“Didn't I tell you how it would be?” said Billy, as he re-entered the kitchen, now crowded by the workpeople, anxious for tidings of the sick man. “The head is re-leaved, the congestive symptoms is allayed, and when the artarial excitement subsides, he 'll be out of danger.”
“Musha, but I 'm glad,” muttered one; “he 'd be a great loss to us.”
“True for you, Patsey; there's eight or nine of us here would miss him if he was gone.”
“Troth, he doesn't give much employment, but we couldn't spare him,” croaked out a third, when the entrance of the Corporal cut short further commentary; and the party gathered around the cheerful turf fire with that instinctive sense of comfort impressed by the swooping wind and rain that beat against the windows.
“It's a dreadful night outside; I would n't like to cross the lough in it,” said one.
“Then that's just what I'm thinking of this minit,” said Billy. “I'll have to be up at the office for the bags at six o'clock.”
“Faix, you 'll not see Leenane at six o'clock to-morrow.”
“Sorra taste of it,” muttered another; “there's a sea runnin' outside now that would swamp a life-boat.”
“I'll not lose an illigant situation of six pounds ten a year, and a pair of shoes at Christmas, for want of a bit of courage,” said Billy; “I'd have my dismissal if I wasn't there as sure as my name is Billy Traynor.”
“And better for you than lose your life, Billy,” said one.
“And it's not alone myself I'd be thinking of,” said Billy; “but every man in this world, high and low, has his duties. My duty,” added he, somewhat pretentiously, “is to carry the King's mail; and if anything was to obstruckt, or impade, or delay the correspondience, it's on me the blame would lie.”
“The letters wouldn't go the faster because you were drowned,” broke in the Corporal.
“No, sir,” said Billy, rather staggered by the grin of approval that met this remark—“no, sir, what you ob-sarve is true; but nobody reflects on the sintry that dies at his post.”
“If you must and will go, I'll give you the yawl,” said Craggs; “and I 'll go with you myself.”
“Spoke like a British Grenadier,” cried Billy, with enthusiasm.
“Carbineer, if the same to you, master,” said the other, quietly; “I never served in the infantry.”
“Tros Tyriusve mihi,” cried Billy; “which is as much as to say,—
it's the same to me, as the poet says.”
And a low murmur of the company seemed to accord approval to the sentiment.
“I wish you 'd give us a tune, Billy,” said one, coaxingly.
“Or a song would be better,” observed another.
“Faix,” cried a third, “'tis himself could do it, and in Frinch or Latin if ye wanted it.”
“The Germans was the best I ever knew for music,” broke in Craggs. “I was brigaded with Arentschild's Hanoverians in Spain; and they used to sit outside the tents every evening, and sing. By Jove! how they did sing—all together, like the swell of a church organ.”
“Yes, you're right,” said Billy, but evidently yielding an unwilling assent to this doctrine. “The Germans has a fine national music, and they 're great for harmony. But harmony and melody is two different things.”
“And which is best, Billy?” asked one of the company.
“Musha, but I pity your ignorance,” said Billy, with a degree of confusion that raised a hearty laugh at his expense.
“Well, but where's the song?” exclaimed another.
“Ay,” said Craggs, “we are forgetting the song. Now for it, Billy. Since all is going on so well above stairs, I'll draw you a gallon of ale, boys, and we 'll drink to the master's speedy recovery.”
It was a rare occasion when the Corporal suffered himself to expand in this fashion, and great was the applause at the unexpected munificence.
Billy at the same moment took out his fiddle and began that process of preparatory screwing and scraping which, no matter how distressing to the surrounders, seems to afford intense delight to performers on this instrument. In the present case, it is but fair to say, there was neither comment nor impatience; on the contrary, they seemed to accept these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of melody that was coming. That Billy was occupied with other thoughts than those of tuning was, however, apparent, for his lips continued to move rapidly; and at moments he was seen to beat time with his foot, as though measuring out the rhythm of a verse.
“I have it now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, making a low obeisance to the company; and so saying, he struck up a very popular tune, the same to which a reverend divine wrote his words of “The night before Larry was Stretched;” and in a voice of a deep and mellow fulness, managed with considerable taste, sang—
It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy's impromptu as did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew nothing, the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest approval. Nor was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The irritabile genus has its soft side, and can enjoy to the uttermost its own successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher associates, that he might have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere pleasure.
“You're right, there, Jim Morris,” said he, turning suddenly round towards one of the company; “you never said a truer thing than that. The poetic temperament is riches to a poor man. Wherever I go—in all weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and the mountain streams all flowin' over—I can just go into my own mind, just the way you'd go into an inn, and order whatever you wanted. I don't need to be a king, to sit on a throne; I don't want ships, nor coaches, nor horses, to convay me to foreign lands. I can bestow kingdoms. When I haven't tuppence to buy tobacco, and without a shoe to my foot, and my hair through my hat, I can be dancin' wid princesses, and handin' empresses in to tay.”
“Musha, musha!” muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to discuss his own miraculous gifts.
“And,” resumed Billy, “it isn't only what ye are to yourself and your own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that sacret bond between you, wouldn't think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware—cheap penknives and scissors, pencil-cases, bodkins, and the like—and I wandered about for weeks through what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in Ireland—more wood, forest timber, and better-off people, but nothing beyond that!
