"The Story of our Lives from Year to Year."-SHAKESPEARE. ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A Weekly Journal. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. VOLUME VI. FROM SEPTEMBER 28, 1861, TO MARCH 8, 1862. Including No. 127 to No. 150. LONDON: PUBLISHED AT No. 26, WELLINGTON STREET, 1862. The Extra Christmas Number, "TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND," will be found at the end of the Volume, containing PAGE 21 20 43 Rosemary from the Camaldoli Monastery, Naples 252 379 Unrest 13 352 ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. No. 127.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1861. A STRANGE STORY. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c. CHAPTER XXII. THAT evening I went to Mrs. Poyntz's; it was one of her ordinary "reception nights," and I felt that she would naturally expect my attendance as a proper attention.' I joined a group engaged in general conversation, of which Mrs. Poyntz herself made the centre, knitting, as usual, rapidly while she talked, slowly when she listened. Without mentioning the visit I had paid that morning, I turned the conversation on the different country places in the neighbourhood, and then incidentally asked, "What sort of a man is Sir Philip Derval? Is it not strange that he should suffer so fine a place to fall into decay?" The answers I received added little to the information I had already obtained. Mrs. Poyntz knew nothing of Sir Philip Derval, except as a man of large estates, whose rental had been greatly increased by a rise in the value of property he possessed in the town of L-, and which lay contiguous to that of her husband. Two or three of the older inhabitants of the Hill had remembered him in his early days, when he was gay, high-spirited, hospitable, lavish. One observed that the only person in L-whom he had admitted to his subsequent seclusion was Dr. Lloyd, who was then without practice, and whom he had employed as an assistant in certain chemical experiments. Here a gentleman struck into the conversation. He was a stranger to me and to La visitor to one of the dwellers on the Hill, who had asked leave to present him to its Queen as a great traveller and an accomplished antiquarian. Said this gentleman: "Sir Philip Derval! I know him. I met him in the East. He was then, still, I believe, very fond of chemical science; a clever, odd, philanthropical man; had studied medicine, or at least practised it; was said to have made many marvellous cures. I became acquainted with him in Aleppo. He had come to that town, not much frequented by English travellers, in order to inquire into the murder of two men, of whom one was his friend and the other his countryman. "This is interesting," said Mrs. Poyntz, dryly. "We who live on this innocent Hill all love stories of crime; murder is the pleasantest [PRICE 2d. subject you could have hit on. Pray give us the details." "So encouraged," said the traveller, good humouredly, "I will not hesitate to communicate the little I know. In Aleppo, there had lived for some years a man who was held by the natives in great reverence. He had the reputation of extraordinary wisdom, but was difficult of access; the lively imagination of the Orientals invested his character with the fascinations of fable; in short, Haroun of Aleppo was popularly considered a magician. Wild stories were told of his powers, of his preternatural age, of his hoarded treasures. Apart from such disputable titles to homage, there seemed no question, from all I heard, that his learning was considerable, his charities extensive, his manner of life irreproachably ascetic. He appears to have resembled those Arabian sages of the Gothic age to whom modern science is largely indebted-a mystic enthusiast but an earnest scholar. A wealthy and singular Englishman, long resident in another part of the East, afflicted by some languishing disease, took a journey to Aleppo to consult this sage, who, among his other acquirements, was held to have discovered rare secrets in medicine-his countrymen said in 'charms.' One morning, not long after the Englishman's arrival, Haroun was found dead in his bed, apparently strangled, and the Englishman, who lodged in another part of the town, had disappeared; but some of his clothes, and a crutch on which he habitually supported himself, were found a few miles distant from Aleppo near the roadside. There appeared no doubt that he, too, had been murdered, but his corpse could not be discovered. Sir Philip Derval had been a loving disciple of this Sage of Aleppo, to whom he assured me he owed not only that knowledge of medicine which, by report, Sir Philip possessed, but the insight into various truths of nature, on the promulgation of which it was evident Sir Philip cherished the ambition to found a philosophical celebrity for himself.” "Of what description were those truths of nature ?" I asked, somewhat sarcastically. 66 Sir, I am unable to tell you, for Sir Philip did not inform me, nor did I much care to ask, for what may be revered as truths in Asia are usually despised as dreams in Europe. To return to my story. Sir Philip had been in Aleppo a little time before the murder; had left the Englishman under the care of Haroun; he VOL. VI. 127 |