The young girl told his name and what he was; but the words did not fall on listening ears, and the lady sat like one spell-bound, with eyes riveted on the youth's face.
“Am I like any one you have known, signora?” asked he, as he read the effect his presence had produced on her. “Do I recall some other features?”
“You do,” said she, reddening painfully.
“And the memory is not of pleasure?” added the youth.
“Far, far from it; it is the saddest and cruelest of all my life,” muttered she, half to herself. “What part of Italy are you from? Your accent is Southern.”
“It is the accent of Naples, signora,” said he, evading her question.
“And your mother, was she Neapolitan?”
“I know little of my birth, signora. It is a theme I would not be questioned on.”
“And you are a sculptor?”
“The artist of the Faun, dearest aunt,” broke in the girl, who watched with intense anxiety the changing expressions of the youth's features.
“Your voice even more than your features brings up the past,” said the lady, as a deadly pallor spread over her own face, and her lips trembled as she spoke. “Will you not tell me something of your history?”
“When you have told me the reason for which you ask it, perhaps I may,” said the youth, half sternly.
“There, there!” cried she, wildly, “in every tone, in every gesture, I trace this resemblance. Come nearer to me; let me see your hands.”
“They are seamed and hardened with toil, lady,” said the youth, as he showed them.
“And yet they look as if there was a time when they did not know labor,” said she, eagerly.
An impatient gesture, as if he would not endure a continuance of this questioning, stopped her, and she said in a faint tone,—
“I ask your pardon for all this. My excuse and my apology are that your features have recalled a time of sorrow more vividly than any words could. Your voice, too, strengthens the illusion. It may be a mere passing impression; I hope and pray it is. Come, Ida, come with me. Do not leave this, sir, till we speak with you again.” So saying, she took her niece's arm and left the room.
It was with a proud consciousness of having well fulfilled his mission that Billy Traynor once more bent his steps towards Massa. Besides providing himself with books of travel and maps of the regions they were about to visit, he had ransacked Genoa for weapons, and accoutrements, and horse-gear. Well knowing the youth's taste for the costly and the splendid, he had suffered himself to be seduced into the purchase of a gorgeously embroidered saddle mounting, and a rich bridle, in Mexican taste; a pair of splendidly mounted pistols, chased in gold and studded with large turquoises, with a Damascus sabre, the hilt of which was a miracle of fine workmanship, were also amongst his acquisitions; and poor Billy fed his imagination with the thought of all the delight these objects were certain to produce. In this way he never wearied admiring them; and a dozen times a day would he unpack them, just to gratify his mind by picturing the enjoyment they were to afford.
“How well you are lookin', my dear boy!” cried he, as he burst into the youth's room, and threw his arms around him; “'tis like ten years off my life to see you so fresh and so hearty. Is it the prospect of the glorious time before us that has given this new spring to your existence?”
“More likely it is the pleasure I feel in seeing you back again,” said Massy; and his cheek grew crimson as he spoke.
“'Tis too good you are to me,—too good,” said Billy, and his eyes ran over in tears, while he turned away his head to hide his emotion; “but sure it is part of yourself I do be growing every day I live. At first I could n't bear the thought of going away to live in exile, in a wilderness, as one may say; but now that I see your heart set upon it, and that your vigor and strength comes back just by the mere anticipation of it, I'm downright delighted with the plan.”
“Indeed!” said the youth, dreamily.
“To be sure I am,” resumed Billy; “and I do be thinking there 's a kind of poethry in carrying away into the solitary pine forest minds stored with classic lore, to be able to read one's Horace beside the gushing stream that flows on nameless and unknown, and con over ould Herodotus amidst adventures stranger than ever he told himself.”
“It might be a happy life,” said the other, slowly, almost moodily.
“Ay, and it will be,” said Billy, confidently. “Think of yourself, mounted on that saddle on a wild prairie horse, galloping free as the wind itself over the wide savannas, with a drove of rushing buffaloes in career before you, and so eager in pursuit that you won't stop to bring down the scarlet-winged bustard that swings on the branch above you. There they go, plungin' and snortin', the mad devils, with a force that would sweep a fortress before them; and here are we after them, makin' the dark woods echo again with our wild yells. That's what will warm up our blood, till we 'll not be afeard to meet an army of dragoons themselves. Them pistols once belonged to Cariatoké, a chief from Scio; and that blade—a real Damascus—was worn by an Aga of the Janissaries. Isn't it a picture?”
The youth poised the sword in his hand, and laid it down without a word; while Billy continued to stare at him with an expression of intensest amazement.
“Is it that you don't care for it all now, that your mind is changed, and that you don't wish for the life we were talkin' over these three weeks? Say so at once, my own darlin', and here I am, ready and willin' never to think more of it. Only tell me what's passin' in your heart; I ask no more.”
“I scarcely know it myself,” said the youth. “I feel as though in a dream, and know not what is real and what fiction.”
“How have you passed your time? What were you doin' while I was away?”
“Dreaming, I believe,” said the other, with a sigh. “Some embers of my old ambition warmed up into a flame once more, and I fancied that there was that in me that by toil and labor might yet win upwards; and that, if so, this mere life of action would but bring repining and regret, and that I should feel as one who chose the meaner casket of fate, when both were within my reach.”