“Well, one evening—it was in August—I came down by a narrow path to the side of a lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to see the view from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot, and well chosen, for you could count as many as five promontories running out into the lake; and there was two islands, all wooded to the water's edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin' to change their colors, and there was shades of deep gold, and dark olive, and russet brown, all mingling together with the green, and glowing in the lake below under the setting sun, and all was quiet and still as midnight; and over the water the only ripple was the track of a water-hen, as she scudded past between the islands; and if ever there was peace and tranquillity in the world it was just there! Well, I put down my pack in the leaves, for I did n't like to see or think of it, and I stretched myself down at the water's edge, and I fell into a fit of musing. It's often and often I tried to remember the elegant fancies that came through my head, and the beautiful things that I thought I saw that night out on the lake fornint me! Ye see I was fresh and fastin'; I never tasted a bit the whole day, and my brain, maybe, was all the better; for somehow janius, real janius, thrives best on a little starvation. And from musing I fell off asleep; and it was the sound of voices near that first awoke me! For a minute or two I believed I was dreaming, the words came so softly to my ear, for they were spoken in a low, gentle voice, and blended in with the slight splash of oars that moved through the water carefully, as though not to lose a word of him that was speakin'.
“It's clean beyond me to tell you what he said; and, maybe, if I could, ye would n't be able to follow it, for he was discoorsin' about night and the moon, and all that various poets said about them; ye'd think that he had books, and was reading out of them, so glibly came the verses from his lips. I never listened to such a voice before, so soft, so sweet, so musical, and the words came droppin' down, like the clear water filterin' over a rocky ledge, and glitterin' like little spangles over moss and wild-flowers.
“It wasn't only in English but Scotch ballads, too, and once or twice in Italian that he recited, till at last he gave out, in all the fulness of his liquid voice, them elegant lines out of Pope's Homer:—
“The Lord forgive me, but when he came to the last words and said, 'useful light,' I couldn't restrain myself, but broke out, 'That's mighty like a bull, anyhow, and reminds me of the ould song,—
“Before I knew where I was, the boat glided in to the steps, and a tall man, a little stooped in the shoulders, stood before me.
“'Is it you,' said he, with a quiet laugh, 'that accuses Pope of a bull?'
“'It is,' says I; 'and, what's more, there isn't a poet from Horace downwards that I won't show bulls in; there's bulls in Shakspeare and in Milton; there's bulls in the ancients; I 'll point out a bull in Aristophanes.'
“'What have we here?' said he, turning to the others.
“'A poor crayture,' says I, 'like Goldsmith's chest of drawers,—
“'With brains reduced a doable debt to pay, To dream by night, sell Sheffield ware by day.'
“Well, with that he took a fit of laughing, and handing the rest out of the boat, he made me come along at his side, discoorsin' me about my thravels, and all I seen, and all I read, till we reached an elegant little cottage on a bank right over the lake; and then he brought me in and made me take tay with the family; and I spent the night there; and when I started the next morning there was n't a 'screed' of my pack that they did n't buy, penknives, and whistles, and nut-crackers, and all, just, as they said, for keepsakes. Good luck to them, and happy hearts, wherever they are, for they made mine happy that day; ay, and for many an hour afterwards, when I just think over their kind words and pleasant faces.”
More than one of the company had dropped off asleep during Billy's narrative, and of the others, their complaisance as listeners appeared taxed to the utmost, while the Corporal snored loudly, like a man who had a right to indulge himself to the fullest extent.
“There's the bell again,” muttered one, “that's from the 'lord's room;'” and Craggs, starting up by the instinct of his office, hastened off to his master's chamber.
“My lord says you are to remain here,” said he, as he re-entered a few minutes later; “he is satisfied with your skill, and I'm to send off a messenger to the post, to let them know he has detained you.”
“I 'm obaydient,” said Billy, with a low bow; “and now for a brief repose!” And so saying, he drew a long woollen nightcap from his pocket, and putting it over his eyes, resigned himself to sleep with the practised air of one who needed but very little preparation to secure slumber.
The old Castle of Glencore contained but one spacious room, and this served all the purposes of drawing-room, dining-room, and library. It was a long and lofty chamber, with a raftered ceiling, from which a heavy chandelier hung by a massive chain of iron. Six windows, all in the same wall, deeply set and narrow, admitted a sparing light. In the opposite wall stood two fireplaces, large, massive, and monumental, the carved supporters of the richly-chased pediment being of colossal size, and the great shield of the house crowning the pyramid of strange and uncouth objects that were grouped below. The walls were partly occupied by bookshelves, partly covered by wainscot, and here and there displayed a worn-out portrait of some bygone warrior or dame, who little dreamed how much the color of their effigies should be indebted to the sad effects of damp and mildew. The furniture consisted of every imaginable type, from the carved oak and ebony console to the white and gold of Versailles taste, and the modern compromise of comfort with ugliness which chintz and soft cushions accomplish. Two great screens, thickly covered with prints and drawings, most of them political caricatures of some fifty years back, flanked each fireplace, making, as it were, in this case two different apartments.
At one of those, on a low sofa, sat, or rather lay, Lord Glencore, pale and wasted by long illness. His thin hand held a letter, to shade his eyes from the blazing wood-fire, and the other hand hung listlessly at his side. The expression of the sick man's face was that of deep melancholy—not the mere gloom of recent suffering, but the deep-cut traces of a long-carried affliction, a sorrow which had eaten into his very heart, and made its home there.
