Title: The Fortunes Of Glencore
Author: Lever, Charles James
Language: English
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THE FORTUNES OF GLENCORE

By Charles James Lever

With Illustrations By E. J. Wheeler and W. Cubitt Cooke

Boston: Little, Brown, And Company.

1902



PREFACE.

I am unwilling to suffer this tale to leave my hands without a word
of explanation to my reader. If I have never disguised from myself the
grounds of any humble success I have attained to as a writer of fiction;
if I have always had before me the fact that to movement and action,
the stir of incident, and a certain light-heartedness and gayety of
temperament, more easy to impart to others than to repress in one’s
self, I have owed much, if not all, of whatever popularity I have
enjoyed, I have yet felt, or fancied that I felt, that it would be in
the delineation of very different scenes, and the portraiture of very
different emotions, that I should reap what I would reckon as a real
success. This conviction, or impression if you will, has become stronger
with years and with the knowledge of life; years have imparted, and time
has but confirmed me in, the notion that any skill I possess lies in the
detection of character, and the unravelment of that tangled skein which
makes up human motives.

I am well aware that no error is more common than to mistake one’s own
powers; nor does anything more contribute to this error than a sense of
self-depreciation for what the world has been pleased to deem successful
in us. To test my conviction, or to abandon it as a delusion forever, I
have written the present story of “Glencore.”

I make but little pretension to the claim of interesting; as little do
I aspire to the higher credit of instructing. All I have attempted-all I
have striven to accomplish-is the faithful portraiture of character,
the close analysis of motives, and correct observation as to some of the
manners and modes of thought which mark the age we live in.

Opportunities of society as well as natural inclination have alike
disposed me to such studies. I have stood over the game of life very
patiently for many a year, and though I may have grieved over the narrow
fortune which has prevented me from “cutting in,” I have consoled myself
by the thought of all the anxieties defeat might have cost me, all the
chagrin I had suffered were I to have risen a loser. Besides this,
I have learned to know and estimate what are the qualities which win
success in life, and what the gifts by which men dominate above their
fellows.

If in the world of well-bred life the incidents and events be fewer,
because the friction is less than in the classes where vicissitudes of
fortune are more frequent, the play of passion, the moods of temper,
and the changeful varieties of nature are often very strongly developed,
shadowed and screened though they be by the polished conventionalities
of society. To trace and mark these has long constituted one of the
pleasures of my life; if I have been able to impart even a portion of
that gratification to my reader, I will not deem the effort in vain, nor
the “Fortunes of Glencore” a failure.

Let me add that although certain traits of character in some of
the individuals of my story may seem to indicate sketches of real
personages, there is but one character in the whole book drawn entirely
from life.

This is Billy Traynor. Not only have I had a sitter for this picture,
but he is alive and hearty at the hour I am writing. For the others,
they are purely, entirely fictitious. Certain details, certain
characteristics, I have of course borrowed,--as he who would mould a
human face must needs have copied an eye, a nose, or a chin from some
existent model; but beyond this I have not gone, nor, indeed, have I
found, in all my experience of life, that fiction ever suggests what
has not been implanted unconsciously by memory; originality in the
delineation of character being little beyond a new combination of old
materials derived from that source.

I wish I could as easily apologize for the faults and blemishes of my
story as I can detect and deplore them; but, like the failings in
one’s nature, they are very often difficult to correct, even when
acknowledged. I have, therefore, but to throw myself once more upon the
indulgence which, “old offender” that I am, has never forsaken me, and
subscribe myself,

Your devoted friend and servant,

C. L.



THE FORTUNES OF GLENCORE

CHAPTER I. A LONELY LANDSCAPE

Where that singularly beautiful inlet of the sea known in the west of
Ireland as the Killeries, after narrowing to a mere strait, expands into
a bay, stands the ruin of the ancient Castle of Glencore. With the bold
steep sides of Ben Creggan behind, and the broad blue Atlantic in front,
the proud keep would seem to have occupied a spot that might have
bid defiance to the boldest assailant. The estuary itself here seems
entirely landlocked, and resembles, in the wild, fantastic outline of
the mountains around, a Norwegian fiord, rather than a scene in our
own tamer landscape. The small village of Leenane, which stands on
the Galway shore, opposite to Glencore, presents the only trace of
habitation in this wild and desolate district, for the country around
is poor, and its soil offers little to repay the task of the husbandman.
Fishing is then the chief, if not the sole, resource of those who pass
their lives in this solitary region; and thus in every little creek or
inlet of the shore may be seen the stout craft of some hardy venturer,
and nets, and tackle, and such-like gear, lie drying on every rocky
eminence. We have said that Glencore was a ruin; but still its vast
proportions, yet traceable in massive fragments of masonry, displayed
specimens of various eras of architecture, from the rudest tower of
the twelfth century to the more ornate style of a later period; while
artificial embankments and sloped sides of grass showed the remains of
what once had been terrace and “parterre,” the successors, it might be
presumed, of fosse and parapet. Many a tale of cruelty and oppression,
many a story of suffering and sorrow, clung to those old walls, for they
had formed the home of a haughty and a cruel race, the last descendant
of which died at the close of the past century. The Castle of Glencore,
with the title, had now descended to a distant relation of the house,
who had repaired and so far restored the old residence as to make it
habitable,--that is to say, four bleak and lofty chambers were
rudely furnished, and about as many smaller ones fitted for servant
accommodation; but no effort at embellishment, not even the commonest
attempt at neatness, was bestowed on the grounds or the garden; and in
this state it remained for some five-and-twenty or thirty years, when
the tidings reached the little village of Leenane that his lordship was
about to return to Glencore, and fix his residence there.

Such an event was of no small moment in such a locality, and many were
the speculations as to what might be the consequence of his coming.
Little, or indeed nothing, was known of Lord Glencore; his only visit
to the neighborhood had occurred many years before, and lasted but for a
day. He had arrived suddenly, and, taking a boat at the ferry, as it was
called, crossed over to the Castle, whence he returned at nightfall, to
depart as hurriedly as he came.

Of those who had seen him in this brief visit the accounts were vague
and most contradictory. Some called him handsome and well built; others
said he was a dark-looking, downcast man, with a sickly and forbidding
aspect. None, however, could record one single word he had spoken, nor
could even gossips pretend to say that he gave utterance to any opinion
about the place or the people. The mode in which the estate was managed
gave as little insight into the character of the proprietor. If no
severity was displayed to the few tenants on the property, there was
no encouragement given to their efforts at improvement; a kind of cold
neglect was the only feature discernible, and many went so far as to say
that if any cared to forget the payment of his rent, the chances were
it might never be demanded of him; the great security against such
a venture, however, lay in the fact that the land was held at a
mere nominal rental, and few would have risked his tenure by such an
experiment.

It was little to be wondered at that Lord Glencore was not better known
in that secluded spot, since even in England his name was scarcely heard
of. His fortune was very limited, and he had no political influence
whatever, not possessing a seat in the Upper House; so that, as he spent
his life abroad, he was almost totally forgotten in his own country.

All that Debrett could tell of him was comprised in a few lines,
recording simply that he was sixth Viscount Glencore and Loughdooner;
born in the month of February, 180-, and married in August, 18--, to
Clarissa Isabella, second daughter of Sir Guy Clifford, of Wytchley,
Baronet; by whom he had issue, Charles Conyngham Massey, born 6th June,
18--. There closed the notice.

Strange and quaint things are these short biographies, with little
beyond the barren fact that “he had lived” and “he had died;” and yet,
with all the changes of this work-a-day world, with its din, and
turmoil, and gold-seeking, and “progress,” men cannot divest themselves
of reverence for birth and blood, and the veneration for high descent
remains an instinct of humanity. Sneer as men will at “heaven-born
legislators,” laugh as you may at the “tenth transmitter of a foolish
face,” there is something eminently impressive in the fact of a position
acquired by deeds that date back to centuries, and preserved inviolate
to the successor of him who fought at Agincourt or at Cressy. If ever
this religion shall be impaired, the fault be with those who have
derogated from their great prerogative, and forgotten to make
illustrious by example what they have inherited illustrious by descent.

When the news first reached the neighborhood that a lord was about to
take up his residence in the Castle, the most extravagant expectations
were conceived of the benefits to arise from such a source. The very
humblest already speculated on the advantages his wealth was to diffuse,
and the thousand little channels into which his affluence would be
directed. The ancient traditions of the place spoke of a time of
boundless profusion, when troops of mounted followers used to accompany
the old barons, and when the lough itself used to be covered with boats,
with the armorial bearings of Glencore floating proudly from their
mastheads. There were old men then living who remembered as many as two
hundred laborers being daily employed on the grounds and gardens of the
Castle; and the most fabulous stories were told of fortunes accumulated
by those who were lucky enough to have saved the rich earnings of that
golden period.

Colored as such speculations were with all the imaginative warmth of the
west, it was a terrible shock to such sanguine fancies when they
beheld a middle-aged, sad-looking man arrive in a simple postchaise,
accompanied by his son, a child of six or seven years of age, and
a single servant,--a grim-looking old dragoon corporal, who neither
invited intimacy nor rewarded it. It was not, indeed, for a long time
that they could believe that this was “my lord,” and that this solitary
attendant was the whole of that great retinue they had so long been
expecting; nor, indeed, could any evidence less strong than Mrs.
Mulcahy’s, of the Post-office, completely satisfy them on the subject.
The address of certain letters and newspapers to the Lord Viscount
Glencore was, however, a testimony beyond dispute; so that nothing
remained but to revenge themselves on the unconscious author of their
self-deception for the disappointment he gave them. This, it is true,
required some ingenuity, for they scarcely ever saw him, nor could they
ascertain a single fact of his habits or mode of life.

He never crossed the “Lough,” as the inlet of the sea, about three miles
in width, was called. He as rigidly excluded the peasantry from the
grounds of the Castle; and, save an old fisherman, who carried his
letter-bag to and fro, and a few laborers in the spring and autumn, none
ever invaded the forbidden precincts.

Of course, such privacy paid its accustomed penalty; and many an
explanation, of a kind little flattering, was circulated to account for
so ungenial an existence. Some alleged that he had committed some heavy
crime against the State, and was permitted to pass his life there,
on the condition of perpetual imprisonment; others, that his wife had
deserted him, and that in his forlorn condition he had sought out a spot
to live and die in, unnoticed and unknown; a few ascribed his solitude
to debt; while others were divided in opinion between charges of
misanthropy and avarice,--to either of which accusations his lonely and
simple life fully exposed him.

In time, however, people grew tired of repeating stories to which no
new evidence added any features of interest. They lost the zest for a
scandal which ceased to astonish, and “my lord” was as much forgotten,
and his existence as unspoken of, as though the old towers had once
again become the home of the owl and the jackdaw.

It was now about eight years since “the lord” had taken up his abode
at the Castle, when one evening, a raw and gusty night of December, the
little skiff of the fisherman was seen standing in for shore,--a sight
somewhat uncommon, since she always crossed the “Lough” in time for the
morning’s mail.

“There’s another man aboard, too,” said a bystander from the little
group that watched the boat, as she neared the harbor; “I think it’s Mr.
Craggs.”

“You ‘re right enough, Sam,--it’s the Corporal; I know his cap, and the
short tail of hair he wears under it. What can bring him at this time of
night?”

“He’s going to bespeak a quarter of Tim Healey’s beef, maybe,” said one,
with a grin of malicious drollery.

“Mayhap it’s askin’ us all to spend the Christmas he’d be,” said
another.

“Whisht! or he ‘ll hear you,” muttered a third; and at the same instant
the sail came clattering down, and the boat glided swiftly past, and
entered a little natural creek close beneath where they stood.

“Who has got a horse and a jaunting-car?” cried the Corporal, as he
jumped on shore. “I want one for Clifden directly.”

“It’s fifteen miles--devil a less,” cried one.

“Fifteen! no, but eighteen! Kiely’s bridge is brack down, and you ‘ll
have to go by Gortnamuck.”

“Well, and if he has, can’t he take the cut?”

“He can’t.”

“Why not? Did n’t I go that way last week?”

“Well, and if you did, did n’t you lame your baste?”

“‘T was n’t the cut did it.”

“It was--sure I know better--Billy Moore tould me.”

“Billy’s a liar!”

Such and such-like comments and contradictions were very rapidly
exchanged, and already the debate was waxing warm, when Mr. Craggs’s
authoritative voice interposed with--

“Billy Moore be blowed! I want to know if I can have a car and horse?”

“To be sure! why not?--who says you can’t?” chimed in a chorus.

“If you go to Clifden under five hours my name isn’t Terry Lynch,” said
an old man in rabbitskin breeches.

“I ‘ll engage, if Barny will give me the blind mare, to drive him there
under four.”

“Bother!” said the Rabbitskin, in a tone of contempt.

“But where’s the horse?” cried the Corporal.

“Ay, that’s it,” said another; “where’s the horse?”

“Is there none to be found in the village?” asked Craggs, eagerly.

“Divil a horse, barrin’ an ass. Barny’s mare has the staggers the last
fortnight, and Mrs. Kyle’s pony broke his two knees on Tuesday carrying
sea-weed up the rocks.”

“But I must go to Clifden; I must be there to-night,” said Craggs.

“It’s on foot, then, you’ll have to do it,” said the Rabbitskin.

“Lord Glencore’s dangerously ill, and needs a doctor,” said the
Corporal, bursting out with a piece of most uncommon communicativeness.
“Is there none of you will give his horse for such an errand?”

“Arrah, musha!--it’s a pity!” and such-like expressions of compassionate
import, were muttered on all sides; but no more active movement seemed
to flow from the condolence, while in a lower tone were added such
expressions as, “Sorra mend him--if he wasn’t a naygar, wouldn’t he have
a horse of his own? It’s a droll lord he is, to be begging the loan of a
baste!”

Something like a malediction arose to the Corporal’s lips; but
restraining it, and with a voice thick from passion, he said,--

“I ‘m ready to pay you--to pay you ten times over the worth of your--”

“You need n’t curse the horse, anyhow,” interposed Rabbitskin, while
with a significant glance at his friends around him, he slyly intimated
that it would be as well to adjourn the debate,--a motion as quickly
obeyed as it was mooted; for in less than five minutes Craggs was
standing beside the quay, with no other companion than a blind
beggar-woman, who, perfectly regardless of his distress, continued
energetically to draw attention to her own.

“A little fivepenny bit, my lord--the last trifle your honor’s glory
has in the corner of your pocket, that you ‘ll never miss, and that ‘ll
sweeten ould Molly’s tay to-night? There, acushla, have pity on ‘the
dark,’ and that you may see glory--”

But Craggs did not wait for the remainder, but, deep in his own
thoughts, sauntered down towards the village. Already had the others
retreated within their homes; and now all was dark and cheerless along
the little straggling street.

“And this is a Christian country!--this a land that people tell you
abounds in kindness and good-nature!” said he, in an accent of sarcastic
bitterness.

“And who’ll say the reverse?” answered a voice from behind, and,
turning, he beheld the little hunchbacked fellow who carried the mail on
foot from Oughterard, a distance of sixteen miles, over a mountain, and
who was popularly known as “Billy the Bag,” from the little leather sack
which seemed to form part of his attire. “Who ‘ll stand up and tell
me it’s not a fine country in every sense,--for natural beauties, for
antiquities, for elegant men and lovely females, for quarries of marble
and mines of gould?”

Craggs looked contemptuously at the figure who thus declaimed of
Ireland’s wealth and grandeur, and, in a sneering tone, said,--

“And with such riches on every side, why do you go barefoot--why are you
in rags, my old fellow?”

“Is n’t there poor everywhere? If the world was all gould and silver,
what would be the precious metals--tell me that? Is it because there’s
a little cripple like myself here, that them mountains yonder is n’t of
copper and iron and cobalt? Come over with me after I lave the bags at
the office, and I ‘ll show you bits of every one I speak of.”

“I’d rather you’d show me a doctor, my worthy fellow,” said Craggs,
sighing.

“I’m the nearest thing to that same going,” replied Billy. “I can
breathe a vein against any man in the barony. I can’t say, that for
any articular congestion of the aortic valves, or for a sero-pulmonic
diathesis--d’ye mind?--that there isn’t as good as me; but for the ould
school of physic, the humoral diagnostic touch, who can beat me?”

“Will you come with me across the lough, and see my lord, then?” said
Craggs, who was glad even of such aid in his emergency.

“And why not, when I lave the bags?” said Billy, touching the leather
sack as he spoke.

If the Corporal was not without his misgivings as to the skill
and competence of his companion, there was something in the fluent
volubility of the little fellow that overawed and impressed him, while
his words were uttered in a rich mellow voice, that gave them a sort of
solemn persuasiveness.

“Were you always on the road?” asked the Corporal, curious to learn some
particulars of his history.

“No, sir; I was twenty things before I took to the bags. I was a poor
scholar for four years; I kept school in Erris; I was ‘on’ the ferry in
Dublin with my fiddle for eighteen months; and I was a bear in Liverpool
for part of a winter.”

“A bear!” exclaimed Craggs. “Yes, sir. It was an Italian--one Pipo
Chiassi by name--that lost his beast at Manchester, and persuaded me,
as I was about the same stature, to don the sable, and perform in his
place. After that I took to writin’ for the papers--‘The Skibbereen
Celt’--and supported myself very well till it broke. But here we are
at the office, so I ‘ll step in, and get my fiddle, too, if you ‘ve no
objection.”

The Corporal’s meditations scarcely were of a kind to reassure him, as
he thought over the versatile character of his new friend; but the case
offered no alternative--it was Billy or nothing--since to reach Clifden
on foot would be the labor of many hours, and in the interval his
master should be left utterly alone. While he was thus musing, Billy
reappeared, with a violin under one arm and a much-worn quarto under the
other.

“This,” said he, touching the volume, “is the ‘Whole Art and Mystery of
Physic,’ by one Fabricius, of Aquapendente; and if we don’t find a cure
for the case down here, take my word for it, it’s among the _morba
ignota_, as Paracelsus says.”

“Well, come along,” said Craggs, impatiently, and set off at a speed
that, notwithstanding Billy’s habits of foot-travel, kept him at a sharp
trot. A few minutes more saw them, with canvas spread, skimming across
the lough, towards Glencore.

“Glencore--Glencore!” muttered Billy once or twice to himself, as the
swift boat bounded through the hissing surf. “Did you ever hear Lady
Lucy’s Lament?” And he struck a few chords with his fingers as he
sang:--

     “‘I care not for your trellised vine,
        I love the dark woods on the shore,
     Nor all the towers along the Rhine
         Are dear to me as old Glencore.

     The ragged cliff, Ben Creggan high,
         Re-echoing the Atlantic roar,
     Are mingling with the seagull’s cry
         My welcome back to old Glencore.’

And then there’s a chorus.”

“That’s a signal to us to make haste,” said the Corporal, pointing to a
bright flame which suddenly shot up on the shore of the lough. “Put out
an oar to leeward there, and keep her up to the wind.”

And Billy, perceiving his minstrelsy unattended to, consoled himself by
humming over, for his own amusement, the remainder of his ballad.

The wind freshened as the night grew darker, and heavy seas repeatedly
broke on the bow, and swept over the boat in sprayey showers.

“It’s that confounded song of yours has got the wind up,” said Craggs,
angrily; “stand by the sheet, and stop your croning!”

“That’s an _error vulgaris_, attributing to music marine disasters,”
 said Billy, calmly; “it arose out of a mistake about one Orpheus.”

“Slack off there!” cried Craggs, as a squall struck the boat, and laid
her almost over.

Billy, however, had obeyed the mandate promptly, and she soon righted,
and held on her course.

“I wish they’d show the light again on shore,” muttered the Corporal;
“the night is black as pitch.”

“Keep the top of the mountain a little to windward, and you ‘re all
right,” said Billy. “I know the lough well; I used to come here all
hours, day and night, once, spearing salmon.”

“And smuggling, too!” added Craggs.

“Yes, sir; brandy, and tay, and pigtail, for Mister Sheares, in
Oughterard.”

“What became of him?” asked Craggs.

“He made a fortune and died, and his son married a lady!”

“Here comes another; throw her head up in the wind,” cried Craggs.

This time the order came too late; for the squall struck her with the
suddenness of a shot, and she canted over till her keel lay out of
water, and, when she righted, it was with the white surf boiling over
her.

“She’s a good boat, then, to stand that,” said Billy, as he struck a
light for his pipe, with all the coolness of one perfectly at his ease;
and Craggs, from that very moment, conceived a favorable opinion of the
little hunchback.

“Now we’re in the smooth water, Corporal,” cried Billy; “let her go a
little free.”

And, obedient to the advice, he ran the boat swiftly along till she
entered a small creek, so sheltered by the highlands that the water
within was still as a mountain tarn.

“You never made the passage on a worse night, I ‘ll be bound,” said
Craggs, as he sprang on shore.

“Indeed and I did, then,” replied Billy. “I remember--it was two days
before Christmas--we were blown out to say in a small boat, not more
than the half of this, and we only made the west side of Arran Island
after thirty-six hours’ beating and tacking. I wrote an account of it
for the ‘Tyrawly Regenerator,’ commencing with--

“‘The elemential conflict that with tremendious violence raged, ravaged,
and ruined the adamantine foundations of our western coast, on Tuesday,
the 23rd of December--’”

“Come along, come along,” said Craggs; “we’ve something else to think
of.”

And with this admonition, very curtly bestowed, he stepped out briskly
on the path towards Glencore.



CHAPTER II. GLENCORE CASTLE

When the Corporal, followed by Billy, entered the gloomy hall of the
Castle, they found two or three country people conversing in a low but
eager voice together, who speedily turned towards them, to learn if the
doctor had come.

“Here ‘s all I could get in the way of a doctor,” said Craggs, pushing
Billy towards them as he spoke.

“Faix, and ye might have got worse,” muttered a very old man; “Billy
Traynor has the lucky hand.’”

“How is my lord, now, Nelly?” asked the Corporal of a woman who,
with bare feet, and dressed in the humblest fashion of the peasantry,
appeared.

“He’s getting weaker and weaker, sir; I believe he’s sinking. I’m glad
it’s Billy is come; I’d rather see him than all the doctors in the
country.”

“Follow me,” said Craggs, giving a signal to step lightly; and he led
the way up a narrow stone stair, with a wall on either hand. Traversing
a long, low corridor, they reached a door, at which having waited for a
second or two to listen, Craggs turned the handle and entered. The room
was very large and lofty, and, seen in the dim light of a small lamp
upon the hearthstone, seemed even more spacious than it was. The oaken
floor was uncarpeted, and a very few articles of furniture occupied the
walls. In one corner stood a large bed, the heavy curtains of which had
been gathered up on the roof, the better to admit air to the sick man.

As Billy drew nigh with cautious steps, he perceived that, although
worn and wasted by long illness, the patient was a man still in the
very prime of life. His dark hair and beard, which he wore long, were
untinged with gray, and his forehead showed no touch of age. His dark
eyes were wide open, and his lips slightly parted, his whole features
exhibiting an expression of energetic action, even to wildness. Still he
was sleeping; and, as Craggs whispered, he seldom slept otherwise, even
when in health. With all the quietness of a trained practitioner, Billy
took down the watch that was pinned to the curtain and proceeded to
count the pulse.

“A hundred and thirty-eight,” muttered he, as he finished; and then,
gently displacing the bedclothes, laid his hand upon the heart.

With a long-drawn sigh, like that of utter weariness, the sick man moved
his head round and fixed his eyes upon him.

“The doctor!” said he, in a deep-toned but feeble voice. “Leave me,
Craggs--leave me alone with him.”

And the Corporal slowly retired, turning as he went to look back towards
the bed, and evidently going with reluctance.

“Is it fever?” asked the sick man, in a faint but unfaltering accent.

“It’s a kind of cerebral congestion,--a matter of them membranes that’s
over the brain, with, of course, _febrilis generalis_.”

The accentuation of these words, marked as it was by the strongest
provincialism of the peasant, attracted the sick man’s attention, and he
bent upon him a look at once searching and severe.

“What are you--who are you?” cried he, angrily.

“What I am is n’t so aisy to say; but who I am is clean beyond me.”

“Are you a doctor?” asked the sick man, fiercely.

“I’m afear’d I’m not, in the sense of a _gradum Universitatis_,--a
diplomia; but sure maybe Paracelsus himself just took to it, like me,
having a vocation, as one might say.”

“Ring that bell,” said the other, peremptorily.

And Billy obeyed without speaking.

“What do you mean by this, Craggs?” said the Viscount, trembling with
passion. “Who have you brought me? What beggar have you picked off the
highway? Or is he the travelling fool of the district?”

But the anger that supplied strength hitherto now failed to impart
energy, and he sank back wasted and exhausted. The Corporal bent over
him, and spoke something in a low whisper, but whether the words were
heard or not, the sick man now lay still, breathing heavily.

“Can you do nothing for him?” asked Craggs, peevishly--“nothing but
anger him?”

“To be sure I can if you let me,” said Billy, producing a very ancient
lancet-case of boxwood tipped with ivory. “I’ll just take a dash of
blood from the temporal artery, to relieve the cerebrum, and then we’ll
put cowld on his head, and keep him quiet.”

And with a promptitude that showed at least self-confidence, he
proceeded to accomplish the operation, every step of which he effected
skilfully and well.

“There, now,” said he, feeling the pulse, as the blood continued to flow
freely, “the circulation is relieved at once; it’s the same as opening a
sluice in a mill-dam. He ‘s better already.”

“He looks easier,” said Craggs.

“Ay, and he feels it,” continued Billy. “Just notice the respiratory
organs, and see how easy the intercostials is doing their work now.
Bring me a bowl of clean water, some vinegar, and any ould rags you
have.”

Craggs obeyed, but not without a sneer at the direction.

“All over the head,” said Billy; “all over it,--back and front,--and
with the blessing of the Virgin, I’ll have that hair off of him if he is
n’t cooler towards evening.”

So saying, he covered the sick man with the wetted cloths, and bathed
his hands in the cooling fluid.

“Now to exclude the light and save the brain from stimulation and
excitation,” said Billy, with a pompous enunciation of the last
syllables; “and then _quies_--rest--peace!”

And with this direction, imparted with a caution to enforce its
benefits, he moved stealthily towards the door and passed out.

“What do you think of him?” asked the Corporal, eagerly.

“He ‘ll do--he ‘ll do,” said Billy. “He’s a sanguineous temperament, and
he’ll bear the lancet. It’s just like weatherin’ a point at say. If you
have a craft that will carry canvas, there’s always a chance for you.”

“He perceived that you were not a doctor,” said Craggs, when they
reached the corridor.

“Did he, faix?” cried Billy, half indignantly. “He might have perceived
that I did n’t come in a coach; that I had n’t my hair powdered, nor
gold knee-buckles in my smallcloths; but, for all that, it would be
going too far to say that I was n’t a doctor! ‘T is the same with physic
and poetry--you take to it, or you don’t take to it! There’s chaps,
ay, and far from stupid ones either, that could n’t compose you ten
hexameters if ye’d put them on a hot griddle for it; and there’s
others that would talk rhyme rather than rayson! And so with the _ars
medicatrix_--everybody has n’t an eye for a hectic, or an ear for a
cough--_non contigit cuique adire Corintheum_. ‘T is n’t every one can
toss pancakes, as Horace says.”

“Hush--be still!” muttered Craggs, “here’s the young master.” And as he
spoke, a youth of about fifteen, well grown and handsome, but poorly,
even meanly clad, approached them.

“Have you seen my father? What do you think of him?” asked he, eagerly.

“‘Tis a critical state he’s in, your honor,” said Billy, bowing; “but I
think he ‘ll come round--_deplation, deplation, deplation--actio, actio,
actio_; relieve the gorged vessels, and don’t drown the grand hydraulic
machine, the heart--them’s my sentiments.”

Turning from the speaker with a look of angry impatience, the boy
whispered some words in the Corporal’s ear.

“What could I do, sir?” was the answer; “it was this fellow or nothing.”

“And better, a thousand times better, nothing,” said the boy, “than
trust his life to the coarse ignorance of this wretched quack.” And in
his passion the words were uttered loud enough for Billy to overhear
them.

“Don’t be hasty, your honor,” said Billy, submissively, “and don’t be
unjust. The realms of disaze is like an unknown tract of country, or a
country that’s only known a little, just round the coast, as it might
be; once ye’re beyond that, one man is as good a guide as another,
_coeteris paribus_, that is, with ‘equal lights.’”

“What have you done? Have you given him anything?” broke in the boy,
hurriedly.

“I took a bleeding from him, little short of sixteen ounces, from the
temporial,” said Billy, proudly, “and I’ll give him now a concoction of
meadow saffron with a pinch of saltpetre in it, to cause diaphoresis,
d’ye mind? Meanwhile, we’re disgorging the arachnoid membranes with cowld
applications, and we’re relievin’ the cerebellum by repose. I challenge
the Hall,” added Billy, stoutly, “to say is n’t them the grand
principles of ‘traitment.’ Ah! young gentleman,” said he, after a few
seconds’ pause, “don’t be hard on me, because I ‘m poor and in rags, nor
think manely of me because I spake with a brogue, and maybe bad grammar,
for, you see, even a crayture of my kind can have a knowledge of disaze,
just as he may have a knowledge of nature, by observation. What is
sickness, after all, but just one of the phenomenons of all organic and
inorganic matter--a regular sort of shindy in a man’s inside, like a
thunderstorm, or a hurry-cane outside? Watch what’s coming, look out
and see which way the mischief is brewin’, and make your preparations.
That’s the great study of physic.”

The boy listened patiently and even attentively to this speech, and when
Billy had concluded, he turned to the Corporal and said, “Look to him,
Craggs, and let him have his supper, and when he has eaten it send him
to my room.”

Billy bowed an acknowledgment, and followed the Corporal to the kitchen.

“That’s my lord’s son, I suppose,” said he, as he seated himself, “and
a fine young crayture too--_puer ingenuus_, with a grand frontal
development.” And with this reflection he addressed himself to the
coarse but abundant fare which Craggs placed before him, and with an
appetite that showed how much he relished it.

“This is elegant living ye have here, Mr. Craggs,” said Billy, as he
drained his tankard of beer, and placed it with a sigh on the table;
“many happy years of it to ye--I could n’t wish ye anything better.”

“The life is not so bad,” said Craggs, “but it’s lonely sometimes.”

“Life need never be lonely so long as a man has health and his
faculties,” said Billy; “give me nature to admire, a bit of baycon for
dinner, and my fiddle to amuse me, and I would n’t change with the King
of Sugar ‘Candy.’”

“I was there,” said Craggs, “it’s a fine island.”

“My lord wants to see the doctor,” said a woman, entering hastily.

“And the doctor is ready for him,” said Billy, rising and leaving the
kitchen with all the dignity he could assume.



CHAPTER III. BILLY TRAYNOR--POET, PEDLAR, AND PHYSICIAN

“Didn’t I tell you how it would be?” said Billy, as he re-entered the
kitchen, now crowded by the workpeople, anxious for tidings of the sick
man. “The head is re-leaved, the congestive symptoms is allayed, and
when the artarial excitement subsides, he ‘ll be out of danger.”

“Musha, but I ‘m glad,” muttered one; “he ‘d be a great loss to us.”

“True for you, Patsey; there’s eight or nine of us here would miss him
if he was gone.”

“Troth, he doesn’t give much employment, but we couldn’t spare him,”
 croaked out a third, when the entrance of the Corporal cut short further
commentary; and the party gathered around the cheerful turf fire with
that instinctive sense of comfort impressed by the swooping wind and
rain that beat against the windows.

“It’s a dreadful night outside; I would n’t like to cross the lough in
it,” said one.

“Then that’s just what I’m thinking of this minit,” said Billy. “I’ll
have to be up at the office for the bags at six o’clock.”

“Faix, you ‘ll not see Leenane at six o’clock to-morrow.”

“Sorra taste of it,” muttered another; “there’s a sea runnin’ outside
now that would swamp a life-boat.”

“I’ll not lose an illigant situation of six pounds ten a year, and a
pair of shoes at Christmas, for want of a bit of courage,” said Billy;
“I’d have my dismissal if I wasn’t there as sure as my name is Billy
Traynor.”

“And better for you than lose your life, Billy,” said one.

“And it’s not alone myself I’d be thinking of,” said Billy; “but every
man in this world, high and low, has his duties. _My_ duty,” added he,
somewhat pretentiously, “is to carry the King’s mail; and if anything
was to obstruckt, or impade, or delay the correspondience, it’s on me
the blame would lie.”

“The letters wouldn’t go the faster because you were drowned,” broke in
the Corporal.

“No, sir,” said Billy, rather staggered by the grin of approval that met
this remark--“no, sir, what you ob-sarve is true; but nobody reflects on
the sintry that dies at his post.”

“If you must and will go, I’ll give you the yawl,” said Craggs; “and I
‘ll go with you myself.”

“Spoke like a British Grenadier,” cried Billy, with enthusiasm.

“Carbineer, if the same to you, master,” said the other, quietly; “I
never served in the infantry.”

“_Tros Tyriusve mihi_,” cried Billy; “which is as much as to say,--

     “‘To storm the skies, or lay siege to the moon,
     Give me one of the line, or a heavy dragoon,’

it’s the same to me, as the poet says.”

And a low murmur of the company seemed to accord approval to the
sentiment.

“I wish you ‘d give us a tune, Billy,” said one, coaxingly.

“Or a song would be better,” observed another.

“Faix,” cried a third, “‘tis himself could do it, and in Frinch or Latin
if ye wanted it.”

“The Germans was the best I ever knew for music,” broke in Craggs. “I
was brigaded with Arentschild’s Hanoverians in Spain; and they used to
sit outside the tents every evening, and sing. By Jove! how they did
sing--all together, like the swell of a church organ.”

“Yes, you’re right,” said Billy, but evidently yielding an unwilling
assent to this doctrine. “The Germans has a fine national music, and
they ‘re great for harmony. But harmony and melody is two different
things.”

“And which is best, Billy?” asked one of the company.

“Musha, but I pity your ignorance,” said Billy, with a degree of
confusion that raised a hearty laugh at his expense.

“Well, but where’s the song?” exclaimed another.

“Ay,” said Craggs, “we are forgetting the song. Now for it, Billy. Since
all is going on so well above stairs, I’ll draw you a gallon of ale,
boys, and we ‘ll drink to the master’s speedy recovery.”

It was a rare occasion when the Corporal suffered himself to expand in
this fashion, and great was the applause at the unexpected munificence.

Billy at the same moment took out his fiddle and began that process of
preparatory screwing and scraping which, no matter how distressing to
the surrounders, seems to afford intense delight to performers on
this instrument. In the present case, it is but fair to say, there was
neither comment nor impatience; on the contrary, they seemed to accept
these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of
melody that was coming. That Billy was occupied with other thoughts than
those of tuning was, however, apparent, for his lips continued to move
rapidly; and at moments he was seen to beat time with his foot, as
though measuring out the rhythm of a verse.

“I have it now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, making a low obeisance
to the company; and so saying, he struck up a very popular tune, the
same to which a reverend divine wrote his words of “The night before
Larry was Stretched;” and in a voice of a deep and mellow fulness,
managed with considerable taste, sang--

     “‘A fig for the chansons of France,
        Whose meaning is always a riddle;
     The music to sing or to dance
        Is an Irish tune played on the fiddle.

     To your songs of the Rhine and the Rhone
        I ‘m ready to cry out  I am satis;
     Just give us something of our own
        In praise of our Land of Potatoes.

     Tol lol de lol, etc.


     “‘What care I for sorrows of those
        Who speak of their heart as a cuore;
     How expect me to feel for the woes
        Of him who calls love an amore!

     Let me have a few words about home,
        With music whose strains I ‘d remember,
     And I ‘ll give you all Florence and Rome,
        Tho’ they have a blue sky in December.

     Tol lol de lol, etc.


     “‘With a pretty face close to your own,
        I ‘m sore there’s no rayson for sighing;
     Nor when walkin’ beside her alone,
        Why the blazes be talking of dying!

     That’s the way tho’, in France and in Spain,
        Where love is not real, but acted,
     You must always portend you ‘re insane,
        Or at laste that you ‘re partly distracted.

     Tol lol de lol, etc.’”


It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy’s impromptu as
did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to
their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the
artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew
nothing, the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest
approval. Nor was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The _irritabile
genus_ has its soft side, and can enjoy to the uttermost its own
successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with
much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher associates, that he might
have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and
seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible
change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere
pleasure.

“You’re right, there, Jim Morris,” said he, turning suddenly round
towards one of the company; “you never said a truer thing than that.
The poetic temperament is riches to a poor man. Wherever I go--in all
weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and
the mountain streams all flowin’ over--I can just go into my own mind,
just the way you’d go into an inn, and order whatever you wanted. I
don’t need to be a king, to sit on a throne; I don’t want ships,
nor coaches, nor horses, to convay me to foreign lands. I can bestow
kingdoms. When I haven’t tuppence to buy tobacco, and without a shoe to
my foot, and my hair through my hat, I can be dancin’ wid princesses,
and handin’ empresses in to tay.”

“Musha, musha!” muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening
to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to
discuss his own miraculous gifts.

“And,” resumed Billy, “it isn’t only what ye are to yourself and your
own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that sacret bond
between you, wouldn’t think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I
was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly
with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware--cheap penknives
and scissors, pencil-cases, bodkins, and the like--and I wandered about
for weeks through what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome
place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in
Ireland--more wood, forest timber, and better-off people, but nothing
beyond that!

“Well, one evening--it was in August--I came down by a narrow path to
the side of a lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to see the view
from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into
the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot, and well
chosen, for you could count as many as five promontories running out
into the lake; and there was two islands, all wooded to the water’s
edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds
on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin’ to
change their colors, and there was shades of deep gold, and dark olive,
and russet brown, all mingling together with the green, and glowing in
the lake below under the setting sun, and all was quiet and still
as midnight; and over the water the only ripple was the track of a
water-hen, as she scudded past between the islands; and if ever there
was peace and tranquillity in the world it was just there! Well, I put
down my pack in the leaves, for I did n’t like to see or think of it,
and I stretched myself down at the water’s edge, and I fell into a fit
of musing. It’s often and often I tried to remember the elegant fancies
that came through my head, and the beautiful things that I thought I saw
that night out on the lake fornint me! Ye see I was fresh and fastin’;
I never tasted a bit the whole day, and my brain, maybe, was all the
better; for somehow janius, real janius, thrives best on a little
starvation. And from musing I fell off asleep; and it was the sound of
voices near that first awoke me! For a minute or two I believed I was
dreaming, the words came so softly to my ear, for they were spoken in
a low, gentle voice, and blended in with the slight splash of oars that
moved through the water carefully, as though not to lose a word of him
that was speakin’.

“It’s clean beyond _me_ to tell you what he said; and, maybe, if I
could, ye would n’t be able to follow it, for he was discoorsin’ about
night and the moon, and all that various poets said about them; ye’d
think that he had books, and was reading out of them, so glibly came the
verses from his lips. I never listened to such a voice before, so soft,
so sweet, so musical, and the words came droppin’ down, like the clear
water filterin’ over a rocky ledge, and glitterin’ like little spangles
over moss and wild-flowers.

“It wasn’t only in English but Scotch ballads, too, and once or twice in
Italian that he recited, till at last he gave out, in all the fulness of
his liquid voice, them elegant lines out of Pope’s Homer:--

     “‘As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
     O’er heaven’s clear azure spreads her sacred light,
     When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
     And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene,
     Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
     And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole:
     O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
     And top with silver every mountain’s head;
     Then shine the vales; the rocks in prospect rise--
     A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
     The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
     Eye the blue vault and bless the useful light.’

“The Lord forgive me, but when he came to the last words and said,
‘useful light,’ I couldn’t restrain myself, but broke out, ‘That’s
mighty like a bull, anyhow, and reminds me of the ould song,--

     “‘Good luck to the moon, she’s a fine noble creature,
     And gives us the daylight all night in the dark.’

“Before I knew where I was, the boat glided in to the steps, and a tall
man, a little stooped in the shoulders, stood before me.

“‘Is it you,’ said he, with a quiet laugh, ‘that accuses Pope of a
bull?’

“‘It is,’ says I; ‘and, what’s more, there isn’t a poet from Horace
downwards that I won’t show bulls in; there’s bulls in Shakspeare and
in Milton; there’s bulls in the ancients; I ‘ll point out a bull in
Aristophanes.’

“‘What have we here?’ said he, turning to the others.

“‘A poor crayture,’ says I, ‘like Goldsmith’s chest of drawers,--

“‘With brains reduced a doable debt to pay, To dream by night, sell
Sheffield ware by day.’

“Well, with that he took a fit of laughing, and handing the rest out
of the boat, he made me come along at his side, discoorsin’ me about
my thravels, and all I seen, and all I read, till we reached an elegant
little cottage on a bank right over the lake; and then he brought me in
and made me take tay with the family; and I spent the night there; and
when I started the next morning there was n’t a ‘screed’ of my pack that
they did n’t buy, penknives, and whistles, and nut-crackers, and all,
just, as they said, for keepsakes. Good luck to them, and happy hearts,
wherever they are, for they made mine happy that day; ay, and for many
an hour afterwards, when I just think over their kind words and pleasant
faces.”

More than one of the company had dropped off asleep during Billy’s
narrative, and of the others, their complaisance as listeners appeared
taxed to the utmost, while the Corporal snored loudly, like a man who
had a right to indulge himself to the fullest extent.

“There’s the bell again,” muttered one, “that’s from the ‘lord’s room;’”
 and Craggs, starting up by the instinct of his office, hastened off to
his master’s chamber.

“My lord says you are to remain here,” said he, as he re-entered a few
minutes later; “he is satisfied with your skill, and I’m to send off a
messenger to the post, to let them know he has detained you.”

“I ‘m obaydient,” said Billy, with a low bow; “and now for a brief
repose!” And so saying, he drew a long woollen nightcap from his
pocket, and putting it over his eyes, resigned himself to sleep with the
practised air of one who needed but very little preparation to secure
slumber.



CHAPTER IV. A VISITOR

The old Castle of Glencore contained but one spacious room, and this
served all the purposes of drawing-room, dining-room, and library. It
was a long and lofty chamber, with a raftered ceiling, from which a
heavy chandelier hung by a massive chain of iron. Six windows, all in
the same wall, deeply set and narrow, admitted a sparing light. In the
opposite wall stood two fireplaces, large, massive, and monumental, the
carved supporters of the richly-chased pediment being of colossal size,
and the great shield of the house crowning the pyramid of strange and
uncouth objects that were grouped below. The walls were partly occupied
by bookshelves, partly covered by wainscot, and here and there displayed
a worn-out portrait of some bygone warrior or dame, who little dreamed
how much the color of their effigies should be indebted to the sad
effects of damp and mildew. The furniture consisted of every imaginable
type, from the carved oak and ebony console to the white and gold of
Versailles taste, and the modern compromise of comfort with ugliness
which chintz and soft cushions accomplish. Two great screens, thickly
covered with prints and drawings, most of them political caricatures of
some fifty years back, flanked each fireplace, making, as it were, in
this case two different apartments.

At one of those, on a low sofa, sat, or rather lay, Lord Glencore, pale
and wasted by long illness. His thin hand held a letter, to shade his
eyes from the blazing wood-fire, and the other hand hung listlessly
at his side. The expression of the sick man’s face was that of deep
melancholy--not the mere gloom of recent suffering, but the deep-cut
traces of a long-carried affliction, a sorrow which had eaten into his
very heart, and made its home there.

At the second fireplace sat his son, and, though a mere boy, the
lineaments of his father marked the youth’s face with a painful
exactness. The same intensity was in the eyes, the same haughty
character sat on the brow; and there was in the whole countenance the
most extraordinary counterpart of the gloomy seriousness of the older
face. He had been reading, but the fast-falling night obliged him to
desist, and he sat now contemplating the bright embers of the wood fire
in dreamy thought. Once or twice was he disturbed from his revery by the
whispered voice of an old serving-man, asking for something with that
submissive manner assumed by those who are continually exposed to the
outbreaks of another’s temper; and at last the boy, who had hitherto
scarcely deigned to notice the appeals to him, flung a bunch of keys
contemptuously on the ground, with a muttered malediction on his
tormentor.

“What’s that?” cried out the sick man, startled at the sound.

“‘Tis nothing, my lord, but the keys that fell out of my hand,” replied
the old man, humbly. “Mr. Craggs is away to Leenane, and I was going to
get out the wine for dinner.”

“Where’s Mr. Charles?” asked Lord Glencore.

“He’s there beyant,” muttered the other, in a low voice, while he
pointed towards the distant fireplace; “but he looks tired and weary,
and I did n’t like to disturb him.”

“Tired! weary!--with what? Where has he been; what has he been doing?”
 cried he, hastily. “Charles, Charles, I say!”

And slowly rising from his seat, and with an air of languid
indifference, the boy came towards him.

Lord Glencore’s face darkened as he gazed on him.

“Where have you been?” asked he, sternly.

“Yonder,” said the boy, in an accent like the echo of his own.

“There’s Mr. Craggs, now, my lord,” said the old butler, as he looked
out of the window, and eagerly seized the opportunity to interrupt the
scene; “there he is, and a gentleman with him.”

“Ha! go and meet him, Charles,--it’s Harcourt. Go and receive him, show
him his room, and then bring him here to me.”

The boy heard without a word, and left the room with the same slow step
and the same look of apathy. Just as he reached the hall the stranger
was entering it. He was a tall, well-built man, with the mingled ease
and stiffness of a soldier in his bearing; his face was handsome, but
somewhat stern, and his voice had that tone which implies the long habit
of command.

“You’re a Massy, that I’ll swear to,” said he, frankly, as he shook
the boy’s hand; “the family face in every lineament. And how is your
father?”

“Better; he has had a severe illness.”

“So his letter told me. I was up the Rhine when I received it, and
started at once for Ireland.”

“He has been very impatient for your coming,” said the boy; “he has
talked of nothing else.”

“Ay, we are old friends. Glencore and I have been schoolfellows, chums
at college, and messmates in the same regiment,” said he, with a slight
touch of sorrow in his tone. “Will he be able to see me now? Is he
confined to bed?”

“No, he will dine with you. I ‘m to show you your room, and then bring
you to him.”

“That ‘s better news than I hoped for, boy. By the way, what’s your
name?”

“Charles Conyngham.”

“To be sure, Charles; how could I have forgotten it! So, Charles, this
is to be my quarters; and a glorious view there is from this window.
What’s the mountain yonder?”

“Ben Creggan.”

“We must climb that summit some of these days, Charley. I hope you ‘re a
good walker. You shall be my guide through this wild region here, for I
have a passion for explorings.”

And he talked away rapidly, while he made a brief toilet, and refreshed
himself from the fatigues of the road.

“Now, Charley, I am at your orders; let us descend to the drawing-room.”

“You ‘ll find my father there,” said the boy, as he stopped short at
the door; and Harcourt, staring at him for a second or two in silence,
turned the handle and entered.

Lord Glencore never turned his head as the other drew nigh, but sat with
his forehead resting on the table, extending his hand only in welcome.

“My poor fellow!” said Harcourt, grasping the thin and wasted
fingers,--“my poor fellow, how glad I am to be with you again!” And he
seated himself at his side as he spoke. “You had a relapse after you
wrote to me?”

Glencore slowly raised his head, and, pushing back a small velvet
skull-cap that he wore, said,--

“You ‘d not have known me, George. Eh? see how gray I am! I saw myself
in the glass to-day for the first time, and I really could n’t believe
my eyes.”

“In another week the change will be just as great the other way. It was
some kind of a fever, was it not?”

“I believe so,” said the other, sighing.

“And they bled you and blistered you, of course. These fellows are like
the farriers--they have but the one system for everything. Who was your
torturer; where did you get him from?”

“A practitioner of the neighborhood, the wild growth of the mountain,”
 said Glencore, with a sickly smile; “but I must n’t be ungrateful; he
saved my life, if that be a cause for gratitude.”

“And a right good one, I take it. How like you that boy is, Glencore! I
started back when he met me. It was just as if I was transported again
to old school-days, and had seen yourself as you used to be long ago. Do
you remember the long meadow, Glencore?”

“Harcourt,” said he, falteringly, “don’t talk to me of long ago,--at
least not now;” and then, as if thinking aloud, added, “How strange that
a man without a hope should like the future better than the past!”

“How old is Charley?” asked Harcourt, anxious to engage him on some
other theme.

“He ‘ll be fifteen, I think, his next birthday; he seems older, does n’t
he?”

“Yes, the boy is well grown and athletic. What has he been doing--have
you had him at a school?”

“At a school!” said Glencore, starting; “no, he has lived always here
with myself. I have been his tutor; I read with him every day, till that
illness seized me.”

“He looks clever; is he so?”

“Like the rest of us, George, he may learn, but he can’t be taught. The
old obstinacy of the race is strong in him, and to rouse him to rebel
all you have to do is to give him a task; but his faculties are
good, his apprehension quick, and his memory, if he would but tax it,
excellent. Here ‘s Craggs come to tell us of dinner; give me your arm,
George, we haven’t far to go--this one room serves us for everything.”

“You’re better lodged than I expected--your letters told me to look for
a mere barrack; and the place stands so well.”

“Yes, the spot was well chosen, although I suppose its founders cared
little enough about the picturesque.”

The dinner-table was spread behind one of the massive screens, and,
under the careful direction of Craggs and old Simon, was well and amply
supplied,--fish and game, the delicacies of other localities, being here
in abundance. Har-court had a traveller’s appetite, and enjoyed himself
thoroughly, while Glencore never touched a morsel, and the boy ate
sparingly, watching the stranger with that intense curiosity which comes
of living estranged from all society.

“Charley will treat you to a bottle of Burgundy, Har-court,” said
Glencore, as they drew round the fire; “he keeps the cellar key.”

“Let us have two, Charley,” said Harcourt, as the boy arose to leave the
room, “and take care that you carry them steadily.”

The boy stood for a second and looked at his father, as if
interrogating, and then a sudden flush suffused his face as Glencore
made a gesture with his hand for him to go.

“You don’t perceive how you touched him to the quick there, Harcourt?
You talked to him as to how he should carry the wine; he thought that
office menial and beneath him, and he looked at me to know what he
should do.”

“What a fool you have made of the boy!” said Harcourt, bluntly. “By
Jove! it was time I should come here!”

When the boy came back he was followed by the old butler, carefully
carrying in a small wicker contrivance, _Hibernicè_ called a cooper,
three cobwebbed and well-crusted bottles.

“Now, Charley,” said Jarcourt, gayly, “if you want to see a man
thoroughly happy, just step up to my room and fetch me a small leather
sack you ‘ll find there of tobacco, and on the dressing-table you ‘ll
see my meerschaum pipe; be cautious with it, for it belonged to no less
a man than Poniatowski, the poor fellow who died at Leipsic.”

The lad stood again irresolute and confused, when a signal from his
father motioned him away to acquit the errand.

“Thank you,” said Harcourt, as he re-entered; “you see I am not vain of
my meerschaum without reason. The carving of that bull is a work of real
art; and if you were a connoisseur in such matters, you ‘d say the color
was perfect. Have you given up smoking, Glencore?--you used to be fond
of a weed.”

“I care but little for it,” said Glencore, sighing.

“Take to it again, my dear fellow, if only that it is a bond ‘tween
yourself and every one who whiffs his cloud. There are wonderfully few
habits--I was going to say enjoyments, and I might say so, but I ‘ll
call them habits--that consort so well with every condition and every
circumstance of life, that become the prince and the peasant, suit the
garden of the palace and the red watch-fire of the bivouac, relieve
the weary hours of a calm at sea, or refresh the tired hunter in the
prairies.”

“You must tell Charley some of your adventures in the West.--The Colonel
has passed two years in the Rocky Mountains,” said Glencore to his son.

“Ay, Charley, I have knocked about the world as much as most men, and
seen, too, my share of its wonders. If accidents by sea and land can
interest you, if you care for stories of Indian life and the wild habits
of a prairie hunter, I ‘m your man. Your father can tell you more of
_salons_ and the great world, of what may be termed the high game of
life--”

“I have forgotten it, as much as if I had never seen it,” said Glencore,
interrupting, and with a severity of voice that showed the theme
displeased him. And now a pause ensued, painful perhaps to the others,
but scarcely felt by Harcourt, as he smoked away peacefully, and seemed
lost in the windings of his own fancies.

“Have you shooting here, Glencore?” asked he at length.

“There might be, if I were to preserve the game.”

“And you do not. Do you fish?”

“No; never.”

“You give yourself up to farming, then?”

“Not even that; the truth is, Harcourt, I literally do nothing. A few
newspapers, a stray review or so, reach me in these solitudes, and keep
me in a measure informed as to the course of events; but Charley and
I con over our classics together, and scrawl sheets of paper with
algebraic signs, and puzzle our heads over strange formulas, wonderfully
indifferent to what the world is doing at the other side of this little
estuary.”

“You of all men living to lead such a life as this! a fellow that never
could cram occupation enough into his short twenty-four hours,” broke in
Harcourt.

Glencore’s pale cheek flushed slightly, and an impatient movement of his
fingers on the table showed how ill he relished any allusion to his own
former life.

“Charley will show you to-morrow all the wonders of our erudition.
Harcourt,” said he, changing the subject; “we have got to think
ourselves very learned, and I hope you ‘ll be polite enough not to
undeceive us.”

“You ‘ll have a merciful critic, Charley,” said the Colonel, laughing,
“for more reasons than one. Had the question been how to track a wolf or
wind an antelope, to outmanoeuvre a scout party or harpoon a calf-whale,
I’d not yield to many; but if you throw me amongst Greek roots or double
equations, I ‘m only Samson with his hair _en crop!_”

The solemn clock over the mantelpiece struck ten, and the boy arose as
it ceased.

“That’s Charley’s bedtime,” said Glencore, “and we are determined to
make no stranger of you, George. He ‘ll say good-night.”

And with a manner of mingled shyness and pride the boy held out his
hand, which the soldier shook cordially, saying,--

“To-morrow, then, Charley, I count upon you for my day, and so that it
be not to be passed in the library I ‘ll acquit myself creditably.”

“I like your boy, Glencore,” said he, as soon as they were alone. “Of
course I have seen very little of him; and if I had seen more I should
be but a sorry judge of what people would call his abilities. But he is
a good stamp: ‘Gentleman’ is written on him in a hand that any can read;
and, by Jove! let them talk as they will, but that’s half the battle of
life!”

“He is a strange fellow; you’ll not understand him in a moment,” said
Glencore, smiling half sadly to himself.

“Not understand him, Glencore? I read him like print, man. You think
that his shy, bashful manner imposes upon me; not a bit of it; I see the
fellow is as proud as Lucifer. All your solitude and estrangement from
the world have n’t driven out of his head that he’s to be a Viscount one
of these days; and somehow, wherever he has picked it up, he has got a
very pretty notion of the importance and rank that same title confers.”

“Let us not speak of this now, Harcourt; I’m far too weak to enter upon
what it would lead to. It is, however, the great reason for which I
entreated you to come here. And to-morrow--at all events in a day or
two--we can speak of it fully. And now I must leave you. You ‘ll have
to rough it here, George; but as there is no man can do so with a better
grace, I can spare my apologies; only, I beg, don’t let the place be
worse than it need be. Give your orders; get what you can; and see if
your tact and knowledge of life cannot remedy many a difficulty which
our ignorance or apathy have served to perpetuate.”

“I ‘ll take the command of the garrison with pleasure,” said Harcourt,
filling up his glass, and replenishing the fire. “And now a good night’s
rest to you, for I half suspect I have already jeopardied some of it.”

The old campaigner sat till long past midnight. The generous wine, his
pipe, the cheerful wood-fire, were all companionable enough, and well
suited thoughts which took no high or heroic range, but were chiefly
reveries of the past,--some sad, some pleasant, but all tinged with the
one philosophy, which made him regard the world as a campaign, wherein
he who grumbles or repines is but a sorry soldier, and unworthy of his
cloth.

It was not till the last glass was drained that he arose to seek his
bed, and presently humming some old air to himself, he slowly mounted
the stairs to his chamber.



CHAPTER V. COLONEL HARCOUUT’S LETTER

As we desire throughout this tale to make the actors themselves,
wherever it be possible, the narrators, using their words in preference
to our own, we shall now place before the reader a letter written by
Colonel Harcourt about a week after his arrival at Glencore, which will
at least serve to rescue him and ourselves from the task of repetition.

It was addressed to Sir Horace Upton, Her Majesty’s Envoy at Stuttgard,
one who had formerly served in the same regiment with Glencore and
himself, but who left the army early to follow the career of diplomacy,
wherein, still a young man, he had risen to the rank of a minister.
It is not important, at this moment, to speak more particularly of his
character, than that it was in almost every respect the opposite of his
correspondent’s. Where the one was frank, open, and unguarded, the other
was cold, cautious, and reserved; where one believed, the other doubted;
where one was hopeful, the other had nothing but misgivings. Harcourt
would have twenty times a day wounded the feelings, or jarred against
the susceptibility, of his best friend; Upton could not be brought to
trench upon the slightest prejudice of his greatest enemy. We might
continue this contrast to every detail of their characters; but enough
has now been said, and we proceed to the letter in question:

Glencore Castle. Dear Upton,--True to my promise to give you early
tidings of our old friend, I sit down to pen a few lines, which if a
rickety table and some infernal lampblack for ink should make illegible,
you ‘ll have to wait for the elucidation till my arrival. I found
Glencore terribly altered; I ‘d not have known him. He used to be
muscular and rather full in habit; he is now a mere skeleton. His hair
and mustache were coal black; they are a motley gray.

He was straight as an arrow--pretentiously erect, many thought; he is
stooped now, and bent nearly double. His voice, too, the most clear and
ringing in the squadron, is become a hoarse whisper. You remember what a
passion he had for dress, and how heartily we all deplored the chance of
his being colonel, well knowing what precious caprices of costly costume
would be the consequence; well, a discharged corporal in a cast-off
mufti is stylish compared to him. I don’t think he has a hat--I have
only seen an oilskin cap; but his coat, his one coat, is a curiosity of
industrious patchwork; and his trousers are a pair of our old overalls,
the same pattern we wore at Hounslow when the King reviewed us.

Great as these changes are, they are nothing to the alteration in the
poor fellow’s disposition. He that was generous to munificence is now an
absolute miser, descending to the most pitiful economy and moaning over
every trifling outlay. He is irritable, too, to a degree. Far from
the jolly, light-hearted comrade, ready to join in the laugh against
himself, and enjoy a jest of which he was the object, he suspects a
slight in every allusion, and bristles up to resent a mere familiarity
as though it were an insult.

Of course I put much of this down to the score of illness, and of bad
health before he was so ill; but, depend upon it, he’s not the man we
knew him. Heaven knows if he ever will be so again. The night I arrived
here he was more natural, more like himself, in fact, than he has ever
been since. His manner was heartier, and in his welcome there was a
touch of the old jovial good fellow, who never was so happy as
when sharing his quarters with a comrade. Since that he has grown
punctilious, anxiously asking me if I am comfortable, and teasing me
with apologies for what I don’t miss, and excuses about things that I
should never have discovered wanting.

I think I see what is passing within him; he wants to be confidential,
and he does n’t know how to go about it. I suppose he looks on me as
rather a rough father to confess to; he is n’t quite sure what kind of
sympathy, if any, he ‘ll meet with from me, and he more than half dreads
a certain careless, outspoken way in which I have now and then addressed
his boy, of whom more anon.

I may be right, or I may be wrong, in this conjecture; but certain it
is, that nothing like confidential conversation has yet passed between
us, and each day seems to render the prospect of such only less and less
likely. I wish from my heart you were here; you are just the fellow to
suit him,--just calculated to nourish the susceptibilities that _I_
only shock. I said as much t’ other day, in a half-careless way, and he
immediately caught it up, and said,

“Ay, George, Upton is a man one wants now and then in life, and when
the moment comes, there is no such thing as a substitute for him.” In a
joking manner, I then remarked, “Why not come over to see him?” “Leave
this!” cried he; “venture in the world again; expose myself to its
brutal insolence, or still more brutal pity!” In a torrent of passion,
he went on in this strain, till I heartily regretted that I had ever
touched this unlucky topic.

I date his greatest reserve from that same moment; and I am sure he
is disposed to connect me with the casual suggestion to go over to
Stuttgard, and deems me, in consequence, one utterly deficient in all
true feeling and delicacy.

I need n’t tell you that my stay here is the reverse of a pleasure. I
‘m never what fine people call bored anywhere; and I could amuse myself
gloriously in this queer spot. I have shot some half-dozen seals,
hooked the heaviest salmon I ever saw rise to a fly, and have had rare
coursing,--not to say that Glencore’s table, with certain reforms I have
introduced, is very tolerable, and his cellar unimpeachable. I’ll back
his chambertin against your Excellency’s, and I have discovered a bin
of red hermitage that would convert a whole vineyard of the smallest
Lafitte into Sneyd’s claret; but with all these seductions, I can’t
stand the life of continued restraint I ‘m reduced to. Glencore
evidently sent for me to make some revelations, which, now that he sees
me, he cannot accomplish. For aught I know, there may be as many changes
in _me_ to _his_ eyes as to _mine_ there are in _him_. I only can vouch
for it, that if I ride three stone heavier, I have n’t the worse place,
and I don’t detect any striking falling off in my appreciation of good
fare and good fellows.

I spoke of the boy; he is a fine lad,--somewhat haughty, perhaps; a
little spoiled by the country people calling him the young lord; but
a generous fellow, and very like Glencore when he first joined us at
Canterbury. By way of educating him himself, Glencore has been driving
Virgil and decimal fractions into him; and the boy, bred in the
country,--never out of it for a day,--can’t load a gun or tie a hackle.
Not the worst thing about the lad is his inordinate love for Glencore,
whom he imagines to be about the greatest and most gifted being that
ever lived. I can scarcely help smiling at the implicitness of this
honest faith; but I take good care not to smile; on the contrary, I
give every possible encouragement to the belief. I conclude the
disenchantment will arrive only too early at last.

You ‘ll not know what to make of such a lengthy epistle from me, and
you ‘ll doubtless torture that fine diplomatic intelligence of yours to
detect the secret motive of my long-windedness; but the simple fact is,
it has rained incessantly for the last three days, and promises the same
cheering weather for as many more. Glencore doesn’t fancy that the
boy’s lessons should be broken in upon, and _hinc istæ litteræ_,--that’s
classical for you.

I wish I could say when I am likely to beat my retreat. I ‘d stay--not
very willingly, perhaps, but still I ‘d stay--if I thought myself of any
use; but I cannot persuade myself that I am such. Glencore is now about
again, feeble of course, and much pulled down, but able to go about the
house and the garden. I can contribute nothing to his recovery, and I
fear as little to his comfort. I even doubt if he desires me to prolong
my visit; but such is my fear of offending him, that I actually dread
to allude to my departure, till I can sound my way as to how he ‘ll
take it. This fact alone will show you how much he is changed from the
Glencore of long ago. Another feature in him, totally unlike his
former self, struck me the other evening. We were talking of old
messmates--Croydon, Stanhope, Loftus, and yourself--and instead of
dwelling, as he once would have done, exclusively on your traits of
character and disposition, he discussed nothing but your abilities, and
the capacity by which you could win your way to honors and distinction.
I need n’t say how, in such a valuation, you came off best. Indeed, he
professes the highest esteem for your talents, and says, “You’ll see
Upton either a cabinet minister or ambassador at Paris yet;” and this he
repeated in the same words last night, as if to show it was not dropped
as a mere random observation.

I have some scruples about venturing to offer anything bordering on
a suggestion to a great and wily diplomatist like yourself; but if an
illustrious framer of treaties and protocols would condescend to take
a hint from an old dragoon colonel, I ‘d say that a few lines from your
crafty pen might possibly unlock this poor fellow’s heart, and lead
him to unburthen to _you_ what he evidently cannot persuade himself to
reveal to me. I can see plainly enough that there is something on his
mind; but I know it just as a stupid old hound feels there is a fox in
the cover, but cannot for the life of him see how he’s to “draw” him.

A letter from you would do him good, at all events; even the little
gossip of your gossiping career would cheer and amuse him. He said very
plaintively, two nights ago, “They ‘ve all forgotten me. When a man
retires from the world he begins to die, and the great event, after all,
is only the _coup de grace_ to a long agony of torture.” Do write to
him, then; the address is “Glencore Castle, Leenane, Ireland,” where, I
suppose, I shall be still a resident for another fortnight to come.

Glencore has just sent for me; but I must close this for the post, or it
will be too late.

Yours ever truly,

George Harcourt.


I open this to say that he sent for me to ask your address,--whether
through the Foreign Office, or direct to Stuttgard. You ‘ll probably not
hear for some days, for he writes with extreme difficulty, and I leave
it to your wise discretion to write to him or not in the interval.

Poor fellow, he looks very ill to-day. He says that he never slept the
whole night, and that the laudanum he took to induce drowsiness only
excited and maddened him. I counselled a hot jorum of mulled
porter before getting into bed; but he deemed me a monster for the
recommendation, and seemed quite disgusted besides. Could n’t you send
him over a despatch? I think such a document from Stuttgard ought to be
an unfailing soporific.



CHAPTER VI. QUEER COMPANIONSHIP

When Harcourt repaired to Glencore’s bedroom, where he still lay,
wearied and feverish after a bad night, he was struck by the signs of
suffering in the sick man’s face. The cheeks were bloodless and fallen
iq, the lips pinched, and in the eyes there shone that unnatural
brilliancy which results from an over-wrought and over-excited brain.

“Sit down here, George,” said he, pointing to a chair beside the bed; “I
want to talk to you. I thought every day that I could muster courage for
what I wish to say; but somehow, when the time arrived, I felt like a
criminal who entreats for a few hours more of life, even though it be a
life of misery.”

“It strikes me that you were never less equal to the effort than now,”
 said Harcourt, laying his hand on the other’s pulse.

“Don’t believe my pulse, George,” said Glencore, smiling faintly. “The
machine may work badly, but it has wonderful holding out. I ‘ve gone
through enough,” added he, gloomily, “to kill most men, and here I am
still, breathing and suffering.”

“This place doesn’t suit you, Glencore. There are not above two days in
the month you can venture to take the air.”

“And where would you have me go, sir?” he broke in, fiercely. “Would you
advise Paris and the Boulevards, or a palace in the Piazza di Spagna at
Rome; or perhaps the Chiaja at Naples would be public enough? Is it that
I may parade disgrace and infamy through Europe that I should leave this
solitude?”

“I want to see you in a better climate, Glencore,--in a place where the
sun shines occasionally.”

“This suits me,” said the other, bluntly; “and here I have the security
that none can invade,--none molest me. But it is not of myself I wish to
speak,--it is of my boy.”

Harcourt made no reply, but sat patiently to listen to what was coming.

“It is time to think of him,” added Glencore, slowly. “The other
day,--it seems but the other day,--and he was a mere child; a few years
more,--to seem when past like a long dreary night,--and he will be a
man.”

“Very true,” said Harcourt; “and Charley is one of those fellows who
only make one plunge from the boy into all the responsibilities of
manhood. Throw him into a college at Oxford, or the mess of a regiment
to-morrow, and this day week you’ll not know him from the rest.”

Glencore was silent; if he had heard, he never noticed Harcourt’s
remark.

“Has he ever spoken to you about himself, Harcourt?” asked he, after a
pause.

“Never, except when I led the subject in that direction; and even then
reluctantly, as though it were a topic he would avoid.”

“Have you discovered any strong inclination in him for a particular kind
of life, or any career in preference to another?”

“None; and if I were only to credit what I see of him, I ‘d say that
this dull monotony and this dreary uneventful existence is what he likes
best of all the world.”

“You really think so?” cried Glencore, with an eagerness that seemed out
of proportion to the remark.

“So far as I see,” rejoined Harcourt, guardedly, and not wishing to let
his observation carry graver consequences than he might suspect.

“So that you deem him capable of passing a life of a quiet, unambitious
tenor,--neither seeking for distinctions nor fretting after honors?”

“How should he know of their existence, Glencore? What has the boy ever
heard of life and its struggles? It’s not in Homer or Sallust he ‘d
learn the strife of parties and public men.”

“And why need he ever know them?” broke in Glencore, fiercely.

“If he doesn’t know them now, he’s sure to be taught them hereafter. A
young fellow who will succeed to a title and a good fortune--”

“Stop, Harcourt!” cried Glencore, passionately. “Has anything of this
kind ever escaped you in intercourse with the boy?”

“Not a word--not a syllable.”

“Has he himself ever, by a hint, or by a chance word, implied that he
was aware of--”

Glencore faltered and hesitated, for the word he sought for did not
present itself. Harcourt, however, released him from all embarrassment
by saying,--

“With me the boy is rarely anything but a listener; he hears me talk
away of tiger-shooting and buffalo-hunting, scarcely ever interrupting
me with a question. But I can see in his manner with the country people,
when they salute him, and call him ‘my lord’--”

“But he is not ‘my lord,’” broke in Glencore.

“Of course he is not; that I am well aware of.”

“He never will--never shall be,” cried Glencore, in a voice to which a
long pent-up passion imparted a terrible energy.

“How!--what do you mean, Glencore?” said Harcourt, eagerly. “Has he any
malady; is there any deadly taint?”

“That there is, by Heaven!” cried the sick man, grasping the curtain
with one hand, while he held the other firmly clenched upon his
forehead,--“a taint, the deadliest that can stain a human heart! Talk
of station, rank, title--what are they, if they are to be coupled with
shame, ignominy, and sorrow? The loud voice of the herald calls his
father Sixth Viscount of Glencore, but a still louder voice proclaims
his mother a--”

With a wild burst of hysteric laughter, he threw himself, face
downwards, on the bed; and now scream after scream burst from him,
till the room was filled by the servants, in the midst of whom appeared
Billy, who had only that same day returned from Leenane, whither he had
gone to make a formal resignation of his functions as letter-carrier.