“So you were at work again in the studio?”
“I have been finishing the arm of the Faun in that pavilion outside the town.” A flush of crimson covered his face as he spoke, which Billy as quickly noticed, but misinterpreted.
“Ay, and they praised you, I 'll be bound. They said it was the work of one whose genius would place him with the great ones of art, and that he who could do this while scarcely more than a boy, might, in riper years, be the great name of his century. Did they not tell you so?”
“No; not that, not that,” said the other, slowly.
“Then they bade you go on, and strive and labor hard to develop into life the seeds of that glorious gift that was in you?”
“Nor that,” sighed the youth, heavily, while a faint spot of crimson burned on one cheek, and a feverish lustre lit up his eye.
“They did n't dispraise what you done, did they?” broke in Billy. “They could not, if they wanted to do it; but sure there's nobody would have the cruel heart to blight the ripenin' bud of genius,—to throw gloom over a spirit that has to struggle against its own misgivin's?”
“You wrong them, my dear friend; their words were all kindness and affection. They gave me hope, and encouragement too. They fancy that I have in me what will one day grow into fame itself; and even you, Billy, in your most sanguine hopes, have never dreamed of greater success for me than they have predicted in the calm of a moonlit saunter.”
“May the saints in heaven reward them for it!” said Billy, and in his clasped hands and uplifted eyes was all the fervor of a prayer. “They have my best blessin' for their goodness,” muttered he to himself.
“And so I am again a sculptor!” said Massy, rising and walking the room. “Upon this career my whole heart and soul are henceforth to be concentrated; my fame, my happiness are to be those of the artist. From this day and this hour let every thought of what—not what I once was, but what I had hoped to be, be banished from my heart. I am Sebastian Greppi. Never let another name escape your lips to me. I will not, even for a second, turn from the path in which my own exertions are to win the goal. Let the faraway land of my infancy, its traditions, its associations, be but dreams for evermore. Forwards! forwards!” cried he, passionately; “not a glance, not a look, towards the past.”
Billy stared with admiration at the youth, over whose features a glow of enthusiasm was now diffused, and in broken, unconnected words spoke encouragement and good cheer.
“I know well,” said the youth, “how this same stubborn pride must be rooted out, how these false, deceitful visions of a stand and a station that I am never to attain must give place to nobler and higher aspirations; and you, my dearest friend, must aid me in all this,—unceasingly, unwearyingly reminding me that to myself alone must I look for anything; and that if I would have a country, a name, or a home, it is by the toil of this head and these hands they are to be won. My plan is this,” said he, eagerly seizing the other's arm, and speaking with immense rapidity: “A life not alone of labor, but of the simplest; not a luxury, not an indulgence; our daily meals the humblest, our dress the commonest, nothing that to provide shall demand a moment's forethought or care; no wants that shall turn our thoughts from this great object, no care for the requirements that others need. Thus mastering small ambitions and petty desires, we shall concentrate all our faculties on our art; and even the humblest may thus outstrip those whose higher gifts reject such discipline.”
“You 'll not live longer under the Duke's patronage, then?” said Traynor.
“Not an hour. I return to that garden no more. There's a cottage on the mountain road to Serravezza will suit us well: it stands alone and on an eminence, with a view over the plain and the sea beyond. You can see it from the door,—there, to the left of the olive wood, lower down than the old ruin. We 'll live there, Billy, and we 'll make of that mean spot a hallowed one, where young enthusiasts in art will come, years hence, when we have passed away, to see the humble home Sebastian lived in,—to sit upon the grassy seat where he once sat, when dreaming of the mighty triumphs that have made him glorious.” A wild burst of mocking laughter rung from the boy's lips as he said this; but its accents were less in derision of the boast than a species of hysterical ecstasy at the vision he had conjured up.
“And why would n't it be so?” exclaimed Billy, ardently,—“why would n't you be great and illustrious?”
The moment of excitement was now over, and the youth stood pale, silent, and almost sickly in appearance; great drops of perspiration, too, stood on his forehead, and his quivering lips were bloodless.
“These visions are like meteor streaks,” said he, falteringly; “they leave the sky blacker than they found it! But come along, let us to work, and we 'll soon forget mere speculation.”
Of the life they now led each day exactly resembled the other. Rising early, the youth was in his studio at dawn; the faithful Billy, seated near, read for him while he worked. Watching, with a tact that only affection ever bestows, each changeful mood of the youth's mind, Traynor varied the topics with the varying humors of the other, and thus little of actual conversation took place between them, though their minds journeyed along together. To eke out subsistence, even humble as theirs, the young sculptor was obliged to make small busts and figures for sale, and Billy disposed of them at Lucca and Pisa, making short excursions to these cities as need required.
The toil of the day over, they wandered out towards the seashore, taking the path which led through the olive road by the garden of the villa. At times the youth would steal away a moment from his companion, and enter the little park, with every avenue of which he was familiar; and although Billy noticed his absence, he strictly abstained from the slightest allusion to it. As he delayed longer and longer to return, Traynor maintained the same reserve, and thus there grew up gradually a secret between them,—a mystery that neither ventured to approach. With a delicacy that seemed an instinct in his humble nature, Billy would now and then feign occupation or fatigue to excuse himself from the evening stroll, and thus leave the youth free to wander as he wished; till at length it became a settled habit between them to separate at nightfall, to meet only on the morrow. These nights were spent in walking the garden around the villa, lingering stealthily amid the trees to watch the room where she was sitting, to catch a momentary glimpse of her figure as it passed the window, to hear perchance a few faint accents of her voice. Hours long would he so watch in the silent night, his whole soul steeped in a delicious dream wherein her image moved, and came and went, with every passing fancy. In the calm moonlight he would try to trace her footsteps in the gravel walk that led to the studio, and, lingering near them, whisper to her words of love.
