The next instant he had lifted the helpless body of the boy from the bottom of the boat, and, with a shout of joy, screamed out,—
“He's alive!—he's well!—it's only fatigue!”
Harcourt pressed his hands to his face, and sank upon his knees in prayer.
Just as Upton had seated himself at that fragal meal of weak tea and dry toast he called his breakfast, Harcourt suddenly entered the room, splashed and road-stained from head to foot, and in his whole demeanor indicating the work of a fatiguing journey.
“Why, I thought to have had my breakfast with you,” cried he, impatiently, “and this is like the diet of a convalescent from fever. Where is the salmon—where the grouse pie—where are the cutlets—and the chocolate—and the poached eggs—and the hot rolls, and the cherry bounce?”
“Say, rather, where are the disordered livers, worn-out stomachs, fevered brains, and impatient tempers, my worthy Colonel?” said Upton, blandly. “Talleyrand himself once told me that he always treated great questions starving.”
“And he made a nice mess of the world in consequence,” blustered out Harcourt. “A fellow with an honest appetite and a sound digestion would never have played false to so many masters.”
“It is quite right that men like you should read history in this wise,” said Upton, smiling, as he dipped a crust in his tea and ate it.
“Men like me are very inferior creatures, no doubt,” broke in Harcourt, angrily; “but I very much doubt if men like you had come eighteen miles on foot over a mountain this morning, after a night passed in an open boat at sea,—ay, in a gale, by Jove, such as I sha' n't forget in a hurry.”
“You have hit it perfectly, Harcourt; suum caique; and if only we could get the world to see that each of us has his speciality, we should all of us do much better.”
By the vigorous tug he gave the bell, and the tone in which he ordered up something to eat, it was plain to see that he scarcely relished the moral Upton had applied to his speech. With the appearance of the good cheer, however, he speedily threw off his momentary displeasure, and as he ate and drank, his honest, manly face lost every trace of annoyance. Once only did a passing shade of anger cross his countenance. It was when, suddenly looking up, he saw Upton's eyes settled on him, and his whole features expressing a most palpable sensation of wonderment and compassion.
“Ay,” cried he, “I know well what's passing in your mind this minute. You are lost in your pitying estimate of such a mere animal as I am; but, hang it all, old fellow, why not be satisfied with the flattering thought that you are of another stamp,—a creature of a different order?”
“It does not make one a whit happier,” sighed Upton, who never shrunk from accepting the sentiment as his own.
“I should have thought otherwise,” said Harcourt, with a malicious twinkle of the eye; for he fancied that he had at last touched the weak point of his adversary.
“No, my dear Harcourt, the crasso naturo have rather the best of it, since no small share of this world's collisions are actually physical shocks; and that great strong pipkin that encloses your brains will stand much that would smash the poor egg-shell that shrouds mine.”
“Whenever you draw a comparison in my favor, I always find at the end I come off worst,” said Harcourt, bluntly; and Upton laughed one of his rich, musical laughs, in which there was indeed nothing mirthful, but something that seemed to say that his nature experienced a sense of enjoyment higher, perhaps, than anything merely comic could suggest.
“You came off best this time, Harcourt,” said he, good-humoredly; and such a thorough air of frankness accompanied the words that Harcourt was disarmed of all distrust at once, and joined in the laugh heartily.
“But you have not yet told me, Harcourt,” said the other, “where you have been, and why you spent your night on the sea.”
“The story is not a very long one,” replied he; and at once gave a full recital of the events, which our reader has already had before him in our last chapter, adding, in conclusion,
“I have left the boy in a cabin at Belmullet; he is in a high fever, and raving so loud that you could hear him a hundred yards away. I told them to keep cold water on his head, and give him plenty of it to drink,—nothing more,—till I could fetch our doctor over, for it will be impossible to move the boy from where he is for the present.”
“Glencore has been asking for him already this morning. He did not desire to see him, but he begged of me to go to him and speak with him.”
“And have you told him that he was from home,—that he passed the night away from this?”
“No; I merely intimated that I should look after him, waiting for your return to guide myself afterwards.”
“I don't suspect that when we took him from the boat the malady had set in; he appeared rather like one overcome by cold and exhaustion. It was about two hours after,—he had taken some food and seemed stronger,—when I said to him, 'Come, Charley, you 'll soon be all right again; I have sent a fellow to look after a pony for you, and you 'll be able to ride back, won't you?'
“'Ride where?' cried he, eagerly.
“'Home, of course,' said I, 'to Glencore.'
“'Home! I have no home,' cried he; and the wild scream he uttered the words with, I 'll never forget. It was just as if that one thought was the boundary between sense and reason, and the instant he had passed it, all was chaos and confusion; for now his raving began,—the most frantic imaginations; always images of sorrow, and with a rapidity of utterance there was no following. Of course in such cases the delusions suggest no clew to the cause, but all his fancies were about being driven out of doors an outcast and a beggar, and of his father rising from his sick bed to curse him. Poor boy! Even in this his better nature gleamed forth as he cried, 'Tell him'—and he said the words in a low whisper—'tell him not to anger himself; he is ill, very ill, and should be kept tranquil. Tell him, then, that I am going—going away forever, and he'll hear of me no more.'” As Harcourt repeated the words, his own voice faltered, and two heavy drops slowly coursed down his bronzed cheeks. “You see,” added he, as if to excuse the emotion, “that was n't like raving, for he spoke this just as he might have done if his very heart was breaking.”