At the second fireplace sat his son, and, though a mere boy, the lineaments of his father marked the youth's face with a painful exactness. The same intensity was in the eyes, the same haughty character sat on the brow; and there was in the whole countenance the most extraordinary counterpart of the gloomy seriousness of the older face. He had been reading, but the fast-falling night obliged him to desist, and he sat now contemplating the bright embers of the wood fire in dreamy thought. Once or twice was he disturbed from his revery by the whispered voice of an old serving-man, asking for something with that submissive manner assumed by those who are continually exposed to the outbreaks of another's temper; and at last the boy, who had hitherto scarcely deigned to notice the appeals to him, flung a bunch of keys contemptuously on the ground, with a muttered malediction on his tormentor.
“What's that?” cried out the sick man, startled at the sound.
“'Tis nothing, my lord, but the keys that fell out of my hand,” replied the old man, humbly. “Mr. Craggs is away to Leenane, and I was going to get out the wine for dinner.”
“Where's Mr. Charles?” asked Lord Glencore.
“He's there beyant,” muttered the other, in a low voice, while he pointed towards the distant fireplace; “but he looks tired and weary, and I did n't like to disturb him.”
“Tired! weary!—with what? Where has he been; what has he been doing?” cried he, hastily. “Charles, Charles, I say!”
And slowly rising from his seat, and with an air of languid indifference, the boy came towards him.
Lord Glencore's face darkened as he gazed on him.
“Where have you been?” asked he, sternly.
“Yonder,” said the boy, in an accent like the echo of his own.
“There's Mr. Craggs, now, my lord,” said the old butler, as he looked out of the window, and eagerly seized the opportunity to interrupt the scene; “there he is, and a gentleman with him.”
“Ha! go and meet him, Charles,—it's Harcourt. Go and receive him, show him his room, and then bring him here to me.”
The boy heard without a word, and left the room with the same slow step and the same look of apathy. Just as he reached the hall the stranger was entering it. He was a tall, well-built man, with the mingled ease and stiffness of a soldier in his bearing; his face was handsome, but somewhat stern, and his voice had that tone which implies the long habit of command.
“You're a Massy, that I'll swear to,” said he, frankly, as he shook the boy's hand; “the family face in every lineament. And how is your father?”
“Better; he has had a severe illness.”
“So his letter told me. I was up the Rhine when I received it, and started at once for Ireland.”
“He has been very impatient for your coming,” said the boy; “he has talked of nothing else.”
“Ay, we are old friends. Glencore and I have been schoolfellows, chums at college, and messmates in the same regiment,” said he, with a slight touch of sorrow in his tone. “Will he be able to see me now? Is he confined to bed?”
“No, he will dine with you. I 'm to show you your room, and then bring you to him.”
“That 's better news than I hoped for, boy. By the way, what's your name?”
“Charles Conyngham.”
“To be sure, Charles; how could I have forgotten it! So, Charles, this is to be my quarters; and a glorious view there is from this window. What's the mountain yonder?”
“Ben Creggan.”
“We must climb that summit some of these days, Charley. I hope you 're a good walker. You shall be my guide through this wild region here, for I have a passion for explorings.”
And he talked away rapidly, while he made a brief toilet, and refreshed himself from the fatigues of the road.
“Now, Charley, I am at your orders; let us descend to the drawing-room.”
“You 'll find my father there,” said the boy, as he stopped short at the door; and Harcourt, staring at him for a second or two in silence, turned the handle and entered.
Lord Glencore never turned his head as the other drew nigh, but sat with his forehead resting on the table, extending his hand only in welcome.
“My poor fellow!” said Harcourt, grasping the thin and wasted fingers,—“my poor fellow, how glad I am to be with you again!” And he seated himself at his side as he spoke. “You had a relapse after you wrote to me?”
Glencore slowly raised his head, and, pushing back a small velvet skull-cap that he wore, said,—
“You 'd not have known me, George. Eh? see how gray I am! I saw myself in the glass to-day for the first time, and I really could n't believe my eyes.”
“In another week the change will be just as great the other way. It was some kind of a fever, was it not?”
“I believe so,” said the other, sighing.
“And they bled you and blistered you, of course. These fellows are like the farriers—they have but the one system for everything. Who was your torturer; where did you get him from?”
“A practitioner of the neighborhood, the wild growth of the mountain,” said Glencore, with a sickly smile; “but I must n't be ungrateful; he saved my life, if that be a cause for gratitude.”
“And a right good one, I take it. How like you that boy is, Glencore! I started back when he met me. It was just as if I was transported again to old school-days, and had seen yourself as you used to be long ago. Do you remember the long meadow, Glencore?”
“Harcourt,” said he, falteringly, “don't talk to me of long ago,—at least not now;” and then, as if thinking aloud, added, “How strange that a man without a hope should like the future better than the past!”
“How old is Charley?” asked Harcourt, anxious to engage him on some other theme.
“He 'll be fifteen, I think, his next birthday; he seems older, does n't he?”
“Yes, the boy is well grown and athletic. What has he been doing—have you had him at a school?”
“At a school!” said Glencore, starting; “no, he has lived always here with myself. I have been his tutor; I read with him every day, till that illness seized me.”
“He looks clever; is he so?”
“Like the rest of us, George, he may learn, but he can't be taught. The old obstinacy of the race is strong in him, and to rouse him to rebel all you have to do is to give him a task; but his faculties are good, his apprehension quick, and his memory, if he would but tax it, excellent. Here 's Craggs come to tell us of dinner; give me your arm, George, we haven't far to go—this one room serves us for everything.”
“You're better lodged than I expected—your letters told me to look for a mere barrack; and the place stands so well.”
“Yes, the spot was well chosen, although I suppose its founders cared little enough about the picturesque.”