One night, as he loitered thus, he thought he was perceived, for as he suddenly emerged from a dark alley into a broad space where the moonlight fell strongly, he saw a figure on a terrace above him, but without being able to recognize to whom it belonged. Timidly and fearfully he retired within the shade, and crept noiselessly away, shocked at the very thought of discovery. The next day he found a small bouquet of fresh flowers on the rustic seat beneath the window. At first he scarcely dared to touch it; but with a sudden flash of hope that it had been destined for himself, he pressed the flowers to his lips, and hid them in his bosom. Each night now the same present attracted him to the same place, and thus at once within his heart was lighted a flame of hope that illuminated all his being, making his whole life a glorious episode, and filling all the long hours of the day with thoughts of her who thus could think of him.
Life has its triumphant moments, its dream of entrancing, ecstatic delight, when suocess has crowned a hard-fought struggle, or when the meed of other men's praise comes showered on us. The triumphs of heroism, of intellect, of noble endurance; the trials of temptation met and conquered; the glorious victory over self-interest,—are all great and ennobling sensations; but what are they all compared with the first consciousness of being loved, of being to another the ideal we have made of her? To this, nothing the world can give is equal. From the moment we have felt it, life changes around us. Its crosses are but barriers opposed to our strong will, that to assail and storm is a duty. Then comes a heroism in meeting the every-day troubles of existence, as though we were soldiers in a good and holy cause. No longer unseen or unmarked in the great ocean of life, we feel that there is an eye ever turned towards us, a heart ever throbbing with our own; that our triumphs are its triumphs,—our sorrows its sorrows. Apart from all the intercourse with the world, with its changeful good and evil, we feel that we have a treasure that dangers cannot approach; we know that in our heart of hearts a blessed mystery is locked up,—a well of pure thoughts that can calm down the most fevered hour of life's anxieties. So the youth felt, and, feeling so, was happy.
British Legation, Naples,
Nov—, 18—.
My dear Harcourt,—Not mine the fault that your letter has lain six weeks unanswered; but having given up penwork myself for the last eight months, and Crawley, my private sec., being ill, the delay was unavoidable. The present communication you owe to the fortunate arrival here of Captain Mellish, who has kindly volunteered to be my amanuensis. I am indeed sorely grieved at this delay. I shall be désolé if it occasion you anything beyond inconvenience. How a private sec. should permit himself the luxury of an attack of influenza I cannot conceive. We shall hear of one's hairdresser having the impertinence to catch cold, to-morrow or next day!
If I don't mistake, it was you yourself recommended Crawley to me, and I am only half grateful for the service. He is a man of small prejudices; fancies that he ought to have a regular hour for dinner; thinks that he should have acquaintances; and will persist in imagining himself an existent something, appertaining to the Legation,—while, in reality, he is only a shadowy excrescence of my own indolent habits, the recipient of the trashy superfluities one commits to paper and calls despatches. Latterly, in my increasing laziness, I have used him for more intimate correspondence; and, as Doctor Allitore has now denied me all manual exertion whatever, I am actually wholly dependent on such aid. I'm sure I long for the discovery of some other mode of transmitting one's brain-efforts than by the slow process of manuscript,—some photographic process that, by a series of bright pictures, might display en tableau what one is now reduced to accomplish by narrative. As it ever did and ever will happen too, they have deluged me with work when I crave rest. Every session of Parliament must have its blue-book; and by the devil's luck they have decided that Italy is to furnish the present one.
You have always been a soldier, and whenever your inspecting general came his round, your whole care has been to make the troop horses look as fat, the men's whiskers as trim, their overalls as clean, and their curb-chains as bright, as possible. You never imagined or dreamed of a contingency when it would be desirable that the animals should be all sorebacked, the whole regiment under stoppages, and the trumpeter in a quinsy. Had you been a diplomatist instead of a dragoon, this view of things might, perhaps, have presented itself, and the chief object of your desire have been to show that the system under which you functionated worked as ill as need be; that the court to which you were accredited abhorred you; its Ministers snubbed, its small officials slighted you; that all your communications were ill received, your counsels ill taken; that what you reprobated was adopted, what you advised rejected; in fact, that the only result of your presence was the maintenance of a perpetual ill-will and bad feeling; and that without the aid of a line-of-battle ship, or at least a frigate, your position was no longer tenable. From the moment, my dear H——, that you can establish this fact, you start into life as an able and active Minister, imbued with thoroughly British principles—an active asserter of what is due to his country's rights and dignity, not truckling to court favor, or tamely submitting to royal impertinences; not like the noble lord at this place, or the more subservient viscount at that, but, in plain words, an admirable public servant, whose reward, whatever courts and cabinets may do, will always be willingly accorded by a grateful nation.