“Poor fellow!” said Upton; and the words were uttered with real feeling.
“Some terrible scene must have occurred between them,” resumed Harcourt; “of that I feel quite certain.”
“I suspect you are right,” said Upton, bending over his teacup; “and our part, in consequence, is one of considerable delicacy; for until Glencore alludes to what has passed, we of course, can take no notice of it. The boy is ill; he is in a fever: we know nothing more.”
“I'll leave you to deal with the father; the son shall be my care. I have told Traynor to be ready to start with me after breakfast, and have ordered two stout ponies for the journey. I conclude there will be no objection in detaining the doctor for the night: what think you, Upton?”
“Do you consult the doctor on that head; meanwhile, I 'll pay a visit to Glencore. I 'll meet you in the library.” And so saying, Upton rose, and gracefully draping the folds of his dressing-gown, and arranging the waving lock of hair which had escaped beneath his cap, he slowly set out towards the sick man's chamber.
Of all the springs of human action, there was not one in which Sir Horace Upton sympathized so little as passion. That any man could adopt a line of conduct from which no other profit could result than what might minister to a feeling of hatred, jealousy, or revenge, seemed to him utterly contemptible. It was not, indeed, the morality of such a course that he called in question, although he would not have contested that point. It was its meanness, its folly, its insufficiency. His experience of great affairs had imbued him with all the importance that was due to temper and moderation. He scarcely remembered an instant where a false move had damaged a negotiation that it could not be traced to some passing trait of impatience, or some lurking spirit of animosity biding the hour of its gratification.
He had long learned to perceive how much more temperament has to do, in the management of great events, than talent or capacity, and his opinion of men was chiefly founded on this quality of their nature. It was, then, with an almost pitying estimate of Glenoore that he now entered the room where the sick man lay.
Anxious to be alone with him, Glenoore had dismissed all the attendants from his room, and sat, propped up by pillows, eagerly awaiting his approach.
Upton moved through the dimly lighted room like one familiar to the atmosphere of illness, and took his seat beside the bed with that noiseless quiet which in him was a kind of instinct.
It was several minutes before Glencore spoke, and then, in a low, faint voice, he said, “Are we alone, Upton?”
“Yes,” said the other, gently pressing the wasted fingers which lay on the counterpane before him.
“You forgive me, Upton,” said he,—and the words trembled as he uttered them,—“You forgive me, Upton, though I cannot forgive myself.”
“My dear friend, a passing moment of impatience is not to breach the friendship of a lifetime. Your calmer judgment would, I know, not be unjust to me.”
“But how am I to repair the wrong I have done you?”
“By never alluding to it,—never thinking of it again, Glenoore.”
“It is so unworthy, so ignoble in me!” cried Glenoore, bitterly; and a tear fell over his eyelid and rested on his wan and worn cheek.
“Let us never think of it, my dear Glenoore. Life has real troubles enough for either of us, not to dwell on those which we may fashion out of our emotions. I promise you, I have forgotten the whole incident.”
Glenoore sighed heavily, but did not speak; at last he said, “Be it so, Upton,” and, covering his face with his hand, lay still and silent. “Well,” said he, after a long pause, “the die is cast, Upton: I have told him!”
“Told the boy?” said Upton.
He nodded an assent. “It is too late to oppose me now, Upton,—the thing is done. I didn't think I had strength for it; but revenge is a strong stimulant, and I felt as though once more restored to health, as I proceeded. Poor fellow! he bore it like a man. Like a man, do I say? No, but better than man ever bore such crushing tidings.”
“He asked me to stop once, while his head reeled, and said, 'In a minute I shall be myself again,' and so he was, too; you should have seen him, Upton, as he rose to leave me. So much of dignity was there in his look that my heart misgave me; and I told him that still, as my son, he should never want a friend and a protector. He grew deadly pale, and caught at the bed for support. Another moment, and I 'd not have answered for myself. I was already relenting; but I thought of her, and my resolution came back in all its force. Still, I dared not look on him. The sight of that wan cheek, those quivering lips and glassy eyes, would certainly have unmanned me. I turned away. When I looked round, he was gone!' As he ceased to speak, a clammy perspiration burst forth over his face and forehead, and he made a sign to Upton to wet his lips.
“It is the last pang she is to cost me, Upton, but it is a sore one!” said he, in a low, hoarse whisper.
“My dear Glencore, this is all little short of madness; even as revenge it is a failure, since the heaviest share of the penalty recoils upon yourself.”
“How so?” cried he, impetuously.
“Is it thus that an ancient name is to go out forever? Is it in this wise that a house noble for centuries is to crumble into ruin? I will not again urge upon you the cruel wrong you are doing. Over that boy's inheritance you have no more right than over mine,—you cannot rob him of the protection of the law. No power could ever give you the disposal of his destiny in this wise.”
“I have done it, and I will maintain it, sir,” cried Glencore; “and if the question is, as you vaguely hint, to be one of law—”
“No, no, Glencore; do not mistake me.”
“Hear me out, sir,” said he, passionately. “If it is to be one of law, let Sir Horace Upton give his testimony,—tell all that he knows,—and let us see what it will avail him. You may—it is quite open to you—place us front to front as enemies. You may teach the boy to regard me as one who has robbed him of his birthright, and train him up to become my accuser in a court of justice. But my cause is a strong one, it cannot be shaken; and where you hope to brand me with tyranny, you will but visit bastardy upon him. Think twice, then, before you declare this combat. It is one where all your craft will not sustain you.”