The dinner-table was spread behind one of the massive screens, and, under the careful direction of Craggs and old Simon, was well and amply supplied,—fish and game, the delicacies of other localities, being here in abundance. Har-court had a traveller's appetite, and enjoyed himself thoroughly, while Glencore never touched a morsel, and the boy ate sparingly, watching the stranger with that intense curiosity which comes of living estranged from all society.
“Charley will treat you to a bottle of Burgundy, Har-court,” said Glencore, as they drew round the fire; “he keeps the cellar key.”
“Let us have two, Charley,” said Harcourt, as the boy arose to leave the room, “and take care that you carry them steadily.”
The boy stood for a second and looked at his father, as if interrogating, and then a sudden flush suffused his face as Glencore made a gesture with his hand for him to go.
“You don't perceive how you touched him to the quick there, Harcourt? You talked to him as to how he should carry the wine; he thought that office menial and beneath him, and he looked at me to know what he should do.”
“What a fool you have made of the boy!” said Harcourt, bluntly. “By Jove! it was time I should come here!”
When the boy came back he was followed by the old butler, carefully carrying in a small wicker contrivance, Hibernicè called a cooper, three cobwebbed and well-crusted bottles.
“Now, Charley,” said Jarcourt, gayly, “if you want to see a man thoroughly happy, just step up to my room and fetch me a small leather sack you 'll find there of tobacco, and on the dressing-table you 'll see my meerschaum pipe; be cautious with it, for it belonged to no less a man than Poniatowski, the poor fellow who died at Leipsic.”
The lad stood again irresolute and confused, when a signal from his father motioned him away to acquit the errand.
“Thank you,” said Harcourt, as he re-entered; “you see I am not vain of my meerschaum without reason. The carving of that bull is a work of real art; and if you were a connoisseur in such matters, you 'd say the color was perfect. Have you given up smoking, Glencore?—you used to be fond of a weed.”
“I care but little for it,” said Glencore, sighing.
“Take to it again, my dear fellow, if only that it is a bond 'tween yourself and every one who whiffs his cloud. There are wonderfully few habits—I was going to say enjoyments, and I might say so, but I 'll call them habits—that consort so well with every condition and every circumstance of life, that become the prince and the peasant, suit the garden of the palace and the red watch-fire of the bivouac, relieve the weary hours of a calm at sea, or refresh the tired hunter in the prairies.”
“You must tell Charley some of your adventures in the West.—The Colonel has passed two years in the Rocky Mountains,” said Glencore to his son.
“Ay, Charley, I have knocked about the world as much as most men, and seen, too, my share of its wonders. If accidents by sea and land can interest you, if you care for stories of Indian life and the wild habits of a prairie hunter, I 'm your man. Your father can tell you more of salons and the great world, of what may be termed the high game of life—”
“I have forgotten it, as much as if I had never seen it,” said Glencore, interrupting, and with a severity of voice that showed the theme displeased him. And now a pause ensued, painful perhaps to the others, but scarcely felt by Harcourt, as he smoked away peacefully, and seemed lost in the windings of his own fancies.
“Have you shooting here, Glencore?” asked he at length.
“There might be, if I were to preserve the game.”
“And you do not. Do you fish?”
“No; never.”
“You give yourself up to farming, then?”
“Not even that; the truth is, Harcourt, I literally do nothing. A few newspapers, a stray review or so, reach me in these solitudes, and keep me in a measure informed as to the course of events; but Charley and I con over our classics together, and scrawl sheets of paper with algebraic signs, and puzzle our heads over strange formulas, wonderfully indifferent to what the world is doing at the other side of this little estuary.”
“You of all men living to lead such a life as this! a fellow that never could cram occupation enough into his short twenty-four hours,” broke in Harcourt.
Glencore's pale cheek flushed slightly, and an impatient movement of his fingers on the table showed how ill he relished any allusion to his own former life.
“Charley will show you to-morrow all the wonders of our erudition. Harcourt,” said he, changing the subject; “we have got to think ourselves very learned, and I hope you 'll be polite enough not to undeceive us.”
“You 'll have a merciful critic, Charley,” said the Colonel, laughing, “for more reasons than one. Had the question been how to track a wolf or wind an antelope, to outmanoeuvre a scout party or harpoon a calf-whale, I'd not yield to many; but if you throw me amongst Greek roots or double equations, I 'm only Samson with his hair en crop!”
The solemn clock over the mantelpiece struck ten, and the boy arose as it ceased.
“That's Charley's bedtime,” said Glencore, “and we are determined to make no stranger of you, George. He 'll say good-night.”
And with a manner of mingled shyness and pride the boy held out his hand, which the soldier shook cordially, saying,—
“To-morrow, then, Charley, I count upon you for my day, and so that it be not to be passed in the library I 'll acquit myself creditably.”
“I like your boy, Glencore,” said he, as soon as they were alone. “Of course I have seen very little of him; and if I had seen more I should be but a sorry judge of what people would call his abilities. But he is a good stamp: 'Gentleman' is written on him in a hand that any can read; and, by Jove! let them talk as they will, but that's half the battle of life!”
“He is a strange fellow; you'll not understand him in a moment,” said Glencore, smiling half sadly to himself.
“Not understand him, Glencore? I read him like print, man. You think that his shy, bashful manner imposes upon me; not a bit of it; I see the fellow is as proud as Lucifer. All your solitude and estrangement from the world have n't driven out of his head that he's to be a Viscount one of these days; and somehow, wherever he has picked it up, he has got a very pretty notion of the importance and rank that same title confers.”
