第7章

"How beautiful they are!" mused Codlingsby, as he surveyed these placid groups calmly taking their pleasure in the sunset.

"D'you vant to look at a nishe coat?" a voice said, which made him start; and then some one behind him began handling a masterpiece of Stultz's with a familiarity which would have made the baron tremble.

"Rafael Mendoza!" exclaimed Godfrey.

"The same, Lord Codlingsby," the individual so apostrophized replied. "I told you we should meet again where you would little expect me. Will it please you to enter? this is Friday, and we close at sunset. It rejoices my heart to welcome you home." So saying Rafael laid his hand on his breast, and bowed, an oriental reverence. All traces of the accent with which he first addressed Lord Codlingsby had vanished: it was disguise; half the Hebrew's life is a disguise. He shields himself in craft, since the Norman boors persecuted him.

They passed under an awning of old clothes, tawdry fripperies, greasy spangles, and battered masks, into a shop as black and hideous as the entrance was foul. "THIS your home, Rafael?" said Lord Codlingsby.

"Why not?" Rafael answered. "I am tired of Schloss Schinkenstein;the Rhine bores me after a while. It is too hot for Florence;besides they have not completed the picture-gallery, and my place smells of putty. You wouldn't have a man, mon cher, bury himself in his chateau in Normandy, out of the hunting season? The Rugantino Palace stupefies me. Those Titians are so gloomy, Ishall have my Hobbimas and Tenierses, I think, from my house at the Hague hung over them.""How many castles, palaces, houses, warehouses, shops, have you, Rafael?" Lord Codlingsby asked, laughing.

"This is one," Rafael answered. "Come in."

II.

The noise in the old town was terrific; Great Tom was booming sullenly over the uproar; the bell of Saint Mary's was clanging with alarm; St. Giles's tocsin chimed furiously; howls, curses, flights of brickbats, stones shivering windows, groans of wounded men, cries of frightened females, cheers of either contending party as it charged the enemy from Carfax to Trumpington Street, proclaimed that the battle was at its height.

In Berlin they would have said it was a revolution, and the cuirassiers would have been charging, sabre in hand, amidst that infuriate mob. In France they would have brought down artillery, and played on it with twenty-four pounders. In Cambridge nobody heeded the disturbance--it was a Town and Gown row.

The row arose at a boat-race. The Town boat (manned by eight stout Bargees, with the redoubted Rullock for stroke) had bumped the Brazenose light oar, usually at the head of the river. High words arose regarding the dispute. After returning from Granchester, when the boats pulled back to Christchurch meadows, the disturbance between the Townsmen and the University youths--their invariable opponents--grew louder and more violent, until it broke out in open battle. Sparring and skirmishing took place along the pleasant fields that lead from the University gate down to the broad and shining waters of the Cam, and under the walls of Balliol and Sidney Sussex. The Duke of Bellamont (then a dashing young sizar at Exeter) had a couple of rounds with Billy Butt, the bow-oar of the Bargee boat. Vavasour of Brazenose was engaged with a powerful butcher, a well-known champion of the Town party, when, the great University bells ringing to dinner, truce was called between the combatants, and they retired to their several colleges for refection.

During the boat-race, a gentleman pulling in a canoe, and smoking a narghilly, had attracted no ordinary attention. He rowed about a hundred yards ahead of the boats in the race, so that he could have a good view of that curious pastime. If the eight-oars neared him, with a few rapid strokes of his flashing paddles his boat shot a furlong ahead; then he would wait, surveying the race, and sending up volumes of odor from his cool narghilly.

"Who is he?" asked the crowds who panted along the shore, encouraging, according to Cambridge wont, the efforts of the oarsmen in the race. Town and Gown alike asked who it was, who, with an ease so provoking, in a barque so singular, with a form seemingly so slight, but a skill so prodigious, beat their best men. No answer could be given to the query, save that a gentleman in a dark travelling-chariot, preceded by six fourgons and a courier, had arrived the day before at the "Hoop Inn," opposite Brazenose, and that the stranger of the canoe seemed to be the individual in question.

No wonder the boat, that all admired so, could compete with any that ever was wrought by Cambridge artificer or Putney workman.

That boat--slim, shining, and shooting through the water like a pike after a small fish--was a caique from Tophana; it had distanced the Sultan's oarsmen and the best crews of the Capitan Pasha in the Bosphorus; it was the workmanship of Togrul-Beg, Caikjee Bashee of his Highness. The Bashee had refused fifty thousand tomauns from Count Boutenieff, the Russian Ambassador, for that little marvel. When his head was taken off, the Father of Believers presented the boat to Rafael Mendoza.

It was Rafael Mendoza that saved the Turkish monarchy after the battle of Nezeeb. By sending three millions of piastres to the Seraskier; by bribing Colonel de St. Cornichon, the French envoy in the camp of the victorious Ibrahim, the march of the Egyptian army was stopped--the menaced empire of the Ottomans was saved from ruin; the Marchioness of Stokepogis, our ambassador's lady, appeared in a suite of diamonds which outblazed even the Romanoff jewels, and Rafael Mendoza obtained the little caique. He never travelled without it. It was scarcely heavier than an arm-chair.

Baroni, the courier, had carried it down to the Cam that morning, and Rafael had seen the singular sport which we have mentioned.