“My dear Glencore, it is not in this spirit that we can speak profitably to each other. If you will not hear my reasons calmly and dispassionately, to what end am I here? You have long known me as one who lays claim to no more rigid morality than consists with the theory of a worldly man's experiences. I affect no high-flown sentiments. I am as plain and practical as may be; and when I tell you that you are wrong in this affair, I mean to say that what you are about to do is not only bad, but impolitic. In your pursuit of a victim, you are immolating yourself.”
“Be it so; I go not alone to the stake; there is another to partake of the torture,” cried Glencore, wildly; and already his flushed cheek and flashing eyes betrayed the approach of a feverish access.
“If I am not to have any influence with you, then,” resumed Upton, “I am here to no purpose. If to all that I say—to arguments you cannot answer—you obstinately persist in opposing an insane thirst for revenge, I see not why you should desire my presence. You have resolved to do this great wrong?”
“It is already done, sir,” broke in Glencore.
“Wherein, then, can I be of any service to you?”
“I am coming to that. I had come to it before, had you not interrupted me. I want you to be guardian to the boy. I want you to replace me in all that regards authority over him. You know life well, Upton. You know it not alone in its paths of pleasure and success, but you understand thoroughly the rugged footway over which humble men toil wearily to fortune. None can better estimate a man's chances of success, nor more surely point the road by which he is to attain it. The provision which I destine for him will be an humble one, and he will need to rely upon his own efforts. You will not refuse me this service, Upton. I ask it in the name of our old friendship.”
“There is but one objection I could possibly have, and yet that seems to be insurmountable.”
“And what may it be?” cried Glencore.
“Simply, that in acceding to your request, I make myself an accomplice in your plan, and thus aid and abet the very scheme I am repudiating.”
“What avails your repudiation if it will not turn me from my resolve? That it will not, I 'll swear to you as solemnly as ever an oath was taken. I tell you again, the thing is done. For the consequences which are to follow on it you have no responsibility; these are my concern.”
“I should like a little time to think over it,” said Upton, with the air of one struggling with irresolution. “Let me have this evening to make up my mind; to-morrow you shall have my answer.”
“Be it so, then,” said Glencore; and, turning his face away, waved a cold farewell with his hand.
We do not purpose to follow Sir Horace as he retired, nor does our task require that we should pry into the secret recesses of his wily nature; enough if we say that in asking for time, his purpose was rather to afford another opportunity of reflection to Glencore than to give himself more space for deliberation. He had found, by the experience of his calling, that the delay we often crave for, to resolve a doubt, has sufficed to change the mind of him who originated the difficulty.
“I'll give him some hours, at least,” thought he, “to ponder over what I have said. Who knows but the argument may seem better in memory than in action? Such things have happened before now.” And having finished this reflection, he turned to peruse the pamphlet of a quack doctor who pledged himself to cure all disorders of the circulation by attending to tidal influences, and made the moon herself enter into the materia medica. What Sir Horace believed, or did not believe, in the wild rhapsodies of the charlatan, is known only to himself. Whether his credulity was fed by the hope of obtaining relief, or whether his fancy only was aroused by the speculative images thus suggested, it is impossible to say. It is not altogether improbable that he perused these things as Charles Fox used to read all the trashiest novels of the Minerva Press, and find, in the very distorted and exaggerated pictures, a relief and a relaxation which more correct views of life had failed to impart. Hard-headed men require strange indulgences.
It was a fine breezy morning as the Colonel set out with Billy Traynor for Belmullet. The bridle-path by which they travelled led through a wild and thinly inhabited tract,—now dipping down between grassy hills, now tracing its course along the cliffs over the sea. Tall ferns covered the slopes, protected from the west winds, and here and there little copses of stunted oak showed the traces of what once had been forest. It was, on the whole, a silent and dreary region, so that the travellers felt it even relief as they drew nigh the bright blue sea, and heard the sonorous booming of the waves as they broke along the shore.
“It cheers one to come up out of those dreary dells, and hear the pleasant plash of the sea,” said Harcourt; and his bright face showed that he felt the enjoyment.
“So it does, sir,” said Billy. “And yet Homer makes his hero go heavy-hearted as he hears the ever-sounding sea.”
“What does that signify, Doctor?” said Harcourt, impatiently. “Telling me what a character in a fiction feels affects me no more than telling me what he does. Why, man, the one is as unreal as the other. The fellow that created him fashioned his thoughts as well as his actions.”
“To be sure he did; but when the fellow is a janius, what he makes is as much a crayture as either you or myself.”
“Come, come, Doctor, no mystification.”
“I don't mean any,” broke in Billy. “What I want to say is this, that as we read every character to elicit truth,—truth in the working of human motives, truth in passion, truth in all the struggles of our poor weak natures,—why would n't a great janius like Homer, or Shakspeare, or Milton, be better able to show us this in some picture drawn by themselves, than you or I be able to find it out for ourselves?”
Harcourt shook his head doubtfully.
