment, with a confidence which seemed to proceed rather from a certain contempt for that medium than from any well-founded trust in the man who had been recommended to him as an ordinary man and nothing more. In this situation of dignity, however, the servant accompanied his master through many strange scenes. He went with him to London, and to many places there where Jerningham would willingly have followed, or even led his lord with very different aims from those which the Prince seemed to pursue. And, indeed, the Prince’s aims were not very easy to fathom. He was not a charity organiser, nor an almoner, nor a missionary. He gave, or rather ordered Jerningham to give, money freely on occasion; but this was certainly not his object. He went everywhere with the same inquiry on his lips, “What has brought you to this pass?” and he put it to everybody, sometimes in the most astonishing circumstances, addressing people who it might have been thought would have knocked him down for his impertinence, or at least resented it in some unequivocal way. But though they might be angry at first, they always ended by telling some story of strange things unlike those appearances which met the eye. One of the persons, for instance, thus interrogated was the clergyman of a large parish, a man full of good deeds, who was very indignant with the words— “this pass?” What pass was the excellent rector in, whose hands were only too full of everybody else’s business, who was the Providence of so many? He had looked contemptuously, indignantly at his questioner, with a scorn of him as an unauthorised busybody which was most natural. But then a spell had fallen over that good clergyman. “How did I come to this pass? full of tickets and cases to examine, and subscriptions to be got? How can a man help it? You go out full of faith, and the first person you meet with cheats you, and turns your very heart. Then you rush to the other side and trust nobody; and the first thing you hear is that you have helped to starve some real sufferer. Then one gets wild for a time; and at the last you come to feel there’s no confidence to be put in anything but figures and cases, and cut - and - dry machinery. There was a time when I was — a young fool; thinking everything was to be done by reasoning with them, and persuading them, and showing your affection. Ah, that’s the grand principle still! the love of God, and the sympathy of our Lord. But then one drifts into the organisation tickets, and elections to hospitals, and so forth. Regret it? ah, that I do with all my heart! If I were a young man again I’d stick to the higher principle: but what can a poor parson do that has to make the best he can of his parish, and keep all his charities going?” There was never any reproof in the Prince’s eyes: he heard this, and a hundred other strange avowals, with a calm which was never broken, and he was unwearied in hearing them, going about the world everywhere, inquiring from every man the secret of his divergence. He took no notes of these many and varied cases: of the women who began with protestations of having been deceived, then, in the light of his steadfast eyes, burst forth into wailing plaints of folly, of the heedless rush into temptation, the fall, half invited, half defied; or the merchant who had meant no harm, who had staked his friend’s credit for something which only an accident prevented from becoming his friend’s advantage instead of hurt; or the servant who borrowed from his master, meaning nothing but to repay. Overall these persons and hundreds more the light which it was so difficult to define suffused itself, never failing although the sun might. Jerningham made out at last by much study that it proceeded from somewhere just over his master’s head, for it lighted up the faces of those who were before him, and kept himself in a curious depth of shadow, so that the most earnest gaze fixed upon him could scarcely penetrate that dimness. There were many things in Jerningham’s mind as he thus attended upon his master. A strong curiosity in the first place. He could not in any way fathom this man. It was not for charity he went about the world, though sometimes he would be very charitable — so charitable that Jerningham thought that it was nothing but proper in the circumstances to take toll: nor was it for any pleasure to himself that the valet could understand. For what was the good of collecting all these stories? The Prince never talked of them, so far as Jerningham knew; it was not for the sake of gossip. Nor did he seem to intend to write a book, for he never put pen to paper, never wrote a letter. The problem was one which could not be explained in any way. And there were a great many mysterious things about the master to whose service he had been sent by so unexceptionable a nobleman as the Earl of Hillesborough. He had evidently plenty of money, which was left in Jerningham’s hands, and which he himself never looked at. The Prince lived as if there were no such thing as money in the world. When there was anything to pay he looked at Jerningham, and that was all that was necessary. Jerningham had pretty pickings, it must be allowed. He did not rob his master, nor permit any one else to do it, but he took a percentage for his trouble: this appeared to him perfectly right and justifiable. He did not, indeed, intend to do anything of the kind when he began. He had always been honest, he said to himself, and he never meant to be otherwise. But a percentage, that was allowed everywhere when a man had so much trouble as he had — a trouble which had never been mentioned or thought of when he was engaged.