“This is nothing but an _accessio nervosa,_” said Billy; “clear the
room, ladies and gentlemen, and lave me with the patient.” And Harcourt
gave the signal for obedience by first taking his departure.

Lord Glencore’s attack was more serious than at first it was
apprehended, and for three days there was every threat of a relapse of
his late fever; but Billy’s skill was once more successful, and on the
fourth day he declared that the danger was past. During this period,
Harcourt’s attention was for the first time drawn to the strange
creature who officiated as the doctor, and who, in despite of all the
detracting influences of his humble garb and mean attire, aspired to be
treated with the deference due to a great physician.

“If it’s the crown and the sceptre makes the king,” said he, “‘tis the
same with the science that makes the doctor; and no man can be despised
when he has a rag of ould Galen’s mantle to cover his shoulders.”

“So you’re going to take blood from him?” asked Harcourt, as he met him
on the stairs, where he had awaited his coming one night when it was
late.

“No, sir; ‘tis more a disturbance of the great nervous centres than any
derangement of the heart and arteries,” said Billy, pompously; “that’s
what shows a real doctor,--to distinguish between the effects of
excitement and inflammation, which is as different as fireworks is from
a bombardment.”

“Not a bad simile, Master Billy; come in and drink a glass of
brandy-and-water with me,” said Harcourt, right glad at the prospect of
such companionship.

Billy Traynor, too, was flattered by the invitation, and seated himself
at the fire with an air at once proud and submissive.

“You’ve a difficult patient to treat there,” said Harcourt, when he had
furnished his companion with a pipe, and twice filled his glass; “he’s
hard to manage, I take it?”

“Yer’ right,” said Billy; “every touch is a blow, every breath of air is
a hurricane with him. There ‘s no such thing as traitin’ a man of that
timperament; it’s the same with many of them ould families as with our
racehorses,--they breed them too fine.”

“Egad! I think you are right,” said Harcourt, pleased with an
illustration that suited his own modes of thinking.

“Yes, sir,” said Billy, gaining confidence by the approval; “a man is a
ma-chine, and all the parts ought to be balanced, and, as the ancients
say, _in equilibrio_. If preponderance here or there, whether it
be brain or spinal marrow, cardiac functions or digestive ones, you
disthroy him, and make that dangerous kind of constitution that, like a
horse with a hard mouth, or a boat with a weather helm, always runs to
one side.”

“That’s well put, well explained,” said Harcourt, who really thought the
illustration appropriate.

“Now, my lord there,” continued Billy, “is all out of balance, every bit
of him. Bleed him, and he sinks; stimulate him, and he goes ragin’ mad.
‘T is their physical conformation makes their character; and to know how
to cure them in sickness, one ought to have some knowledge of them in
health.”

“How came you to know all this? You are a very remarkable fellow,
Billy.”

“I am, sir; I’m a phenumenon in a small way. And many people thinks,
when they see and convarse with me, what a pity it is I hav’ n’t the
advantages of edication and instruction; and that’s just where they ‘re
wrong,--complately wrong.”

“Well, I confess I don’t perceive that.”

“I’ll show you, then. There’s a kind of janius natural to men like
myself,--in Ireland I mean, for I never heerd of it elsewhere,--that’s
just like our Irish emerald or Irish diamond,--wonderful if one
considers where you find it, astonishin’ if you only think how azy it is
to get, but a regular disappointment, a downright take-in, if you intend
to have it cut and polished and set. No, sir; with all the care and
culture in life, you ‘ll never make a precious stone of it!”

“You’ve not taken the right way to convince me, by using such an
illustration, Billy.”

“I ‘ll try another, then,” said Billy. “We are like Willy-the-Whisps,
showing plenty of light where there’s no road to travel, but of no
manner of use on the highway, or in the dark streets of a village where
one has business.”

“Your own services here are the refutation to your argument, Billy,”
 said Harcourt, filling his glass.

“‘Tis your kindness to say so, sir,” said Billy, with gratified pride;
“but the sacrat was, he thrusted me,--that was the whole of it. All the
miracles of physic is confidence, just as all the magic of eloquence is
conviction.”

“You have reflected profoundly, I see,” said Harcourt.

“I made a great many observations at one time of my life,--the
opportunity was favorable.”

“When and how was that?”

“I travelled with a baste caravan for two years, sir; and there’s
nothing taches one to know mankind like the study of bastes!”

“Not complimentary to humanity, certainly,” said Harcourt, laughing.

“Yes, but it is, though; for it is by a consideration of the _fero
naturo_ that you get at the raal nature of mere animal existence. You
see there man in the rough, as a body might say, just as he was turned
out of the first workshop, and before he was infiltrated with the
_divinus afflatus_, the ethereal essence, that makes him the first
of creation. There ‘s all the qualities, good and bad,--love, hate,
vengeance, gratitude, grief, joy, ay, and mirth,--there they are in the
brutes; but they ‘re in no subjection, except by fear. Now, it’s out
of man’s motives his character is moulded, and fear is only one amongst
them. D’ ye apprehend me?”

“Perfectly; fill your pipe.” And he pushed the tobacco towards him.

“I will; and I ‘ll drink the memory of the great and good man that first
intro-duced the weed amongst us--Here’s Sir Walter Raleigh! By the same
token, I was in his house last week.”

“In his house! where?”

“Down at Greyhall. You Englishmen, savin’ your presence, always forget
that many of your celebrities lived years in Ireland; for it was the
same long ago as now,--a place of decent banishment for men of janius,
a kind of straw-yard where ye turned out your intellectual hunters till
the sayson came on at home.”

“I ‘m sorry to see, Billy, that, with all your enlightenment, you have
the vulgar prejudice against the Saxon.”

“And that’s the rayson I have it, because it is vulgar,” said Billy,
eagerly. “Vulgar means popular, common to many; and what’s the best test
of truth in anything but universal belief, or whatever comes nearest to
it? I wish I was in Parliament--I just wish I was there the first night
one of the nobs calls out ‘That ‘s vulgar;’ and I ‘d just say to him,
‘Is there anything as vulgar as men and women? Show me one good thing in
life that is n’t vulgar! Show me an object a painter copies, or a poet
describes, that is n’t so!’ Ayeh,” cried he, impatiently, “when they
wanted a hard word to fling at us, why didn’t they take the right one?”

“But you are unjust, Billy; the ungenerous tone you speak of is fast
disappearing. Gentlemen nowadays use no disparaging epithets to men
poorer or less happily circumstanced than themselves.”

“Faix,” said Billy, “it isn’t sitting here at the same table with
yourself that I ought to gainsay that remark.”

And Harcourt was so struck by the air of good breeding in which he
spoke, that he grasped his hand, and shook it warmly.

“And what is more,” continued Billy, “from this day out I ‘ll never think
so.”

He drank off his glass as he spoke, giving to the libation all the
ceremony of a solemn vow.

“D’ ye hear that?--them’s oars; there’s a boat coming in.”

“You have sharp hearing, master,” said Harcourt, laughing.

“I got the gift when I was a smuggler,” replied he. “I could put my ear
to the ground of a still night, and tell you the tramp of a revenue boot
as well as if I seen it. And now I’ll lay sixpence it’s Pat Morissy is
at the bow oar there; he rows with a short jerking stroke there ‘s
no timing. That’s himself, and it must be something urgent from the
post-office that brings him over the lough to-night.”

The words were scarcely spoken when Craggs entered with a letter in his
hand.

“This is for you, Colonel,” said he; “it was marked ‘immediate,’ and the
post-mistress despatched it by an express.”

The letter was a very brief one; but, in honor to the writer, we shall
give it a chapter to itself.



CHAPTER VII. A GREAT DIPLOMATIST

My dear Harcourt,--I arrived here yesterday, and by good fortune
caught your letter at F. O., where it was awaiting the departure of the
messenger for Germany.

Your account of poor Glencore is most distressing. At the same time, my
knowledge of the man and his temper in a measure prepared me for it.
You say that he wishes to see me, and intends to write. Now, there is a
small business matter between us, which his lawyer seems much disposed
to push on to a difficulty, if not to worse. To prevent this, if
possible,--at all events to see whether a visit from me might not be
serviceable,--I shall cross over to Ireland on Tuesday, and be with you
by Friday, or at latest Saturday. Tell him that I am coming, but only
for a day. My engagements are such that I must be here again early in
the following week. On Thursday I go down to Windsor.

There is wonderfully little stirring here, but I keep that little for
our meeting. You are aware, my dear friend, what a poor, shattered,
broken-down fellow I am; so that I need not ask you to give me a
comfortable quarter for my one night, and some shell-fish, if easily
procurable, for my one dinner.

Yours, ever and faithfully,

H. U.


We have already told our reader that the note was a brief one, and yet
was it not altogether uncharacteristic. Sir Horace Upton--it will spare
us both some repetition if we present him at once--was one of a very
composite order of human architecture; a kind of being, in fact, of
which many would deny the existence, till they met and knew them, so
full of contradictions, real and apparent, was his nature. Chivalrous
in sentiment and cunning in action, noble in aspiration and utterly
sceptical as regards motives, one half of his temperament was the
antidote to the other. Fastidious to a painful extent in matters of
taste, he was simplicity itself in all the requirements of his life;
and with all a courtier’s love of great people, not only tolerating,
but actually preferring the society of men beneath him. In person he was
tall, and with that air of distinction in his manner that belongs only
to those who unite natural graces with long habits of high society. His
features were finely formed, and would have been strikingly handsome,
were the expression not spoiled by a look of astuteness,--a something
that implied a tendency to overreach,--which marred their repose
and injured their uniformity. Not that his manner ever betrayed this
weakness; far from it,--his was a most polished courtesy. It was
impossible to conceive an address more bland or more conciliating. His
very gestures, his voice, languid by a slight habit of indisposition,
seemed as though exerted above their strength in the desire to please,
and making the object of his attentions to feel himself the mark of
peculiar honor. There ran through all his nature, through everything he
did or said or thought, a certain haughty humility, which served, while
it assigned an humble place to himself, to mark out one still more
humble for those about him. There were not many things he could not
do; indeed, he had actually done most of those which win honor and
distinction in life. He had achieved a very gallant but brief military
career in India, made a most brilliant opening in Parliament, where his
abilities at once marked him out for office, was suspected to be the
writer of the cleverest political satire, and more than suspected to be
the author of “the novel” of the day. With all this, he had great social
success. He was deep enough for a ministerial dinner, and “fast” enough
for a party of young Guardsmen at Greenwich. With women, too, he was
especially a favorite; there was a Machiavelian subtlety which he could
throw into small things, a mode of making the veriest trifles little
Chinese puzzles of ingenuity, that flattered and amused them. In a word,
he had great adaptiveness, and it was a quality he indulged less for the
gratification of others than for the pleasure it afforded himself.

He had mixed largely in society, not only of his own, but of every
country of Europe. He knew every chord of that complex instrument which
people call the world, like a master; and although a certain jaded and
wearied look, a tone of exhaustion and fatigue, seemed to say that he
was tired of it all, that he had found it barren and worthless, the real
truth was, he enjoyed life to the full as much as on the first day in
which he entered it; and for this simple reason,--that he had started
with an humble opinion of mankind, their hopes, fears, and ambitions,
and so he continued, not disappointed, to the end.

The most governing notion of his own life was an impression that he had
a disease of the chest, some subtle and mysterious affection which had
defied the doctors, and would go on to defy them to the last. He had
been dangerously wounded in the Burmese war, and attributed the origin
of his malady to this cause. Others there were who said that the want of
recognition to his services in that campaign was the direst of all the
injuries he had received. And true it was, a most brilliant career had
met with neither honors nor advancement, and Upton left the service in
disgust, carrying away with him only the lingering sufferings of his
wound. To suggest to him that his malady had any affinity to any known
affection was to outrage him, since the mere supposition would reduce
him to a species of equality with some one else,--a thought infinitely
worse than any mere physical suffering; and, indeed, to avoid this
shocking possibility, he vacillated as to the locality of his disorder,
making it now in the lung, now in the heart, at one time in the
bronchial tubes, at another in the valves of the aorta. It was his
pleasure to consult for this complaint every great physician of Europe,
and not alone consult, but commit himself to their direction, and this
with a credulity which he could scarcely have summoned in any other
cause.

It was difficult to say how far he himself believed in this
disorder,--the pressure of any momentous event, the necessity of action,
never finding him unequal to any effort, no matter how onerous. Give him
a difficulty,--a minister to outwit, a secret scheme to unravel, a false
move to profit by,--and he rose above all his pulmonary symptoms, and
could exert himself with a degree of power and perseverance that very
few men could equal, none surpass. Indeed it seemed as though he kept
this malady for the pastime of idle hours, as other men do a novel or
a newspaper, but would never permit it to interfere with the graver
business of life.

We have, perhaps, been prolix in our description; but we have felt it
the more requisite to be thus diffuse, since the studious simplicity
which marked all his manner might have deceived our reader, and which
the impression of his mere words have failed to convey.

“You will be glad to hear Upton is in England, Glen-core,” said
Harcourt, as the sick man was assisted to his seat in the library, “and,
what is more, intends to pay you a visit.”

“Upton coming here!” exclaimed Glencore, with an expression of mingled
astonishment and confusion; “how do you know that?”

“He writes me from Long’s to say that he ‘ll be with us by Friday, or,
if not, by Saturday.”

“What a miserable place to receive him!” exclaimed Glencore. “As for
you, Harcourt, you know how to rough it, and have bivouacked too often
under the stars to care much for satin curtains. But think of Upton
here! How is he to eat, where is he to sleep?”

“By Jove! we ‘ll treat him handsomely. Don’t you fret yourself about his
comforts; besides, I ‘ve seen a great deal of Upton, and, with all his
fastidiousness and refinement, he’s a thorough good fellow at taking
things for the best. Invite him to Chatsworth, and the chances are he’ll
find fault with twenty things,--with the place, the cookery, and the
servants; but take him down to the Highlands, lodge him in a shieling,
with bannocks for breakfast and a Fyne herring for supper, and I ‘ll
wager my life you ‘ll not see a ruffle in his temper, nor hear a word of
impatience out of his mouth.”

“I know that he is a well-bred gentleman,” said Glencore, half
pettishly; “but I have no fancy for putting his good manners to a severe
test, particularly at the cost of my own feelings.”

“I tell you again he shall be admirably treated; he shall have my room;
and, as for his dinner, Master Billy and I are going to make a raid
amongst the lobster-pots. And what with turbot, oysters, grouse-pie,
and mountain mutton, I ‘ll make the diplomatist sorrow that he is not
accredited to some native sovereign in the Arran islands, instead of
some ‘mere German Hertzog.’ He can only stay one day.”

“One day!”

“That’s all; he is over head and ears in business, and he goes down to
Windsor on Thursday, so that there is no help for it.”

“I wish I may be strong enough; I hope to Heaven that I may rally--”
 Glencore stopped suddenly as he got thus far, but the agitation the
words cost him seemed most painful.

“I say again, don’t distress yourself about Upton,--leave the care of
entertaining him to _me_. I ‘ll vouch for it that he leaves us well
satisfied with his welcome.”

“It was not of _that_ I was thinking,” said he, impatiently; “I have
much to say to him,--things of great importance. It may be that I
shall be unequal to the effort; I cannot answer for my strength for a
day,--not for an hour. Could you not write to him, and ask him to defer
his coming till such time as he can spare me a week, or at least some
days?”

“My dear Glencore, you know the man well, and that we are lucky if we
can have him on his _own_ terms, not to think of imposing _ours_; he is
sure to have a number of engagements while he is in England.”

“Well, be it so,” said Glencore, sighing, with the air of a man
resigning himself to an inevitable necessity.



CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT MAN’S ARRIVAL.

“Not come, Craggs!” said Harcourt, as late on the Saturday evening the
Corporal stepped on shore, after crossing the lough.

“No, sir, no sign of him. I sent a boy away to the top of ‘the Devil’s
Mother,’ where you have a view of the road for eight miles, but there
was nothing to be seen.”

“You left orders at the post-office to have a boat in readiness if he
arrived?”

“Yes, Colonel,” said he, with a military salute; and Harcourt now turned
moodily towards the Castle.

Glencore had scarcely ever been a very cheery residence, but latterly it
had become far gloomier than before. Since the night of Lord Glencore’s
sudden illness, there had grown up a degree of constraint between
the two friends which to a man of Harcourt’s disposition was positive
torture. They seldom met, save at dinner, and then their reserve was
painfully evident.

The boy, too, in unconscious imitation of his father, grew more and more
distant; and poor Harcourt saw himself in that position, of all others
the most intolerable,--the unwilling guest of an unwilling host.

“Come or not come,” muttered he to himself, “I ‘ll bear this no longer.
There is, besides, no reason why I should bear it. I ‘m of no use to
the poor fellow; he does not want, he never sees me. If anything, my
presence is irksome to him; so that, happen what will, I ‘ll start
to-morrow, or next day at farthest.”

He was one of those men to whom deliberation on any subject was no small
labor, but who, once that they have come to a decision, feel as if they
had acquitted a debt, and need give themselves no further trouble in the
matter. In the enjoyment of this newly purchased immunity he entered the
room where Glencore sat impatiently awaiting him.

“Another disappointment!” said the Viscount, anxiously.

“Yes; Craggs has just returned, and says there’s no sign of a carriage
for miles on the Oughterard road.”

“I ought to have known it,” said the other, in a voice of guttural
sternness. “He was ever the same; an appointment with him was an
engagement meant only to be binding on those who expected him.”

“Who can say what may have detained him? He was in London on
business,--public business, too; and even if he had left town, how many
chance delays there are in travelling.”

“I have said every one of these things over to myself, Harcourt; but
they don’t satisfy me. This is a habit with Upton. I ‘ve seen him do
the same with his Colonel, when he was a subaltern; I ‘ve heard of his
arrival late to a Court dinner, and only smiling at the dismay of the
horrified courtiers.”

“Egad,” said Harcourt, bluntly, “I don’t see the advantage of the
practice. One is so certain of doing fifty things in this daily life to
annoy one’s friends, through mere inadvertence or forgetfulness, that I
think it is but sorry fun to incur their ill-will by malice prepense.”

“That is precisely why he does it.”

“Come, come, Glencore; old Rixson was right when he said, ‘Heaven help
the man whose merits are canvassed while they wait dinner for him.’ I
‘ll order up the soup, for if we wait any longer we ‘ll discover Upton
to be the most graceless vagabond that ever walked.”

“I know his qualities, good and bad,” said Glencore, rising, and pacing
the room with slow, uncertain steps; “few men know him better. None need
tell me of his abilities; none need instruct me as to his faults.
What others do by accident, _he_ does by design. He started in life
by examining how much the world would bear from him; he has gone on,
profiting by the experience, and improving on the practice.”

“Well, if I don’t mistake me much, he ‘ll soon appear to plead his own
cause. I hear oars coming speedily in this direction.”

And so saying, Harcourt hurried away to resolve his doubts at once.
As he reached the little jetty, over which a large signal-fire threw a
strong red light, he perceived that he was correct, and was just in time
to grasp Upton’s hand as he stepped on shore.

“How picturesque all this, Harcourt,” said he, in his soft, low voice;
“a leaf out of ‘Rob Roy.’ Well, am I not the mirror of punctuality, eh?”

“We looked for you yesterday, and Glencore has been so impatient.”

“Of course he has; it is the vice of your men who do nothing. How is
he? Does he dine with us? Fritz, take care those leather pillows are
properly aired, and see that my bath is ready by ten o ‘clock. Give me
your arm, Harcourt; what a blessing it is to be such a strong fellow!”

“So it is, by Jove! I am always thankful for it. And you--how do you get
on? You look well.”

“Do I?” said he, faintly, and pushing back his hair with an almost
fine-ladylike affectation. “I ‘m glad you say so. It always rallies me a
little to hear I ‘m better. You had my letter about the fish?”

“Ay, and I’ll give you such a treat.”

“No, no, my dear Harcourt; a fried mackerel, or a whiting and a few
crumbs of bread,--nothing more.”

“If you insist, it shall be so; but I promise you I’ll not be of your
mess, that’s all. This is a glorious spot for turbot--and such oysters!”

“Oysters are forbidden me, and don’t let me have the torture of
temptation. What a charming place this seems to be!--very wild, very
rugged.”

“Wild--rugged! I should think it is,” muttered Harcourt.

“This pathway, though, does not bespeak much care. I wish our friend
yonder would hold his lantern a little lower. How I envy you the kind of
life you lead here,--so tranquil, so removed from all bores! By the way,
you get the newspapers tolerably regularly?”

“Yes, every day.”

“That’s all right. If there be a luxury left to any man after the age
of forty, it is to be let alone. It’s the best thing I know of. What a
terrible bit of road! They might have made a pathway.”

“Come, don’t grow faint-hearted. Here we are; this is Glencore.”

“Wait a moment. Just let him raise that lantern. Really this is very
striking--a very striking scene altogether. The doorway excellent, and
that little watch-tower, with its lone-star light, a perfect picture.”

“You ‘ll have time enough to admire all this; and we are keeping poor
Glencore waiting,” said Harcourt, impatiently.

“Very true; so we are.”

“Glencore’s son, Upton,” said Harcourt, presenting the boy, who stood,
half pride, half bashfulness, in the porch.

“My dear boy, you see one of your father’s oldest friends in the
world,” said Upton, throwing one arm on the boy’s shoulder, apparently
caressing, but as much to aid himself in ascending the stair. “I’m
charmed with your old Schloss here, my dear,” said he, as they moved
along. “Modern architects cannot attain the massive simplicity of these
structures. They have a kind of confectionery style with false ornament,
and inappropriate decoration, that bears about the same relation to the
original that a suit of Drury Lane tinfoil does to a coat of Milanese
mail armor. This gallery is in excellent taste.”

And as he spoke, the door in front of him opened, and the pale,
sorrow-struck, and sickly figure of Glencore stood before him. Upton,
with all his self-command, could scarcely repress an exclamation at the
sight of one whom he had seen last in all the pride of youth and great
personal powers; while Glencore, with the instinctive acuteness of his
morbid temperament, as quickly saw the impression he had produced, and
said, with a deep sigh,--

“Ay, Horace, a sad wreck.”

“Not so, my dear fellow,” said the other, taking the thin, cold hand
within both his own; “as seaworthy as ever, after a little dry-docking
and refitting. It is only a craft like that yonder,” and he pointed to
Harcourt, “that can keep the sea in all weathers, and never care for the
carpenter. You and I are of another build.”

“And you--how are you?” asked Glencore, relieved to turn attention away
from himself, while he drew his arm within the other’s.

“The same poor ailing mortal you always knew me,” said Upton, languidly;
“doomed to a life of uncongenial labor, condemned to climates totally
unstated to me, I drag along existence, only astonished at the trouble I
take to live, knowing pretty well as I do what life is worth.”

“‘Jolly companions every one!’ By Jove!” said Har-court, “for a pair of
fellows who were born on the sunny side of the road, I must say you are
marvellous instances of gratitude.”

“That excellent hippopotamus,” said Upton, “has no-thought for any
calamity if it does not derange his digestion! How glad I am to see the
soup! Now, Glencore, you shall witness no invalid’s appetite.”

As the dinner proceeded, the tone of the conversation grew gradually
lighter and pleasanter. Upton had only to permit his powers to take
their free course to be agreeable, and now talked away on whatever came
uppermost, with a charming union of reflectiveness and repartee. If a
very rigid purist might take occasional Gallicisms in expression, and
a constant leaning to French modes of thought, none could fail to be
delighted with the graceful ease with which he wandered from theme to
theme, adorning each with some trait of that originality which was his
chief characteristic. Harcourt was pleased without well knowing how or
why, while to Glencore it brought back the memory of the days of happy
intercourse with the world, and all the brilliant hours of that polished
circle in which he had lived. To the pleasure, then, which his powers
conferred, there succeeded an impression of deep melancholy, so deep as
to attract the notice of Harcourt, who hastily asked,--

“If he felt ill?”

“Not worse,” said he, faintly, “but weak--weary; and I know Upton will
forgive me if I say good-night.”

“What a wreck indeed!” exclaimed Upton, as Glencore left the room with
his son. “I’d not have known him.”

“And yet until the last half-hour I have not seen him so well for weeks
past. I ‘m afraid something you said about Alicia Villars affected him,”
 said Harcourt.

“My dear Harcourt, how young you are in all these things,” said Upton,
as he lighted his cigarette. “A poor heart-stricken fellow, like
Glencore, no more cares for what _you_ would think a painful allusion,
than an old weather-beaten sailor would for a breezy morning on the
Downs at Brighton. His own sorrows lie too deeply moored to be disturbed
by the light winds that ruffle the surface. And to think that all this
is a woman’s doing! Is n’t that what’s passing in your mind, eh, most
gallant Colonel?”

“By Jove, and so it was! They were the very words I was on the point of
uttering,” said Harcourt, half nettled at the ease with which the other
read him.

“And of course you understand the source of the sorrow?”

“I’m not quite so sure of that,” said Harcourt, more and more piqued at
the tone of bantering superiority with which the other spoke.

“Yes, you do, Harcourt; I know you better than you know yourself. Your
thoughts were these: Here’s a fellow with a title, a good name, good
looks, and a fine fortune, going out of the world of a broken heart, and
all for a woman!”

“You knew her,” said Harcourt, anxious to divert the discussion from
himself.

“Intimately. Ninetta della Torre was the belle of Florence--what am I
saying? of all Italy--when Glencore met her, about eighteen years ago.
The Palazzo della Torre was the best house in Florence. The old Prince,
her grandfather,--her father was killed in the Russian campaign,--was
spending the last remnant of an immense fortune in every species of
extravagance. Entertainments that surpassed those of the Pitti Palace in
splendor, fêtes that cost fabulous sums, banquets voluptuous as those
of ancient Rome, were things of weekly occurrence. Of course every
foreigner, with any pretension to distinction, sought to be presented
there, and we English happened just at that moment to stand tolerably
high in Italian estimation. I am speaking of some eighteen or twenty
years back, before we sent out that swarm of domestic economists who,
under the somewhat erroneous notion of foreign cheapness, by a system
of incessant higgle and bargain, cutting down every one’s demand to
the measure of their own pockets, end by making the word ‘Englishman’ a
synonym for all that is mean, shabby, and contemptible. The English of
that day were of another class; and assuredly their characteristics, as
regards munificence and high dealing, must have been strongly impressed
upon the minds of foreigners, seeing how their successors, very
different people, have contrived to trade upon the mere memory of these
qualities ever since.”

“Which all means that ‘my lord’ stood cheating better than those who
came after him,” said Harcourt, bluntly.

“He did so; and precisely for that very reason he conveyed the notion
of a people who do not place money in the first rank of all their
speculations, and who aspire to no luxury that they have not a just
right to enjoy. But to come back to Glencore. He soon became a favored
guest at the Palazzo della Torre. His rank, name, and station, combined
with very remarkable personal qualities, obtained for him a high place
in the old Prince’s favor, and Ninetta deigned to accord him a little
more notice than she bestowed on any one else. I have, in the course of
my career, had occasion to obtain a near view of royal personages and
their habits, and I can say with certainty that never in any station, no
matter how exalted, have I seen as haughty a spirit as in that girl. To
the pride of her birth, rank, and splendid mode of life were added the
consciousness of her surpassing beauty, and the graceful charm of a
manner quite unequalled. She was incomparably superior to all around
her, and, strangely enough, she did not offend by the bold assertion
of this superiority. It seemed her due, and no more. Nor was it the
assumption of mere flattered beauty. Her house was the resort of persons
of the very highest station, and in the midst of them--some even of
royal blood--she exacted all the deference and all the homage that she
required from others.”

“And they accorded it?” asked Harcourt, half contemptuously.

“They did; and so had you also if you had been in their place! Believe
me, most gallant Colonel, there is a wide difference between the empty
pretension of mere vanity and the daring assumption of conscious power.
This girl saw the influence she wielded. As she moved amongst us she
beheld the homage, not always willing, that awaited her. She felt that
she had but to distinguish any one man there, and he became for the time
as illustrious as though touched by the sword or ennobled by the star of
his sovereign. The courtier-like attitude of men, in the presence of
a very beautiful woman, is a spectacle full of interest. In the homage
vouchsafed to mere rank there enters always a sense of humiliation,
and in the observances of respect men tender to royalty, the idea of
vassalage presents itself most prominently; whereas in the other case,
the chivalrous devotion is not alloyed by this meaner servitude, and men
never lift their heads more haughtily than after they have bowed them in
lowly deference to loveliness.”

A thick, short snort from Harcourt here startled the speaker, who,
inspired by the sounds of his own voice and the flowing periods he
uttered, had fallen into one of those paroxysms of loquacity which now
and then befell him. That his audience should have thought him tiresome
or prosy, would, indeed, have seemed to him something strange; but that
his hearer should have gone off asleep, was almost incredible.

“It is quite true,” said Upton to himself; “he snores ‘like a warrior
taking his rest.’ What wonderful gifts some fellows are endowed with!
and, to enjoy life, there is none of them all like dulness. Can you show
me to my room?” said he, as Craggs answered his ring at the bell.

The Corporal bowed an assent.

“The Colonel usually retires early, I suppose?” said Upton.

“Yes, sir; at ten to a minute.”

“Ah! it is one--nearly half-past one--now, I perceive,” said he, looking
at his watch. “That accounts for his drowsiness,” muttered he, between
his teeth. “Curious vegetables are these old campaigners. Wish him good
night for me when he awakes, will you?”

And so saying, he proceeded on his way, with all that lassitude and
exhaustion which it was his custom to throw into every act which
demanded the slightest exertion.

“Any more stairs to mount, Mr. Craggs?” said he, with a bland but sickly
smile.

“Yes, sir; two flights more.”

“Oh, dear! couldn’t you have disposed of me on the lower floor?--I don’t
care where or how, but something that requires no climbing. It matters
little, however, for I’m only here for a day.”

“We could fit up a small room, sir, off the library.”

“Do so, then. A most humane thought; for if I _should_ remain another
night--Not at it yet?” cried he, peevishly, at the aspect of an almost
perpendicular stair before him.

“This is the last flight, sir; and you’ll have a splendid view for your
trouble, when you awake in the morning.”

“There is no view ever repaid the toil of an ascent, Mr. Craggs, whether
it be to an attic or the Righi. Would you kindly tell my servant, Mr.
Schöfer, where to find me, and let him fetch the pillows, and put a
little rosemary in a glass of water in the room,--it corrects the odor
of the night-lamp. And I should like my coffee early,--say at seven,
though I don’t wish to be disturbed afterwards. Thank you, Mr.
Craggs,--good-night. Oh! one thing more. You have a doctor here: would
you just mention to him that I should like to see him to-morrow about
nine or half-past? Good night, good night.”

And with a smile worthy of bestowal upon a court beauty, and a gentle
inclination of the head, the very ideal of gracefulness, Sir Horace
dismissed Mr. Craggs, and closed the door.



CHAPTER IX. A MEDICAL VISIT

Mr. Schöfer moved through the dimly lighted chamber with all the
cat-like stealthiness of an accomplished valet, arranging the various
articles of his master’s wardrobe, and giving, so far as he was able,
the semblance of an accustomed spot to this new and strange locality.
Already, indeed, it was very unlike what it had been during Harcourt’s
occupation. Guns, whips, fishing-tackle, dog-leashes, and landing-nets
had all disappeared, as well as uncouth specimens of costume for boating
or the chase; and in their place were displayed all the accessories
of an elaborate toilet, laid out with a degree of pomp and ostentation
somewhat in contrast to the place. A richly embroidered dressing-gown
lay on the back of a chair, before which stood a pair of velvet slippers
worked in gold. On the table in front of these, a whole regiment of
bottles, of varied shape and color, were ranged, the contents being
curious essences and delicate odors, every one of which entered into
some peculiar stage of that elaborate process Sir Horace Upton went
through, each morning of his life, as a preparation for the toils of the
day.

Adjoining the bed stood a smaller table, covered with various
medicaments, tinctures, essences, infusions, and extracts, whose subtle
qualities he was well skilled in, and but for whose timely assistance he
would not have believed himself capable of surviving throughout the day.
Beside these was a bulky file of prescriptions, the learned documents of
doctors of every country of Europe, all of whom had enjoyed their little
sunshine of favor, and all of whom had ended by “mistaking his case.”
 These had now been placed in readiness for the approaching consultation
with “Glencore’s doctor;” and Mr. Schöfer still glided noiselessly from
place to place, preparing for that event.

“I ‘m not asleep, Fritz,” said a weak, plaintive voice from the bed.
“Let me have my aconite,--eighteen drops; a full dose to-day, for this
journey has brought back the pains.”

“Yes, Excellenz,” said Fritz, in a voice of broken accentuation.

“I slept badly,” continued his master, in the same complaining tone.
“The sea beat so heavily against the rocks, and the eternal plash,
plash, all night irritated and worried me. Are you giving me the right
tincture?”

“Yes, Excellenz,” was the brief reply.

“You have seen the doctor,--what is he like, Fritz?”

A strange grimace and a shrug of the shoulders were Mr. Schöfer’s only
answer.

“I thought as much,” said Upton, with a heavy sigh. “They called him
the wild growth of the mountains last night, and I fancied what that was
like to prove. Is he young?”

A shake of the head implied not.

“Nor old?”

Another similar movement answered the question.

“Give me a comb, Fritz, and fetch the glass here.” And now Sir Horace
arranged his silky hair more becomingly, and having exchanged one or
two smiles with his image in the mirror, lay back on the pillow, saying,
“Tell him I am ready to see him.”

Mr. Schöfer proceeded to the door, and at once presented the obsequious
figure of Billy Traynor, who, having heard some details of the rank and
quality of his new patient, made his approaches with a most deferential
humility. It was true, Billy knew that my Lord Glencore’s rank was above
that of Sir Horace, but to his eyes there was the far higher distinction
of a man of undoubted ability,--a great speaker, a great writer, a great
diplomatist; and Billy Traynor, for the first time in his life, found
himself in the presence of one whose claims to distinction stood upon
the lofty basis of personal superiority. Now, though bashful-ness was
not the chief characteristic of his nature, he really felt abashed and
timid as he drew near the bed, and shrank under the quick but searching
glance of the sick man’s cold gray eyes.

“Place a chair, and leave us, Fritz,” said Sir Horace; and then, turning
slowly round, smiled as he said, “I’m happy to make your acquaintance,
sir. My friend, Lord Glencore, has told me with what skill you treated
him, and I embrace the fortunate occasion to profit by your professional
ability.”

“I’m your humble slave, sir,” said Billy, with a deep, rich brogue; and
the manner of the speaker, and his accent, seemed so to surprise Upton
that he continued to stare at him fixedly for some seconds without
speaking.

“You studied in Scotland, I believe?” said he, with one of the most
engaging smiles, while he hazarded the question.

“Indeed, then, I did not, sir,” said Billy, with a heavy sigh; “all I
know of the _ars medicâtrix_ I picked up,--_currendo per campos_,--as
one may say, vagabondizing through life, and watching my opportunities.
Nature gave me the Hippocratic turn, and I did my best to improve it.”

“So that you never took out a regular diploma?” said Sir Horace, with
another and still blander smile.

“Sorra one, sir! I ‘m a doctor just as a man is a poet,--by sheer
janius! ‘T is the study of nature makes both one and the other; that is,
when there’s the raal stuff,--the _divinus afflatus_,--inside. Without
you have that, you ‘re only a rhymester or a quack.”

“You would, then, trace a parallel between them?” said Upton,
graciously.

“To be sure, sir! Ould Heyric says that the poet and the physician is
one:--

     “‘For he who reads the clouded skies,
        And knows the utterings of the deep,
     Can surely see in human eyes
        The sorrows that so heart-locked sleep.’

The human system is just a kind of universe of its own; and the very
same faculties that investigate the laws of nature in one case is good
in the other.”

“I don’t think the author of ‘King Arthur’ supports your theory,” said
Upton, gently.

“Blackmoor was an ass; but maybe he was as great a bosthoon in physic as
in poetry,” rejoined Billy, promptly.

“Well, Doctor,” said Sir Horace, with one of those plaintive sighs in
which he habitually opened the narrative of his own suffering, “let us
descend to meaner things, and talk of myself. You see before you
one who, in some degree, is the reproach of medicine. That file of
prescriptions beside you will show that I have consulted almost every
celebrity in Europe; and that I have done so unsuccessfully, it is
only necessary that you should look on these worn looks--these wasted
fingers--this sickly, feeble frame. Vouchsafe me a patient hearing for
a few moments, while I give you some insight into one of the most
intricate cases, perhaps, that has ever engaged the faculty.”

It is not our intention to follow Sir Horace through his statement,
which in reality comprised a sketch of half the ills that the flesh
is heir to. Maladies of heart, brain, liver, lungs, the nerves, the
arteries, even the bones, contributed their aid to swell the dreary
catalogue, which, indeed, contained the usual contradictions and
exaggerations incidental to such histories. We could not assuredly
expect from our reader the patient attention with which Billy listened
to this narrative. Never by a word did he interrupt the description;
not even a syllable escaped him as he sat; and even when Sir Horace had
finished speaking, he remained with slightly drooped head and clasped
hands in deep meditation.

“It’s a strange thing,” said he, at last; “but the more I see of the
aristocracy, the more I ‘m convinced that they ought to have doctors
for themselves alone, just as they have their own tailors and
coachmakers,---chaps that could devote themselves to the study of physic
for the peerage, and never think of any other disorders but them that
befall people of rank. Your mistake, Sir Horace, was in consulting the
regular middle-class practitioner, who invariably imagined there must be
a disease to treat.”

“And you set me down as a hypochondriac, then,” said Upton, smiling.

“Nothing of the kind! You have a malady, sure enough, but nothing
organic. ‘Tis the oceans of tinctures, the sieves full of pills, the
quarter-casks of bitters you ‘re takin’, has played the divil with you.
The human machine is like a clock, and it depends on the proportion the
parts bear to each other, whether it keeps time. You may make the spring
too strong, or the chain too thick, or the balance too heavy for the
rest of the works, and spoil everything just by over security. That’s
what your doctors was doing with their tonics and cordials. They didn’t
see, here’s a poor washy frame, with a wake circulation and no vigor. If
we nourish him, his heart will go quicker, to be sure; but what will his
brain be at? There’s the rub! His brain will begin to go fast too,
and already it’s going the pace. ‘T is soothin’ and calmin’ you want;
allaying the irritability of an irrascible, fretful nature, always on
the watch for self-torment. Say-bathin’, early hours, a quiet mopin’
kind of life, that would, maybe, tend to torpor and sleepiness,--them’s
the first things you need; and for exercise, a little work in the garden
that you ‘d take interest in.”

“And no physic?” asked Sir Horace.

“Sorra screed! not as much as a powder or a draught,--barrin’,” said
he, suddenly catching the altered expression of the sick man’s face, “a
little mixture of hyoscyamus I’ ll compound for you myself. This, and
friction over the region of the heart, with a mild embrocation, is all
my tratement!”

“And you have hopes of my recovery?” asked Sir Horace, faintly.

“My name isn’t Billy Traynor if I’d not send you out of this hale and
hearty before two months. I read you like a printed book.”

“You really give me great confidence, for I perceive you understand the
tone of my temperament. Let us try this same embrocation at once; I’ll
most implicitly obey you in everything.”

“My head on a block, then, but I’ll cure you,” said Billy, who
determined that no scruples on his side should mar the trust reposed in
him by the patient. “But you must give yourself entirely up to me; not
only as to your eatin’ and drinkin’, but your hours of recreation and
study, exercise, amusement, and all, must be at my biddin’. It is the
principle of harmony between the moral and physical nature constitutes
the whole sacret of my system. To be stimulatin’ the nerves, and lavin’
the arteries dormant, is like playing a jig to minuet time,--all must
move in simultaneous action; and the cerebellum, the great flywheel of
the whole, must be made to keep orderly time. D’ye mind?”

“I follow you with great interest,” said Sir Horace, to whose subtle
nature there was an intense pleasure in the thought of having discovered
what he deemed a man of original genius under this unpromising exterior.
“There is but one bar to these arrangements: I must leave this at once;
I ought to go to-day. I must be off to-morrow.”

“Then I’ll not take the helm when I can’t pilot you through the shoals,”
 said Billy. “To begin my system, and see you go away before I developed
my grand invigoratin’ arcanum, would be only to destroy your confidence
in an elegant discovery.”

“Were I only as certain as you seem to be----” began

Sir Horace, and then stopped.

“You ‘d stay and be cured, you were goin’ to say. Well, if you did n’t
feel that same trust in me, you ‘d be right to go; for it is that very
confidence that turns the balance. Ould Babbington used to say that
between a good physician and a bad one there was just the difference
between a pound and a guinea. But between the one you trust and the one
you don’t, there’s all the way between Billy Traynor and the Bank of
Ireland!”

“On that score every advantage is with you,” said Upton, with all the
winning grace of his incomparable manner; “and I must now bethink me
how I can manage to prolong my stay here.” And with this he fell into
a musing fit, letting drop occasionally some stray word or two, to mark
the current of his thoughts: “The Duke of Headwater’s on the thirteenth;
Ardroath Castle the Tuesday after; More-hampton for the Derby day. These
easily disposed of. Prince Boratinsky, about that Warsaw affair, must be
attended to; a letter, yes, a letter, will keep that question open. Lady
Grencliffe _is_ a difficulty; if I plead illness, she ‘ll say I ‘m not
strong enough to go to Russia. I ‘ll think it over.” And with this he
rested his head on his hands, and sank into profound reflection.
“Yes, Doctor,” said he, at length, as though summing up his secret
calculations, “health is the first requisite. If you can but restore me,
you will be--I am above the mere personal consideration--you will be
the means of conferring an important service on the King’s Government. A
variety of questions, some of them deep and intricate, are now pending,
of which I alone understand the secret meaning. A new hand would
infallibly spoil the game; and yet, in my present condition, how could
I hear the fatigues of long interviews, ministerial deliberations,
incessant note-writing, and evasive conversations?”

“Utterly unpossible!” exclaimed the doctor.

“As you observe, it is utterly impossible,” rejoined Sir Horace, with
one of his own dubious smiles; and then, in a manner more natural,
resumed: “We public men have the sad necessity of concealing the
sufferings on which others trade for sympathy. We must never confess
to an ache or a pain, lest it be rumored that we are unequal to the
fatigues of office; and so is it that we are condemned to run the race
with broken health and shattered frame, alleging all the while that no
exertion is too much, no effort too great for us.”

“And maybe, after all, it’s that very struggle that makes you more than
common men,” said Billy. “There’s a kind of irritability that keeps
the brain at stretch, and renders it equal to higher efforts than ever
accompany good everyday health. Dyspepsia is the soul of a prose-writer,
and a slight ossification of the aortic valves is a great help to the
imagination.”

“Do you really say so?” asked Sir Horace, with all the implicit
confidence with which he accepted any marvel that had its origin in
medicine.

“Don’t you feel it yourself, sir?” asked Billy. “Do you ever pen a reply
to a knotty state-paper as nately as when you’ve the heartburn?--are
you ever as epigrammatic as when you’re driven to a listen slipper?--and
when do you give a minister a jobation as purtily as when you are
laborin’ under a slight indigestion? Not that it would sarve a man to be
permanently in gout or the colic; but for a spurt like a cavalry charge,
there’s nothing like eatin’ something that disagrees with you.”

“An ingenious notion,” said the diplomatist, smiling.

“And now I ‘ll take my lave,” said Billy, rising. “I’m going out
to gather some mountain-colchicum and sorrel, to make a diaphoretic
infusion; and I’ve to give Master Charles his Greek lesson; and blister
the colt,--he’s thrown out a bone spavin; and, after that, Handy Care’s
daughter has the shakin’ ague, and the smith at the forge is to be
bled,--all before two o ‘dock, when ‘the lord’ sends for me. But the
rest of the day, and the night too, I’m your honor’s obaydient.”

And with a low bow, repeated in a more reverential man-ner at the door,
Billy took his leave and retired.



CHAPTER X. A DISCLOSURE

“Have you seen Upton?” asked Glencore eagerly of Harcourt as he entered
his bedroom.

“Yes; he vouchsafed me an audience during his toilet, just as the old
kings of France were accustomed to honor a favorite with one.”

“And is he full of miseries at the dreary place, the rough fare and
deplorable resources of this wild spot?”

“Quite the reverse; he is charmed with everything and everybody. The
view from his window is glorious; the air has already invigorated him.
For years he has not breakfasted with the same appetite; and he finds
that of all the places he has ever chanced upon, this is the one
veritable exact spot which suits him.”

“This is very kind on his part,” said Glencore, with a faint smile.
“Will the humor last, Harcourt? That is the question.”

“I trust it will,--at least it may well endure for the short period
he means to stay; although already he has extended that, and intends
remaining till next week.”

“Better still,” said Glencore, with more animation of voice and manner.
“I was already growing nervous about the brief space in which I was to
crowd in all that I want to say to him; but if he will consent to wait a
day or two, I hope I shall be equal to it.”

“In his present mood there is no impatience to be off; on the contrary,
he has been inquiring as to all the available means of locomotion, and
by what convenience he is to make various sea and land excursions.”

“We have no carriage,--we have no roads, even,” said Glencore,
peevishly.

“He knows all that; but he is concerting measures about a certain
turf-kish, I think they call it, which, by the aid of pillows to lie
on, and donkeys to drag, can be made a most useful vehicle; while, for
longer excursions, he has suggested a ‘conveniency’ of wheels and axles
to the punt, rendering it equally eligible on land or water. Then he
has been designing great improvements in horticulture, and giving orders
about a rake, a spade, and a hoe for himself. I ‘m quite serious,” said
Harcourt, as Glencore smiled with a kind of droll incredulity. “It is
perfectly true; and as he hears that the messenger occasionally crosses
the lough to the post, when there are no letters there, he hints at a
little simple telegraph for Leenane, which should announce what the mail
contains, and which might be made useful to convey other intelligence.
In fact, all _my_ changes here will be as for nothing to _his_ reforms,
and between us you ‘ll not know your own house again, if you even be
able to live in it.”

“You have already done much to make it more habitable, Harcourt,” said
Glencore, feelingly; “and if I had not the grace to thank you for it,
I ‘m not the less grateful. To say truth, my old friend, I half doubted
whether it was an act of friendship to attach me ever so lightly to a
life of which I am well weary. Ceasing as I have done for years back to
feel interest in anything, I dread whatever may again recall me to the
world of hopes and fears,--that agitated sea of passion wherein I have
no longer vigor to contend. To speak to me, then, of plans to carry
out, schemes to accomplish, was to point to a future of activity and
exertion; and!”--here he dropped his voice to a deep and mournful
tone--“can have but one future,--the dark and dreary one before the
grave!”

Harcourt was too deeply impressed by the solemnity of these words to
venture on a reply, and he sat silently contemplating the sorrow-struck
but placid features of the sick man.

“There is nothing to prevent a man struggling, and successfully too,
against mere adverse fortune,” continued Glencore. “I feel at times
that if I had been suddenly reduced to actual beggary,--left without
a shilling in the world,--there are many ways in which I could eke out
subsistence. A great defeat to my personal ambition I could resist. The
casualty that should exclude me from a proud position and public life,
I could bear up against with patience, and I hope with dignity. Loss of
fortune, loss of influence, loss of station, loss of health even, dearer
than them all, can be borne. There is but one intolerable ill, one
that no time alleviates, no casuistry diminishes,--loss of honor!
Ay, Harcourt, rank and riches do little for him who feels himself the
inferior of the meanest that elbows him in a crowd; and the man whose
name is a scoff and a jibe has but one part to fill,--to make himself
forgotten.”

“I hope I ‘m not deficient in a sense of personal honor, Glencore,” said
Harcourt; “but I must say that I think your reasoning on this point is
untenable and wrong.”

“Let us not speak more of it,” said Glencore, faintly. “I know not how
I have been led to allude to what it is better to bear in secret than
to confide even to friendship;” and he pressed the strong fingers of the
other as he spoke, in his own feeble grasp. “Leave me now, Harcourt, and
send Upton here. It may be that the time is come when I shall be able to
speak to him.”

“You are too weak to-day, Glencore,--too much agitated. Pray defer this
interview.”

“No, Harcourt; these are my moments of strength. The little energy now
left to me is the fruit of strong excitement. Heaven knows how I shall
be to-morrow.”

Harcourt made no further opposition, but left the room in search of
Upton.

It was full an hour later when Sir Horace Upton made his appearance in
Glencore’s chamber, attired in a purple dressing-gown, profusely braided
with gold, loose trousers as richly brocaded, and a pair of real Turkish
slippers, resplendent with costly embroidery; a small fez of blue
velvet, with a deep gold tassel, covered the top of his head, at
either side of which his soft silky hair descended in long massy waves,
apparently negligently, but in reality arranged with all the artistic
regard to effect of a consummate master. From the gold girdle at his
waist depended a watch, a bunch of keys, a Turkish purse, an embroidered
tobacco-bag, a gorgeously chased smelling-bottle, and a small stiletto,
with a topaz handle. In one hand he carried a meerschaum, the other
leaned upon a cane, and with all the dependence of one who could not
walk without its aid. The greeting was cordial and affectionate on both
sides; and when Sir Horace, after a variety of preparations to ensure
his comfort, at length seated himself beside the bed, his features
beamed with all their wonted gentleness and kindness.

“I’m charmed at what Harcourt has been telling me, Upton,” said
Glencore; “and that you really can exist in all the savagery of this
wild spot.”

“I’m in ecstasy with the place, Glencore. My memory cannot recall the
same sensations of health and vigor I have experienced since I came
here. Your cook is first-rate; your fare is exquisite; the quiet is
a positive blessing; and that queer creature, your doctor, is a very
remarkable genius.”

“So he is,” said Glencore, gravely.

“One of those men of original mould who leave cultivation leagues
behind, and arrive at truth by a bound.”

“He certainly treated me with considerable skill.”

“I’m satisfied of it; his conversation is replete with shrewd and
intelligent observation, and he seems to have studied his art more like
a philosopher than a mere physician of the schools. And depend upon it,
Glencore, the curative art must mainly depend upon the secret instinct
which divines the malady, less by the rigid rules of acquired skill than
by that prerogative of genius, which, however exerted, arrives at its
goal at once. Our conversation had scarcely lasted a quarter of an hour,
when he revealed to me the exact seat of all my sufferings, and the
most perfect picture of my temperament. And then his suggestions as to
treatment were all so reasonable, so well argued.”

“A clever fellow, no doubt of it,” said Glencore.

“But he is far more than that, Glencore. Cleverness is only a
manufacturing quality,--that man supplies the raw article also. It has
often struck me as very singular that such heads are not found in _our_
class,--they belong to another order altogether. It is possible that the
stimulus of necessity engenders the greatest of all efforts, calling
to the operations of the mind the continued strain for contrivance; and
thus do we find the most remarkable men are those, every step of whose
knowledge has been gained with a struggle.”

“I suspect you are right,” said Glencore, “and that our old system of
school education, wherein all was rough, rugged, and difficult, turned
out better men than the present-day habit of everything-made-easy and
everybody-made-any-thing. Flippancy is the characteristic of our age,
and we owe it to our teaching.”

“By the way, what do you mean to do with Charley?” said Upton. “Do you
intend him for Eton?”

“I scarcely know,--I make plans only to abandon them,” said Glencore,
gloomily.

“I’m greatly struck with him. He is one of those fellows, however,
who require the nicest management, and who either rise superior to all
around them, or drop down into an indolent, dreamy existence, conscious
of power, but too bashful or too lazy to exert it.”

“You have hit him off, Upton, with all your own subtlety; and it was to
speak of that boy I have been so eager to see you.”

Glencore paused as he said these words, and passed his hand over his
brow, as though to prepare himself for the task before him.

“Upton,” said he, at last, in a voice of deep and solemn meaning, “the
resolution I am about to impart to you is not unlikely to meet your
strenuous opposition; you will be disposed to show me strong reasons
against it on every ground; you may refuse me that amount of assistance
I shall ask of you to carry out my purpose; but if your arguments were
all unanswerable, and if your denial to aid me was to sever the old
friendship between us, I ‘d still persist in my determination. For more
than two years the project has been before my mind. The long hours
of the day, the longer ones of the night, have found me deep in the
consideration of it. I have repeated over to myself everything that my
ingenuity could suggest against it; I have said to my own heart all that
my worst enemy could utter, were he to read the scheme and detect my
plan; I have done more,--I have struggled with myself to abandon it;
but in vain. My heart is linked to it; it forms the one sole tie that
attaches me to life. Without it, the apathy that I feel stealing over me
would be complete, and my existence become a mournful dream. In a word,
Upton, all is passionless within me, save one sentiment; and I drag on
life merely for a ‘_Vendetta_.’”

Upton shook his head mournfully, as the other paused here, and said,--

“This is disease, Glencore!”

“Be it so; the malady is beyond cure,” said he, sternly.

“Trust me it is not so,” said Upton, gently; “you listened to my
persuasions on a more--”

“Ay, that I did!” cried Glencore, interrupting; “and have I ever ceased
to rue the day I did so? But for _your_ arguments, and I had not lived
this life of bitter, self-reproaching misery; but for you, and my
vengeance had been sated ere this!”

“Remember, Glencore,” said the other, “that you had obtained all the
world has decreed as satisfaction. He met you and received your fire;
you shot him through the chest,--not mortally, it is true, but to carry
to his grave a painful, lingering disease. To have insisted on his again
meeting you would have been little less than murder. No man could have
stood your friend in such a quarrel. I told you so then, I repeat it
now, _he_ could not fire at you; what, then, was it possible for you to
do?”

“Shoot him,--shoot him like a dog!” cried Glencore, while his eyes
gleamed like the glittering eyes of an enraged beast. “You talk of his
lingering life of pain: think of _mine_; have some sympathy for what _I_
suffer! Would all the agony of _his_ whole existence equal one hour of
the torment he has bequeathed to me, its shame and ignominy?”

“These are things which passion can never treat of, my dear Glencore.”

“Passion alone can feel them,” said the other, sternly. “Keep subtleties
for those who use like weapons. As for me, no casuistry is needed
to tell me I am dishonored, and just as little to tell me I must be
avenged! If _you_ think differently, it were better not to discuss this
question further between us; but I did think I could have reckoned upon
you, for I felt you had barred my first chance of a vengeance.”

“Now, then, for your plan, Glencore,” said Upton, who, with all the
dexterity of his calling, preferred opening a new channel in the
discussion, to aggravating difficulties by a further opposition.

“I must rid myself of her! There’s my plan!” cried Glencore, savagely.
“You have it all in that resolution. Of no avail is it that I have
separated my fortune from hers, so long as she bears my name, and
renders it infamous in every city of Europe. Is it to _you_, who live in
the world,--who mix with men of every country,--that I need tell this?
If a man cannot throw off such a shame, he must sink under it.”

“But you told me you had an unconquerable aversion to the notion of
seeking a divorce.”

“So I had; so I have! The indelicate, the ignominious course of a trial
at law, with all its shocking exposure, would be worse than a thousand
deaths! To survive the suffering of all the licensed ribaldry of some
gowned coward aspersing one’s honor, calumniating, inventing, and,
when invention failed, suggesting motives, the very thought of which in
secret had driven a man to madness! To endure this--to read it--to
know it went published over the wide globe, till one’s shame became the
gossip of millions--and then--with a verdict extorted from pity, damages
awarded to repair a broken heart and a sullied name--to carry this
disgrace before one’s equals, to be again discussed, sifted, and
cavilled at! No, Upton; this poor shattered brain would give way under
such a trial; to compass it in mere fancy is already nigh to madness! It
must be by other means than these that I attain my object!”

The terrible energy with which he spoke actually frightened Upton, who
fancied that his reason had already begun to show signs of decline.

“The world has decreed,” resumed Glencore, “that in these conflicts all
the shame shall be the husband’s; but it shall not be so here! _She_
shall have her share, ay, and, by Heaven, not the smaller share
either!”

“Why, what would you do?” asked Upton, eagerly.

“Deny my marriage; call her my mistress!” cried Glencore, in a voice
shaken with passion and excitement.

“But your boy,--your son, Glencore!”

“He shall be a bastard! You may hold up your hands in horror, and look
with all your best got-up disgust at such a scheme; but if you wish
to see me swear to accomplish it, I’ll do so now before you, ay, on
my knees before you! When we eloped from her father’s house at
Castellamare, we were married by a priest at Capri; of the marriage
no trace exists. The more legal ceremony was performed before you, as
Chargé d’Affaires at Naples,--of that I have the registry here; nor,
except my courier, Sanson, is there a living witness. If you determine
to assert it, you will do so without a fragment of proof, since every
document that could substantiate it is in my keeping. You shall see them
for yourself. She is, therefore, in my power; and will any man dare to
tell me how I should temper that power?”

“But your boy, Glencore, your boy!”

“Is my boy’s station in the world a prouder one by being the son of the
notorious Lady Glencore, or as the offspring of a nameless mistress?
What avail to him that he should have a title stained by _her_ shame?
Where is he to go? In what land is he to live, where her infamy has not
reached? Is it not a thousand times better that he enter life ignoble
and unknown,--to start in the world’s race with what he may of strength
and power,--than drag on an unhonored existence, shunned by his equals,
and only welcome where it is disgrace to find companionship?”

“But you surely have never contemplated all the consequences of this
rash resolve. It is the extinction of an ancient title, the alienation
of a great estate, when once you have declared your boy illegitimate.”

“He is a beggar: I know it; the penalty he must pay is a heavy one. But
think of _her_, Upton,--think of the haughty Viscountess, revelling in
splendor, and, even in all her shame, the flattered, welcomed guest of
that rotten, corrupt society she lives in. Imagine her in all the pride
of wealth and beauty, sought after, adulated, worshipped as she is,
suddenly struck down by the brand of this disgrace, and left upon the
world without fortune, without rank, without even a name. To be shunned
like a leper by the very meanest of those it had once been an honor when
she recognized them. Picture to yourself this woman, degraded to the
position of all that is most vile and contemptible. She, that scarcely
condescended to acknowledge as her equals the best-born and the highest,
sunk down to the hopeless infamy of a mistress. They tell me she
laughed on the day I fainted at seeing her entering the San Carlos at
Naples,--laughed as they carried me down the steps into the fresh air!
Will she laugh now, think you? Shall I be called ‘Le Pauvre Sire’
when she hears this? Was there ever a vengeance more terrible, more
complete?”

“Again, I say, Glencore, you have no right to involve others in the
penalty of her fault. Laying aside every higher motive, you can have no
more right to deny your boy’s claim to his rank and fortune than I or
any one else. It cannot be alienated nor extinguished; by his birth he
became the heir to your title and estates.”

“He has no birth, sir, he is a bastard: who shall deny it? _You_ may,”
 added he, after a second’s pause; “but where’s your proof? Is not every
probability as much against you as all documentary evidence, since none
will ever believe that I could rob myself of the succession, and make
over my fortune to Heaven knows what remote relation?”

“And do you expect me to become a party to this crime?” asked Upton,
gravely.

“You balked me in one attempt at vengeance, and I think you owe me a
reparation!”

“Glencore,” said Upton, solemnly, “we are both of us men of the
world,--men who have seen life in all its varied aspects sufficiently to
know the hollowness of more than half the pretension men trade upon as
principle; we have witnessed mean actions and the very lowest motives
amongst the highest in station; and it is not for either of us to affect
any overstrained estimate of men’s honor and good faith; but I say to
you, in all sincerity, that not alone do I refuse you all concurrence in
the act you meditate, but I hold myself open to denounce and frustrate
it.”

“You do!” cried Glencore, wildly, while with a bound he sat up in his
bed, grasping the curtain convulsively for support.

“Be calm, Glencore, and listen to me patiently.”

“You declare that you will use the confidence of this morning against
me!” cried Glencore, while the lines in his face became indented more
deeply, and his bloodless lips quivered with passion. “You take your
part with _her!_”

“I only ask that you would hear me.”

“You owe me four thousand five hundred pounds, Sir Horace Upton,”
 said Glencore, in a voice barely above a whisper, but every accent of
which was audible.

“I know it, Glencore,” said Upton, calmly. “You helped me by a loan of
that sum in a moment of great difficulty. Your generosity went farther,
for you took, what nobody else would, my personal security.”

Glencore made no reply, but, throwing back the bedclothes, slowly and
painfully arose, and with tottering and uncertain steps approached a
table. With a trembling hand he unlocked a drawer, and taking out a
paper, opened and scanned it over.

“There’s your bond, sir,” said he, with a hollow, cavernous voice, as
he threw it into the fire, and crushed it down into the flames with a
poker. “There is now nothing between us. You are free to do your worst!”
 And as he spoke, a few drops of dark blood trickled from his nostril,
and he fell senseless upon the floor.



CHAPTER XI. SOME LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF DIPLOMATIC LIFE

There is a trait in the lives of great diplomatists of which it is just
possible some one or other of my readers may not have heard, which is,
that none of them have ever attained to any great eminence without an
attachment--we can find no better word for it--to some woman of superior
understanding who has united within herself great talents for society
with a high and soaring ambition.

They who only recognize in the world of politics the dry details of
ordinary parliamentary business, poor-law questions, sanitary rules,
railroad bills, and colonial grants can form but a scanty notion of the
excitement derived from the high interests of party, and the great game
played by about twenty mighty gamblers, with the whole world for the
table, and kingdoms for counters. In this “grand rôle” women perform no
ignoble part; nay, it were not too much to say that theirs is the very
motive-power of the whole vast machinery.

Had we any right to step beyond the limits of our story for
illustration, it would not be difficult to quote names enough to show
that we are speaking not at hazard, but “from book,” and that great
events derive far less of their impulse from “the lords” than from “the
ladies of creation.” Whatever be the part they take in these contests,
their chief attention is ever directed, not to the smaller battle-field
of home questions, but to the greater and wider campaign of
international politics. Men may wrangle and hair-split, and divide about
a harbor bill or a road cession; but women occupy themselves in devising
how thrones may be shaken and dynasties disturbed,--how frontiers may be
changed, and nationalities trafficked; for, strange as it may seem,
the stupendous incidents which mould human destinies are more under the
influence of passion and intrigue than the commonest events of every-day
life.

Our readers may, and not very unreasonably, begin to suspect that it was
in some moment of abstraction we wrote “Glencore” at the head of these
pages, and that these speculations are but the preface to some very
abstruse reflections upon the political condition of Europe. But no;
they are simply intended as a prelude to the fact that Sir Horace Upton
was not exempt from the weakness of his order, and that he, too, reposed
his trust upon a woman’s judgment.

The name of his illustrious guide was the Princess Sabloukoff,
by birth a Pole, but married to a Russian of vast wealth and high
family, from whom she separated early in life, to mingle in the
world with all the “prestige” of position, riches, and--greater than
either--extreme beauty, and a manner of such fascination as made her
name of European celebrity.

When Sir Horace first met her, he was the junior member of our Embassy
at Naples, and she the distinguished leader of fashion in that city.
We are not about to busy ourselves with the various narratives which
professed to explain her influence at Court, or the secret means to
which she owed her ascendency over royal highnesses, and her sway over
cardinals. Enough that she possessed such, and that the world knew it.
The same success attended her at Vienna and at Paris. She was courted
and sought after everywhere; and if her arrival was not fêted with the
public demonstrations that await royalty, it was assuredly an event
recognized with all that could flatter her vanity or minister to her
self-esteem.

When Sir Horace was presented to her as an Attaché, she simply bowed and
smiled. He renewed his acquaintance some ten years later as a Secretary,
when she vouchsafed to say she remembered him. A third time, after a
lapse of years, he came before her as a Chargé d’Affaires, when she
conversed with him; and lastly, when time had made him a Minister, and
with less generosity had laid its impress upon herself, she gave him her
hand, and said,--

“My dear Horace, how charming to see an old friend, if you will be good
enough to let me call you so.”

And he was so; he accepted the friendship as frankly as it was
proffered. He knew that time was when he could have no pretension to
this distinction: but the beautiful Princess was no longer young; the
fascinations she had wielded were already a kind of Court tradition;
archdukes and ambassadors were no more her slaves; nor was she the
terror of jealous queens and Court favorites. Sir Horace knew all this;
but he also knew that, she being such, his ambition had never dared
to aspire to her friendship, and it was only in her days of declining
fortune that he could hope for such distinction.

All this may seem very strange and very odd, dear reader; but we live
in very strange and very odd times, and more than one-half the world
is only living on “second-hand,”--second-hand shawls and second-hand
speeches, second-hand books, and Court suits and opinions are all rife;
and why not second-hand friendships?

Now, the friendship between a bygone beauty of forty--and we will not
say how many more years--and a hackneyed, half-disgusted man of the
world, of the same age, is a very curious contract. There is no love
in it; as little is there any strong tie of esteem: but there is a
wonderful bond of self-interest and mutual convenience. Each seems to
have at last found “one that understands him;” similarity of pursuit
has engendered similarity of taste. They have each seen the world from
exactly the same point of view, and they have come out of it equally
heart-wearied and tired, stored with vast resources of social knowledge,
and with a keen insight into every phase of that complex machinery by
which one-half the world cheats the other.

Madame de Sabloukoff was still handsome; she had far more than what
is ill-naturedly called the remains of good looks. She had a brilliant
complexion, lustrous dark eyes, and a profusion of the most beautiful
hair. She was, besides, a most splendid dresser. Her toilet was the very
perfection of taste, and if a little inclining to over-magnificence, not
the less becoming to one whose whole air and bearing assumed something
of queenly dignity.

In the world of society there is a very great prestige attends those who
have at some one time played a great part in life. The deposed king, the
ex-minister, the banished general, and even the bygone beauty, receive a
species of respectful homage, which the wider world without-doors is not
always ready to accord them. Good breeding, in fact, concedes what mere
justice might deny; and they who have to fall back upon “souvenirs” for
their greatness, always find their advantage in associating with the
class whose prerogative is good manners.

The Princess Sabloukoff was not, however, one of those who can live upon
the interest of a bygone fame. She saw that, when the time of coquetry
and its fascinations has passed, still, with faculties like hers,
there was yet a great game to be played. Hitherto she had only studied
characters; now she began to reflect upon events. The transition was
an easy one, to which her former knowledge contributed largely its
assistance. There was scarcely a royalty, hardly a leading personage, in
Europe she did not know personally and well. She had lived in intimacy
with ministers, and statesmen, and great politicians. She knew them
in all that “life of the _salon_” where men alternately expand into
frankness, and practise the wily devices of their crafty callings. She
had seen them in all the weaknesses, too, of inferior minds, eager after
small objects, tormented by insignificant cares. They who habitually
dealt with these mighty personages only beheld them in their dignity of
station, or surrounded by the imposing accessories of office. What an
advantage, then, to regard them closer and nearer,--to be aware of their
shortcomings, and acquainted with the secret springs of their ambitions!

The Princess and Sir Horace very soon saw that each needed the other.
When Robert Macaire accidentally met an accomplished gamester who
“turned the king” as often as he did, and could reciprocate every
trick and artifice with him, he threw down the cards, saying,
“Embrassons-nous, nous sommes frères!” Now, the illustration is a very
ignoble one, but it conveys no very inexact idea of the bond which
united these two distinguished individuals.

Sir Horace was one of those fine, acute intelligences which may
be gapped and blunted if applied to rough work, but are splendid
instruments where you would cut cleanly and cut deep. She saw this at
once. He, too, recognized in her a wonderful knowledge of life, joined
to vast powers of employing it with profit. No more was wanting to
establish a friendship between them. Dispositions must be, to a certain
degree, different between those who are to live together as friends, but
tastes must be alike. Theirs were so. They had the same veneration for
the same things, the same regard for the same celebrities, and the same
contempt for the small successes which were engaging the minds of
many around them. If the Princess had a real appreciation of the fine
abilities of Sir Horace, he estimated at their full value all the
resources of her wondrous tact and skill, and the fascinations which
even yet surrounded her.

Have we said enough to explain the terms of this alliance, or must we
make one more confession, and own that her insidious praise--a flattery
too delicate and fine ever to be committed to absolute eulogy--convinced
Sir Horace that she alone, of all the world, was able to comprehend the
vast stores of his knowledge, and the wide measure of his capacity as a
statesman?

In the great game of statecraft, diplomatists are not above looking into
each other’s hands; but this must always be accomplished by means of
a confederate. How terribly alike are all human rogueries, whether the
scene be a conference at Vienna, or the tent of a thimblerig at Ascot!
La Sabloukoff was unrivalled in the art. She knew how to push raillery
and _persiflage_ to the very frontiers of truth, and even peep over and
see what lay beyond. Sir Horace traded on the material with which she
supplied him, and acquired the reputation of being all that was crafty
and subtle in diplomacy.

How did Upton know this? Whence came he by that? What mysterious source
of information is he possessed of? Who could have revealed such a secret
to him? were questions often asked in that dreary old drawing-room
of Downing Street, where men’s destinies are shaped, and the fate of
millions decided, from four o’clock to six of an afternoon.

Often and often were the measures of the Cabinet shaped by the tidings
which arrived with all the speed of a foreign courier; over and over
again were the speeches in Parliament based upon information received
from him. It has even happened that the news from his hand has caused
the telegraph of the Admiralty to signalize the “Thunderer” to put
to sea with all haste. In a word, he was the trusted agent of our
Government, whether ruled by a Whig or a Tory, and his despatches were
ever regarded as a sure warranty for action.