I am afraid this sketch of a special envoy's career will scarcely tempt you to exchange for a mission abroad! And you are quite right, my dear friend. It is a very unrewarding profession. I often wish myself that I had taken something in the colonies, or gone into the Church, or some other career which had given me time and opportunity to look after my health,—of which, by the way, I have but an indifferent account to render you. These people here can't hit it off at all, Harcourt; they keep muddling away about indigestion, deranged functions, and the rest of it. The mischief is in the blood,—I mean, in the undue distribution of the blood. So Treysenac, the man of Bagnères, proved to me. There is a flux and reflux in us, as in the tides, and when, from deficient energy or lax muscular power, that ceases, we are all driven by artificial means to remedy the defect. Treysenac's theory is position. By a number of ingeniously contrived positions he accomplishes an artificial congestion of any part he pleases; and in his establishment at Bagnères you may see some fifty people strung up by the arms and legs, by the waists or the ankles, in the most marvellous manner, and with truly fabulous success. I myself passed three mornings suspended by the middle, like the sheep in the decoration of the Golden Fleece, and was amazed at the strange sensations I experienced before I was cut down.
You know the obstinacy with which the medical people reject every discovery in the art, and only sanction its employment when the world has decreed in its favor. You will, therefore, not be surprised to hear that Larrey and Cooper, to whom I wrote about Treysenac's theory, sent me very unsatisfactory, indeed very unseemly, replies. I have resolved, however, not to let the thing drop, and am determined to originate a Suspensorium in England, when I can chance upon a man of intelligence and scientific knowledge to conduct it. Like mesmerism, the system has its antipathies; and thus yesterday Crawley fainted twice after a few minutes' suspension by the arms. But he is a bigot about anything he hears for the first time, and I was not sorry at his punishment.
I wish you would talk over this matter with any clever medical man in your neighborhood, and let me hear the result.
And so you are surprised, you say, how little influence English representations exercise over the determinations of foreign cabinets. I go farther, and confess no astonishment at all at the no-influence! My dear dragoon, have you not, some hundred and fifty times in this life, endured a small martyrdom in seeing a very indifferent rider torment almost to madness the animal he bestrode, just by sheer ignorance and awkwardness,—now worrying the flank with incautious heel, now irritating the soft side of the mouth with incessant jerkings; always counteracting the good impulses, ever prompting the bad ones of his beast? And have you not, while heartily wishing yourself in the saddle, felt the utter inutility of administering any counsels to the rider? You saw, and rightly saw, that even if he attempted to follow your suggestions, he would do so awkwardly and inaptly, acting at wrong moments and without that continuity of purpose which must ever accompany an act of address; and that for his safety, and even for the welfare of the animal, it were as well they should jog on together as they had done, trusting that after a time they might establish a sort of compromise, endurable, if not beneficial, to both.
Such, my dear friend, in brief, is the state of many of those foreign governments to whom we are so profuse of our wise counsels. It were doubtless much better if they ruled well; but let us see if the road to this knotty consummation be by the adoption of methods totally new to them, estranged from all their instincts and habits, and full of perils which their very fears will exaggerate. Constitutional governments, like underdone roast beef, suit our natures and our latitude; but they would seem lamentable experiments when tried south of the Alps. Liberty with us means the right to break heads at a county election, and to print impertinences in newspapers. With the Spaniard or the Italian it would be to carry a poniard more openly, and use it more frequently than at present.
At all events, if it be any satisfaction to you, you may be assured that the rulers in all these cases are not much better off than those they rule over. They lead lives of incessant terror, distrust, and anxiety. Their existence is poisoned by ceaseless fears of treachery,—they know not where. They change ministers as travellers change the direction of their journey, to disconcert the supposed plans of their enemies; and they vacillate between cruelty and mercy, really not knowing in which lies their safety. Don't fancy that they have any innate pleasure in harsh measures. The likelihood is, they hate them as much as you do yourself; but they know no other system; and, to come back to my cavalry illustration, the only time they tried a snaffle, they were run away with.
I trust these prosings will be a warning to you how you touch upon politics again in a letter to me; but I really did not wish to-be a bore, and now here I am, ready to answer, as far as in me lies, all your interrogatories; first premising that I am not at liberty to enter upon the question of Glencore himself, and for the simple reason that he has made me his confidant. And now, as to the boy, I could make nothing of him, Harcourt; and for this reason,—he had not what sailors call “steerage way” on him. He went wherever you bade, but without an impulse. I tried to make him care for his career; for the gay world; for the butterfly life of young diplomacy; for certain dissipations,—excellent things occasionally to develop nascent faculties. I endeavored to interest him by literary society and savans, but unsuccessfully. For art indeed he showed some disposition, and modelled prettily; but it never rose above “amateurship.” Now, enthusiasm, although a very excellent ingredient, will no more make an artist than a brisk kitchen fire will provide a dinner where all the materials are wanting.