Another thing was that, as the Prince did not wear the beautiful clothes that had been provided for him, preferring his own “costoome,” as Jerningham said, it seemed wiser that the valet should wear some of them than that they should be thrown away. Jerningham wore the coats to keep the moth out of them. He put on one on a certain day with this excellent object, and another day he put on another. The Prince was larger than he, and much taller, yet somehow they all fitted Jerningham. It could do them nothing but good should the master finally make up his mind to put them on, that they should be worn to air them now and then. With all these things Jerningham did very well for himself and harmed nobody, as he himself believed. It did not occur to him that his master might one day turn upon him with his usual inquiry, “What has brought you to this pass?” and that he might be compelled to reveal everything. This pass! he was in no pass! he was doing nothing wrong. And as for any interrogation from his master, he made very light of that. The Prince did not observe any of these things. In short, Jerningham came by degrees, notwithstanding the mystery that surrounded him, to have on the whole a considerable deal of good-humoured contempt for his Prince.
There was one thing, however, about which he continued to be so very curious that he felt no effort to be too great to find it out. And that was, as has been said before, the mysterious light which accompanied his master everywhere. It flashed upon him suddenly at last what it was. Going into the Prince’s room one evening in the twilight, he was astonished and blinded by the light which shone from a table at which his master had been sitting, — a light almost level with the table, proceeding from one central point. Jerningham drew near upon the tips of his toes, though the Prince was not there. He saw then, to his amazement, that it was a jewel in a curious dark setting covered with strange signs — but it was not the setting or the signs that moved him. It was the diamond! — such a diamond as he had never in his life beheld before. You may think he was not likely to have had much experience in diamonds; but Jerningham had been in good places all his life, and had seen a great deal of jewellery in his day, though never, never anything like this! It was of the size of a small watch, and as it lay there on the table seemed to represent Wealth itself incarnate, fortune and all it brings — quite unprotected, within the reach of any chance person that might come into the room. A flood of indignation rushed through Jerningham’s mind at the rashness of his master, who could go and leave such a prize as that open upon the table. He bent over it to look at it, but it so blazed into his eyes that they were dazzled and could see nothing. Lord! what a thing to see lying on a table within reach of your hand — worth thousands and thousands, enough to make a man comfortable for life: comfortable! more than that, — rich, like a prince. Jerningham made a rapid calculation in his mind how a man — not himself! oh, not himself! but any man — might dispose of such a thing. It would be difficult to do, for diamonds of that size are not common anywhere; but no doubt, at least in foreign parts, it could be done. And a man could get away to Holland or some such place before ever anybody knew anything about it. From London a man can get off anywhere. These thoughts flew through Jerningham’s mind with a sort of rush of moral indignation to think how easily it might be done, and how any man could do it. He put out his hand, not without alarm, to touch the wonderful thing which was worth, he said to himself almost bitterly, far more than all a man even in a good service could lay up in his life; but as he was about cautiously to lift it he heard the Prince’s step returning to the room, and fled precipitately, fearing to be asked what he was doing there. This was all that happened the first time.
But it appeared that the Prince, always a strange person in all his habits, had a fancy for reading by the light of his great diamond, and Jerningham saw it many times after this. He began vaguely to define also, after many questions with himself where his master had hitherto hidden it, to make out, putting one thing to another, that this blazing orb of light was in reality no other than the shining jewel which he had hitherto thought no bigger than a glowworm, which shone among the filmy folds of the Prince’s head-gear when he was out of doors. This made it more wonderful still to think that it could contract and then magnify itself in this way; but Jerningham soon came to the conclusion that its contraction must be caused by some peculiarity in its setting, which partially covered it when worn, and subdued its size and splendour. His mind grew more and more full of this diamond as time went on. He had been so angry at the thought that some one might steal it and escape to Holland with it, that it would be wrong to imagine he had any intention of committing such a crime: and yet his mind was full of the diamond by night and by day.
