THE FLIGHT.

Silently the fugitives glided through the deserted streets, and made their way to the drawbridges. They had not a hope of finding these bridges let down, or unguarded; and were prepared to swim across to shore. By a fortunate accident, however, that night there was a drawbridge, to the south-east of the town, which had not been raised, and the two warders belonging to it were fast asleep. Using the utmost care, the fugitives passed noiselessly over the causeway, and gained the shore. Now the town of Abibah lay to the east of Abinamanche. Realmah had often thought what he would do if, by any lucky chance, he should make his escape. There was a long strip of open ground on the shore. Over this they hurried along, proceeding westwards; Realmah, to the astonishment of his companion, treading heavily so as to insure the marks of his sandals being seen in the ground. When they had proceeded half a mile in this way, they diverged into a wood which lay towards the south, and through this wood they went, but still in a westerly direction. The moon was very bright, and Realmah was able to thread his way without much difficulty. He ascended, with great labour (for from his infirmity he was not agile), a lofty tree, the foliage of which was thickly interlaced with other trees. From this tree he passed to another, and from that other to a third, and then, taking off his sandals, descended with the utmost caution. Carefully choosing the hardest ground when he came near to the spot where he had left the Ainah, he bade her rejoin him, telling her to take care to step as lightly as possible. When she had done so, they changed the direction of their flight, and proceeded swiftly for about three miles to the east, so that the town of Abinamanche now lay to the west of them. There they halted again. Not a word had been spoken by either except the words of command that were necessary for Realmah to direct his Ainah.

The fugitives lay down upon the ground. It was an embarrassing moment for Realmah. He would have liked to have burst into an effusion of thanks and even tenderness towards his preserver; but the relations between them had hitherto been so cold that he hardly knew how to begin. At last he uttered a few words of praise to her for her skill. She recounted the various steps that she had taken to effect his escape: he told her of his sufferings in prison. Afterwards, she related to him the news of Abibah, and all that had happened at home during his absence.

The subtle Realmah contrived by artful questions to detect, to some extent, from the Ainah, who, however, had no intention of enlightening him, how much his loss had been felt by the Varnah and by Talora. The truth was, that the Varnah had really missed him, having grown accustomed to look after him and to care for him; and that Talora had been very cross at his absence, had blamed him exceedingly for his folly in allowing himself to be captured, and had greatly deplored her own forlorn situation.

Realmah and the Ainah talked on in the douce, quiet way that two youths who had been concerned in some great enterprise, and were still in great peril, would have talked. At length the Ainah, who was oppressed by fatigue and want of food--for she had stinted herself in order that they might have something to eat in case they should escape--fell asleep.

Throughout that night, Realmah sat entranced in thought. There are times when our lives come before us in imagination, not by the recalling or forecasting of individual facts or events, but by their being grouped together as it were in large pictures,--landscapes of the mind, as they might be called; and Realmah now saw his past life, and his probable future life, laid out before him in a strange weird way, the brightness of a morning sun illumining the pictures of the past, the rich hues of a setting sun gilding, and yet softening, the colours of the grander scenes of the future.

As was natural, having just escaped a great peril, in his picture of the future, perils fell into beautiful forms, and it was a picture of success he painted, in which he was to accomplish his high ends and noble purposes. And then, with a certain feeling of profound melancholy, there fell upon him a sense of the futility of it all; and the great questions--Why are we here? What does it all mean? What does it all tend to? came upon him with a force and a pathos far greater than they would upon modern minds; for he had no reason to think that the burthen of such thoughts was partaken by any human being.

Still he resolved to do the work that lay before him, whatever might come of it, or of him.

When the morning broke, his thoughts were diverted into other channels, as he contemplated the sleeping Ainah.

I have said that what little beauty she possessed lay in expression rather than in features; and for the first time Realmah perceived this beauty. Even the fatigue and anxiety she had gone through had improved her looks, creating a refinement in her countenance which had not always in former days been perceptible in it.

Gradually it dawned upon him how it was that neither the Varnah nor Talora had sought to do what the Ainah had done, and he knew, for the first time, what love should be, and who was really lovable. Eventually the bold idea came into his mind that he would kiss the sleeping girl; but he felt ashamed to do so, for he thought within himself, “There is the girl I have treated as a slave, and upon whom I have never bestowed one thought of real affection; and now, because she has saved my life, I begin to discern that she is beautiful and loving,--perhaps the only woman, besides my dear old foster-nurse, who does love me in the world.”

At that moment the Ainah awoke. She timidly took his hand, and kissed it. Emboldened by this mark of affection, he embraced her warmly, and poured his thanks into her ears. She looked at him with astonishment, murmured something about her duty, and, as if divining his thoughts, said, that she had not entrusted the others with her enterprise, because she felt that they could not aid her. She knew that her low condition and common appearance would enable her to enter the town of Abinamanche with less observation than that which the Varnah or Talora would have had to encounter. She was sure they would have flown to rescue him, had it been possible for them to do so.