“Let us not speak of this now, Harcourt; I'm far too weak to enter upon what it would lead to. It is, however, the great reason for which I entreated you to come here. And to-morrow—at all events in a day or two—we can speak of it fully. And now I must leave you. You 'll have to rough it here, George; but as there is no man can do so with a better grace, I can spare my apologies; only, I beg, don't let the place be worse than it need be. Give your orders; get what you can; and see if your tact and knowledge of life cannot remedy many a difficulty which our ignorance or apathy have served to perpetuate.”
“I 'll take the command of the garrison with pleasure,” said Harcourt, filling up his glass, and replenishing the fire. “And now a good night's rest to you, for I half suspect I have already jeopardied some of it.”
The old campaigner sat till long past midnight. The generous wine, his pipe, the cheerful wood-fire, were all companionable enough, and well suited thoughts which took no high or heroic range, but were chiefly reveries of the past,—some sad, some pleasant, but all tinged with the one philosophy, which made him regard the world as a campaign, wherein he who grumbles or repines is but a sorry soldier, and unworthy of his cloth.
It was not till the last glass was drained that he arose to seek his bed, and presently humming some old air to himself, he slowly mounted the stairs to his chamber.
As we desire throughout this tale to make the actors themselves, wherever it be possible, the narrators, using their words in preference to our own, we shall now place before the reader a letter written by Colonel Harcourt about a week after his arrival at Glencore, which will at least serve to rescue him and ourselves from the task of repetition.
It was addressed to Sir Horace Upton, Her Majesty's Envoy at Stuttgard, one who had formerly served in the same regiment with Glencore and himself, but who left the army early to follow the career of diplomacy, wherein, still a young man, he had risen to the rank of a minister. It is not important, at this moment, to speak more particularly of his character, than that it was in almost every respect the opposite of his correspondent's. Where the one was frank, open, and unguarded, the other was cold, cautious, and reserved; where one believed, the other doubted; where one was hopeful, the other had nothing but misgivings. Harcourt would have twenty times a day wounded the feelings, or jarred against the susceptibility, of his best friend; Upton could not be brought to trench upon the slightest prejudice of his greatest enemy. We might continue this contrast to every detail of their characters; but enough has now been said, and we proceed to the letter in question:
Glencore Castle. Dear Upton,—True to my promise to give you early tidings of our old friend, I sit down to pen a few lines, which if a rickety table and some infernal lampblack for ink should make illegible, you 'll have to wait for the elucidation till my arrival. I found Glencore terribly altered; I 'd not have known him. He used to be muscular and rather full in habit; he is now a mere skeleton. His hair and mustache were coal black; they are a motley gray.
He was straight as an arrow—pretentiously erect, many thought; he is stooped now, and bent nearly double. His voice, too, the most clear and ringing in the squadron, is become a hoarse whisper. You remember what a passion he had for dress, and how heartily we all deplored the chance of his being colonel, well knowing what precious caprices of costly costume would be the consequence; well, a discharged corporal in a cast-off mufti is stylish compared to him. I don't think he has a hat—I have only seen an oilskin cap; but his coat, his one coat, is a curiosity of industrious patchwork; and his trousers are a pair of our old overalls, the same pattern we wore at Hounslow when the King reviewed us.
Great as these changes are, they are nothing to the alteration in the poor fellow's disposition. He that was generous to munificence is now an absolute miser, descending to the most pitiful economy and moaning over every trifling outlay. He is irritable, too, to a degree. Far from the jolly, light-hearted comrade, ready to join in the laugh against himself, and enjoy a jest of which he was the object, he suspects a slight in every allusion, and bristles up to resent a mere familiarity as though it were an insult.
Of course I put much of this down to the score of illness, and of bad health before he was so ill; but, depend upon it, he's not the man we knew him. Heaven knows if he ever will be so again. The night I arrived here he was more natural, more like himself, in fact, than he has ever been since. His manner was heartier, and in his welcome there was a touch of the old jovial good fellow, who never was so happy as when sharing his quarters with a comrade. Since that he has grown punctilious, anxiously asking me if I am comfortable, and teasing me with apologies for what I don't miss, and excuses about things that I should never have discovered wanting.
I think I see what is passing within him; he wants to be confidential, and he does n't know how to go about it. I suppose he looks on me as rather a rough father to confess to; he is n't quite sure what kind of sympathy, if any, he 'll meet with from me, and he more than half dreads a certain careless, outspoken way in which I have now and then addressed his boy, of whom more anon.
I may be right, or I may be wrong, in this conjecture; but certain it is, that nothing like confidential conversation has yet passed between us, and each day seems to render the prospect of such only less and less likely. I wish from my heart you were here; you are just the fellow to suit him,—just calculated to nourish the susceptibilities that I only shock. I said as much t' other day, in a half-careless way, and he immediately caught it up, and said,
“Ay, George, Upton is a man one wants now and then in life, and when the moment comes, there is no such thing as a substitute for him.” In a joking manner, I then remarked, “Why not come over to see him?” “Leave this!” cried he; “venture in the world again; expose myself to its brutal insolence, or still more brutal pity!” In a torrent of passion, he went on in this strain, till I heartily regretted that I had ever touched this unlucky topic.
I date his greatest reserve from that same moment; and I am sure he is disposed to connect me with the casual suggestion to go over to Stuttgard, and deems me, in consequence, one utterly deficient in all true feeling and delicacy.