One night, he could scarcely tell how, he found himself at a late hour in the Prince’s room. Among his other habits was one of walking late, and so far as Jerningham was aware, his master was out, though he had represented to himself that he had heard the bell, and that this was the reason why he made his way thither at so late an hour. He was curious to know also (he said to himself) whether the Prince went out with so valuable an ornament in his hat, alone, and at night, which would have been so foolish a thing to do. Jerningham’8 heart gave a jump when he saw the blaze of the jewel on the table. The rest of the room, the bed and the large space behind, lay in total darkness, but a luminous circle was drawn round the table upon which the diamond lay. He paused a moment, his heart beating loud, and then he drifted silently, moving, as he afterwards said, by some sort of compulsion, not by his own will at all, into this circle of light. His face was a sight to see as he came within the range of the illumination out of the shadowy gloom in which all things are softened. It was blazing with excitement, with eager cupidity, with that vehemence of desire which is so strong a passion — to have it, to possess it, even to take it into his hands! but he was also afraid. His master might come in upon him before he could escape. There might be some trap about the dreadful glorious thing itself. It almost blinded him as he looked down into its white flames. At last, in mingled greed and terror, he put out his hand —
Ah! Jerningham’s shriek would have wakened the Seven Sleepers; and there was no one to be awakened here, but only a perfectly collected, self - possessed looker-on, who had seen everything with a pair of serene open eyes from the bed. What the Prince saw was a man fixed and immovable, his countenance contorted with alarm and horror, standing, not as if he held the diamond, but as if it held him, in the centre of the floor, the rays of the gem shining round him, his features convulsed, his whole soul gone forth in that wild shriek. He stood trying vainly to disengage his fingers from the paralysing grasp that seemed to him to have seized him, an image of fright and helplessness. “Jerningham,” said his master, “is it you? and what has brought you to this pass?”
“Oh, let me go, sir!” he cried. “I’m a fool; I’m a thief. I don’t mind what you call me. Let me go; let me go! Your ‘Ighness, I’d ask you on my bended knees, if I could bend a knee or move a finger! Oh, let me go!”
“What did you want with my diamond?” the Prince said.
“Want with it? It was your ‘Ighness’s fault leaving of it there, where a man couldn’t help seeing it. Want with it, — oh Lord! But I don’t want nothing now but to be let free and never trouble nobody any more.”
“What would you have done with it?” said the Prince, in his calm tones, “had you got it safely away?”
“Oh Lord! — oh Lord! — only let me free of it for one moment! I’d have sold it,” cried Jerningham, feeling the words forced from him, and understanding now in his trouble how it was that every one had answered these questions — a thing he had never understood before.
“To whom? not to any honest dealer, who would know its value.”
“I’d have gone — to Holland. I’d have found some o’ those fellows out. It mightn’t have been its value,” cried Jerningham, “but it would have been a fortune to me. Oh, your ‘Ighness! don’t pull the brains and the eyes out of a poor man’s head, but let me go!”
“And what would your life have been afterwards? You would have trembled to see me come in wherever you were and ask for my diamond. You would have been afraid to be seen by any one who knew you. You would have wandered from place to place, and tried every coarse pleasure which you cannot indulge in because you have your character to think of now; and you would have found them all bitter in your mouth.”
“Very likely, sir; very likely, sir,” cried Jerningham in his distress. “It’s true; it’s true. I’ve thought of all that. I knows it as well as any man. Sir, I’ll never ask you for a character nor nothing if your ‘Ighness will let me free.”
“You thought of all that?” said the master, in his absolute calm.
“I did; I did! I knows it all. But what’s the good of knowing when a thing drags you as if your soul was coming out of your body? It’s your ‘Ighness’s fault for leaving it there.”
“Then you will do it again tomorrow if I let you free.”
“Oh, never, s’help me — oh, never! Yes, perhaps I will. A man never can tell what he’ll do. I can’t tell you a lie though I want to; — perhaps I will. It’s stronger nor me. Oh, your ‘Ighness; oh, for the love of God, let me free!”