The English Minister at a Foreign Court labors under one great
disadvantage, which is, that his policy, and all the consequences that
are to follow it, are rarely, if ever, shaped with any reference to the
state of matters then existing in his own country. Absorbed as he is in
great European questions, how can he follow with sufficient attention
the course of events at home, or recognize, in the signs and tokens of
the division list, the changeful fortunes of party? He may be advising
energy when the cry is all for temporizing; counselling patience and
submission, when the nation is eager for a row; recommend religious
concessions in the very week that Exeter Hall is denouncing toleration;
or actually suggesting aid to a Government that a popular orator has
proclaimed to be everything that is unjust and ignominious.

It was Sir Horace Upton’s fortune to have fallen into one of these
embarrassments. He had advised the Home Government to take some
measures, or at least look with favor on certain movements of the Poles
in Russia, in order the better to obtain some concessions then required
from the Cabinet of the Czar. The Premier did not approve of the
suggestion, nor was it like to meet acceptance at home. We were in a
pro-Russian fever at the moment. Some mob disturbances at Norwich,
a Chartist meeting at Stockport, and something else in Wales, had
frightened the nation into a hot stage of conservatism; and never
was there such an ill-chosen moment to succor Poles or awaken dormant
nationalities.

Upton’s proposal was rejected. He was even visited with one of those
disagreeable acknowledgments by which the Foreign Office reminds a
speculative minister that he is going _ultra crepidam_. When an envoy
is snubbed, he always asks for leave of absence. If the castigation
be severe, he invariably, on his return to England, goes to visit the
Leader of the Opposition. This is the ritual. Sir Horace, however,
only observed it in half. He came home; but after his first morning’s
attendance at the Foreign Office, he disappeared; none saw or heard
of him. He knew well all the value of mystery, and he accordingly
disappeared from public view altogether.

When, therefore, Harcourt’s letter reached him, proposing that he should
visit Glencore, the project came most opportunely; and that he only
accepted it for a day, was in the spirit of his habitual diplomacy,
since he then gave himself all the power of an immediate departure,
or permitted the option of remaining gracefully, in defiance of all
pre-engage-ments, and all plans to be elsewhere. We have been driven,
for the sake of this small fact, to go a great way round in our history;
but we promise our readers that Sir Horace was one of those people whose
motives are never tracked without a considerable _détour_. The reader
knows now why he was at Glencore,--he already knew how.

The terrible interview with Glencore brought back a second relapse of
greater violence than the first, and it was nigh a fortnight ere he was
pronounced out of danger. It was a strange life that Harcourt and Upton
led in that dreary interval. Guests of one whose life was in utmost
peril, they met in that old gallery each day to talk, in half-whispered
sentences, over the sick man’s case, and his chances of recovery.

Harcourt frankly told Upton that the first relapse was the consequence
of a scene between Glencore and himself. Upton made no similar
confession. He reflected deeply, however, over all that had passed, and
came to the conclusion that, in Glencore’s present condition, opposition
might prejudice his chance of recovery, but never avail to turn him from
his project. He also set himself to study the boy’s character, and found
it, in all respects, the very type of his father’s. Great bashfulness,
united to great boldness, timidity, and distrust, were there side by
side with a rash, impetuous nature that would hesitate at nothing in
pursuit of an object. Pride, however, was the great principle of his
being,--the good and evil motive of all that was in him. He had pride
on every subject. His name, his rank, his station, a consciousness of
natural quickness, a sense of aptitude to learn whatever came before
him,--all gave him the same feeling of pride.

“There’s a deal of good in that lad,” said Harcourt to Upton, one
evening, as the boy had left the room; “I like his strong affection
for his father, and that unbounded faith he seems to have in Glencore’s
being better than every one else in the world.”

“It is an excellent religion, my dear Harcourt, if it could only last!”
 said the diplomat, smiling amiably.

“And why should n’t it last?” asked the other, impatiently.

“Just because nothing lasts that has its origin in ignorance. The boy
has seen nothing of life, has had no opportunity for forming a judgment
or instituting a comparison between any two objects. The first shot
that breaches that same fortress of belief, down will come the whole
edifice!”

“You ‘d give a lad to the Jesuits, then, to be trained up in every
artifice and distrust?”

“Far from it, Harcourt. I think their system a mistake all through. The
science of life must be self-learned, and it is a slow acquisition.
All that education can do is to prepare the mind to receive it. Now, to
employ the first years of a boy’s life by storing him with prejudices,
is just to encumber a vessel with a rotten cargo that she must throw
overboard before she can load with a profitable freight.”

“And is it in that category you’d class his love for his father?” asked
the Colonel.

“Of course not; but any unnatural or exaggerated estimate of him is a
great error, to lead to an equally unfair depreciation when the time of
deception is past. To be plain, Harcourt, is that boy fitted to enter
one of our great public schools, stand the hard, rough usage of his own
equals, and buffet it as you or I have done?”

“Why not? or, at least, why should n’t he become so after a month or
two?”

“Just because in that same month or two he’d either die broken-hearted,
or plunge his knife into the heart of some comrade who insulted him.”

“Not a bit of it. You don’t know him at all. Charley is a fine
give-and-take fellow; a little proud, perhaps, because he lives apart
from all that are his equals. Let Glencore just take courage to send him
to Harrow or Rugby, and my life on it, but he ‘ll be the manliest fellow
in the school.”

“I ‘ll undertake, without Harrow or Rugby, that the boy should become
something even greater than that,” said Upton, smiling.

“Oh, I know you sneer at my ideas of what a young fellow ought to be,”
 said Harcourt; “but, somehow, you did not neglect these same pursuits
yourself. You can shoot as well as most men, and you ride better than
any I know of.”

“One likes to do a little of everything, Harcourt,” said Upton, not at
all displeased at this flattery; “and somehow it never suits a fellow,
who really feels that he has fair abilities, to do anything badly; so
that it comes to this: one does it well, or not at all. Now, you never
heard me touch the piano?”

“Never.”

“Just because I’m only an inferior performer, and so I only play when
perfectly alone.”

“Egad, if I could only master a waltz, or one of the melodies, I’d be at
it whenever any one would listen to me.”

“You’re a good soul, and full of amiability, Harcourt,” said Upton; but
the words sounded very much as though he said, “You’re a dear, good,
sensible creature, without an atom of self-respect or esteem.”

Indeed, so conscious was Harcourt that the expression meant no
compliment that he actually reddened and looked away. At last he took
courage to renew the conversation, and said,--

“And what would you advise for the boy, then?”

“I ‘d scarcely lay down a system; but I ‘ll tell you what I would not
do. I ‘d not bore him with mathematics; I ‘d not put his mind on the
stretch in any direction; I ‘d not stifle the development of any taste
that may be struggling within him, but rather encourage and foster it,
since it is precisely by such an indication you ‘ll get some clew to his
nature. Do you understand me?”

“I ‘m not quite sure I do; but I believe you’d leave him to something
like utter idleness.”

“What to _you_, my dear Harcourt, would be utter idleness, I’ve no
doubt; but not to him, perhaps.”

Again the Colonel looked mortified, but evidently knew not how to resent
this new sneer.

“Well,” said he, after a pause, “the lad will not require to be a
genius.”

“So much the better for him, probably; at all events, so much the better
for his friends, and all who are to associate with him.”

Here he looked fixedly at Upton, who smiled a most courteous
acquiescence in the opinion,--a politeness that made poor Harcourt
perfectly ashamed of his own rudeness, and he continued hurriedly,--

“He’ll have abundance of money. The life Glencore leads here will be
like a long minority to him. A fine old name and title, and the deuce is
in it if he can’t rub through life pleasantly enough with such odds.”

“I believe you are right, after all, Harcourt,” said Upton, sighing, and
now speaking in a far more natural tone; “it _is_ ‘rubbing through’ with
the best of us, and no more!”

“If you mean that the process is a very irksome one, I enter my dissent
at once,” broke in Harcourt. “I ‘m not ashamed to own that I like life
prodigiously; and if I be spared to say so, I ‘m sure I ‘ll have the
same story to tell fifteen or twenty years hence; and yet I ‘m not a
genius!”

“No,” said Upton, smiling a bland assent.

“Nor a philosopher either,” said Harcourt, irritated at the
acknowledgment.

“Certainly not,” chimed in Upton, with another smile.

“Nor have I any wish to be one or the other,” rejoined Harcourt,
now really provoked. “I know right well that if I were in trouble or
difficulty to-morrow,--if I wanted a friend to help me with a loan of
some thousand pounds,--it is not to a genius or a philosopher I ‘d look
for the assistance.”

It is ever a chance shot that explodes a magazine, and so is it that a
random speech is sure to hit the mark that has escaped all the efforts
of skilful direction.

Upton winced and grew pale at these last words, and he fixed his
penetrating gray eyes upon the speaker with a keenness all his own.
Harcourt, however, bore the look without the slightest touch of
uneasiness. The honest Colonel had spoken without any hidden meaning,
nor had he the slightest intention of a personal application in his
words. Of this fact Upton appeared soon to be convinced, for his
features gradually recovered their wonted calmness.

“How perfectly right you are, my dear Harcourt,” said he, mildly. “The
man who expects to be happier by the possession of genius is like one
who would like to warm himself through a burning-glass.”

“Egad, that is a great consolation for us slow fellows,” said Harcourt,
laughing; “and now what say you to a game at _écarté_; for I believe it
is just the one solitary thing I am more than your match in?”

“I accept inferiority in a great many others,” said Upton, blandly; “but
I must decline the challenge, for I have a letter to write, and our post
here starts at daybreak.”

“Well, I’d rather carry the whole bag than indite one of its contents,”
 said the Colonel, rising; and, with a hearty shake of the hand, he left
the room.

A letter was fortunately not so great an infliction to Upton, who opened
his desk at once, and with a rapid hand traced the following lines:--

Mv dear Princess,--My last will have told you how and when I came here;
I wish I but knew in what way to explain why I still remain! Imagine
the dreariest desolation of Calabria in a climate of fog and sea-drift:
sunless skies, leafless trees, impassable roads, the out-door comforts;
the joys within depending on a gloomy old house, with a few gloomier
inmates, and a host on a sick bed. Yet, with all this, I believe I am
better; the doctor, a strange, unsophisticated creature, a cross between
Galen and Caliban, seems to have hit off what the great dons of science
never could detect,--the true seat of my malady. He says--and he really
reasons out his case ingeniously--that the brain has been working for
the inferior nerves, not limiting itself to cerebral functions, but
actually performing the humbler office of muscular direction, and so
forth; in fact, a field-marshal doing duty for a common soldier! I
almost fancy I can corroborate his view, from internal sensations; I
have a kind of secret instinct that he is right. Poor brain! why it
should do the work of another department, with abundance of occupation
of its own, I cannot make out. But to turn to something else. This is
not a bad refuge just now. They cannot make out where I am, and all the
inquiries at my club are answered by a vague impression that I have gone
back to Germany, which the people at F. O. are aware is not the case.
I have already told you that my suggestion has been negatived in the
Cabinet: it was ill-timed, Allington says; but I ventured to remind his
Lordship that a policy requiring years to develop, and more years still
to push to a profitable conclusion, is not to be reduced to the category
of mere _à propos_ measures. He was vexed, and replied weakly and
angrily. I rejoined, and left him. Next day he sent for me, but my reply
was, “I was leaving town;” and I left. I don’t want the Bath, because it
would be “ill-timed;” so that they must give me Vienna, or be satisfied
to see me in the House and the Opposition!

Your tidings of Brekenoff came exactly in the nick. Allington said
pompously that they were sure of him; so I just said, “Ask him if they
would like our sending a Consular Agent to Cracow?” It seems that he was
so flurried by a fancied detection that he made a full acknowledgment
of all. But even at this, Allington takes no alarm. The malady of the
Treasury benches is deafness, with a touch of blindness. What a cumbrous
piece of bungling machinery is this boasted “representative government”
 of ours! No promptitude, no secrecy! Everything debated, and discussed,
and discouraged, before begun; every blot-hit for an antagonist to
profit by! Even the characters of our public men exposed, and their
weaknesses displayed to view, so that every state of Europe may see
where to wound us, and through whom! There is no use in the Countess
remaining here any longer; the King never noticed her at the last ball;
she is angry at it, and if she shows her irritation she ‘ll spoil all. I
always thought Josephine would fail in England. It is, indeed, a widely
different thing to succeed in the small Courts of Germany, and our great
whirlpool of St. James. _You_ could do it, my dear friend; but where is
the other dare attempt it?

Until I hear from you again I can come to no resolution. One thing is
clear,--they do not, or they will not, see the danger I have pointed
out to them. All the home policy of our country is drifting, day by
day, towards a democracy: how, in the name of common sense, then, is our
foreign policy to be maintained at the standard of the Holy Alliance?
What an absurd juxtaposition is there between popular rights and
an alliance with the Czar! This peril will overtake them one day or
another, and then, to escape from national indignation, the minister,
whoever he may be, will be driven to make war. But I can’t wait for
this; and yet, were I to resign, my resignation would not embarrass
them,--it would irritate and annoy, but not disconcert. Brekenoff will
surely go home on leave. You ought to meet him; he is certain to be at
Ems. It is the refuge of disgraced diplomacy. Try if something cannot be
done with him. He used to say formerly yours were the only dinners now
in Europe. He hates Allington. This feeling, and his love for white
truffles, are, I believe, the only clews to the man. Be sure, however,
that the truffles are Piedmontese; they have a slight flavor of garlic,
rather agreeable than otherwise. Like Josephine’s lisp, it is a defect
that serves for a distinction. The article in the “Beau Monde” was
clever, prettily written, and even well worked out; but state affairs
are never really well treated save by those who conduct them. One must
have played the game himself to understand all the nice subtleties of
the contest. These, your mere reviewer or newspaper scribe never attains
to; and then he has no reserves,--none of those mysterious concealments
that are to negotiations like the eloquent pauses of conversation: the
moment when dialogue ceases, and the real interchange of ideas begins.

The fine touch, the keen _aperçu_, belongs alone to those who have had
to exercise these same qualities in the treatment of great questions;
and hence it is that though the Public be often much struck, and
even enlightened, by the powerful “article” or the able “leader,” the
Statesman is rarely taught anything by the journalist, save the force
and direction of public opinion.

I had a deal to say to you about poor Glencore, whom you tell me
you remember; but, how to say it? He is broken-hearted--literally
broken-hearted--by her desertion of him. It was one of those
ill-assorted leagues which cannot hold together. Why they did not
see this, and make the best of it,--sensibly, dispassionately, even
amicably,--it is difficult to say. An Englishman, it would seem,
must always hate his wife if she cannot love him; and, after all, how
involuntary are all affections, and what a severe penalty is this for an
unwitting offence!

He ponders over this calamity just as if it were the crushing stroke by
which a man’s whole career was to be finished forever.

The stupidity of all stupidities is in these cases to fly from the world
and avoid society. By doing this a man rears a barrier he never can
repass; he proclaims aloud his sentiment of the injury, quite forgetting
all the offence he is giving to the hundred and fifty others who, in the
same predicament as himself, are by no means disposed to turn hermits
on account of it. Men make revolutionary governments, smash dynasties,
transgress laws, but they cannot oppose _convenances!_

I need scarcely say that there is nothing to be gained by reason-ing
with him. He has worked himself up to a chronic fury, and talks of
vengeance all day long, like a Corsican. For company here I have an
old brother officer of my days of tinsel and pipe-clay,--an excellent
creature, whom I amuse myself by tormenting. There is also Glencore’s
boy,--a strange, dreamy kind of haughty fellow, an exaggeration of
his father in disposition, but with good abilities. These are not the
elements of much social agreeability; but you know, dear friend, how
little I stand in need of what is called company. Your last letter,
charming as it was, has afforded me all the companionship I could
desire. I have re-read it till I know it by heart. I could almost chide
you for that delightful little party in my absence, but of course it
was, as all you ever do is, perfectly right; and, after all, I am,
perhaps, not sorry that you had those people when I was away, so that we
shall be more _chez nous_ when we meet. But when is that to be? Who can
tell? My medico insists upon five full weeks for my cure. Allington is
very likely, in his present temper, to order me back to my post. You
seem to think that you must be in Berlin when Seckendorf arrives, so
that--But I will not darken the future by gloomy forebodings. I _could_
leave this--that is, if any urgency required it--at once; but, if
possible, it is better I should remain at least a little longer. My last
meeting with Glencore was unpleasant. Poor fellow! his temper is not
what it used to be, and he is forgetful of what is due to one whose
nerves are in the sad state of mine. You shall hear all my complainings
when we meet, dear Princess; and with this I kiss your hand, begging you
to accept all “_mes hommages” et mon estime_,

H. U.

Your letter must be addressed “Leenane, Ireland.” Your last had only
“Glencore” on it, and not very legible either, so that it made what I
wished _I_ could do, “the tour of Scotland,” before reaching me.


Sir Horace read over his letter carefully, as though it had been
a despatch, and, when he had done, folded it up with an air of
satisfaction. He had said nothing that he wished unsaid, and he had
mentioned a little about everything he desired to touch upon. He then
took his “drops” from a queer-looking little phial he carried about with
him, and having looked at his face in a pocket-glass, he half closed his
eyes in revery.

Strange, confused visions were they that flitted through his brain.
Thoughts of ambition the most daring, fancies about health, speculations
in politics, finance, religion, literature, the arts, society,--all came
and went. Plans and projects jostled each other at every instant. Now
his brow would darken, and his thin lips close tightly, as some painful
impression crossed him; now again a smile, a slight laugh even, betrayed
the passing of some amusing conception. It was easy to see how such
a nature could suffice to itself, and how little he needed of that
give-and-take which companionship supplies. He could--to steal a figure
from our steam language--he could “bank his fires,” and await any
emergency, and, while scarcely consuming any fuel, prepare for the most
trying demand upon his powers. A hasty movement of feet overhead, and
the sound of voices talking loudly, aroused him from his reflections,
while a servant entered abruptly to say that Lord Glencore wished to see
him immediately.

“Is his Lordship worse?” asked Upton.

“No, sir; but he was very angry with the young lord this evening about
something, and they say that with the passion he opened the bandage on
his head, and set the vein a-bleed-ing again. Billy Traynor is there now
trying to stop it.”

“I’ll go upstairs,” said Sir Horace, rising, and beginning to fortify
himself with caps, and capes, and comforters,--precautions that he never
omitted when moving from one room to the other.



CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT AT SEA

Glencore’s chamber presented a scene of confusion and dismay as Upton
entered. The sick man had torn off the bandage from his temples, and so
roughly as to reopen the half-closed artery, and renew the bleeding. Not
alone the bedclothes and the curtains, but the faces of the attendants
around him, were stained with blood, which seemed the more ghastly from
contrast with their pallid cheeks. They moved hurriedly to and fro,
scarcely remembering what they were in search of, and evidently deeming
his state of the greatest peril. Traynor, the only one whose faculties
were unshaken by the shock, sat quietly beside the bed, his fingers
firmly compressed upon the orifice of the vessel, while with the other
hand he motioned to them to keep silence.

Glencore lay with closed eyes, breathing long and labored inspirations,
and at times convulsed by a slight shivering. His face, and even his
lips, were bloodless, and his eyelids of a pale, livid hue. So terribly
like the approach of death was his whole appearance that Upton whispered
in the doctor’s ear,--

“Is it over? Is he dying?”

“No, Upton,” said Glencore; for, with the acute hearing of intense
nervousness, he had caught the words. “It is not so easy to die.”

“There, now,--no more talkin’,--no discoorsin’--azy and quiet is now the
word.”

“Bind it up and leave me,--leave me with _him_;” and Glencore pointed to
Upton.

“I dar’ n’t move out of this spot,” said Billy, addressing Upton. “You’d
have the blood coming out, _per saltim_, if I took away my finger.”

“You must be patient, Glencore,” said Upton, gently; “you know I’m
always ready when you want me.”

“And you’ll not leave this,--you’ll not desert me?” cried the other,
eagerly.

“Certainly not; I have no thought of going away.”

“There, now, hould your prate, both of ye, or, by my conscience, I ‘ll
not take the responsibility upon me,--I will not!” said Billy, angrily.
“‘Tis just a disgrace and a shame that ye haven’t more discretion.”

Glencore’s lips moved with a feeble attempt at a smile, and in his faint
voice he said,--

“We must obey the doctor, Upton; but don’t leave me.”

Upton moved a chair to the bedside, and sat down without a word.

“Ye think an artery is like a canal, with a lock-gate to it, I believe,”
 said Billy, in a low, grumbling voice, to Upton, “and you forget all its
vermicular motion, as ould Fabricius called it, and that it is only by
a coagalum, a kind of barrier, like a mud breakwater, that it can be
plugged. Be off out of that, ye spalpeens! be off, every one of yez, and
leave us tranquil and paceable!”

This summary command was directed to the various servants, who were
still moving about the room in imaginary occupation. The room was at
last cleared of all save Upton and Billy, who sat by the bedside, his
hand still resting on the sick man’s forehead. Soothed by the stillness,
and reduced by the loss of blood, Glencore sank into a quiet sleep,
breathing softly and gently as a child.

“Look at him now,” whispered Billy to Upton, “and you ‘ll see what
philosophy there is in ascribin’ to the heart the source of all our
emotions. He lies there azy and comfortable just because the great
bellows is working smoothly and quietly. They talk about the brain, and
the spinal nerves, and the soliar plexus; but give a man a wake, washy
circulation, and what is he? He’s just like a chap with the finest
intentions in the world, but not a sixpence in his pocket to carry them
out! A fine well-regulated, steady-batin’ heart is like a credit on the
bank,--you draw on it, and your draft is n’t dishonored!”

“What was it brought on this attack?” asked Upton, in a whisper.

“A shindy he had with the boy. I was n’t here; there was nobody by. But
when I met Master Charles on the stairs, he flew past me like lightning,
and I just saw by a glimpse that something was wrong. He rushed out with
his head bare, and his coat all open, and it sleetin’ terribly! Down he
went towards the lough, at full speed, and never minded all my callin’
after him.”

“Has he returned?” asked Upton.

“Not as I know, sir. We were too much taken up with the lord to ask for
him.”

“I ‘ll just step down and see,” said Sir Horace, who arose, and left the
room on tiptoe.

To Upton’s inquiry all made the same answer. None had seen the young
lord,--none could give any clew as to whither he had gone. Sir Horace
at once hastened to Harcourt’s room, and, after some vigorous shakes,
succeeded in awakening the Colonel, and by dint of various repetitions
at last put him in possession of all that had occurred.

“We must look after the lad,” cried Harcourt, springing from his bed,
and dressing with all haste. “He is a rash, hot-headed fellow; but
even if it were nothing else, he might get his death in such a night as
this.”

The wind dashed wildly against the window-panes as he spoke, and the old
timbers of the frame rattled fearfully.

“Do you remain here, Upton. I’ll go in search of the boy. Take care
Glencore hears nothing of his absence.” And with a promptitude that
bespoke the man of action, Harcourt descended the stairs and set out.

The night was pitch dark; sweeping gusts of wind bore the rain along in
torrents, and the thunder rolled incessantly, its clamor increased by
the loud beating of the waves as they broke upon the rocks. Upton had
repeated to Harcourt that Billy saw the boy going towards the sea-shore,
and in this direction he now followed. His frequent excursions had
familiarized him with the place, so that even at night Harcourt found
no difficulty in detecting the path and keeping it. About half an hour’s
brisk walking brought him to the side of the lough, and the narrow
flight of steps cut in the rock, which descended to the little
boat-quay. Here he halted, and called out the boy’s name several times.
The sea, however, was running mountains high, and an immense drift,
sweeping over the rocks, fell in sheets of scattered foam beyond them;
so that Harcourt’s voice was drowned by the uproar. A small shealing
under the shelter of the rock formed the home of a boatman; and at the
crazy door of this humble cot Harcourt now knocked violently.

The man answered the summons at once, assuring him that he had not heard
or seen any one since the night closed in; adding, at the same time,
that in such a tempest a boat’s crew might have landed without his
knowing it.

“To be sure,” continued he, after a pause, “I heard a chain rattlin’ on
the rock soon after I went to bed, and I ‘ll Just step down and see if
the yawl is all right.”

Scarcely had he left the spot, when his voice was heard calling out from
below,--

“She’s gonel the yawl is gone! the lock is broke with a stone, and she’s
away!”

“How could this be? No boat could live in such a sea,” cried Harcourt,
eagerly.

“She could go out fast enough, sir. The wind is northeast, due; but how
long she’ll keep the say is another matter.”

“Then he ‘ll be lost!” cried Harcourt, wildly.

“Who, sir,--who is it?” asked the man.

“Your master’s son!” cried he, wringing his hands in anguish.

“Oh, murther! murther!” screamed the boatman; “we ‘ll never see him
again. ‘T is out to say, into the wild ocean, he’ll be blown!”

“Is there no shelter,--no spot he could make for?”

“Barrin’ the islands, there’s not a spot between this and America.”

“But he could make the islands,--you are sure of that?”

“If the boat was able to live through the say. But sure I know him well;
he ‘ll never take in a reef or sail, but sit there, with the helm hard
up, just never carin’ what came of him! Oh, musha! musha! what druv him
out such a night as this!”

“Come, it’s no time for lamenting, my man; get the launch ready, and let
us follow him. Are you afraid?”

“Afraid!” replied the man, with a touch of scorn in his voice; “faix,
it’s little fear troubles me. But, may be, you won’t like to be in
her yourself when she’s once out. I ‘ve none belongin’ to me,--father,
mother, chick or child; but you may have many a one that’s near to you.”

“My ties, are, perhaps, as light as your own,” said Harcourt. “Come,
now, be alive. I’ll put ten gold guineas in your hand if you can
overtake him.”

“I’d rather see his face than have two hundred,” said the man, as,
springing into the boat, he began to haul out the tackle from under the
low half-deck, and prepare for sea.

“Is your honor used to a boat, or ought I to get another man with me?”
 asked the sailor.

“Trust me, my good fellow; I have had more sailing than yourself, and in
more treacherous seas too,” said Harcourt, who, throwing off his cloak,
proceeded to help the other, with an address that bespoke a practised
hand.

The wind blew strongly off the shore, so that scarcely was the foresail
spread than the boat began to move rapidly through the water, dashing
the sea over her bows, and plunging wildly through the waves.

“Give me a hand now with the halyard,” said the boatman; “and when
the mainsail is set, you ‘ll see how she ‘ll dance over the top of the
waves, and never wet us.”

“She ‘s too light in the water, if anything,” said Harcourt, as the boat
bounded buoyantly under the increased press of canvas.

“Your honor’s right; she’d do better with half a ton of iron in her.
Stand by, sir, always, with the peak halyards; get the sail aloft in,
when I give you the word.”

“Leave the tiller to me, my man,” said Harcourt, taking it as he spoke.
“You ‘ll soon see that I ‘m no new hand at the work.”

“She’s doing it well,” said the man. “Keep her up! keep her up! there’s
a spit of land runs out here; in a few minutes more we’ll have say room
enough.”

The heavier roll of the waves, and the increased force of the wind, soon
showed that they had gained the open sea; while the atmosphere, relieved
of the dark shadows of the mountain, seemed lighter and thinner than in
shore.

“We ‘re to make for the islands, you say, sir?”

“Yes. What distance are they off?”

“About eighteen miles. Two hours, if the wind lasts, and we can bear
it.”

“And could the yawl stand this?” said Harcourt, as a heavy sea struck
the bow, and came in a cataract over them.

“Better than ourselves, if she was manned. Luff! luff!--that’s it!” And
as the boat turned up to wind, sheets of spray and foam flew over her.
“Master Charles hasn’t his equal for steerin’, if he wasn’t alone. Keep
her there!--now! steady, sir!”

“Here’s a squall coming,” cried Harcourt; “I hear it hissing.”

Down went the peak, but scarcely in time, for the wind, catching the
sail, laid the boat gunwale under. After a struggle, she righted, but
with nearly one-third of her filled with water.

“I’d take in a reef, or two reefs,” said the man; “but if she could
n’t rise to the say, she ‘ll fill and go down. We must carry on, at all
events.”

“So say I. It’s no time to shorten sail, with such a sea running.”

The boat now flew through the water, the sea itself impelling her, as
with every sudden gust the waves struck the stern.

“She’s a brave craft,” said Harcourt, as she rose lightly over the great
waves, and plunged down again into the trough of the sea; “but if we
ever get to land again, I’ll have combings round her to keep her dryer.”

“Here it comes!--here it comes, sir!”

Nor were the words well out, when, like a thunder-clap, the wind struck
the sail, and bent the mast over like a whip. For an instant it seemed
as if she were going down by the prow; but she righted again, and,
shivering in every plank, held on her way.

“That ‘s as much as she could do,” said the sailor; “and I would not
like to ax her to do more.”

“I agree with you,” said Harcourt, secretly stealing his feet back again
into his shoes, which he had just kicked off.

“It’s freshening it is every minute,” said the man; “and I’m not sure
that we could make the islands if it lasts.”

“Well,--what then?”

“There’s nothing for it but to be blown out to say,” said he, calmly,
as, having filled his tobacco-pipe, he struck a light and began to
smoke.

“The very thing I was wishing for,” said Harcourt, touching his cigar to
the bright ashes. “How she labors! Do you think she can stand this?”

“She can, if it’s no worse, sir.” “But it looks heavier weather
outside.”

“As well as I can see, it’s only beginnin’.”

Harcourt listened with a species of admiration to the calm and measured
sentiment of the sailor, who, fully conscious of all the danger, yet
never, by a word or gesture, showed that he was flurried or excited.

“You have been out on nights as bad as this, I suppose?” said Harcourt.

“Maybe not quite, sir, for it’s a great say is runnin’; and, with the
wind off shore, we could n’t have this, if there was n’t a storm blowing
farther out.”

“From the westward, you mean?”

“Yes, sir,--a wind coming over the whole ocean, that will soon meet the
land wind.”

“And does that often happen?”

The words were but out, when, with a loud report like a cannon-shot, the
wind reversed the sail, snapping the strong sprit in two, and bringing
down the whole canvas clattering into the boat. With the aid of a
hatchet, the sailor struck off the broken portion of the spar, and
soon cleared the wreck, while the boat, now reduced to a mere foresail,
labored heavily, sinking her prow in the sea at every bound. Her course,
too, was now altered, and she flew along parallel to the shore, the
great cliffs looming through the darkness, and seeming as if close to
them.

“The boy!--the boy!” cried Harcourt; “what has become of him? He never
could have lived through that squall.”

“If the spar stood, there was an end of us, too,” said the sailor;
“she’d have gone down by the stern, as sure as my name is Peter.”

“It is all over by this time,” muttered Harcourt, sorrowfully.

“Pace to him now!” said the sailor, as he crossed himself, and went over
a prayer.

The wind now raged fearfully; claps, like the report of cannon, struck
the frail boat at intervals, and laid her nearly keel uppermost; while
the mast bent like a whip, and every rope creaked and strained to its
last endurance. The deafening noise close at hand told where the waves
were beating on the rock-bound coast, or surging with the deep growl
of thunder through many a cavern. They rarely spoke, save when some
emergency called for a word. Each sat wrapped up in his own dark
reveries, and unwilling to break them. Hours passed thus,--long, dreary
hours of darkness, that seemed like years of suffering, so often in this
interval did life hang in the balance.

As morning began to break with a grayish blue light to the westward,
the wind slightly abated, blowing more steadily, too, and less in sudden
gusts; while the sea rolled in large round waves, unbroken above, and
showing no crest of foam.

“Do you know where we are?” asked Harcourt.

“Yes, sir; we ‘re off the Rooks’ Point, and if we hold on well, we ‘ll
soon be in slacker water.”

“Could the boy have reached this, think you?”

The man shook his head mournfully, without speaking.

“How far are we from Glencore?”

“About eighteen miles, sir; but more by land.”

“You can put me ashore, then, somewhere hereabouts.”

“Yes, sir, in the next bay; there’s a creek we can easily run into.”

“You are quite sure he couldn’t have been blown out to sea?”

“How could he, sir? There’s only one way the wind could dhrive him. If
he isn’t in the Clough Bay, he’s in glory.”

All the anxiety of that dreary night was nothing to what Harcourt now
suffered, in his eagerness to round the Rooks’ Point, and look in the
bay beyond it. Controlling it as he would, still would it break out in
words of impatience and even anger.

“Don’t curse the boat, yer honor,” said Peter, respectfully, but calmly;
“she’s behaved well to us this night, or we ‘d not be here now.”

“But are we to beat about here forever?” asked the other, angrily.

“She’s doin’ well, and we ought to be thankful,” said the man; and
his tone, even more than his words, served to reprove the other’s
impatience. “I’ll try and set the mainsail on her with the remains of
the sprit.”

Harcourt watched him, as he labored away to repair the damaged rigging;
but though he looked at him, his thoughts were far away with poor
Glencore upon his sick bed, in sorrow and in suffering, and perhaps soon
to hear that he was childless. From these he went on to other thoughts.
What could have occurred to have driven the boy to such an act of
desperation? Harcourt invented a hundred imaginary causes, to reject
them as rapidly again. The affection the boy bore to his father seemed
the strongest principle of his nature. There appeared to be no event
possible in which that feeling would not sway and control him. As he
thus ruminated, he was aroused by the sudden cry of the boatman.

“There’s a boat, sir, dismasted, ahead of us, and drifting out to say.”

“I see her!--I see her!” cried Harcourt; “out with the oars, and let’s
pull for her.”

Heavily as the sea was rolling, they now began to pull through the
immense waves, Harcourt turning his head at every instant to watch the
boat, which now was scarcely half a mile ahead of them.

“She’s empty!--there’s no one in her!” said Peter, mournfully, as,
steadying himself by the mast, he cast a look seaward.

“Row on,--let us get beside her,” said Harcourt.

“She’s the yawl!--I know her now,” cried the man.

“And empty?”

“Washed out of her with a say, belike,” said Peter, resuming his oar,
and tugging with all his strength.

A quarter of an hour’s hard rowing brought them close to the dismasted
boat, which, drifting broadside on the sea, seemed at every instant
ready to capsize.

“There’s something in the bottom,--in the stern-sheets!” screamed Peter.
“It’s himself! O blessed Virgin, it’s himself!” And, with a bound, he
sprang from his own boat into the other.

[Illustration: 126]

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.



CHAPTER XIII. A “VOW” ACCOMPLISHED

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.



CHAPTER XIV. BILLY TRAYNOR AND THE COLONEL

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 all our pursuits
     Lifts us high above brutes,’”

--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.



CHAPTER XV. A SICK BED

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.



CHAPTER XVI. THE “PROJECT”

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.”



CHAPTER XVII. A TÊTE-À-TÊTE

When Harcourt was aroused from his sound sleep by Upton, and requested
in the very blandest tones of that eminent diplomatist to lend him every
attention of his “very remarkable faculties,” he was not by any
means certain that he was not engaged in a strange dream; nor was the
suspicion at all dispelled by the revelations addressed to him.

“Just dip the end of that towel in the water, Upton, and give it to me,”
 cried he at last; and then, wiping his face and forehead, said, “Have I
heard you aright,--there was no marriage?”

Upton nodded assent.

“What a shameful way he has treated this poor boy, then!” cried the
other. “I never heard of anything equal to it in cruelty, and I conclude
it was breaking this news to the lad that drove him out to sea on that
night, and brought on this brain fever. By Jove, I ‘d not take _his_
title, and _your_ brains, to have such a sin on my conscience!”

“We are happily not called on to judge the act,” said Upton, cautiously.

“And why not? Is it not every honest man’s duty to reprobate whatever
he detects dishonorable or disgraceful? I do judge him, and sentence him
too, and I say, moreover, that a more cold-blooded piece of cruelty
I never heard of. He trains up this poor boy from childhood to fancy
himself the heir to his station and fortune; he nurses in him all the
pride that only a high rank can cover; and then, when the lad’s years
have brought him to the period when these things assume all their value,
he sends for him to tell him he is a bastard.”

“It is not impossible that I think worse of Glencore’s conduct than you
do yourself,” said Upton, gravely.

“But you never told him so, I’ll be sworn,--you never said to him it
was a rascally action. I’ll lay a hundred pounds on it, you only
expostulated on the inexpediency, or the inconvenience, or some such
trumpery consideration, and did not tell him, in round numbers, that
what he had done was an infamy.”

“Then I fancy you’d lose your money, pretty much as you are losing your
temper,--that is, without getting anything in requital.”

“What did you say to him, then?” said Harcourt, slightly abashed.

“A great deal in the same strain as you have just spoken in, doubtless
not as warm in vituperation, but possibly as likely to produce an
effect; nor is it in the least necessary to dwell upon that. What
Glencore has done, and what I have said about it, both belong to the
past. They are over,--they are irrevocable. It is to what concerns the
present and the future I wish now to address myself, and to interest
you.”

“Why, the boy’s name was in the Peerage,--I read it there myself.”

“My dear Harcourt, you must have paid very little attention to me a
while ago, or you would have understood how that occurred.”

“And here were all the people, the tenantry on the estate, calling
him the young lord, and the poor fellow growing up with the proud
consciousness that the title was his due.”

“There is not a hardship of the case I have not pictured to my own mind
as forcibly as you can describe it,” said Upton; “but I really do not
perceive that any reprobation of the past has in the slightest assisted
me in providing for the future.”

“And then,” murmured Harcourt,--for all the while he was pursuing his
own train of thought, quite irrespective of all Upton was saying,--“and
then he turns him adrift on the world without friend or fortune.”

“It is precisely that he may have both the one and the other that I
have come to confer with you now,” replied Upton. “Glencore has made a
liberal provision for the boy, and asked me to become his guardian. I
have no fancy for the trust, but I did n’t see how I could decline
it. In this letter he assigns to him an income, which shall be legally
secured to him. He commits to me the task of directing his education,
and suggesting some future career, and for both these objects I want
your counsel.”

“Education,--prospects,--why, what are you talking about? A poor fellow
who has not a name, nor a home, nor one to acknowledge him,--what need
has he of education, or what chance of prospects? I’d send him to sea,
and if he wasn’t drowned before he came to manhood, I’d give him his
fortune, whatever it was, and say, ‘Go settle in some of the colonies.’
You have no right to train him up to meet fresh mortifications and
insults in life; to be flouted by every fellow that has a father, and
outraged by every cur whose mother was married.”

“And are the colonies especially inhabited by illegitimate offspring?”
 said Upton, dryly.

“At least he’d not be met with a rebuff at every step he made. The rude
life of toil would be better than the polish of a civilization that
could only reflect upon him.”

“Not badly said, Harcourt,” said Upton, smiling; “but as to the boy, I
have other prospects. He has, if I mistake not, very good faculties. You
estimate them even higher. I don’t see why they should be neglected.
If he merely possess the mediocrity of gifts which make men tolerable
lawyers and safe doctors, why, perhaps, he may turn them into some
channel. If he really can lay claim to higher qualities, they must not
be thrown away.”

“Which means that he ought to be bred up to diplomacy,” said Harcourt.

“Perhaps,” said the other, with a bland inclination of the head.

“And what can an old dragoon like myself contribute to such an object?”
 asked Harcourt.

“You can be of infinite service in many ways,” said Upton; “and for the
present I wish to leave the boy in your care, till I can learn something
about my own destiny. This, of course, I shall know in a few days.
Meanwhile you ‘ll look after him, and as soon as his removal becomes
safe you ‘ll take him away from this,--it does not much matter whither;
probably some healthy, secluded spot in Wales, for a week or two, would
be advisable. Glencore and he must not meet again; if ever they are to
do so, it must be after a considerable lapse of time.”

“Have you thought of a name for him, or is his to be still Massy?” asked
Harcourt, bluntly.

“He may take the maternal name of Glencore’s family, and be called
Doyle, and the settlements could be drawn up in that name.”

“I’ll be shot if I like to have any share in the whole transaction! Some
day or other it will all come out, and who knows how much blame may be
imputed to us, perhaps for actually advising the entire scheme,” said
Harcourt.

“You must see, my dear Harcourt, that you are only refusing aid to
alleviate an evil, and not to devise one. If this boy--”

“Well--well--I give in. I’d rather comply at once than be preached into
acquiescence. Even when you do not convince me, I feel ashamed to oppose
myself to so much cleverness; so, I repeat, I ‘m at your orders.”

“Admirably spoken,” said Upton, with a smile.

“My greatest difficulty of all,” said Harcourt, “will be to meet
Glencore again after this. I know--I feel--I never can forgive him.”

“Perhaps he will not ask forgiveness, Harcourt,” said the other, with
one of his slyest of looks. “Glencore is a strange, self-opinionated
fellow, and has amongst other odd notions that of going the road he
likes best himself. Besides, there is another consideration here, and
with no man will it weigh more than with yourself. Glencore has been
dangerously ill,--at this moment we can scarcely say that he has
recovered; his state is yet one of anxiety and doubt. You are the last
who would forget such infirmity; nor is it necessary to secure your pity
that I should say how seriously the poor fellow is now suffering.”

“I trust he’ll not speak to me about this business,” said Harcourt,
after a pause.

“Very probably he will not. He will know that I have already told you
everything, so that there will be no need of any communication from
him.”

“I wish from my heart and soul I had never come here. I would to Heaven
I had gone away at once, as I first intended. I like that boy; I feel he
has fine stuff in him; and now--”

“Come, come, Harcourt, it’s the fault of all soft-hearted fellows, like
yourself, that their kindliness degenerates into selfishness, and they
have such a regard for their own feelings that they never agree to
anything that wounds them. Just remember that you and I have very small
parts in this drama, and the best way we can do is to fill them without
giving ourselves the airs of chief characters.”

“You’re at your old game, Upton; you are always ready to wet yourself,
provided you give another fellow a ducking.”

“Only if he get a worse one, or take longer to dry after it,” remarked
Upton, laughing.

“Quite true, by Jove!” chimed in the other; “you take special care
to come off best. And now you ‘re going,” added he, as Upton rose to
withdraw, “and I’m certain that I have not half comprehended what you
want from me.”

“You shall have it in writing, Harcourt; I’ll send you a clear despatch
the first spare moment I can command after I reach town. The boy will
not be fit to move for some time to come, and so good-bye.”

“You don’t know where they are going to send you?”

“I cannot frame even a conjecture,” sighed Upton, languidly. “I ought to
be in the Brazils for a week or so about that slave question; and then
the sooner I reach Constantinople the better.”

“Sha’ n’t they want you at Paris?” asked Harcourt, who felt a kind of
quiet vengeance in developing what he deemed the weak vanity of the
other.

“Yes,” sighed he again; “but I can’t be everywhere.” And so saying, he
lounged away, while it would have taken a far more subtle listener than
Harcourt to say whether he was mystifying the other, or the dupe of his
own self-esteem.



CHAPTER XVIII. BILLY TRAYNOR AS ORATOR

Three weeks rolled over,--an interval not without its share of interest
for the inhabitants of the little village of Leenane, since on one
morning Mr. Craggs had made his appearance on his way to Clifden, and
after an absence of two days returned to the Castle. The subject for
popular discussion and surmise had not yet declined, when a boat was
seen to leave Glencore, heavily laden with trunks and travelling
gear; and as she neared the land, the “lord” was detected amongst the
passengers, looking very ill,--almost dying; he passed up the little
street of the village, scarcely noticing the uncovered heads which
saluted him respectfully. Indeed, he scarcely lifted up his eyes, and,
as the acute observers remarked, never once turned a glance towards the
opposite shore, where the Castle stood.

He had not reached the end of the village, when a chaise with four
horses arrived at the spot. No time was lost in arranging the trunks
and portmanteaus, and Lord Glencore sat moodily on a bank, listlessly
regarding what went forward. At length Craggs came up, and, touching his
cap in military fashion, announced all was ready.

Lord Glencore arose slowly, and looked languidly around him; his
features wore a mingled expression of weariness and anxiety, like one
not fully awakened from an oppressive dream. He turned his eyes on the
people, who at a respectful distance stood around, and in a voice of
peculiar melancholy said, “Good-bye.”

“A good journey to you, my Lord, and safe back again to us,” cried a
number together.

“Eh--what--what was that?” cried he, suddenly; and the tones were shrill
and discordant in which he spoke.

A warning gesture from Craggs imposed silence on the crowd, and not a
word was uttered.

“I thought they said something about coming back again,” muttered
Glencore, gloomily.

“They were wishing you a good journey, my Lord,” replied Craggs.

“Oh, that was it, was it?” And so saying, with bent-down head he walked
feebly forward and entered the carriage. Craggs was speedily on the box,
and the next moment they were away.

It is no part of our task to dwell on the sage speculations and wise
surmises of the village on this event. They had not, it is true, much
“evidence” before them, but they were hardy guessers, and there was very
little within the limits of possibility which they did not summon to the
aid of their imaginations. All, however, were tolerably agreed upon one
point,--that to leave the place while the young lord was still unable
to quit his bed, and too weak to sit up, was unnatural and unfeeling;
traits which, “after all,” they thought “not very surprising, since the
likes of them lords never cared for anybody.”

Colonel Harcourt still remained at Glencore, and under his rigid
sway the strictest blockade of the coast was maintained, nor was any
intercourse whatever permitted with the village. A boat from the Castle,
meeting another from Leenane, half way in the lough, received the
letters and whatever other resources the village supplied. All was done
with the rigid exactness of a quarantine regulation; and if the mainland
had been scourged with plague, stricter measures of exclusion could
scarcely have been enforced.

In comparison with the present occupant of the Castle, the late one was
a model of amiability; and the village, as is the wont in the case, now
discovered a vast number of good qualities in the “lord,” when they had
lost him. After a while, however, the guesses, the speculations, and
the comparisons all died away, and the Castle of Glencore was as much
dreamland to their imaginations as, seen across the lough in the dim
twilight of an autumn evening, its towers might have appeared to their
eyes.

It was about a month after Lord Glencore’s departure, of a fine, soft
evening in summer, Billy Traynor suddenly appeared in the village. Billy
was one of a class who, whatever their rank in life, are always what
Coleridge would have called “noticeable men.” He was soon, therefore,
surrounded with a knot of eager and inquiring friends, all solicitous to
know something of the life he was leading, what they were doing “beyant
at the Castle.”

“It’s a mighty quiet studious kind of life,” said Billy, “but agrees
with me wonderfully; for I may say that until now I never was able
to give my ‘janius’ fair play. Professional life is the ruin of the
student; and being always obleeged to be thinkin’ of the bags destroyed
my taste for letters.” A grin of self-approval at his own witticism
closed this speech.

“But is it true, Billy, the lord is going to break up house entirely,
and not come back here?” asked Peter Slevin, the sacristan, whose rank
and station warranted his assuming the task of cross-questioner.

“There ‘s various ways of breakin’ up a house,” said Billy. “Ye may
do so in a moral sinse, or in a physical sinse; you may obliterate, or
extinguish, or, without going so far, you may simply obfuscate,--do you
perceave?”

“Yes!” said the sacristan, on whom every eye was now bent, to see if he
was able to follow subtleties that had outwitted the rest.

“And whin I say _obfuscate_,” resumed Billy, “I open a question of
disputed etymology, bekase tho’ Lucretius thinks the word _obfuscator_
original, there’s many supposes it comes from _ob_ and _fucus_, the
dye the ancients used in their wool, as we find in Horace, _lana fuco
medicata_; while Cicero employs it in another sense, and says, _facere
fucum_, which is as much as to say, humbuggin’ somebody,--do ye mind?”

“Begorra, he might guess that anyhow!” muttered a shrewd little tailor,
with a significance that provoked hearty laughter.

“And now,” continued Billy, with an air of triumph, “we’ll proceed to
the next point.”

“Ye needn’t trouble yerself then,” said Terry Lynch, “for Peter has gone
home.”

And so, to the amusement of the meeting, it turned out to be the case;
the sacristan had retired from the controversy. “Come in here to Mrs.
Moore’s, Billy, and take a glass with us,” said Terry; “it isn’t often
we see you in these parts.”

“If the honorable company will graciously vouchsafe and condescind
to let me trate them to a half-gallon,” said Billy, “it will be the
proudest event of my terrestrial existence.”

The proposition was received with a cordial enthusiasm, flattering to
all concerned; and in a few minutes after, Billy Traynor sat at the head
of a long table in the neat parlor of “The Griddle,” with a company of
some fifteen or sixteen very convivially disposed friends around him.

“If I was Cæsar, or Lucretius, or Nebuchadnezzar, I couldn’t be
prouder,” said Billy, as he looked down the board. “And let moralists
talk as they will, there’s a beautiful expansion of sentiment, there’s a
fine genial overflowin’ of the heart, in gatherin’s like this, where we
mingle our feelin’s and our philosophy; and our love and our learning
walk hand in hand like brothers--pass the sperits, Mr. Shea. If we look
to the ancient writers, what do we see!--Lemons! bring in some lemons,
Mickey.--What do we see, I say, but that the very highest enjoyment
of the haythen gods was--Hot wather! why won’t they send in more hot
wather?”

“Begorra, if I was a haythen god, I ‘d like a little whisky in it,”
 muttered Terry, dryly.

“Where was I?” asked Billy, a little disconcerted by this sally, and the
laugh it excited. “I was expatiatin’ upon celestial convivialities. The
_nodes coenoeque deum_,--them elegant hospitalities where wisdom was
moistened with nectar, and wit washed down with ambrosia. It is not, by
coorse, to be expected,” continued he, modestly, “that we mere mortials
can compete with them elegant refections. But, as Ovid says, we can at
least _diem jucundam decipere_.”

The unknown tongue had now restored to Billy all the reverence and
respect of his auditory, and he continued to expatiate very eloquently
on the wholesome advantages to be derived from convivial intercourse,
both amongst gods and men; rather slyly intimating that either on the
score of the fluids, or the conversation, his own leanings lay towards
“the humanities.”

“For, after all,” said he, “‘tis our own wakenesses is often the
source of our most refined enjoyments. No, Mrs. Cassidy, ye need n’t
be blushin’. I ‘m considerin’ my subject in a high ethnological and
metaphysical sinse.” Mrs. Cassidy’s confusion, and the mirth it excited,
here interrupted the orator.

“The meeting is never tired of hearin’ you, Billy,” said Terry Lynch;
“but if it was plazin’ to ye to give us a song, we’d enjoy it greatly.”

“Ah!” said Billy, with a sigh, “I have taken my partin’ kiss with the
Muses; _non mihi licet increpare digitis lyram_:--

     “‘No more to feel poetic fire,
        No more to touch the soundin’ lyre;
     But wiser coorses to begin,
        I now forsake my violin.’”

An honest outburst of regret and sorrow broke from the assembly, who
eagerly pressed for an explanation of this calamitous change.

“The thing is this,” said Billy: “if a man is a creature of mere
leisure and amusement, the fine arts--and by the fine arts I mean music,
paintin’, and the ladies--is an elegant and very refined subject of
cultivation; but when you raise your cerebrial faculties to grander and
loftier considerations, to explore the difficult ragions of polemic
or political truth, to investigate the subtleties of the schools, and
penetrate the mysteries of science, then, take my word for it, the fine
arts is just snares,--devil a more than snares! And whether it is soft
sounds seduces you, or elegant tints, or the union of both,--women, I
mane,--you ‘ll never arrive at anything great or tri-um-phant till you
wane yourself away from the likes of them vanities. Look at the haythen
mythology; consider for a moment who is the chap that represents
Music,--a lame blackguard, with an ugly face, they call Pan. Ay, indeed,
Pan! If you wanted to see what respect they had for the art, it’s easy
enough to guess, when this crayture represints it; and as to Paintin’,
on my conscience, they have n’t a god at all that ever took to the
brush.--Pass up the sperits, Mickey,” said he, somewhat blown and out of
breath by this effort. “Maybe,” said he, “I’m wearin’ you.”

“No, no, no,” loudly responded the meeting.

“Maybe I’m imposin’ too much of personal details on the house,” added
he, pompously.

“Not at all; never a bit,” cried the company.

“Because,” resumed he, slowly, “if I did so, I ‘d have at least the
excuse of say in’, like the great Pitt, ‘These may be my last words from
this place.’”

An unfeigned murmur of sorrow ran through the meeting, and he resumed:--

“Ay, ladies and gintlemin, Billy Traynor is takin’ his ‘farewell
benefit;’ he’s not humbuggin’. I ‘m not like them chaps that’s always
positively goin’, but stays on at the unanimous request of the whole
world. No; I’m really goin’ to leave you.”

“What for? Where to, Billy?” broke from a number of voices together.

“I ‘ll tell ye,” said he,--“at least so far as I can tell; because it
would n’t be right nor decent to ‘print the whole of the papers for
the house,’ as they say in parliamint. I ‘m going abroad with the young
lord; we are going to improve our minds, and cultivate our janiuses, by
study and foreign travel. We are first to settle in Germany, where we
‘re to enter a University, and commince a coorse of modern tongues,
French, Sweadish, and Spanish; imbibin’ at the same time a smatterin’ of
science, such as chemistry, conchology, and the use of the globes.”

“Oh dear! oh dear!” murmured the meeting, in wonder and admiration.

“I ‘m not goin’ to say that we ‘ll neglect mechanics, metaphysics, and
astrology; for we mane to be cosmonopolists in knowledge. As for myself,
ladies and gintlemin, it’s a proud day that sees me standin’ here to
say these words. I, that was ragged, without a shoe to my foot,--without
breeches,--never mind, I was, as the poet says, _nudus nummis ac
vestimentis_,--

     “‘I have n’t sixpence in my pack,
     I have n’t small clothes to my back.’

carryin’ the bag many a weary mile, through sleet and snow, for six
pounds tin per annum, and no pinsion for wounds or superannuation; and
now I ‘m to be--it is n’t easy to say what--to the young lord a spacies
of humble companion,--not maniai, do you mind, nothing manial; what
the Latins called a __famulus, which was quite a different thing from
a _servus_. The former bein’ a kind of domestic adviser, a
deputy-assistant, monitor-general, as a body might say. There, now, if
I discoorsed for a month, I could n’t tell you more about myself and my
future prospects. I own to you that I ‘m proud of my good luck, and I
would n’t exchange it to be Emperor of Jamaica, or King of the Bahamia
Islands.”

If we have been prolix in our office of reporter to Billy Traynor,
our excuse is that his discourse will have contributed so far to the
reader’s enlightenment as to save us the task of recapitulation. At the
same time, it is but justice to the accomplished orator that we should
say we have given but the most meagre outline of an address which, to
use the newspaper phrase, “occupied three hours in the delivery.” The
truth was, Billy was in vein; the listeners were patient, the punch
strong: nor is it every speaker who has had the good fortune of such
happy accessories.



CHAPTER XIX. THE CASCINE AT FLORENCE

It was spring, and in Italy! one of those half-dozen days, at very
most, when, the feeling of winter departed, a gentle freshness breathes
through the air; trees stir softly, and as if by magic; the earth
becomes carpeted with flowers, whose odors seem to temper, as it were,
the exciting atmosphere. An occasional cloud, fleecy and jagged, sails
lazily aloft, marking its shadow on the mountain side. In a few days--a
few hours, perhaps--the blue sky will be unbroken, the air hushed, a hot
breath will move among the leaves, or pant over the trickling fountains.

In this fast-flitting period,--we dare not call it season,--the Cascine
of Florence is singularly beautiful; on one side, the gentle river
stealing past beneath the shadowing foliage; on the other, the
picturesque mountain towards Fiesole, dotted with its palaces and
terraced gardens. The ancient city itself is partly seen, and the
massive Duomo and the Palazzo Vecchio tower proudly above the trees!
What other people of Europe have such a haunt?--what other people would
know so thoroughly how to enjoy it? The day was drawing to a close,
and the Piazzone was now filled with equipages. There were the
representatives of every European people, and of nations far away over
the seas,--splendid Russians, brilliant French, splenetic, supercilious
English, and ponderous Germans, mingled with the less marked
nationalities of Belgium and Holland, and even America. Everything that
called itself Fashion was there to swell the tide; and although a choice
military band was performing with exquisite skill the favorite overtures
of the day, the noise and tumult of conversation almost drowned their
notes. Now, the Cascine is to the world of society what the Bourse is to
the world of trade. It is the great centre of all news and intelligence,
where markets and bargains of intercourse are transacted, and where the
scene of past pleasure is revived, and the plans of future enjoyment are
canvassed. The great and the wealthy are there, to see and to meet with
each other. The proud equipages lie side by side, like great liners;
while phaetons, like fast frigates, shoot swiftly by, and solitary
dandies flit past in varieties of conveyance to which sea-craft can
offer no analogies. All are busy, eager, and occupied. Scandal holds
here its festival, and the misdeeds of every capital of Europe are
now being discussed. The higher themes of politics occupy but few; the
interests of literature attract still less. It is essentially of the
world they talk, and it must be owned they do it like adepts. The last
witticism of Paris,--the last duel at Berlin,--who has fled from his
creditors in England,--who has run away from her husband at Naples,--all
are retailed with a serious circumstantiality that would lead one to
believe that gossip maintained its “own correspondent” in every city of
the Continent. Moralists might fancy, perhaps, that in the tone these
subjects are treated they would mingle a reprobation of the bad, and a
due estimate of the opposite, if it ever occurred at all; but as surely
would they be disappointed. Never were censors more lenient,--never were
critics so charitable. The transgressions against good-breeding--the
“gaucheries” of manner, the solecisms in dress, language, or
demeanor--do indeed meet with sharp reproof and cutting sarcasm; but,
in recompense for such severity, how gently do they deal with graver
offences! For the felonies they can always discover “the attenuating
circumstances;” for the petty larcenies of fashion they have nothing but
whipcord.

Amidst the various knots where such discussions were carried on, one
was eminently conspicuous. It was around a handsome open carriage, whose
horses, harnessing, and liveries were all in the most perfect taste. The
equipage might possibly have been deemed showy in Hyde Park; but in
the Bois de Boulogne or the Cascine it must be pronounced the acme of
elegance. Whatever might have been the differences of national opinion
on this point, there could assuredly have been none as to the beauty of
those who occupied it.

Though a considerable interval of years divided them, the aunt and her
niece had a wonderful resemblance to each other. They were both--the
rarest of all forms of beauty--blond Italians; that is, with light
hair and soft gray eyes. They had a peculiar tint of skin, deeper and
mellower than we see in Northern lands, and an expression of mingled
seriousness and softness that only pertains to the South of Europe.
There was a certain coquetry in the similarity of their dress, which in
many parts was precisely alike; and although the niece was but fifteen,
and the aunt above thirty, it needed not the aid of flattery to make
many mistake one for the other.

Beauty, like all other “Beaux Arts,” has its distinctions. The same
public opinion that enthrones the sculptor or the musician, confers
its crown on female loveliness; and by this acclaim were they declared
Queens of Beauty. To any one visiting Italy for the first time, there
would have seemed something very strange in the sort of homage rendered
them: a reverence and respect only accorded elsewhere to royalties,--a
deference that verged on actual humiliation,--and yet all this blended
with a subtle familiarity that none but an Italian can ever attain to.
The uncovered head, the attitude of respectful attention, the patient
expectancy of notice, the glad air of him under recognition, were
all there; and yet, through these, there was dashed a strange tone of
intimacy, as though the observances were but a thin crust over deeper
feelings. “La Contessa”--for she was especially “the Countess,” as one
illustrious man of our own country was “the Duke”--possessed every gift
which claims preeminence in this fair city. She was eminently beautiful,
young, charming in her manners, with ample fortune; and, lastly,--ah!
good reader, you would surely be puzzled to supply that “lastly,” the
more as we say that in it lies an excellence without which all the rest
are of little worth, and yet with it are objects of worship, almost of
adoration,--she was--separated from her husband! There must have been an
epidemic, a kind of rot, among husbands at one period; for we scarcely
remember a very pretty woman, from five-and-twenty to five-and-thirty,
who had not been obliged to leave hers from acts of cruelty or acts of
brutality, etc., that only husbands are capable of, or of which their
poor wives are ever the victims.

If the moral geography of Europe be ever written, the region south of
the Alps will certainly be colored with that tint, whatever it be,
that describes the blessedness of a divorced existence. In other lands,
especially in our own, the separated individual labors under no common
difficulty in his advances to society. The story--there must be a
story--of his separation is told in various ways, all, of course, to his
disparagement. Tyrant or victim, it is hard to say under which title
he comes out best,--so much for the man; but for the woman there is no
plea: judgment is pronounced at once, without the merits. Fugitive, or
fled from,--who inquires? she is one that few men dare to recognize.
The very fact that to mention her name exacts an explanation, is
condemnatory. What a boon to all such must it be that there is a
climate mild enough for their malady, and a country that will suit their
constitution; and not only that, but a region which actually pays homage
to their infirmity, and makes of their martyrdom a triumph! As you go to
Norway for salmon-fishing,--to Bengal to hunt tigers,--to St. Petersburg
to eat caviare, so when divorced, if you really know the blessing
of your state, go take a house on the Arno. Vast as are the material
resources of our globe, the moral ones are infinitely greater; nor need
we despair, some day or other, of finding an island where a certificate
of fraudulent bankruptcy will be deemed a letter of credit, and an
evidence of insolvency be accepted as qualification to open a bank.

La Contessa inhabited a splendid palace, furnished with magnificence;
her gardens were one of the sights of the capital, not only for their
floral display, but that they contained a celebrated group by Canova, of
which no copy existed. Her gallery was, if not extensive, enriched with
some priceless treasures of art; and with all these she possessed
high rank, for her card bore the name of La Comtesse de Glencore, née
Comtesse della Torre.

The reader thus knows at once, if not actually as much as we do
ourselves, all that we mean to impart to him; and now let us come back
to that equipage around which swarmed the fashion of Florence, eagerly
pressing forward to catch a word, a smile, or even a look, and actually
perched on every spot from which they could obtain a glimpse of those
within. A young Russian Prince, with his arm in a sling, had just
recited the incident of his’ late duel; a Neapolitan Minister had
delivered a rose-colored epistle from a Royal Highness of his own
court. A Spanish Grandee had deposited his offering of camellias, which
actually covered the front cushions of the carriage; and now a little
lane was formed for the approach of the old Duke de Brignolles, who
made his advance with a mingled courtesy and haughtiness that told of
Versailles and long ago.

A very creditable specimen of the old _noblesse_ of France was the Duke,
and well worthy to be the grandson of one who was Grand Maréchal to
Louis XIV. Tall, thin, and slightly stooped from age, his dark eye
seemed to glisten the brighter beneath his shaggy white eyebrows. He
had served with distinction as a soldier, and been an ambassador at the
court of the Czar Paul; in every station he had filled sustaining
the character of a true and loyal gentleman,--a man who could reflect
nothing but honor upon the great country he belonged to. It was amongst
the scandal of Florence that he was the most devoted of La Contessa’s
admirers; but we are quite willing to believe that his admiration had
nothing in it of love. At all events, she distinguished him by her most
marked notice. He was the frequent guest of her choicest dinners, and
the constant visitor at her evenings at home. It was, then, with a
degree of favor that many an envious heart coveted, she extended her
hand to him as he came forward, which he kissed with all the lowly
deference he would have shown to that of his prince.

“_Mon cher Duc_” said she, smiling, “I have such a store of grievances
to lay at your door. The essence of violets is not violets, but
verbena.”

“Charming Comtesse, I had it direct from Pierrot’s.”

“Pierrot is a traitor, then, that’s all; and where’s Ida’s Arab? is he
to be here to-day, or to-morrow? When are we to see him?”

“Why, I only wrote to the Emir on Tuesday last.”

“_Mais à quoi bon l’Emir_ if he can’t do impossibilities? Surely the
very thought of him brings up the Arabian Nights and the Calif Haroun.
By the way, thank you for the poignard. It is true Damascus, is it not?”

“Of course. I ‘d not have dared--”

“To be sure not. I told the Archduchess it was. I wore it in my Turkish
dress on Wednesday, and you, false man, would n’t come to admire me!”

“You know what a sad day was that for me, madam,” said he, solemnly. “It
was the anniversary of her fate who was your only rival in beauty, as
she had no rival in undeserved misfortunes.”

“_Pauvre Reine!_” sighed the Countess, and held her bouquet to her face.

“What great mass of papers is that you have there, Duke?” resumed she.
“Can it be a journal?”

“It is an English newspaper, my dear Countess. As I know you do not
receive any of his countrymen, I have not asked your permission
to present the Lord Selby; but hearing him read out your name in a
paragraph here, I carried off his paper to have it translated for me.
You read English, don’t you?”

“Very imperfectly, and I detest it,” said she, impatiently; “but Prince
Volkoffsky can, I am sure, oblige you.” And she turned away her head, in
ill humor.

“It is here somewhere. _Parbleu_, I thought I marked the place,”
 muttered the Duke, as he handed the paper to the Russian. “Is n’t that
it?”

“This is all about theatres,--Madame Pasta and the Haymarket.”

“Ah! well, it is lower down; here, perhaps.”

“Court news. The Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar--”

“No, no; not that.”

“Oh, here it is. ‘Great Scandal in High Life.--A very singular
correspondence has just passed, and will soon, we believe, be made
public, between the Heralds’ College and Lord Glencore.’” Here the
reader stopped, and lowered his voice at the next word.

“Read on, Prince. _C’est mon mari_,” said she, coldly, while a very
slight movement of her upper lip betrayed what might mean scorn or
sorrow, or even both.

The Prince, however, had now run his eyes over the paragraph, and
crushing the newspaper in his hand, hurried away from the spot. The Duke
as quickly followed, and soon overtook him.

“Who gave you this paper, Duke?” cried the Russian, angrily.

“It was Lord Selby. He was reading it aloud to a friend.”

“Then he is an _infame!_ and I ‘ll tell him so,” cried the other,
passionately. “Which is he? the one with the light moustache, or the
shorter one?” And, without waiting for reply, the Russian dashed between
the carriages, and thrusting his way through the prancing crowd
of moving horses, arrived at a spot where two young men, evidently
strangers to the scene, were standing, calmly surveying the bright
panorama before them.

“The Lord Selby,” said the Russian, taking off his hat and saluting one
of them.

“That’s his Lordship,” replied the one he addressed, pointing to his
friend.

“I am the Prince Volkoffsky, aide-de-camp to the Emperor,” said the
Russian; “and hearing from my friend the Duke de Brignolles that you
have just given him this newspaper, that he might obtain the translation
of a passage in it which concerns Lady Glencore, and have the
explanation read out at her own carriage, publicly, before all the
world, I desire to tell you that your Lordship is unworthy of your rank;
that you are an _infame!_ and if you do not resent this, a _polisson!_”

“This man is mad, Selby,” said the short man, with the coolest air
imaginable.

“Quite sane enough to give your friend a lesson in good manners; and you
too, sir, if you have any fancy for it,” said the Russian.

“I’d give him in charge to the police, by Jove! if there were police
here,” said the same one who spoke before; “he can’t be a gentleman.”

“There ‘s my card, sir,” said the Russian; “and for you too, sir,” said
he, presenting another to him who spoke.

“Where are you to be heard of?” said the short man.

“At the Russian legation,” said the Prince, haughtily, and turned away.

“You’re wrong, Baynton, he is a gentleman,” said Lord Selby, as he
pocketed the card, “though certainly he is not a very mild-tempered
specimen of his order.”

“You did n’t give the newspaper as he said--”

“Nothing of the kind. I was reading it aloud to you when the royal
carriages came suddenly past; and, in taking off my hat to salute, I
never noticed that the old Duke had carried off the paper. I know he
can’t read English, and the chances are, he has asked this Scythian
gentleman to interpret for him.”

“So, then, the affair is easily settled,” said the other, quietly.

“Of course it is,” was the answer; and they both lounged about among
the carriages, which already were thinning, and, after a while, set out
towards the city.

They had but just reached the hotel, when a stranger presented himself
to them as the Count de Marny. He had come as the friend of Prince
Volkoffsky, who had fully explained to him the event of that afternoon.

“Well,” said Baynton, “we are of opinion your friend has conducted
himself exceedingly ill, and we are here to receive his excuses.”

“I am afraid, messieurs,” said the Frenchman, bowing, “that it will
exhaust your patience if you continue to wait for them. Might it not
be better to come and accept what he is quite prepared to offer
you,--satisfaction?”

“Be it so,” said Lord Selby: “he ‘ll see his mistake some time or other,
and perhaps regret it. Where shall it be?--and when?”

“At the Fossombroni Villa, about two miles from this. To-morrow morning,
at eight, if that suit you.”

“Quite well. I have no other appointment. Pistols, of course?”

“You have the choice, otherwise my friend would have preferred the
sword.”

“Take him at his word, Selby,” whispered Baynton; “you are equal to any
of them with the rapier.”

“If your friend desire the sword, I have no objection,--I mean the
rapier.”

“The rapier be it,” said the Frenchman; and with a polite assurance
of the infinite honor he felt in forming their acquaintance, and the
gratifying certainty that they were sure to possess of his highest
consideration, he bowed, backed, and withdrew.

“Well-mannered fellow, the Frenchman,” said Baynton, as the door closed;
and the other nodded assent, and rang the bell for dinner.



CHAPTER XX. THE VILLA FOSSOMBRONI

The grounds of the Villa Fossombroni were, at the time we speak of,
the Chalk Farm, or the Fifteen Acres of Tuscany. The villa itself, long
since deserted by the illustrious family whose name it bore, had fallen
into the hands of an old Pied-montese noble, ruined by a long life of
excess and dissipation. He had served with gallantry in the imperial
army of France, but was dismissed the service for a play transaction
in which his conduct was deeply disgraceful; and the Colonel Count
Tasseroni, of the 8th Hussars of the Guards, was declared unworthy to
wear the uniform of a Frenchman.

For a number of years he had lived so estranged from the world that
many believed he had died; but at last it was known that he had gone
to reside in a half-ruined villa near Florence, which soon became the
resort of a certain class of gamblers whose habits would have speedily
attracted notice if practised within the city. The quarrels and
altercations, so inseparable from high play, were usually settled on the
spot in which they occurred, until at last the villa became famous for
these meetings, and the name of Fossombroni, in a discussion, was the
watchword for a duel.

