The Treasure of the Lake by Haggard H. Rider

Author:Haggard, H. Rider [Haggard, H. Rider]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, Africa
ISBN: 9789997516336
Amazon: 9997516338
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 1926-06-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11 – Arkle’s Story

At first Arkle walked rather lamely, being troubled with stiffness and his sore heel, but soon these wore off for the time, and in the fresh air of the morning his vigour returned to him. Certainly he was a splendid-looking man, I reflected, as I marched at his side, a perfect specimen of the finest stamp of the Anglo-Saxon race.

While we went he continued his story.

“You were quite right in supposing that there were other reasons which induced me to come to Africa besides those I mentioned. I will tell them to you, if you care to hear them, for I may as well put my cards on the table. If not, please say so, for I do not wish to bore anybody with my affairs.”

I replied that nothing would please me better, for to tell the truth my curiosity was much excited.

“Here goes, then,” he said, “though I expect that the tale won’t raise your opinion of me and my intelligence. As I have said, I am what is called a man with prospects or rather I was, for these seem far enough off today, and as such, having plenty of money to spend, I was exposed to many temptations. Mr. Quatermain, I cannot pretend that these were always resisted. I will pass over my follies, of which I am ashamed, with the remark that they were such as are common to impetuous young men.

“In short, I lived fast, so fast that my uncle and connections—my mother, by the way, died when I was young—being nonconformist of that puritanical stamp which often combines piety with a continual thirst for worldly advancement, were quite properly scandalized, and remonstrated. They said that I must change my mode of life, and as a first step, get married. This my uncle desired above all things, for there was no other heir, and as he often used to remark in a solemn voice, life is uncertain.

“At length I gave way and became engaged to a lady very well born indeed and very handsome, but without means, which, as I would have plenty, did not matter. To be honest, I did not greatly care for this lady, nor did she care for me, being, as I discovered afterwards, in love with somebody else. In fact the marriage would have been one of mutual convenience, nothing more. Now I am going to make you laugh.

“Although no one knew it and I scarcely expect you to believe it, I, a man who, as I have said, could and did plunge into dissipations, have another side to my nature. At times, Mr. Quatermain, I am a dreamer and what is called a mystic. I suppose I inherited it from my father, at any rate there it is.”

“There is nothing wonderful in that,” I remarked; “the old story of the flesh and the spirit, nothing more.”

“Perhaps. At least I put faith in queer and unprovable things, for instance in what are called ‘soul affinities’, and even in the theory that we have lived before.

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