Jerningham was in torture. The blood in his veins seemed to be turned into fire; sparks came from his broadcloth; his temples throbbed as if some dreadful machinery had been set going within; and the blaze of the diamond in his eyes was like those flames which he had heard of all his life as the reward of those who steal and lie. But suddenly in a moment he felt a dark still shadow over him. The machinery in his head stopped; the flare in his face was subdued; a cool hand touched his; and the cruel thing that held him loosed its clutches. This was what the sensation was — not that the diamond was taken from him by his master’s hand, which was the fact, but as if it had been constrained to let him go. A sudden sense of relief ran through Jerningham’s frame, but along with that — was it possible? — a regret, — a pang as of something which had all but been his, yet never would be his again.
The Prince put it down on the table on the same spot as before. “You are sorry,” he said, “that you have not succeeded. You forget already how it punished you. You would try again.”
“No, your ‘Ighness; no, your ‘Ighness,” said Jerningham. The sense of relief was in all his veins, and yet it was dreadful to him to give it up, and have no further hope of it. There ran through his mind like an arrow the thought, that after he was dismissed there might be a very good chance of coming back privately, and, with gloves or handkerchiefs wrapped round his hands or something, managing better another time. He did not entertain the thought, but it flashed through him all the same. He stood back in the shade an abashed and penitent sinner, notwithstanding this flash of thought.
“I asks no warning, sir, after what have ‘appened; no board-wages nor nothing. I’m thankful to your ‘Ighness for a-letting of me off. I asks no character. Mr Jones of the hotel will see, sir, as I leaves everything right, and not a pin out of its place. I’m — I’m a good servant, sir,” said Jerningham. He paused for a moment, his intromissions with his master’s garments and his percentages jumping up suddenly into his face. Then he added, “I mayn’t be strong to resist a great temptation as has been left before my eyes; but I’m a good servant, sir, and nobody can speak different.”
“You intended, then, to go away?” said the Prince, with a smile. “No; you need not go away. I shall not dismiss you. You will, perhaps, attempt to do this again? Well, you know beforehand what the issue will be, and I need not say any more. We understand each other, I think? in this and also in the other little ways—”
“What other little ways, sir?” said Jerningham, holding his head high; but it was very difficult to keep any pretence up in the presence of his master. “If your ‘Ighness is satisfied, sir, so am I,” he added, lowering his eyes and his tone.
The Prince’s laugh was not un-unkindly, yet it rung into Jerningham’s very heart, and stung him much more than a lecture.
“I am satisfied — that we understand each other,” he said, and dismissed the culprit with a wave of his hand.
And this was how the strange incident ended. A master that had no respect for himself as a master; that could find out an attempt at robbery and never dismiss the man; that left the most valuable property about, and all his money in Jerningham’s hands, notwithstanding that he knew Jerningham to be a rogue — as if it didn’t matter, — as if nothing mattered!— “Lord! I’d have turned him neck and crop out o’ the ‘ouse.
I’d have in with him into the hands of the police sooner than look at him. He shouldn’t never ‘ave ‘ad a day’s grace from me!” Jerningham said to himself, putting himself in his master’s place; but he was on the whole relieved to be going to bed as if nothing had happened, with his character safe, and no longer any necessity for flying to Holland or elsewhere in order to realise his ill-gotten gains.