It was of a splendid spring morning that the two Englishmen arrived
at this spot, which, even on the unpleasant errand that they had come,
struck them with surprise and admiration. The villa itself was one
of those vast structures which the country about Florence abounds in.
Gloomy, stern, and jail-like without, while within, splendid apartments
opened into each other in what seems an endless succession. Frescoed
walls and gorgeously ornamented ceilings, gilded mouldings and rich
tracery, were on every side; and these, too, in chambers where the
immense proportions and the vast space recalled the idea of a royal
residence. Passing in by a dilapidated “grille” which once had been
richly gilded, they entered by a flight of steps a great hall which ran
the entire length of the building. Though lighted by a double range of
windows, neglect and dirt had so dimmed the panes that the place was
almost in deep shadow. Still, they could perceive that the vaulted roof
was a mass of stuccoed tracery, and that the colossal divisions of the
wall were of brilliant Sienna marble. At one end of this great gallery
was a small chapel, now partly despoiled of its religious decorations,
which were most irreverently replaced by a variety of swords and sabres
of every possible size and shape, and several pairs of pistols, arranged
with an evident eye to picturesque grouping.

“What are all these inscriptions here on the walls, Baynton?” cried
Selby, as he stood endeavoring to decipher the lines on a little marble
slab, a number of which were dotted over the chapel.

“Strange enough this, by Jove!” muttered the other, reading to
himself, half aloud, “‘Francesco Ricordi, ucciso da Gieronimo Gazzi, 29
Settembre, 1818.’”

“What does that mean?” asked Selby.

“It is to commemorate some fellow who was killed here in ‘18.”

“Are they all in the same vein?” asked the other.

“It would seem so. Here ‘s one: ‘Gravamente ferito,’--badly wounded;
with a postscript that he died the same night.”

“What’s this large one here, in black marble?” inquired Selby.

“To the memory of Carlo Luigi Guiccidrini, ‘detto il Carnefice,’ called
‘the slaughterer:’ cut down to the forehead by Pietro Baldasseroni, on
the night of July 8th, 1819.”

“I confess any other kind of literature would amuse me as well,” said
Selby, turning back again into the large hall. Baynton had scarcely
joined him when they saw advancing towards them through the gloom a
short, thickset man, dressed in a much-worn dressing-gown and slippers.

He removed his skull-cap as he approached, and said, “The Count
Tasseroni, at your orders.”

“We have come here by appointment,” said Baynton.

“Yes, yes. I know it all. Volkoffsky sent me word. He was here on
Saturday. He gave that French colonel a sharp lesson. Ran the sword
clean through the chest. To be sure, he was wounded too, but only
through the arm; but ‘La Marque’ has got his passport.”

“You’ll have him up there soon, then,” said Baynton, pointing towards
the chapel.

“I think not. We have not done it latterly,” said the Count, musingly.
“The authorities don’t seem to like it; and, of course, we respect the
authorities!”

“That’s quite evident,” said Baynton, who turned to translate the
observation to his friend.

Selby whispered a word in his ear.

“What does the signore say?” inquired the Count.

“My friend thinks that they are behind the time.”

“_Per Baccho!_ Let him be easy as to that. I have known some to think
that the Russian came too soon. I never heard of one who wished him
earlier! There they are now: they always come by the garden.” And so
saying, he hastened off to receive them.

“How is this fellow to handle a sword, if his right arm be wounded?”
 said Selby.

“Don’t you know that these Russians use the left hand indifferently with
the right, in all exercises? It may be awkward for _you_; but, depend
upon it, _he’ll_ not be inconvenienced in the least.”

As he spoke, the others entered the other end of the hall. The Prince
no sooner saw the Englishmen than he advanced towards them with his hat
off. “My lord,” said he, rapidly, “I have come to make you an apology,
and one which I trust you will accept in all the frankness that I
offer it. I have learned from your friend the Duc de Brignolles how the
incident of yesterday occurred. I see that the only fault committed
was my own. Will you pardon, then, a momentary word of ill-temper,
occasioned by what I wrongfully believed to be a great injury?”

“Of course, I knew it was all a mistake on your part. I told Colonel
Baynton, here, you’d see so yourself,--when it is too late, perhaps.”

“I thank you sincerely,” said the Russian, bowing; “your readiness to
accord me this satisfaction makes your forgiveness more precious to me.
And now, as another favor, will you permit me to ask you one question?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Why, when you could have so easily explained this misconception on my
part, did you not take the trouble of doing so?”

Selby looked confused, blushed, looked awkwardly from side to side, and
then, with a glance towards his friend, seemed to say, “Will you try and
answer him?”

“I think you have hit it yourself, Prince,” said Baynton. “It was the
trouble, the bore of an explanation, deterred him. He hates writing, and
he thought there would be a shower of notes to be replied to, meetings,
discussions, and what not; and so he said, ‘Let him have his shot, and
have done with it.’”

The Russian looked from one to the other as he listened, and seemed
really as if not quite sure whether this speech was uttered
in seriousness or sarcasm. The calm, phlegmatic faces of the
Englishmen,--the almost apathetic expression they wore,--soon convinced
him that the words were truthfully spoken; and he stood actually
confounded with amazement before them.

Lord Selby and his friend freely accepted the polite invitation of the
Prince to breakfast, and they all adjourned to a small but splendidly
decorated room, where everything was already awaiting them. There are
few incidents in life which so much predispose to rapid intimacy as the
case of an averted duel. The revulsion from animosity is almost certain
to lead to, if not actual friendship, what may easily become so. In the
present instance, the very diversities of national character gave a zest
and enjoyment to the meeting; and while the Englishmen were charmed by
the fascination of manners and conversational readiness of their hosts,
the Russians were equally struck with a cool imperturbability and
impassiveness, of which they had never seen the equal.

By degrees the Russian led the conversation to the question by which
their misunderstanding originated. “You know my Lord Glencore, perhaps?”
 said he.

“Never saw, scarcely ever heard of him,” said Selby, in his dry, laconic
tone.

“Is he mad, or a fool?” asked the Prince, half angrily.

“I served in a regiment once where he commanded a troop,” said Baynton;
“and they always said he was a good sort of fellow.”

“You read that paragraph this morning, I conclude?” said the Russian.
“You saw how he dares to stigmatize the honor of his wife,--to degrade
her to the rank of a mistress,--and, at the same time, to bastardize the
son who ought to inherit his rank and title?”

“I read it,” said Selby, dryly; “and I had a letter from my lawyer about
it this morning.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed he, anxious to hear more, and yet too delicate to
venture on a question.

“Yes; he writes to me for some title-deeds or other. I did n’t pay much
attention, exactly, to what he says. Glen-core’s man of business had
addressed a letter to him.”

The Russian bowed, and waited for him to resume; but, apparently, he had
rather fatigued himself by such unusual loquacity, and so he lay back in
his chair, and puffed his cigar in indolent enjoyment.

“A goodish sort of thing for _you_ it ought to be,” said Baynton,
between the puffs of his tobacco smoke, and with a look towards Selby.

“I suspect it may,” said the other, without the slightest change of tone
or demeanor.

“Where is it,--somewhere in the south?”

“Mostly, Devon. There’s something in Wales too, if I remember aright.”

“Nothing Irish?”

“No, thank Heaven,--nothing Irish;” and his grim Lordship made the
nearest advance to a smile of which his unplastic features seemed
capable.

“Do I understand you aright, my Lord,” said the Prince, “that you
receive an accession of fortune by this event?”

“I shall, if I survive Glencore,” was the brief reply.

“You are related, then?”

“Some cousinship,--I forget how it is. Do you remember, Baynton?”

“I’m not quite certain. I think it was a Coventry married one of Jack
Conway’s sisters, and she afterwards became the wife of Sir something
Massy. Isn’t that it?”

“Yes, that’s it,” muttered the other, in the tone of a man who was tired
of a knotty problem.

“And, according to your laws, this Lord Glencore may marry again?” cried
the Russian.

“I should think so, if he has no wife living,” said Selby; “but I trust,
for _my_ sake, he’ll not.”

“And what if he should, and should be discovered the wedded husband of
another?”

“That would be bigamy,” said Selby. “Would they hang him, Baynton?”

“I think not,--scarcely,” rejoined the Colonel.

The Prince tried in various ways to obtain some insight into Lord
Glencore’s habits, his tastes and mode of life, but all in vain. They
knew, indeed, very little, but even that little they were too indolent
to repeat. Lord Selby’s memory was often at fault, too, and Baynton’s
had ill supplied the deficiency. Again and again did the Russian mutter
curses to himself over the apathy of these stony islanders. At moments
he fancied that they suspected his eagerness, and had assumed their most
guarded caution against him; but he soon perceived that this manner was
natural to them, not prompted in the slightest degree by any distrust
whatever.

“After all,” thought the Russian, “how can I hope to stimulate a man who
is not excited by his own increase of fortune? Talk of Turkish fatalism,
these fellows would shame the Moslem.”

“Do you mean to prolong your stay at Florence, my Lord?” asked the
Prince, as they arose from the table.

“I scarcely know. What do you say, Baynton?”

“A week or so, I fancy,” muttered the other.

“And then on to Rome, perhaps?”

The two Englishmen looked at each other with an air of as much confusion
as if subjected to a searching examination in science.

“Well, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Selby, at last, with a sigh.

“Yes, it may come to that,” said Baynton, like a man who had just
overcome a difficulty.

“You ‘ll be in time for the Holy Week and all the ceremonies,” said the
Prince.

“Mind that, Baynton,” said his Lordship, who wasn’t going to carry what
he felt to be another man’s load; and Baynton nodded acquiescence.

“And after that comes the season for Naples,--you have a month or six
weeks, perhaps, of such weather as nothing in all Europe can vie with.”

“You hear, Baynton!” said Selby.

“I’ve booked it,” muttered the other; and so they took leave of their
entertainer, and set out towards Florence. Neither you nor I, dear
reader, will gain anything by keeping them company, for they say
scarcely a word by the way. They stop at intervals, and cast their eyes
over the glorious landscape at their feet. Their glances are thrown over
the fairest scene of the fairest of all lands; and whether they turn
towards the snow-capt Apennines, by Vall’ombrosa, or trace the sunny
vineyards along the Val’ d’ Arno, they behold a picture such as no
canvas ever imitated; still, they are mute and uncommunicative. Whatever
of pleasure their thoughts suggest, each keeps for himself. Objects of
wonder, strange sights and new, may present themselves, but they are
not to be startled out of national dignity by so ignoble a sentiment as
surprise. And so they jog onward,--doubtless richer in reflection than
eloquent in communion; and so we leave them.

Let us not be deemed unjust or ungenerous if we assert that we have met
many such as these. They are not individuals,--they are a class; and,
strange enough too, a class which almost invariably pertains to a high
and distinguished rank in society. It would be presumptuous to ascribe
such demeanor to insensibility. There is enough in their general conduct
to disprove the assumption. As little is it affectation; it is simply
an acquired habit of stoical indifference, supposed to be--why, Heaven
knows!--the essential ingredient of the best breeding. If the practice
extinguish all emotion, and obliterate all trace of feeling from the
heart, we deplore the system. If it only gloss over the working of human
sympathy, we pity the men. At all events, they are very uninteresting
company, with whom longer dalliance would only be wearisome.



CHAPTER XXI. SOME TRAITS OF LIFE

It was the night Lady Glencore received; and, as usual, the street
was crowded with equipages, which somehow seemed to have got into
inextricable confusion,--some endeavoring to turn back, while others
pressed forward,--the court of the palace being closely packed with
carriages which the thronged street held in fast blockade. As the
apartments which faced the street were not ever used for these
receptions, the dark unlighted windows suggested no remark; but they who
had entered the courtyard were struck by the gloomy aspect of the vast
building: not only that the entrance and the stairs were in darkness,
but the whole suite of rooms, usually brilliant as the day, were now in
deep gloom. From every carriage window heads were protruded, wondering
at this strange spectacle; and eager inquiries passed on every side
for an explanation. The explanation of “sudden illness” was rapidly
disseminated, but as rapidly contradicted, and the reply given by
the porter to all demands quickly repeated from mouth to mouth, “Her
Ladyship will not receive.”

“Can no one explain this mystery?” cried the old Princess Borinsky, as,
heavy with fat and diamonds, she hung out of her carriage window.
“Oh, there ‘s Major Scaresby; he is certain to know, if it be anything
malicious.”

Scaresby was, however, too busy in recounting his news to others to
perceive the signals the old Princess held out; and it was only as
her chasseur, six feet three of green and gold, bent down to give her
Highness’s message, that the Major hurried off, in all the importance of
a momentary scandal, to the side of her carriage.

“Here I am, all impatience. What is it, Scaresby? Tell me quickly,”
 cried she.

“A smash, my dear Princess,--nothing more or less,” said he, in a voice
which nature seemed to have invented to utter impertinences, so harsh
and grating, and yet so painfully distinct in all its accents,--“as
complete a smash as ever I heard of.”

“You can’t mean that her fortune is in peril?”

“I suppose that must suffer also. It is her character--her station as
one of us--that’s shipwrecked here.”

“Go on, go on,” cried she, impatiently; “I wish to hear it all.”

“All is very briefly related, then,” said he. “The charming Countess,
you remember, ran away with a countryman of mine, young Glencore, of the
8th Hussars; I used to know his father intimately.”

“Never mind his father.”

“That ‘s exactly what Glencore did. He came over here and fell in
love with the girl, and they ran off together; but they forgot to get
married, Princess. Ha--ha--ha!” And he laughed with a cackle a demon
could not have rivalled.

“I don’t believe a word of it,--I’ll never believe it,” cried the
Princess.

“That’s exactly what I was recommending to the Mar-quesa Guesteni. I
said, you need n’t believe it. Why, how do we go anywhere, nowadays,
except by ‘not believing’ the evil stories that are told of our
entertainers.”

“Yes, yes; but I repeat that this is an infamous calumny. She, a
Countess, of a family second to none in all Italy; her father a Grand
d’Espagne. I ‘ll go to her this moment.”

“She’ll not see you. She has just refused to see La Genori,” said the
Major, tartly. “Though, if a cracked reputation might have afforded any
sympathy, she might have admitted _her_.”

“What is to be done?” exclaimed the Princess, sorrowfully.

“Just what you suggested a few moments ago,--don’t believe it. Hang
me, but good houses and good cooks are growing too scarce to make one
credulous of the ills that can be said of their owners.”

“I wish I knew what course to take,” muttered the Princess.

“I’ll tell you, then. Get half a dozen of your own set together
to-morrow morning, vote the whole story an atrocious falsehood, and
go in a body and tell the Countess your mind. You know as well as I,
Princess, that social credit is as great a bubble as commercial; we
should all of us be bankrupts if our books were seen. Ay, by Jove! and
the similitude goes farther too; for when one old established house
breaks, there is generally a crash in the whole community around it.”

While they thus talked, a knot had gathered around the carriage, all
eager to hear what opinion the Princess had formed on the catastrophe.

Various were the sentiments expressed by the different speakers,--some
sorrowfully deploring the disaster; others more eagerly inveighing
against the infamy of the man who had proclaimed it. Many declared that
they had come to the determination to discredit the story. Not one,
however, sincerely professed that he disbelieved it.

Can it be, as the French moralist asserts, that we have a latent sense
of satisfaction in the misfortunes of even our best friends; or is it,
as we rather suspect, that true friendship is a rarer thing than
is commonly believed, and has little to do with those conventional
intimacies which so often bear its name?

Assuredly of all this well-bred, well-dressed, and wellborn company, now
thronging the courtyard of the palace and the street in front of it, the
tone was as much sarcasm as sorrow, and many a witty epigram and smart
speech were launched over a disaster which might have been spared such
levity. At length the space slowly began to thin. Slowly carriage after
carriage drove off,--the heaviest grief of their occupants often being
over a lost _soirée_, an unprofited occasion to display toilette and
jewels; while a few, more reflective, discussed what course was to be
followed in future, and what recognition extended to the victim.

The next day Florence sat in committee over the lost Countess. Witnesses
were heard and evidence taken as to her case. They all agreed it was a
great hardship,--a terrible calamity; but still, if true, what could be
done?

Never was there a society less ungenerously prudish, and yet there were
cases--this, one of them--which transgressed all conventional rule.
Like a crime which no statute had ever contemplated, it stood out
self-accused and self-condemned. A few might, perhaps, have been
merciful, but they were overborne by numbers. Lady Glencore’s beauty and
her vast fortune were now counts in the indictment against her, and many
a jealous rival was not sorry at this hour of humiliation. The despotism
of beauty is not a very mild sway, after all; and perhaps the Countess
had exercised her rule right royally. At all events, it was the young
and the good-looking who voted her exclusion, and only those who could
not enter into competition with her charms who took the charitable
side. They discussed and debated the question all day; but while they
hesitated over the reprieve, the prisoner was beyond the law. The gate
of the palace, locked and barred all day, refused entrance to every one;
at night, it opened to admit the exit of a travelling-carriage. The next
morning large bills of sale, posted over the walls, declared that all
the furniture and decorations-were to be sold.

The Countess had left Florence, none knew whither.

“I must really have those large Sèvres jars,” said one.

“And I, the small park phaeton,” cried another.

“I hope she has not taken Horace with her; he was the best cook in
Italy. Splendid hock she had,--I wonder is there much of it left?”

“I wish we were certain of another bad reputation to replace her,”
 grunted out Scaresby; “they are the only kind of people who give good
dinners, and never ask for returns.”

And thus these dear friends--guests of a hundred brilliant
fêtes--discussed the fall of her they once had worshipped.

It may seem small-minded and narrow to stigmatize such conduct as this.
Some may say that for the ordinary courtesies of society no pledges of
friendship are required, no real gratitude incurred. Be it so. Still,
the revulsion, from habits of deference and respect, to disparagement,
and even sarcasm, is a sorry evidence of human kindness; and the
threshold, over which for years we had only passed as guests, might well
suggest sadder thoughts as we tread it to behold desolation.

The fair Countess had been the celebrity of that city for many a day.
The stranger of distinction sought her, as much as a matter of course
as he sought presentation to the sovereign. Her _salons_ had the double
eminence of brilliancy in rank and brilliancy in wit; her entertainments
were cited as models of elegance and refinement; and now she was gone!
The extreme of regret that followed her was the sorrow of those who were
to dine there no more; the grief of him who thought he should never have
a house like it.

The respectable vagabonds of society are a large family, much larger
than is usually supposed. They are often well born, almost always well
mannered, invariably well dressed. They do not, at first blush, appear
to discharge any very great or necessary function in life; but we must
by no means, from that, infer their inutility. Naturalists tell us
that several varieties of insect existence we rashly set down as mere
annoyances, have their peculiar spheres of usefulness and good; and,
doubtless, these same loungers contribute in some mysterious manner to
the welfare of that state which they only seem to burden. We are told
that but for flies, for instance, we should be infested with myriads of
winged tormentors, insinuating themselves into our meat and drink, and
rendering life miserable. Is there not something very similar performed
by the respectable class I allude to? Are they not invariably devouring
and destroying some vermin a little smaller than themselves, and making
thus a healthier atmosphere for their betters? If good society only knew
the debt it owes to these defenders of its privileges, a “Vagabonds’
Home and Aged Asylum” would speedily figure amongst bur national
charities.

We have been led to these thoughts by observing how distinctly different
was Major Scaresby’s tone in talking of the Countess when he addressed
his betters or spoke in his own class. To the former he gave vent to all
his sarcasm and bitterness; they liked it just because they would n’t
condescend to it themselves. To his own he put on the bullying air of
one who said, “How should _you_ possibly know what vices such great
people have, any more than you know what they have for dinner? _I_ live
amongst them,--_I_ understand them,--_I_ am aware that what would be
very shocking in _you_ is quite permissible to _them_. _They_ know
how to be wicked; _you_ only know how to be gross.” And thus Scaresby
talked, and sneered, and scoffed, making such a hash of good and evil,
such a Maelstrom of right and wrong, that it were a subtle moralist who
could have extracted one solitary scrap of uncontaminated meaning from
all his muddy lucubrations.

He, however, effected this much: he kept the memory of her who had
gone, alive by daily calumnies. He embalmed her in poisons, each morning
appearing with some new trait of her extravagance, till the world, grown
sick of himself and his theme, vowed they would hear no more of either;
and so she was forgotten.

Ay, good reader, utterly forgotten! The gay world, for so it likes to be
called, has no greater element of enjoyment amongst all its high gifts
than its precious power of forgetting. It forgets not only all it
owes to others,--gratitude, honor, and esteem,--but even the closer
obligations it has contracted with itself. The Palazzo della Torre was
for a fortnight the resort of the curious and the idle. At the sale
crowds appeared to secure some object of especial value to each;
and then the gates were locked, the shutters closed, and a large,
ill-written notice on the door announced that any letters for the
proprietor were to be addressed to “Pietro Arretini, Via del Sole.”



CHAPTER XXII. AN UPTONIAN DESPATCH

British Legation, Naples. My dear Harcourt,--It would seem that a letter
of mine to you must have miscarried,--a not unfrequent occurrence when
entrusted to our Foreign Office for transmission. Should it ever reach
you, you will perceive how unjustly you have charged me with neglecting
your wishes. I have ordered the Sicilian wine for your friend; I have
obtained the Royal leave for you to shoot in Calabria; and I assure
you it is rather a rare incident in my life to have forgotten nothing
required of me! Perhaps you, who know me well, will do me this justice,
and be the more grateful for my present promptitude.

It was quite a mistake sending me here; for anything there is to be
done, Spencer or Lonsdale would perfectly suffice. _I_ ought to have
gone to Vienna,--and so they know at home; but it’s the old game played
over again. Important questions! why, my dear friend, there is not a
matter between this country and our own that rises above the capacity
of a Colonel of Dragoons. Meanwhile really great events are preparing in
the East of Europe,--not that I am going to inflict them upon you, nor
ask you to listen to speculations which even those in authority turn a
deaf ear to.

It is very kind of you to think of my health. I am still a sufferer; the
old pains rather aggravated than relieved by this climate. You are aware
that, though warm, the weather here has some exciting property, some
excess or other of a peculiar gas in the atmosphere, prejudicial to
certain temperaments. I feel it greatly; and though the season is
midsummer, I am obliged to dress entirely in a light costume of
buckskin, and take Marsalla baths, which refresh me, at least for the
while. I have also taken to smoke the leaves of the nux vomica, steeped
in arrack, and think it agrees with me. The King has most kindly placed
a little villa at Ischia at my disposal; but I do not mean to avail
myself of the politeness. The Duke of San Giustino has also offered me
his palace at Baia; but I don’t fancy leaving this just now, where there
is a doctor, a certain Luigi Buffeloni, who really seems to have hit
off my case. He calls it arterial arthriticis,--a kind of inflammatory
action of one coat of the arterial system; his notion is highly
ingenious, and wonderfully borne out by the symptoms. I wish you would
ask Brodie, or any of our best men, whether they have met with this
affection; what class it affects, and what course it usually takes?
My Italian doctor implies that it is the passing malady of men highly
excitable, and largely endowed with mental gifts. He may, or may not,
be correct in this. It is only nature makes the blunder of giving the
sharpest swords the weakest scabbards. What a pity the weapon cannot be
worn naked!

You ask me if I like this place. I do, perhaps, as well as I should
like anywhere. There is a wonderful sameness over the world just now,
preluding, I have very little doubt, some great outburst of nationality
from all the countries of Europe,--just as periods of Puritanism succeed
intervals of gross licentiousness.

Society here is, therefore, what you see it in London or Paris;
well-bred people, like Gold, are current everywhere. There is really
little peculiar to observe. I don’t perceive that there is more levity
than elsewhere. The difference is, perhaps, that there is less shame
about it, since it is under the protection of the Church.

I go out very little; my notion is, that the Diplomatist, like the
ancient Augur, must not suffer himself to be vulgarized by contact. He
can only lose, not gain, by that mixed intercourse with the world. I
have a few who come when I want them, and go in like manner. They
tell me “what is going on,” far better and more truthfully than paid
employees, and they cannot trace my intentions through my inquiries,
and hasten off to retail them at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of my
colleagues I see as little as possible, though, when we do meet, I feel
an unbounded affection for them. So much for my life, dear Harcourt; on
the whole, a very tolerable kind of existence, which if few would envy,
still fewer would care to part with.

I now come to the chief portion of your letter. This boy of Glencore’s,
I rather like the account you give of him, better than you do yourself.
Imaginative and dreamy he may be, but remember what he was, and where we
have placed him. A moonstruck, romantic youth at a German University. Is
it not painting the lily?

I merely intended he should go to Göttingen to learn the
language,--always a difficulty, if not abstracted from other and more
dulcet sounds. I never meant to have him domesticated with some rusty
Hochgelehrter, eating sauer-kraut in company with a green-eyed Fraulein,
and imbibing love and metaphysics together. Let him “moon away,” as you
call it, my dear Harcourt. It is wonderfully little consequence what any
one does with his intellect till he be three or four and twenty. Indeed,
I half suspect that the soil might be left quietly to rear weeds till
that time; and as to dreaminess, it signifies nothing if there be a
strong “physique.” With a weak frame, imagination will play the tyrant,
and never cease till it dominates over all the other faculties; but
where there is strength and activity, there is no fear of this.

You amuse me with your account of the doctor; and so the Germans have
actually taken him for a savant, and given him a degree “honoris
causa.” May they never make a worse blunder. The man is eminently
remarkable,--with his opportunities, miraculous. I am certain, Harcourt,
you never felt half the pleasure on arriving at a region well stocked
with game, that he did on finding himself in a land of Libraries,
Museums, and Collections. Fancy the poor fellow’s ecstasy at being
allowed to range at will through all ancient literature, of which
hitherto a stray volume alone had reached him. Imagine his delight as
each day opened new stores of knowledge to him, surrounded as he was by
all that could encourage zeal and reward research. The boy’s treatment
of him pleases me much; it smacks of the gentle blood in his veins. Poor
lad, there is something very sad in his case.

You need not have taken such trouble about accounts and expenditure; of
course, whatever you have done I perfectly approve of. You say that the
boy has no idea of money or its value. There is both good and evil in
this. And now as to his future. I should have no objection whatever to
having him attached to my Legation here, and perhaps no great difficulty
in effecting his appointment; but there is a serious obstacle in his
position. The young men who figure at embassies and missions are all
“cognate numbers.” They each of them know who and what the other is,
whence he came, and so on. Now, our poor boy could not stand this
ordeal, nor would it be fair he should be exposed to it. Besides this,
it was never Glencore’s wish, but the very opposite to it, that he
should be brought prominently forward in life. He even suggested one of
the Colonies as the means of withdrawing him at once, and forever, from
public gaze.

You have interested me much by what you say of the boy’s progress. His
tastes, I infer, lie in the direction which, in a worldly sense, are
least profitable; but, after all, Harcourt, every one has brains enough,
and to spare, for any career. Let us only decide upon that one most
fitted for him, and, depend upon it, his faculties will day by day
conform to his duties, and his tastes be merely dissipations, just as
play or wine is to coarser natures.

If you really press the question of his coming to me, I will not refuse,
seeing that I can take my own time to consider what steps subsequently
should be adopted. How is it that you know nothing of Glencore,--can he
not be traced?

Lord Selby, whom you may remember in the Blues formerly, dined here
yesterday, and mentioned a communication he had received from his lawyer
with regard to some property entail, which, if Glencore should leave
no heir male, devolved upon him. I tried to find out the whereabouts and
the amount of this heritage; but, with the admirable indifference that
characterizes him, he did not know or care.

As to my Lady, I can give you no information whatever. Her house at
Florence is uninhabited, the furniture is sold off; but no one seems
even to guess whither she has betaken herself. The fast and loose
of that pleasant city are, as I hear, actually houseless since her
departure. No asylum opens there with fire and cigars. A number of
the destitute have come down here in half despair, amongst the rest
Scaresby,--Major Scaresby, an insupportable nuisance of flat stories
and stale gossip; one of those fellows who cannot make even malevolence
amusing, and who speak ill of their neighbors without a single spark
of wit. He has left three cards upon me, each duly returned; but I am
resolved that our inter-change of courtesies shall proceed no farther.

I trust I have omitted nothing in reply to your last despatch, except
it be to say that I look for you here about September, or earlier, if as
convenient to you; you will, of course, write to me, however, meanwhile.

Do not mention having heard from me, at the clubs or in society. I am,
as I have the right to be, on the sick list, and it is as well my rest
should remain undisturbed.

I wish you had any means of making it known that the article in the
“Quarterly,” on our Foreign relations, is not mine. The newspapers have
coolly assumed me to be the author, and of course I am not going to give
them the _éclat_ of a personal denial. The fellow who wrote it must be
an ass; since had he known what he pretends, he had never revealed it.
He who wants to bag his bird, Colonel, never bangs away at nothing. I
have now completed a longer despatch to you than I intend to address to
the Noble Secretary at F. O., and am yours, very faithfully,

Horace Upton.

Whose Magnesia is it that contains essence of Bark? Tripley’s or
Chipley’s, I think. Find it out for me, and send me a packet through the
office; put up Fauchard’s pamphlet with it, on Spain, and a small box
of those new blisters,--Mouches they are called; they are to be had at
Atkinson’s. I have got so accustomed to their stimulating power that I
never write without one or two on my forehead. They tell me the cautery,
if dexterously applied, is better; but I have not tried it.



CHAPTER XXIII. THE TUTOR AND HIS PUPIL

We are not about to follow up the correspondence of Sir Horace by
detailing the reply which Harcourt sent, and all that thereupon ensued
between them.

We pass over, then, some months of time, and arrive at the late autumn.

It is a calm, still morning; the sea, streaked with tinted shadows,
is without a ripple; the ships of many nations that float on it are
motionless, their white sails hung out to bleach, their ensigns drooping
beside the masts. Over the summit of Vesuvius--for we are at Naples--a
light blue cloud hangs, the solitary one in all the sky. A mild,
plaintive song, the chant of some fishermen on the rocks, is the only
sound, save the continuous hum of that vast city, which swells and falls
at intervals.

Close beside the sea, seated on a rock, are two figures. One is that
of a youth of some eighteen or nineteen years; his features, eminently
handsome, wear an expression of gloomy pride as in deep preoccupation
he gazes out over the bay; to all seeming, indifferent to the fair scene
before him, and wrapped in his own sad thoughts. The other is a short,
square-built, almost uncouth figure, overshadowed by a wide straw hat,
which seems even to diminish his stature; a suit of black, wide
and ample enough for one twice his size, gives his appearance a
grotesqueness to which his features contribute their share.

It is, indeed, a strange physiognomy, to which Celt and Calmuc seem
equally to contribute. The low, overhanging forehead, the intensely keen
eye, sparkling with an almost imp-like drollery, are contrasted by
a firmly compressed mouth and a far-projecting under-jaw that imply
sternness even to cruelty; a mass of waving black hair, that covers neck
and shoulders, adds a species of savagery to a head which assuredly
has no need of such aid. Bent down over a large quarto volume, he never
lifts his eyes; but, intently occupied, his lips are rapidly repeating
the words as he reads them.

“Do you mean to pass the morning here?” asks the youth, at length, “or
where shall I find you later on?”

“I ‘ll do whatever you like best,” said the other, in a rich brogue; “I
‘m agreeable to go or stay,--_ad utrumque pa-ratus_.” And Billy Traynor,
for it was he, shut up his venerable volume.

“I don’t wish to disturb you,” said the boy, mildly, “you can read. I
cannot; I have a fretful, impatient feeling over me that perhaps will
go off with exercise. I’ll set out, then, for a walk, and come back here
towards evening, then go and dine at the Rocca, and afterwards whatever
you please.”

“If you say that, then,” said Billy, in a voice of evident delight,
“we’ll finish the day at the Professor Tadeucci’s, and get him to go
over that analysis again.”

“I have no taste for chemistry. It always seems to me to end where it
began,” said the boy, impatiently. “Where do all researches tend to?
how are you elevated in intellect? how are your thoughts higher, wider,
nobler, by all these mixings and manipulations?”

“Is it nothing to know how thunder and lightning is made; to understand
electricity; to dive into the secrets of that old crater there, and see
the ingredients in the crucible that was bilin’ three thousand years
ago?”

“These things appeal more grandly to my imagination when the mystery
of their forces is unrevealed. I like to think of them as dread
manifestations of a mighty will, rather than gaseous combinations or
metallic affinities.”

“And what prevents you?” said Billy, eagerly. “Is the grandeur of
the phenomenon impaired because it is in part intelligible? Ain’t you
elevated as a reasoning being when you get what I may call a peep into
God’s workshop, rather than by implicitly accepting results just as any
old woman accepts a superstition?”

“There is something ignoble in mechanism,” said the boy, angrily.

“Don’t say that, while your heart is beatin’ and your arteries is
contractin; never say it as long as your lungs dilate or collapse.
It’s mechanism makes water burst out of the ground, and, swelling into
streams, flow as mighty rivers through the earth. It’s mechanism raises
the sap to the topmost bough of the cedar-tree that waves over Lebanon.
‘T is the same power moves planets above, just to show us that as there
is nothing without a cause, there is one great and final ‘Cause’ behind
all.”

“And will you tell me,” said the boy, sneeringly, “that a sunbeam pours
more gladness into your heart because a prism has explained to you the
composition of light?”

“God’s blessings never seemed the less to me because he taught me the
beautiful laws that guide them,” said Billy, reverently; “every little
step that I take out of darkness is on the road, at least, to Him.”

In part abashed by the words, in part admonished by the tone of the
speaker, the boy was silent for some minutes. “You know, Billy,” said
he, at length, “that I spoke in no irreverence; that I would no more
insult your convictions than I would outrage my own. It is simply that
it suits my dreamy indolence to like the wonderful better than the
intelligible; and you must acknowledge that there never was so palatable
a theory for ignorance.”

“Ay, but I don’t want you to be ignorant,” said Billy, earnestly;
“and there’s no greater mistake than supposing that knowledge is an
impediment to the play of fancy. Take my word for it, Master Charles,
imagination, no more than any one else, does not work best in the dark.”

“I certainly am no adept under such circumstances,” said the boy. “I
have n’t told you what happened me in the studio last night. I went in
without a candle, and, trying to grope my way to the table, I overturned
the large olive jar, full of clay, against my Niobe, and smashed her to
atoms.”

“Smashed Niobe!” cried Billy, in horror.

“In pieces. I stood over her sadder than ever she felt herself, and I
have not had the courage to enter the studio since.”

“Come, come, let us see if she couldn’t be restored,” said Billy,
rising. “Let us go down there together.”

“You may, if you have any fancy,--there’s the key,” said the boy. “I ‘ll
return there no more till the rubbish be cleared away.” And so saying,
he moved off, and was soon out of sight.

Deeply grieving over this disaster, Billy Traynor hastened from the
spot, but he had only reached the garden of the Chiaja when he heard a
faint, weak voice calling him by his name; he turned, and saw Sir Horace
Upton, who, seated in a sort of portable arm-chair, was enjoying the
fresh air from the sea.

“Quite a piece of good fortune to meet you, Doctor,” said he, smiling;
“neither you nor your pupil have been near me for ten days or more.”

“‘Tis our own loss then, your Excellency,” said Billy, bowing; “even
a chance few minutes in your company is like whetting the intellectual
razor,--I feel myself sharper for the whole day after.”

“Then why not come oftener, man? Are you afraid of wearing the steel all
away?”

“‘T is more afraid I am of gapping the fine edge of your Excellency by
contact with my own ruggedness,” said Billy, obsequiously.

“You were intended for a courtier, Doctor,” said Sir Horace, smiling.

“If there was such a thing as a court fool nowadays, I’d look for the
place.”

“The age is too dull for such a functionary. They’ll not find ten men
in any country of Europe equal to the office,” said Sir Horace. “One has
only to see how lamentably dull are the journals dedicated to wit and
drollery, to admit this fact; though written by many hands, how rare
it is to chance upon what provokes a laugh. You ‘ll have fifty
metaphysicians anywhere before you ‘ll hit on one Molière. Will you
kindly open that umbrella for me? This autumnal sun, they say, gives
sunstroke. And now what do you think of this boy? He’ll not make a
diplomatist, that’s clear.”

“He ‘ll not make anything,--just for one simple reason, because he could
be whatever he pleased.”

“An intellectual spendthrift,” sighed Sir Horace “What a hopeless
bankruptcy it leads to!”

“My notion is ‘twould be spoiling him entirely to teach him a trade or
a profession. Let his great faculties shoot up without being trimmed or
trained; don’t want to twist or twine or turn them at all, but just see
whether he won’t, out of his uncurbed nature, do better than all our
discipline could effect. There’s no better colt than the one that was
never backed till he was a five-year-old.”

“He ought to have a career,” said Sir Horace, thoughtfully. “Every man
ought to have a calling, if only that he may be able to abandon it.”

“Just as a sailor has a point of departure,” said Billy.

“Precisely,” said Sir Horace, pleased at being so well appreciated.

“You are aware, Doctor,” resumed he, after a pause, “that the lad will
have little or no private fortune. There are family circumstances that
I cannot enter into, nor would your own delicacy require it, that will
leave him almost dependent on his own efforts. Now, as time is rolling
over, we should bethink us what direction it were wisest to give his
talents; for he has talents.”

“He has genius and talents both,” said Billy; “he has the raw material,
and the workshop to manufacture it.”

“I am rejoiced to hear such an account from one so well able to
pronounce,” said Sir Horace, blandly; and Billy bowed, and blushed with
a sense of happiness that none but humble men, so praised, could ever
feel.

“I should like much to hear what you would advise for him,” said Upton.

“He’s so full of promise,” said Billy, “that whatever he takes to he ‘ll
be sure to fancy he ‘d be better at something else. See, now,--it isn ‘t
a bull I ‘m sayin’, but I ‘ll make a blunder of it if I try to explain.”

“Go on; I think I apprehend you.”

“By coorse you do. Well, it’s that same feelin’ makes me cautious
of sayin’ what he ought to do. For, after all, a variety of capacity
implies discursiveness, and discursiveness is the mother of failure.”

“You speak like an oracle, Doctor.”

“If I do, it’s because the priest is beside me,” said Billy, howmg. “My
notion is this: I’d let him cultivate his fine gifts for a year or two
in any way he liked,--in work or idleness; for they ‘ll grow in the
fallow as well as in the tilled land. I ‘d let him be whatever he
liked,--striving always, as he’s sure to be striving, after something
higher, and greater, and better than he’ll ever reach; and then, when he
has felt both his strength and his weakness, I ‘d try and attach him to
some great man in public life; set a grand ambition before him, and say,
‘Go on.’”

“He’s scarcely the stuff for public life,” muttered Sir Horace.

“He is,” said Billy, boldly.

“He ‘d be easily abashed,--easily deterred by failure.”

“Sorra bit. Success might cloy, but failure would never damp him.”

“I can’t fancy him a speaker.”

“Rouse him by a strong theme and a flat contradiction, and you ‘ll see
what he can do.”

“And then his lounging, idle habits--”

“He’ll do more in two hours than any one else in two days.”

“You are a warm admirer, my dear Doctor,” said Sir Horace, smiling
blandly. “I should almost rather have such a friend than the qualities
that win the friendship.--Have you a message for me, Antoine?” said
he to a servant who stood at a little distance, waiting the order to
approach. The man came forward, and whispered a few words. Sir Horace’s
cheek gave a faint, the very faintest possible, sign of flush as he
listened, and uttering a brief “Very well,” dismissed the messenger.

“Will you give me your arm, Doctor?” said he, languidly; and the elegant
Sir Horace Upton passed down the crowded promenade, leaning on his
uncouth companion, without the slightest consciousness of the surprise
and sarcasm around him. No man more thoroughly could appreciate
conventionalities; he would weigh the effect of appearances to the
veriest nicety; but in practice he seemed either to forget his knowledge
or despise it. So that, as leaning on the little dwarf’s arm he moved
along, his very air of fashionable languor seemed to heighten the
absurdity of the contrast. Nay, he actually seemed to bestow an almost
deferential attention to what the other said, bowing blandly his
acquiescence, and smiling with an urbanity all his own.

Of the crowd that passed, nearly all knew the English Minister.
Uncovered heads were bent obsequiously; graceful salutations met him as
he went; while a hundred conjectures ran as to who and what might be his
companion.

He was a Mesmeric Professor, a Writer in Cipher, a Rabbi, an Egyptian
Explorer, an Alchemist, an African Traveller, and, at last, Monsieur
Thiers!--and so the fine world of Naples discussed the humble individual
whom you and I, dear reader, are acquainted with as Billy Traynor.



CHAPTER XXIV. HOW A “RECEPTION” COMES TO ITS CLOSE

On the evening of that day the handsome saloons of the great Hôtel
“Universo” were filled with a brilliant assemblage to compliment the
Princess Sabloukoff on her arrival. We have already introduced this lady
to the reader, and have no need to explain the homage and attention
of which she was the object. There is nothing which so perfectly
illustrates the maxim of _ignotum pro magnifico_ as the career of
politics; certain individuals obtaining, as they do, a pre-eminence
and authority from a species of mysterious prestige about them, and a
reputation of having access at any moment to the highest personage in
the world of state affairs. Doubtless great ministers are occasionally
not sorry to see the public full cry on a false scent, and encourage to
a certain extent this mystification; but still it would be an error
to deny to such persons as we speak of a knowledge, if not actually an
influence, in great affairs.

When the Swedish Chancellor uttered his celebrated sarcasm on the
governing capacities of Europe, the political _salon_, as a state
engine, was not yet in existence. What additional energy might it have
given to his remark, had he known that the tea-table was the chapel of
ease to the council-room, and gossip a new power in the state. Despotic
governments are always curious about public opinion; they dread while
affecting to despise it. They, however, make a far greater mistake
than this, for they imagine its true exponent to be the society of the
highest in rank and station.

It is not necessary to insist upon an error so palpable, and yet it is
one of which nearly every capital of Europe affords example; and the
same council-chamber that would treat a popular movement with disdain
would tremble at the epigram launched by some “elegant” of society. The
theory is, “that the masses _act_, but never _think_; the higher ranks
_think_, and set the rest in motion.” Whether well or ill founded, one
consequence of the system is to inundate the world with a number of
persons who, no matter what their station or pretensions, are no other
than spies. If it be observed that, generally speaking, there is
nothing worth recording; that society, too much engaged with its own
vicissitudes, troubles itself little with those of the state,--let it
be remembered that the governments which employ these agencies are in
a position to judge of the value of what they receive; and as they
persevere in maintaining them, they are, doubtless, in some degree,
remunerated.

To hold this high detective employ, a variety of conditions are
essential. The individual must have birth and breeding to gain access
to the highest circles; conciliating manners and ample means. If a lady,
she is usually young and a beauty, or has the fame of having once been
such. The strangest part of all is, that her position is thoroughly
appreciated. She is recognized everywhere for what she is; and yet her
presence never seems to impose a restraint or suggest a caution. She
becomes, in reality, less a discoverer than a depositary of secrets.
Many have something to communicate, and are only at a loss as to the
channel. They have found out a political puzzle, hit a state blot, or
unravelled a cabinet mystery. Others are in possession of some personal
knowledge of royalty. They have marked the displeasure of the Queen
Dowager, or seen the anger of the Crown Prince. Profitable as such facts
are, they are nothing without a market. Thus it is that these characters
exercise a wider sphere of influence than might be naturally ascribed
to them, and possess besides a terrorizing power over society, the chief
members of which are at their mercy.

It is, doubtless, not a little humiliating that such should be the
instruments of a government, and that royalty should avail itself of
such agencies; but the fact is so, and perhaps an inquiry into the
secret working of democratic institutions might not make one a whit more
proud of Popular Sovereignty.

Amongst the proficients in the great science we speak of, the Princess
held the first place. Mysterious stories ran of her acquaintance with
affairs the most momentous; there were narratives of her complicity in
even darker events. Her name was quoted by Savary in his secret report
of the Emperor Paul’s death; an allusion to her was made by one of the
assassins of Murat; and a gloomy record of a celebrated incident in
Louis Philippe’s life ascribed to her a share in a terrible tragedy.
Whether believed or not, they added to the prestige that attended her,
and she was virtually a “puissance” in European politics.

To all the intriguists in state affairs her arrival was actually a
boon. She could and would give them, out of her vast capital, enough
to establish them successfully in trade. To the minister of police
she brought accurate descriptions of suspected characters,--the
_signalements_ of Carbonari that were threatening half the thrones of
Europe. To the foreign secretary she brought tidings of the favor in
which a great Emperor held him, and a shadowy vision of the grand
cross he was one day to have. She had forbidden books for the cardinal
confessor, and a case of smuggled cigars for the minister of finance.
The picturesque language of a “Journal de Modes” could alone convey the
rare and curious details of dress which she imported for the benefit of
the court ladies. In a word, she had something to secure her a welcome
in every quarter,--and all done with a tact and a delicacy that the most
susceptible could not have resisted.

If the tone and manner of good society present little suitable to
description, they are yet subjects of great interest to him who would
study men in their moods of highest subtlety and astuteness. To mere
passing careless observation, the reception of the Princess was a
crowded gathering of a number of well-dressed people, in which the men
were in far larger proportion than the other sex. There was abundance of
courtesy; not a little of that half-flattering compliment which is the
small change of intercourse; some--not much--scandal, and a fair share
of small-talk. It was late when Sir Horace Upton entered, and, advancing
to where the Princess stood, kissed her gloved hand with all the
submissive deference of a courtier. The most lynx-eyed observer could
not have detected either in his manner or in hers that any intimacy
existed between them, much less friendship; least of all, anything still
closer. His bearing was a most studied and respectful homage,--hers a
haughty, but condescending, acceptance of it; and yet, with all this,
there was that in those around that seemed to say, “This man is more
master here than any of us.” He did not speak long with the Princess,
but, respectfully yielding his place to a later arrival, fell back into
the crowd, and soon after took a seat beside one of the very few ladies
who graced the reception. In all, they were very few, we are bound to
acknowledge; for although La Sabloukoff was received at court and all
the embassies, they who felt, or affected to feel, any strictness on the
score of morals avoided rather than sought her intimacy.

She covered over what might have seemed this disparagement of her
conduct, by always seeking the society of men, as though their hardy and
vigorous intellects were more in unison with her own than the graceful
attributes of the softer sex; and in this tone did the few lady friends
she possessed appear also to concur. It was their pride to discuss
matters of state and politics; and whenever they condescended to more
trifling themes, they treated them with a degree of candor and in a
spirit that allowed men to speak as unreservedly as though no ladies
were present.

Let us be forgiven for prolixity, since we are speaking less of
individuals than of a school,--a school, too, on the increase, and
one whose results will be more widely felt than many are disposed to
believe.

As the evening wore on, the guests bartered the news and _bons mots_;
scraps of letters from royal hands were read; epigrams from illustrious
characters repeated; racy bits of courtly scandal were related; and
shrewd explanations hazarded as to how this was to turn out, and that
was to end. It was a very strange language they talked,--so much seemed
left for inference, so much seemed left to surmise. There was a shadowy
indistinctness, as it were, over all; and yet their manner showed a
perfect and thorough appreciation of whatever went forward. Through all
this treatment of great questions, one striking feature pre-eminently
displayed itself,--a keen appreciation of how much the individual
characters, the passions, the prejudices, the very caprices of men in
power modified the acts of their governments; and thus you constantly
heard such remarks as, “If the Duke of Wellington disliked the Emperor
less; or, so long as Metternich has such an attachment to the Queen
Dowager; when we get over Carini’s dread of the Archduchess; or, if we
could only reconcile the Prince to a visit from Nesselrode,”--showing
that private personal feelings were swaying the minds of those whose
contemplation might have seemed raised to a far loftier level. And then
what a mass of very small gossip abounded,--incidents so slight and
insignificant that they only were lifted into importance by the actors
in them being Kings and Kaisers! By what accidents great events were
determined; on what mere trifles vast interests depended,--it were,
doubtless, no novelty to record; still, it would startle many to be
told that a casual pique, a passing word launched at hazard, some petty
observance omitted or forgotten, have changed the destinies of whole
nations.

It is in such circles as these that incidents of this kind are
recounted. Each has some anecdote, trivial and unimportant it may be,
but still illustrating the life of those who live under the shadow
of Royalty. The Princess herself was inexhaustible in these stores of
secret biography; there was not a dynastic ambition to be consolidated
by a marriage, not a Coburg alliance to patch up a family compact, that
she was not well versed in. She detected in the vaguest movements plans
and intentions, and could read the signs of a policy in indications that
others would have passed without remark.

One by one the company retired, and at length Sir Horace found himself
the last guest of the evening. Scarcely had the door closed on the last
departure, when, drawing his arm-chair to the side of the fire opposite
to that where the Princess sat, he took out his cigar-case, and,
selecting a cheroot, deliberately lighted and commenced to smoke it.

“I thought they ‘d never go,” said she, with a sigh; “but I know why
they remained,--they all thought the Prince of Istria was coming. They
saw his carriage stop here this evening, and heard he had sent up to
know if I received. I wrote on a card, ‘To-morrow at dinner, at eight;’
so be sure you are here to meet him.”

Sir Horace bowed, and smiled his acceptance.

“And your journey, dear Princess,” said he, between the puffs of his
smoke, “was it pleasant?”

“It might have been well enough, but I was obliged to make a great
_détour_. The Duchess detained me at Parma for some letters, and then
sent me across the mountains of Pontremoli--a frightful road--on a
secret mission to Massa.”

“To Massa! of all earthly places.”

“Even so. They had sent down there, some eight or nine months ago, the
young Count Wahnsdorf, the Archduchess Sophia’s son, who, having got
into all manner of dissipation at Vienna, and lost largely at play,
it was judged expedient to exile him for a season; and as the Duke of
Modena offered his aid to their plans, he was named to a troop in a
dragoon regiment, and appointed aide-de-camp to his Royal Highness. Are
you attending; or has your Excellency lost the clew of my story?”

“I am all ears; only waiting anxiously to hear: who is she?”

“Oh, then, you suspect a woman in the case?”

“I am sure of it, dear Princess. The very accents of your voice prepared
me for a bit of romance.”

“Yes, you are right; he has fallen in love,--so desperately in love
that he is incessant in his appeals to the Duchess to intercede with his
family and grant him leave to marry.”

“To marry whom?” asked Sir Horace.

“That’s the very question which he cannot answer himself; and when
pressed for information, can only reply that ‘she is an angel.’ Now,
angels are not always of good family; they have sometimes very humble
parents, and very small fortunes.”

“_Hélas!_” sighed the diplomatist, pitifully.

“This angel, it would seem, is untraceable. She arrived with her mother,
or what is supposed to be her mother, from Corsica; they landed at
Spezzia, with an English passport, calling them Madame and Mademoiselle
Harley. On arriving at Massa they took a villa close to the town, and
established themselves with all the circumstance of people well-off as
to means. They, however, neither received visits nor made acquaintance
with any one. They even so far withdrew themselves from public view
that they rarely left their own grounds, and usually took their
carriage-airing at night. You are not attending, I see.”

“On the contrary, I am an eager listener; only, it is a story one has
heard so often. I never heard of any one preserving the incognito except
where disclosure would have revealed a shame.”

“Your Excellency mistakes,” replied she; “the incognito is sometimes,
like a feigned despatch in diplomacy, a means of awakening curiosity.”

“_Ces ruses ne se font plus_, Princess,--they were the fashion in
Talleyrand’s time; now we are satisfied to mystify by no meaning.”

“If the weapons of the old school are not employed, there is another
reason, perhaps,” said she, with a dubious smile.

“That modern arms are too feeble to wield them, you mean,” said he,
bowing courteously. “Ah! it is but too true, Princess;” and he sighed
what might mean regret over the fact, or devotion to herself,--perhaps
both. At all events, his submission served as a treaty of peace, and she
resumed.

“And now, _revenons à nos moutons_,” said she, “or at least to our
lambs. This Wahnsdorf is quite capable of contracting a marriage without
any permission, if they appear inclined to thwart him; and the question
is, What can be done? The Duke would send these people away out of his
territory, only that, if they be English, as their passports imply, he
knows that there will be no end of trouble with your amiable Government,
which is never paternal till some one corrects one of her children.
If Wahnsdorf be sent away, where are they to send him? Besides, in all
these cases the creature carries his malady with him, and is sure
to marry the first who sympathizes with him. In a word, there were
difficulties on all sides, and the Duchess sent me over, in observation,
as they say, rather than with any direct plan of extrication.”

“And you went?”

“Yes; I passed twenty-four hours. I couldn’t stay longer, for I promised
the Cardinal Caraffa to be in Rome on the 18th, about those Polish
nunneries. As to Massa, I gathered little more than I had heard
beforehand. I saw their villa; I even penetrated as far as the orangery
in my capacity of traveller,--the whole a perfect Paradise. I ‘m not
sure I did not get a peep at Eve herself,--at a distance, however. I
made great efforts to obtain an interview, but all unsuccessfully. The
police authorities managed to summon two of the servants to the Podestà,
on pretence of some irregularity in their papers, but we obtained
nothing out of them; and, what is more, I saw clearly that nothing could
be effected by a _coup de main_. The place requires a long siege, and I
had not time for that.”

“Did you see Wahnsdorf?”

“Yes; I had him to dinner with me alone at the hotel, for, to avoid all
observation, I only went to the Palace after nightfall. He confessed all
his sins to me, and, like every other scapegrace, thought marriage was
a grand absolution for past wickedness. He told me, too, how he made the
acquaintance of these strangers. They were crossing the Magra with their
carriage on a raft, when the cable snapped, and they were all carried
down the torrent. He happened to be a passenger at the time, and did
something very heroic, I ‘ve no doubt, but I cannot exactly remember
what; but it amounted to either being, or being supposed to be, their
deliverer. He thus obtained leave to pay his respects at the villa. But
even this gratitude was very measured; they only admitted him at rare
intervals, and for a very brief visit. In fact, it was plain he had
to deal with consummate tacticians, who turned the mystery of their
seclusion and the honor vouchsafed him to an ample profit.”

“He told them his name and his rank?”

“Yes; and he owned that they did not seem at all impressed by the
revelation. He describes them as very naughty, very condescending in
manner, _très grandes dames_, in fact, but unquestionably born to the
class they represent. They never dropped a hint of whence they had come,
or any circumstance of their past lives, but seemed entirely engrossed
by the present, which they spent principally in cultivating the arts;
they both drew admirably, and the young lady had become a most skilful
modellist in clay, her whole day being passed in a studio which they had
just built. I urged him strongly to try and obtain permission for me
to see it, but he assured me it was hopeless,--the request might even
endanger his own position with them.

“I could perceive that, though very much in love, Wahns-dorf was equally
taken with the romance of this adventure. He had never been a hero to
himself before, and he was perfectly enchanted by the novelty of
the sensation. He never affected to say that he had made the least
impression on the young lady’s heart; but he gave me to understand that
the nephew of an Emperor need not trouble his head much on that score.
He is a very good-looking, well-mannered, weak boy, who, if he only
reach the age of thirty without some great blunder, will pass for a very
dignified Prince for the rest of his life.”

“Did you give him any hopes?”

“Of course, if he only promised to follow my counsels; and as these same
counsels are yet in the oven, he must needs wait for them. In a word, he
is to write to me everything, and I to him; and so we parted.”

“I should like to see these people,” said Upton, languidly.

“I’m sure of it,” rejoined she; “but it is perhaps unnecessary;” and
there was that in the tone which made the words very significant.

“Chelmsford--he ‘s now Secretary at Turin--might perhaps trace them,”
 said he; “he always knows everything of those people who are secrets to
the rest of the world.”

“For the present, I am disposed to think it were better not to direct
attention towards them,” replied she. “What we do here must be done
adroitly, and in such a way as that it can be disavowed if necessary, or
abandoned if unsuccessful.”

“Said with all your own tact, Princess,” said Sir Horace, smiling. “I
can perceive, however, that you have a plan in your head already. Is it
not so?”

“No,” said she, with a faint sigh; “I took wonderfully little interest
in the affair. It was one of those games where the combinations are so
few you don’t condescend to learn it. Are you aware of the hour?”

“Actually three o’clock,” said he, standing up. “Really, Princess, I am
quite shocked.”

“And so am I,” said she, smiling; “_on se compromet si facilement dans
ce bas monde_. Good night.” And she courtesied and withdrew before he
had time to take his hat and retire.



CHAPTER XXV. A DUKE AND HIS MINISTER

In this age of the world, when everybody has been everywhere, seen
everything, and talked with everybody, it may savor of an impertinence
if we ask of our reader if he has ever been at Massa. It may so chance
that he has not, and, if so, as assuredly has he yet an untasted
pleasure before him.

Now, to be sure, Massa is not as it once was. The little Duchy, whose
capital it formed, has been united to a larger state. The distinctive
features of a metropolis, and the residence of a sovereign prince,
are gone. The life and stir and animation which surround a court have
subsided; grass-grown streets and deserted squares replace the busy
movement of former days; a dreamy weariness seems to have fallen over
every one, as though life offered no more prizes for exertion, and that
the day of ambition was set forever. Yet are there features about the
spot which all the chances and changes of political fortune cannot
touch. Dynasties may fall, and thrones crumble, but the eternal
Apennines will still rear their snow-clad summits towards the sky. Along
the vast plain of ancient olives the perfumed wind will still steal at
evening, and the blue waters of the Mediterranean plash lazily among the
rocks, over which the myrtle and the arbutus are hanging. There, amidst
them all, half hid in clustering vines, bathed in soft odors from
orange-groves, with plashing fountains glittering in the sun, and
foaming streams gushing from the sides of marble mountains,--there
stands Massa, ruined, decayed, and deserted, but beautiful in all its
desolation, and fairer to gaze on than many a scene where the tide of
human fortune is at the flood.

As you wander there now, passing the deep arch over which, hundreds
of feet above you, the ancient fortress frowns, and enter the silent
streets, you would find it somewhat difficult to believe how, a very few
years back, this was the brilliant residence of a court,--the gay resort
of strangers from every land of Europe,--that showy equipages traversed
these weed-grown squares, and highborn dames swept proudly beneath these
leafy alleys. Hard, indeed, to fancy the glittering throng of courtiers,
the merry laughter of light-hearted beauty, beneath these trellised
shades, where, moodily and slow, some solitary figure now steals along,
“pondering sad thoughts over the bygone!”

But a few, a very few years ago, and Massa was in the plenitude of its
prosperity. The revenues of the state were large,--more than sufficient
to have maintained all that such a city could require, and nearly enough
to gratify every caprice of a prince whose costly tastes ranged over
every theme, and found in each a pretext for reckless expenditure. He
was one of those men whom Nature, having gifted largely, “takes out” the
compensation by a disposition of instability and fickleness that renders
every acquirement valueless. He could have been anything,--orator,
poet, artist, soldier, statesman; and yet, in the very diversity of his
abilities there was that want of fixity of purpose that left him
ever short of success, till he himself, wearied by repeated failures,
distrusted his own powers, and ceased to exert them.

Such a man, under the hard pressure of a necessity, might have done
great things; as it was, born to a princely station, and with a vast
fortune, he became a reckless spendthrift,--a dreamy visionary at one
time, an enthusiastic dilettante at another. There was not a scheme of
government he had not eagerly embraced and abandoned in turn. He had
attracted to his little capital all that Europe could boast of artistic
excellence, and as suddenly he had thrown himself into the most
intolerant zeal of Papal persecution,--denouncing every species of
pleasure, and ordaining a more than monastic self-denial and strictness.
There was only one mode of calculating what he might be, which was,
by imagining the very opposite to what he then was. Extremes were
his delight, and he undulated between Austrian tyranny and democratic
licentiousness in politics, just as he vacillated between the darkest
bigotry of his church and open infidelity.

At the time when we desire to present him to our readers (the exact year
is not material), he was fast beginning to weary of an interregnum of
asceticism and severity. He had closed theatres, and suppressed all
public rejoicings; and for an entire winter he had sentenced his
faithful subjects to the unbroken sway of the Priest and the Friar,--a
species of rule which had banished all strangers from the Duchy, and
threatened, by the injury to trade, the direst consequences to his
capital. To have brought the question formally before him in all its
details would have ensured the downfall of any minister rash enough
for such daring. There was, indeed, but one man about the court who had
courage for the enterprise; and to him we would devote a few lines as we
pass. He was an Englishman, named Stubber. He had originally come out to
Italy with horses for his Highness, and been induced, by good offers of
employment, to remain. He was not exactly stable-groom, nor trainer,
nor was he of the dignity of master of the stables; but he was something
whose attributes included a little of all, and something more. One thing
he assuredly was,--a consummately clever fellow, who could apply all his
native Yorkshire shrewdness to a new sphere, and make of his homespun
faculties the keen intelligence by which he could guide himself in novel
and difficult circumstances.

A certain freedom of speech, with a bold hardihood of character, based,
it is true, upon a conscious sense of honor, had brought him more than
once under the notice of the Prince. His Highness felt such pleasure in
the outspoken frankness of the man that he frequently took opportunities
of conversing with him, and even asking his advice. Never deterred by
the subject, whatever it was, Stubber spoke out his mind; and by
the very force of strong native sense, and an unswerving power of
determination, soon impressed his master that his best counsels were to
be had from the Yorkshire jockey, and not from the decorated and gilded
throng who filled the antechambers.

To elevate the groom to the rank of personal attendant, to create him
a Chevalier, and then a Count, were all easy steps to such a Prince.
At the time we speak of, Stubber was chief of the Cabinet,--the trusted
adviser of his master in knottiest questions of foreign politics, the
arbiter of the most difficult points with other states, the highest
authority in home affairs, and the absolute ruler over the Duke’s
household and all who belonged to it. He was one of those men of action
who speedily distinguish themselves wherever the game of life is being
played. Smart to discern the character of those around him, prompt to
avail himself of their knowledge, little hampered by the scruples which
conventionalities impose on men bred in a higher station, he generally
attained his object before others had arranged their plans to oppose
him. To these qualities he added a rugged, unflinching honesty, and
a loyal attachment to the person of his Prince. Strong in his own
conscious rectitude, and in the confiding regard of his sovereign,
Stubber stood alone against all the wiles and machinations of his
formidable rivals.

Were we giving a history of this curious court and its intrigues, we
could relate some strange stories of the mechanism by which states are
ruled. We have, however, no other business with the subject than as it
enters into the domain of our own story, and to this we return.

It was a calm evening of the early autumn, as the Prince, accompanied
by Stubber alone, and unattended by even a groom, rode along one of the
alleys of the olive wood which skirts the sea-shore beneath Massa.
His Highness was unusually moody and thoughtful, and as he sauntered
carelessly along, seemed scarcely to notice the objects about him.

“What month are we in, Stubber?” asked he, at length.

“September, Altezza,” was the short reply.

“_Per Bacco!_ so it is; and in this very month we were to have been in
Bohemia with the Archduke Stephen,--the best shooting in all Europe, and
the largest stock of pheasants in the whole world, perhaps; and I, that
love field-sports as no man ever loved them! Eh, Stubber?” and he
turned abruptly round to seek a confirmation of what he asserted.
Either Stubber did not fully agree in the judgment, or did not deem
it necessary to record his concurrence; but the Prince was obliged to
reiterate his statement, adding, “I might say, indeed, it is the one
solitary dissipation I have ever permitted myself.”

Now, this was a stereotyped phrase of his Highness, and employed by him
respecting music, literature, field-sports, picture-buying, equipage,
play, and a number of other pursuits not quite so pardonable, in each of
which, for the time, his zeal would seem to be exclusive.

A scarcely audible ejaculation--a something like a grunt--from Stubber,
was the only assent to this proposition.

“And here I am,” added the Prince, testily, “the only man of my rank in
Europe, perhaps, without society, amusement, or pleasure, condemned
to the wearisome details of a petty administration, and actually a
slave,--yes, sir, I say, a slave--What the deuce is this? My horse is
sinking above his pasterns. Where are we, Stubber?” and with a vigorous
dash of the spurs he extricated himself from the deep ground.

“I often told your Highness that these lands were ruined for want of
drainage. You may remark how poor the trees are along here; the fruit,
too, is all deteriorated,--all for want of a little skill and industry.
And, if your Highness remarked the appearance of the people in that
village, every second man has the ague on him.”

“They did look very wretched. And why is it not drained? Why isn’t
everything done as it ought, Stubber, eh?”

“Why is n’t your Highness in Bohemia?”

“Want of means, my good Stubber; no money. My man, Landelli, tells me
the coffer is empty; and until this new tax on the Colza comes in, we
shall have to live on our credit or our wits,--I forget which, but I
conclude they are about equally productive.”

“Landelli is a _ladro_,” said Stubber. “He has money enough to build a
new wing to his château in Serravezza, and to give fifty thousand scudi
of fortune to his daughter, though he can’t afford your Highness the
common necessaries of your station.”

“_Per Bacco!_ Billy, you are right; you must look into these accounts
yourself. They always confuse me.”

“I _have_ looked into them, and your Highness shall have two hundred
thousand francs to-morrow on your dressing-table, and as much more
within the week.”

“Well done, Billy! you are the only fellow who can unmask these
rogueries. If I had only had you with me long ago! Well! well! well! it
is too late to think of it. What shall we do with this money? Bohemia is
out of the question now. Shall we rebuild the San Felice? It is really
too small; the stage is crowded with twenty people on it. There’s that
gate towards Carrara, when is it to be completed? There’s a figure
wanted for the centre pedestal. As for the fountain, it must be done by
the municipality. It is essentially the interest of the townspeople.
You ‘d advise me to spend the money in draining these low lands, or in
a grant to that new company for a pier at Marina; but I ‘ll not; I have
other thoughts in my head. Why should not this be the centre of art to
the whole Peninsula? Carrara is a city of sculptors. Why not concentrate
their efforts here--by a gallery? I have myself some glorious
things,--the best group Canova ever modelled; the original Ariadne
too,--far finer than the thing people go to see at Frankfort. Then
there’s Tanderini’s Shepherd with the Goats.--Who lives yonder, Stubber?
What a beautiful garden it is!” And he drew up short in front of a villa
whose grounds were terraced in a succession of gardens down to the very
margin of the sea. Plants and shrubs of other climates were mingled
with those familiar to Italy, making up a picture of singular beauty, by
diversity of color and foliage. “Isn’t this the ‘Ombretta,’ Stubber?”

“Yes, Altezza; but the Morelli have left it. It is let now to a
stranger,--a French lady. Some call her English, I believe.”

“To be sure; I remember. There was a demand about a formal permission
to reside here. Landelli advised me not to sign it,--that she might turn
out English, or have some claim upon England, which was quite equivalent
to placing the Duchy, and all within it, under that blessed thing they
call British protection.”

“There are worse things than even that,” muttered Stubber.

“British occupation, perhaps you mean; well, you may be right. At all
events, I did not take Landelli’s advice, for I gave the permission, and
I have never heard more of her. She must be rich, I take it. See what
order this place is kept in; that conservatory is very large indeed, and
the orange-trees are finer than ours.”

“They seem very fine indeed,” said Stubber.

“I say, sir, that we have none such at the Palace. I’ll wager a zecchino
they have come from Naples. And look at that magnolia: I tell you,
Stubber, this garden is very far superior to ours.”

“Your Highness has not been in the Palace gardens lately, perhaps. I was
there this morning, and they are really in admirable order.”

“I’ll have a peep inside of these grounds, Stubber,” said the Duke, who,
no longer attentive to the other, only followed out his own train of
thought. At the same instant he dismounted, and, without giving himself
any trouble about his horse, made straight for a small wicket which lay
invitingly open in front of him. The narrow skirting of copse passed,
the Duke at once found himself in the midst of a lovely garden, laid
out with consummate skill and taste, and offering at intervals the most
beautiful views of the surrounding scenery. Although much of what he
beheld around him was the work of many years, there were abundant traces
of innovation and improvement. Some of the statues were recently placed,
and a small temple of Grecian architecture seemed to have been just
restored. A heavy curtain hung across the doorway; drawing back which,
the Duke entered what he at once perceived to be a sculptor’s studio.
Casts and models lay carelessly about, and a newly begun group stood
enshrouded in the wetted drapery with which artists clothe their
unfinished labors. No mean artist himself, the Duke examined critically
the figures before him; nor was he long in perceiving that the artist
had committed more than one fault in drawing and proportion. “This is
amateur work,” said he to himself; “and yet not without cleverness,
and a touch of genius too. Your dilettante scorns anatomy, and will not
submit to drudgery; hence, here are muscles incorrectly developed, and
their action ill expressed.” So saying, he sat down before the model,
and taking up one of the tools at his side, began to correct some of the
errors in the work. It was exactly the kind of task for which his skill
adapted him. Too impatient and too discursive to accomplish anything of
his own, he was admirably fitted to correct the faults of another, and
so he worked away vigorously,--totally forgetting where he was, how he
had come there, and as utterly oblivious of Stubber, whom he had left
without. Growing more and more interested as he proceeded, he arose at
length to take a better view of what he had done, and, standing some
distance off, exclaimed aloud, “_Per Bacco!_ I have made a good thing of
it--there ‘s life in it now!”

“So indeed is there,” cried a gentle voice behind him; and, turning, he
beheld a young and very beautiful girl, whose dress was covered by
the loose blouse of a sculptor. “How I thank you for this!” said she,
blushing deeply, as she courtesied before him. “I have had no teaching,
and never till this moment knew how much I needed it.”

“And this is your work, then?” said the Duke, who turned again towards
the model. “Well, there is promise in it. There is even more. Still, you
have hard labor before you, if you would be really an artist. There is a
grammar in these things, and he who would speak the tongue must get over
the declensions. I know but little myself--”

“Oh, do not say so!” cried she, eagerly; “I feel that I am in a master’s
presence.”