“Well, now,” said Billy, returning to the charge, “did you ever see a waxwork model of anatomy? Every nerve and siny of a nerve was there,—not a vein nor an artery wanting. The artist that made it all just wanted to show you where everything was; but he never wanted you to believe it was alive, or ever had been. But with janius it's different. He just gives you some traits of a character, he points him out to you passing,—just as I would to a man going along the street,—and there he is alive for ever and ever; not like you and me, that will be dead and buried to-morrow or next day, and the most known of us three lines in a parish registhry, but he goes down to posterity an example, an illustration—or a warning, maybe—to thousands and thousands of living men. Don't talk to me about fiction! What he thought and felt is truer than all that you and I and a score like us ever did or ever will do. The creations of janius are the landmarks of humanity; and well for us is it that we have such to guide us!”
“All this may be very fine,” said Harcourt, contemptuously, “but give me the sentiments of a living man, or one that has lived, in preference to all the imaginary characters that have ever adorned a story.”
“Just as I suppose that you'd say that a soldier in the Blues, or some big, hulking corporal in the Guards, is a finer model of the human form than ever Praxiteles chiselled.”
“I know which I 'd rather have alongside of me in a charge, Doctor,” said Harcourt, laughing; and then, to change the topic, he pointed to a lone cabin on the sea-shore, miles away, as it seemed, from all other habitations.
“That's Michel Cady's, sir,” said Traynor; “he lives by birds,—hunting them saygulls and cormorants through the crevices of the rocks, and stealing the eggs. There isn't a precipice that he won't climb, not a cliff that he won't face.”
“Well, if that be his home, the pursuit does not seem a profitable one.”
“'Tis as good as breaking stones on the road for four-pence a day, or carrying sea-weed five miles on your back to manure the potatoes,” said Billy, mournfully.
“That's exactly the very thing that puzzles me,” said Harcourt, “why, in a country so remarkable for fertility, every one should be so miserably poor!”
“And you never heard any explanation of it?”
“Never; at least, never one that satisfied me.”
“Nor ever will you,” said Billy, sententiously.
“And why so?”
“Because,” said he, drawing a long breath, as if preparing for a discourse,—“because there's no man capable of going into the whole subject; for it's not merely an economical question or a social one, but it is metaphysical, and religious, and political, and ethnological, and historical,—ay, and geographical too! You have to consider, first, who and what are the aborigines. A conquered people that never gave in they were conquered. Who are the rulers? A Saxon race that always felt that they were infarior to them they ruled over!”
“By Jove, Doctor, I must stop you there; I never heard any acknowledgment of this inferiority you speak of.”
“I'd like to get a goold medal for arguin' it out with you,” said Billy.
“And, after all, I don't see how it would resolve the original doubt,” said Harcourt. “I want to know why the people are so poor, and I don't want to hear of the battle of Clontarf, or the Danes at Dundalk.”
“There it is, you'd like to narrow down a great question of race, language, traditions, and laws to a little miserable dispute about labor and wages. O Manchester, Manchester! how ye're in the heart of every Englishman, rich or poor, gentle or simple! You say you never heard of any confession of inferiority. Of course you did n't; but quite the reverse,—a very confident sense of being far better than the poor Irish; and I'll tell you how, and why, just as you, yourself, after a discusshion with me, when you find yourself dead bate, and not a word to reply, you 'll go home to a good dinner and a bottle of wine, dry clothes and a bright fire; and no matter how hard my argument pushed you, you'll remember that I'm in rags, in a dirty cabin, with potatoes to ate and water to drink, and you 'll say, at all events, 'I 'm better off than he is;' and there's your superiority, neither more or less,—there it is! And all the while, I'm saying the same thing to myself,—'Sorrow matter for his fine broadcloth, and his white linen, and his very best roast beef that he's atin',—I 'm his master! In all that dignifies the spacies in them grand qualities that makes us poets, rhetoricians, and the like, in those elegant attributes that, as the poet says,—
—in these, I say again, I 'm his master!'”
As Billy finished his growing panegyric upon his country and himself, he burst out in a joyous laugh, and cried, “Did ye ever hear conceit like that? Did ye ever expect to see the day that a ragged poor blackguard like me would dare to say as much to one like you? And, after all, it's the greatest compliment I could pay you.”
“How so, Billy? I don't exactly see that.”
“Why, that if you weren't a gentleman,—a raal gentleman, born and bred,—I could never have ventured to tell you what I said now. It is because, in your own refined feelings, you can pardon all the coarseness of mine, that I have my safety.”
“You're as great a courtier as you are a scholar, Billy,” said Harcourt, laughing; “meanwhile, I'm not likely to be enlightened as to the cause of Irish poverty.”
“'T is a whole volume I could write on the same subject,” said Billy; “for there's so many causes in operation, com-binin', and assistin', and aggravatin' each other. But if you want the head and front of the mischief in one word, it is this, that no Irishman ever gave his heart and sowl to his own business, but always was mindin' something else that he had nothin' to say to; and so, ye see, the priest does be thinkin' of politics, the parson's thinkin' of the priest, the people are always on the watch for a crack at the agent or the tithe-proctor, and the landlord, instead of looking after his property, is up in Dublin dinin' with the Lord-Leftinint and abusin' his tenants. I don't want to screen myself, nor say I'm better than my neighbors, for though I have a larned profession to live by, I 'd rather be writin' a ballad, and singin' it too, down Thomas Street, than I 'd be lecturin' at the Surgeons' Hall.”
“You are certainly a very strange people,” said Harcourt.