I began to despair of him, Harcourt, when I saw that there were no features about him. He could do everything reasonably well, because there was no hope of his doing anything with real excellence. He wandered away from me to Carrara, with his quaint companion the Doctor; and after some months wrote me rather a sturdy letter, rejecting all moneyed advances, past and future, and saying something very haughty, and of course very stupid, about the “glorious sense of independence.” I replied, but he never answered me; and here might have ended all my knowledge of his history, had not a letter, of which I send you an extract, resumed the narrative. The writer is the Princess Sabloukoff, a lady of whose attractions and fascinations you have often heard me speak. When you have read, and thought over the enclosed, let me have your opinion. I do not, I cannot, believe in the rumor you allude to. Glencore is not the man to marry at his time of life, and in his circumstances. Send me, however, all the particulars you are in possession of. I hope they don't mean to send you to India, because you seem to dislike it. For my own part, I suspect I should enjoy that country immensely. Heat is the first element of daily comfort, and all the appliances to moderate it are ex-officio luxuries; besides that in India there is a splendid and enlarged selfishness in the mode of life very different from the petty egotisms of our rude Northland.
If you do go, pray take Naples in the way. The route by Alexandria and Suez, they all tell me, is the best and most expeditious.
Mellish desires me to add his remembrances, hoping you have not forgotten him. He served in the “Fifth” with you in Canada,—that is, if you be the same George Harcourt who played Tony Lumpkin so execrably at Montreal. I have told him it is probable, and am yours ever,
When Harcourt had finished the reading of that letter we have presented in our last chapter, he naturally turned for information on the subject which principally interested him to the enclosure. It was a somewhat bulky packet, and, from its size, at once promised very full and ample details. As he opened it, however, he discovered it was in various handwritings; but his surprise was further increased by the following heading, in large letters, in the top of a page: “Sulphur Question,” and beginning, “My Lord, by a reference to my despatch, No. 478, you will perceive that the difficulties which the Neapolitan Government—” Harcourt turned over the page. It was all in the same strain. Tariffs, treaties, dues, and duties occurred in every line. Three other documents of like nature accompanied this; after which came a very ill-written scrawl on coarse paper, entitled, “Hints as to diet and daily exercise for his Excellency's use.”
The honest Colonel, who was not the quickest of men, was some time before he succeeded in unravelling to his satisfaction the mystery before him, and recognizing that the papers on his table had been destined for a different address, while the letter of the Princess had, in all probability, been despatched to the Foreign Office, and was now either confounding or amusing the authorities in Downing Street. While Harcourt laughed over the blunder, he derived no small gratification from thinking that nothing but great geniuses ever fell into these mistakes, and was about to write off in this very spirit to Upton, when he suddenly bethought him that, before an answer could arrive, he himself would be far away on his journey to India.
“I asked nothing,” said he, “that could be difficult to reply to. It was plain enough, too, that I only wanted such information as he could have given me off-hand. If I could but assure Glencore that the boy was worthy of him,—that there was stuff to give good promise of future excellence, that he was honorable and manly in all his dealings,—who knows what effect such assurance might have had? There are days when it strikes me Glencore would give half his fortune to have the youth beside him, and be able to call him his own. Why he cannot, does not do it, is a mystery which I am unable to fathom. He never gave me his confidence on this head; indeed, he gave me something like a rebuff one evening, when he erroneously fancied that I wanted to probe the mysterious secret. It shows how much he knows of my nature,” added he, laughing. “Why, I'd rather carry a man's trunk or his portmanteau on my back than his family secrets in my heart. I could rest and lay down my burden in the one case,—in the other, there's never a moment of repose! And now Glencore is to be here this very day—the ninth—to learn my news. The poor fellow comes up from Wales, just to talk over these matters, and I have nothing to offer him but this blundering epistle. Ay, here 's the letter:—
“Dear Harcourt,—Let me have a mutton-chop with you on the ninth, and give me, if you can, the evening after it.
“Yours,
“Glencore.”
“A man must be ill off for counsel and advice when he thinks of such aid as mine. Heaven knows, I never was such a brilliant manager of my own fortunes that any one should trust his destinies in my hands. Well, he shall have the mutton-chop, and a good glass of old port after it; and the evening, or, if he likes it, the night shall be at his disposal.” And with this resolve, Harcourt, having given orders for dinner at six, issued forth to stroll down to his club, and drop in at the Horse Guards, and learn as much as he could of the passing events of the day,—meaning, thereby, the details of whatever regarded the army-list, and those who walk in scarlet attire.
It was about five o'clock of a dreary November afternoon that a hackney-coach drew op at Harcourt's lodgings in Dover Street, and a tall and very sickly looking man, carrying his carpet-bag in one hand and a dressing-case in the other, descended and entered the house.
“Mr. Massy, sir?” said the Colonel's servant, as he ushered him in; for such was the name Glencore desired to be known by. And the stranger nodded, and throwing himself wearily down on a sofa, seemed overcome with fatigue.
“Is your master out?” asked he, at length.
“Yes, sir; but I expect him immediately. Dinner was ordered for six, and he 'll be back to dress half an hour before that time.”
“Dinner for two?” half impatiently asked the other.
“Yes, sir, for two.”
“And all visitors in the evening denied admittance? Did your master say so?”
“Yes, sir; out for every one.”
Glencore now covered his face with his hands, and relapsed into silence. At length he lifted his eyes till they fell upon a colored drawing over the chimney. It was an officer in hussar uniform, mounted on a splendid charger, and seated with all the graceful ease of a consummate horseman. This much alone he could perceive from where he lay, and indolently raising himself on one arm, he asked if it were “a portrait of his master”?