The Duke started, partly struck by the energy of her manner, in part by
the words themselves. It is often difficult for men in his station
to believe that they are not known and recognized; and so he stood
wondering at her, and thinking who she could be that did not know him to
be the Prince. “You mistake me,” said he, gently, and with that dignity
which is the birthright of those born to command. “I am but a very
indifferent artist. I have studied a little, it is true; but other
pursuits and idleness have swept away the small knowledge I once
possessed, and left me, as to art, pretty much as I am in morals,--that
is, I know what is right, but very often I can’t accomplish it.”

“You are from Carrara, I conclude?” said the young girl, timidly, still
curious to hear more about him.

“Pardon me,” said he, smiling; “I am a native of Massa, and live here.”

“And are you not a sculptor by profession?” asked she, still more
eagerly.

“No,” said he, laughing pleasantly; “I follow a more precarious trade,
nor can I mould the clay I work in so deftly.”

“At least you love art,” said she, with an enthusiasm heightened by the
changes he had effected in her group.

“Now it is my turn to question, Signorina,” said he, gayly. “Why, with
a talent like yours, have you not given yourself to regular study? You
live in a land where instruction should not be difficult to obtain.
Carrara is one vast studio; there must be many there who would not alone
be willing, but even proud, to have such a pupil. Have you never thought
of this?”

“I have thought of it,” said she, pensively, “but my aunt, with whom
I live, desires to see no one, to know no one;--even now,” added she,
blushing deeply, “I find myself conversing with an utter stranger, in
a way--” She stopped, overwhelmed with confusion, and he finished her
sentence for her.

“In a way which shows how naturally a love of art establishes a
confidence between those who profess it.” As he spoke, the curtain was
drawn back, and a lady entered, who, though several years older, bore
such a likeness to the young girl that she might readily have been taken
for her sister.

“It is at length time I should make my excuses for this intrusion,
madame,” said he, turning towards her; and then in a few words explained
how the accidental passing by the spot, and the temptation of the open
wicket, had led him to a trespass, “which,” added he, smiling, “I can
only say I shall be charmed if you will condescend to retaliate. I,
too, have some objects of art, and gardens which are thought worthy of a
visit.”

“We live here, sir, apart from the world. It is for that reason we have
selected this residence,” replied she, coldly.

“I shall respect your seclusion, madame,” answered he, with a deep bow,
“and only beg once more to tender my sincere apologies for the past.” He
moved towards the door as he spoke, the ladies courtesied deeply, and,
with a still lowlier reverence, he passed out.

The Duke lingered in the garden, as though unwilling to leave the spot.
For a while some doubt as to whether he had been recognized passed
through his mind, but he soon satisfied himself that such was not the
case, and the singularity of the situation amused him.

“I am culling a souvenir, madame,” said he, plucking a moss-ross as the
lady passed.

“I will give you a better one, sir,” said she, detaching one from her
bouquet, and handing it to him. And so they parted.

“_Per Bacco!_ Stubber, I have seen two very charming women. They are
evidently persons of condition; find out all about them, and let me
hear it to-morrow.” And so say-ing, his Highness rode away, thinking
pleasantly over his adventure, and fancying a hundred ways in which it
might be amusingly carried out. The life of princes is rarely fertile
in surprises; perhaps, therefore, the uncommon and unusual are the
pleasantest of all their sensations.



CHAPTER XXVI. ITALIAN TROUBLES

Stubber knew his master well. There was no need for any “perquisitions”
 on his part; the ladies, the studio, and the garden were totally
forgotten ere nightfall. Some rather alarming intelligence had arrived
from Carrara, which had quite obliterated every memory of his late
adventure. That little town of artists had long been the resort of an
excited class of politicians, and it was more than rumored that the
“Carbonari” had established there a lodge of their order. Inflammatory
placards had been posted through the town--violent denunciations of
the Government--vengeance, even on the head of the sovereign, openly
proclaimed, and a speedy day promised when the wrongs of an enslaved
people should be avenged in blood. The messenger who brought the
alarming tidings to Massa carried with him many of the inflammatory
documents, as well as several knives and poniards, discovered by the
activity of the police in a ruined building at the sea-shore. No
arrests had as yet been made, but the authorities were in possession of
information with regard to various suspicious characters, and the police
prepared to act at a moment’s notice.

It was an hour after midnight when the Council met; and the Duke sat,
pale, agitated, and terrified, at the table, with Landelli, the Prime
Minister, Caprini, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and General
Ferrucio, the War Minister; a venerable ecclesiastic, Monsignore Abbati,
occupying the lowest place, in virtue of his humble station as confessor
of his Highness. He who of all others enjoyed his master’s confidence,
and whose ready intelligence was most needed in the emergency, was not
present; his title of Minister of the Household not qualifying him for a
place at the Council.

Whatever the result, the deliberation was a long one. Even while it
continued, there was time to despatch a courier to Carrara, and receive
the answer he brought back; and when the Duke returned to his room,
it was already far advanced in the morning. Fatigued and harassed, he
dismissed his valet at once, and desired that Stubber might attend him.
When he arrived, however, his Highness had fallen off asleep, and lay,
dressed as he was, on his bed.

Stubber sat noiselessly beside his master, his mind deeply pondering
over the events which, although he had not been present at the Council,
had all been related to him. It was not the first time he had heard of
that formidable conspiracy, which, under the title of the Carbonari, had
established themselves in every corner of Europe.

In the days of his humbler fortune he had known several of them
intimately; he had been often solicited to join their band; but
while steadily refusing this, he had detected much which to his keen
intelligence savored of treachery to the cause amongst them. This cause
was necessarily recruited from those whose lives rejected all honest and
patient labor. They were the disappointed men of every station, from
the highest to the lowest. The ruined gentleman, the beggared noble, the
bankrupt trader, the houseless artisan, the homeless vagabond, were all
there; bold, daring, and energetic, fearless as to the present, reckless
as to the future. They sought for any change, no matter what, seeing
that in the convulsion their own condition must be bettered. Few
troubled their heads how these changes were to be accomplished; they
cared little for the real grievances they assumed to redress: their work
was demolition. It was to the hour of pillage alone they looked for the
recompense of their hardihood. Some, unquestionably, took a different
view of the agencies and the objects; dreamy, speculative men, with high
aspirations, hoped that the cruel wrongs which tyranny inflicted on many
a European state might be effectually curbed by a glorious freedom,
when each man’s actions should be made comformable to the benefit of the
community, and the will of all be typified in the conduct of each.
There was, however, another class, and to these Stubber had given deep
attention. It was a party whose singular activity and energy were always
in the ascendant,--ever suggesting bold measures whose results could
scarcely be more than menaces, and advocating actions whose greatest
effect could not rise above acts of terror and dismay. And thus while
the leaders plotted great political convulsions, and the masses dreamed
of sack and pillage, these latter dealt in acts of assassination,--the
vengeance of the poniard and the poison-cup. These were the men Stubber
had studied with no common attention. He fancied he saw in them neither
the dupes of their own excited imaginations, nor the reckless followers
of rapine, but an order of men equal to the former by intelligence,
but far transcending the last in crime and infamy. In his own early
experiences he had perceived that more than one of these had expatriated
themselves suddenly, carrying away to foreign shores considerable
wealth, and, that, too, under circumstances where the acquisition of
property seemed scarcely possible. Others he had seen as suddenly,
throwing off their political associates, rise into stations of rank and
power; and one memorable case he knew where the individual had become
the chief adviser of the very state whose destruction he had sworn to
accomplish. Such a one he now fancied he had detected among the advisers
of his Prince; and deeply ruminating on this theme, he sat at the
bedside.

“Is it a dream, Stubber, or have we really heard bad news from Carrara?
Has Fraschetti been stabbed, or not?”

“Yes, your Highness, he has been stabbed exactly two inches below where
he was wounded in September last,--then, it was his pocket-book saved
him; now, it was your Highness’s picture, which, like a faithful
follower, he always carried about him.”

“Which means, that you disbelieve the whole story.”

“Every word of it.”

“And the poniards found at the Bocca di Magra?”

“Found by those who placed them there.”

“And the proclamations?”

“Blundering devices. See, here is one of them, printed on the very paper
supplied to the Government offices. There ‘s he water-mark, with the
crown and your own cipher on it.”

“_Per Bacco!_so it is. Let me show this to Landelli.”

“Wait awhile, your Highness; let us trace this a little farther. No
arrests have been made?”

“None.”

“Nor will any. The object in view is already gained; they have terrified
you, and secured the next move.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply, that they have persuaded you that this state is the hotbed
of revolutionists; that your own means of security and repression are
unequal to the emergency; that disaffection exists in the army; and
that, whether for the maintenance of the Government or your safety, you
have only one course remaining.”

“Which is--”

“To call in the Austrians.”

“_Per Bacco!_ it is exactly what they have advised. How did you come to
know it? Who is the traitor at the Council-board?”

“I wish I could tell you the name of one who was not such. Why, your
Highness, these fellows are not _your_ Ministers, except in so far as
they are paid by you. They are Metternich’s people; they receive their
appointments from Vienna, and are only accountable to the cabinet held
at Schönbrunn. If wise and moderate counsels prevailed here, if our
financial measures prospered, if the people were happy and contented,
how long, think you, would Lombardy submit to be ruled by the rod and
the bayonet? Do you imagine that _you_ will be suffered to give an
example to the Peninsula of a good administration?”

“But so it is,” broke in the Prince; “I defy any man to assert the
opposite. The country _is_ prosperous, the people _are_ contented, the
laws justly administered, and, I hesitate not to say, myself as popular
as any sovereign of Europe.”

“And I tell your Highness, just as distinctly, that the country is
ground down with taxation, even to export duties on the few things
we have to export; that the people are poor to the very verge of
starvation; that if they do not take to the highways as brigands, it is
because some traditions as honest men yet survive amongst them; that the
laws only exist as an agent of tyranny, arrest and imprisonment being
at the mere caprice of the authorities. Nor is there a means by which an
innocent man can demand his trial, and insist on being confronted with
his accuser. Your jails are full, crowded to a state of pestilence with
supposed political offenders, men that, in a free country, would be
at large, toiling industriously for their families, and whose opinions
could never be dangerous, if not festering in the foul air of a dungeon.
And as to _your own_ popularity, all I say is, don’t walk in the Piazza
at Carrara after dusk. No, nor even at noonday.”

“And you dare to speak thus to _me_, Stubber!” said the Prince, his face
covered with a deadly pallor as he spoke, and his white lips trembling,
but less in passion than in fear.

“And why not, sir? Of what value could such a man as I am be to
your service, if I were not to tell you what you ‘ll never hear from
others,--the plain, simple truth? Is it not clear enough that if I
only thought of my own benefit, I ‘d say whatever you’d like best to
hear?--I’d tell you, like Landelli, that the taxes were well paid, or
say, as Cerreccio did t’other day, that your army would do credit to any
state in Europe, when he well knew at the time that the artillery was
in mutiny from arrears of pay, and the cavalry horses dying from short
rations!”

“I am well weary of all this,” said the Duke, with a sigh. “If the half
of what I hear of my kingdom every day be but true, my lot in life is
worse than a galley-slave’s. One assures me that I am bankrupt; another
calls me a vassal of Austria; a third makes me out a Papal spy; and
_you_ aver that if I venture into the streets of my own town, in the
midst of my own people, I am almost sure to be assassinated!”

“Take no man’s word, sir, for what, while you can see for yourself, it
is your own duty to ascertain,” said Stubber, resolutely. “If you really
only desire a life of ease and indolence, forgetting what you owe to
yourself and those you rule over, send for the Austrians. Ask for a
brigade and a general. You ‘ll have them for the asking. They ‘d come
at a word, and try your people at the drum-head, and flog and shoot them
with as little disturbance to you as need be. You may pension off the
judges; for a court-martial is a far speedier tribunal, and a corporal’s
guard is quite an economy in criminal justice. Trade will not, perhaps,
prosper with martial law, nor is a state of siege thought favorable
to commerce. No matter. You ‘ll sleep safe so long as you keep
within doors, and the band under your window will rouse the spirit of
nationality in your heart, as it plays, ‘God preserve the Emperor!’”

“You forget yourself, sir, and you forget _me!_” said the Duke, sternly,
as he drew himself up, and threw a look of insolent pride at the
speaker.

“Mayhap I do, your Highness,” was the ready answer; “and out of that
very forgetfulness let your Highness take a warning. I say, once more,
I distrust the people about you; and as to this conspiracy at Carrara,
I’ll wager a round sum on it that it was hatched on t ‘other side of
the Alps, and paid for in good florins of the Holy Roman Empire. At all
events, give me time to investigate the matter. Let me have till the
end of the week to examine into it, and, if I find nothing to confirm
my views, I ‘ll say not one word against all the measures of precaution
that your Council are bent on importing from Austria.”

“Take your own way; I promise nothing,” said the Duke, haughtily; and,
with a motion of his hand, dismissed his adviser.



CHAPTER XXVII. CARRARA

To all the luxuriant vegetation and cultivated beauty of Massa, glowing
in the “golden glories” of its orange-groves,--steeped in the perfume of
its thousand gardens,--Carrara offers the very strongest contrast.
Built in a little cleft of the Apennines, it is begirt with great
mountains,--wild, barren, and desolate. Some, dark and precipitous, have
no traces in their sides but those of the torrents which are formed by
the melting snows; others show the white caves, as they are called, of
that pure marble which has made the name of the spot famous throughout
Europe. High in the mountain sides, escarped amidst rocks, and
zig-zagging over many a dangerous gorge and deep abyss, are the rough
roads trodden by the weary oxen,--trailing along their massive loads
and straining their stout chests to drag the great white blocks of
glittering stone. Far down below, crossed and recrossed by splashing
torrents, sprinkled with the spray of a hundred cataracts, stands
Carrara itself,--a little marble city of art, every house a studio,
every citizen a sculptor. Hither are sent all the marvellous conceptions
of genius,--the models which mighty imaginations have begotten,--to
be converted into imperishable stone. Here are the grand conceptions
gathered for every land and clime, treasures destined to adorn the great
galleries of nations, or the splendid palaces of kings.

Some of these studios are of imposing size and vast proportions, and not
devoid of a certain architectural pretension,--a group, a figure, or a
bas-relief usually adorning the space over the door, and by its subject
giving some indication of the tastes of the proprietor. Thus, Madonnas
and saints are of frequent occurrence; and the majority of the artists
display their faith by an image of the saint whose patronage they claim.
Others exhibit some ideal conception; and a few denote their nationality
by the bust of their sovereign, or some prince of his house.

One of these buildings, a short distance from the town, and so small as
to be little more than a mere crypt, was distinguished by the chaste and
simple elegance of its design, and the tasteful ornament with which its
owner had decorated the most minute details of the building. He was
a young artist who had arrived in Carrara friendless and unknown, but
whose abilities had soon obtained for him consideration and employment.
At first, the tasks intrusted to him were the humbler ones of friezes
and decorative art; but at length, his skill becoming acknowledged, to
his hands were confided the choicest conceptions of Danneker, the most
rare creations of Canova. Little or nothing was known of him; his habits
were of the strictest seclusion,--he went into no society, he formed
no friendships. His solitary life, after a while, ceased to attract any
notice; and men saw him pass, and come and go, without question,--almost
without greeting; and, save when some completed work was about to be
packed off to its destination, the name of Sebastian Greppi was rarely
heard in Carrara.

His strict retirement had not, however, exempted him from the jealous
suspicions of the authorities; on the contrary, the seeming mystery of
his life had sharpened their curiosity and aroused their zeal; and more
than once was he summoned to the Prefecture to answer some frivolous
questions about his passport or his means of subsistence.

It was on one of these errands that he stood one morning in the
antechamber of the Podestà’s court, awaiting his turn to be called
and interrogated. The heat of a crowded chamber, the wearisome
delay,--perhaps, too, some vexation at the frequency of these irritating
calls,--had partially excited him; and when he was at length introduced,
his manner was confused, and his replies vague and almost wandering.

Two strangers, whose formal permission to reside were then being filled
up by a clerk, were accommodated with seats in the room, and listened
with no slight interest to a course of inquiry so strange and novel to
their ears.

“Greppi!” cried the harsh voice of the President, “come forward;” and
a youth stood up, dressed in the blue blouse of a common workman, and
wearing the coarse shoes of the very humblest laborer; but yet, in the
calm dignity of his mien and the mild character of his sad but handsome
features, already proclaiming that he came of a class whose instincts
denote good blood.

“Greppi, you have a servant, it would seem, whose name is not in your
passport. How is this?”

“He is an humble friend who shares my fortunes, sir,” said the artist.
“They asked no passport from him when we crossed the Tuscan frontier;
and he has been here some months without any demand for one.”

“Does he assist you in your work?”

“He does, sir, by advice and counsel; but he is not a sculptor. Poor
fellow! he never dreamed that his presence here could have attracted any
remark.”

“His tongue and accent betray a foreign origin, Greppi?”

“Be it so,--so do mine, perhaps. Are we the less submissive to the
laws?”

“The laws can make themselves respected,” said the Podestà, sternly.
“Where is this man,--how is he called?”

“He is known as Guglielmo, sir. At this moment he is ill; he has caught
the fever of the Campagna, and is confined to bed.”

“We shall send to ascertain the fact,” was the reply.

“Then my word is doubted!” said the youth haughtily.

The Podestà started, but more in amazement than anger. There was,
indeed, enough to astonish him in the haughty ejaculation of the poorly
clad boy.

“I am given to believe that you are not--as your passport would imply--a
native of Capri, nor a Neapolitan born,” said the Podestà.

“If my passport be regular and my conduct blameless, what have you or
any one to do with my birthplace? Is there any charge alleged against
me?”

“You are forgetting where you are, boy; but I may take measures to
remind you of it,” said the Podestà, whispering to a sergeant of the
gendarmes at his side.

“I hope I have said nothing that could offend you,” said the boy,
eagerly; “I scarcely know what I have said. My wish is to submit myself
in all obedience to the laws; to live quietly and follow my trade. If
my presence here give displeasure to the authorities, I will, however
sorry, take my departure, though I cannot say whither to.” The last
words were uttered falteringly, and in a kind of soliloquy, and only
overheard by the two strangers, who now, having received their papers,
arose to withdraw.

“Will you call at our inn and speak with us? That’s my card,” said one,
as he passed out, and gave a visiting-card into the youth’s hand.

He took it without a word; indeed, he was too deeply engaged in his own
thoughts to pay much attention to the request.

“The sergeant will accompany you, my good youth, to your lodgings, and
verify what you have stated as to your companion. To-morrow you will
appear here again, to answer certain questions we shall put to you as to
your subsistence, and the means by which you live.”

“Is it a crime to have wherewithal to subsist upon?” asked the boy.

“He whose means of living are disproportionate to his evident station
may well be an object of suspicion,” said the other, with a sneer.

“And who is to say what is my station, or what becomes it? Will _you_
take upon you to pronounce upon the question?” cried the boy, boldly.

“Mayhap it is what I shall do very soon!” was the calm answer.

“Then let me have done with this. I’ll leave the place as soon as my
friend be able to bear removal.”

“Even that I ‘ll not promise for.”

“Why, you ‘ll not detain me here by force?” exclaimed the youth. \

A cold, ambiguous smile was the only reply he received to this speech.

“Well, let us see when this restraint is to begin,” cried the boy,
passionately, as he moved towards the door; but no impediment was
offered to his departure. On the contrary, the servant, at a signal
from the Prefect, threw wide the two sides of the folding-doors, and the
youth passed out, down the stairs, and into the street.

His mind obscured by passion, his heart bursting with indignation, he
threaded his way through many a narrow lane and alley, till he reached a
small rustic bridge, crossing over which he ascended a narrow flight of
steps cut in the solid rock, and gained a little terrace, on which stood
a small cottage of the humblest kind.

As usual in Italy, during the summer-time, the glass sashes of the
windows had been removed, and the shutters closed. Opening one of these
gently with his hand, he peeped in, and as suddenly a voice cried out,
“Are you come back? Oh, how my heart was aching to see you here again!
Come in quickly, and let me touch your hand.”

The next moment the boy was seated by the bed, where lay a man greatly
emaciated by sickness, and bearing in his worn features the traces of a
severe tertian.

“It’s going off now,” said he, “but the fit was a long one. This morning
it began at eight o’clock; but I ‘m throwing it off now, and I ‘ll soon
be better.”

“My poor fellow,” said the boy, caressing the cold fingers within his
own hands, “it was in these midnight rambles of mine you caught the
terrible malady. As it ever has been, your fidelity is fatal to you. I
told you a thousand times that I was born to hard luck, and carried more
than enough to swamp all who might try to succor me.

“And don’t I say, as the ould heathen philosopher did of fortune,
‘Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia’?” Is it necessary to say that the
speaker was Billy Traynor, and the boy his pupil?

“_Prudentia_,” said the youth, scoffingly, “may mean anything, from
trickery to downright meanness; since, by such acts as these, men grow
great in life. _Prudentia_ is thrift and self-denial; but it is more
too,--it is a compromise between a man’s dignity and his worldly
success--it is the compact that says, Bear _this_ that _that_ may
happen; and so I ‘ll none of it.”

“Tell me how you fared with the Prefect,” asked Billy.

“You shall hear, and judge for yourself,” said the other; and related,
as well as his memory would serve him, the circumstances of his late
interview.

“Well, well!” said Billy, “it might be worse.”

“I knew you ‘d say so, poor fellow!” said the youth, affectionately;
“you accept the rubs of life as cheerfully as I take them with
impatience. But, after all, this is matter of temperament too. _You_ can
forgive,--I love better to resist.”

“Mine is the better philosophy, though,” said Billy, “since it will last
one’s lifetime. Forgiveness must dignify old age, when your virtue of
resistance be no longer possible.”

“I never wish to reach the time when I may be too old for it,” said the
boy, passionately.

“Hush! don’t say that. It’s not for you to determine how long you are to
live, nor in what frame of mind years are to find you.” He paused, and
there was a long unbroken silence between them.

“I have been at the post,” said the youth, at last, “and found that
letter, which, by the Neapolitan postmark, must have been despatched
many weeks since.”

Billy Traynor took up the letter, whose seal was yet unbroken, and
having examined it carefully, returned it to him, saying, “You did n’t
answer his last, I think?”

“No; and I half hoped he might have felt offended, and given up the
correspondence. What have we to do with ambassadors or great ministers,
Billy? Ours is not the grand highway in life, but the humble path on the
mountain side.”

“I’m content if it only lead upwards,” said the sick man; and the words
were uttered firmly, but with the solemn fervor of prayer.



CHAPTER XXVIII. A NIGHT SCENE

As young Massy--for so we like best to call him--sat with the letter
in his hand, a card fell to the ground from between his fingers, and,
taking it up, he read the name “Lord Selby.”

“What does this mean, Billy?” asked he; “whom can it belong to? Oh,
I remember now. There were some strangers at the Podestà’s office this
morning when I was there; and one of them asked me to call at this inn,
and speak with them.”

“He has seen the ‘Alcibiades,’” exclaimed Billy, eagerly. “He has been
at the studio?”

“How should he?” rejoined the youth. “I have not been there myself for
two days: here is the key!”

“He has heard of it then,--of that I’m certain; since he could not be in
town here an hour without some one telling him of it.” Massy smiled half
sadly, and shook his head. “Go and see him, at all events,” said Billy;
“and be sure to put on your coat and a hat; for one would n’t know what
ye were at all, in that cap and dirty blouse.”

“I’ll go as I am, or not at all,” said the other, rising. “I am
Sebastian Greppi, a young sculptor. At least,” added he, bitterly, “I
have about the same right to that name that I have to any other.” He
turned abruptly away as he spoke, and gained the open air. There for a
few moments he stood seemingly irresolute, and then, wiping away a heavy
tear that had fallen on his cheek, he slowly descended the steps towards
the bridge.

When he reached the inn, the strangers had just dined, but left word
that when he called he should be introduced at once, and Massy followed
the waiter into a small garden, where, in a species of summer-house,
they were seated at their wine. One of them arose courteously as the
youth came forward, and placing a chair for him, and filling out a glass
of wine, invited him to join them.

“Give him one of your cigars, Baynton,” said the other; “they are better
than mine.” And Massy accepted, and began smoking without a word.

“That fellow at the police-office gave you no further trouble, I hope,”
 said my lord, in a half-languid tone, and with that amount of difficulty
that showed he was no master of Italian.

“No,” replied Massy; “for the present, he has done nothing more. I
‘m not so certain, however, that to-morrow or next day I shall not be
ordered away from this.”

“On what grounds?”

“Suspicion,--Heavens knows of what!”

“That’s infamous, I say. Eh, Baynton?”

“Detestable,” muttered the other.

“And whereto can you go?”

“I scarcely know as yet, since the police are in communication
throughout the whole Peninsula, and they transmit your character from
state to state.”

“They ‘d not credit this in England, Baynton!”

“No, not a word of it!” rejoined the other.

“You ‘re a Neapolitan, I think I heard him say.”

“So my passport states.”

“Ah, he won’t say that he is one, though,” interposed his Lordship, in
English. “Do you mind that, Baynton?”

“Yes, I remarked it,” was the reply.

“And how came you here originally?” asked Selby, turning towards the
youth.

“I came here to study and to work. There is always enough to be had to
do in this place, copying the works of great masters; and at one’s spare
moments there is time to try something of one’s own.”

“And have you done anything of that kind?”

“Yes, I have begun. I have attempted two or three.”

“We should like to see them,--eh, Baynton?”

“Of course, when we ‘ve finished our wine. It’s not far off, is it?”

“A few minutes’ walk; but not worth even that, when the place is full
of things really worth seeing. There’s Danneker’s ‘Bathing Nymph,’ and
Canova’s ‘Dead Cupid,’ and Rauch’s ‘Antigone,’ all within reach.”

“Mind that, Baynton; we must see all these to-morrow. Could you come
about with us, and show us what we ought to see?”

“Who knows if I shall not be on the road to-morrow?” said the youth,
smiling faintly.

“Oh, I think not, if there’s really nothing against you; if it’s only
mere suspicion.”

“Just so!” said the other, and drank off his wine.

“And you are able to make a good thing of it here,--by copying, I mean?”
 asked his Lordship, languidly.

“I can live,” said the youth; “and as I labor very little and idle a
great deal, that is saying enough, perhaps.”

“I ‘m not sure the police are not right about him, after all, Baynton,”
 said his Lordship; “he doesn’t seem to care much about his trade;” and
Massy was unable to repress a smile at the remark.

“You don’t understand English, do you?” asked Selby, with a degree of
eagerness very unusual to him.

“Yes, I am English by birth,” was the answer.

“English! and how came you to call yourself a Neapolitan? What was the
object of that?”

“I wished to excite less notice and less observation here, and, if
possible, to escape the jealousy with which Englishmen are regarded by
the authorities; for this I obtained a passport at Naples.”

Baynton eyed him suspiciously as he spoke, and as he sipped his wine
continued to regard him with a keen glance.

“And how did you manage to get a Neapolitan passport?”

“Our Minister, Sir Horace Upton, managed that for me.”

“Oh, you are known to Sir Horace, then?”

“Yes.”

A quick interchange of looks between my lord and his friend showed that
they were by no means satisfied that the young sculptor was simply a
worker in marble and a fashioner in modelling-clay.

“Have you heard from Sir Horace lately?” asked Lord Selby.

“I received this letter to-day, but I have not read it;” and he showed
the unopened letter as he spoke.

“The police may, then, have some reasonable suspicions about your
residence here,” said his Lordship, slowly.

“My Lord,” said Massy, rising, “I have had enough of this kind of
examination from the Podestà himself this morning, not to care to pass
my evening in a repetition of it. Who I am, what I am, and with what
object here, are scarcely matters in which you have any interest, and
assuredly were not the subjects on which I expected you should address
me. I beg now to take my leave.” He moved towards the garden as he
spoke, bowing respectfully to each.

“Wait a moment; pray don’t go,--sit down again,--I never meant,--of
course I could n’t mean so,--eh, Baynton?” said his Lordship,
stammering in great confusion.

“Of course not,” broke in Baynton; “his Lordship’s inquiries were really
prompted by a sincere desire to serve you.”

“Just so,--a sincere desire to serve you.”

“In fact, seeing you, as I may say, in the toils.”

“Exactly so,--in the toils.”

“He thought very naturally that his influence and his position
might,--you understand,--for these fellows know perfectly well what
an English peer is,--they take a proper estimate of the power of Great
Britain.”

His Lordship nodded assentingly, as though any stronger corroboration
might not be exactly graceful on his part, and Baynton went on:--

“Now you perfectly comprehend why,--you see at once the whole thing; and
I ‘m sure, instead of feeling any soreness or irritation at my lord’s
interference, that in point of fact--”

“Just so,” broke in his Lordship, pressing Massy into a seat at his
side,--“just so; that’s it!”

It requires no ordinary tact for any man to reseat himself at a table
from which he has risen in anger or irritation, and Massy had far too
little knowledge of life to overcome this difficulty gracefully. He
tried, indeed, to seem at ease, he endeavored even to be cheerful; but
the efforts were all unsuccessful. My lord was no very acute observer at
any time; he was, besides, so constitutionally indolent that the company
which exacted least was ever the most palatable to him. As for Baynton,
he was only too happy whenever least reference was made to his opinion,
and so they sat and sipped their wine with wonderfully little converse
between them.

“You have a statue, or a group, or something or other, have n’t you?”
 said my lord, after a very long interval.

“I have a half-finished model,” said the youth, not without a certain
irritation at the indifference of his questioner.

“Scarcely light enough to look at it to-night,--eh, Baynton?”

“Scarcely!” was the dry answer.

“We can go in the morning though, eh?”

The other nodded a cool assent.

My lord now filled his glass, drank it off, and refilled, with the air
of a man nerving himself for a great undertaking,--and such was indeed
the case. He was about to deliver himself of a sentiment, and the
occasion was one to which Baynton could not lend his assistance.

“I have been thinking,” said he, “that if that same estate we spoke
of, Baynton,--that Welsh property, you know, and that thing in
Ireland,--should fall in, I ‘d buy some statues and have a gallery!”

“Devilish costly work you’d find it,” muttered Baynton.

“Well, I suppose it is,--not more so than a racing stable, after all.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Besides, I look upon that property--if it does ever come to me--as a
kind of windfall; it was one of those pieces of fortune one could n’t
have expected, you know.” Then, turning towards the youth, as if to
apologize for a discussion in which he could take no part, he said, “We
were talking of a property which, by the eccentricity of its owner, may
one day become mine.”

“And which doubtless some other had calculated on inheriting,” said the
youth.

“Well, that may be very true; I never thought about that,--eh, Baynton?”

“Why should you?” was the short response.

“Gain and loss, loss and gain,” muttered the youth, moodily, “are the
laws of life.”

“I say, Baynton, what a jolly moonlight there is out there in the
garden! Would n’t it be a capital time this to see your model, eh?”

“If you are disposed to take the trouble,” said the youth, rising, and
blushing modestly; and the others stood up at the same moment.

Nothing passed between them as they followed the young sculptor through
many an intricate by-way and narrow lane, and at last reached the little
stream on whose bank stood his studio.

“What have we here!” exclaimed Baynton as he saw it; “is this a little
temple?”

“It is my workshop,” said the boy, proudly, and produced the key to open
the door.

Scarcely had he crossed the threshold, however, than his foot struck
a roll of papers, and, stooping down, he caught up a large placard,
headed, “Morte al Tiranno,” in large capitals. Holding the sheet up to
the moonlight, he saw that it contained a violent and sanguinary
appeal to the wildest passions of the Carbonari,--one of those savage
exhortations to bloodshedding which were taken from the terrible
annals of the French Revolution. Some of these bore the picture of the
guillotine at top, others were headed with cross poniards.

“What are all these about?” asked Baynton, as he took up three or four
of them in his hand; but the youth, overcome with terror, could make no
answer.

“These are all _sans-culotte_ literature, I take it,” said his Lordship;
but the youth was stupefied and silent.

“Has there been any treachery at work here?” asked Baynton. “Is there a
scheme to entrap you?”

The youth nodded a melancholy and slow assent.

“But why should you be obnoxious to these people? Have you any enemies
amongst them?”

“I cannot tell,” gloomily muttered the youth.

“And this is your statue?” said Baynton, as, opening a large shutter, he
suffered a flood of moonlight to fall on the figure.

[Illustration: 242]

“Fine!--a work of great merit, Baynton,” broke in his Lordship,
whose apathy was at last overcome by admiration. But the youth stood
regardless of their comments, his eyes bent upon the ground; nor did he
heed them as they moved from side to side, examining the statue in all
its details, and in words of high praise speaking their approval.

“I’ll buy this,” muttered his Lordship. “I’ll give him an order, too,
for another work,--leaving the subject to himself.”

“A clever fellow, certainly,” replied the other.

“Whom does he mean the figure to represent?”

“It is Alcibiades as he meets his death,” broke in the youth; “he is
summoned to the door as though to welcome a friend, and he falls pierced
by a poisoned arrow,--there is but legend to warrant the fact. I cared
little for the incident,--I was full of the man, as he contended with
seven chariots in the Olympic games, and proudly rode the course with
his glittering shield of ivory and gold, and his waving locks
all perfumed. I thought of him in his gorgeous panoply, and his
voluptuousness; lion-hearted and danger-seeking, pampering the very
flesh he offered to the spears of the enemy. I pictured him to my
mind, embellishing life with every charm, and daring death in every
shape,--beautiful as Apollo, graceful as the bounding Mercury, bold as
Achilles, the lion’s whelp, as Æschylus calls him. This,” added he, in
a tone of depression,--“this is but a sorry version of what my mind had
conceived.”

“I arrest you, Sebastiano Greppi,” said a voice from behind; and
suddenly three gendarmes surrounded the youth, who stood still and
speechless with terror, while a mean-looking man in shabby black
gathered up the printed proclamations that lay about, and commenced a
search for others throughout the studio.

“Ask them will they take our bail for his appearance, Baynton,” said my
lord, eagerly.

“No use,--they ‘d only laugh at us,” was the reply.

“Can we be of any service to you? Is there anything we can do?” asked
his Lordship of the boy.

“You must not communicate with the prisoner, signore,” cried the
brigadier, “if you don’t wish to share his arrest.”

“And this, doubtless,” said the man in black, standing, and holding up
the lantern to view the statue,--“this is the figure of Liberty we have
heard of, pierced by the deadly arrow of Tyranny!”

“You hear them!” cried the boy, in wild indignation, addressing
the Englishmen; “you hear how these wretches draw their infamous
allegations! But this shall not serve them as a witness.” And with a
spring he seized a large wooden mallet from the floor, and dashed the
model in pieces.

A cry of horror and rage burst from the bystanders, and as the
Englishmen stooped in sorrow over the broken statue, the gendarmes
secured the boy’s wrists with a stout cord, and led him away.

“Go after them, Baynton; tell them he is an Englishman, and that if he
comes to harm they ‘ll hear of it!” cried my lord, eagerly; while he
muttered in a lower tone, “I think we might knock these fellows over and
liberate him at once, eh, Baynton?”

“No use if we did,” replied the other; “they’d overpower us afterwards.
Come along to the inn; we’ll see about it in the morning.”



CHAPTER XXIX. A COUNCIL OF STATE

It was a fine mellow evening of the late autumn as two men sat in a
large and handsomely furnished chamber opening upon a vast garden. There
was something in the dim half-light, the heavily perfumed air, rich with
the odor of the orange and the lime, and the stillness, that imparted
a sense of solemnity to the scene, where, indeed, few words were
interchanged, and each seemed to ponder long after every syllable of the
other.

We have no mysteries with our reader, and we hasten to say that one of
these personages was the Chevalier Stubber,--confidential minister of
the Duke of Massa; the other was our old acquaintance Billy Traynor. If
there was some faint resemblance in the fortunes of these two men, who,
sprung from the humblest walks of life, had elevated themselves by
their talents to a more exalted station, there all likeness between them
ended. Each represented, in some of the very strongest characteristics,
a nationality totally unlike that of the other: the Saxon, blunt,
imperious, and decided; the Celt, subtle, quick-sighted, and suspicious,
distrustful of all, save his own skill in a moment of difficulty.

“But you have not told me his real name yet,” said the Chevalier, as
he slowly smoked his cigar, and spoke with the half-listlessness of a
careless inquirer.

“I know that, sir,” said Billy, cautiously; “I don’t see any need of
it.”

“Nor your own, either,” remarked the other.

“Nor even that, sir,” responded Billy, calmly.

“It comes to this, then, my good friend,” rejoined Stubber, “that,
having got yourself into trouble, and having discovered, by the aid of a
countryman, that a little frankness would serve you greatly, you prefer
to preserve a mystery that I could easily penetrate if I cared for it,
to speaking openly and freely, as a man might with one of his own.”

“We have no mysteries, sir. We have family secrets that don’t regard any
one but ourselves. My young ward, or pupil, whichever I ought to call
him, has, maybe, his own reasons for leading a life of unobtrusive
obscurity, and what one may term an umbrageous existence. It’s enough
for me to know that, to respect it.”

“Come, come, all this is very well if you were at liberty, or if you
stood on the soil of your own country; but remember where you are now,
and what accusations are hanging over you. I have here beside me very
grave charges indeed,--constant and familiar intercourse with leaders of
the Carbonari--”

“We don’t know one of them,” broke in Billy.

“Correspondence with others beyond the frontier,” continued the
Chevalier.

“Nor that either,” interrupted Billy.

“Treasonable placards found by the police in the very hands of the
accused; insolent conduct to the authorities when arrested; attempted
escape: all these duly certified on oath.”

“Devil may care for that; oaths are as plenty with these blaguards as
clasp-knives, and for the same purpose too. Here’s what it is, now,”
 said he, crossing his arms on the table, and staring steadfastly at the
other: “we came here to study and work, to perfect ourselves in the art
of modellin’, with good studies around us; and, more than all, a quiet,
secluded little spot, with nothing to distract our attention, or take us
out of a mind for daily labor. That we made a mistake, is clear enough.
Like everywhere else in this fine country, there’s nothing but tyrants
on one side, and assassins on the other; and meek and humble as we
lived, we could n’t escape the thievin’ blaguards of spies.”

“Do you know the handwriting of this address?” said the Chevalier,
showing a sealed letter directed to Sebastiano Greppi, Sculptore,
Carrara.

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” was the gruff reply. “Won’t you let me
finish what I was savin’?”

“This letter was found in the possession of the young prisoner, and is
of some consequence,” continued the other, totally inattentive to the
question.

“I suppose a letter is always of consequence to him it’s meant for,” was
the half-sulky reply. “Sure you ‘re not goin’ to break the seal--sure
you don’t mean to read it!” exclaimed he, almost springing from his seat
as he spoke.

“I don’t think I’d ask your permission for anything I think fit to do,
my worthy fellow,” said the other, sternly; and then, passing across the
room, he summoned a gendarme, who waited at the door, to enter.

“Take this man back to the Fortezza,” said he, calmly; and while Billy
Traynor slowly followed the guard, the other seated himself leisurely
at the table, lighted his candles, and perused the letter. Whether
disappointed by the contents, or puzzled by the meaning, he sat long
pondering with the document before him.

It was late in the night when a messenger came to say that his Highness
desired to see him; and Stubber arose at once, and hastened to the
Duke’s chamber.

In a room studiously plain and simple in all its furniture, and on a
low, uncurtained bed, lay the Prince, half dressed, a variety of books
and papers littering the table, and even the floor at his side. Maps,
prints, colored drawings,--some representing views of Swiss scenery,
others being portraits of opera celebrities,--were mingled with
illuminated missals and richly-embossed rosaries; while police reports,
petitions, rose-colored billets and bon-bons, made up a mass of
confusion wonderfully typical of the illustrious individual himself.

Stubber had scarcely crossed the threshold of the room when he appeared
to appreciate the exact frame of his master’s mind. It was the very
essence of his tact to catch in a moment the ruling impulse which swayed
for a time that strange and vacillating nature, and he had but to glance
at him to divine what was passing within.

“So then,” broke out the Prince, “here we are actually in the very midst
of revolution. Marocchi has been stabbed in the Piazza of Carrara. Is it
a thing to laugh at, sir?”

“The wound has only been fatal to the breast of his surtout, your
Highness; and so adroitly given, besides, that it does not correspond
with the incision in his waistcoat.”

“You distrust everyone and everything, Stubber; and, of course, you
attribute all that is going forward to the police.”

“Of course I do, your Highness. They predict events with too much
accuracy not to have a hand in their fulfilment. I knew three weeks ago
when this outbreak was to occur, who was to be assassinated,--since that
is the phrase for Marocchi’s mock wound,--who was to be arrested, and
the exact nature of the demand the Council would make of your Royal
Highness to suppress the troubles.”

“And what was that?” asked the Duke, grasping a paper in his hand as he
spoke.

“An Austrian division, with a half-battery of field-artillery, a
judge-advocate to try the prisoners, and a provost-marshal to shoot
them.”

“And you ‘d have me believe that all these disturbances are deliberate
plots of a party who desire Austrian influence in the Duchy?” cried
the Duke, eagerly. “There may be really something in what you suspect.
Here’s a letter I have just received from La Sabloukoff,--she ‘s always
keen-sighted; and _she_ thinks that the Court at Vienna is playing out
here the game that they have not courage to attempt in Lombardy. What if
this Wahnsdorf was a secret agent in the scheme, eh, Stubber?”

Stubber started with well-affected astonishment, and appeared as if
astounded at the keen acuteness of the Duke’s suggestion.

“Eh!” cried his Highness, in evident delight. “That never occurred to
_you_, Stubber? I’d wager there’s not a man in the Duchy could have hit
that plot but myself.”

Stubber nodded sententiously, without a word.

“I never liked that fellow,” resumed the Duke. “I always had my
suspicion about that half-reckless, wasteful manner he had. I know that
I was alone in this opinion, eh, Stubber? It never struck _you?_”

“Never! your Highness, never!” replied Stubber, frankly.

“I can’t show you the Sabloukoff’s letter, Stubber, there are certain
private details for my own eye alone; but she speaks of a young sculptor
at Carrara, a certain--Let me find his name. Ah! here it is, Sebastian
Greppi, a young artist of promise, for whom she bespeaks our protection.
Can you make him out, and let us see him?”

Stubber bowed in silence.

“I will give him an order for something. There’s a pedestal in the
flower-garden where the Psyche stood. You remember, I smashed the
Psyche, because it reminded me of Camilla Monti. He shall design a
figure for that place. I ‘d like a youthful Bacchus. I have a clever
sketch of one somewhere; and it shall be tinted,--slightly tinted. The
Greeks always colored their statues. Strange enough, too; for, do you
remark, Stubber, they never represented the iris of the eye, which the
Romans invariably did. And yet, if you observe closely, you’ll see that
the eyelid implies the direction of the eye more accurately than in the
Roman heads. I ‘m certain you never detected what I ‘m speaking of, eh,
Stubber?”

Stubber candidly confessed that he had not, and listened patiently while
his master descanted critically on the different styles of art, and his
own especial tact and skill in discriminating between them.

“You’ll look after these police returns, then, Stubber,” said he, at
last. “You’ll let these people understand that we can suffice for the
administration of our own duchy. We neither want advice from Metternich,
nor battalions from Radetzky. The laws here are open to every man; and
if we have any claim to the gratitude of our people, it rests on our
character for justice.”

While he spoke with a degree of earnestness that indicated sincerity,
there was something in the expression of his eye--a half-malicious
drollery in its twinkle--that made it exceedingly difficult to say
whether his words were uttered in honesty of purpose, or in mere mockery
and derision. Whether Stubber rightly understood their import is more
than we are able to say; but it is very probable that he was, with all
his shrewdness, mystified by one whose nature was a puzzle to himself.

“Let Marocchi return to Carrara. Say we have taken the matter into our
own hands. Change the brigadier in command of the gendarmerie there.
Tell the _canonico_ Baldetti that we look to _him_ and his deacons for
true reports of any movement that is plotting in the town. I take no
steps with regard to Wahnsdorf for the present, but let him be closely
watched. And then, Stubber, send off an _estafetta_ to Pietra Santa
for the ortolans, for I think we have earned our breakfast by all this
attention to state affairs.” And then, with a laugh whose accents gave
not the very faintest clew to its meaning, he lay back on his pillow
again.

“And these two prisoners, your Highness, what is to be done with them?”

“Whatever you please, Stubber. Give them the third-class cross of Massa,
or a month’s imprisonment, at your own good pleasure. Only, no more
business,--no papers to sign, no schemes to unravel; and so good night.”
 And the Chevalier retired at once from a presence which he well knew
resented no injury so unmercifully as any invasion of his personal
comfort.



CHAPTER XXX. THE LIFE THEY LED AT MASSA

It was with no small astonishment young Massy heard that he and his
faithful follower were not alone restored to liberty, but that an
order of his Highness had assigned them a residence in a portion of the
palace, and a promise of future employment.

“This smacks of Turkish rather than of European rule,” said the youth.
“In prison yesterday,--in a palace to-day. My own fortunes are wayward
enough, Heaven knows, not to require any additional ingredient of
uncertainty. What think you, Traynor?”

“I’m thinkin’,” said Billy, gravely, “that as the bastes of the field
are guided by their instincts to objects that suit their natures, so
man ought, by his reason, to be able to pilot himself in
difficulties,--choosin’ this, avoidin’ that; seein’ by the eye of
prophecy where a road would lead him, and makin’ of what seem the
accidents of life, steppin’-stones to fortune.”

“In what way does your theory apply here?” cried the other. “How am I to
guess whither this current may carry me?”

“At all events, there’s no use wastin’ your strength by swimmin’ against
it,” rejoined Billy.

“To be the slave of some despot’s whim,--the tool of a caprice that may
elevate me to-day, and to-morrow sentence me to the gallows. The object
I have set before myself in life is to be independent. Is this, then,
the road to it?”

“You ‘re tryin’ to be what no man ever was, or will be, to the world’s
end, then,” said Billy. “Sure it’s the very nature and essence of our
life here below that we are dependent one on the other for kindness, for
affection, for material help in time of difficulty, for counsel in time
of doubt. The rich man and the poor one have their mutual dependencies;
and if it was n’t so, cowld-hearted and selfish as the world is, it
would be five hundred times worse.”

“You mistake my meaning,” said Massy, sternly, “as you often do, to read
me a lesson on a text of your own. When I spoke of independence, I meant
freedom from the serfdom of another’s charity. I would that my life
here, at least, should be of my own procuring.”

“_I_ get mine from _you_,” said Traynor, calmly, “and never felt myself
a slave on that account.”

“Forgive me, my dear, kind friend. I could hate myself if I gave you a
moment’s pain. This temper of mine does not improve by time.”

“There’s one way to conquer it. Don’t be broodin’ on what’s within.
Don’t be magnifyin’ your evil fortunes to your own heart till you come
to think the world all little, and yourself all great. Go out to your
daily labor, whatever it be, with a stout spirit to do your best, and a
thankful, grateful heart that you are able to do it. Never let it out of
your mind that if there’s many a one your inferior, winnin’ his way up
to fame and fortune before you, there’s just as many better than you
toilin’ away unseen and unnoticed, wearin’ out genius in a garret, and
carryin’ off a Godlike intellect to an obscure grave!”

“You talk to me as though my crying sin were an overweening vanity,”
 said the youth, half angrily.

“Well, it’s one of them,” said Billy; and the blunt frankness of the
avowal threw the boy into a fit of laughing.

“You certainly do not intend to spoil me, Billy,” said he, still
laughing.

“Why would I do what so many is ready to do for nothing? What does the
crowd that praise the work of a young man of genius care where they ‘re
leading him to? It’s like people callin’ out to a strong swimmer,
‘Go out farther and farther,--out to the open say, where the waves is
rollin’ big, and the billows is roughest; that’s worthy of you, in your
strong might and your stout limbs. Lave the still water and the shallows
to the weak and the puny. _Your_ course is on the mountain wave, over
the bottomless ocean.’ It’s little they think if he’s ever to get back
again. ‘T is their boast and their pride that they said, ‘Go on;’ and
when his cold corpse comes washed to shore, all they have is a word of
derision and scorn for one who ventured beyond his powers.”

“How you cool down one’s ardor; with what pleasure you check every
impulse that nerves one’s heart for high daring!” said the youth,
bitterly. “These eternal warnings--these never-ending forebodings of
failure--are sorry stimulants to energy.”

“Is n’t it better for you to have all your reverses at the hands of a
crayture as humble as me?” said Billy, while the tears glistened in his
eyes. “What good am I, except for this?”

In a moment the boy’s arms were around him, while he cried out,--

“There, forgive me once more, and let me try if I cannot amend a temper
that any but yourself had grown weary of correcting. I’ll work--I’ll
labor--I’ll submit--I’ll accept the daily rubs of life, as others take
them, and you shall be satisfied with me. We shall go back to all our
old pursuits, my dear Billy. I’ll join all your ecstasies over Æschylus,
and believe as much as I can of Herodotus, to please you. You shall lead
me to all the wonders of the stars, and dazzle me with the brightness of
visions that my intellect is lost in; and in revenge I only ask that you
should sit with me in the studio, and read to me some of those songs of
Horace that move the heart like old wine. Shall I own to you what it is
which sways me thus uncertainly,--jarring every chord of my existence,
making life a sea of stormy conflict? Shall I tell you?”

He grasped the other’s hand with both his own as he spoke, and, while
his lips quivered in strong emotion, went on:--

“It is this, then. I cannot forget, do all that I will, I cannot root
out of my heart what I once believed myself to be. You know what I mean.
Well, there it is still, like the sense of a wrong or foul injustice,
as though I had been robbed and cheated of what never was mine! This
contrast between the life my earliest hopes had pictured, and that which
I am destined to, never leaves me. All your teachings--and I have seen
how devotedly you have addressed yourself to this lesson--have not
eradicated from my nature the proud instincts that guided my childhood.
Often and often have you warmed my blood by thoughts of a triumph to be
achieved by me hereafter,--how men should recognize me as a genius, and
elevate me to honors and rewards; and yet would I barter such success,
ten thousand times told, for an hour of that high station that comes
by birth alone, independent of all effort,--the heirloom of deeds
chronicled centuries back, whose actors have been dust for ages. That is
real pride,” cried he, enthusiastically, “and has no alloy of the petty
vanity that mingles with the sense of a personal triumph.”

Traynor hung his head heavily as the youth spoke, and a gloomy
melancholy settled on his features; the sad conviction came home to him
of all his counsels being fruitless, all his teachings in vain; and as
the boy sat wrapped in a wild, dreamy revery of ancestral greatness, the
humble peasant brooded darkly over the troubles such a temperament might
evoke.

“It is agreed, then,” cried Massy, suddenly, “that we are to accept of
this great man’s bounty, live under his roof, and eat his bread. Well,
I accede,--as well his as another’s. Have you seen the home they destine
for us?”

“Yes, it’s a real paradise, and in a garden that would beat Adam’s
now,” exclaimed Traynor; “for there’s marble fountains, and statues, and
temples, and grottos in it; and it’s as big as a prairie, and as wild as
a wilderness. And, better than all, there’s a little pathway leads to
a private stair that goes up into the library of the palace,--a spot
nobody ever enters, and where you may study the whole day long without
hearin’ a footstep. All the books is there that ever was written, and
manuscripts without end besides; and the Minister says I’m to have my
own kay, and go in and out whenever I plaze. ‘And if there’s anything
wantin’,’ says be, ‘just order it on a slip of paper and send it to me,
and you ‘ll have it at once.’ When I asked if I ought to spake to the
librarian himself, he only laughed, and said, ‘That’s me; but I’m
never there. Take my word for it, Doctor, you ‘ll have the place to
yourself.’”

He spoke truly. Billy Traynor had it, indeed, to himself. There, the
gray dawn of morning, and the last shadows of evening, ever found him,
seated in one of those deep, cell-like recesses of the windows; the
table, the seats, the very floor littered with volumes which, revelling
in the luxury of wealth, he had accumulated around him. His greedy
avidity for knowledge knew no bounds. The miser’s thirst for gold was
weak in comparison with that intense craving that seized upon him.
Historians, critics, satirists, poets, dramatists, metaphysicians, never
came amiss to a mind bent on acquiring. The life he led was like the
realization of a glorious dream,--the calm repose, the perfect stillness
of the spot, the boundless stores that lay about him; the growing
sense of power, as day by day his intellect expanded; new vistas opened
themselves before him, and new and unproved sources of pleasure sprang
up in his nature. The never-ending variety gave a zest, too, to his
labors that averted all weariness; and at last he divided his time
ingeniously, alternating grave and difficult subjects with lighter
topics,--making, as he said himself, “Aristophanes digest Plato.”

And what of young Massy all this while? His life was a dream, too,
but of another and very different kind. Visions of a glorious future
alternated with sad and depressing thoughts; high darings, and hopeless
views of what lay before him, came and went, and went and came again.
The Duke, who had just taken his departure for some watering-place in
Germany, gave him an order for certain statues, the models for which
were to be ready by his return,--at least, in that sketchy state of
which clay is even more susceptible than canvas. The young artist chafed
and fretted under the restraint of an assigned task. It was gall to his
haughty nature to be told that his genius should accept dictation, and
his fancy be fettered by the suggestions of another. If he tried to
combat this rebellious spirit, and addressed himself steadily to labor,
he found that his imagination grew sluggish, and his mind uncreative.
The sense of servitude oppressed him; and though he essayed to subdue
himself to the condition of an humble artist, the old pride still
rankled in his heart, and spirited him to a haughty resistance. His days
thus passed over in vain attempts to work, or still more unprofitable
lethargy. He lounged through the deserted garden, or lay, half-dreamily,
in the long, deep grass, listening to the cicala, or watching the
emerald-backed lizards as they lay basking in the sun. He drank in all
the soft voluptuous influences of a climate which steeps the senses in
a luxurious stupor, making the commonest existence a toil, but giving to
mere indolence all the zest of a rich enjoyment. Sometimes he wandered
into the library, and noiselessly drew nigh the spot where Billy sat
deeply busied in his books. He would gaze silently, half curiously,
at the poor fellow, and then steal noiselessly away, pondering on the
blessings of that poor peasant’s nature, and wondering what in his own
organization had denied him the calm happiness of this humble man’s
life.



CHAPTER XXXI. AT MASSA

Billy Traynor sat, deeply sunk in study, in the old recess of the palace
library. A passage in the “Antigone” had puzzled him, and the table was
littered with critics and commentators, while manuscript notes, scrawled
in the most rude hand, lay on every side. He did not perceive, in
his intense preoccupation, that Massy had entered and taken the place
directly in front of him. There the youth sat gazing steadfastly at
the patient and studious features before him. It was only when Traynor,
mastering the difficulty that had so long opposed him, broke out into an
enthusiastic declamation of the text that Massy, unable to control the
impulse, laughed aloud.

“How long are you there? I never noticed you comin’ in,” said Billy,
half-shamed at his detected ardor.

“But a short time; I was wondering at--ay, Billy, and was envying,
too--the concentrated power in which you address yourself to your task.
It is the real secret of all success, and somehow it is a frame of mind
I cannot achieve.”

“How is the boy Bacchus goin’ on?” asked Billy, eagerly.

“I broke him up yesterday, and it is like a weight off my heart that his
curly bullet head and sensual lips are not waiting for me as I enter the
studio.”

“And the Cleopatra?” asked Traynor, still more anxiously.

“Smashed,--destroyed. Shall I own to you, Billy, I see at last myself
what you have so often hinted to me,--I have no genius for the work?”

“I never said,--I never thought so,” cried the other; “I only insisted
that nothing was to be done without labor,--hard, unflinching labor;
that easy successes were poor triumphs, and bore no results.”

“There,--there, I’ll hear that sermon no more. I’d not barter the
freedom of my own unfettered thoughts, as they come and go, in hours of
listless idleness, for all the success you ever promised me. There
are men toil elevates,--me it wearies to depression, and brings no
compensation in the shape of increased power. Mine is an unrewarding
clay,--that’s the whole of it. Cultivation only develops the rank weeds
which are deep sown in the soil. I’d like to travel,--to visit some new
land, some scene where all association with the past shall be broken.
What say you?”

“I’m ready, and at your orders,” said Traynor, closing his book.

“East or west, then, which shall it be? If sometimes my heart yearns for
the glorious scenes of Palestine, full of memories that alone satisfy
the soul’s longings, there are days when I pant for the solitude of
the vast savannas of the New World. I feel as if to know one’s self
thoroughly, one’s nature should be tested by the perils and exigencies
of a life hourly making some demand on courage and ingenuity. The
hunter’s life does this. What say you,--shall we try it?”

“I ‘m ready,” was the calm reply.

“We have means for such an enterprise, have we not? You told me, some
short time past, that nearly the whole of our last year’s allowance was
untouched.”

“Yes, it’s all there to the good,” said Billy; “a good round sum too.”

“Let us get rid of all needless equipment, then,” cried Massy, “and only
retain what beseems a prairie life. Sell everything, or give it away at
once.”

“Leave all that to me,--I’ll manage everything; only say when you make
up your mind.”

“But it is made up. I have resolved on the step. Few can decide so
readily; for I leave neither home nor country behind.”

“Don’t say that,” burst in Billy; “here’s myself, the poorest crayture
that walks the earth, that never knew where he was born or who nursed
him, yet even to me there’s the tie of a native land,--there’s the soil
that reared warriors and poets and orators that I heard of when a
child, and gloried in as a man; and, better than that, there’s the green
meadows and the leafy valleys where kind-hearted men and women live and
labor, spakin’ our own tongue and feelin’ our own feelin’s, and that, if
we saw to-morrow, we ‘d know were our own,--heart and hand our own.
The smell of the yellow furze, under a griddle of oaten bread, would be
sweeter to me than all the gales of Araby the Blest; for it would remind
me of the hearth I had my share of, and the roof that covered me when I
was alone in the world.”

The boy buried his face in his hands and made no answer. At last,
raising up his head, he said,--

“Let us try this life; let us see if action be not better than mere
thought. The efforts of intellect seem to inspire a thirst there is no
slaking. Sleep brings no rest after them. I long for the sense of some
strong peril which, over, gives the proud feeling of a goal reached,--a
feat accomplished.”

“I’ll go wherever you like; I’ll be whatever you want me,” said Billy,
affectionately.

“Let us lose no time, then. I would not that my present ardor should
cool ere we have begun our plan. What day is this? The seventh. Well, on
the eighteenth there is a ship sails from Genoa for Porto Rico. It was
the announcement set my heart a-thinking of the project. I dreamed of it
two entire nights. I fancied myself walking the deck on a starlit night,
and framing all my projects for the future. The first thing I saw next
morning was the same placard, ‘The “Colombo” will sail for Porto Rico on
Friday, the eighteenth.’”

“An unlucky day,” muttered Billy, interrupting.

“I have fallen upon few that were otherwise,” said Massy, gloomily;
“besides,” he added, after a pause, “I have no faith in omens, or any
care for superstitions. Come, let us set about our preparations. Do
_you_ bethink you how to rid ourselves of all useless encumbrances here.
Be it _my_ care to jot down the list of all we shall need for the voyage
and the life to follow it. Let us see which displays most zeal for the
new enterprise.”

Billy Traynor addressed himself with a will to the duty allotted him. He
rummaged through drawers and desks, destroyed papers and letters, laid
aside all the articles which he judged suitable for preservation, and
then hastened off to the studio to arrange for the disposal of the
few “studies,” for they were scarcely more, which remained of Massy’s
labors.

A nearly finished Faun, the head of a Niobe, the arm and hand of a Jove
launching a thunderbolt, the torso of a dead sailor after shipwreck, lay
amid fragments of shattered figures, grotesque images, some caricatures
of his own works, and crude models of anatomy. The walls were
scrawled with charcoal drawings of groups,--one day to be fashioned
in sculpture,--with verses from Dante, or lines from Tasso, inscribed
beneath; proud resolves to a life of labor figured beside stanzas in
praise of indolence and dreamy abandonment. There were passages of
Scripture, too, glorious bursts of the poetic rapture of the Psalms,
intermingled with quaint remarks on life from Jean Paul or Herder. All
that a discordant, incoherent nature consisted of was there in some
shape or other depicted; and as Billy ran his eye over this curious
journal,--for such it was,--he grieved over the spirit which had
dictated it.

The whole object of all his teaching had been to give a purpose to this
uncertain and wavering nature, and yet everything showed him now that
he had failed. The blight which had destroyed the boy’s early fortunes
still worked its evil influences, poisoning every healthful effort, and
dashing with a sense of shame every successful step towards fame and
honor.

“Maybe he’s right after all,” muttered Billy to himself. “The New World
is the only place for those who have not the roots of an ancient stock
to hold them in the Old. Men can be there whatever is in them, and they
can be judged without the prejudices of a class.”

Having summed up, as it were, his own doubts in this remark, he
proceeded with his task. While he was thus occupied, Massy entered, and
threw himself into a chair.

“There, you may give it up, Traynor. Fate is ever against us, do and
decide on what we will. Your confounded omen of a Friday was right this
time.”

“What do you mean? Have you altered your mind?”

“I expected you to say so,” said the other, bitterly. “I knew that I
should meet with this mockery of my resolution, but it is uncalled for.
It is not I that have changed!”

“What is it, then, has happened,--do they refuse your passport?”

“Not that either; I never got so far as to ask for it. The misfortune
is in this wise: on going to the bank to learn the sum that lay to
my credit and draw for it, I was met by the reply that I had nothing
there,--not a shilling. Before I could demand how this could be the
case, the whole truth suddenly flashed across my memory, and I recalled
to mind how one night, as I lay awake, the thought occurred to me that
it was base and dishonorable in me, now that I was come to manhood, to
accept of the means of life from one who felt shame in my connection
with him. ‘Why,’ thought I, ‘is there to be the bond of dependence where
there is no tie of affection to soften its severity?’ And so I arose
from my bed, and wrote to Sir Horace, saying that by the same post I
should remit to his banker at Naples whatever remained of my last year’s
allowance, and declined in future to accept of any further assistance.
This I did the same day, and never told you of it,--partly, lest you
should try to oppose me in my resolve; partly,” and here his voice
faltered, “to spare myself the pain of revealing my motives. And now
that I have buoyed my heart up with this project, I find myself without
means to attempt it. Not that I regret my act, or would recall it,”
 cried he, proudly, “but that the sudden disappointment is hard to bear.
I was feeding my hopes with such projects for the future when this
stunning news met me, and the thought that I am now chained here by
necessity has become a torture.”

“What answer did Sir Horace give to your letter?” asked Billy.

“I forget; I believe he never replied to it, or if he did, I have no
memory of what he said. Stay,--there was a letter of his taken from me
when I was arrested at Carrara. The seal was unbroken at the time.”

“I remember the letter was given to the Minister, who has it still in
his keeping.”

“What care I,” cried Massy, angrily, “in whose hands it may be?”

“The Minister is not here now,” said Billy, half speaking to himself,
“he is travelling with the Duke; but when he comes back--”

“When he comes back!” burst in Massy, impatiently; “with what calm
philosophy you look forward to a remote future. I tell you that this
scheme is now a part and parcel of my very existence. I can turn to no
other project, or journey no other road in life, till at least I shall
have tried it!”

“Well, it is going to work in a more humble fashion,” said Billy,
calmly. “Leave me to dispose of all these odds and ends here--”

“This trash!” cried the youth, fiercely. “Who would accept it as a
gift?”

“Don’t disparage it; there are signs of genius even in these things;
but, above all, don’t meddle with me, but just leave me free to follow
my own way. There now, go back and employ yourself preparing for the
road; trust the rest to me.”

Massy obeyed without speaking. It was not, indeed, that he ventured
to believe in Traynor’s resources, but he was indisposed to further
discussion, and longed to be in solitude once more.

It was late at night when they met again. Charles Massy was seated at a
window of his room, looking out into the starry blue of a cloudless sky,
when Traynor sat down beside him. “Well,” said he, gently, “it’s all
done and finished. I have sold off everything, and if you will only
repair the hand of the Faun, which I broke in removing, there’s nothing
more wanting.”

“That much can be done by any one,” said Massy, haughtily. “I hope never
to set eyes on the trumpery things again.”

“But I have promised you would do it,” said Traynor, eagerly.

“And how--by what right could you pledge yourself for my labor? Nay,”
 cried he, suddenly changing the tone in which he spoke, “knowing my
wilful nature, how could you answer for what I might or might not do?”

“I knew,” said Billy, slowly, “that you had a great project in your
head, and that to enable you to attempt it, you would scorn to throw all
the toil upon another.”

“I never said I was ashamed of labor,” said the youth, reddening with
shame.

“If you had, I would despair of you altogether,” rejoined the other.

“Well, what is it that I have to do?” said Massy, bluntly.

“It is to remodel the arm, for I don’t think you can mend it; but you
‘ll see it yourself.”

“Where is the figure,--in the studio?”

“No; it is in a small pavilion of a villa just outside the gates. It was
while I was conveying it there it met this misfortune. There’s the name
of the villa on that card. You ‘ll find the garden gate open, and
by taking the path through the olive wood you ‘ll be there in a few
minutes; for I must go over to-morrow to Carrara with the Niobe; the
Academy has bought it for a model.”

A slight start of surprise and a faint flush bespoke the proud
astonishment with which he heard of this triumph; but he never spoke a
word.

“If you had any pride in your works, you’d be delighted to see where the
Faun is to be placed. It is in a garden, handsomer even than this here,
with terraces rising one over the other, and looking out on the blue
sea, from the golden strand of Via Reggio down to the headlands above
Spezia. The great olive wood in the vast plain lies at your feet, and
the white cliffs of Serravezza behind you.”

“What care I for all this?” said Massy, gloomily. “Benvenuto could
afford to be in love with his own works,--_I_ cannot!”

Traynor saw at once the mood of mind he was in, and stole noiselessly
away to his room.



CHAPTER XXXII. THE PAVILION IN THE GARDEN

Charles Massy, dressed in the blouse of his daily labor, and with the
tools of his craft in his hand, set out early in search of the garden
indicated by Billy Traynor. A sense of hope that it was for the last
time he was to exercise his art, that a new and more stirring existence
was now about to open before him, made his step lighter and his spirits
higher as he went. “Once amid the deep woods, and on the wide plains of
the New World, I shall dream no more of what judgment men may pass upon
my efforts. There, if I suffice to myself, I have no other ordeal to
meet. Perils may try me, but not the whims and tastes of other men.”

Thus, fancying an existence of unbounded freedom and unfettered action,
he speedily traversed the olive wood, and almost ere he knew it found
himself within the garden. The gorgeous profusion of beautiful flowers,
the graceful grouping of shrubs, the richly perfumed air, laden with a
thousand odors, first awoke him from his day dream, and he stood amazed
in the midst of a scene surpassing all that he had ever conceived
of loveliness. From the terrace, where under a vine trellis he was
standing, he could perceive others above him rising on the mountain
side, while some beneath descended towards the sea, which, blue as a
turquoise, lay basking and glittering below. A stray white sail or so
was to be seen, but there was barely wind to shake the olive leaves, and
waft the odors of the orange and the oleander. It was yet too early for
the hum of insect life, and the tricklings of the tiny fountains that
sprinkled the flower-beds were the only sounds in the stillness. It was
in color, outline, effect, and shadow, a scene such as only Italy can
present, and Massy drank in all its influences with an eager delight.

“Were I a rich man,” said he, “I would buy this paradise. What in all
the splendor of man’s invention can compare with the gorgeous glory
of this flowery carpet? What frescoed ceiling could vie with these
wide-leaved palms, interlaced with these twining acacias, glimpses of
the blue sky breaking through? And for a mirror, there lies Nature’s
own,--the great blue ocean! What a life were it, to linger days and
hours here, amid such objects of beauty, having one’s thoughts ever
upwards, and making in imagination a world of which these should be the
types. The faintest fancies that could float across the mind in such an
existence would be pleasures more real, more tangible, than ever were
felt in the tamer life of the actual world.”

Loitering along, he at length came upon the little temple which served
as a studio, on entering which, he found his own statue enshrined in the
place of honor. Whether it was the frame of mind in which he chanced to
be, or that place and light had some share in the result, for the first
time the figure struck him as good, and he stood long gazing at his own
work with the calm eye of a critic. At length, detecting, as he deemed,
some defects in design, he drew nigh, and began to correct them.
There are moments in which the mind attains the highest and clearest
perception,--seasons in which, whatever the nature of the mental
operation, the faculties address themselves readily to the task, and
labor becomes less a toil than an actual pleasure. This was such. Massy
worked on for hours; his conceptions grew rapidly under his hand into
bold realities, and he saw that he was succeeding. It was not alone that
he had imparted a more graceful and lighter beauty to his statue, but he
felt within himself the promptings of a spirit that grew with each new
suggestion of its own. Efforts that before had seemed above him he now
essayed boldly; difficulties that once had appeared insurmountable he
now encountered with courageous daring. Thus striving, he lost all sense
of fatigue. Hunger and exhaustion were alike unremembered, and it was
already late in the afternoon, as, overcome by continued toil, he threw
himself heavily down, and sank off into a deep sleep.

It was nigh sunset as he awoke. The distant bell of a monastery was
ringing the hour of evening prayer, the solemn chime of the “Venti
quattro,” as he leaned on his arm and gazed in astonishment around
him. The whole seemed like a dream. On every side were objects new and
strange to, his eyes,--casts and models he had never seen before busts
and statues and studies all unknown to him. At last his eyes rested
on the Faun, and he remembered at once where he was. The languor of
excessive fatigue, however, still oppressed him, and he was about to lie
back again in sleep, when, bending gently over him, a young girl, with a
low, soft accent, asked if he felt ill, or only tired.