Realmah now found himself placed in a most embarrassing position.

There is hardly any man who has attained middle life who has not--socially speaking--found himself in some very strange position. He has, for instance, sat next, at some feast, to some person, unknown to him by countenance, but well known to him by repute as one of his greatest opponents and bitterest enemies. Each has, on this occasion, found the other very likable and agreeable, and each has been shocked, amazed, and almost startled out of his prejudices, when by some accident it has been revealed to both of them with whom it was that each had been talking in this most friendly manner.

Or, to take another instance, your next neighbour at a dinner pours out to you, in confidence, being rather taken with you, his especial dislike to yourself, and his contempt for your writings, your pictures, or your statues, or your conduct as a politician; for he, poor man, has no idea that you are yourself, but, having heard that you are in the company, has mistaken the man opposite for you.

But all these positions of awkwardness may almost be said to be pleasant when compared with that in which Realmah now found himself. To have lived in close domestic intimacy with a woman; never to have pretended even to love her; to owe his life to a great and perilous effort on her part to rescue him; then to fall in love with her; and not to know how to begin the love-making, which ought to have begun long ago; to feel that any love now proffered might seem to be merely gratitude;--surely this is a position in which few lovers have ever found themselves, and which Realmah had now to encounter. He was a skilful talker, and probably owed much of his popularity to his being able to enter into conversation with any person, of whatever rank, with whom he was thrown in contact. But, on this occasion, he sat by the side of his Ainah, and could not find anything to say, though, in his heart, he was longing to pour out his love for her. To talk of commonplace things would, he felt, be supremely ridiculous.

At last, however, like a wise man, he resolved to make the plunge at once, and after a long pause, thus began: “What could make you take all this trouble, and go through such peril, for a foolish, dim-eyed man like me, who never had the sagacity to see what a treasure he possessed in you, or the tenderness to say one really kind or loving word to you? You are a very silly child. You should have let Realmah die in prison, and then have married some one more worthy of your love.”

But the Ainah only replied by clasping his hand in hers, and with downcast looks softly saying, “But what if I was so silly as only to love my lord Realmah, whom it was presumption in the poor fisher-girl to love at all?”

Then ensued a long pause, which was owing, on Realmah’s part, to a most ludicrous circumstance. The truth was he had forgotten her name. He had, of course, heard it on the day she was brought to him, but he had entirely forgotten it. Such titles as the “Ainah” and the “Varnah” were merely words used in the household, and in the presence of other persons, and no lover ever thought of using them when alone with his beloved. Realmah had been struck with this in the few words he had just addressed to the Ainah, and he felt that it would be almost an insult to go on pretending to make love to a young woman whose name he, of all men, should know, but which had entirely faded from his memory.

Poor Realmah sat there in silence, cogitating over the names most common amongst his countrywomen, and vainly torturing his memory as to which could be the right one. At length, when the silence was becoming ominous, he resolved as it were to make a clean breast of it, and exclaimed--

“Here is a miserable wretch of a man who would wish to express all the love he feels for his beloved, and does not even know her name.”

The Ainah laughed,--a low, pleasant laugh,--then threw her arms round his neck, and whispered, “Lufra.” It was one of the common names which poor Realmah had thought of, and which he naturally could not now help wishing that he had been bold enough to try. But perhaps it was better, as he thought with the wisdom of a second thought, that he had concealed nothing from his Lufra, and that he might now begin from the beginning and address her as if she had been some gracious stranger with whom he had become acquainted for the first time that day. He did not fail to play his part well as a lover. He said that others amongst the Sheviri might talk of their nymphs, who watched over their destinies and defended them from all harm; but henceforth the only nymph he should worship would be his Lufra. She hastened to put her hand upon his lips, for these were sadly irreverent words (Realmah was certainly not orthodox); but, though irreverent, the words were singularly pleasing to the girl, and Realmah did not fail to kiss the hand which sought to save him from the anger of his heavenly nymph.

The first embarrassment overcome, Realmah was fluent, ardent, and eloquent; and much time passed away, during which the lovers spoke of all their love for each other.

He confided to her his great schemes and hopes for the nation, and found her a worthy recipient of his high thoughts. Gradually he gained from her the knowledge of how his courtesy to a poor girl like her had won her timid love, and a hundred times he offered to her his fond excuses for having been indifferent to, indeed unconscious of, her love. They both felt that their love must for ever remain somewhat concealed, because it would not be thought right for a man of his dignity and high rank to be in love with his Ainah.

She then produced from her wallet a strip of dried deer’s flesh, all of which she would have insisted upon his eating, but that he was peremptory and commanded her to share it with him.

Having finished their hasty meal they proceeded on their way to Abibah, strangely joyful fugitives, indeed almost reckless ones, for in their great love they had forgotten their imminent dangers. Realmah, however, always made the Ainah precede him by a step or two, for he feared a surprise from the rear.