“And yet there's another thing stranger still, which is, that your countrymen never took any advantage of our eccentricities, to rule us by; and if they had any wit in their heads, they 'd have seen, easy enough, that all these traits are exactly the clews to a nation's heart. That's what Pitt meant when he said, 'Let me make the songs of a people, and I don't care who makes the laws.' Look down now in that glen before you, as far as you can see. There's Belmullet, and ain't you glad to be so near your journey's end? for you're mighty tired of all this discoorsin'.”
“On the contrary, Billy, even when I disagree with what you say, I'm pleased to hear your reasons; at the same time, I 'm glad we are drawing nigh to this poor boy, and I only trust we may not be too late.”
Billy muttered a pious concurrence in the wish, and they rode along for some time in silence. “There's the Bay of Belmullet now under your feet,” cried Billy, as he pulled up short, and pointed with his whip seaward. “There's five fathoms, and fine anchoring ground on every inch ye see there. There's elegant shelter from tempestuous winds. There's a coast rich in herrings, oysters, lobsters, and crabs; farther out there's cod, and haddock, and mackerel in the sayson. There's sea wrack for kelp, and every other con-vanience any one can require; and a poorer set of devils than ye 'll see when we get down there, there's nowhere to be found. Well, well! 'if idleness is bliss, it's folly to work hard.'” And with this paraphrase, Billy made way for the Colonel, as the path had now become too narrow for two abreast, and in this way they descended to the shore.
Although the cabin in which the sick boy lay was one of the best in the village, its interior presented a picture of great poverty. It consisted of a single room, in the middle of which a mud wall of a few feet in height formed a sort of partition, abutting against which was the bed,—the one bed of the entire family,—now devoted to the guest. Two or three coarsely fashioned stools, a rickety table, and a still more rickety dresser comprised all the furniture. The floor was uneven and fissured, and the solitary window was mended with an old hat,—thus diminishing the faint light which struggled through the narrow aperture.
A large net, attached to the rafters, hung down in heavy festoons overhead, the corks and sinks dangling in dangerous proximity to the heads underneath. Several spars and oars littered one corner, and a newly painted buoy filled another; but, in spite of all these encumbrances, there was space around the fire for a goodly company of some eight or nine of all ages, who were pleasantly eating their supper from a large pot of potatoes that smoked and steamed in front of them.
“God save all here!” cried Billy, as he preceded the Colonel into the cabin.
“Save ye kindly,” was the courteous answer, in a chorus of voices; at the same time, seeing a gentleman at the door, the whole party arose at once to receive him. Nothing could have surpassed the perfect good-breeding with which the fisherman and his wife did the honors of their humble home; and Harcourt at once forgot the poverty-struck aspect of the scene in the general courtesy of the welcome.
“He 's no better, your honor,—no better at all,” said the man, as Harcourt drew nigh the sick bed. “He does be always ravin',—ravin' on,—beggin' and implorin' that we won't take him back to the Castle; and if he falls asleep, the first thing he says when he wakes up is, 'Where am I?—tell me I'm not at Glencore!' and he keeps on screechin', 'Tell me, tell me so!'”
Harcourt bent down over the bed and gazed at him. Slowly and languidly the sick boy raised his heavy lids and returned the stare.
“You know me, Charley, boy, don't you?” said he, softly.
“Yes,” muttered he, in a weak tone.
“Who am I, Charley? Tell me who is speaking to you.”
“Yes,” said he again.
“Poor fellow!” Bighed Harcourt, “he does not know me!”
“Where's the pain?” asked Billy, suddenly.
The boy placed his hand on his forehead, and then on his temples.
“Look up! look at me!” said Billy. “Ay, there it is! the pupil does not contract,—there's mischief in the brain. He wants to say something to you, sir,” said he to Harcourt; “he's makin' signs to you to stoop down.”
Harcourt put his ear close to the sick boy's lips, and listened.
“No, my dear child, of course not,” said he, after a pause. “You shall remain here, and I will stay with you too. In a few days your father will come—”
A wild yell, a shriek that made the cabin ring, now broke from the boy, followed by another, and then a third; and then with a spring he arose from the bed, and tried to escape. Weak and exhausted as he was, such was the strength supplied by fever, it was all that they could do to subdue him and replace him in the bed; violent convulsions followed this severe access, and it was not till after hours of intense suffering that he calmed down again and seemed to slumber.
“There's more than we know of here, Colonel,” said Billy, as he drew him to one side. “There's moral causes as well as malady at work.”
“There may be, but I know nothing of them,” said Harcourt; and in the frank air of the speaker the other did not hesitate to repose his trust.
“If we hope to save him, we ought to find out where the mischief lies,” said Billy; “for, if ye remark, his ravin' is always upon one subject; he never wanders from that.”
“He has a dread of home. Some altercation with his father has, doubtless, impressed him with this notion.”
“Ah, that isn't enough, we must go 'deeper; we want a clew to the part of the brain engaged. Meanwhile, here's at him, with the antiphlogistic touch;” and he opened his lancet-case, and tucked up his cuffs. “Houlde the basin, Biddy.”
“There, Harvey himself couldn't do it nater than that. It's an elegant study to be feelin' a pulse while the blood is flowin'. It comes at first like a dammed-up cataract, a regular out-pouring, just as a young girl would tell her love, all wild and tumultuous; then, after a time, she gets more temperate, the feelings are relieved, and the ardor is moderated, till at last, wearied and worn out, the heart seems to ask for rest; and then ye'll remark a settled faint smile coming over the lips, and a clammy coldness in the face.”