Massy gazed, without speaking, at features regular as the most classic
model, and whose paleness almost gave them the calm beauty of the
marble. His steady stare slightly colored her cheek, and made her voice
falter a little as she repeated her question.

“I scarcely know,” said he, sighing heavily. “I feel as though this were
a dream, and I am afraid to awaken from it.”

“Let me give you some wine,” said she, bending down to hand him the
glass; “you have over-fatigued yourself. The Faun is by your hand, is it
not?”

He nodded a slow assent.

“Whence did you derive that knowledge of ancient art?” said she,
eagerly. “Your figure has the light elasticity of the classic models,
and yet nothing strained or exaggerated in attitude. Have you studied at
Rome?”

“I could do better now,” said the youth, as, rising on his elbow, he
strained his eyes to examine her. “I could achieve a real success.”

A deep flush covered her face at these words, so palpably alluding to
herself, and she tried to repeat her question.

“No,” said he, “I cannot say I have ever studied: all that I have done
is full of faults; but I feel the spring of better things within me.
Tell me, is this _your_ home?”

“Yes,” said she, smiling faintly. “I live in the villa here with my
aunt. She has purchased your statue, and wishes you to repair it, and
then to engage in some other work for her. Let me assist you to rise;
you seem very weak.”

“I _am_ weak, and weary too,” said he, staggering to a seat. “I have
overworked myself, perhaps,--I scarcely know. Do not take away your
hand.”

“And you are, then, the Sebastian Greppi of whom Carrara is so proud?”

“They call me Sebastian Greppi; but I never heard that my name was
spoken of with any honor.”

“You are unjust to your own fame. We have often heard of you. See, here
are two models taken from your works. They have been my studies for
many a day. I have often wished to see you, and ask if my attempt were
rightly begun. Then here is a hand.”

“Let me model yours,” said the youth, gazing steadfastly at the
beautifully shaped one which rested on the chair beside him.

“Come with me to the villa, and I will present you to my aunt; she will
be pleased to know you. There, lean on my arm, for I see you are very
weak.”

“Why are you so kind, so good to me?” said he, faintly, while a tear
rose slowly to his eye.

He arose totteringly, and, taking her arm, walked slowly along at her
side. As they went, she spoke kindly and encouragingly to him, praised
what she had seen of his works, and said how frequently she had wished
to know him, and enjoy the benefit of his counsels in art. “For I, too,”
 said she, laughing, “would be a sculptor.”

The youth stopped to gaze at her with a rapture he could not control.
That one of such a station, surrounded by all the appliances of a
luxurious existence, could devote herself to the toil and labor of art,
implied an amount of devotion and energy that at once elevated her in
his esteem. She blushed deeply at his continued stare, and turned at
last away.

“Oh, do not feel offended with me,” cried he, passionately. “If you but
knew how your words have relighted within me the dying-out embers of
an almost exhausted ambition,--if you but knew how my heart has gained
courage and hope,--how light and brightness have shone in upon me after
hours and days of gloom! It was but yesterday I had resolved to abandon
this career forever. I was bent on a new life, in a new world beyond
the seas. These few things that a faithful companion of mine had charged
himself to dispose of, were to supply the means of the journey; and now
I think of it no more. I shall remain here to work hard and study, and
try to achieve what may one day be called good. You will sometimes deign
to see what I am doing, to tell me if my efforts are on the road to
success, to give me hope when I am weak-hearted, and courage when I am
faint. I know and feel,” said he, proudly, “that I am not devoid of what
accomplishes success, for I can toil and toil, and throw my whole soul
into my work; but for this I need, at least, one who shall watch me
with an eye of interest, glorying when I win, sorrowing when I am
defeated.--Where are we? What palace is this?” cried he, as they crossed
a spacious hall paved with porphyry and Sienna marble.

“This is my home,” said the girl, “and this is its mistress.”

Just as she spoke, she presented the youth to a lady, who, reclining on
a sofa beside a window, gazed out towards the sea. She turned suddenly,
and fixed her eyes on the stranger. With a wild start, she sprang up,
and, staring eagerly at him, cried, “Who is this? Where does he come
from?”

[Illustration: frontispiece]

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.



CHAPTER XXXIII. NIGHT THOUGHTS

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.



CHAPTER XXXIV. A MINISTER’S LETTER


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,

H. U.



CHAPTER XXXV. HARCOURT’S LODGINGS

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.



CHAPTER XXXVI. A FEVERED MIND

Harcourt passed the morning of the following day in watching the street
for Scaresby’s arrival. Glencore’s impatience had grown into absolute
fever to obtain the missing letter, and he kept asking every moment at
what hour he had promised to be there, and wondering at his delay.

Noon passed over,--one o’clock; it was now nearly half-past, as a
carriage drove hastily to the door.

“At last,” cried Glencore, with a deep sigh.

“Sir Gilbert Bruce, sir, requests to know if you can receive him,” said
the servant to Harcourt.

“Another disappointment!” muttered Glencore, as he left the room, when
Harcourt motioned to the servant to introduce the visitor.

“My dear Colonel Harcourt,” cried the other, entering, “excuse a very
abrupt call; but I have a most pressing need of your assistance. I hear
you can inform me of Lord Glencore’s address.”

“He is residing in North Wales at present. I can give you his post
town.”

“Yes, but can I be certain that he will admit me if I should go down
there? He is living, I hear, in strict retirement, and I am anxious for
a personal interview.”

“I cannot insure you that,” said Harcourt. “He does live, as you have
heard, entirely estranged from all society. But if you write to him--”

“Ah! there’s the difficulty. A letter and its reply takes some days.”

“And is the matter, then, so very imminent?”

“It is so; at least it is thought to be so by an authority that neither
you nor I will be likely to dispute. You know his Lordship intimately, I
fancy?”

“Perhaps. I may call myself as much his friend as any man living.”

“Well, then, I may confide to you my business with him. It happened
that, a few days back, Lord Adderley was on a visit with the King at
Brighton, when a foreign messenger arrived with despatches. They were,
of course, forwarded to him there; and as the King has a passion for
that species of literature, he opened them all himself. Now, I suspect
that his Majesty cares more for the amusing incidents which occasionally
diversify the life of foreign courts than for the great events of
politics. At all events, he devours them with avidity, and seems
conversant with the characters and private affairs of some hundreds
of people he has never seen, nor in all likelihood will ever see! In
turning over the loose pages of one of the despatches from Naples, I
think, he came upon what appeared to be a fragment of a letter. Of
what it was, or what it contained, I have not the slightest knowledge.
Adderley himself has not seen it, nor any one but the King. All I
know is that it concerns in some way Lord Glencore; for immediately on
reading it he gave me instructions to find him out, and send him down to
Brighton.”

“I am afraid, were you to see Glencore, your mission would prove a
failure. He has given up the world altogether, and even a royal command
would scarcely withdraw him from his retirement.”

“At all events, I must make the trial. You can let me have his address,
and perhaps you would do more, and give me some sort of introduction to
him,--something that might smooth down the difficulty of a first visit.”

Harcourt was silent, and stood for some seconds in deep thought; which
the other, mistaking for a sign of unwillingness to comply with his
request, quickly added, “If my demand occasion you any inconvenience, or
if there be the slightest difficulty--”

“Nay, nay, I was not thinking of that,” said Harcourt. “Pray excuse me
for a moment. I will fetch you the address you spoke of;” and without
waiting for more, he left the room. The next minute he was in Glencore’s
room, hurriedly narrating to him all that had passed, and asking him
what course he should pursue. Glencore heard the story with a greater
calm than Harcourt dared to hope for; and seemed pleased at the
reiterated assurance that the King alone had seen the letter referred
to; and when Harcourt abruptly asked what was to be done, he slowly
replied, “I must obey his Majesty’s commands. I must go to Brighton.”

“But are you equal to all this? Have you strength for it?”

“I think so; at all events, I am determined to make the effort. I was
a favorite with his Majesty long ago. He will say nothing to hurt me
needlessly; nor is it in his nature to do so. Tell Bruce that you will
arrange everything, and that I shall present myself to-morrow at the
palace.”

“Remember, Glencore, that if you say so--”

“I must be sure and keep my word. Well, so I mean, George. I was a
courtier once upon a time, and have not outlived my deference to a
sovereign. I ‘ll be there; you may answer for me.”

From the moment that Glencore had come to this resolve, a complete
change seemed to pass over the nature of the man. It was as though a
new spring had been given to his existence. The reformation that all the
blandishments of friendship, all the soft influences of kindness, could
never accomplish, was more than half effected by the mere thought of
an interview with a king, and the possible chance of a little royal
sympathy!

If Harcourt was astonished, he was not the less pleased at all this.
He encouraged Glencore’s sense of gratification by every means in his
power, and gladly lent himself to all the petty anxieties about dress
and appearance in which he seemed now immersed. Nothing could exceed,
indeed, the care he bestowed on these small details; ever insisting as
he did that, his Majesty being the best-dressed gentleman in Europe,
these matters assumed a greater importance in his eyes.

“I must try to recover somewhat of my former self,” said he. “There was
a time when I came and went freely to Carlton House, when I was somewhat
more than a mere frequenter of the Prince’s society. They tell me that
of late he is glad to see any of those who partook of his intimacy of
those times; who can remember the genial spirits who made his table the
most brilliant circle of the world; who can talk to him of Hanger, and
Kelly, and Sheridan, and the rest of them. I spent my days and nights
with them.”

Warming with the recollection of a period which, dissolute and
dissipated as it was, yet redeemed by its brilliancy many of its least
valuable features, Glencore poured forth story after story of a time
when statesmen had the sportive-ness of schoolboys, and the greatest
intellects loved to indulge in the wildest excesses of folly. A
good jest upon Eldon, a smart epigram on Sidmouth, a quiz against
Vansittart, was a fortune at Court; and there grew up thus around the
Prince a class who cultivated ridicule so assiduously that nothing was
too high or too venerable to escape their sarcasms.

Though Glencore was only emerging out of boyhood,--a young subaltern
in the Prince’s own regiment,--when he first entered this society,
the impression it had made upon his mind was not the less permanent.
Independently of the charm of being thus admitted to the most choice
circle of the land, there was the fascination of intimacy with names
that even amongst contemporaries were illustrious.

“I feel in such spirits to-day, George,” cried Glencore at length,
“that I vote we go and pass the day at Richmond. We shall escape
the possibility of being bored by your acquaintance. We shall have a
glorious stroll through the fields, and a pleasant dinner afterwards at
the Star and Garter.”

Only too well pleased at this sudden change in his friend’s humor,
Harcourt assented.

The day was a bright and clear one, with a sharp, frosty air and that
elasticity of atmosphere that invigorates and stimulates. They both soon
felt its influence, and as the hours wore on, pleasant memories of
the past were related, and old friends remembered and talked over in a
spirit that brought back to each much of the youthful sentiments they
recorded.

“If one could only go over it all again, George,” said Glencore, as they
sat after dinner, “up to three-and-twenty, or even a year or two later,
I ‘d not ask to change a day,--scarcely an hour. Whatever was deficient
in fact, was supplied by hope. It was a joyous, brilliant time, when
we all made partnership of our good spirits, and traded freely on the
capital. Even Upton was frank and free-hearted then. There were some six
or eight of us, with just fortune enough never to care about money, and
none of us so rich as to be immersed in dreams of gold, as ever happens
with your millionnaire. Why could we not have continued so to the end?”

Harcourt adroitly turned him from the theme which he saw impending,--his
departure for the Continent, his residence there, and his marriage,--and
once more occupied him in stories of his youthful life in London, when
Glencore suddenly came to a stop, and said, “I might have married the
greatest beauty of the time,--of a family, too, second to none in all
England. You know to whom I allude. Well, she would have accepted me;
her father was not averse to the match; a stupid altercation with her
brother, Lord Hervey, at Brookes’s one night--an absurd dispute about
some etiquette of the play-table--estranged me from their house. I was
offended at what I deemed their want of courtesy in not seeking me,--for
I was in the right; every one said so. I determined not to call first.
They gave a great entertainment, and omitted me; and rather than stay
in town to publish this affront, I started for the Continent; and out
of that petty incident, a discussion of the veriest trifle imaginable,
there came the whole course of my destiny.”

“To be sure,” said Harcourt, with assumed calm, “every man’s fortune in
life is at the sport of some petty incident or other, which at the time
he undervalues.”

“And then we scoff at those men who scrutinize each move, and hesitate
over every step in life, as triflers and little-minded; while, if your
remark be just, it is exactly they who are the wise and prudent,” cried
Glencore, with warmth. “Had I, for instance, seen this occurrence,
trivial as it was, in its true light, what and where might I not have
been to-day?”

“My dear Glencore, the luckiest fellow that ever lived, were he only to
cast a look back on opportunities neglected, and conjunctures unprofited
by, would be sure to be miserable. I am far from saying that some have
not more than their share of the world’s sorrows; but, take my word for
it, every one has his load, be it greater or less; and, what is worse,
we all of us carry our burdens with as much inconvenience to ourselves
as we can.”

“I know what you would say, Harcourt. It is the old story about giving
way to passion, and suffering temper to get the better of one; but let
me tell you that there are trials where passion is an instinct, and
reason works too slowly. I have experienced such as this.”

“Give yourself but fair play, Glencore, and you will surmount all your
troubles. Come back into the world again,--I don’t mean this world of
balls and dinner-parties, of morning calls and afternoons in the Park;
but a really active, stirring life. Come with me to India, and let us
have a raid amongst the jaguars; mix with the pleasant, light-hearted
fellows you ‘ll meet at every mess, who ask for nothing better than
their own good spirits and good health, to content them with the
world; just look out upon life, and see what numbers are struggling and
swimming for existence, while you, at least, have competence and wealth
for all you wish; and bear in mind that round the table where wit is
flashing and the merriest laughter rings, there is not a man--no, not
one--who hasn’t a something heavy in his heart, but yet who’d feel
himself a coward if his face confessed it.”

“And why am I to put this mask upon me? For what and for whom have I to
wear this disguise?” cried Glencore, angrily.

“For yourself! It is in bearing up manfully before the world you’ll
gain the courage to sustain your own heart. Ay, Glencore, you ‘ll do
it to-morrow. In the presence of royalty you ‘ll comport yourself with
dignity and reserve, and you ‘ll come out from the interview higher and
stronger in self-esteem.”

“You talk as if I were some country squire who would stand abashed and
awe-struck before his King; but remember, my worthy Colonel, I have
lived a good deal inside the tabernacle, and its mysteries are no
secrets to _me_.

“Reason the more for what I say!” broke in Harcourt; “your deference
will not obliterate your judgment; your just respect will not alloy your
reason.”

“I’ll talk to the King, sir, as I talk to you,” said Glencore,
passionately; “nor is the visit of my seeking. I have long since done
with courts and those who frequent them. What can royalty do for _me?_
Upton and yourself may play the courtier, and fawn at levées; you have
your petitions to present, your favors to beg for; you want to get this,
or be excused from that: but I am no supplicant; I ask for no place, no
ribbon. If the King speak to me about my private affairs, he shall be
answered as I would answer any one who obtrudes his rank into the place
that should only be occupied by friendship.”

“It may be that he has some good counsel to offer.”

“Counsel to offer me!” burst in Glencore, with increased warmth. “I
would no more permit any man to give me advice unasked than I would
suffer him to go to my tradespeople and pay my debts for me. A man’s
private sorrows are his debts,--obligations between himself and his own
heart. Don’t tell me, sir, that even a king’s prerogative absolves him
from the duties of a gentleman.”

While he uttered these words, he continued to fill and empty his
wine-glass several times, as if passion had stimulated his thirst; and
now his flashing eyes and his heightened color betrayed the effect of
wine.

“Let us stroll out into the cool air,” said Harcourt. “See what a
gorgeous night of stars it is!”

“That you may resume your discourse on patience and resignation!” said
Glencore, scoffingly. “No, sir. If I must listen to you, let me have at
least the aid of the decanter. Your bitter maxims are a bad substitute
for olives, but I must have wine to swallow them.”

“I never meant them to be so distasteful to you,” said Harcourt,
good-humoredly.

“Say, rather, you troubled your head little whether they were or not,”
 replied Glencore, whose voice was now thick from passion and drink
together. “You and Upton, and two or three others, presume to lecture
_me_--who, because gifted, if you call it gifted--I’d say cursed--ay,
sir, cursed with coarser natures--temperaments where higher sentiments
have no place--fellows that can make what they feel subordinate to what
they want--you appreciate _that_, I hope--_that_ stings you, does it?
Well, sir, you’ll find me as ready to act as to speak. There’s not a
word I utter here I mean to retract to-morrow.”

“My dear Glencore, we have both taken too much wine.”

“Speak for yourself, sir. If you desire to make the claret the excuse
for your language, I can only say it’s like everything else in your
conduct,--always a subterfuge, always a scapegoat. Oh, George, George, I
never suspected this in you;” and burying his head between his hands, he
burst into tears.

He never spoke a word as Harcourt assisted him to the carriage, nor did
he open his lips on the road homewards.



CHAPTER XXXVII. THE VILLA AT SORRENTO

In one of the most sequestered nooks of Sorrento, almost escarped out
of the rocky cliff, and half hid in the foliage of orange and oleander
trees, stood the little villa of the Princess Sabloukoff. The blue sea
washed the white marble terrace before the windows, and the arbutus,
whose odor scented the drawing-room, dipped its red berries in the
glassy water. The wildest and richest vegetation abounded on every side.
Plants and shrubs of tropical climes mingled with the hardier races of
Northern lands; and the cedar and the plantain blended their leaves with
the sycamore and the ilex; while, as if to complete the admixture, birds
and beasts of remote countries were gathered together; and the bustard,
the ape, and the antelope mixed with the peacock, the chamois, and
the golden pheasant. The whole represented one of those capricious
exhibitions by which wealth so often associates itself with the
beautiful, and, despite all errors in taste, succeeds in making a spot
eminently lovely. So was it. There was often light where a painter would
have wished shadow. There were gorgeous flowers where a poet would
have desired nothing beyond the blue heather-bell. There were startling
effects of view, managed where chance glimpses through the trees had
been infinitely more picturesque. There was, in fact, the obtrusive
sense of riches in a thousand ways and places where mere unadorned
nature had been far preferable; and yet, with all these faults, sea and
sky, rock and foliage, the scented air, the silence, only broken by
the tuneful birds, the rich profusion of color upon a sward strewn with
flowers, made of the spot a perfect paradise.

In a richly decorated room, whose three windows opened on a marble
terrace, sat the Princess. It was December; but the sky was cloudless,
the sea a perfect mirror, and the light air that stirred the leaves
soft and balmy as the breath of May. Her dress was in keeping with the
splendor around her: a rich robe of yellow silk fastened up the front
with large carbuncle buttons; sleeves of deep Valenciennes lace fell far
over her jewelled fingers; and a scarf of golden embroidery, negligently
thrown over an arm of her chair, gave what a painter would call the warm
color to a very striking picture. Farther from the window, and carefully
protected from the air by a screen, sat a gentleman whose fur-lined
pelisse and velvet skull-cap showed that he placed more faith in the
almanac than in the atmosphere. From his cork-soled boots to his shawl
muffled about the throat, all proclaimed that distrust of the weather
that characterizes the invalid. No treachery of a hot sun, no seductions
of that inveterate cheat, a fine day in winter, could inveigle Sir
Horace Upton into any forgetfulness of his precautions. He would have
regarded such as a palpable weakness on his part,--a piece of folly
perfectly unbecoming in a man of his diplomatic standing and ability.

He was writing, and smoking, and talking by turns, the table before him
being littered with papers, and even the carpet at his feet strewn with
the loose sheets of his composition. There was not in his air any of
the concentration, or even seriousness, of a man engaged in an important
labor; and yet the work before him employed all his faculties, and
he gave to it the deepest attention of abilities of which very few
possessed the equal. To great powers of reasoning and a very strong
judgment he united a most acute knowledge of men; not exactly of mankind
in the mass, but of that especial order with whom he had habitually to
deal. Stolid, commonplace stupidity might puzzle or embarrass him;
while for any amount of craft, for any degree of subtlety, he was an
over-match. The plain matter-of-fact intelligence occasionally gained a
slight advantage over him at first; the trained and polished mind of
the most astute negotiator was a book he could read at sight. It was his
especial tact to catch up all this knowledge at once,--very often in
a first interview,--and thus, while others were interchanging the
customary platitudes of every-day courtesy, he was gleaning and
recording within himself the traits and characteristics of all around
him.

“A clever fellow, very clever fellow, Cineselli,” said he, as he
continued to write. “His proposition is--certain commercial advantages,
and that we, on our side, leave him alone to deal his own way with his
own rabble. I see nothing against it, so long as they continue to be
rabble; but grubs grow into butterflies, and very vulgar populace have
now and then emerged into what are called liberal politicians.”

“Only where you have the blessing of a free press,” said the Princess,
in a tone of insolent mockery.

“Quite true, Princess; a free press is a tonic that with an increased
dose becomes a stimulant, and occasionally over-excites.”

“It makes your people drunk now and then!” said she, angrily.

“They always sleep it off over-night,” said he, softly. “They very
rarely pay even the penalty of the morning headache for the excess,
which is exactly why it will not answer in warmer latitudes.”

“Ours is a cold one, and I ‘m sure it would not suit us.”

“I’m not so certain of that,” said he, languidly. “I think it is
eminently calculated for a people who don’t know how to read.”

She would have smiled at the remark, if the sarcasm had not offended
her.

“Your Lordship will therefore see,” muttered he, reading to himself as
he wrote, “that in yielding this point we are, while apparently making a
concession, in reality obtaining a very considerable advantage--”

“Rather an English habit, I suspect,” said she, smiling.

“Picked up in the course of our Baltic trade, Princess. In sending us
your skins, you smuggled in some of your sentiments; and Russian tallow
has enlightened the nation in more ways than one!”

“You need it all, my dear chevalier,” said she, with a saucy smile.
“Harzewitch told me that your diplomatic people were inferior to those
of the third-rate German States; that, in fact, they never had any
‘information.’”

“I know what he calls ‘information,’ Princess; and his remark is just.
Our Government is shockingly mean, and never would keep up a good system
of spies.”

“Spies! If you mean by an odious word to inculpate the honor of a high
calling--”

“Pray forgive my interruption, but I am speaking in all good faith. When
I said ‘spy,’ it was in the bankrupt misery of a man who had nothing
else to offer. I wanted to imply that pure but small stream which
conveys intelligence from a fountain to a river it was not meant to
feed. Was n’t that a carriage I heard in the ‘cour’? Oh, pray don’t open
the window; there’s an odious _libeccio_ blowing to-day, and there’s
nothing so injurious to the nervous system.”

“A cabinet messenger, your Excellency,” said a servant, entering.

“What a bore! I hoped I was safe from a despatch for at least a month to
come. I really believe they have no veneration for old institutions in
England. They don’t even celebrate Christmas!”

“I’m charmed at the prospect of a bag,” cried the Princess.

“May I have the messenger shown in here, Princess?”

“Certainly; by all means.”

“Happy to see your Excellency; hope your Ladyship is in good health,”
 said a smart-looking young fellow, who wore a much-frogged pelisse, and
sported a very well-trimmed moustache.

“Ah, Stevins, how d’ye do?” said Upton. “You’ve had a cold journey over
the Cenis.”

“Came by the Splugen, your Excellency. I went round by Vienna, and
Maurice Esterhazy took me as far as Milan.”

The Princess stared with some astonishment. That the messenger should
thus familiarly style one of that great family was indeed matter of
wonderment to her; nor was it lessened as Upton whispered her, “Ask him
to dine.”

“And London, how is it? Very empty, Stevins?” continued he.

“A desert,” was the answer.

“Where’s Lord Adderley?”

“At Brighton. The King can’t do without him,--greatly to Adderley’s
disgust; for he is dying to have a week’s shooting in the Highlands.”

“And Cantworth, where is he?”

“He’s off for Vienna, and a short trip to Hungary. I met him at dinner
at the mess while waiting for the Dover packet. By the way, I saw a
friend of your Excellency’s,--Harcourt.”

“Not gone to India?”

“No. They’ve made him a governor or commander-in-chief of something in
the Mediterranean; I forget exactly where or what.”

“You have brought me a mighty bag, Stevins,” said Upton, sighing. “I had
hoped for a little ease and rest now that the House is up.”

“They are all blue-books, I believe,” replied Stevins. “There’s that
blacking your Excellency wrote about, and the cricket-bats; the lathe
must come out by the frigate, and the down mattress at the same time.”

“Just do me the favor to open the bag, my dear Stevins. I am utterly
without aid here,” said Upton, sighing drearily; and the other proceeded
to litter the table and the floor with a variety of strange and
incongruous parcels.

“Report of factory commissioners,” cried he, throwing down a weighty
quarto. “Yarmouth bloaters; Atkinson’s cerulean paste for the eyebrows;
Worcester sauce; trade returns for Tahiti; a set of shoemaking
tools; eight bottles of Darby’s pyloric corrector; buffalo
flesh-brushes,--devilish hard they seem; Hume’s speech on the reduction
of foreign legations; novels from Bull’s; top-boots for a tiger; and a
mass of letters,” said Stevins, throwing them broadcast over the sofa.

“No despatches?” cried Upton, eagerly.

“Not one, by Jove!” said Stevins.

“Open one of those Darby’s. I ‘ll take a teaspoonful at once. Will you
try it, Stevins?”

“Thanks, your Excellency, I never take physic.”

“Well, you dine here, then,” said he, with a sly look at the Princess.

“Not to-day, your Excellency. I dine with Grammont at eight.”

“Then I’ll not detain you. Come back here to-morrow about eleven or a
little later. Come to breakfast if you like.”

“At what hour?”

“I don’t know,--at any hour,” sighed Upton, as he opened one of his
letters and began to read; and Stevins bowed and withdrew, totally
unnoticed and unrecognized as he slipped from the room.

One after another Upton threw down, after reading half a dozen lines,
muttering some indistinct syllables over the dreary stupidity of
letter-writers in general. Occasionally he came upon some pressing
appeal for money,--some urgent request for even a small remittance by
the next post; and these he only smiled at, while he refolded them with
a studious care and neatness. “Why will you not help me with this chaos,
dear Princess?” said he, at last.

“I am only waiting to be asked,” said she; “but I feared that there
might be secrets--”

“From you?” said he, with a voice of deep tenderness, while his eyes
sparkled with an expression far more like raillery than affection. The
Princess, however, had either not seen or not heeded it, for she was
already deep in the correspondence.

“This is strictly private. Am I to read it?” said she.

“Of course,” said he, bowing courteously. And she read:--

“Dear Upton,--Let us have a respite from tariffs and trade-talk for a
month or two, and tell me rather what the world is doing around you. We
have never got the right end of that story about the Princess Celestine
as yet. Who was he? Not Labinsky, I’ll be sworn. The K---- insists it
was Roseville, and I hope you may be able to assure me that he is
mistaken. He is worse tempered than ever. That Glencore business has
exasperated him greatly. Could n’t your Princess,--the world calls her
yours [“How good of the world, and how delicate of your friend!” said
she, smiling superciliously. “Let us see who the writer is. Oh! a great
man,--the Lord Adderley,” and went on with her reading:] couldn’t your
Princess find out something of real consequence to us about the Q----”

“What queen does he mean?” cried she, stopping.

“The Queen of Sheba, perhaps,” said Upton, biting his lips with anger,
while he made an attempt to take the letter from her.

“Pardon! this is interesting,” said she, and went on:

“We shall want it soon; that is, if the manufacturing districts will
not kindly afford us a diversion by some open-air demonstrations and a
collision with the troops. We have offered them a most taking bait, by
announcing wrongfully the departure of six regiments for India; thus
leaving the large towns in the North apparently ungarrisoned. They are
such poltroons that the chances are they ‘ll not bite! You were right
about Emerson. We have made his brother a Bishop, and he voted with us
on the Arms Bill. Cole is a sterling patriot and an old Whig. He
says nothing shall seduce him from his party, save a Lordship of the
Admiralty. Corruption everywhere, my dear Upton, except on the Treasury
benches!

“Holecroft insists on being sent to Petersburg; and having ascertained
that the Emperor will not accept him, I have induced the K----to
nominate him to the post. ‘Non culpa nostra,’ etc. He can scarcely vote
against us after such an evidence of our good-will. Find out what will
give most umbrage to your Court, and I will tell you why in my next.

“Don’t bother yourself about the Greeks. The time is not come yet, nor
will it till it suit our policy to loosen the ties with Russia. As
to France, there is not, nor will there be, in our time at least, any
Government there. We must deal with them as with a public meeting, which
may reverse to-morrow the resolutions they have adopted to-day. The
French will never be formidable till they are unanimous. They ‘ll never
be unanimous till we declare war with them! Remember, I don’t want
anything serious with Cineselli. Irritate and worry as much as you can.
Send even for a ship or two from Malta; but go no farther. I want this
for our radicals at home. Our own friends are in the secret. Write me a
short despatch about our good relations with the Two Sicilies; and send
me some news in a private letter. Let me have some ortolans in the bag,
and believe me yours,

“Adderley.”

“There,” said she, turning over a number of letters with a mere glance
at their contents, “these are all trash,--shooting and fox-hunting news,
which one reads in the newspapers better, or at least more briefly,
narrated, with all that death and marriage intelligence which you
English are so fond of parading before the world. But what is this
literary gem here? Where did the paper come from? And that wonderful
seal, and still more wonderful address?--‘To his Worshipful Excellency
the Truly Worthy and Right Honorable Sir Horace Upton, Plenipotentiary,
Negotiator, and Extraordinary Diplomatist, living at Naples.’”

“What can it mean?” said he, languidly.

“You shall hear,” said she, breaking the massive seal of green wax,
which, to the size of a crown piece, ornamented one side of the epistle.
“It is dated Schwats, Tyrol, and begins: ‘Venerated and Reverend
Excellency, when these unsymmetrically-designed, and not more
ingeniously-conceived syllables--’ Let us see his name,” said she,
stop-ping suddenly, and turning to the last page, read, “‘W. T.,
_vulgo_, Billy Traynor,--a name cognate to your Worshipful Eminence in
times past.’”

“To be sure, I remember him perfectly,--a strange creature that came out
here with that boy you heard me speak of. Pray read on.”

“I stopped at ‘syllables.’ Yes--when these curiously-conceived
syllables, then, come under the visionary apertures of your acute
understanding, they will disclose to your much-reflecting and
nice-discriminating mind as cruel and murderous a deed as ever a
miscreant imagination suggested to a diabolically-constructed and
nefariously-fashioned organization, showing that Nature in her
bland adaptiveness never imposes a mistaken fruit on a genuine
arborescence’--Do you understand him?” asked she.

“Partly, perhaps,” continued he. “Let us have the subject.”

“‘Not to weary your exalted and never-enough-to-be-esteemed
intelligence, I will proceed, without further ambiguous or
circumgyratory evolutions, to the main body of my allegation. It
happened in this way: Charley--your venerated worship knows who I
mean--Charley, ever deep in marmorial pursuits, and far progressed in
sculptorial excellence, with a genius that Phidias, if he did not envy,
would esteem--’

“Really I cannot go on with these interminable parentheses,” said she;
“you must decipher them yourself.” Upton took the letter, and read
it, at first hastily, and then, recommencing, with more of care and
attention, occasionally stopping to reflect, and consider the details.
“This is likely to be a troublesome business,” said he. “This boy has
got himself into a serious scrape. Love and a duel are bad enough; but
an Austrian state-prison, and a sentence of twenty years in irons,
are even worse. So far as I can make out from my not over lucid
correspondent, he had conceived a violent affection for a young lady
at Massa, to whose favor a young Austrian of high rank at the same time
pretended.”

“Wahnsdorf, I’m certain,” broke in the Princess; “and the girl--that
Mademoiselle--”

“Harley,” interposed Sir Horace.

“Just so,--Harley. Pray go on,” said she, eagerly.

“A very serious altercation and a duel were the consequences of this
rivalry, and Wahnsdorf has been dangerously wounded; his life is still
in peril. The Harleys have been sent out of the country, and my unlucky
_protégé_, handed over to the Austrians, has been tried, condemned, and
sentenced to twenty years in Kuffstein, a Tyrol fortress where great
severity is practised,--from the neighborhood of which this letter is
written, entreating my speedy interference and protection.”

“What can you do? It is not even within your jurisdiction,” said she,
carelessly.

“True; nor was the capture by the Austrians within theirs, Princess. It
is a case where assuredly everybody was in the wrong, and, therefore,
admirably adapted for nice negotiation.”

“Who and what is the youth?”

“I have called him a _protégé_.”

“Has he no more tender claim to the affectionate solicitude of Sir
Horace Upton?” said she, with an easy air of sarcasm.

“None, on my honor,” said he, eagerly; “none, at least, of the kind you
infer. His is a very sad story, which I ‘ll tell you about at another
time. For the present, I may say that he is English, and as such must
be protected by the English authorities. The Government of Massa have
clearly committed a great fault in handing him over to the Austrians.
Stubber must be ‘brought to book’ for this in the first instance. By
this we shall obtain a perfect insight into the whole affair.”

“The Imperial family will never forgive an insult offered to one of
their own blood,” said the Princess, haughtily.

“We shall not ask them to forgive anything, my dear Princess. We shall
only prevent their natural feelings betraying them into an act of
injustice. The boy’s offence, whatever it was, occurred outside the
frontier, as I apprehend.”

“How delighted you English are when you can convert an individual case
into an international question! You would at any moment sacrifice an
ancient alliance to the trumpery claim of an aggrieved tourist,” said
she, rising angrily, and swept out of the room ere Sir Horace could
arise to open the door for her.

Upton walked slowly to the chimney and rang the bell. “I shall want the
calèche and post-horses at eight o’clock, Antoine. Put up some things
for me, and get all my furs ready.” And with this he measured forty
drops from a small phial he carried in his waistcoat pocket, and sat
down to pare his nails with a very diminutive penknife.



CHAPTER XXXVIII. A DIPLOMATIST’S DINNER

Were we writing a drama instead of a true history, we might like to
linger for a few moments on the leave-taking between the Princess and
Sir Horace Upton. They were indeed both consummate “artists,” and they
played their parts to perfection,--not as we see high comedy performed
on the stage, by those who grotesque its refinements and exaggerate
its dignity; “lashing to storm” the calm and placid lake, all whose
convulsive throes are many a fathom deep, and whose wildest workings
never bring a ripple to the surface. No, theirs was the true version
of well-bred “performance.” A little well-affected grief at separation,
brief as it was meant to be; a little half-expressed surprise, on the
lady’s part, at the suddenness of the departure; a little, just
as vaguely conveyed, complaint on the other side, over the severe
requirements of duty, and a very little tenderness--for there was no one
to witness it--at the thought of parting; and with a kiss upon her hand,
whose respectful courtesy no knight-errant of old could have surpassed,
Sir Horace backed from the “presence,” sighed, and slipped away.

Had our reader been a spectator instead of a peruser of the events
we have lately detailed, he might have fancied, from certain small
asperities of manner, certain quicknesses of reproof and readiness at
rejoinder, that here were two people only waiting for a reasonable and
decent pretext to go on their separate roads in life. Yet nothing of
this kind was the case; the bond between them was not affection, it was
simply convenience. Their partnership gave them a strength and a social
solvency which would have been sorely damaged had either retired from
“the firm;” and they knew it.

What would the Princess’s dinners have been without the polished ease
of him who felt himself half the host? What would all Sir Horace Upton’s
subtlety avail him, if it were not that he had sources of information
which always laid open the game of his adversaries? Singly, each would
have had a tough struggle with the world; together, they were more than
a match for it.

The highest order of diplomatist, in the estimation of Upton, was the
man who, at once, knew what was _possible_ to be done. It was his
own peculiar quality to possess this gift; but great as his natural
acuteness was, it would not have availed him, without those secret
springs of intelligence we have alluded to. There is no saying to what
limit he might not have carried this faculty, had it not been that one
deteriorating and detracting feature marred and disfigured the fairest
form of his mind.

He could not, do all that he would, disabuse himself of a very
low estimate of men and their motives. He did not slide into this
philosophy, as certain indolent people do, just to save them the trouble
of discriminating; he did not acquire it by the hard teachings of
adversity. No; it came upon him slowly and gradually, the fruit, as he
believed, of calm judgment and much reflection upon life. As little did
he accept it willingly; he even labored against the conviction: but,
strive as he might, there it was, and there it would remain.

His fixed impression was, that in every circumstance and event in
life there was always a _dessous des cartes_,--a deeper game concealed
beneath the surface,--and that it was a mere question of skill and
address how much of this penetrated through men’s actions. If this
theory unravelled many a tangled web of knavery to him, it also served
to embarrass and confuse him in situations where inferior minds had
never recognized a difficulty! How much ingenuity did he expend to
detect what had no existence! How wearily did he try for soundings where
there was no bottom!

Through the means of the Princess he had learned--what some very wise
heads do not yet like to acknowledge--that the feeling of the despotic
governments towards England was very different from what it had been at
the close of the great war with Napoleon. They had grown more dominant
and exacting, just as we were becoming every hour more democratic. To
maintain our old relations with them, therefore, on the old footing,
would be only to involve ourselves in continual difficulty, with a
certainty of final failure; and the only policy that remained was to
encourage the growth of liberal opinions on the Continent, out of which
new alliances might be formed, to recompense us for the loss of the
old ones. There is a story told of a certain benevolent prince, whose
resources were, unhappily, not commensurate with his good intentions,
and whose ragged retinue wearied him with entreaties for assistance. “Be
of good cheer,” said he, one day, “I have ordered a field of flax to be
sown, and you shall all of you have new shirts.” Such were pretty much
the position and policy of England. Out of our crop of Constitutionalism
we speculated on a rich harvest, to be afterwards manufactured for our
use and benefit. We leave it to deeper heads to say if the result has
been all that we calculated on, and, asking pardon for such digression,
we join Sir Horace once more.

When Sir Horace Upton ordered post-horses to his carriage, he no more
knew where he was going, nor where he would halt, than he could have
anticipated what course any conversation might take when once started.
He had, to be sure, a certain ideal goal to be reached; but he was one
of those men who liked to think that the casual interruptions one meets
with in life are less obstruction than opportunity; so that, instead of
deeming these subjects for regret or impatience, he often accepted them
as indications that there was some profit to be derived from them,--a
kind of fatalism more common than is generally believed. When he set
out for Sorrento it was with the intention of going direct to Massa;
not that this state lay within the limits his functions ascribed to
him,--that being probably the very fact which imparted a zest to the
journey. Any other man would have addressed himself to his colleague in
Tuscany, or wherever he might be; while he, being Sir Horace Upton,
took the whole business upon himself in his own way. Young Massy’s case
opened to his eyes a great question, viz., what was the position the
Austrians assumed to take in Italy? For any care about the youth, or any
sympathy with his sufferings, he distressed himself little; not that he
was, in any respect, heartless or unfeeling, it was simply that greater
interests were before him. Here was one of those “grand issues” that he
felt worthy of his abilities,--it was a cause where he was proud to hold
a brief.

Resolving all his plans of action methodically, yet rapidly; arranging
every detail in his own mind, even to the use of certain expressions
he was to employ,--he arrived at the palace of the Embassy, where he
desired to halt to take up his letters and make a few preparations
before his departure. His Maestro di Casa, Signor Franchetti, was in
waiting for his arrival, and respectfully assured him “that all was in
readiness, and that his Excellency would be perfectly satisfied. We had,
it is true,” continued he, “a difficulty about the fish, but I sent off
an express to Baia, and we have secured a sturgeon.”

“What are you raving about, caro Pipo?” said the Minister; “what is all
this long story of Baia and the fish?”

“Has your Excellency forgotten that we have a grand dinner to-day, at
eight o’clock; that the Prince Maximilian of Bavaria and all the foreign
ambassadors are invited?”

“Is this Saturday, Pipo?” said Sir Horace, blandly.

“Yes, your Excellency.”

“Send Mr. Brockett to me,” said Sir Horace, as he slowly mounted the
stairs to his own apartment.

Sir Horace was stretched on a sofa, in all the easy luxury of
magnificent dressing-gown and slippers, when Mr. Brockett entered; and
without any preliminary of greeting he said, with a quiet laugh, “You
have let me forget all about the dinner to-day, Brockett!”

“I thought you knew it; you took great trouble about the persons to
be asked, and you canvassed whether the Duc de Borodino, being only a
Chargé d’Affaires--”

“There, there; don’t you see the--the inappropriateness of what you are
doing? Even in England a man is not asked to criminate himself. How many
are coming?”

“Nineteen; the ‘Nonce’ is ill, and has sent an apology.”

“Then the party can be eighteen, Brockett; you must tell them that I am
ill,--too ill to come to dinner. I know the Prince Max very well,--he
‘ll not take it badly; and as to Cineselli, we shall see what humor he
is in!”

“But they ‘ll know that you arrived here this afternoon; they ‘ll
naturally suppose--”

“They ‘ll naturally suppose--if people ever do anything so intensely
stupid as naturally to suppose anything--that I am the best judge of my
own health; and so, Mr. Brockett, you may as well con over the terms by
which you may best acquaint the company with the reasons for my absence;
and if the Prince proposes a visit to me in the evening, let him come;
he ‘ll find me here in my own room. Would you do me the kindness to let
Antinori fetch his cupping-glasses, and tell Franchetti also that I ‘ll
take my chicken grilled, not roasted. I’ll look over the treaty in the
evening. One mushroom, only one, he may give me, and the Carlsbad water,
at 28 degrees. I ‘m very troublesome, Brockett, but I ‘m sure you ‘ll
excuse it. Thanks, thanks;” and he pressed the Secretary’s hand, and
gave him a smile, whose blandishment had often done good service, and
would do so again!

To almost any other man in the world this interruption to his
journey--this sudden tidings of a formally-arranged dinner which he
could not or would not attend--would have proved a source of chagrin and
dissatisfaction. Not so with Upton; he liked a “contrariety.” Whatever
stirred the still waters of life, even though it should be a head-wind,
was far more grateful than a calm! He laughed to himself at the various
comments his company were sure to pass over his conduct; he pictured to
his mind the anger of some and the astonishment of others, and revelled
in the thought of the courtier-like indignation such treatment of a
Royal Highness was certain to elicit.

“But who can answer for his health?” said he, with an easy laugh to
himself. “Who can promise what he may be ten days hence?” The appearance
of his dinner--if one may dignify by such a name the half of a chicken,
flanked by a roasted apple and a biscuit--cut short his lucubrations;
and Sir Horace ate and sipped his Carlsbad with as much enjoyment as
many another man has felt over venison and Chambertin.

“Are they arrived, Pipo?” said he, as his servant removed the dessert of
two figs and a lime.

“Yes, your Excellency, they are at table.”

“How many are there?”

“Seventeen, sir, and Mr. Brockett.”

“Did the Prince seem to--to feel my absence, Pipo?”

“I thought he appeared very sorry for your Excellency when Mr. Brockett
spoke to him, and he whispered something to the aide-de-camp beside
him.”

“And the others, how did they take it?”

“Count Tarrocco said he’d retire, sir, that he could not dine where the
host was too ill to receive him; but the Duc de Campo Stretto said
it was impossible they could leave the room while a ‘Royal Highness’
continued to remain in it; and they all agreed with him.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Upton, in a low tone. “I hope the dinner is a good
one?”

“It is exquisite, sir; the Prince ate some of the caviare soup, and was
asking a second time for the ‘pain des ortolans’ when I left the room.”

“And the wine, Pipo? have you given them that rare ‘La Rose’?”

“Yes, your Excellency, and the ‘Klausthaller cabinet;’ his Royal
Highness asked for it.”

“Go back, then, now. I want for nothing more; only drop in here by and
by, and tell me how all goes on. Just light that pastil before you go;
there--that will, do.”

And once more his Excellency was left to himself. In that vast
palace,--the once home of a royal prince,--no sounds of the distant
revelry could reach the remote quarter where he sat, and all was silent
and still around him, and Upton was free to ruminate and reflect at
ease. There was à sense of haughty triumph in thinking that beneath his
roof, at that very moment, were assembled the great representatives of
almost every important state of Europe, to whom he had not deigned
to accord the honor of his presence; but though this thought did flit
across his mind, far more was he intent on reflecting what might be the
consequences--good or evil--of the incident. “And then,” said he, aloud,
“how will Printing House Square treat us? What a fulminating leader
shall we not have, denouncing either our insolence or our incompetence,
ending with the words: ‘If, then, Sir Horace Upton be not incapacitated
from illness for the discharge of his high functions, it is full time
for his Government to withdraw him from a sphere where his caprice and
impertinence have rendered him something worse than useless;’ and then
will come a flood of petty corroborations,--the tourist tribe who heard
of us at Berlin, or called upon as at the Hague, and whose unreturned
cards and uninvited wives are counts in the long indictment against us.
What a sure road to private friendships is diplomacy! How certain is one
of conciliating the world’s good opinion by belonging to it! I wish
I had followed the law, or medicine,” muttered he; “they are both
abstruse, both interesting; or been a gardener, or a shipwright, or a
mathematical instrument maker, or--” Whatever the next choice might have
been we know not, for he dropped off asleep.

From that pleasant slumber, and a dream of Heaven knows what life of
Arcadian simplicity, of rippling streams and soft-eyed shepherdesses,
he was destined to be somewhat suddenly, if not rudely, aroused, as
Franchetti introduced a stranger who would accept no denial.

“Your people were not for letting me up, Upton,” cried a rich, mellow
voice; and Harcourt stood before him, bronzed and weather-beaten, as he
came off his journey.

“You, George? Is it possible!” exclaimed Sir Horace; “what best of all
lucky winds has driven you here? I’m not sure I wasn’t dreaming of you
this very moment. I know I have had a vision of angelic innocence and
simplicity, which you must have had your part in; but do tell me when
did you arrive, and whence--”

“Not till I have dined, by Jove! I have tasted nothing since daybreak,
and then it was only a mere apology for a breakfast.”

“Franchetti, get something, will you?” said Upton, languidly,--“a
cutlet, a fowl; anything that can be had at once.”

“Nothing of the kind, Signor Franchetti,” interposed Harcourt; “if
I have a wolfs appetite, I have a man’s patience. Let me have a real
dinner,--soup, fish, an entrée,--two if you like,--roast beef; and I
leave the wind-up to your own discretion, only premising that I like
game, and have a weakness for woodcocks. By the way, does this climate
suit Bordeaux, Upton?”

“They tell me so, and mine has a good reputation.”

“Then claret be it, and no other wine. Don’t I make myself at home, old
fellow, eh?” said he, clapping Upton on the shoulder. “Have I not taken
his Majesty’s Embassy by storm, eh?”

“We surrender at discretion, only too glad to receive our vanquisher.
Well, and how do you find me looking? Be candid: how do I seem to your
eyes?”

“Pretty much as I have seen you these last fifteen years,--not an hour
older, at all events. That same delicacy of constitution is a confounded
deal better than most men’s strong health, for it never wears out; but I
have always said it, Upton will see us all down!”

Sir Horace sighed, as though this were too pleasant to be true.

“Well,” said he, at last, “but you have not told me what good chance has
brought you here. Is it the first post-station on the way to India?”

“No; they’ve taken me off the saddle, and given me a staff appointment
at Corfu. I ‘m going out second in command there; and whether it was
to prevent my teasing them for something else, or that there was really
some urgency in the matter, they ordered me off at once.”

“Are they reinforcing the garrison there?” asked Upton.

“No; not so far as I have heard.”

“It were better policy to do so than to send out a ‘commander-in-chief
and a drummer of great experience,’” muttered Upton to himself; but
Harcourt could not catch the remark. “Have you any news stirring in
England? What do the clubs talk about?” asked Sir Horace.

“Glencore’s business occupied them for the last week or so; now, I
think, it is yourself furnishes the chief topic for speculation.”

“What of me?” asked Upton, eagerly.

“Why, the rumor goes that you are to have the Foreign Office; Adderley,
they say, goes out, and Conway and yourself are the favorites, the odds
being slightly on his side.”

“This is all news to me, George,” said Upton, with a degree of animation
that had nothing fictitious about it; “I have had a note from Adderley
in the last bag, and there’s not a word about these changes.”

“Possibly; but perhaps my news is later. What I allude to is said to
have occurred the day I started.”

“Ah, very true; and now I remember that the messenger came round by
Vienna, sent there by Adderley, doubtless,” muttered he, “to consult
Conway before seeing _me_; and, I have little doubt, with a letter for
_me_ in the event of Conway declining.”

“Well, have you hit upon the solution of it?” said Har-court, who had
not followed him through his half-uttered observation.

“Perhaps so,” said Upton, slowly, while he leaned his head upon his
hand, and fell into a fit of meditation. Meanwhile, Harcourt’s dinner
made its appearance, and the Colonel seated himself at the table with a
traveller’s appetite.

“Whenever any one has called you a selfish fellow, Upton,” said he, as
he helped himself twice from the same dish, “I have always denied it,
and on this good ground, that, had you been so, you had never kept the
best cook in Europe, while unable to enjoy his talents. What a rare
artist must this be! What’s his name?”

“Pipo, how is he called?” said Upton, languidly.

“Monsieur Carmael, your Excellency.”

“Ah, to be sure; a person of excellent family. I’ve been told he’s from
Provence,” said Upton, in the same weary voice.

“I could have sworn to his birthplace,” cried Harcourt; “no man can
manage cheese and olives in cookery but a Provençal. Ah, what a glass
of Bordeaux! To your good health, Upton, and to the day that you may be
able to enjoy this as I do,” said he, as he tossed off a bumper.

“It does me good even to witness the pleasure it yields,” said Upton,
blandly.

“By Jove! then, I ‘ll be worth a whole course of tonics to you, for I
most thoroughly appreciate all the good things you have given me. By the
way, how are you off for dinner company here,--any pleasant people?”

“I have no health for pleasant people, my dear Harcourt; like horse
exercise, they only agree with you when you are strong enough not to
require them.”

“Then what have you got?” asked the Colonel, somewhat abashed.

“Princes, generals, envoys, and heads of departments.”

“Good heavens! legions of honor and golden fleeces!”

“Just so,” said Upton, smiling at the dismay in the other’s countenance;
“I have had such a party as you describe to-day. Are they gone yet,
Franchetti?”

“They’re at coffee, your Excellency, but the Prince has ordered his
carriage.”

“And you did not go near them?” asked Harcourt, in amazement.

“No; I was poorly, as you see me,” said Upton, smiling. “Pipo tells me,
however, that the dinner was a good one, and I am sure they pardon my
absence.”

“Foreign ease, I’ve no doubt; though I can’t say I like it,” muttered
Harcourt. “At all events, it is not for _me_ to complain, since the
accident has given me the pleasure of your society.”

“You are about the only man I could have admitted,” said Upton, with
a certain graciousness of look and manner that, perhaps, detracted a
little from its sincerity.

Fortunately, not so to Harcourt’s eyes, for he accepted the speech in
all honesty and good faith, as he said, “Thank you heartily, my boy. The
welcome is better even than the dinner, and that is saying a good deal.
No more wine, thank you; I ‘m going to have a cigar, and, with your
leave, I ‘ll ask for some brandy and water.”

This was addressed to Franchetti, who speedily reappeared with a liqueur
stand and an ebony cigar-case.

“Try these, George; they ‘re better than your own,” said Upton, dryly.

“That I will,” cried Harcourt, laughing; “I’m determined to draw all
my resources from the country in occupation, especially as they are
superior to what I can obtain from home. This same career of yours,
Upton, strikes me as rather a good thing. You have all these things duty
free?”

“Yes, we have that privilege,” said Upton, sighing.

“And the privilege of drawing some few thousand pounds per annum, paid
messengers to and from England, secret-service money, and the rest of
it, eh?”

Upton smiled, and sighed again.

“And what do you do for all that,--I mean, what are you expected to do?”

“Keep your party in when they are in; disconcert the enemy when your
friends are out.”

“And is that always a safe game?” asked Harcourt, eagerly.

“Not when played by unskilful players, my dear George. They occasionally
make sad work, and get bowled out themselves for their pains; but
there’s no great harm in that neither.”

“How do you mean there ‘s no harm in it?”

“Simply, that if a man can’t keep his saddle, he ought n’t to try to
ride foremost; but these speculations will only puzzle you, my dear
Harcourt. What of Glencore? You said awhile ago that the town was
talking of him--how and wherefore was it?”

“Haven’t you heard the story, then?”

“Not a word of it.”

“Well, I’m a bad narrator; besides, I don’t know where to begin; and
even if I did, I have nothing to tell but the odds and ends of club
gossip, for I conclude nobody knows all the facts but the King himself.”

“If I were given to impatience, George, you would be a most consummate
plague to me,” said Upton; “but I am not. Go on, however, in your own
blundering way, and leave me to glean what I can _in mine_.”

Cheered and encouraged by this flattering speech, Harcourt did begin;
but, more courteous to him than Sir Horace, we mean to accord him a new
chapter for his revelations; premising the while to our reader that the
Colonel, like the knife-grinder, had really “no story to tell.”



CHAPTER XXXIX. A VERY BROKEN NARRATIVE

“You want to hear all about Glencore?” said Harcourt, as, seated in the
easiest of attitudes in an easy-chair, he puffed his cigar luxuriously;
“and when I have told you all I know, the chances are you’ll be little
the wiser.” Upton smiled a bland assent to this exordium, but in such a
way as to make Harcourt feel less at ease than before.

“I mean,” said the Colonel, “that I have little to offer you beyond the
guesses and surmises of club talk. It will be for your own intelligence
to penetrate through the obscurity afterwards. You understand me?”

“I believe I understand you,” said Upton, slowly, and with the same
quiet smile. Now, this cold, semi-sarcastic manner of Upton was the
one sole thing in the world which the honest Colonel could not stand
up against; he always felt as though it were the prelude to something
cutting or offensive,--some sly impertinence that he could not detect
till too late to resent,--some insinuation that might give the point
to a whole conversation, and yet be undiscovered by him till the day
following. Little as Harcourt was given to wronging his neighbor, he
in this instance was palpably unjust; Upton’s manner being nothing more
than the impress made upon a very subtle man by qualities very unlike
any of his own, and which in their newness amused him. The very look of
satire was as often an expression of sorrow and regret that he could
not be as susceptible--as easy of deception--as those about him. Let us
pardon our worthy Colonel if he did not comprehend this; shrewder heads
than his own had made the same mistake. Half to resent this covert
slyness, half to arouse himself to any conflict before him, he said,
in a tone of determination, “It is only fair to tell you that you are
yourself to blame for anything that may have befallen poor Glencore.”

“I to blame! Why, my dear Harcourt, you are surely dreaming.”

“As wide awake as ever I was. If it had not been for a blunder of
yours,--an unpardonable blunder, seeing what has come of it,--sending
a pack of trash to me about salt and sulphur, while you forwarded a
private letter about Glencore to the Foreign Office, all this might not
have happened.”

“I remember that it was a most disagreeable mistake. I have paid heavily
for it, too. That lotion for the cervical vertebrae has come back all
torn, and we cannot make out whether it be a phosphate or a prot’-oxide
of bismuth. You don’t happen to remember?”

“I?--of course I know nothing about it. I’d as soon have taken a
porcupine for a pillow as I ‘d have adventured on the confounded
mixture. But, as I was saying, that blessed letter, written by some
Princess or other, as I understand, fell into the King’s hands, and the
consequence was that he sent off immediately to Glencore an order to go
down to him at Brighton. Naturally enough, I thought he ‘d not go; he
had the good and sufficient pretext of his bad health to excuse him.
Nobody had seen him abroad in the world for years back, and it was easy
enough to say that he could not bear the journey. Nothing of the kind;
he received the command as willingly as he might have done an invitation
to dinner fifteen years ago, and talked of nothing else for the whole
evening after but of his old days and nights in Carlton House; how
gracious the Prince used to be to him formerly; how constantly he was a
guest at his table; what a brilliant society it was; how full of wit and
the rest of it; till, by Jove, what between drinking more wine than he
was accustomed to take, and the excitement of his own talking, he became
quite wild and unmanageable. He was not drunk, nor anything like it, it
was rather the state of a man whose mind had got some sudden shock;
for in the midst of perfectly rational conversation, he would fall
into paroxysms of violent passion, inveighing against every one, and
declaring that he never had possessed one true-hearted, honest friend in
his life.

“It was not without great difficulty that I got him back to my lodgings,
for we had gone to dine at Richmond. Then we put him to bed, and I sent
for Hunter, who came on the instant. Though by this time Glencore was
much more calm and composed, Hunter called the case brain fever; had his
hair cut quite close, and ice applied to the head. Without any knowledge
of his history or even of his name, Hunter pronounced him to be a man
whose intellect had received some terrible shock, and that the present
was simply an acute attack of a long-existent malady.”

“Did he use any irritants?” asked Upton, anxiously.

“No; he advised nothing but the cold during the night.”

“Ah! what a mistake,” sighed Upton, heavily. “It was precisely the case
for the cervical lotion I was speaking of. Of course he was much worse
next morning?”

“That he was; not as regarded his reason, however, for he could talk
collectedly enough, but he was irritable and passionate to a degree
scarcely credible: would not endure the slightest opposition, and so
suspectful of everything and everybody that if he overheard a whisper it
threw him into a convulsion of anger. Hunter’s opinion was evidently
a gloomy one, and he said to me as we went downstairs, ‘He may come
through it with life, but scarcely with a sound intellect.’ This was a
heavy blow to _me_, for I could not entirely acquit myself of the fault
of having counselled this visit to Brighton, which I now perceived had
made such a deep impression upon him. I roused myself, however, to meet
the emergency, and walked down to St. James’s to obtain some means of
letting the King know that Glencore was too ill to keep his appointment.
Fortunately, I met Knighton, who was just setting off to Brighton, and
who promised to take charge of the commission. I then strolled over
to Brookes’s to see the morning papers, and lounged till about four
o’clock, when I turned homeward.

“Gloomy and sad I was as I reached my door, and rang the bell with a
cautious hand. They did not hear the summons, and I was forced to
ring again, when the door was opened by my servant, who stood pale and
trembling before me. ‘He’s gone, sir,--he’s gone,’ cried he, almost
sobbing.

“‘Good Heaven!’ cried I. ‘Dead?’

“‘No, sir, gone away,--driven off, no one knows where. I had just gone
out to the chemist’s, and was obliged to call round at Doctor Hunter’s
about a word in the prescription they could n’t read, and when I came
back he was away.’

“I then ascertained that the carriage which had been ordered the day
before at a particular hour, and which we had forgotten to countermand,
had arrived during my servant’s absence. Glencore, hearing it stop at
the door, inquired whose it was, and as suddenly springing out of bed,
proceeded to dress himself, which he did, in the suit he had ordered to
wait on the King. So apparently reasonable was he in all he said, and
such an air of purpose did he assume, that the nurse-tender averred she
could not dare to interpose, believing that his attack might possibly be
some sort of passing access that he was accustomed to, and knew best how
to deal with.

“I did not lose a moment, but, ordering post-horses, pursued him with
all speed. On reaching Croydon, I heard he had passed about two hours
before; but though I did my best, it was in vain. I arrived at Brighton
late at night, only to learn that a gentleman had got out at the
Pavilion, and had not left it since.

“I do not believe that all I have ever suffered in my life equalled what
I went through in the two weary hours that I passed walking up and down
outside that low paling that skirts the Palace garden. The poor fellow,
in all his misery, came before me in so many shapes; sometimes wandering
in intellect--sometimes awake and conscious of his sufferings--now
trying to comport himself as became the presence he was in--now reckless
of all the world and everything. What could have happened to detain
him so long? What had been the course of events since he passed that
threshold? were questions that again and again crossed me.

“I tried to make my way in,--I know not exactly what I meant to do
afterwards; but the sentries refused me admittance. I thought of scaling
the enclosure, and reaching the Palace through the garden; but the
police kept strict watch on every side. At last, it was nigh twelve
o’clock, that I heard a sentry challenge some one, and shortly after a
figure passed out and walked towards the pier. I followed, determined to
make inquiry, no matter of whom. He walked so rapidly, however, that I
was forced to run to overtake him. This attracted his notice; he turned
hastily, and by the straggling moonlight I recognized Glencore.

“He stood for a moment still, and beckoning me towards him, he took my
arm in silence, and we walked onward in the direction of the sea-shore.
It was now a wild and gusty night. The clouds drifted fast, shutting out
the moon at intervals, and the sea broke harshly along the strand.

“I cannot tell you the rush of strange and painful emotions which came
upon me as I thus walked along, while not a word passed between us.
As for myself, I felt that the slightest word from me might, perhaps,
change the whole current of his thoughts, and thus destroy my only
chance of any clew to what was passing within him. ‘Are you cold?’ said
he, at length, feeling possibly a slight tremor in my arm. ‘Not cold,
exactly,’ said I, ‘but the night is fresh, and I half suspect too fresh
for _you_.’ ‘Feel that,’ said he, placing his hand in mine; and it was
burning. ‘The breeze that comes off the sea is grateful to me, for I am
like one on fire.’ Then I am certain, my dear Glencore,’ said I, ‘that
this is a great imprudence. Let us turn back, towards the inn.’

“He made no reply, but with a rough motion of his arm moved forward
as before. ‘Three hours and more,’ said he, with a full and stern
utterance, ‘they kept me waiting. There were Ministers with the King;
there was some foreign envoy, too, to be presented; and if I had not
gone in alone and unannounced, I might still be in the ante-chamber.
How he stared at me, Harcourt, and my close-cropped hair. It was
_that_ seemed first to strike him, as he said, “Have you had an illness
lately?” He looked poorly, too, bloated and pale, and like one who
fretted, and I told him so. “We are both changed, sir,” said I,--“sadly
changed since we met last. We might almost begin to hope that another
change is not far off,--the last and the best one.” I don’t remember
what he answered. It was, I think, something about who came along with
me from town, and who was with me at Brighton,--I forget exactly; but I
know that he sent for Knighton, and made him feel my pulse. “You’ll find
it rapid enough, I ‘ve no doubt, Sir William,” said I. “I rose from a
sick bed to come here; his Majesty had deigned to wish to see me.” Then
the King stopped me, and made a sign to Knighton to withdraw.

“‘Was n’t it a strange situation, Harcourt, to be seated there beside
the King, alone? None other present,--all to ourselves,--talking as you
and I might talk of what interested us most of all the world; and _he_
showing me that letter,--the letter that ought to have come to _me_. How
he could do it I know not. Neither you nor I, George, could have done
so; for, after all, she was, ay, and she _is_, his wife. He could not
avail himself of _my_ stratagem. I said so too, and he answered, “Ay,
but I can divorce her if one half of that be true;” and he pointed to
the letter. “The Lady Glencore,” said he, “must know everything, and
be willing to tell it too. She has paid the heaviest penalty ever woman
paid for another. Read that.” And I read it,--ay, I read it four times,
five times over; and then my brain began to burn, and a thousand fancies
flitted across me, and though he talked on, I heard not a word.

“‘“But that lady is my wife, sir,” broke I in; “and what a part do you
assign her! She is to be a spy, a witness, perhaps, in some infamous
cause. How shall I, a peer of the realm, endure to see my name thus
degraded? Is it Court favor can recompense me for lost or tarnished
honor?” “But it will be her own vindication,” said he. Her own
vindication,--these were the words, George; _she_ should be clear of
all reproach. By Heaven, he said so, that I might declare it before the
world. And then it should be proved!--be proved! How base a man can be,
even though he wear a crown! Just fancy his proposition! But I spurned
it, and said, “You must seek for some one with a longer chance of life,
sir, to do this; my days are too brief for such dishonor;” and he was
angry with me, and said I had forgotten the presence in which I stood.
It was true, I had forgotten it.

“‘He called me a wretched fool, too, as I tore up that letter. That was
wrong in me, Harcourt, was it not? I did not see him go, but I found
myself alone in the room, and I was picking up the fragments of the
letter as they entered. They were less than courteous to me, though
I told them who I was,--an ancient barony better than half the modern
marquisates. I gave them date and place for a creation that smacked of
other services than theirs. Knighton would come with me, but I shook him
off. Your Court physician can carry his complaisance even to poison. By
George! it is their chief office, and I know well what snares are now in
store for me.’

“And thence he went on to say that he would hasten back to his Irish
solitude, where none could trace him out. That there his life, at least,
would be secure, and no emissaries of the King dare follow him. It was
in vain I tried to induce him to return, even for one night, to the
hotel; and I saw that to persist in my endeavors would be to hazard the
little influence I still possessed over him. I could not, however, leave
the poor fellow to his fate without at least the assurance of a home
somewhere, and so I accompanied him to Ireland, and left him in
that strange old ruin where we once sojourned together. His mind
had gradually calmed down, but a deep melancholy had gained entire
possession of him, and he passed whole days without a word. I saw that
he often labored to recall some of the events of the interview with
the King; but his memory had not retained them, and he seemed like one
eternally engaged in some problem which his faculties could not solve.

“When I left him and arrived in town, I found the clubs full of the
incident, but evidently without any real knowledge of what had occurred;
since the version was that Glencore had asked an audience of the King,
and gone down to the Pavilion to read to his Majesty a most
atrocious narrative of the Queen’s life in Italy, offering to
substantiate--through his Italian connection--every allegation it
contained,--a proposal that, of course, was only received by the King in
the light of an insult; and that this reception, so different from all
his expectations, had turned his head and driven him completely insane!

“I believe now I have told you everything as I heard it; indeed, I have
given you Glencore’s own words, since, without them, I could not convey
to you what he intended to say. The whole affair is a puzzle to me, for
I am unable to tell when the poor fellow’s brain was wandering, and when
he spoke under the guidance of right reason. You, of course, have the
clew to it all.”

“I! How so?” cried Upton.

“You have seen the letter which caused all the trouble; you know its
contents, and what it treats of.”

“Very true; I must have read it; but I have not the slightest
recollection of what it was about. There was something, I know, about
Glencore’s boy,--he was called Greppi, though, and might not have been
recognized; and there was some gossip about the Princess of Wales--the
Queen, as they call her now--and her ladies; but I must frankly confess
it did not interest me, and I have forgotten it all.”

“Is the writer of the letter to be come at?”

“Nothing easier. I’ll take you over to breakfast with her to-morrow
morning; you shall catechise her yourself.”

“Oh! she is then--”

“She is the Princess Sabloukoff, my dear George, and a very charming
person, as you will be the first to acknowledge. But as to this
interview at Brighton, I fancy--even from the disjointed narrative of
Glencore--one can make a guess of what it portended. The King saw that
my Lady Glencore--for so we must call her--knew some very important
facts about the Queen, and wished to obtain them; and saw, too, that
certain scandals, as the phrase goes, which attached to her ladyship,
lay at another door. He fancied, not unreasonably, perhaps, that
Glencore would be glad to hear this exculpation of his wife; and he
calculated that by the boon of this intelligence he could gain over
Glencore to assist him in his project for a divorce. Don’t you perceive,
Harcourt, of what an inestimable value it would prove, to possess one
single gentleman, one man or one woman of station, amid all this
rabble that they are summoning throughout the world to bring shame upon
England?”

“Then you incline to believe Lady Glencore blameless?” asked Harcourt,
anxiously.

“I think well of every one, my charming Colonel. It is the only true
philosophy in life. Be as severe as you please on all who injure
yourself, but always be lenient to the faults that only damage your
friends. You have no idea how much practical wisdom the maxim contains,
nor what a fund of charity it provides.”

“I ‘m ashamed to be so stupid, but I must come back to my old question.
Is all this story against Glencore’s wife only a calumny?”

“And I must fall back upon my old remark, that all the rogues in the
world are in jail; the people you see walking about and at large
are unexceptionably honest,--every man of them. Ah, my dear
deputy-assistant, adjutant, or commissary, or whatever it be, can you
not perceive the more than folly of these perquisitions into character?
You don’t require that the ice should be strong enough to sustain a
twenty-four pounder before you venture to put foot on it,--enough
that it is quite equal to your own weight; and so of the world at
large,--everybody, or nearly everybody, has virtue enough for all we
want with him. This English habit--for it is essentially English--of
eternally investigating everything, is like the policy of a man who
would fire a round-shot every morning at his house, to see if it were
well and securely built.”

“I don’t, I can’t agree with you,” cried Harcourt.

“Be it so, my dear fellow; only don’t give me your reasons, and at least
I shall respect your motives.”

“What would you do, then, in Glencore’s place? Let me ask you that.”

“You may as well inquire how I should behave if I were a quadruped.
Don’t you perceive that I never could, by any possibility, place myself
in such a false position? The man who, in a case of difficulty, takes
counsel from his passions, is exactly like one, who being thirsty, fills
himself out a bumper of aquafortis and drinks it off.”

“I wish with all my heart you ‘d give up aphorisms, and just tell me
how we could serve this poor fellow; for I feel that there is a gleam of
light breaking through his dark fortunes.”

“When a man is in the state Glencore is now in, the best policy is to
let him alone. They tell us that when Murat’s blood was up, the Emperor
always left him to his own guidance, since he either did something
excessively brilliant, or made such a blunder as recalled him to
subjection again. Let us treat our friend in this fashion, and wait. Oh,
my worthy Colonel, if you but knew what a secret there is in that same
waiting policy. Many a game is won by letting the adversary move out of
his turn.”

“If all this subtlety be needed to guide a man in the plain road of
life, what is to become of poor simple fellows like myself?”

“Let them never go far from home, Harcourt, and they ‘ll always find
their way back,” said Upton; and his eyes twinkled with quiet drollery.
“Come, now,” said he, with perfect good-nature of look and voice, “If I
won’t tell you what I should counsel Glencore in this emergency, I ‘ll
do the next best thing, I’ ll tell you what advice you’d give him.”

“Let us hear it, then,” said the other.