“No, sir; of my master's colonel, Lord Glencore, when he commanded the Eighth, and was said to be the handsomest man in the service.”
“Show it to me!” cried he, eagerly, and almost snatched the drawing from the other's hands. He gazed at it intently and fixedly, and his sallow cheek once reddened slightly as he continued to look.
“That never was a likeness!” said he, bitterly.
“My master thinks it a wonderful resemblance, sir,—not of what he is now, of course; but that was taken fifteen years ago or more.”
“And is he so changed since that?” asked the sick man, plaintively.
“So I hear, sir. He had a stroke of some kind, or fit of one sort or another, brought on by fretting. They took away his title, I'm told. They made out that he had no right to it, that he wasn't the real lord. But here's the Colonel, sir;” and almost as he spoke, Harcourt's step was on the stair. The next moment his hand was cordially clasped in that of his guest.
“I scarcely expected you before six; and how have you borne the journey?” cried he, taking a seat beside the sofa. A gentle motion of the eyebrows gave the reply.
“Well, well, you'll be all right after the soup. Marcom, serve the dinner at once. I'll not dress. And mind, no admittance to any one.”
“You have heard from Upton?” asked Glencore.
“Yes.”
“And satisfactorily?” asked he, more anxiously.
“Quite so; but you shall know all by and by. I have got mackerel for you. It was a favorite dish of yours long ago, and you shall taste such mutton as your Welsh mountains can't equal. I got the haunch from the Ardennes a week ago, and kept it for you.”
“I wish I deserved such generous fare; but I have only an invalid's stomach,” said Glencore, smiling faintly.
“You shall be reported well, and fit for duty to-day, or my name is not George Harcourt. The strongest and toughest fellow that ever lived could n't stand up against the united effects of low diet and low spirits. To act generously and think generously, you must live generously, take plenty of exercise, breathe fresh air, and know what it is to be downright weary when you go to bed,—not bored, mark you, for that's another thing. Now, here comes the soup, and you shall tell me whether turtle be not the best restorative a man ever took after twelve hours of the road.”
Whether tempted by the fare, or anxious to gratify the hospitable wishes of his host, Glencore ate heartily, and drank what for his abstemious habit was freely, and, so far as a more genial air and a more ready smile went, fully justified Harcourt's anticipations.
“By Jove! you 're more like yourself than I have seen you this many a day,” said the Colonel, as they drew their chairs towards the fire, and sat with that now banished, but ever to be regretted, little spider-table, that once emblematized after-dinner blessedness, between them. “This reminds one of long ago, Glencore, and I don't see why we cannot bring to the hour some of the cheerfulness that we once boasted.”
A faint, very faint smile, with more of sorrow than joy in it, was the other's only reply.
“Look at the thing this way, Glencore,” said Harcourt, eagerly. “So long as a man has, either by his fortune or by his personal qualities, the means of benefiting others, there is a downright selfishness in shutting himself up in his sorrow, and saying to the world, 'My own griefs are enough for me; I 'll take no care or share in yours.' Now, there never was a fellow with less of this selfishness than you—”
“Do not speak to me of what I was, my dear friend. There's not a plank of the old craft remaining. The name alone lingers, and even that will soon be extinct.”
“So, then, you still hold to this stern resolution? Shall I tell you what I think of it?”
“Perhaps you had better not do so,” said Glencore, sternly.
“By Jove! then, I will, just for that menace,” said Harcourt. “I said, 'This is vengeance on Glencore's part.'”
“To whom, sir, did you make this remark?”
“To myself, of course. I never alluded to the matter to any other; never.”
“So far, well,” said Glencore, solemnly; “for had you done so, we had never exchanged words again!”
“My dear fellow,” said Harcourt, laying his hand affectionately on the other's, “I can well imagine the price a sensitive nature like yours must pay for the friendship of one so little gifted with tact as I am. But remember always that there's this advantage in the intercourse: you can afford to hear and bear things from a man of my stamp, that would be outrages from perhaps the lips of a brother. As Upton, in one of his bland moments, once said to me, 'Fellows like you, Harcourt, are the bitters of the human pharmacopoeia,—somewhat hard to take, but very wholesome when you're once swallowed.'”
“You are the best of the triad, and no great praise that, either,” muttered Glencore to himself. After a pause, he continued: “It has not been from any distrust in your friendship, Harcourt, that I have not spoken to you before on this gloomy subject. I know well that you bear me more affection than any one of all those who call themselves my friends; but when a man is about to do that which never can meet approval from those who love him, he seeks no counsel, he invites no confidence. Like the gambler, who risks all on a single throw, he makes his venture from the impulse of a secret mysterious prompting within, that whispers, 'With this you are rescued or ruined!' Advice, counsel!” cried he, in bitter mockery, “tell me, when have such ever alleviated the tortures of a painful malady? Have you ever heard that the writhings of the sick man were calmed by the honeyed words of his friends at the bedside? I”—here his voice became full and loud—“I was burdened with a load too great for me to bear. It had bowed me to the earth, and all but crushed me! The sense of an unaccomplished vengeance was like a debt which, unrequited ere I died, sent me to my grave dishonored. Which of you all could tell me how to endure this? What shape could your philosophy assume?”
“Then I guessed aright,” broke in Harcourt. “This was done in vengeance.”
