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"I am sorry to say that I have a Dorcas meeting to-night and cannot possibly dine with you," he explained to the astonished lad. "I shall return at nine o'clock, however, to see that all is as Mr. Gessner wishes. The servants have told you, perhaps, that Miss Anna is in the country and does not return until to-morrow. This old house is very dull without her, Kennedy.
Other poets, of inferior powers, have from time to time attempted, with different degrees of success, some of the minor Scriptural histories; Bodmer, the Noachian Deluge; Solomon Gessner, the Death of Abel, &c.
"Did Paul Boriskoff tell you that I was about to marry his daughter, Mr. Gessner?" "My dear lad, what Paul Boriskoff said or did can be of little interest to you or me to-night. He is no longer in England, let me tell you. He left for Poland three days ago." "Then you saw him or heard from him before he left?" "Not at all. The less one sees or hears from that kind of person the better.
A well-meaning stage-door keeper for once had told the plain truth and there had been a man upon the pavement when Alban quitted the Regent Theatre. Little more than six months ago, this identical fellow had been commissioned by Richard Gessner to seek Alban out and report upon his habits.
Now he would be living in London again, a drudge at the works, the nightly companion of little Lois, the adventurer of the streets and the slums. Then, as readily, he would recall the most trifling incidents of his life in Richard Gessner's house, the days of the miracles, the wonderful hours when he had worshipped Anna Gessner and believed almost in her divinity.
"My father was a musician," he said. "I believe that if he had not been a parson, he would have been a great musician. I don't know very much about music myself, but the first time that Mr. Gessner took me to hear one of Wagner's operas, I seemed to live in a new world. It could not have been just the desire to like it, for I had made up my mind that it would be very dry.
I don't think that if I had money I should spend it on plates and jars which nobody uses. I would much sooner buy a battle ship and give it to the nation." And then he asked, "Did Mr. Gessner put up all this glass to keep out the fresh air? Does he like being in a hot-house? I should have thought a garden would have been better." Silas Geary could make nothing of such criticism as this.
No cloud stood upon the horizon of his self-esteem nor did shadows darken his glowing hopes. He had promised Richard Gessner to arrest the girl Lois Boriskoff, and arrested she would be before twelve o'clock to-morrow.
And here was this bit of an English boy plucking the venerable beard of Terror as unconcernedly as though he were a sullen-eyed Cossack with a nagaika in his hand. Assuredly he could be no ordinary traveller. And why did he harp upon this name Gessner, Richard Gessner! Reflection brought it to Zaniloff's mind that he had heard the name before.
The remembrance of one thing which supplied the place of all these was what I had read the evening before my departure. I recollect, also, the pastorals of Gessner, which his translator Hubert had sent me a little time before.
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