“You’d send him abroad to search out his wife; ask her forgiveness
for all the wrong he has done her; call out any man that whispered the
shadow of a reproach against her; and go back to such domesticity as it
might please Heaven to accord him.”

“Certainly, if the woman has been unjustly dealt with--”

“There’s the rock you always split on: you are everlastingly in search
of a character. Be satisfied when you have eaten a hearty breakfast,
and don’t ask for a bill of health. Researches are always dangerous. My
great grandfather, who had a passion for genealogy, was cured of it by
discovering that the first of the family was a staymaker! Let the lesson
not be lost on us.”

“From all which I am to deduce that you ‘d ask no questions,--take her
home again, and say nothing.”

“You forget, Harcourt, we are now discussing the line of action _you_
would recommend; I am only hinting at the best mode of carrying out
_your_ ideas.”

“Just for the pleasure of showing me that I did n’t know how to walk in
the road I made myself,” said Harcourt, laughing.

“What a happy laugh that was, Harcourt! How plainly, too, it said,
‘Thank Heaven I ‘m not like that fellow, with all his craft!’ And you
are right too, my dear friend; if the devil were to walk the world now,
he ‘d be bored beyond endurance, seeing nothing but the old vices played
over again and again. And so it is with all of us who have a spice of
his nature; we’d give anything to see one new trick on the cards. Good
night, and pleasant dreams to you!” And with a sigh that had in its
cadence something almost painful, he gave his two fingers to the honest
grasp of the other, and withdrew.

“You’re a better fellow than you think yourself, or wish any one else
to believe you,” muttered Harcourt, as he puffed his cigar; and he
ruminated over this reflection till it was bedtime.

And Harcourt was right.



CHAPTER XL. UPTONISM

About noon on the following day, Sir Horace Upton and the Colonel drove
up to the gate of the villa at Sorrento, and learned, to their no small
astonishment, that the Princess had taken her departure that morning for
Como. If Upton heard these tidings with a sense of pain, nothing in his
manner betrayed the sentiment; on the contrary, he proceeded to do the
honors of the place like its owner. He showed Harcourt the grounds and
the gardens, pointed out all the choice points of view, directed his
attention to rare plants and curious animals; and then led him within
doors to admire the objects of art and luxury which abounded there.

“And that, I conclude, is a portrait of the Princess,” said Harcourt, as
he stood before what had been a flattering likeness twenty years back.

“Yes, and a wonderful resemblance,” said Upton, eying it through
his glass. “Fatter and fuller now, perhaps; but it was done after an
illness.”

“By Jove!” muttered Harcourt, “she must be beautiful; I don’t think I
ever saw a handsomer woman!”

“You are only repeating a European verdict. She is the most perfectly
beautiful woman of the Continent.”

“So there is no flattery in that picture?”

“Flattery! Why, my dear fellow, these people, the very cleverest of
them, can’t imagine anything as lovely as that. They can imitate,--they
never invent real beauty.”

“And clever, you say, too?”

“_Esprit_ enough for a dozen reviewers and fifty fashionable novelists.”
 And as he spoke he smiled and coquetted with the portrait, as though to
say, “Don’t mind my saying all this to your face.”

“I suppose her history is a very interesting one.”

“Her history, my worthy Harcourt! She has a dozen histories. Such women
have a life of politics, a life of literature, a life of the _salons_,
a life of the affections, not to speak of the episodes of jealousy,
ambition, triumph, and sometimes defeat, that make up the brilliant
web of their existence. Some three or four such people give the whole
character and tone to the age they live in. They mould its interests,
sway its fashions, suggest its tastes, and they finally rule those who
fancy that they rule mankind.”

“Egad, then, it makes one very sorry for poor mankind,” muttered
Harcourt, with a most honest sincerity of voice.

“Why should it do so, my good Harcourt? Is the refinement of a woman’s
intellect a worse guide than the coarser instincts of a man’s nature?
Would you not yourself rather trust your destinies to the fair creature
yonder than be left to the legislative mercies of that old gentleman
there, Hardenberg, or his fellow on the other side, Metternich?”

“Grim-looking fellow the Prussian; the other is much better,” said
Harcourt, rather evading the question.

“I confess I prefer the Princess,” said Upton, as he bowed before the
portrait in deepest courtesy. “But here comes breakfast. I have ordered
them to give it to us here, that we may enjoy that glorious sea view
while we eat.”

“I thought your cook a man of genius, Upton, but this fellow is his
master,” said Harcourt, as he tasted his soup.

“They are brothers,--twins, too; and they have their separate gifts,”
 said Upton, affectedly. “My fellow, they tell me, has the finer
intelligence; but he plays deeply, speculates on the Bourse, and it
spoils his nerve.”

Harcourt watched the delivery of this speech to catch if there were
any signs of raillery in the speaker; he felt that there was a kind of
mockery in the words; but there was none in the manner, for there was
not any in the mind of him who uttered them.

“My _chef_,” resumed Upton, “is a great essayist, who must have time for
his efforts. This fellow is a _feuilleton_ writer, who is required to
be new and sparkling every day of the year,--always varied, never
profound.”

“And is this your life of every day?” said Harcourt, as he surveyed the
splendid room, and carried his glance towards the terraced gardens that
flanked the sea.

“Pretty much this kind of thing,” sighed Upton, wearily.

“And no great hardship either, I should call it.”

“No, certainly not,” said the other, hesitatingly. “To one like myself,
for instance, who has no health for the wear and tear of public life,
and no heart for its ambitions, there is a great deal to like in the
quiet retirement of a first-class mission.”

“Is there really, then, nothing to do?” asked Harcourt, innocently.

“Nothing, if you don’t make it for yourself. You can have a harvest if
you like to sow. Otherwise, you may lie in fallow the year long.
The subordinates take the petty miseries of diplomacy for _their_
share,--the sorrows of insulted Englishmen, the passport difficulties,
the custom-house troubles, the police insults. The Secretary calls at
the offices of the Government, carries messages and the answers; and I,
when I have health for it, make my compliments to the King in a cocked
hat on his birthday, and have twelve grease-pots illuminated over my
door to honor the same festival.”

“And is that all?”

“Very nearly. In fact, when one does anything more, they generally do
wrong; and by a steady persistence in this kind of thing for
thirty years, you are called ‘a safe man, who never compromised his
Government,’ and are certain to be employed by any party in power.”

“I begin to think I might be an envoy myself,” said Harcourt.

“No doubt of it; we have two or three of your calibre in Germany this
moment,--men liked and respected; and, what is of more consequence, well
looked upon at ‘the Office.’”

“I don’t exactly follow you in that last remark.”

“I scarcely expected you should; and as little can I make it clear to
you. Know, however, that in that venerable pile in Downing Street called
the Foreign Office, there is a strange, mysterious sentiment,--partly
tradition, partly prejudice, partly toadyism,--which bands together all
within its walls, from the whiskered porter at the door to the essenced
Minister in his bureau, into one intellectual conglomerate, that judges
of every man in ‘the Line’--as they call diplomacy--with one accord.
By that curious tribunal, which hears no evidence, nor ever utters a
sentence, each man’s merits are weighed; and to stand well in the
Office is better than all the favors of the Court, or the force of great
abilities.”

“But I cannot comprehend how mere subordinates, the underlings of
official life, can possibly influence the fortunes of men so much above
them.”

“Picture to yourself the position of an humble guest at a great man’s
table; imagine one to whose pretensions the sentiments of the servants’
hall are hostile: he is served to all appearance like the rest of the
company; he gets his soup and his fish like those about him, and
his wine-glass is duly replenished,--yet what a series of petty
mortifications is he the victim of; how constantly is he made to
feel that he is not in public favor; how certain, too, if he incur an
awkwardness, to find that his distresses are exposed. The servants’
hall is the Office, my dear Harcourt, and its persecutions are equally
polished.”

“Are you a favorite there yourself?” asked the other, slyly.

“A prime favorite; they all like _me!_” said he, throwing himself back
in his chair, with an air of easy self-satisfaction; and Harcourt stared
at him, curious to know whether so astute a man was the dupe of his own
self-esteem, or merely amusing himself with the simplicity of another.
Ah, my good Colonel, give up the problem; it is an enigma far above your
powers to solve. That nature is too complex for _your_ elucidation; in
its intricate web no one thread holds the clew, but all is complicated,
crossed, and entangled.

“Here comes a cabinet messenger again,” said Upton, as a courier’s
_calèche_ drove up, and a well-dressed and well-looking fellow leaped
out.

“Ah, Stanhope, how are you?” said Sir Horace, shaking his hand with what
from him was warmth. “Do you know Colonel Harcourt? Well, Frank, what
news do you bring me?”

“The best of news.”

“From F. O., I suppose,” said Upton, sighing.

“Just so. Adderley has told the King you are the only man capable to
succeed him. The Press says the same, and the clubs are all with you.”

“Not one of them all, I’d venture to say, has asked whether I have the
strength or health for it,” said Sir Horace, with a voice of pathetic
intonation.

“Why, as we never knew you want energy for whatever fell to your lot to
do, we have the same hope still,” said Stanhope.

“So say I too,” cried Harcourt. “Like many a good hunter, he ‘ll do his
work best when he is properly weighted.”

“It is quite refreshing to listen to you both--creatures with crocodile
digestion--talk to a man who suffers nightmare if he over-eat a dry
biscuit at supper. I tell you frankly, it would be the death of me to
take the Foreign Office. I ‘d not live through the season,--the very
dinners would kill me; and then, the House, the heat, the turmoil, the
worry of opposition, and the jaunting back and forward to Brighton or to
Windsor!”

While he muttered these complaints, he continued to read with great
rapidity the letters which Stanhope had brought him, and which, despite
all his practised coolness, had evidently afforded him pleasure in the
perusal.

“Adderley bore it,” continued he, “just because he was a mere machine,
wound up to play off so many despatches, like so many tunes; and then,
he permitted a degree of interference on the King’s part I never could
have suffered; and he liked to be addressed by the King of Prussia as
‘Dear Adderley.’ But what do I care for all these vanities? Have I not
seen enough of the thing they call the great world? Is not this retreat
better and dearer to me than all the glare and crash of London, or all
the pomp and splendor of Windsor?”

“By Jove! I suspect you are right, after all,” said Harcourt, with an
honest energy of voice.

“Were I younger, and stronger in health, perhaps,” said Upton, “this
might have tempted me. Perhaps I can picture to myself what I might
have made of it; for you may perceive, George, these people have done
nothing: they have been pouring hot water on the tea-leaves Pitt left
them,--no more.”

“And you ‘d have a brewing of your own, I ‘ve no doubt,” responded the
other.

“I’d at least have foreseen the time when this compact, this Holy
Alliance, should become impossible; when the developed intelligence of
Europe would seek something else from their rulers than a well-concocted
scheme of repression. I ‘d have provided for the hour when England
must either break with her own people or her allies; and I ‘d have
inaugurated a new policy, based upon the enlarged views and extended
intelligence of mankind.”

“I ‘m not certain that I quite apprehend you,” muttered Harcourt.

“No matter; but you can surely understand that if a set of mere
mediocrities have saved England, a batch of clever men might have done
something more. She came out of the last war the acknowledged head of
Europe: does she now hold that place, and what will she be at the next
great struggle?”

“England is as great as ever she was,” cried Harcourt, boldly.

“Greater in nothing is she than in the implicit credulity of her
people!” sighed Upton. “I only wish I could have the same faith in my
physicians that she has in hers! By the way, Stanhope, what of that new
fellow they have got at St. Leonard’s? They tell me he builds you up in
some preparation of gypsum, so that you can’t move or stir, and that
the perfect repose thus imparted to the system is the highest order of
restorative.”

“They were just about to try him for manslaughter when I left England,”
 said Stanhope, laughing.

“As often the fate of genius in these days as in more barbarous times,”
 said Upton. “I read his pamphlet with much interest. If you were going
back, Harcourt, I ‘d have begged of you to try him.”

“And I ‘m forced to say, I’d have refused you flatly.”

“Yet it is precisely creatures of robust constitution, like you, that
should submit themselves to these trials, for the sake of humanity.
Frail organizations, like mine, cannot brave these ordeals. What are
they talking of in town? Any gossip afloat?”

“The change of ministry is the only topic. Glencore’s affair has worn
itself out.”

“What was that about Glencore?” asked Upton, half indolently.

“A strange story; one can scarcely believe it. They say that Glencore,
hearing of the King’s great anxiety to be rid of the Queen, asked an
audience of his Majesty, and actually suggested, as the best possible
expedient, that his Majesty should deny the marriage. They add that he
reasoned the case so cleverly, and with such consummate craft and skill,
it was with the greatest difficulty that the King could be persuaded
that he was deranged. Some say his Majesty was outraged beyond
endurance; others, that he was vastly amused, and laughed immoderately
over it.”

“And the world, how do they pronounce upon it?”

“There are two great parties,--one for Glencore’s sanity the other
against; but, as I said before, the cabinet changes have absorbed all
interest latterly, and the Viscount and his case are forgotten; and when
I started, the great question was, who was to have the Foreign Office.”

“I believe I could tell them one who will not,” said Upton, with a
melancholy smile. “Dine with me, both of you, to-day, at seven; no
company, you know. There is an opera in the evening, and my box is at
your service, if you like to go; and so, till then;” and with a little
gesture of the hand he waved an adieu, and glided from the room.

“I’m sorry he’s not up to the work of office,” said Har-court; “there’s
plenty of ability in him.”

“The best man we have,” said Stanhope; “so they say at the Office.”

“He’s gone to lie down, I take it; he seemed much exhausted. What say
you to a walk back to town?”

“I ask nothing better,” said Stanhope; and they started for Naples.



CHAPTER XLI. AN EVENING IN FLORENCE

That happy valley of the Val d’Arno, in which fair Florence stands,
possesses, amidst all its virtues, none more conspicuous than the
blessed forgetfulness of the past, so eminently the gift of those who
dwell there. Faults and follies of a few years back have so faded by
time as to be already historical; and as, in certain climates, rocks and
stones become shrined by lichens, and moss-covered in a year or two, so
here, in equally brief space, bygones are shrouded and shadowed in a
way that nothing short of cruelty and violence could once more expose to
view.

The palace where Lady Glencore once displayed all her attractions of
beauty and toilette, and dispensed a hospitality of princely splendor,
had remained for a course of time close barred and shut up. The massive
gate was locked, the windows shuttered, and curious tourists were told
that there were objects of interest within, but it was impossible to
obtain sight of them. The crowds who once flocked there at nightfall,
and whose equipages filled the court, now drove on to other haunts,
scarcely glancing as they passed at the darkened casements of the
grim old edifice; when at length the rumor ran that “some one” had
arrived there. Lights were seen in the porter’s lodge, the iron _grille_
was observed to open and shut, and tradespeople came and went within
the building; and, finally, the assurance gained ground that its former
owner had returned.

“Only think who has come back to us,” said one of the idlers of the
Cascine, as he lounged on the steps of a fashionable carriage,--“La
Nina!” And at once the story went far and near, repeated at every
corner, and discussed in every circle; so that had a stranger to the
place but caught the passing sounds, he would have heard that one name
uttered in every group he encountered. La Nina! and why not the Countess
of Glencore, or, at least, the Countess de la Torre? As when exiled
royalists assume titles in accordance with fallen fortunes, so, in
Italy, injured fame seeks sympathy in the familiarity of the Christian
name, and “Society” at once accepts the designation as that of those
who throw themselves upon the affectionate kindness of the world, rather
than insist upon its reverence and respect.

Many of her former friends were still there; but there was also a
numerous class, principally foreigners, who only knew of her by repute.
The traditions of her beauty, her gracefulness, the charms of her
demeanor, and the brilliancy of her diamonds, abounded. Her admirers
were of all ages, from those who worshipped her loveliness to that
not less enthusiastic section who swore by her cook; and it was indeed
“great tidings” to hear that she had returned.

Some statistician has asserted that no less than a hundred thousand
people awake every day in London, not one of whom knows where he
will pass the night. Now, Florence is but a small city, and the
lacquered-boot class bear but a slight proportion to the shoeless herd
of humanity. Yet there is a very tolerable sprinkling of well-dressed,
well-got-up individuals, who daily arise without the very vaguest
conception of who is to house them, fire them, light them, and cigar
them for the evening. They are an interesting class, and have this
strong appeal to human sympathy, that not one of them, by any possible
effort, could contribute to his own support.

They toil not, neither do they spin. They have the very fewest of social
qualities; they possess no conversational gifts; they are not even
moderately good reporters of the passing events of the day. And yet,
strange to say, the world they live in seems to have some need of them.
Are they the last relics of a once gifted class,--worn out, effete, and
exhausted,--degenerated like modern Greeks from those who once shook
the Parthenon? Or are they what anatomists call “rudimentary
structures,”--the first abortive attempts of nature to fashion something
profitable and good? Who knows?

Amidst this class the Nina’s arrival was announced as the happiest of
all tidings; and speculation immediately set to work to imagine who
would be the favorites of the house; what would be its habits and hours;
would she again enter the great world of society, or would she, as her
quiet, unannounced arrival portended, seek a less conspicuous position?
Nor was this the mere talk of the cafés and the Cascine. The _salons_
were eagerly discussing the very same theme.

In certain social conditions a degree of astuteness is acquired as to
who may and who may not be visited, that, in its tortuous intricacy of
reasons, would puzzle the craftiest head that ever wagged in Equity.
Not that the code is a severe one; it is exactly in its lenity lies
its difficulty,--so much may be done, but so little may be fatal! The
Countess in the present case enjoyed what in England is reckoned a great
privilege,--she was tried by her peers--or “something more.” They were,
however, all nice discriminators as to the class of case before them,
and they knew well what danger there was in admitting to their “guild”
 any with a little more disgrace than their neighbors. It was curious
enough that she, in whose behalf all this solicitude was excited, should
have been less than indifferent as to the result; and when, on the third
day of the trial, a verdict was delivered in her favor, and a shower
of visiting-cards at the porter’s lodge declared that the act of her
recognition had passed, her orders were that the cards should be
sent back to their owners, as the Countess had not the honor of their
acquaintance.

“Les grands coups se font respecter toujours,” was the maxim of a
great tactician in war and politics; and the adage is no less true
in questions of social life. We are so apt to compute the strength of
resources by the amount of pretension that we often yield the victory
to the mere declaration of force. We are not, however, about to dwell on
this theme,--our business being less with those who discussed her, than
with the Countess of Glencore herself.

In a large _salon_, hung with costly tapestries, and furnished in the
most expensive style, sat two ladies at opposite sides of the fire. They
were both richly dressed, and one of them (it was Lady Glencore), as she
held a screen before her face, displayed a number of valuable rings
on her fingers, and a massive bracelet of enamel with a large emerald
pendant. The other, not less magnificently attired, wore an imperial
portrait suspended by a chain around her neck, and a small knot of white
and green ribbon on her shoulder, to denote her quality of a lady in
waiting at Court. There was something almost queenly in the haughty
dignity of her manner, and an air of command in the tone with which
she addressed her companion. It was our acquaintance the Princess
Sabloukoff, just escaped from a dinner and reception at the Pitti
Palace, and carrying with her some of the proud traditions of the
society she had quitted.

“What hour did you tell them they might come, Nina?” asked she.

“Not before midnight, my dear Princess; I wanted to have a talk with you
first. It is long since we have met, and I have so much to tell you.”

“_Cara mia_,” said the other, carelessly, “I know everything already.
There is nothing you have done, nothing that has happened to you, that
I am not aware of. I might go further, and say that I have looked with
secret pleasure at the course of events which to your short-sightedness
seemed disastrous.”

“I can scarce conceive that possible,” said the Countess, sighing.

“Naturally enough, perhaps, because you never knew the greatest of all
blessings in this life, which is--liberty. Separation from your husband,
my dear Nina, did not emancipate you from the tiresome requirements
of the world. You got rid of _him_, to be sure, but not of those who
regarded you as his wife. It required the act of courage by which you
cut with these people forever, to assert the freedom I speak of.”

“I almost shudder at the contest I have provoked, and had you not
insisted on it--”

“You had gone back again to the old slavery, to be pitied and
compassionated, and condoled with, instead of being feared and envied,”
 said the other; and as she spoke, her flashing eyes and quivering brows
gave an expression almost tiger-like to her features. “What was there
about your house and its habits distinctive before? What gave you any
pre-eminence above those that surround you? You were better looking,
yourself; better dressed; your _salons_ better lighted; your dinners
more choice,--there was the end of it. _Your_ company was _their_
company,--_your_ associates were _theirs_. The homage _you_ received
to-day had been yesterday the incense of another. There was not a
bouquet nor a flattery offered to _you_ that had not its _facsimile_,
doing service in some other quarter. You were ‘one of them,’ Nina,
obliged to follow their laws and subscribe to their ideas; and while
_they_ traded on the wealth of your attractions, _you_ derived nothing
from the partnership but the same share as those about you.”

“And how will it be now?” asked the Countess, half in fear, half in
hope.

“How will it be now? I ‘ll tell you. This house will be the resort of
every distinguished man, not of Italy, but of the world at large. Here
will come the highest of every nation, as to a circle where they
can say, and hear, and suggest a thousand things in the freedom of
unauthorized intercourse. You will not drain Florence alone, but all the
great cities of Europe, of its best talkers and deepest thinkers. The
statesman and the author, and the sculptor and the musician, will hasten
to a neutral territory, where for the time a kind of equality will
prevail. The weary minister, escaping from a Court festival, will come
here to unbend; the witty converser will store himself with his best
resources for your _salons_. There will be all the freedom of a club to
these men, with the added charm of that fascination your presence
will confer; and thus, through all their intercourse, will be felt
the ‘_parfum de femme_,’ as Balzac calls it, which both elevates and
entrances.”

“But will not society revenge itself on all this?” “It will invent a
hundred calumnious reports and shocking stories; but these, like the
criticisms on an immoral play, will only serve to fill the house.
Men--even the quiet ones--will be eager to see what it is that
constitutes the charm of these gatherings; and one charm there is that
never misses its success. Have you ever experienced, in visiting some
great gallery, or, still more, some choice collection of works of art, a
strange, mysterious sense of awe for objects which you rather knew to
be great by the testimony of others, than felt able personally to
appreciate? You were conscious that the picture was painted by Raphael,
or the cup carved by Cellini, and, independently of all the pleasure it
yielded you, arose a sense of homage to its actual worth. The same
is the case in society with illustrious men. They may seem slower of
apprehension, less ready at reply, less apt to understand; but there
they are, Originals, not Copies of greatness. They represent value.”

Have we said enough to show our reader the kind of persuasion by which
Madame de Sabloukoff led her friend into this new path? The flattery
of the argument was, after all, its success; and the Countess was
fascinated by fancying herself something more than the handsomest and
the best-dressed woman in Florence. They who constitute a free port of
their house will have certainly abundance of trade, and also invite no
small amount of enterprise.

A little after midnight the _salons_ began to fill, and from the Opera
and the other theatres flocked in all that was pleasant, fashionable,
and idle of Florence. The old beau, painted, padded, and essenced, came
with the younger and not less elaborately dressed “fashionable,” great
in watch-chains and splendid in waistcoat buttons; long-haired artists
and moustached hussars mingled with close-shaven actors and pale-faced
authors; men of the world, of politics, of finance, of letters, of
the turf,--all were there. There was the gossip of the Bourse and the
cabinet, the green-room and the stable. The scandal of society, the
events of club life, the world’s doings in dinners, divorces, and duels,
were all revealed and discussed, amidst the most profuse gratitude
to the Countess for coming back again to that society which scarcely
survived her desertion.

They were not, it is but fair to say, all that the Princess Sabloukoff
had depicted them; but there was still a very fair sprinkling of witty,
pleasant talkers. The ease of admission permitted any former intimate
to present his friend, and thus at once, on the very first night of
receiving, the Countess saw her _salons_ crowded. They smoked, and
sang, and laughed, and played écarte, and told good stories. They drew
caricatures, imitated well-known actors, and even preachers, talking
away with a volubility that left few listeners; and then there was a
supper laid out on a table too small to accommodate even by standing,
so that each carried away his plate, and bivouacked with others of his
friends, here and there, through the rooms.

All was contrived to impart a sense of independence and freedom; all,
to convey an impression of “license” special to the place, that made the
most rigid unbend, and relaxed the gravity of many who seldom laughed.

As in certain chemical compounds a mere drop of some one powerful
ingredient will change the whole property of the mass, eliciting new
elements, correcting this, developing that, and, even to the eye,
announcing by altered color the wondrous change accomplished, so here
the element of womanhood, infinitely small in proportion as it was,
imparted a tone and a refinement to this orgie which, without it, had
degenerated into coarseness. The Countess’s beautiful niece, Ida Delia
Torre, was also there, singing at times with all an artist’s excellence
the triumphs of operatic music; at others, warbling over those
“canzonettes” which to Italian ears embody all that they know of love
of country. How could such a reception be other than successful; or
how could the guests, as they poured forth into the silent street at
daybreak, do aught but exult that such a house was added to the haunts
of Florence,--so lovely a group had returned to adorn their fair city?

In a burst of this enthusiastic gratitude they sang a serenade before
they separated; and then, as the closed curtains showed them that the
inmates had left the windows, they uttered the last “felice Notte,” and
departed.

“And so Wahnsdorf never made his appearance?” said the Princess, as she
was once more alone with the Countess.

“I scarcely expected him. He knows the ill-feeling towards his
countrymen amongst Italians, and he rarely enters society where he may
meet them.”

“It is strange that he should marry one!” said she, half musingly.

“He fell in love,--there’s the whole secret of it,” said the Countess.
“He fell in love, and his passion encountered certain difficulties. His
rank was one of them, Ida’s indifference another.”

“And how have they been got over?”

“Evaded rather than surmounted. He has only his own consent after all.”

“And Ida, does she care for him?”

“I suspect not; but she will marry him. Pique will often do what
affection would fail in. The secret history of the affair is this: There
was a youth at Massa, who, while he lived there, made our acquaintance
and became even intimate at the Villa: he was a sculptor of some talent,
and, as many thought, of considerable promise. I engaged him to give Ida
lessons in modelling, and, in this way, they were constantly together.
Whether Ida liked him or not I cannot say; but it is beyond a doubt that
he loved her. In fact, everything he produced in his art only showed
what his mind was full of,--her image was everywhere. This aroused
Wahnsdorf’s jealousy, and he urged me strongly to dismiss Greppi, and
shut my doors to him. At first I consented, for I had a strange sense,
not exactly of dislike, but misgiving, of the youth. I had a feeling
towards him that if I attempted to convey to you, it would seem as
though in all this affair I had suffered myself to be blinded by
passion, not guided by reason. There were times that I felt a deep
interest in the youth: his genius, his ardor, his very poverty
engaged my sympathy; and then, stronger than all these, was a strange,
mysterious sense of terror at sight of him, for he was the very image of
one who has worked all the evil of my life.”

“Was not this a mere fancy?” said the Princess, compassionately, for she
saw the shuddering emotion these words had cost her.

“It was not alone his look,” continued the Countess, speaking now with
impetuous eagerness, “it was not merely his features, but their every
play and movement; his gestures when excited; the very voice was _his_.
I saw him once excited to violent passion; it was some taunt that
Wahnsdorf uttered about men of unknown or ignoble origin; and then
He--he himself seemed to stand before me as I have so often seen him,
in his terrible outbursts of rage. The sight brought back to me the
dreadful recollection of those scenes,--scenes,” said she, looking
wildly around her, “that if these old walls could speak, might freeze
your heart where you are sitting.

“You have heard, but you cannot know, the miserable life we led
together; the frantic jealousy that maddened every hour of his
existence; how, in all the harmless freedom of our Italian life, he saw
causes of suspicion and distrust; how, by his rudeness to this one,
his coldness to that, he estranged me from all who have been my dearest
intimates and friends, dictating to me the while the custom of a land
and a people I had never seen nor wished to see; till at last I was left
a mockery to some, an object of pity to others, amidst a society where
once I reigned supreme,--and all for a man that I had ceased to love! It
was from this same life of misery, unrewarded by the affection by which
jealousy sometimes compensates for its tyranny, that I escaped, to
attach myself to the fortunes of that unhappy Princess whose lot bore
some resemblance to my own.

“I know well that he ascribed my desertion to another cause, and--shall
I own it to you?--I had a savage pleasure in leaving him to the
delusion. It was the only vengeance within my reach, and I grasped it
with eagerness. Nothing was easier for me than to disprove it,--a mere
word would have shown the falsehood of the charge; but I would not utter
it. I knew his nature well, and that the insult to his name and the
stain to his honor would be the heaviest of all injuries to him; and
they were so. He drove _me_ from my home,--I banished _him_ from the
world. It is true, I never reckoned on the cruel blow he had yet in
store for me, and when it fell I was crushed and stunned. There was now
a declared war between us,--each to do their worst to the other. It
was less succumbing before him, than to meditate and determine on the
future, that I fled from Florence. It was not here and in such a society
I should have to blush for any imputation. But I had always held my
place proudly, perhaps too proudly, here, and I did not care to enter
upon that campaign of defence--that stooping to cultivate alliances,
that humble game of conciliation--that must ensue.

“I went away into banishment. I went to Corsica, and thence to Massa.
I was meditating a journey to the East. I was even speculating on
establishing myself there for the rest of my life, when your letters
changed my plans. You once more kindled in my heart a love of life by
instilling a love of vengeance. You suggested to me the idea of coming
back here boldly, and confronting the world proudly.”

“Do not mistake me, Nina,” said the Princess, “the ‘Vendetta’ was the
last thing in my thoughts. I was too deeply concerned for you to be
turned away from my object by any distracting influence. It was that
you should give a bold denial--the boldest--to your husband’s calumny, I
counselled your return. My advice was: Disregard, and, by disregarding,
deny the foul slander he has invented. Go back to the world in the rank
that is yours and that you never forfeited, and then challenge him to
oppose your claim to it.”

“And do you think that for such a consideration as this--the honor to
bear the name of a man I loathe--that I ‘d face that world I know so
well? No, no; believe me, I had very different reasons. I was resolved
that my future life, _my_ name, _his_ name, should gain a European
notoriety. I am well aware that when a woman is made a public talk, when
once her name comes sufficiently often before the world, let it be for
what you will,--her beauty, her will, her extravagance, her dress,--from
that hour her fame is perilled, and the society she has overtopped take
their vengeance in slandering her character. To be before the world as
a woman is to be arraigned. If ever there was a man who dreaded such a
destiny for his wife, it was _he_. The impertinences of the Press had
greater terrors for his heart than aught else in life, and I resolved
that he should taste them.”

“How have you mistaken, how have you misunderstood me, Nina!” said the
Princess, sorrowfully.

“Not so,” cried she, eagerly. “You only saw one advantage in the plan
you counselled. _I_ perceived that it contained a double benefit.”

“But remember, dearest Nina, revenge is the most costly of all
pleasures, if one pays for it with all that they possess--their
tranquillity. I myself might have indulged such thoughts as yours; there
were many points alike in our fortunes: but to have followed such a
course would be like the wisdom of one who inoculates himself with a
deadly malady that he may impart the poison to another.”

“Must I again tell you that in all I have done I cared less how it might
serve _me_ than how it might wound _him?_ I know you cannot understand
this sentiment; I do not ask of you to sympathize with it. _Your_
talents enabled you to shape out a high and ambitious career for
yourself. You loved the great intrigues of state, and were well fitted
to conduct or control them. None such gifts were mine. I was and I am
still a mere creature of society. I never soared, even in fancy,
beyond the triumphs which the world of fashion decrees. A cruel destiny
excluded me from the pleasures of a life that would have amply satisfied
me, and there is nothing left but to avenge myself on the cause.”

“My dearest Nina, with all your self-stimulation you cannot make
yourself the vindictive creature you would appear,” said the Princess,
smiling.

“How little do you know my Italian blood!” said the other, passionately.
“That boy--he was not much more than boy--that Greppi was, as I told
you, the very image of Glencore. The same dark skin, the same heavy
brow, the same cold, stern look, which even a smile did not enliven;
even to the impassive air with which he listened to a provocation,--all
were alike. Well, the resemblance has cost him dearly. I consented at
last to Wahnsdorf’s continual entreaty to exclude him from the Villa,
and charged the Count with the commission. I am not sure that he
expended an excess of delicacy on the task; I half fear me that he did
the act more rudely than was needed. At all events, a quarrel was the
result, and a challenge to a duel. I only knew of this when all was
over; believe me, I should never have permitted it. However, the result
was as safe in the hands of Fate. The youth fled from Massa; and though
Wahnsdorf followed him, they never met.”

“There was no duel, you say?” cried the Princess, eagerly.

“How could there be? This Greppi never went to the rendezvous. He
quitted Massa during the night, and has never since been heard of. In
this, I own to you, he was not like _him._” And, as she said the words,
the tears swam in her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks. “May I ask you
how you learned all this?” “From Wahnsdorf; on his return, in a week or
two, he told me all. Ida, at first, would not believe it; but how could
she discredit what was plain and palpable? Greppi was gone. All the
inquiries of the police were in vain as to his route; none could guess
how he had escaped.”

“And this account was given you--you yourself--by Wahnsdorf?” repeated
the Princess.

“Yes, to myself. Why should he have concealed it?” “And now he is to
marry Ida?” said the Princess, half musingly, to herself.

“We hope, with _your_ aid, that it may be so. The family difficulties
are great; Wahnsdorf s rank is not ours; but he persists in saying that
to your management nothing is impossible.”

“His opinion is too flattering,” said the Princess, with a cold gravity
of manner.

“But you surely will not refuse us your assistance?” “You may count upon
me even for more than you ask,” said the Princess, rising. “How late
it is! day is breaking already!” And so, with a tender embrace, they
parted.



CHAPTER XLIII. MADAME DE SABBLOUKOFF IN THE MORNING

Madame de Sabloukoff inhabited “the grand apartment” of the Hôtel
d’Italie, which is the handsomest quarter of the great hotel of
Florence. The same suite which had once the distinguished honor of
receiving a Czar and a King of Prussia, and Heaven knows how many lesser
potentates! was now devoted to one who, though not of the small number
of the elect-in-purple, was yet, in her way, what politicians calls a
“puissance.”

As in the drama a vast number of agencies are required for the due
performance of a piece, so, on the greater stage of life, many of the
chief motive powers rarely are known to the public eye. The Princess was
of this number. She was behind the scenes, in more than one sense, and
had her share in the great events of her time.

While her beauty lasted, she had traded on the great capital of
attractions which were unsurpassed in Europe. As the perishable flower
faded, she, with prudential foresight, laid up a treasure in secret
knowledge of people and their acts, which made her dreaded and feared
where she was once admired and flattered. Perhaps--it is by no means
improbable--she preferred this latter tribute to the former.

Although the strong sunlight was tempered by the closed jalousies and
the drawn muslin curtains, she sat with her back to the window, so that
her features were but dimly visible in the darkened atmosphere of
the room. There was something of coquetry in this; but there was
more,--there was a dash of semi-secrecy in the air of gloom and
stillness around, which gave to each visitor who presented himself,--and
she received but one at a time,--an impression of being admitted to an
audience of confidence and trust. The mute-like servant who waited
in the corridor without, and who drew back a massive curtain on
your entrance, also aided the delusion, imparting to the interview a
character of mysterious solemnity.

Through that solemn portal there had passed, in and out, during the
morning, various dignitaries of the land, ministers and envoys, and
grand “chargés” of the Court. The embroidered key of the Chamberlain and
the purple stockings of a Nuncio had come and gone; and now there was
a Brief pause, for the groom in waiting had informed the crowd in the
antechamber that the Princess could receive no more. Then there was
a hurried scrawling of great names in a large book, a shower of
visiting-cards, and all was over; the fine equipages of fine people
dashed off, and the courtyard of the hotel was empty.

The large clock on the mantelpiece struck three, and Madame de
Sabloukoff compared the time with her watch, and by a movement of
impatience showed a feeling of displeasure. She was not accustomed to
have her appointments lightly treated, and he for whom she had fixed
an hour was now thirty minutes behind his time. She had been known to
resent such unpunctuality, and she looked as though she might do so
again. “I remember the day when his grand-uncle descended from his
carriage to speak to me,” muttered she; “and that same grand-uncle was
an emperor.”

Perhaps the chance reflection of her image in the large glass before her
somewhat embittered the recollection, for her features flushed, and as
suddenly grew pale again. It may have been that her mind went rapidly
back to a period when her fascination was a despotism that even the
highest and the haughtiest obeyed. “Too true,” said she, speaking to
herself, “time has dealt heavily with us all. But _they_ are no more
what they once were than am I. Their old compact of mutual assistance is
crumbling away under the pressure of new rivalries and new pretensions.
Kings and Kaisers will soon be like bygone beauties. I wonder will they
bear their altered fortune as heroically?” It is but just to say that
her tremulous accents and quivering lip bore little evidence of the
heroism she spoke of.

She rang the bell violently, and as the servant entered she said, but in
a voice of perfect unconcern,--

“When the Count von Wahnsdorf calls, you will tell him that I am
engaged, but will receive him to-morrow--”

“And why not to-day, charming Princess?” said a young man, entering
hastily, and whose graceful but somewhat haughty air set off to every
advantage his splendid Hungarian costume. “Why not now?” said he,
stooping to kiss her hand with respectful gallantry. She motioned to the
servant to withdraw, and they were alone.

“You are not over exact in keeping an appointment, monsieur,” said
she, stiffly. “It is somewhat cruel to remind me that my claims in this
respect have grown antiquated.”

“I fancied myself the soul of punctuality, my dear Princess,” said
he, adjusting the embroidered pelisse he wore over his shoulder. “You
mentioned four as the hour--”

“I said three o’clock,” replied she, coldly.

“Three, or four, or even five,--what does it signify?” said he,
carelessly. “We have not either of us, I suspect, much occupation to
engage us; and if I have interfered with your other plans--if you have
plans--A thousand pardons!” cried he, suddenly, as the deep color of her
face and her flashing eye warned him that he had gone too far; “but the
fact is, I was detained at the riding-school. They have sent me some
young horses from the Banat, and I went over to look at them.”

“The Count de Wahnsdorf knows that he need make no apologies to Madame
de Sabloukoff,” said she, calmly; “but it were just as graceful,
perhaps, to affect them. My dear Count,” continued she, but in a tone
perfectly free from all touch of irritation, “I have asked to see and
speak with you on matters purely your own--”

“You want to dissuade me from this marriage,” said he, interrupting;
“but I fancy that I have already listened to everything that can be
urged on that affair. If you have any argument other than the old one
about misalliance and the rest of it, I ‘ll hear it patiently; though I
tell you beforehand that I should like to learn that a connection with
an imperial house had some advantage besides that of a continual barrier
to one’s wishes.”

“I understand,” said she, quietly, “that you named the terms on which
you would abandon this project,--is it not so?”

“Who told _you_ that?” cried he, angrily. “Is this another specimen of
the delicacy with which ministers treat a person of my station?”

“To discuss that point, Count, would lead us wide of our mark. Am I to
conclude that my informant was correct?”

“How can I tell what may have been reported to you?” said he, almost
rudely.

“You shall hear and judge for yourself,” was the calm answer. “Count
Kollorath informed me that you offered to abandon this marriage on
condition that you were appointed to the command of the Pahlen Hussars.”

The young man’s face became scarlet with shame, and he tried twice to
speak, but unavailingly.

With a merciless slowness of utterance, and a manner of the most unmoved
sternness, she went on: “I did not deem the proposal at all exorbitant.
It was a price that they could well afford to pay.”

“Well, they refused me,” said he, bluntly.

“Not exactly refused you,” said she, more gently. “They reminded you of
the necessity of conforming--of at least appearing to conform--to the
rules of the service; that you had only been a few months in command of
a squadron; that your debts, which were considerable, had been noised
about the world, so that a little time should elapse, and a favorable
opportunity present itself, before this promotion could be effected.”

“How correctly they have instructed you in all the details of this
affair!” said he, with a scornful smile.

“It is a rare event when I am misinformed, sir,” was her cold reply;
“nor could it redound to the advantage of those who ask my advice to
afford me incorrect information.”

“Then I am quite unable to perceive what you want with _me_.” cried he.
“It is plain enough you are in possession of all that I could tell you.
Or is all this only the prelude to some menace or other?”

She made no other answer to this rude question than by a smile so
dubious in its meaning, it might imply scorn, or pity, or even sorrow.

“You must not wonder if I be angry,” continued he, in an accent that
betokened shame at his own violence. “They have treated me so long as a
fool that they have made me something worse than one.”

“I am not offended by your warmth, Count,” said she, softly. “It is at
least the guarantee of your sincerity. I tell you, therefore, I have
no threat to hold over you. It will be enough that I can show you the
impolicy of this marriage,--I don’t want to use a stronger word,--what
estrangement it will lead to as regards your own family, how
inadequately it will respond to the sacrifices it must cost.”

“That consideration is for me to think of, madam,” said he, proudly.

“And for your friends also,” interposed she, softly.

“If by my friends you mean those who have watched every occasion of my
life to oppose my plans and thwart my wishes, I conclude that they
will prove themselves as vigilant now as heretofore; but I am getting
somewhat weary of this friendship.”

“My dear Count, give me a patient--if possible, an indulgent--hearing
for five minutes, or even half that time, and I hope it will save us
both a world of misconception. If this marriage that you are so eager to
contract were an affair of love,--of that ardent, passionate love which
recognizes no obstacle nor acknowledges any barrier to its wishes,--I
could regard the question as one of those everyday events in life whose
uniformity is seldom broken by a new incident; for love stories have a
terrible sameness in them.” She smiled as she said this, and in such a
way as to make him smile at first, and then laugh heartily.

“But if,” resumed she, seriously,--“if I only see in this project a
mere caprice, half--more than half--based upon the pleasure of wounding
family pride, or of coercing those who have hitherto dictated to you;
if, besides this, I perceive that there is no strong affection on either
side, none of that impetuous passion which the world accepts as ‘the
attenuating circumstance’ in rash marriages--”

“And who has told you that I do not love Ida, or that she is not devoted
with her whole heart to _me?_” cried he, interrupting her.

“You yourself have told the first. You have shown by the price you have
laid on the object the value at which you estimate it. As for the latter
part of your question--” She paused, and arranged the folds of her shawl,
purposely playing with his impatience, and enjoying it.

“Well,” cried he, “as for the latter part; go on.”

“It scarcely requires an answer. I saw Ida Delia Torre last night in a
society of which her affianced husband was not one; and, I will be
bold enough to say, hers was not the bearing that bespoke engaged
affections.”

“Indeed!” said he, but in a tone that indicated neither displeasure nor
surprise.

“It was as I have told you, Count. Surrounded by the youth of Florence,
such as you know them, she laughed, and talked, and sang, in all the
careless gayety of a heart at ease; or, if at moments a shade of sadness
crossed her features, it was so brief that only one observing her
closely as myself could mark it.”

“And how did that subtle intelligence of yours interpret this show of
sorrow?” said he, in a voice of mockery, but yet of deep anxiety.

“My subtle intelligence was not taxed to guess, for I knew her secret,”
 said the Princess, with all the strength of conscious power.

“Her secret--her secret!” said he, eagerly. “What do you mean by that?”

The Princess smiled coldly, and said, “I have not yet found my frankness
so well repaid that I should continue to extend it.”

“What is the reward to be, madam? Name it,” said he, boldly.

“The same candor on your part, Count; I ask for no more.”

“But what have I to reveal; what mystery is there that your omniscience
has not penetrated?”

“There may be some that your frankness has not avowed, my dear Count.”

“If you refer to what you have called Ida’s secret--”

“No,” broke she in. “I was now alluding to what might be called _your_
secret.”

“Mine! _my_ secret!” exclaimed he. But though the tone was meant to
convey great astonishment, the confusion of his manner was far more
apparent.

“Your secret, Count,” she repeated slowly, “which has been just as safe
in my keeping as if it had been confided to me on honor.”

“I was not aware how much I owed to your discretion, madam,” said he,
scoffingly.

“I am but too happy when any services of mine can rescue the fame of
a great family from reproach, sir,” replied she, proudly; for all the
control she had heretofore imposed upon her temper seemed at last
to have yielded to offended dignity. “Happily for that illustrious
house--happily for you, too--I am one of a very few who know of Count
Wahnsdorf’s doings. To have suffered your antagonist in a duel to be
tracked, arrested, and imprisoned in an Austrian fortress, when a word
from you had either warned him of his peril or averted the danger, was
bad enough; but to have stigmatized his name with cowardice, and to have
defamed him because he was your rival, was far worse.”

Wahnsdorf struck the table with his clenched fist till it shook beneath
the blow, but never uttered a word, while with increased energy she
continued,--

“Every step of this bad history is known to me; every detail of it,
from your gross and insulting provocation of this poor friendless youth
to the last scene of his committal to a dungeon.”

“And, of course, you have related your interesting narrative to Ida?”
 cried he.

“No, sir; the respect which I have never lost for those whose name
you bear had been quite enough to restrain me, had I not even other
thoughts.”

“And what may they be?” asked he.

“To take the first opportunity of finding myself alone with you, to
represent how nearly it concerns your honor that this affair should
never be bruited abroad; to insist upon your lending every aid to obtain
this young man’s liberation; to show that the provocation came from
yourself; and, lastly, all-painful though it be, to remove from him the
stain you have inflicted, and to reinstate him in the esteem that your
calumny may have robbed him of. These were the other thoughts I alluded
to.”

“And you fancy that I am to engage in this sea of trouble for the sake
of some nameless bastard, while in doing so I compromise myself and my
own honor?”

“Do you prefer that it should be done by another, Count Wahnsdorf?”
 asked she.

“This is a threat, madam.”

“All the speedier will the matter be settled if you understand it as
such.”

“And, of course, the next condition will be for me to resign my
pretensions to Ida in his favor,” said he, with a savage irony.

“I stipulate for nothing of the sort; Count Wahnsdorf’s pretensions will
be to-morrow just where they are to-day.”

“You hold them cheaply, madam. I am indeed unfortunate in all my pursuit
of your esteem.”

“You live in a sphere to command it, sir,” was her reply, given with a
counterfeited humility; and whether it was the tone of mingled insolence
and submission she assumed, or simply the sense of his own unworthiness
in her sight, but Wahnsdorf cowered before her like a frightened child.
At this moment the servant entered, and presented a visiting-card to the
Princess.

“Ah, he comes in an opportune moment,” cried she. “This is the Minister
of the Duke of Massa’s household,--the Chevalier Stubber. Yes,”
 continued she to the servant, “I will receive him.”

If there was not any conspicuous gracefulness in the Chevalier’s
approach, there was an air of quiet self-possession that bespoke a sense
of his own worth and importance; and while he turned to pay his respects
to the young Count, his unpolished manner was not devoid of a certain
dignity.

“It is a fortunate chance by which I find you here, Count Wahnsdorf,”
 said he, “for you will be glad to learn that the young fellow you had
that affair with at Massa has just been liberated.”

“When, and how?” cried the Princess, hastily.

“As to the time, it must be about four days ago, as my letters inform
me; as to the how, I fancy the Count can best inform you,--he has
interested himself greatly in the matter.” The Count blushed deeply,
and turned away to hide his face, but not so quickly as to miss the
expression of scornful meaning with which the Princess regarded him.

“But I want to hear the details, Chevalier,” said she.

“And I can give you none, madam. My despatches simply mention that the
act of arrest was discovered in some way to be informal. Sir Horace
Upton proved so much. There then arose a question of giving him up to
us; but my master declined the honor,--he would have no trouble, he
said, with England or Englishmen; and some say that the youth claims an
English nationality. The cabinet of Vienna are, perhaps, like-minded in
the matter; at all events, he is free, and will be here to-morrow.”

“Then I shall invite him to dinner, and beg both of you gentlemen to
meet him,” said she, with a voice wherein a tone of malicious drollery
mingled.

“I am your servant, madam,” said Stubber.

“And I am engaged,” said Wahnsdorf, taking up his shako.

“You are off to Vienna to-night, Count Wahnsdorf,” whispered the
Princess-in his ear.

“What do you mean, madam?” said he, in a tone equally low.

“Only that I have a letter written for the Archduchess Sophia, which I
desire to intrust to your hands. You may as well read ere I seal it.”

The Count took the letter from her hand, and retired towards the window
to read it. While she conversed eagerly with Stubber, she did not fail
from time to time to glance towards the other, and mark the expression
of his features as he folded and replaced the letter in its envelope,
and, slowly approaching her, said,--

“You are most discreet, madam.”

“I hope I am just, sir,” said she, modestly.

“This was something of a difficult undertaking, too,” said he, with an
equivocal smile.

“It was certainly a pleasant and proud one, sir, as it always must be,
to write to a mother in commendation of her son. By the way, Chevalier,
you have forgotten to make your compliments to the Count on his
promotion--”

“I have not heard of it, madam; what may it be?” asked Stubber.

“To the command of the Pahlen Hussars, sir,--one of the proudest
‘charges’ of the Empire.”

A rush of blood to Wahnsdorf’s face was as quickly followed by a deadly
pallor, and with a broken, faint utterance he said, “Good-bye,” and left
the room.

“A fine young fellow,--the very picture of a soldier,” exclaimed
Stubber, looking after him.

“A chevalier of the olden time, sir,--the very soul of honor,” said the
Princess, enthusiastically. “And now for a little gossip with yourself.”

It is not “in our brief” to record what passed in that chatty interview;
plenty of state secrets and state gossip there was,--abundance of that
dangerous trifling which mixes up the passions of society with the great
game of politics, and makes statecraft feel the impress of men’s
whims and caprices. We were just beginning that era, “the policy of
resentments,” which has since pervaded Europe, and the Chevalier and
the Princess were sufficiently behind the scenes to have many things
to communicate; and here we must leave them while we hasten on to other
scenes and other actors.



CHAPTER XLIII. DOINGS IN DOWNING STREET

The dull old precincts of Downing Street were more than usually astir.
Hackney-coaches and cabs at an early hour, private chariots somewhat
later, went to and fro along the dreary pavement, and two cabinet
messengers with splashed _calèches_ arrived in hot haste from Dover.
Frequent, too, were the messages from the House; a leading Oppositionist
was then thundering away against the Government, inveighing against the
treacherous character of their foreign policy, and indignantly calling
on them for certain despatches to their late envoy at Naples. At
every cheer which greeted him from his party a fresh missive would
be despatched from the Treasury benches, and the whisper, at first
cautiously muttered, grew louder and louder, “Why does not Upton come
down?”

So intricate has been the web of our petty entanglements, so complex the
threads of those small intrigues by which we have earned our sobriquet
of the “perfide Albion,” that it is difficult at this time of day to
recall the exact question whose solution, in the words of the orator of
the debate, “placed us either at the head of Europe, or consigned to us
the fatal mediocrity of a third-rate power.” The prophecy, whichever way
read, gives us unhappily no clew to the matter in hand, and we are only
left to conjecture that it was an intervention in Spain, or “something
about the Poles.” As is usual in such cases, the matter, insignificant
enough in itself, was converted into a serious attack on the Government,
and all the strength of the Opposition was arrayed to give power and
consistency to the assault. As is equally usual, the cabinet was totally
unprepared for defence; either they had altogether undervalued the
subject, or they trusted to the secrecy with which they had conducted
it; whichever of these be the right explanation, each minister could
only say to his colleague, “It never came before _me_; Upton knows all
about it.”

“And where is Upton?--why does he not come down?”--were again and again
reiterated; while a shower of messages and even mandates invoked his
presence.

The last of these was a peremptory note from no less a person than the
Premier himself, written in three very significant words, thus: “Come,
or go;” and given to a trusty whip, the Hon. Gerald Neville, to deliver.

Armed with this not very conciliatory document, the well-practised
tactician drew up to the door of the Foreign Office, and demanded to see
the Secretary of State.

“Give him this card and this note, sir,” said he to the well-dressed and
very placid young gentleman who acted as his private secretary.

“Sir Horace is very poorly, sir; he is at this moment in a mineral bath;
but as the matter you say is pressing, he will see you. Will you pass
this way?”

Mr. Neville followed his guide through an infinity of passages, and at
length reached a large folding-door, opening one side of which he was
ushered into a spacious apartment, but so thoroughly impregnated with
a thick and offensive vapor that he could barely perceive, through the
mist, the bath in which Upton lay reclined, and the figure of a man,
whose look and attitude bespoke the doctor, beside him.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” sighed Upton, extending two dripping fingers in
salutation, “you have come in at the death. This is the last of it!”

“No, no; don’t say that,” cried the other, encouragingly. “Have you had
any sudden seizure? What is the nature of it?”

“He,” said he, looking round to the doctor, “calls it ‘arachnoidal
trismus,’--a thing, he says, that they have all of them ignored for many
a day, though Charlemagne died of it. Ah, Doctor,”--and he addressed a
question to him in German.

A growled volley of gutturals ensued, and Upton went on:--

“Yes, Charlemagne,--Melancthon had it, but lingered for years. It is
the peculiar affection of great intellectual natures over-taxed and
over-worked.”

Whether there was that in the manner of the sick man that inspired hope,
or something in the aspect of the doctor that suggested distrust, or a
mixture of the two together, but certainly Neville rapidly rallied from
the fears which had beset him on entering, and in a voice of a more
cheery tone, said,--

“Come, come, Sir Horace, you ‘ll throw off this as you have done other
such attacks. You have never been wanting either to your friends or
yourself when the hour of emergency called. We are in a moment of such
difficulty now, and you alone can rescue us.”

“How cruel of the Duke to write me that!” sighed Upton, as he held up
the piece of paper, from which the water had obliterated all trace of
the words. “It was so inconsiderate,--eh, Neville?”

“I’m not aware of the terms he employed,” said the other.

This was the very admission that Upton sought to obtain, and in a far
more cheery voice he said,--

“If I was capable of the effort,--if Doctor Geimirstad thought it safe
for me to venture,--I could set all this to right. These people are
all talking ‘without book,’ Neville,--the ever-recurring blunder of an
Opposition when they address themselves to a foreign question: they
go upon a newspaper paragraph, or the equally incorrect ‘private
communication from a friend.’ Men in office alone can attain to
truth--exact truth--about questions of foreign policy.”

“The debate is taking a serious turn, however,” interposed Neville.
“They reiterate very bold assertions, which none of our people are in
a position to contradict. Their confidence is evidently increasing with
the show of confusion in our ranks. Something must be done to meet them,
and that quickly.”

“Well, I suppose I must go,” sighed Upton; and as he held out his wrist
to have his pulse felt, he addressed a few words to the doctor.

“He calls it ‘a life period,’ Neville. He says that he won’t answer for
the consequences.”

The doctor muttered on.

“He adds that the trismus may be thus converted into ‘Bi-trismus.’ Just
imagine Bi-trismus!”

This was a stretch of fancy clear and away beyond Neville’s
apprehension, and he began to feel certain misgivings about pushing a
request so full of danger; but from this he was in a measure relieved
by the tone in which Upton now addressed his valet with directions as to
the dress he intended to wear. “The loose pelisse, with the astrakhan,
Giuseppe, and that vest of _cramoisie_ velvet; and if you will just
glance at the newspaper, Neville, in the next room, I ‘ll come to you
immediately.”

The newspapers of the morning after this interview afford us the
speediest mode of completing the incidents; and the concluding sentences
of a leading article will be enough to place before our readers what
ensued:--

“It was at this moment, and amidst the most enthusiastic cheers of the
Treasury bench, that Sir Horace Upton entered the House. Leaning on the
arm of Mr. Neville, he slowly passed up and took his accustomed place.
The traces of severe illness in his features, and the great debility
which his gestures displayed, gave an unusual interest to a scene
already almost dramatic in its character. For a moment the great
chief of Opposition was obliged to pause in his assault, to let this
flood-tide of sympathy pass on; and when at length he did resume, it was
plain to see how much the tone of his invective had been tempered by a
respect for the actual feeling of the House. The necessity for this act
of deference, added to the consciousness that he was in presence of the
man whose acts he so strenuously denounced, were too much for the nerves
of the orator, and he came to an abrupt conclusion, whose confused and
uncertain sentences scarcely warranted the cheers with which his friends
rallied him.

“Sir Horace rose at once to reply. His voice was at first so
inarticulate that we could but catch the burden of what he said,--a
request that the House would accord him all the indulgence which his
state of debility and suffering called for. If the first few sentences
he uttered imparted a painful significance to the entreaty, it very soon
became apparent that he had no occasion to bespeak such indulgence. In a
voice that gained strength and fulness as he proceeded, he entered
upon what might be called a narrative of the foreign policy of the
administration, clearly showing that their course was guided by certain
great principles which dictated a line of action firm and undeviating;
that the measures of the Government, however modified by passing events
in Europe, had been uniformly consistent,--based upon the faith of
treaties, but ever mindful of the growing requirements of the age.
Through a narrative of singular complexity he guided himself with
consummate skill, and though detailing events which occupied every
region of the globe, neither confusion nor inconsistency ever marred the
recital, and names and places and dates were quoted by him without any
artificial aid to memory.”

There was in the polished air, and calm, dispassionate delivery of the
speaker, something which seemed to charm the ears of those who for four
hours before had been so mercilessly assailed by all the vituperation
and insolence of party animosity. It was, so to say, a period of relief
and repose, to which even antagonists were not insensible. No man ever
understood the advantage of his gifts in this way better than Upton, nor
ever was there one who could convert the powers which fascinated society
into the means of controlling a popular assembly, with greater assurance
of success. He was a man of a strictly logical mind, a close and acute
thinker; he was of a highly imaginative temperament, rich in all the
resources of a poetic fancy; he was thoroughly well read, and gifted
with a ready memory; but, above all these,--transcendently above them
all,--he was a “man of the world;” and no one, either in Parliament or
out of it, knew so well when it was wrong to say “the right thing.” But
let us resume our quotation:--

“For more than three hours did the House listen with breathless
attention to a narrative which in no parliamentary experience has been
surpassed for the lucid clearness of its details, the unbroken flow of
its relation. The orator up to this time had strictly devoted himself
to explanation; he now proceeded to what might be called reply. If
the House was charmed and instructed before, it was now positively
astonished and electrified by the overwhelming force of the speaker’s
raillery and invective. Not satisfied with showing the evil consequences
that must ensue from any adoption of the measures recommended by the
Opposition, he proceeded to exhibit the insufficiency of views always
based upon false information.

“‘We have been taunted,’ said he, ‘with the charge of fomenting discords
in foreign lands; we have been arraigned as disturbers of the world’s
peace, and called the firebrands of Europe; we are exhibited as parading
the Continent with a more than Quixotic ardor, since we seek less the
redress of wrong than the opportunity to display our own powers
of interference,--that quality which the learned gentleman has
significantly stigmatized as a spirit of meddling impertinence,
offensive to the whole world of civilization. Let me tell him, sir, that
the very debate of this night has elicited, and from himself too, the
very outrages he has had the temerity to ascribe to us. His has been
this indiscriminate ardor, his this unjudging rashness, his this
meddling impertinence (I am but quoting, not inventing, a phrase),
by which, without accurate, without, indeed, any, information, he has
ventured to charge the Government with what no administration would
be guilty, of--a cool and deliberate violation of the national law of
Europe.

“‘He has told you, sir, that in our eagerness to distinguish ourselves
as universal redressers of injury, we have “ferreted out”--I take his
own polished expression--the case of an obscure boy in an obscure corner
of Italy, converted a commonplace and very vulgar incident into a tale
of interest, and, by a series of artful devices and insinuations based
upon this narrative, a grave and insulting charge upon one of the
oldest of our allies. He has alleged that throughout the whole of those
proceedings we had not the shadow of pretence for our interference; that
the acts imputed occurred in a land over which we had no control, and
in the person of an individual in whom we had no interest; that this
Sebastiano Greppi--this image boy, for so with a courteous pleasantry he
has called him--was a Neapolitan subject, the affiliated envoy of I know
not what number of secret societies; that his sculptural pretensions
were but pretexts to conceal his real avocations,--the agency of a
bloodthirsty faction; that his crime was no less than an act of
high treason; and that Austrian gentleness and mercy were never more
conspicuously illustrated than in the commutation of a death-sentence to
one of perpetual imprisonment.

“‘What a rude task is mine when I must say that for even one of these
assertions there is not the slightest foundation in fact. Greppi’s
offence was not a crime against the state; as little was it committed
within the limits of the Austrian territory. He is not the envoy, or
even a member, of any revolutionary club; he never--I am speaking with
knowledge, sir--he never mingled in the schemes of plotting politicians;
as far removed is he from sympathy with such men, as, in the genius of a
great artist, he is elevated above the humble path to which the learned
gentleman’s raillery would sentence him. For the character of “an image
vendor,” the learned gentleman must look nearer home; and, lastly, this
youth is an Englishman, and born of a race and a blood that need feel no
shame in comparison with any I see around me!’

“To the loud cry of ‘Name, name,’ which now arose, Sir Horace replied:
‘If I do not announce the name at this moment, it is because there are
circumstances in the history of the youth to which publicity would give
irreparable pain. These are details which I have no right to bring under
discussion, and which must inevitably thus become matters of town-talk.
To any gentleman of the opposite side who may desire to verify the
assertions I have made to the House, I would, under pledge of secrecy,
reveal the name. I would do more; I would permit him to confide it to
a select number of friends equally pledged with himself. This is surely
enough?’”

We have no occasion to continue our quotation farther, and we take
up our history as Sir Horace, overwhelmed by the warmest praises and
congratulations, drove off from the House to his home. Amid all the
excitement and enthusiasm which this brilliant success produced among
the ministerialists, there was a kind of dread lest the overtaxed powers
of the orator should pay the heavy penalty of such an effort. They
had all heard how he came from a sick chamber; they had all seen him,
trembling, faint, and almost voiceless, as he stole up to his place, and
they began to fear lest they had, in the hot zeal of party, imperilled
the ablest chief in their ranks.

What a relief to these agonies had it been, could they have seen Upton
as he once more gained the solitude of his chamber, where, divested
of all the restraints of an audience, he walked leisurely up and down,
smoking a cigar, and occasionally smiling pleasantly as some “conceit”
 crossed his mind.

Had there been any one to mark him there, it is more than likely that
he would have regarded him as a man revelling in the after-thought of a
great success,--one who, having come gloriously through the combat, was
triumphantly recalling to his memory every incident of the fight. How
little had they understood Sir Horace Upton who would have read him in
this wise! That daring and soaring nature rarely dallied in the past;
even the present was scarcely full enough for the craving of a spirit
that cried ever, “Forward!”

What might be made of that night’s success; how best it should be turned
to account!--these were the thoughts which beset him, and many were the
devices which his subtlety hit on to this end. There was not a goal
his ambition could point to but which became associated with some
deteriorating ingredient. He was tired of the Continent, he hated
England, he shuddered at the Colonies. “India, perhaps,” said he,
hesitatingly,--“India, perhaps, might do.” To continue as he
was,--to remain in office, as having reached the topmost round of the
ladder,--would have been insupportable indeed; and yet how, without
longer service at his post, could any man claim a higher reward?



CHAPTER XLIV. THE SUBTLETIES OF STATECRAFT

It was not till Sir Horace had smoked his third cigar that he seated
himself at his writing-table. He then wrote rapidly a brief note, of
which he proceeded to make a careful copy. This he folded and placed in
an envelope, addressing it to his Grace the Duke of Cloudeslie.

A few minutes afterwards he began to prepare for bed. The day was
already breaking, and yet that sick man was unwearied and unwasted; not
a trace of fatigue on features that, under the infliction of a tiresome
dinner-party, would have seemed bereft of hope.

The tied-up knocker, the straw-strewn street, the closely drawn curtains
announced to London the next morning that the distinguished minister
was seriously ill; and from an early hour the tide of inquirers, in
carriages and on foot, passed silently along that dreary way. High and
mighty were the names inscribed in the porter’s book; royal dukes
had called in person; and never was public solicitude more widely
manifested. There is something very flattering in the thought of a great
intelligence being damaged and endangered in our service! With all its
melancholy influences, there is a feeling of importance suggested by
the idea that for us and our interests a man of commanding powers should
have jeoparded his life. There is a very general prejudice, not alone in
obtaining the best article for our money, but the most of it also;
and this sentiment extends to the individuals employed in the public
service; and it is doubtless a very consolatory reflection to the
tax-paying classes that the great functionaries of state are not
indolent recipients of princely incomes, but hard-worked men of office,
up late and early at their duties,--prematurely old, and worn out before
their time! Something of this same feeling inspires much of the sympathy
displayed for a sick statesman,--a sentiment not altogether void of a
certain misgiving that we have probably over-taxed the energies employed
in our behalf.

Scarcely one in a hundred of those who now called and “left their names”
 had ever seen Sir Horace Upton in their lives. Few are more removed from
public knowledge than the men who fill even the highest places in
our diplomacy. He was, therefore, to the mass a mere name. Since his
accession to office little or nothing had been heard of him, and of that
little, the greater part was made up of sneering allusions to his habits
of indolence; impertinent hints about his caprices and his tastes. Yet
now, by a grand effort in the “House,” and a well got-up report of a
dangerous illness the day after, was he the most marked man in all the
state,--the theme of solicitude throughout two millions of people!

There was a dash of mystery, too, in the whole incident, which
heightened its flavor for public taste; a vague, indistinct
impression--it did not even amount to rumor--was abroad, that Sir Horace
had not been “fairly treated” by his colleagues; either that they could,
if they wished it, have defended the cause themselves, or that they had
needlessly called him from a sick bed to come to the rescue, or that
some subtle trap had been laid to ensnare him. These were vulgar
beliefs, which, if they obtained little credence in the higher region
of club-life, were extensively circulated, and not discredited, in less
distinguished circles. How they ever got abroad at all; how they found
their ways into newspaper paragraphs, terrifying timid supporters of
the ministry by the dread prospect of a “smash,” exciting the hopes
of Opposition with the notion of a great secession, throwing broadcast
before the world of readers every species of speculation, all kinds of
combination,--who knows how all this happened? Who, indeed, ever
knew how things a thousand times more secret ever got wind and became
club-talk ere the actors in the events had finished an afternoon’s
canter in the Park?

If, then, the world of London learned on the morning in question that
Sir Horace Upton was very ill, it also surmised--why and wherefore it
knows best--that the same Sir Horace was an ill-used man. Now, of
all the objects of public sympathy and interest, next after a foreign
emperor on a visit at Buckingham Palace, or a newly arrived hippopotamus
at the Zoological Gardens, there is nothing your British public is so
fond of as “an ill-used man.” It is essential, however, to his great
success that he be ill-used in high places; that his enemies and
calumniators should have been, if not princes, at least dukes and
marquises and great dignitaries of the state. Let him only be supposed
to be martyred by these, and there is no saying where his popularity may
be carried. A very general impression is current that the mass of the
nation is more or less “ill-used,”--denied its natural claims and just
rewards. To hit upon, therefore, a good representation of this hard
usage, to find a tangible embodiment of this great injustice, is a
discovery that is never unappreciated.

To read his speech of the night before, and to peruse the ill-scrawled
bulletin of his health at the hall door in the morning, made up the
measure of his popularity, and the world exclaimed, “Think of the man
they have treated in this fashion!” Every one framed the indictment to
his own taste; nor was the wrong the less grievous that none could give
it a name. Even cautious men fell into the trap, and were heard to say,
“If all we hear be true, Upton has not been fairly treated.”

What an air of confirmation to all these rumors did it give, when the
evening papers announced in the most striking type: Resignation of Sir
Horace Upton. If the terms in which he communicated that step to the
Premier were not before the world, the date, the very night of the
debate, showed that the resolution had been come to suddenly.

Some of the journals affected to be in the whole secret of the
transaction, and only waiting the opportune moment to announce it to the
world. The dark, mysterious paragraphs in which journalists show their
no-meanings abounded, and menacing hints were thrown out that the
country would no longer submit to.--Heaven knows what. There was,
besides all this, a very considerable amount of that catechetical
inquiry, which, by suggesting a number of improbabilities, hopes to
arrive at the likely, and thus, by asking questions where they had
a perfect confidence they would never be answered, they seemed to
overwhelm their adversaries with shame and discomfiture. The great fact,
however, was indisputable,--Upton had resigned.

To the many who looked up at the shuttered windows of his sad-looking
London house, this reflection occurred naturally enough,--How little the
poor sufferer, on his sick bed, cared for the contest that raged around
him; how far away were, in all probability, his thoughts from that world
of striving and ambition whose waves came to his door-sills. Let us,
in that privilege which belongs to us, take a peep within the curtained
room, where a bright fire is blazing, and where, seated behind a screen,
Sir Horace is now penning a note; a bland half smile rippling his
features as some pleasant conceit has flashed across his mind. We have
rarely seen him looking so well. The stimulating events of the last few
days have done for him more than all the counsels of his doctors,
and his eyes are brighter and his cheeks fuller than usual. A small
miniature hangs suspended by a narrow ribbon round his neck, and a
massive gold bracelet adorns one wrist,--“two souvenirs” which he stops
to contemplate as he writes; nor is there a touch of sorrowful
meaning in the glance he bestows upon them,--the look rather seems the
self-complacent regard that a successful general might bestow on the
decorations he had won by his valor. It is essentially vainglorious.

More than once has he paused to read over the sentence he has written,
and one may see, by the motion of his lips as he reads, how completely
he has achieved the sentiment he would express. “Yes, charming
Princess,” said he, perusing the lines before him, “I’ve once more to
throw myself at your feet, and reiterate the assurances of a devotion
which has formed the happiness of my existence.” (“That does not sound
quite French, after all,” muttered he; “better perhaps: ‘has formed the
religion of my heart.’”) “I know you will reproach my precipitancy; I
feel how your judgment, unerring as it ever is, will condemn what may
seem a sudden ebullition of temper; but, I ask, is this amongst the
catalogue of my weaknesses? Am I of that clay which is always fissured
when heated? No. _You_ know me better,--_you_ alone of all the world
have the clew to a heart whose affections are all your own. The few
explanations of all that has happened must be reserved for our meeting.
Of course, neither the newspapers nor the reviews have any conception
of the truth. Four words will set your heart at ease, and these you
must have: ‘I have done wisely;’ with that assurance you have no more
to fear. I mean to leave this in all secrecy by the end of the week. I
shall go over to Brussels, where you can address me under the name of
Richard Bingham. I shall only remain there to watch events for a day or
two, and thence on to Geneva.