I need n't tell you that my stay here is the reverse of a pleasure. I 'm never what fine people call bored anywhere; and I could amuse myself gloriously in this queer spot. I have shot some half-dozen seals, hooked the heaviest salmon I ever saw rise to a fly, and have had rare coursing,—not to say that Glencore's table, with certain reforms I have introduced, is very tolerable, and his cellar unimpeachable. I'll back his chambertin against your Excellency's, and I have discovered a bin of red hermitage that would convert a whole vineyard of the smallest Lafitte into Sneyd's claret; but with all these seductions, I can't stand the life of continued restraint I 'm reduced to. Glencore evidently sent for me to make some revelations, which, now that he sees me, he cannot accomplish. For aught I know, there may be as many changes in me to his eyes as to mine there are in him. I only can vouch for it, that if I ride three stone heavier, I have n't the worse place, and I don't detect any striking falling off in my appreciation of good fare and good fellows.
I spoke of the boy; he is a fine lad,—somewhat haughty, perhaps; a little spoiled by the country people calling him the young lord; but a generous fellow, and very like Glencore when he first joined us at Canterbury. By way of educating him himself, Glencore has been driving Virgil and decimal fractions into him; and the boy, bred in the country,—never out of it for a day,—can't load a gun or tie a hackle. Not the worst thing about the lad is his inordinate love for Glencore, whom he imagines to be about the greatest and most gifted being that ever lived. I can scarcely help smiling at the implicitness of this honest faith; but I take good care not to smile; on the contrary, I give every possible encouragement to the belief. I conclude the disenchantment will arrive only too early at last.
You 'll not know what to make of such a lengthy epistle from me, and you 'll doubtless torture that fine diplomatic intelligence of yours to detect the secret motive of my long-windedness; but the simple fact is, it has rained incessantly for the last three days, and promises the same cheering weather for as many more. Glencore doesn't fancy that the boy's lessons should be broken in upon, and hinc istæ litteræ,—that's classical for you.
I wish I could say when I am likely to beat my retreat. I 'd stay—not very willingly, perhaps, but still I 'd stay—if I thought myself of any use; but I cannot persuade myself that I am such. Glencore is now about again, feeble of course, and much pulled down, but able to go about the house and the garden. I can contribute nothing to his recovery, and I fear as little to his comfort. I even doubt if he desires me to prolong my visit; but such is my fear of offending him, that I actually dread to allude to my departure, till I can sound my way as to how he 'll take it. This fact alone will show you how much he is changed from the Glencore of long ago. Another feature in him, totally unlike his former self, struck me the other evening. We were talking of old messmates—Croydon, Stanhope, Loftus, and yourself—and instead of dwelling, as he once would have done, exclusively on your traits of character and disposition, he discussed nothing but your abilities, and the capacity by which you could win your way to honors and distinction. I need n't say how, in such a valuation, you came off best. Indeed, he professes the highest esteem for your talents, and says, “You'll see Upton either a cabinet minister or ambassador at Paris yet;” and this he repeated in the same words last night, as if to show it was not dropped as a mere random observation.
I have some scruples about venturing to offer anything bordering on a suggestion to a great and wily diplomatist like yourself; but if an illustrious framer of treaties and protocols would condescend to take a hint from an old dragoon colonel, I 'd say that a few lines from your crafty pen might possibly unlock this poor fellow's heart, and lead him to unburthen to you what he evidently cannot persuade himself to reveal to me. I can see plainly enough that there is something on his mind; but I know it just as a stupid old hound feels there is a fox in the cover, but cannot for the life of him see how he's to “draw” him.
A letter from you would do him good, at all events; even the little gossip of your gossiping career would cheer and amuse him. He said very plaintively, two nights ago, “They 've all forgotten me. When a man retires from the world he begins to die, and the great event, after all, is only the coup de grace to a long agony of torture.” Do write to him, then; the address is “Glencore Castle, Leenane, Ireland,” where, I suppose, I shall be still a resident for another fortnight to come.
Glencore has just sent for me; but I must close this for the post, or it will be too late.
Yours ever truly,
George Harcourt.
I open this to say that he sent for me to ask your address,—whether through the Foreign Office, or direct to Stuttgard. You 'll probably not hear for some days, for he writes with extreme difficulty, and I leave it to your wise discretion to write to him or not in the interval.
Poor fellow, he looks very ill to-day. He says that he never slept the whole night, and that the laudanum he took to induce drowsiness only excited and maddened him. I counselled a hot jorum of mulled porter before getting into bed; but he deemed me a monster for the recommendation, and seemed quite disgusted besides. Could n't you send him over a despatch? I think such a document from Stuttgard ought to be an unfailing soporific.
When Harcourt repaired to Glencore's bedroom, where he still lay, wearied and feverish after a bad night, he was struck by the signs of suffering in the sick man's face. The cheeks were bloodless and fallen iq, the lips pinched, and in the eyes there shone that unnatural brilliancy which results from an over-wrought and over-excited brain.
“Sit down here, George,” said he, pointing to a chair beside the bed; “I want to talk to you. I thought every day that I could muster courage for what I wish to say; but somehow, when the time arrived, I felt like a criminal who entreats for a few hours more of life, even though it be a life of misery.”
“It strikes me that you were never less equal to the effort than now,” said Harcourt, laying his hand on the other's pulse.
“Don't believe my pulse, George,” said Glencore, smiling faintly. “The machine may work badly, but it has wonderful holding out. I 've gone through enough,” added he, gloomily, “to kill most men, and here I am still, breathing and suffering.”