“He's fainting, sir,” broke in Biddy.
“He is, ma'am, and it's myself done it,” said Billy. “Oh, dear, oh, dear! If we could only do with the moral heart what we can with the raal physical one, what wonderful poets we 'd be!”
“What hopes have you?” whispered Harcourt.
“The best, the very best. There 's youth and a fine constitution to work upon; and what more does a doctor want? As ould Marsden said, 'You can't destroy these in a fortnight, so the patient must live.' But you must help me, Colonel, and you can help me.”
“Command me in any way, Doctor.”
“Here's the modus, then. You must go back to the Castle and find out, if you can, what happened between his father and him. It does not signify now, nor will it for some days; but when he comes to the convalescent stage, it's then we 'll need to know how to manage him, and what subjects to keep him away from. 'T is the same with the brain as with a sprained ankle; you may exercise if you don't twist it; but just come down once on the wrong spot, and maybe ye won't yell out!”
“You 'll not quit him, then.”
“I'm a senthry on his post, waiting to get a shot at the enemy if he shows the top of his head. Ah, sir, if ye only knew physic, ye 'd acknowledge there 's nothing as treacherous as dizaze. Ye hunt him out of the brain, and then he is in the lungs. Ye chase him out of that, and he skulks in the liver. At him there, and he takes to the fibrous membranes, and then it's regular hide-and-go-seek all over the body. Trackin' a bear is child's play to it.” And so saying, Billy held the Colonel's stirrup for him to mount, and giving his most courteous salutation, and his best wishes for a good journey, he turned and re-entered the cabin.
It was not without surprise that Harcourt saw Glencore enter the drawing-room a few minutes before dinner. Very pale and very feeble, he slowly traversed the room, giving a hand to each of his guests, and answering the inquiries for his health by a sickly smile, while he said, “As you see me.”
“I am going to dine with you to-day, Harcourt,” said he, with an attempt at gayety of manner. “Upton tells me that a little exertion of this kind will do me good.”
“Upton's right,” cried the Colonel, “especially if he added that you should take a glass or two of that admirable Burgundy. My life on 't but that is the liquor to set a man on his legs again.”
“I did n't remark that this was exactly the effect it produced upon you t' other night,” said Upton, with one of his own sly laughs.
“That comes of drinking it in bad company,” retorted Harcourt; “a man is driven to take two glasses for one.”
As the dinner proceeded, Glencore rallied considerably, taking his part in the conversation, and evidently enjoying the curiously contrasted temperaments at either side of him. The one, all subtlety, refinement, and finesse; the other, out-spoken, rude, and true-hearted; rarely correct in a question of taste, but invariably right in every matter of honorable dealing. Though it was clear enough that Upton relished the eccentricities whose sallies he provoked, it was no less easy to see how thoroughly he appreciated the frank and manly nature of the old soldier; nor could all the crafty habits of his acute mind overcome the hearty admiration with which he regarded him.
It is in the unrestricted ease of these “little dinners,” where two or three old friends are met, that social intercourse assumes its most charming form. The usages of the great world, which exact a species of uniformity of breeding and manners, are here laid aside, and men talk with all the bias and prejudices of their true nature, dashing the topics discussed with traits of personality, and even whims, that are most amusing. How little do we carry away of tact or wisdom from the grand banquets of life; and what pleasant stores of thought, what charming memories remain to us, after those small gatherings!
How, as I write this, one little room rises to my recollection, with its quaint old sideboard of carved oak; its dark-brown cabinets, curiously sculptured; its heavy old brocade curtains, and all its queer devices of knick-knackery, where such meetings once were held, and where, throwing off the cares of life,—shut out from them, as it were, by the massive folds of the heavy drapery across the door,—. we talked in all the fearless freedom of old friendship, rambling away from theme to theme, contrasting our experiences, balancing our views in life, and mingling through our converse the racy freshness of a boy's enjoyment with the sager counsels of a man's reflectiveness. Alas! how very early is it sometimes in life that we tread “the banquet-hall deserted.” But to our story: the evening wore pleasantly on; Upton talked, as few but himself could do, upon the public questions of the day; and Harcourt, with many a blunt interruption, made the discourse but more easy and amusing. The soldier was, indeed, less at his ease than the others. It was not alone that many of the topics were not such as he was most familiar with, but he felt angry and indignant at Glencore's seeming indifference as to the fate of his son. Not a single reference to him even occurred; his name was never even passingly mentioned. Nothing but the careworn, sickly face, the wasted form and dejected expression before him, could have restrained Harcourt from alluding to the boy. He bethought him, however, that any indiscretion on his part might have the gravest consequences. Upton, too, might have said something to quiet Glencore's mind. “At all events, I'll wait,” said he to himself; “for wherever there is much delicacy in a negotiation, I generally make a mess of it.” The more genially, therefore, did Glencore lend himself to the pleasure of the conversation, the more provoked did Harcourt feel at his heartlessness, and the more did the struggle cost him to control his own sentiments.
Upton, who detected the secret working of men's minds with a marvellous exactness, saw how the poor Colonel was suffering, and that, in all probability, some unhappy explosion would at last ensue, and took an opportunity of remarking that though all this chit-chat was delightful for them, Glencore was still a sick man.