It was shortly after this that the Prince went for the first time to Hillesborough, though, as the reader may recollect, it was Lord Hillesborough who had arranged everything for him on his arrival in England. He was received with great state as became the highest rank — indeed, though he never stood upon his greatness, and his title was never fully announced, he had at the same time never hesitated to accept the name of Prince as natural and befitting his condition. When the old earl came out to the door to meet him, their rencounter was considered by many persons to be both curious and touching. Lord Hillesborough had travelled much in his life; he had been all over the world — everywhere, people said, without knowing very well what that word meant. He had penetrated far into the East, he had gone through Africa (as was said; for much less was known of Africa in those days than now). As for Europe and such little holiday journeyings as are to be accomplished there, he thought nothing of them; and that he should have met in his wanderings a mysterious Prince whom nobody knew, yet who was every inch a Prince, bearing his superiority in every feature and action, was a very natural thing. But it was strange and pathetic, as people say, to see that very old man, full of dignities and honours, bowing low before the Stranger, who greeted him with the warmest cordiality, but no such demonstrations of respect. Lord Hillesborough hurried down the steps to open the carriage - door with his own aged ivory hands. He murmured something about so poor a means of conveyance, though his carriage was good enough for the Queen herself. The Prince smiled in the most gracious and affectionate manner; he put his hand to his heart, his lips, and his forehead by way of greeting; finally, when he got out he put an arm round the old gentleman like a son, and seemed to raise him thus like a feather up the flight of majestic steps, which were usually a great strain upon Lord Hillesborough’s limbs and breath. “I am glad to arrive at your house, my old friend,” he said. “And I am honoured above all honours to see you here,” said the old man. The Prince drew the old earl’s arm within his own — and those who were watching saw, as if some air of youth and strength had blown that way, his countenance clear like the sun, and light come into his eyes. See what friendship does, they said, even to so old a man! For he no longer looked old when this glorious young Prince, — so more than common tall, so splendid in his bearing, in his strange yet noble dress, and with — now clearly shining and displayed — a diamond bigger than the Koh-i-noor shining through the filmy folds of his head-dress, — had him by the hand.
There was a party of some eminence assembled at Hillesborough, presumably to meet the Prince, though, so far as I am aware, the name of this illustrious convive had not been mentioned directly to any of them. The old earl had spoken, however, to some, of a friend whom he expected, who was making a sort of voyage of discovery in England, a member of a very old princely race, “of a civilisation much anterior to ours,” he said. What did he mean? a Brahmin prince from India — perhaps a sacred Llama from Thibet,— “one of old Hillesborough’s swans, who are mere geese,” a witty member of the party said. But they did not laugh when they were presented to the mysterious and noble personage who appeared among them — though there was scarcely one who was not distinguished in one way or another — like an eagle among the lesser birds, rather than a swan. He talked with them freely and upon all subjects, with an easy grace of utterance which was very surprising in a foreigner. And he was not a Hindoo: no dark nor even dusky blood ran in the veins which traversed visibly on his temples, in lines of blue, the milk-white of his complexion. He might have been an Anglo-Saxon for his fairness; but he was not an Anglo-Saxon, — the type was much higher, more intellectual, and finer than anything produced among our races. There was a keen ethnographer among the party who was eager to identify him, yet entirely baffled by the Prince’s imperturbable and smiling incapacity for being questioned. He questioned a great deal himself on his own part, and knew almost everything about the private history of most of the people there, and this almost exclusively from themselves, for he encouraged no gossip. Day by day his fellow - guests wondered more and more at him, — at his points of view, the opinions he expressed, and his curious spectator-attitude in respect to everything that went on. He blamed nothing, they observed, attacked nothing — had not a word to say about the foreign policy of England, nor her treatment of the distant States in which her sons had made their settlements. This was a thing that was eagerly expected from him at first. A foreigner himself, and evidently one from the far East or South, there was nothing so likely as that he should criticise the methods of Great Britain with those conquered or allied provinces, and the vast world of heathenism which she had more or less subdued. But to the surprise especially of a Cabinet Minister, who was one of the party, he said nothing at all on this point. He did not even attempt to make out that his own race was more truly civilised than the British, and might with truth call them barbarians. He never spoke, indeed, of his own race at all. Sometimes he would exchange a recollection with Lord Hillesborough of some particular moment or occurrence through which they had passed together, and on these occasions named him apparently by a name which was quite unknown, and indeed never was caught by any one, each hearer making of it a different sound — a word of a language which nobody had ever heard before.
The mysterious visitor caused great interest and excitement among the guests at Hillesborough. He was heard of through all the county; and people to whom it was half a day’s journey came to call, with a sense that the very crown and climax of all old Lord Hillesborough’s eccentricities was thus to be seen and taken account of. But the Prince’s visit was of still more importance to some of those who were most closely at hand.