“This place doesn't suit you, Glencore. There are not above two days in the month you can venture to take the air.”
“And where would you have me go, sir?” he broke in, fiercely. “Would you advise Paris and the Boulevards, or a palace in the Piazza di Spagna at Rome; or perhaps the Chiaja at Naples would be public enough? Is it that I may parade disgrace and infamy through Europe that I should leave this solitude?”
“I want to see you in a better climate, Glencore,—in a place where the sun shines occasionally.”
“This suits me,” said the other, bluntly; “and here I have the security that none can invade,—none molest me. But it is not of myself I wish to speak,—it is of my boy.”
Harcourt made no reply, but sat patiently to listen to what was coming.
“It is time to think of him,” added Glencore, slowly. “The other day,—it seems but the other day,—and he was a mere child; a few years more,—to seem when past like a long dreary night,—and he will be a man.”
“Very true,” said Harcourt; “and Charley is one of those fellows who only make one plunge from the boy into all the responsibilities of manhood. Throw him into a college at Oxford, or the mess of a regiment to-morrow, and this day week you'll not know him from the rest.”
Glencore was silent; if he had heard, he never noticed Harcourt's remark.
“Has he ever spoken to you about himself, Harcourt?” asked he, after a pause.
“Never, except when I led the subject in that direction; and even then reluctantly, as though it were a topic he would avoid.”
“Have you discovered any strong inclination in him for a particular kind of life, or any career in preference to another?”
“None; and if I were only to credit what I see of him, I 'd say that this dull monotony and this dreary uneventful existence is what he likes best of all the world.”
“You really think so?” cried Glencore, with an eagerness that seemed out of proportion to the remark.
“So far as I see,” rejoined Harcourt, guardedly, and not wishing to let his observation carry graver consequences than he might suspect.
“So that you deem him capable of passing a life of a quiet, unambitious tenor,—neither seeking for distinctions nor fretting after honors?”
“How should he know of their existence, Glencore? What has the boy ever heard of life and its struggles? It's not in Homer or Sallust he 'd learn the strife of parties and public men.”
“And why need he ever know them?” broke in Glencore, fiercely.
“If he doesn't know them now, he's sure to be taught them hereafter. A young fellow who will succeed to a title and a good fortune—”
“Stop, Harcourt!” cried Glencore, passionately. “Has anything of this kind ever escaped you in intercourse with the boy?”
“Not a word—not a syllable.”
“Has he himself ever, by a hint, or by a chance word, implied that he was aware of—”
Glencore faltered and hesitated, for the word he sought for did not present itself. Harcourt, however, released him from all embarrassment by saying,—
“With me the boy is rarely anything but a listener; he hears me talk away of tiger-shooting and buffalo-hunting, scarcely ever interrupting me with a question. But I can see in his manner with the country people, when they salute him, and call him 'my lord'—”
“But he is not 'my lord,'” broke in Glencore.
“Of course he is not; that I am well aware of.”
“He never will—never shall be,” cried Glencore, in a voice to which a long pent-up passion imparted a terrible energy.
“How!—what do you mean, Glencore?” said Harcourt, eagerly. “Has he any malady; is there any deadly taint?”
“That there is, by Heaven!” cried the sick man, grasping the curtain with one hand, while he held the other firmly clenched upon his forehead,—“a taint, the deadliest that can stain a human heart! Talk of station, rank, title—what are they, if they are to be coupled with shame, ignominy, and sorrow? The loud voice of the herald calls his father Sixth Viscount of Glencore, but a still louder voice proclaims his mother a—”
With a wild burst of hysteric laughter, he threw himself, face downwards, on the bed; and now scream after scream burst from him, till the room was filled by the servants, in the midst of whom appeared Billy, who had only that same day returned from Leenane, whither he had gone to make a formal resignation of his functions as letter-carrier.
“This is nothing but an accessio nervosa,” said Billy; “clear the room, ladies and gentlemen, and lave me with the patient.” And Harcourt gave the signal for obedience by first taking his departure.
Lord Glencore's attack was more serious than at first it was apprehended, and for three days there was every threat of a relapse of his late fever; but Billy's skill was once more successful, and on the fourth day he declared that the danger was past. During this period, Harcourt's attention was for the first time drawn to the strange creature who officiated as the doctor, and who, in despite of all the detracting influences of his humble garb and mean attire, aspired to be treated with the deference due to a great physician.
“If it's the crown and the sceptre makes the king,” said he, “'tis the same with the science that makes the doctor; and no man can be despised when he has a rag of ould Galen's mantle to cover his shoulders.”
“So you're going to take blood from him?” asked Harcourt, as he met him on the stairs, where he had awaited his coming one night when it was late.
“No, sir; 'tis more a disturbance of the great nervous centres than any derangement of the heart and arteries,” said Billy, pompously; “that's what shows a real doctor,—to distinguish between the effects of excitement and inflammation, which is as different as fireworks is from a bombardment.”
“Not a bad simile, Master Billy; come in and drink a glass of brandy-and-water with me,” said Harcourt, right glad at the prospect of such companionship.
Billy Traynor, too, was flattered by the invitation, and seated himself at the fire with an air at once proud and submissive.
“You've a difficult patient to treat there,” said Harcourt, when he had furnished his companion with a pipe, and twice filled his glass; “he's hard to manage, I take it?”
“Yer' right,” said Billy; “every touch is a blow, every breath of air is a hurricane with him. There 's no such thing as traitin' a man of that timperament; it's the same with many of them ould families as with our racehorses,—they breed them too fine.”