“I have no reckoning to render you, sir,” said Glencore, haughtily; “for any confidence of mine, you are more indebted to my passion than to my inclination. I came up here to speak and confer with you about this boy, whose guardianship you are unable to continue longer. Let us speak of that.”
“Yes,” said Harcourt, in his habitual tone of easy good humor, “they are going to send me out to India again. I have had eighteen years of it already; but I have no Parliamentary influence, nor could I trace a fortieth cousinship with the House of Lords; but, after all, it might be worse. Now, as to this lad, what if I were to take him out with me? This artist life that he seems to have adopted scarcely promises much.”
“Let me see Upton's letter,” said Glencore, gravely.
“There it is. But I must warn you that the really important part is wanting; for instead of sending us, as he promised, the communication of his Russian Princess, he has stuffed in a mass of papers intended for Downing Street, and a lot of doctor's prescriptions, for whose loss he is doubtless suffering martyrdom.”
“Is this credible?” cried Glencore.
“There they are, very eloquent about sulphur, and certain refugees with long names, and with some curious hints about Spanish flies and the flesh-brush.”
Glencore flung down the papers in indignation, and walked up and down the room without speaking.
“I'd wager a trifle,” cried Harcourt, “that Madame—What 's-her-name's letter has gone to the Foreign Office in lien of the despatches; and, if so, they have certainly gained most by the whole transaction.”
“You have scarcely considered, perhaps, what publicity may thus be given to my private affairs,” said Glencore. “Who knows what this woman may have said; what allusions her letter may contain?”
“Very true; I never did think of that,” muttered Harcourt.
“Who knows what circumstances of my private history are now bandied about from desk to desk by flippant fools, to be disseminated afterwards over Europe by every courier?” cried he, with increasing passion.
Before Harcourt could reply, the servant entered, and whispered a few words in his ear. “But you already denied me,” said Harcourt. “You told him that I was from home?”
“Yes, sir; but he said that his business was so important that he 'd wait for your return, if I could not say where he might find you. This is his card.”
Harcourt took it, and read, “Major Scaresby, from Naples.” “What think you, Glencore? Ought we to admit this gentleman? It may be that this visit relates to what we have been speaking about.”
“Scaresby—Scaresby—I know the name,” muttered Glencore. “To be sure! There was a fellow that hung about Florence and Rome long ago, and called himself Scaresby; an ill-tongued old scandal-monger people encouraged in a land where newspapers are not permitted.”
“He affects to have something very pressing to communicate. Perhaps it were better to have him up.”
“Don't make me known to him, then, or let me have to talk to him,” said Glencore, throwing himself down on a sofa; “and let his visit be as brief as you can manage.”
Harcourt made a significant sign to his servant, and the moment after the Major was heard ascending the stairs.
“Very persistent of me, you'll say, Colonel Harcourt. Devilish tenacious of my intentions, to force myself thus upon you!” said the Major, as he bustled into the room, with a white leather bag in his hand; “but I promised Upton I'd not lie down on a bed till I saw you.”
“All the apologies should come from my side, Major,” said Harcourt, as he handed him to a chair; “but the fact was, that having an invalid friend with me, quite incapable of seeing company, and having matters of some importance to discuss with him—”
“Just so,” broke in Scaresby; “and if it were not that I had given a very strong pledge to Upton, I 'd have given my message to your servant, and gone off to my hotel. But he laid great stress on my seeing you, and obtaining certain papers which, if I understand aright, have reached you in mistake, being meant for the Minister at Downing Street. Here's his own note, however, which will explain all.”
It ran thus:—
Dear H———,—So I find that some of the despatches have got into your enclosure instead of that “on his Majesty's service.” I therefore send off the insupportable old bore who will deliver this, to rescue them, and convey them to their fitting destination. “The extraordinaries” will be burdened to some fifty or sixty pounds for it; but they very rarely are expended so profitably as in getting rid of an intolerable nuisance. Give him all the things, therefore, and pack him off to Downing Street. I'm far more uneasy, however, about some prescriptions which I suspect are along with them. One, a lotion for the cervical vertebrae, of invaluable activity, which you may take a copy of, but strictly, on honor, for your own use only. Scaresby will obtain the Princess's letter, and hand it to you. It is certain not to have been opened at F. O., as they never read anything not alluded to in the private correspondence.
This blunder has done me a deal of harm. My nerves are not in a state to stand such shocks; and though, in fact, you are not the culpable party, I cannot entirely acquit you for having in part occasioned it. [Harcourt laughed good-humoredly at this, and continued:] If you care for it, old S. will give you all the last gossip from these parts, and be the channel of yours to me. But don't dine him; he's not worth a dinner. He 'll only repay sherry and soda-water, and one of those execrable cheroots you used to be famed for. Amongst the recipes, let me recommend you an admirable tonic, the principal ingredient in which is the oil of the star-fish. It will probably produce nausea, vertigo, and even fainting for a week or two, but these symptoms decline at last, and, except violent hiccup, no other inconvenience remains. Try it, at all events.
Yours ever, H. U.
While Harcourt perused this short epistle, Scaresby, on the invitation of his host, had helped himself freely to the Madeira, and a plate of devilled biscuits beside it, giving, from time to time, oblique glances towards the dark corner of the room, where Glencore lay, apparently asleep.