“We must n't forget, Harcourt,” said he, “that a chicken-broth diet includes very digestible small-talk; and here we are leading our poor friend through politics, war, diplomacy, and the rest of it, just as if he had the stomach of an old campaigner and—”
“And the brain of a great diplomatist! Say it out, man, and avow honestly the share of excellence you accord to each of us,” broke in Harcourt, laughing.
“I would to Heaven we could exchange,” sighed Upton, languidly.
“The saints forbid!” exclaimed the other; “and it would do us little good if we were able.”
“Why so?”
“I'd never know what to do with that fine intellect if I had it; and as for you, what with your confounded pills and mixtures, your infernal lotions and embrocations, you'd make my sound system as bad as your own in three months' time.”
“You are quite wrong, my dear Harcourt; I should treat the stomach as you would do the brain,—give it next to nothing to do, in the hopes it might last the longer.”
“There now, good night,” said Harcourt; “he's always the better for bitters, whether he gives or takes them.” And with a good-humored laugh he left the room.
Glencore's eyes followed him as he retired; and then, as they closed, an expression as of long-repressed suffering settled down on his features so marked that Upton hastily asked,—
“Are you ill, are you in pain, Glencore?”
“In pain? Yes,” said he, “these two hours back I have been suffering intensely; but there's no help for it! Must you really leave this to-morrow, Upton?”
“I must. This letter from the Foreign Office requires my immediate presence in London, with a very great likelihood of being obliged to start at once for the Continent.”
“And I had so much to say,—so many things to consult you on,” sighed the other.
“Are you equal to it now?” asked Upton.
“I must try, at all events. You shall learn my plan.” He was silent for some minutes, and sat with his head resting on his hand, in deep reflection. At last he said, “Has it ever occurred to you, Upton, that some incident of the past, some circumstance in itself insignificant, should rise up, as it were, in after life to suit an actual emergency, just as though fate had fashioned it for such a contingency?”
“I cannot say that I have experienced what you describe, if, indeed, I fully understand it.”
“I'll explain better by an instance. You know now,”—here his voice became slow, and the words fell with a marked distinctness,—“you know now what I intend by this woman. Well, just as if to make my plan more feasible, a circumstance intended for a very different object offers itself to my aid. When my uncle, Sir Miles Herrick, heard that I was about to marry a foreigner, he declared that he would never leave me a shilling of his fortune. I am not very sure that I cared much for the threat when it was uttered. My friends, however, thought differently; and though they did not attempt to dissuade me from my marriage, they suggested that I should try some means of overcoming this prejudice; at all events, that I should not hurry on the match without an effort to obtain his consent. I agreed,—not very willingly, indeed,—and so the matter remained. The circumstance was well known amongst my two or three most intimate friends, and constantly discussed by them. I need n't tell you that the tone in which such things are talked of as often partakes of levity as seriousness. They gave me all manner of absurd counsels, one more outrageously ridiculous than the other. At last, one day,—we were picnicking at Baia,—Old Clifford,—you remember that original who had the famous schooner-yacht 'The Breeze,'—well, he took me aside after dinner, and said, 'Glencore, I have it,—I have just hit upon the expedient. Your uncle and I were old chums at Christ Church fifty years ago. What if we were to tell him that you were going to marry a daughter of mine? I don't think he'd object. I 'm half certain he 'd not. I have been abroad these five-and-thirty years. Nobody in England knows much about me now. Old Herrick can't live forever; he is my senior by a good ten or twelve years; and if the delusion only lasts his time—'
“'But perhaps you have a daughter?' broke I in.
“'I have, and she is married already, so there is no risk on that score.' I need n't repeat all that he said for, nor that I urged against, the project; for though it was after dinner, and we all had drunk very freely, the deception was one I firmly rejected. When a man shows a great desire to serve you on a question of no common difficulty, it is very hard to be severe upon his counsels, however unscrupulous they may be. In fact, you accept them as proofs of friendship only the stronger, seeing how much they must have cost him to offer.”
Upton smiled dubiously, and Glencore, blushing slightly, said, “You don't concur in this, I perceive.”
“Not exactly,” said Upton, in his silkiest of tones; “I rather regard these occasions as I should do the generosity of a man who, filling my hand with base money, should say, 'Pass it if you can!'”
“In this case, however,” resumed Glencore, “he took his share of the fraud, or at least was willing to do so, for I distinctly said 'No' to the whole scheme. He grew very warm about it; at one moment appealing to my 'good sense, not to kick seven thousand a year out of the window;' at the next, in half-quarrelsome mood, asking 'if it were any objection I had to be connected with his family.' To get rid of a very troublesome subject, and to end a controversy that threatened to disturb a party, I said at last, 'We 'll talk it over to-morrow, Clifford, and if your arguments be as good as your heart, then perhaps they may yet convince me.' This ended the theme, and we parted. I started the next day on a shooting excursion into Calabria, and when I got back it was not of meeting Clifford I was thinking. I hastened to meet the Delia Torres, and then came our elopement. You know the rest. We went to the East, passed the winter in Upper Egypt, and came to Cairo in spring, where Charley was born. I got back to Naples after a year or two, and then found that my uncle had just died, and in consequence of my marrying the daughter of his old and attached friend, Sir Guy Clifford, had reversed the intention of his will, and by a codicil left me his sole heir. It was thus that my marriage, and even my boy's birth, became inserted in the Peerage; my solicitor, in his vast eagerness for my interests, having taken care to indorse the story with his own name. The disinherited nephews and nieces, the half-cousins and others, soon got wind of the real facts, and contested the will, on the ground of its being executed under a delusion. I, of course, would not resist their claim, and satisfied myself by denying the statement as to my marriage; and so, after affording the current subject of gossip for a season, I was completely forgotten, the more as we went to live abroad, and never mixed with English. And now, Upton, it is this same incident I would utilize for the present occasion, though, as I said before, when it originally occurred it had a very different signification.”