“Egad! I think you are right,” said Harcourt, pleased with an illustration that suited his own modes of thinking.
“Yes, sir,” said Billy, gaining confidence by the approval; “a man is a ma-chine, and all the parts ought to be balanced, and, as the ancients say, in equilibrio. If preponderance here or there, whether it be brain or spinal marrow, cardiac functions or digestive ones, you disthroy him, and make that dangerous kind of constitution that, like a horse with a hard mouth, or a boat with a weather helm, always runs to one side.”
“That's well put, well explained,” said Harcourt, who really thought the illustration appropriate.
“Now, my lord there,” continued Billy, “is all out of balance, every bit of him. Bleed him, and he sinks; stimulate him, and he goes ragin' mad. 'T is their physical conformation makes their character; and to know how to cure them in sickness, one ought to have some knowledge of them in health.”
“How came you to know all this? You are a very remarkable fellow, Billy.”
“I am, sir; I'm a phenumenon in a small way. And many people thinks, when they see and convarse with me, what a pity it is I hav' n't the advantages of edication and instruction; and that's just where they 're wrong,—complately wrong.”
“Well, I confess I don't perceive that.”
“I'll show you, then. There's a kind of janius natural to men like myself,—in Ireland I mean, for I never heerd of it elsewhere,—that's just like our Irish emerald or Irish diamond,—wonderful if one considers where you find it, astonishin' if you only think how azy it is to get, but a regular disappointment, a downright take-in, if you intend to have it cut and polished and set. No, sir; with all the care and culture in life, you 'll never make a precious stone of it!”
“You've not taken the right way to convince me, by using such an illustration, Billy.”
“I 'll try another, then,” said Billy. “We are like Willy-the-Whisps, showing plenty of light where there's no road to travel, but of no manner of use on the highway, or in the dark streets of a village where one has business.”
“Your own services here are the refutation to your argument, Billy,” said Harcourt, filling his glass.
“'Tis your kindness to say so, sir,” said Billy, with gratified pride; “but the sacrat was, he thrusted me,—that was the whole of it. All the miracles of physic is confidence, just as all the magic of eloquence is conviction.”
“You have reflected profoundly, I see,” said Harcourt.
“I made a great many observations at one time of my life,—the opportunity was favorable.”
“When and how was that?”
“I travelled with a baste caravan for two years, sir; and there's nothing taches one to know mankind like the study of bastes!”
“Not complimentary to humanity, certainly,” said Harcourt, laughing.
“Yes, but it is, though; for it is by a consideration of the fero naturo that you get at the raal nature of mere animal existence. You see there man in the rough, as a body might say, just as he was turned out of the first workshop, and before he was infiltrated with the divinus afflatus, the ethereal essence, that makes him the first of creation. There 's all the qualities, good and bad,—love, hate, vengeance, gratitude, grief, joy, ay, and mirth,—there they are in the brutes; but they 're in no subjection, except by fear. Now, it's out of man's motives his character is moulded, and fear is only one amongst them. D' ye apprehend me?”
“Perfectly; fill your pipe.” And he pushed the tobacco towards him.
“I will; and I 'll drink the memory of the great and good man that first intro-duced the weed amongst us—Here's Sir Walter Raleigh! By the same token, I was in his house last week.”
“In his house! where?”
“Down at Greyhall. You Englishmen, savin' your presence, always forget that many of your celebrities lived years in Ireland; for it was the same long ago as now,—a place of decent banishment for men of janius, a kind of straw-yard where ye turned out your intellectual hunters till the sayson came on at home.”
“I 'm sorry to see, Billy, that, with all your enlightenment, you have the vulgar prejudice against the Saxon.”
“And that's the rayson I have it, because it is vulgar,” said Billy, eagerly. “Vulgar means popular, common to many; and what's the best test of truth in anything but universal belief, or whatever comes nearest to it? I wish I was in Parliament—I just wish I was there the first night one of the nobs calls out 'That 's vulgar;' and I 'd just say to him, 'Is there anything as vulgar as men and women? Show me one good thing in life that is n't vulgar! Show me an object a painter copies, or a poet describes, that is n't so!' Ayeh,” cried he, impatiently, “when they wanted a hard word to fling at us, why didn't they take the right one?”
“But you are unjust, Billy; the ungenerous tone you speak of is fast disappearing. Gentlemen nowadays use no disparaging epithets to men poorer or less happily circumstanced than themselves.”
“Faix,” said Billy, “it isn't sitting here at the same table with yourself that I ought to gainsay that remark.”
And Harcourt was so struck by the air of good breeding in which he spoke, that he grasped his hand, and shook it warmly.
“And what is more,” continued Billy, “from this day out I 'll never think so.”
He drank off his glass as he spoke, giving to the libation all the ceremony of a solemn vow.
“D' ye hear that?—them's oars; there's a boat coming in.”
“You have sharp hearing, master,” said Harcourt, laughing.
“I got the gift when I was a smuggler,” replied he. “I could put my ear to the ground of a still night, and tell you the tramp of a revenue boot as well as if I seen it. And now I'll lay sixpence it's Pat Morissy is at the bow oar there; he rows with a short jerking stroke there 's no timing. That's himself, and it must be something urgent from the post-office that brings him over the lough to-night.”
The words were scarcely spoken when Craggs entered with a letter in his hand.
“This is for you, Colonel,” said he; “it was marked 'immediate,' and the post-mistress despatched it by an express.”
The letter was a very brief one; but, in honor to the writer, we shall give it a chapter to itself.