“I hope Upton's letter justifies my insistence, Colonel. He certainly gave me to understand that the case was a pressing one,” said Scaresby.
“Quite so, Major Scaresby; and I have only to reiterate my excuses for having denied myself to you. But you are aware of the reason;” and he glanced towards where Glen-Core was lying.
“Very excellent fellow, Upton,” said the Major, sipping his wine, “but very—what shall I call it?—eccentric; very odd; not like any one else, you know, in the way he does things. I happened to be one of his guests t'other day. He had detained us above an hour waiting dinner, when he came in all flurried and excited, and, turning to me, said, 'Scaresby, have you any objection to a trip to England at his Majesty's expense?' and as I replied, 'None whatever; indeed, it would suit my book to perfection just now.'
“'Well, then,' said he, 'get your traps together, and be here within an hour. I 'll have all in readiness for you.' I did not much fancy starting off in this fashion, and without my dinner, too; but egad! he's one of those fellows that don't stand parleying, and so I just took him at his word, and here I am. I take it the matter must be a very emergent one, eh?”
“It is clear Sir Horace Upton thought so,” said Harcourt, rather amused than offended by the other's curiosity.
“There's a woman in it, somehow, I 'll be bound, eh?”
Harcourt laughed heartily at this sally, and pushed the decanter towards his guest.
“Not that I'd give sixpence to know every syllable of the whole transaction,” said Scaresby. “A man that has passed, as I have, the last twenty-five years of his life between Rome, Florence, and Naples, has devilish little to learn of what the world calls scandal.”
“I suppose you must indeed possess a wide experience,” said Harcourt.
“Not a man in Europe, sir, could tell you as many dark passages of good society! I kept a kind of book once,—a record of fashionable delinquencies; but I had to give it up. It took me half my day to chronicle even the passing events; and then my memory grew so retentive by practice, I did n't want the reference, but could give you date, and name, and place for every incident that has scandalized the world for the last quarter of the century.”
“And do you still possess this wonderful gift, Major?”
“Pretty well; not, perhaps, to the same extent I once did. You see, Colonel Harcourt,”—here his voice became low and confidential,—“some twenty, or indeed fifteen years back, it was only persons of actual condition that permitted themselves the liberty to do these things; but, hang it, sir! now you have your middle-class folk as profligate as their betters. Jones, or Smith, or Thompson runs away with his neighbor's wife, cheats at cards, and forges his friend's name, just as if he had the best blood in his veins, and fourteen quarterings on his escutcheon. What memory, then, I ask you, could retain all the shortcomings of these people?”
“But I 'd really not trouble my head with such ignoble delinquents,” said Harcourt.
“Nor do I, sir, save when, as will sometimes happen, they have a footing, with one leg at least, in good society. For, in the present state of the world, a woman with a pretty face, and a man with a knowledge of horseflesh, may move in any circle they please.”
“You're a severe censor of the age we live in, I see,” said Harcourt, smiling. “At the same time, the offences could scarcely give you much uneasiness, or you 'd not take up your residence where they most abound.”
“If you want to destroy tigers, you must frequent the jungle,” said Scaresby, with one of his heartiest laughs.
“Say, rather, if you have the vulture's appetite, you must go where there is carrion!” cried Glencore, with a voice to which passion lent a savage vehemence.
“Eh? ha! very good! devilish smart of your sick friend. Pray present me to him,” said Scaresby, rising.
“No, no, never mind him,” whispered Harcourt, pressing him down into his seat. “At some other time, perhaps. He is nervous and irritable. Conversation fatigues him, too.”
“Egad! that was neatly said, though; I hope I shall not forget it. One envies these sick fellows, sometimes, the venom they get from bad health. But I am forgetting myself in the pleasure of your society,” added he, rising from the table, as he finished off the last glass in the decanter. “I shall call at Downing Street to-morrow for that letter of Upton's, and, with your permission, will deposit it in your hands afterwards.”
Harcourt accompanied him to the door with thanks. Profuse, indeed, was he in his recognitions, desiring to get him clear off the ground before any further allusions on his part, or rejoinders from Glencore, might involve them all in new complications.
“I know that fellow well,” cried Glencore, almost ere the door closed on him. “He is just what I remember him some twenty years ago. Dressed up in the cast-off vices of his betters, he has passed for a man of fashion amongst his own set, while he is regarded as a wit by those who mistake malevolence for humor. I ask no other test of a society than that such a man is endured in it.”
“I sometimes suspect,” said Harcourt, “that the world never believes these fellows to be as ill-natured as then-tongues bespeak them.”
“You are wrong, George; the world knows them well. The estimation they are held in is, for the reflective flattery by which each listener to their sarcasms soothes his own conscience as he says, 'I could be just as bitter, if I consented to be as bad.'”
“I cannot at all account for Upton's endurance of such a man,” said Harcourt.
“As there are men who fancy that they strengthen their animal system by braving every extreme of climate, so Upton imagines that he invigorates his morale by associating with all kinds and descriptions of people; and there is no doubt that in doing so he extends the sphere of his knowledge of mankind. After all,” muttered he, with a sigh, “it 's only learning the geography of a land too unhealthy to live in.”
Glencore arose as he said this, and, with a nod of leave-taking, retired to his room.