“I don't exactly see how,” said Upton.
“In this wise. My real marriage was never inserted in the Peerage. I'll now manage that it shall so appear, to give me the opportunity of formally contradicting it, and alluding to the strange persistence with which, having married me some fifteen years ago to a lady who never existed, they now are pleased to unite me to one whose character might have secured me against the calumny. I 'll threaten an action for libel, etc., obtain a most full, explicit, and abject apology, and then, when this has gone the round of all the journals of Europe, her doom is sealed!”
“But she has surely letters, writings, proofs of some sort.”
“No, Upton, I have not left a scrap in her possession; she has not a line, not a letter to vindicate her. On the night I broke open her writing-desk, I took away everything that bore the traces of my own hand. I tell you again she is in my power, and never was power less disposed to mercy.”
“Once more, my dear friend,” said Upton, “I am driven to tell you that I cannot be a profitable counsellor in a matter to every detail of which I object. Consider calmly for one moment what you are doing. See how, in your desire to be avenged upon her, you throw the heaviest share of the penalty on your own poor boy. I am not her advocate now. I will not say one word to mitigate the course of your anger towards her, but remember that you are actually defrauding him of his birthright. This is not a question where you have a choice. There is no discretionary power left you.”
“I 'll do it,” said Glencore, with a savage energy.
“In other words, to wreak a vengeance upon one, you are prepared to immolate another, not only guiltless, but who possesses every claim to your love and affection.”
“And do you think that if I sacrifice the last tie that attaches me to life, Upton, that I retire from this contest heart-whole? No, far from it; I go forth from the struggle broken, blasted, friendless!”
“And do you mean that this vengeance should outlive you? Suppose, for instance, that she should survive you.”
“It shall be to live on in shame, then,” cried he, savagely.
“And were she to die first?”
“In that case—I have not thought well enough about that. It is possible,—it is just possible; but these are subtleties, Upton, to detach me from my purpose, or weaken my resolution to carry it through. You would apply the craft of your calling to the case, and, by suggesting emergencies, open a road to evasions. Enough for me the present. I neither care to prejudge the future, nor control it. I know,” cried he, suddenly, and with eyes flashing angrily as he spoke,—“I know that if you desire to use the confidence I have reposed in you against me, you can give me trouble and even difficulty; but I defy Sir Horace Upton, with all his skill and all his cunning, to outwit me.”
There was that in the tone in which he uttered these words, and the exaggerated energy of his manner, that convinced Upton, Glencore's reason was not intact. It was not what could amount to aberration in the ordinary sense, but sufficient evidence was there to show that judgment had become so obscured by passion that the mental power was weakened by the moral.
“Tell me, therefore, Upton,” cried he, “before we part, do you leave this house my friend or my enemy?”
“It is as your sincere, attached friend that I now dispute with you, inch by inch, a dangerous position, with a judgment under no influence from passion, viewing this question by the coldest of all tests,—mere expediency—'
“There it is,” broke in Glencore; “you claim an advantage over me, because you are devoid of feeling; but this is a case, sir, where the sense of injury gives the instinct of reparation. Is it nothing to me, think you, that I am content to go down dishonored to my grave, but also to be the last of my name and station? Is it nothing that a whole line of honorable ancestry is extinguished at once? Is it nothing that I surrender him who formed my sole solace and companionship in life? You talk of your calm, unbiassed mind; but I tell you, till your brain be on fire like mine, and your heart swollen to very bursting, that you have no right to dictate to me! Besides, it is done! The blow has fallen,” added he, with a deeper solemnity of voice. “The gulf that separates us is already created. She and I can meet no more. But why continue this contest? It was to aid me in directing that boy's fortunes I first sought your advice, not to attempt to dissuade me from what I will not be turned from.”
“In what way can I serve you?” said Upton, calmly.
“Will you consent to be his guardian?”
“I will.”
Glencore seized the other's hand, and pressed it to his heart, and for some seconds he could not speak.
“This is all that I ask, Upton,” said he. “It is the greatest boon friendship could accord me. I need no more. Could you have remained here a day or two more, we could have settled upon some plan together as to his future life; as it is, we can arrange it by letter.”
“He must leave this,” said Upton, thoughtfully.
“Of course,—at once!”
“How far is Harcourt to be informed in this matter; have you spoken to him already?”
“No; nor mean to do so. I should have from him nothing but reproaches for having betrayed the boy into false hopes of a station he was never to fill. You must tell Harcourt. I leave it to yourself to find the suitable moment.”
“We shall need his assistance,” said Upton, whose quick faculties were already busily travelling many a mile of the future. “I 'll see him to-night, and try what can be done. In a few days you will have turned over in your mind what you yourself destine for him,—the fortune you mean to give—”
“It is already done,” said Glencore, laying a sealed letter on the table. “All that I purpose in his behalf you will find there.”
“All this detail is too much for you, Glencore,” said the other, seeing that a weary, depressed expression had come over him, while his voice grew weaker with every word. “I shall not leave this till late to-morrow, so that we can meet again. And now good night.”