“I am quite charmed with your account of poor Lady G------, though, as
I read, I can detect how all the fascinations you tell of were but
reflected glories. Your view of her situation is admirable, and, by your
skilful tactique, it is she herself that ostracizes the society that
would only have accepted her on sufferance. How true is your remark as
to the great question at issue,--not her guilt or innocence, but what
danger might accrue to others from infractions that invite publicity.
The cabinet were discussing t’ other day a measure by which sales of
estated property could be legalized without those tiresome and costly
researches into title which, in a country where confiscations were
frequent, became at last endless labor. Don’t you think that some such
measure might be beneficially adopted as regards female character? Could
there not be invented a species of social guarantee which, rejecting all
investigation into bygones after a certain limit, would confer a valid
title that none might dispute?

“Lawyers tell us that no man’s property would stand the test of a search
for title. Are we quite certain how far the other sex are our betters in
this respect; and might it not be wise to interpose a limit beyond which
research need not proceed?

“I concur in all you say about G------himself. He was always looking for
better security than he needed,--a great mistake, whether the investment
consist of our affections or our money. Physicians say that if any man
could only see the delicate anatomy on which his life depends, and watch
the play of those organs that sustain him, he would not have courage to
move a step or utter a loud word. Might we not carry the analogy into
morals, and ask, is it safe or prudent in us to investigate too deeply?
are we wise in dissecting motives? or would it not be better to enjoy
our moral as we do our material health, without seeking to assure
ourselves further?

“Besides all this, the untravelled Englishman--and such was Glencore
when he married--never can be brought to understand the harmless
levities of foreign life. Like a fresh-water sailor, he always fancies
the boat is going to upset, and he throws himself out at the first
‘jobble’! I own to you frankly, I never knew the case in question; ‘how
far she went,’ is a secret to me. I might have heard the whole story.
It required some address in me to escape it; but I do detest these
narrations, where truth is marred by passion, and all just inferences
confused and confounded with vague and absurd suspicions.

“Glencore’s conduct throughout was little short of insanity; like a
man who, hearing his banker is insecure, takes refuge in insolvency, he
ruins himself to escape embarrassment. They tell me here that the shock
has completely deranged his intellect, and that he lives a life of
melancholy isolation in that old castle in Ireland.

“How few men in this world can count the cost of their actions, and make
up that simple calculation, ‘How much shall I have to pay for it?’

“Take any view one pleases of the case, would it not have been
better for him to have remained in the world and of it? Would not its
pleasures, even its cares, have proved better ‘distractions’ than his
own brooding thoughts? If a man have a secret ailment, does he parade
it in public? Why, then, this exposure of a pain for which there is no
sympathy?

“Life, after all, is only a system of compensations. Wish it to be
whatever you please, but accept it as it really is, and make the best
of it! For my own part, I have ever felt like one who, having got a most
disastrous account of a road he was about to travel, is delightfully
surprised to find the way better and the inns more comfortable than he
looked for. In the main, men and women are very good; our mistake is,
expecting to find people always in our own humor. Now, if one is
very rich, this is practical enough; but the mass must be content to
encounter disparity of mood and difference of taste at every step.
There is, therefore, some tact required in conforming to these
‘irregularities,’ and unhappily everybody has not got tact.

“You, charming Princess, have tact; but you have beauty, wit,
fascination, rank,--all that can grace high station, and all that high
station can reflect upon great natural gifts; that _you_ should see the
world through a rose-tinted medium is a very condition of your identity;
and there is truth, as well as good philosophy, in this view! You have
often told me that if people were not exactly all that strict moralists
might wish, yet that they made up a society very pleasant and livable
withal, and that there was also a floating capital of kindness and
good feeling quite sufficient to trade upon, and even grow richer by
negotiating!

“People who live out of the world, or, what comes to the same
thing, in a little world of their own, are ever craving after
perfectibility,--just as, in time of peace, nations only accept in their
armies six-foot grenadiers and gigantic dragoons. Let the pressure of
war or emergency arise, however, or, in other words, let there be the
real business of life to be done, then the standard is lowered at once,
and the battle is sought and won by very inferior agency. Now, show
troops and show qualities are very much alike; they are a measure of
what would be very charming to arrive at, were it only practicable! Oh
that poor Glencore had only learned this lesson, instead of writing
nonsense verses at Eton!

“The murky domesticities of England have no correlatives in the sunny
enjoyments of Italian life; and John Bull has got a fancy that virtue is
only cultivated where there are coal fires, stuff curtains, and a
window tax. Why, then, in the name of Doctors’ Commons, does he marry a
foreigner?”

Just as Upton had written these words, his servant presented him with a
visiting-card.

“Lord Glencore!” exclaimed he, aloud. “When was he here?”

“His Lordship is below stairs now, sir. He said he was sure you’d see
him.”

“Of course; show him up at once. Wait a moment; give me that cane, place
those cushions for my feet, draw the curtain, and leave the aconite and
ether drops near me,--that will do, thank you.”

Some minutes elapsed ere the door was opened; the slow footfall of
one ascending the stairs, step by step, was heard, accompanied by the
labored respiration of a man breathing heavily; and then Lord Glencore
entered, his form worn and emaciated, and his face pale and colorless.
With a feeble, uncertain voice, he said,--

“I knew you ‘d see me, Upton, and I would n’t go away!” And with this he
sank into a chair and sighed deeply.

“Of course, my dear Glencore, you knew it,” said the other, feelingly,
for he was shocked by the wretched spectacle before him; “even were I
more seriously indisposed than--”

“And were you really ill, Upton?” asked Glencore, with a weakly smile.

“Can you ask the question? Have you not seen the evening papers,
read the announcement on my door, seen the troops of inquirers in the
streets?”

“Yes,” sighed he, wearily, “I have heard and seen all you say; and yet
I bethought me of a remark I once heard from the Duke of Orleans:
‘Monsieur Upton is a most active minister when his health permits; and
when it does not, he is the most mischievous intriguant in Europe.’”

“He was always straining at an antithesis; he fancied he could talk like
St. Simon, and it really spoiled a very pleasant converser.”

“And so you have been very ill?” said Glencore, slowly, and as though he
had not heeded the last remark; “so have I also!”

“You seem to me too feeble to be about, Glencore,” said Upton, kindly.

“I am so, if it were of any consequence,--I mean, if my life could
interest or benefit any one. My head, however, will bear solitude no
longer; I must have some one to talk to. I mean to travel; I will leave
this in a day or so.”

“Come along with me, then; my plan is to make for Brussels, but it
must not be spoken of, as I want to watch events there before I remove
farther from England.”

“So it is all true, then,--you have resigned?” said Glencore.

“Perfectly true.”

“What a strange step to take! I remember, more than twenty years ago,
your telling me that you’d rather be Foreign Secretary of England than
the monarch of any third-rate Continental kingdom.”

“I thought so then, and, what is more singular, I think so still.”

“And you throw it up at the very moment people are proclaiming your
success!”

“You shall hear all my reasons, Glencore, for this resolution, and will,
I feel assured, approve of them; but they ‘d only weary you now.”

“Let me know them now, Upton; it is such a relief to me when, even by
a momentary interest in anything, I am able to withdraw this poor tired
brain from its own distressing thoughts.” He spoke these words not only
with strong feeling, but even imparted to them a tone of entreaty, so
that Upton could not but comply.

“When I wished for the Secretaryship, my dear Glencore,” said he, “I
fancied the office as it used to be in olden times, when one played the
great game of diplomacy with kings and ministers for antagonists, and
the world at large for spectators; when consummate skill and perfect
secrecy were objects of moment, and when grand combinations rewarded
one’s labor with all the certainty of a mathematical problem. Every move
on the board could be calculated beforehand, no disturbing influences
could derange plans that never were divulged till they were
accomplished. All that is past and gone; our Constitution, grown every
day more and more democratic, rules by the House of Commons. Questions
whose treatment demands all the skill of a statesman and all the
address of a man of the world come to be discussed in open Parliament;
correspondence is called for, despatches and even private notes are
produced; and while the State you are opposed to revels in the security
of secrecy, _your_ whole game is revealed to the world in the shape of a
blue-book.

“Nor is this all: the debaters on these nice and intricate questions,
involving the most far-reaching speculation of statesmanship, are men
of trade and enterprise, who view every international difficulty only in
its relation to their peculiar interests. National greatness, honor, and
security are nothing,--the maintenance of that equipoise which preserves
peace is nothing,--the nice management which, by the exhibition of
courtesy here, or of force there, is nothing compared to alliances
that secure us ample supplies of raw material, and abundant markets for
manufactures. Diplomacy has come to this!”

“But you must have known all this before you accepted office; you had
seen where the course of events led to, and were aware that the House
ruled the country.”

“Perhaps I did not recognize the fact to its full extent. Perhaps
I fancied I could succeed in modifying the system,” said Upton,
cautiously.

“A hopeless undertaking!” said Glencore.

“I’m not quite so certain of that,” said Upton, pausing for a while
as he seemed to reflect. When he resumed, it was in a lighter and more
flippant tone: “To make short of it, I saw that I could not keep office
on these conditions, but I did not choose to go out as a beaten man. For
my pride’s sake I desired that my reasons should be reserved for myself
alone; for my actual benefit it was necessary that I should have a hold
over my colleagues in office. These two conditions were rather difficult
to combine, but I accomplished them.

“I had interested the King so much in my views as to what the Foreign
Office ought to be that an interchange of letters took place, and his
Majesty imparted to me his fullest confidence in disparagement of the
present system. This correspondence was a perfect secret to the whole
Cabinet; but when it had arrived at a most confidential crisis, I
suggested to the King that Cloudeslie should be consulted. I knew well
that this would set the match to the train. No sooner did Cloudeslie
learn that such a correspondence had been carried on for months without
his knowledge, views stated, plans promulgated, and the King’s pleasure
taken on questions not one of which should have been broached without
his approval and concurrence, than he declared he would not hold the
seals of office another hour. The King, well knowing his temper, and
aware what a terrific exposure might come of it, sent for me, and asked
what was to be done. I immediately suggested my own resignation as a
sacrifice to the difficulty and to the wounded feelings of the Duke.
Thus did I achieve what I sought for. I imposed a heavy obligation on
the King and the Premier, and I have secured secrecy as to my motives,
which none will ever betray.

“I only remained for the debate of the other night, for I wanted a
little public enthusiasm to mark the fall of the curtain.”

“So that you still hold them as your debtors?” asked Glencore.

“Without doubt, I do; my claim is a heavy one.”

“And what would satisfy it?”

“If my health would stand England,” said Upton, leisurely, “I’d take a
peerage; but as this murky atmosphere would suffocate me, and as I don’t
care for the latter without the political privileges, I have determined
to have the ‘Garter.’”

“The Garter! a blue ribbon!” exclaimed Glencore, as though the
insufferable coolness with which the pretension was announced might
justify any show of astonishment.

“Yes; I had some thoughts of India, but the journey deters me,--in fact,
as I have enough to live on, I ‘d rather devote the remainder of my days
to rest, and the care of this shattered constitution.” It is impossible
to convey to the reader the tender and affectionate compassion with
which Sir Horace seemed to address these last words to himself.

“Do you ever look upon yourself as the luckiest fellow in Europe,
Upton?” asked Glencore.

“No,” sighed he; “I occasionally fancy I have been hardly dealt with by
fortune. I have only to throw my eyes around me, and see a score of men,
richer and more elevated than myself, not one of whom has capacity for
even a third-rate task, so that really the self-congratulation you speak
of has not occurred to me.”

“But, after all, you have had a most successful career--”

“Look at the matter this way, Glencore; there are about six--say six men
in all Europe--who have a little more common sense than all the rest of
the world: I could tell you the names of five of them.” If there was a
supreme boastfulness in the speech, the modest delivery of it completely
mystified the hearer, and he sat gazing with wonderment at the man
before him.



CHAPTER XLV. SOME SAD REVERIES

“Have you any plans, Glencore?” asked Upton, as they posted along
towards Dover.

“None,” was the brief reply.

“Nor any destination you desire to reach?”

“Just as little.”

“Such a state as yours, then, I take it, is about the best thing
going in life. Every move one makes is attended with so many adverse
considerations,--every goal so separated from us by unforeseen
difficulties,--that an existence, even without what is called an object,
has certain great advantages.”

“I am curious to hear them,” said the other, half cynically.

“For myself,” said Upton, not accepting the challenge, “the brief
intervals of comparative happiness I have enjoyed have been in periods
when complete repose, almost torpor, has surrounded me, and when the
mere existence of the day has engaged my thoughts.”

“What became of memory all this while?”

“Memory!” said Upton, laughing, “I hold my memory in proper subjection.
It no more dares obtrude upon me uncalled for than would my valet come
into my room till I ring for him. Of the slavery men endure from their
own faculties I have no experience.”

“And, of course, no sympathy for them.”

“I will not say that I cannot compassionate sufferings, though I have
not felt them.”

“Are you quite sure of that?” asked Glencore, almost sternly; “is not
your very pity a kind of contemptuous sentiment towards those who sorrow
without reason,--the strong man’s estimate of the weak man’s sufferings?
Believe me, there is no true condolence where there is not the same
experience of woe!”

“I should be sorry to lay down so narrow a limit to fellow-feeling,”
 said Upton.

“You told me a few moments back,” said Glencore, “that your memory was
your slave. How, then, can you feel for one like me, whose memory is his
master? How understand a path that never wanders out of the shadow of
the past?”

There was such an accent of sorrow impressed upon these words that Upton
did not desire to prolong a discussion so painful; and thus, for the
remainder of the way, little was interchanged between them. They crossed
the strait by night, and as Upton stole upon deck after dusk, he found
Glencore seated near the wheel, gazing intently at the lights on shore,
from which they were fast receding.

“I am taking my last look at England, Upton,” said he, affecting a tone
of easy indifference.

“You surely mean to go back again one of these days?” said Upton.

“Never, never!” said he, solemnly. “I have made all my arrangements for
the future,--every disposition regarding my property; I have neglected
nothing, so far as I know, of those claims which, in the shape of
relationship, the world has such reverence for; and now I bethink me of
myself. I shall have to consult you, however, about this boy,” said he,
faltering in the words. “The objection I once entertained to his bearing
my name exists no longer; he may call himself Massy, if he will. The
chances are,” added he, in a lower and more feeling voice, “that he
rejects a name that will only remind him of a wrong!”

“My dear Glencore,” said Upton, with real tenderness, “do I apprehend
you aright? Are you at last convinced that you have been unjust? Has the
moment come in which your better judgment rises above the evil counsels
of prejudice and passion--”

“Do you mean, am I assured of her innocence?” broke in Glencore, wildly.
“Do you imagine, if I were so, that I could withhold my hand from taking
a life so infamous and dishonored as mine? The world would have no
parallel for such a wretch! Mark me, Upton!” cried he, fiercely, “there
is no torture I have yet endured would equal the bare possibility of
what you hint at.”

“Good Heavens! Glencore, do not let me suppose that selfishness has so
marred and disfigured your nature that this is true. Bethink you of what
you say. Would it not be the crowning glory of your life to repair a
dreadful wrong, and acknowledge before the world that the fame you had
aspersed was without stain or spot?”

“And with what grace should I ask the world to believe me? Is it when
expiating the shame of a falsehood that I should call upon men to accept
me as truthful? Have I not proclaimed her, from one end of Europe to the
other, dishonored? If _she_ be absolved, what becomes of _me?_”

“This is unworthy of you, Glencore,” said Upton, severely; “nor, if
illness and long suffering had not impaired your judgment, had you ever
spoken such words. I say once more, that if the day came that you
could declare to the world that her fame had no other reproach than the
injustice of your own unfounded jealousy, that day would be the best and
the proudest of your life.”

“The proud day that published me a calumniator of all that I was most
pledged to defend,--the deliberate liar against the obligation of the
holiest of all contracts! You forget, Upton,--but I do not forget,--that
it was by this very argument you once tried to dissuade me from my act
of vengeance. You told me--ay, in words that still ring in my ears--to
remember that if by any accident or chance her innocence might be
proven, I could never avail myself of the indication without first
declaring my own unworthiness to profit by it; that if the Wife stood
forth in all the pride of purity, the Husband would be a scoff and a
shame throughout the world!”

“When I said so,” said Upton, “it was to turn you from a path that
could not but lead to ruin; I endeavored to deter you by an appeal that
interested even your selfishness.”

“Your subtlety has outwitted itself, Upton,” said Glencore, with a
bitter irony; “it is not the first instance on record where blank
cartridge has proved fatal!”

“One thing is perfectly clear,” said Upton, boldly, “the man who shrinks
from the repair of a wrong he has done, on the consideration of how it
would affect himself and his own interests, shows that he cares more for
the outward show of honor than its real and sustaining power.”

“And will you tell me, Upton, that the world’s estimate of a man’s fame
is not essential to his self-esteem, or that there yet lived one, who
would brave obloquy without, by the force of something within him?”

“This I will tell you,” replied Upton, “that he who balances between the
two is scarcely an honest man, and that he who accepts the show for the
substance is not a wise one.”

“These are marvellous sentiments to hear from one whose craft has
risen to a proverb, and whose address in life is believed to be not his
meanest gift.”

“I accept the irony in all good humor; I go farther, Glencore, I stoop
to explain. When any one in the great and eventful journey of life seeks
to guide himself safely, he has to weigh all the considerations, and
calculate all the combinations adverse to him. The straight road is
rarely, or never, possible; even if events were, which they are not,
easy to read, they must be taken in combination with others, and with
their consequences. The path of action becomes necessarily devious and
winding, and compromises are called for at every step. It is not in the
moment of shipwreck that a man stops to inquire into petty details of
the articles he throws into a long-boat; he is bent on saving himself as
best he can. He seizes what is next to him, if it suit his purpose. Now,
were he to act in this manner in all the quiet security of his life on
shore, his conduct would be highly blamable. No emergency would warrant
his taking what belonged to another,--no critical moment would drive
him to the instinct of self-preservation. Just the same is the interval
between action and reflection. Give me time and forethought, and I will
employ something better and higher than craft. My subtlety, as you like
to call it, is not my best weapon; I only use it in emergency.”

“I read the matter differently,” said Glencore, sulkily; “I could,
perhaps, offer another explanation of your practice.”

“Pray let me hear it; we are all in confidence here, and I promise you I
will not take badly whatever you say to me.”

Glencore sat silent and motionless.

“Come, shall I say it for you, Glencore? for I think I know what is
passing in your mind.”

The other nodded, and he went on,--

“You would tell me, in plain words, that I keep my craft for myself; my
high principle for my friends.”

Glencore only smiled, but Upton continued,--

“So, then, I have guessed aright; and the very worst you can allege
against this course is, that what I bestow is better than what I
retain!”

“One of Solomon’s proverbs may be better than a shilling; but which
would a hungry man rather have? I want no word-fencing, Upton; still
less do I seek what might sow distrust between us. This much, however,
has life taught me: the great trials of this world are like its great
maladies. Providence has meant them to be fatal. We call in the doctor
in the one case, or the counsellor in the other, out of habit rather
than out of hope. Our own consciousness has already whispered that
nothing can be of use; but we like to do as our neighbors, and so we
take remedies and follow injunctions to the last. The wise man quickly
detects by the character of the means how emergent is the case believed
to be, and rightly judges that recourse to violent measures implies the
presence of great peril. If he be really wise, then he desists at once
from what can only torture his few remaining hours. They can be given to
better things than the agonies of such agency. To this exact point has
my case come, and by the counsels you have given me do I read my danger!
Your only remedy is as bad as the malady it is meant to cure! I cannot
take it!”

“Accepting your own imagery, I would say,” said Upton, “that you are
one who will not submit to an operation of some pain that he might be
cured.”

Glencore sat moodily for some moments without speaking; at last he
said,--

“I feel as though continual change of place and scene would be a relief
to me. Let us rendezvous, therefore, somewhere for the autumn, and
meanwhile I ‘ll wander about alone.”

“What direction do you purpose to take?”

“The Schwarzwald and the Hohlenthal, first. I want to revisit a place I
knew in happier days. Memory must surely have something besides sorrows
to render us. I owned a little cottage there once, near Steig. I fished
and read Uhland for a summer long. I wonder if I could resume the same
life. I knew the whole village,--the blacksmith, the schoolmaster, the
Dorfrichter,--all of them. Good, kind souls they were: how they wept
when we parted! Nothing consoled them but my having purchased the
cottage, and promised to come back again!”

Upton was glad to accept even this much of interest in the events of
life, and drew Glencore on to talk of the days he had passed in this
solitary region.

As in the dreariest landscape a ray of sunlight will reveal some
beautiful effects, making the eddies of the dark pool to glitter,
lighting up the russet moss, and giving to the half-dried lichen a tinge
of bright color, so will, occasionally, memory throw over a life of
sorrow a gleam of happier meaning. Faces and events, forms and accents,
that once found the way to our hearts, come back again, faintly and
imperfectly it may be, but with a touch that revives in us what we once
were. It is the one sole feature in which self-love becomes amiable,
when, looking back on our past, we cherish the thought of a time before
the world had made us sceptical and hard-hearted!

Glencore warmed as he told of that tranquil period when poetry gave a
color to his life, and the wild conceptions of genius ran like a thread
of gold through the whole web of existence. He quoted passages that had
struck him for their beauty or their truthfulness; he told how he had
tried to allure his own mind to the tone that vibrated in “the magic
music of verse,” and how the very attempt had inspired him with gentler
thoughts, a softer charity, and a more tender benevolence towards his
fellows.

“Tieck is right, Upton, when he says there are two natures in us,
distinct and apart: one, the imaginative and ideal; the other, the
actual and the sensual. Many shake them together and confound them,
making of the incongruous mixture that vile compound of inconsistency
where the beautiful and the true are ever warring with the deformed
and the false; their lives a long struggle with themselves, a perpetual
contest between high hope and base enjoyment. A few keep them apart,
retaining, through their worldliness, some hallowed spot in the heart,
where ignoble desires and mean aspirations have never dared to come. A
fewer still have made the active work of life subordinate to the guiding
spirit of purity, adventuring on no road unsanctioned by high and holy
thoughts, caring for no ambitions but such as make us nobler and better.

“I once had a thought of such a life; and even the memory of it, like
the prayers we have learned in our childhood, has a hallowing influence
over after years. If that poor boy, Upton,” and his lips trembled on the
words,--“if that poor boy could have been brought up thus humbly! If
he had been taught to know no more than an existence of such simplicity
called for, what a load of care might it have spared _his_ heart and
_mine!_”

“You have read over those letters I gave you about him?” asked Upton,
who eagerly availed himself of the opportunity to approach an almost
forbidden theme.

“I have read them over and over,” said Glencore, sadly; “in all the
mention of him I read the faults of my own nature,--a stubborn spirit of
pride that hardens as much as elevates; a resentful temper, too prone to
give way to its own impulses; an over-confidence in himself, too, always
ready to revenge its defeats on the world about him. These are his
defects, and they are mine. Poor fellow, that he should inherit all that
I have of bad, and yet not be heir to the accidents of fortune which
make others so lenient to faults!”

If Upton heard these words with much interest, no less was he struck by
the fact that Glencore made no inquiry whatever as to the youth’s fate.
The last letter of the packet revealed the story of an eventful duel and
the boy’s escape from Massa by night, with his subsequent arrest by
the police; and yet in the face of incidents like these he continued to
speculate on traits of mind and character, nor even adverted to the
more closely touching events of his fate. By many an artful hint
and ingenious device did Sir Horace try to tempt him to some show
of curiosity; but all were fruitless. Glencore would talk freely and
willingly of the boy’s disposition and his capacity; he would even
speculate on the successes and failures such a temperament might meet
with in life; but still he spoke as men might speak of a character in a
fiction, ingeniously weighing casualties and discussing chances; never,
even by accident, approaching the actual story of his life, or seeming
to attach any interest to his destiny.

Upton’s shrewd intelligence quickly told him that this reserve was not
accidental; and he deliberated within himself how far it was safe to
invade it.

At length he resumed the attempt by adroitly alluding to the spirited
resistance the boy had made to his capture, and the consequences one
might naturally enough ascribe to a proud and high-hearted youth thus
tyrannically punished.

“I have heard something,” said Upton, “of the severities practised at
Kuffstein, and they recall the horrible tales of the Inquisition; the
terrible contrivances to extort confessions,--expedients that often
break down the intellect whose secrets they would discover; so that one
actually shudders at the name of a spot so associated with evil.”

Glencore placed his hands over his face, but did not utter a word; and
again Upton went on urging, by every device he could think of, some
indication that might mean interest, if not anxiety, when suddenly he
felt Glencore’s hand grasp his arm with violence.

“No more of this, Upton,” cried he, sternly; “you do not know the
torture you are giving me.” There was a long and painful pause between
them, at the end of which Glencore spoke, but it was in a voice scarcely
above a whisper, and every accent of which trembled with emotion. “You
remember one sad and memorable night, Upton, in that old castle in
Ireland,--the night when I came to the resolution of this vengeance! I
sent for the boy to my room; we were alone there together, face to face.
It was such a scene as could brook no witness, nor dare I now recall its
details as they occurred. He came in frankly and boldly, as he felt
he had a right to do. How he left that room,--cowed, abashed, and
degraded,--I have yet before me. Our meeting did not exceed many minutes
in duration; neither of us could have endured it longer. Brief as it
was, we ratified a compact between us: it was this,--neither was ever to
question or inquire after the other, as no tie should unite, no interest
should bind us. Had you seen him then, Upton,” cried Glencore, wildly,
“the proud disdain with which he listened to my attempts at excuse,
the haughty distance with which he seemed to reject every thought
of complaint, the stern coldness with which he heard me plan out his
future,--you would have said that some curse had fallen upon my heart,
or it could never have been dead to traits which proclaimed him to be
my own. In that moment it was my lot to be like him who held out his own
right hand to be first burned, ere he gave his body to the flames.

“We parted without an embrace; not even a farewell was spoken between
us. While I gloried in his pride, had he but yielded ever so little,
had one syllable of weakness, one tear escaped him, I had given up my
project, reversed all my planned vengeance, and taken him to my heart as
my own. But no! He was resolved on proving by his nature that he was of
that stern race from which, by a falsehood, I was about to exclude him.
It was as though my own blood hurled a proud defiance to me.

“As he walked slowly to the door, his glove fell from his hand. I
stealthily caught it up. I wanted to keep it as a memorial of that
bitter hour; but he turned hastily around and plucked it from my hand.
The action was even a rude one; and with a mocking smile, as though he
read my meaning and despised it, he departed.

“You now have heard the last secret of my heart in this sad history.
Let us speak of it no more.” And with this, Glencore arose and left the
deck.



CHAPTER XLVI. THE FLOOD IN THE MAGRA

When it rains in Italy it does so with a passionate ardor that bespeaks
an unusual pleasure. It is no “soft dissolving in tears,” but a perfect
outburst of woe,--wailing in accents the very wildest, and deluging the
land in torrents. Mountain streams that were rivulets in the morning,
before noon arrives are great rivers, swollen and turbid, carrying away
massive rocks from their foundations, and tearing up large trees by the
roots. The dried-up stony bed you have crossed a couple of hours back
with unwetted feet is now the course of a stream that would defy the
boldest.

These sudden changes are remarkably frequent along that beautiful tract
between Nice and Massa, and which is known as the “Riviera di Levante.”
 The rivers, fed from innumerable streams that pour down from the
Apennines, are almost instantaneously swollen; and as their bed
continually slopes towards the sea, the course of the waters is one of
headlong velocity. Of these, the most dangerous by far is the Magra. The
river, which even in dry seasons is a considerable stream, becomes, when
fed by its tributaries, a very formidable body of water, stretching full
a mile in width, and occasionally spreading a vast sheet of foam close
to the very outskirts of Sarzana. The passage of the river is all the
more dangerous at these periods as it approaches the sea, and more than
one instance is recorded where the stout raft, devoted to the use of
travellers, has been carried away to the ocean.

Where the great post-road from Genoa to the South passes, a miserable
shealing stands, half hidden in tall osiers, and surrounded with a
sedgy, swampy soil the foot sinks in at every step. This is the shelter
of the boatmen who navigate the raft, and who, in relays by day and
night, are in waiting for the service of travellers. In the dreary days
of winter, or in the drearier nights, it is scarcely possible to imagine
a more hopeless spot; deep in the midst of a low marshy tract, the
especial home of tertian fever, with the wild stream roaring at the very
door-sill, and the thunder of the angry ocean near, it is indeed all
that one can picture of desolation and wretchedness. Nor do the living
features of the scene relieve its gloomy influence. Though strong men,
and many of them in the prime of life, premature age and decay seem to
have settled down upon them. Their lustreless eyes and leaden lips tell
of ague, and their sad, thoughtful faces bespeak those who are often
called upon to meet peril, and who are destined to lives of emergency
and hazard.

It was in the low and miserable hut we speak of, just as night set in of
a raw November, that four of these raftsmen sat at their smoky fire, in
company with two travellers on foot, whose humble means compelled them
to await the arrival of some one rich enough to hire the raft. Meanly
clad and wayworn were the strangers who now sat endeavoring to dry their
dripping clothes at the blaze, and conversing in a low tone together.
If the elder, dressed in a russet-colored blouse and a broad-leafed hat,
his face almost hid in beard and moustaches, seemed by his short and
almost grotesque figure a travelling showman, the appearance of the
younger, despite all the poverty of his dress, implied a very different
class.

He was tall and well knit, with a loose activity in all his gestures
which almost invariably characterizes the Englishman; and though his
dark hair and his bronzed cheek gave him something of a foreign look,
there was a calm, cold self-possession in his air that denoted the
Anglo-Saxon. He sat smoking his cigar, his head resting on one hand, and
evidently listening with attention to the words of his companion. The
conversation that passed will save us the trouble of introducing them to
our reader, if he have not already guessed them.

“If we don’t wait,” said the elder, “till somebody richer and better
off than ourselves comes, we ‘ll have to pay seven francs for passin’ in
such a night as this.”

“It is a downright robbery to ask so much,” cried the other, angrily.
“What so great danger is there, or what so great hardship, after all?”

“There is both one and the other, I believe,” replied he, in a tone
evidently meant to moderate his passion; “and just look at the poor
craytures that has to do it. They’re as weak as a bit of wet paper;
they haven’t strength to make themselves heard when they talk out there
beside the river.”

“The fellow yonder,” said the youth, “has got good brawny arms and
sinewy legs of his own.”

“Ay, and he is starved after all. A cut of rye bread and an onion
won’t keep the heart up, nor a jug of red vinegar, though ye call it
grape-juice. On my conscience, I ‘m thinkin’ that the only people that
preserves their strength upon nothin’ is the Irish. I used to carry
the bags over Slieb-na-boregan mountain and the Turk’s Causeway on wet
potatoes and buttermilk, and never a day late for eleven years.”

“What a life!” cried the youth, in an accent of utter pity.

“Faix, it was an elegant life,--that is, when the weather was anyways
good. With a bright sun shinin’ and a fine fresh breeze blowin’ the
white clouds away over the Atlantic, my road was a right cheery one, and
I went along inventin’ stories, sometimes fairy tales, sometimes makin’
rhymes to myself, but always happy and contented. There wasn’t a bit of
the way I had n’t a name for in my own mind, either some place I read
about, or some scene in a story of my own; but better than all, there
was a dog,--a poor starved lurcher he was,--with a bit of the tail
cut off; he used to meet me, as regular as the clock, on the side of
Currah-na-geelah, and come beside me down to the ford every day in the
year. No temptation nor flattery would bring him a step farther. I spent
three-quarters of an hour once trying it, but to no good; he took leave
of me on the bank of the river, and went away back with his head down,
as if he was grievin’ over something. Was n’t that mighty curious?”

“Perhaps, like ourselves, Billy, he wasn’t quite sure of his passport,”
 said the other, dryly.

“Faix, may be so,” replied he, with perfect seriousness. “My notion was
that he was a kind of an outlaw, a chap that maybe bit a child of the
family, or ate a lamb of a flock given him to guard. But indeed his
general appearance and behavior was n’t like that; he had good manners,
and, starved as he was, he never snapped the bread out of my fingers,
but took it gently, though his eyes was dartin’ out of his head with
eagerness all the while.”

“A great test of good breeding, truly,” said the youth, sadly. “It must
be more than a mere varnish when it stands the hard rubs of life in this
wise.”

“‘Tis the very notion occurred to myself. It was the dhrop of good blood
in him made him what he was.”

Stealthy and fleeting as was the look that accompanied these words, the
youth saw it, and blushed to the very top of his forehead. “The night
grows milder,” said he, to relieve the awkwardness of the moment by any
remark.

“It’s a mighty grand sight out there now,” replied the other; “there’s
three miles if there’s an inch of white foam dashing down to the sea,
that breaks over the bar with a crash like thunder; big trees are
sweepin’ past, and pieces of vine trellises, and a bit of a mill-wheel,
all carried off just like twigs on a stream.”

“Would money tempt those fellows, I wonder, to venture out on such a
night as this?”

“To be sure; and why not? The daily fight poverty maintains with
existence dulls the sense of every danger but what comes of want. Don’t
I know it myself? The poor man has no inimy but hunger; for, ye see, the
other vexations and troubles of life, there’s always a way of gettin’
round them. You can chate even grief, and you can slip away from danger;
but there’s no circumventin’ an empty stomach.”

“What a tyrant is then your rich man!” sighed the youth, heavily.

“That he is. ‘Dives honoratus. Pulcher rex denique regum.’ You may do as
you please if ye’r rich as a Begum.”

“A free translation, rather, Billy,” said the other, laughing.

“Or ye might render it this way,” said Billy,--

     “If ye ‘ve money enough and to spare in the bank,
     The world will give ye both beauty and rank.

And I ‘ve nothing to say agin it,” continued he. “The raal stimulus to
industhry in life, is to make wealth powerful. Gettin’ and heapin’
up money for money’s sake is a debasin’ kind of thing; but makin’ a
fortune, in order that you may extind your influence, and mowld the
distinies of others,--that’s grand.”

“And see what comes of it!” cried the youth, bitterly. “Mark the base
and unworthy subserviency it leads to; see the race of sycophants it
begets.”

“I have you there, too,” cried Billy, with all the exultation of a ready
debater. “Them dirty varmint ye speak of is the very test of the truth
I ‘m tellin’ ye. ‘T is because they won’t labor--because they won’t
work--that they are driven to acts of sycophancy and meanness. The
spirit of industhry saves a man even the excuse of doin’ anything low!”

“And how often, from your own lips, have I listened to praises at your
poor humble condition; rejoicings that your lot in life secured you
against the cares of wealth and grandeur!”

“And you will again, plaze God! if _I_ live, and _you_ pre-sarve
your hearin’. What would I be if I was rich, but an ould--an ould
voluptuary?” said Billy, with great emphasis on a word he had some
trouble in discovering. “Atin’ myself sick with delicacies, and drinkin’
cordials all day long. How would I know the uses of wealth? Like all
other vulgar creatures, I ‘d be buyin’ with my money the respect that I
ought to be buyin’ with my qualities. It’s the very same thing you
see in a fair or a market,--the country girls goin’ about, hobbled
and crippled with shoes on, that, if they had bare feet, could walk as
straight as a rush. Poverty is not ungraceful itself. It’s tryin’ to be
what isn’t natural, spoils people entirely.”

“I think I hear voices without. Listen!” cried the youth.

“It ‘s only the river; it’s risin’ every minute.”

“No, that was a shout. I heard it distinctly. Ay, the boatmen hear it
now!”

“It is a travelling-carriage. I see the lamps,” cried one of the men,
as he stood at the door and looked landward. “They may as well keep the
road; there’s no crossing the Magra to-night!”

By this time the postilions’ whips commenced that chorus of cracking by
which they are accustomed to announce all arrivals of importance.

“Tell them to go back, Beppo,” said the chief of the raftsmen to one
of his party. “If we might try to cross with the mail-bags in a boat,
there’s not one of us would attempt the passage on the raft.”

To judge from the increased noise and uproar, the travellers’ impatience
had now reached its highest point; but to this a slight lull succeeded,
probably occasioned by the parley with the boatman.

“They’ll give us five Napoleons for the job,” said Beppo, entering, and
addressing his Chief.

“_Per Dio_, that won’t support our families if we leave them
fatherless,” muttered the other. “Who and what are they that can’t wait
till morning?”

“Who knows?” said Beppo, with a genuine shrug of native indifference.
“Princes, belike!”

“Princes or beggars, we all have lives to save!” mumbled out an old man,
as he reseated himself by the fire. Meanwhile the courier had entered
the hut, and was in earnest negotiation with the chief, who, however,
showed no disposition to run the hazard of the attempt.

“Are you all cowards alike?” said the courier, in all the insolence
of his privileged order; “or is it a young fellow of _your_ stamp that
shrinks from the risk of a wet jacket?”

This speech was addressed to the youth, whom he had mistaken for one of
the raftsmen.

“Keep your coarse speeches for those who will bear them, my good
fellow,” said the other, boldly, “or mayhap the first wet jacket here
will be one with gold lace on the collar.”

“He’s not one of us; he’s a traveller,” quickly interposed the chief,
who saw that an angry scene was brewing. “He’s only waiting to cross the
river,” muttered he in a whisper, “when some one comes rich enough to
hire the raft.”

“_Sacre bleu!_ Then he shan’t come with us; that I’ll promise him,” said
the courier, whose offended dignity roused all his ire. “Now, once for
all, my men, will you earn a dozen Napoleons, or not? Here they are for
you if you land us safely at the other side; and never were you so well
paid in your lives for an hour’s labor.”

The sight of the gold, as it glistened temptingly in his outstretched
hand, appealed to their hearts far more eloquently than all his words,
and they gathered in a group together to hold counsel.

“And you, are you also a distinguished stranger?” said the courier,
addressing Billy, who sat warming his hands by the embers of the fire.

“Look you, my man,” cried the youth, “all the gold in your master’s
leathern bag there can give you no claim to insult those who have
offered you no offence. It is enough that you know that we do not belong
to the raft to suffer us to escape your notice.”

“_Sacristi!_” exclaimed the courier, in a tone of insolent mockery, “I
have travelled the road long enough to learn that one does not need an
introduction before addressing a vagabond.”

[Illustration:  402]

“Vagabond!” cried the youth, furiously; and he sprang at the other with
the bound of a tiger. The courier quickly parried the blow aimed at him,
and, closely grappled, they both now reeled out of the hut in terrible
conflict. With that terror of the knife that figures in all Italian
quarrels, the boatmen did not dare to interfere, but looked on
as, wrestling with all their might, the combatants struggled, each
endeavoring to push the other towards the stream. Billy, too, restrained
by force, could not come to the rescue, and could only by words,
screamed out in all the wildness of his agony, encourage his companion.
“Drop on your knee--catch him by the legs--throw him back--back into the
stream. That’s it--that’s it! Good luck to ye!” shouted he, madly, as
he fought like a lion with those about him. Slipping in the slimy soil,
they had both now come to their knees; and after a struggle of some
minutes’ duration, rolled, clasped in each other’s fierce embrace, down
the slope into the river. A plash, and a cry half smothered, were heard,
and all was over.

While some threw themselves on the frantic creature, whose agony now
overtopped his reason, and who fought to get free, with the furious rage
of despair, others, seizing lanterns and torches, hurried along the bank
of the torrent to try and rescue the combatants. A sudden winding of the
river at the place gave little hope to the search, and it was all but
certain that the current must already have swept them down far beyond
any chance of succor. Assisted by the servants of the traveller, who
speedily were apprised of the disaster, the search was continued for
hours, and morning at length began to break over the dreary scene,
without one ray of hope. By the gray cold dawn, the yellow flood could
be seen for a considerable distance, and the banks too, over which
a gauzy mist was hanging; but not a living thing was there! The wild
torrent swept along his murky course with a deep monotonous roar. Trunks
of trees and leafy branches rose and sank in the wavy flood, but nothing
suggested the vaguest hope that either had escaped. The traveller’s
carriage returned to Spezia, and Billy, now bereft of reason, was
conveyed to the same place, fast tied with cords, to restrain him from a
violence that threatened his own life and that of any near him.

In the evening of that day a peasant’s car arrived at Spezia, conveying
the almost lifeless courier, who had been found on the river’s bank,
near the mouth of the Magra. How he had reached the spot, or what had
become of his antagonist, he knew not. Indeed, the fever which soon set
in placed him beyond the limit of all questioning, and his incoherent
cries and ravings only betrayed the terrible agonies his mind must have
passed through.

If this tragic incident, heightened by the actual presence of two of the
actors--one all but dead, the other dying--engaged the entire interest
and sympathy of the little town, the authorities were actively employed
in investigating the event, and ascertaining, so far as they could, to
which side the chief blame inclined.

The raftsmen had all been arrested, and were examined carefully, one
by one; and now it only remained to obtain from the traveller himself
whatever information he could contribute to throw light on the affair.

His passport, showing that he was an English peer, obtained for him all
the deference and respect foreign officials are accustomed to render to
that title, and the Prefect announced that if it suited his convenience,
he would wait on his Lordship at his hotel to receive his deposition.

“I have nothing to depose, no information to give,” was the dry and
not over-courteous response; but as the visit, it was intimated, was
indispensable, he named his hour to admit him.

The bland and polite tone of the Prefect was met by a manner of cold but
well-bred ease which seemed to imply that the traveller only regarded
the incident in the light of an unpleasant interruption to his journey,
but in which he took no other interest. Even the hints thrown out
that he ought to consider himself aggrieved and his dignity insulted,
produced no effect upon him.

“It was my intention to have halted a few days at Massa, and I could
have obtained another courier in the interval,” was the cool commentary
he bestowed on the incident.

“But your Lordship would surely desire investigation. A man is missing;
a great crime may have been committed--”

“Excuse my interrupting; but as I am not, nor can be supposed to be, the
criminal,--nor do I feel myself the victim,--while I have not a claim to
the character of witness, you would only harass me with interrogatories
I could not answer, and excite me to take interest, or at least bestow
attention, on what cannot concern me.”

“Yet there are circumstances in this case which give it the character of
a preconcerted plan,” said the Prefect, thoughtfully.

“Perhaps so,” said the other, in a tone of utter indifference.

“Certainly, the companion of the man who is missing, and of whom no clew
can be discovered, is reported to have uttered your name repeatedly in
his ravings.”

“My name,--how so?” cried the stranger, hurriedly.

“Yes, my Lord, the name of your passport,--Lord Glen-core. Two of those
I have placed to watch beside his bed have repeated the same story,
and told how he has never ceased to mutter the name to himself in his
wanderings.”

“Is this a mere fancy?” said the stranger, over whose sickly features a
flush now mantled. “Can I see him?”

“Of course. He is in the hospital, and too ill to be removed; but if you
will visit him there, I will accompany you.”

It was only when a call was made upon Lord Glencore for some bodily
exertion that his extreme debility became apparent. Seated at ease in a
chair, his manner seemed merely that of natural coolness and apathy;
he spoke as one who would not suffer his nature to be ruffled by any
avoidable annoyance; but now, as he arose from his seat, and endeavored
to walk, one side betrayed unmistakable signs of palsy, and his general
frame exhibited the last stage of weakness.

“You see, sir, that the exertion costs its price,” said he, with a
sad, sickly smile. “I am the wreck of what once was a man noted for his
strength.”

The other muttered some words of comfort and compassion, and they
descended the stairs together.

“I do not know this man,” said Lord Glencore, as he gazed on the flushed
and fevered face of the sick man, whose ill-trimmed and shaggy beard
gave additional wild-ness to his look; “I have never, to my knowledge,
seen him before.”

The accents of the speaker appeared to have suddenly struck some chord
in the sufferer’s intelligence, for he struggled for an instant, and
then, raising himself on his elbow, stared fixedly at him. “Not know
me?” cried he, in English; “‘t is because sorrow and sickness has
changed me, then.”

“Who are you? Tell me your name?” said Glencore, eagerly.

“I’m Billy Traynor, my Lord, the one you remember, the doctor--”

“And my boy!” screamed Glencore, wildly.

The sick man threw up both his arms in the air, and fell backward with
a cry of despair; while Glencore, tottering for an instant, sank with a
low groan, and fell senseless on the ground.



CHAPTER XLVII. A FRAGMENT OF A LETTER

Long before Lord Glencore had begun to rally from an attack which
had revived all the symptoms of his former illness, Billy Traynor had
perfectly recovered, and was assiduously occupied in attending him.
Almost the first tidings which Glencore could comprehend assured him
that the boy was safe, and living at Massa under the protection of the
Chevalier Stubber, and waiting eagerly for Billy to join him. A brief
extract from one of the youth’s letters to his warm-hearted follower
will suffice to show how he himself regarded the incident which befell,
and the fortune that lay before him.

It was a long swim, of a dark night too, Master Billy; and whenever the
arm of a tree would jostle me, as it floated past, I felt as though that
“blessed” courier was again upon me, and turned to give fight at once.
If it were not that the river took a sudden bend as it nears the sea, I
must infallibly have been carried out; but I found myself quite suddenly
in slack water, and very soon after it shallowed so much that I could
walk ashore. The thought of what became of my adversary weighed more
heavily on me when I touched land; indeed, while my own chances of
escape were few, I took his fate easily enough. With all its dangers, it
was a glorious time, as, hurrying downward in the torrent, through the
dark night, the thunder growling overhead, the breakers battering away
on the bar, I was the only living thing there to confront that peril!
What an emblem of my own fate in everything! A headlong course, an
unknown ending, darkness--utter and day less darkness--around me, and
not one single soul to say, “Courage!” There is something splendidly
exciting in the notion of having felt thoughts that others have
never felt,--of having set footsteps in that un tracked sand where no
traveller has ever ventured. This impression never left me as I buffeted
the murky waves, and struck out boldly through the surfy stream. Nay,
more, it will never leave me while I live. I have now proved myself to
my own heart! I have been, and for a considerable time too, face to
face with death. I have regarded my fate as certain, and yet have I not
quailed in spirit or flinched in coolness. No, Billy; I reviewed every
step of my strange and wayward life. I bethought me of my childhood,
with all its ambitious longings, and my boyish days as sorrow first
broke upon me, and I felt that there was a fitness in this darksome and
mysterious ending to a life that touched on no other existence. For am I
not as much alone in the great world as when I swam there in the yellow
flood of the Magra?

As the booming breakers of the sea met my ear, and I saw that I was
nearing the wide ocean, I felt as might a soldier when charging an
enemy’s battery at speed. I was wildly mad with impatience to get
forward, and shouted till my voice rang out above the din around me.
How the mad cheer echoed in my own heart! It was the trumpet-call of
victory.

Was it reaction from all this excitement--the depression that follows
past danger--that made me feel low and miserable afterwards? I know
I walked along towards Lavenza in listlessness, and when a gendarme
stopped to question me, and asked for my passport, I had not even energy
to tell him how I came there. Even the intense desire to see that spot
once more,--to walk that garden and sit upon that terrace,--all had
left me; it was as though the waves had drowned the spirit, and left the
limbs to move unguided. He led me beside the walls of the villa, by the
little wicket itself, and still I felt no touch of feeling, no memory
came back on me; I was indifferent to all! and yet _you_ know how many
a weary mile I have come just to see them once more,--to revisit a spot
where the only day-dream of my life lingered, and where I gave way to
the promptings of a hope that have not often warmed this sad heart.

What a sluggish swamp has this nature of mine become, when it needs a
hurricane of passion to stir it! Here I am, living, breathing, walking,
and sleeping, but without one sentiment that attaches me to existence;
and yet do I feel as though whatever endangered life, or jeoparded fame
would call me up to an effort and make me of some value to myself.

I went yesterday to see my old studio: sorry things were those strivings
of mine,--false endeavors to realize conceptions that must have some
other interpreter than marble. Forms are but weak appeals, words are
coarse ones; music alone, my dear friend, is the true voice of the
heart’s meanings.

How a little melody that a peasant girl was singing last night touched
me! It was one that _she_ used to warble, humming as we walked, like
some stray waif thrown up by memory on the waste of life.

So then, at last, I feel I am not a sculptor; still as little, with all
your teaching, am I a scholar. The world of active life offers to me
none of its seductions; I only recognize what there is in it of vulgar
contention and low rivalry. I cannot be any of the hundred things by
which men eke out subsistence, and yet I long for the independence of
being the arbiter of my own daily life. What is to become of me? Say,
dearest, best of friends,--say but the word, and let me try to obey
you. What of our old plans of ‘savagery’? The fascinations of civilized
habits have made no stronger hold upon me since we relinquished that
grand idea. Neither you nor I assuredly have any places assigned us at
the feast of this old-world life; none have bidden us to it, nor have we
even the fitting garments to grace it!

There are moments, however,--one of them is on me while I
write,--wherein I should like to storm that strong citadel of social
exclusion, and test its strength. Who are they who garrison it? Are they
better, and wiser, and purer than their fellows? Are they lifted by the
accidents of fortune above the casualties and infirmities of nature?
and are they more gentle-minded, more kindly-hearted, and more forgiving
than others? This I should wish to know and learn for myself. Would they
admit us, for the nonce, to see and judge them? let the Bastard and the
Beggar sit down at their board, and make brotherhood with them? I trow
not, Billy. They would hand us over to the police!

And my friend the courier was not so far astray when he called us
vagabonds!

If I were free, I should, of course, be with you; but I am under a kind
of mild bondage here, of which I don’t clearly comprehend the meaning.
The chief minister has taken me, in some fashion, under his protection,
and I am given to understand that no ill is intended me; and, indeed,
so far as treatment and moderate liberty are concerned, I have every
reason to be satisfied. Still is there something deeply wounding in all
this mysterious “consideration.” It whispers to me of an interest in me
on the part of those who are ashamed to avow it,--of kind feelings held
in check by self-esteem. Good Heavens! what have _I_ done, that this
humiliation should be my portion? There is no need of any subtlety to
teach me what I am, and what the world insists I must remain. There is
no ambition I dare to strive for, no affection my heart may cherish, no
honorable contest I may engage in, but that the utterance of one fatal
word may not bar the gate against my entrance, and send me back in shame
and confusion. Had I of myself incurred this penalty, there would be in
me that stubborn sense of resistance that occurs to every one who counts
the gain and loss of all his actions; but I have not done so! In the
work of my own degradation I am blameless!

I have just been told that a certain Princess de Sabloukoff is to arrive
here this evening, and that I am to wait upon her immediately. Good
Heavens! can she be--? The thought has just struck me, and my head is
already wandering at the bare notion of it! How I pray that this may not
be so; my own shame is enough, and more than I can bear; but to witness
that of--I Can you tell me nothing of this? But even if you can, the
tidings will come too late; I shall have already seen her.

I am unable to write more now; my brain is burning, and my hand trembles
so that I cannot trace the letters. Adieu till this evening.


Midnight.

I was all in error, dear friend. I have seen her; for the last two hours
we have conversed together, and my suspicion had no foundation. She
evidently knows all my history, and almost gives me to believe that one
day or other I may stand free of this terrible shame that oppresses me.
If this were possible, what vengeance would be enough to wreak on those
who have thus practised on me? Can you imagine any vendetta that
would pay off the heart-corroding misery that has made my youth like
a sorrowful old age, dried up hope within me, made my ambition to be a
snare, and my love a mere mockery? I could spend a life in the search
after this revenge, and think it all too short to exhaust it!

I have much to tell you of this Princess, but I doubt if I can remember
it. Her manner meant so much, and yet so little; there was such elegance
of expression with such perfect ease,--so much of the _finest_ knowledge
of life united to a kind of hopeful trust in mankind, that I kept
eternally balancing in my mind whether her intelligence or her
kindliness had the supremacy. She spoke to me much of the Harleys.
Ida was well, and at Florence. She had refused Wahnsdorf’s offer of
marriage, and though ardently solicited to let time test her decision,
persisted in her rejection.

Whether she knew of my affection or not, I cannot say; but I opine not,
for she talked of Ida as one whose haughty nature would decline alliance
with even an imperial house if they deemed it a condescension; so that
the refusal of Wahnsdorf may have been on this ground. But how can it
matter to _me?_

I am to remain here a week, I think they said. Sir Horace Upton is
coming on his way south, and wishes to see me; but you will be with me
ere that time, and then we can plan our future together. As this web of
intrigue--for so I cannot but feel it--draws more closely around me, I
grow more and more impatient to break bounds and be away! It is evident
enough that _my_ destiny is to be the sport of some accident, lucky or
unlucky, in the fate of others. Shall I await this?

And they have given me money, and fine clothes, and a servant to wait
upon me, and treated me like one of condition. Is this but another
act of the drama, the first scene of which was an old ruined castle in
Ireland? They will fail signally if they think so; a heart can be broken
only once! They may even feel sorry for what they have done, but I can
never forgive them for what they have made me! Come to me, dear, kind
friend, as soon as you can; you little know how far your presence
reconciles me to the world and to yourself!--Ever yours,

C. M.


This letter Billy Traynor read over and over as he sat by Glencore’s
bedside. It was his companion in the long, dreary hours of the night,
and he pondered over it as he sat in the darkened room at noonday.

“What is that you are crumpling up there? From whom is the letter?” said
Lord Glencore, as Billy hurriedly endeavored to conceal the oft-perused
epistle. “Nay,” cried he, suddenly correcting himself, “you need not
tell me; I asked without forethought.” He paused a few seconds, and then
went on: “I am now as much recovered as I ever hope to be, and you may
leave me to-morrow. I know that both your wish and your duty call you
elsewhere. Whatever future fortune may betide any of us, you at least
have been a true and faithful friend, and shall never want! As I count
upon your honesty to keep a pledge, I reckon on your delicacy not asking
the reasons for it. You will, therefore, not speak of having been with
me here. To mention me would be but to bring up bitter memories.”

In the pause which now ensued, Billy Traynor’s feelings underwent a sore
trial; for while he bethought him that now or never had come the moment
to reconcile the father and the son, thus mysteriously separated, his
fears also whispered the danger of any ill-advised step on his part,
and the injury he might by possibility inflict on one he loved best on
earth.

“You make me this pledge, therefore, before we part,” said Lord
Glencore, who continued to ruminate on what he had spoken. “It is
less for _my_ sake than that of another.” Billy took the hand Glencore
tendered towards him respectfully in his own, and kissed it twice.

“There are men who have no need of oaths to ratify their faith
and trustfulness. You are one of them, Tray-nor,” said Glencore,
affectionately.

Billy tried to speak, but his heart was too full, and he could not utter
a word.

“A dying man’s words have ever their solemn weight,” said Glencore, “and
mine beseech you not to desert one who has no prize in life equal to
your friendship. Promise me nothing, but do not forget my prayer to
you.” And with this, Lord Glencore turned away, and buried his face
between his hands.

“And in the name of Heaven,” muttered Billy to himself as he stole away,
“what is it that keeps them apart and won’t let them love one another?
Sure it wasn’t in nature that a boy of his years could ever do what
would separate them this way. What could he possibly say or do that his
father might n’t forget and forgive by this time? And then if it was
n’t the child’s fault at all, where’s the justice in makin’ him pay for
another’s crime? Sure enough, great people must be unlike poor craytures
like me, in their hearts and feelin’s as well as in their grandeur; and
there must be things that _we_ never mind nor think of, that are thought
to be mortial injuries by _them_. Ay, and that is raysonable too! We see
the same in the matayrial world. There’s fevers that some never takes;
and there’s climates some can live in, and no others can bear!

“I suppose, now,” said he, with a wise shake of the head, “pride--pride
is at the root of it all, some way or other; and if it is, I may give
up the investigation at onst, for divil a one o’ me knows what pride
is,--barrin’ it’s the delight one feels in consthruin’ a hard bit in
a Greek chorus, or hittin’ the manin’ of a doubtful passage in ould
Æschylus. But what’s the good o’ me puzzlin’ myself? If I was to
speculate for fifty years, I ‘d never be able to think like a lord,
after all!” And with this conclusion he began to prepare for his
journey.



CHAPTER XLVIII. HOW A SOVEREIGN TREATS WITH HIS MINISTER

“What can have brought them here, Stubber?” said the Duke of Massa, as
he walked to and fro in his dressing-room, with an air of considerable
perturbation. “Be assured of one thing, they have come for mischief!
I know that Sabloukoff well. _She_ it was separated Prince Max from my
sister, and that Montenegro affair was all _her_ doing also.”

“I don’t suspect--”

“Don’t you? Well, then, _I_ do, sir; and that’s enough,” said he,
interrupting. “And as to Upton, he’s well known throughout Europe,--a
‘mauvais coucheur,’ Stubber; that’s what the Emperor Franz called
him,--a ‘mauvais coucheur,’ one of those fellows England employs to get
up the embarrassments she so deeply deplores. Eh, Stubber, that’s the
phrase: ‘While we deeply deplore the condition of the kingdom,’--that’s
always the exordium to sending out a fleet or an impertinent
despatch. But I’ll not endure it here. I have my sovereign rights, my
independence, my allies. By the way, haven’t my allies taken possession
of the Opera House for a barrack?”

“That they have, sir; and they threaten an encampment in the Court
gardens.”

“An open insult, an outrage! And have _you_ endured and submitted to
this?”

“I have refused the permission; but they may very possibly take no heed
of my protest.”

“And you ‘ll tell me that I am the ruler of this state?”

“No, but I ‘ll say you might, if you liked to be so.”

“How so, Stubber? Come, my worthy fellow, what’s your plan? You have
a plan, I’m certain--but I guess it: turn Protestant, hunt out the
Jesuits, close the churches, demolish the monasteries, and send for an
English frigate down to the Marina, where there’s not water to float
a fishing-boat. But no, sir, I ‘ll have no such alliances; I ‘ll throw
myself upon the loyalty and attachment of my people, and--I’ll raise
the taxes. Eh, Stubber? We’ll tax the ‘colza’ and the quarries! If they
demur, we ‘ll abdicate; that’s my last word,--abdicate.”

“I wonder who this sick man can be that accompanies Upton,” said
Stubber, who never suffered himself to be moved by his master’s
violence.

“Another firebrand,--another emissary of English disturbance. Hardenberg
was perfectly right when he said the English nation pays off the meanest
subserviency to their own aristocracy by hunting down all that is
noble in every state of Europe. There, sir, he hit the mark in the very
centre. Slaves at home, rebels abroad,--that’s your code!”

“We contrive to mix up a fair share of liberty with our bondage, sir.”

“In your talk,--only in your talk; and in the newspapers, Stubber. I
have studied you closely and attentively. You submit to more social
indignities than any nation, ancient or modern. I was in London in ‘15,
and I remember, at a race-course,--Ascot, they called it,--the Prince
had a certain horse called Rufus.”

“I rode him,” said Stubber, dryly.

“_You_ rode him?”

“Yes, sir. I was his jock for the King’s Plate. There was a matter of
twenty-eight started,--the largest field ever known for the Cup,--and
Rufus reared, and, falling back, killed his rider; and the Duke of
Dunrobin sent for me, and told me to mount. That’s the way I came to be
there.”

“_Per Bacco!_ it was a splendid race, and I’m sure I never suspected
when I cheered you coming in, that I was welcoming my future minister.
Eh, Stubber, only fancy what a change!”

Stubber only shrugged his shoulders, as though the alteration in fortune
was no such great prize after all.

“I won two thousand guineas on that day, Stubber. Lord Heddleworth paid
me in gold, I remember; for they picked my pocket of three rouleaux on
the course. The Prince laughed so at dinner about it, and said it was
pure patriotism not to suffer exportation of bullion. A great people
the English, that I must say! The display of wealth was the grandest
spectacle I ever beheld; and such beauty too! By the way, Stubber, our
ballet here is detestable. Where did they gather together that gang of
horrors?”

“What? signifies it, sir, if the Austrian Jagers are bivouacked in the
theatre?”

“Very true, by Jove!” said the Duke, pondering. “Can’t we hit upon
something,--have you no happy suggestion? I have it, Stubber,--an
admirable thought. We ‘ll have Upton to dinner. We ‘ll make it appear
that he has come here specially to treat with us. There is a great
coldness just now between St. James’s and Vienna. Upton will be charmed
with the thought of an intrigue; so will be La Sabloukoff. We ‘ll not
invite the Field-Marshal Rosen-krantz: that will itself offend Austria.
Eh, Stubber, is n’t it good? Say to-morrow at six, and go yourself with
the invitation.”

And, overjoyed with the notion of his own subtlety, the Prince walked up
and down, laughing heartily, and rubbing his hands in glee.

Stubber, however, was too well versed in the changeability of his
master’s nature to exhibit any rash promptitude in obeying him.

“You must manage to let the English papers speak of this, Stubber.
The ‘Augsburg Gazette’ will be sure to copy the paragraph, and what a
sensation it will create at Vienna!”

“I am inclined to think Upton has come here about that young fellow we
gave up to the Austrians last autumn, and for whom he desires to claim
some compensation and an ample apology.”

“Apology, of course, Stubber,--humiliation to any extent. I’ll send the
Minister Landelli into exile,--to the galleys, if they insist; but I
‘ll not pay a scudo,--my royal word on it! But who says that such is the
reason of his presence here?”

“I had a hint of it last night, and I received a polite note from Upton
this morning, asking when he might have a few moments’ conversation with
me.”

“Go to him, Stubber, with our invitation. Ask him if he likes shooting.
Say I am going to Serravezza on Saturday; sound him if he desires to
have the Red Cross of Massa; hint that I am an ardent admirer of his
public career; and be sure to tell me something he has said or done, if
he come to dinner.”

“There is to be a dinner, then, sir?” asked Stubber, with the air of one
partly struggling with a conviction.

“I have said so, Chevalier!” replied the Prince, haughtily, and in the
tone of a man whose decisions were irrevocable. “I mean to dine in the
state apartments, and to have a reception in the evening, just to show
Rosenkrantz how cheaply we hold him. Eh, Stubber? It will half kill him
to come with the general company!”

Stubber gave a faint sigh, as though fresh complications and more
troubles would be the sole results of this brilliant tactique.

“If I were well served and faithfully obeyed, there is not a sovereign
in Europe who would boast a more independent position,--protected by
my bold people, environed by my native Apennines, and sustained by the
proud consciousness--the proud consciousness---that I cannot injure a
state which has not sixpence in the treasury! Eh, Stubber?” cried he,
with a burst of merry laughter. “That’s the grand feature of composure
and dignity, to know you can’t be worse! and this, we Italian princes
can all indulge in. Look at the Pope himself, he is collecting the
imposts a year in advance!”

“I hope that this country is more equitably administered,” said Stubber.

“So do I, sir. Were I not impressed with the full conviction that the
subjects of this realm were in the very fullest enjoyment of every
liberty consistent with public tranquillity, protected in the
maintenance of every privilege--By the way, talking of privileges,
they must n’t play ‘Trottolo’ on the high roads; they sent one of those
cursed wheels flying between the legs of my horse yesterday, so that
if I had n’t been an old cavalry soldier, I must have been thrown! I
ordered the whole village to be fined three hundred scudi, one half of
which to be sent to the shrine of our Lady of Loretta, who really, I
believe, kept me in my saddle!”

“If the people had sufficient occupation, they ‘d not play ‘Trottolo,’”
 said Stubber, sternly.

“And whose the fault if they have not, sir? How many months have I been
entreating to have those terraced gardens finished towards the sea? I
want that olive wood, too, all stubbed up, and the ground laid out in
handsome parterres. How repeatedly have I asked for a bridge over that
ornamental lake; and as to the island, there’s not a magnolia planted
in it yet. Public works, indeed; find me the money, Stubber, and I ‘ll
suggest the works. Then, there ‘s that villa, the residence of those
English people,--have we not made a purchase of it?”

“No, your Highness; we could not agree about the terms, and I have just
heard that the stranger who is travelling with Upton is going to buy
it.”

“Stepping in between me and an object I have in view! And in my own
Duchy, too! And you have the hardihood to tell me that you knew of and
permitted this negotiation to go on?”

“There is nothing in the law to prevent it, sir.”

“The law! What impertinence to tell me of the law I Why, sir, it is I
am the law,--I am the head and fountain of all law here; without my
sanction, what can presume to be legal?”

“I opine that the Act which admits foreigners to possess property in the
state was passed in the life of your Highness’s father.”

“I repeal it, then! It saps the nationality of a people; it is a blow
aimed at the very heart of independent sovereignty. I may stand alone
in all Europe on this point, but I will maintain it. And as to this
stranger, let his passport be sent to him on the spot.”

“He may possibly be an Englishman, your Highness: and remember that we
have already a troublesome affair on our hands with that other youth,
who in some way claims Upton’s protection. Had we not better go more
cautiously to work? I can see and speak with him.”

“What a tyranny is this English interference! There is not a land,
from Sweden to Sicily, where, on some assumed ground of humanity, your
Government have not dared to impose their opinions! You presume to
assert that all men must feel precisely like your dogged and hard-headed
countrymen, and that what are deemed grievances in your land should be
thought so elsewhere. You write up a code for the whole world, built
out of the materials of all your national prejudices, your insular
conceit,--ay, and out of the very exigencies of your bad climate; and
then you say to us, blessed in the enjoyment of light hearts and God’s
sunshine, that we must think and feel as you do! I am not astonished
that my nobles are discontented with the share you possess of my
confidence; they must long have seen how little suited the maxims of
your national policy are to the habits of a happier population!”

“The people are far better than their nobles,--that I ‘m sure of,” said
Stubber, stoutly.

“You want to preach socialism to me, and hope to convert me to that
splendid doctrine of communism we hear so much of. You are a dangerous
fellow,--a very dangerous fellow. It was precisely men of your stamp
sapped the monarchy in France, and with it all monarchy in Europe.”

“If your Highness intends Proserpine to run at Bologna, she ought to be
put in training at once,” said Stubber, gravely; “and we might send up
some of the weeds at the same time, and sell them off.”

“Well thought of, Stubber; and there was something else in my
head,--what was it?”

“The suppression of the San Lorenzo convent, perhaps; it is all
completed, and only waits your Highness to sign the deed.”

“What sum does it give us, Stubber, eh?”

“About one hundred and eighty thousand scudi, sir, of which some twenty
thousand go to the National Mortgage Fund.”

“Not one crown of it,--not a single bajocco, as I am a Christian knight
and a true gentleman. I need it all, if it were twice as much. If we
incur the anger of the Pope and the Sacred College,--if we risk the
thunders of the Vatican,--let us have the worldly consolation of a full
purse.”

“I advised the measure on wiser grounds, sir. It was not fair and just
that a set of lazy friars should be leading lives of indolence and
abundance in the midst of a hard-worked and ill-fed peasantry.”

“Quite true; and on these wise grounds, as you call them, we have rooted
them out. We only wish that the game were more plenty, for the sport
amuses us vastly.” And he clapped Stubber familiarly on the shoulder,
and laughed heartily at his jest.

It was in this happy frame of mind that Stubber always liked to leave
his master; and so, promising to attend to the different subjects
discussed between them, he bowed and withdrew.



CHAPTER XLIX. SOCIAL DIPLOMACIES

“What an insufferable bore, dear Princess!” sighed Sir Horace, as he
opened the square-shaped envelope that contained his Royal Highnesses
invitation to dinner.

“I mean to be seriously indisposed,” said Madame de Sabloukoff; “one
gets nothing but chagrin in intercourse with petty Courts.”

“Like provincial journals, they only reproduce what has appeared in the
metropolitan papers, and give you old gossip for fresh intelligence.”

“Or, worse again, ask you to take an interest in their miserable
‘localisms,’--the microscopic contentions of insect life.”

“They have given us a sentry at the door, I perceive,” said Sir Horace,
with assumed indifference.

“A very proper attention!” remarked the lady, in a tone that more than
half implied the compliment was one intended for herself.

“Have you seen the Chevalier Stubber yet?” asked Upton.

“No; he has been twice here, but I was dressing, or writing notes. And
you?”

“I told him to come about two o’clock,” sighed Sir Horace. “I rather
like Stubber.”

This was said in a tone of such condescension that it sounded as though
the utterer was confessing to an amicable weakness in his nature,--“I
rather like Stubber.”

Though there was something meant to invite agreement in the tone, the
Princess only accepted the speech with a slight motion of her eyebrows,
and a look of half unwilling assent.

“I know he’s not of _your_ world, dear Princess, but he belongs to that
Anglo-Saxon stock we are so prone to associate with all the ideas of
rugged, unadorned virtue.”

“Rugged and unadorned indeed!” echoed the lady.

“And yet never vulgar,” rejoined Upton,--“never affecting to be other
than he is; and, stranger still, not self-opinionated and conceited.”

“I own to you,” said she, haughtily, “that the whole Court here puts me
in mind of Hayti, with its Marquis of Orgeat and its Count Marmalade.
These people, elevated from menial station to a mock nobility, only
serve to throw ridicule upon themselves and the order that they
counterfeit. No socialist in Europe has done such service to the cause
of democracy as the Prince of Massa!”

“Honesty is such a very rare quality in this world that I am not
surprised at his Highness prizing it under any garb. Now, Stubber is
honest.”

“He says so himself, I am told.”

“Yes, he says so, and I believe him. He has been employed in situations
of considerable trust, and always acquitted himself well. Such a man
cannot have escaped temptations, and yet even his enemies do not accuse
him of venality.”

“Good Heavens! what more would he have than his legitimate spoils? He
is a Minister of the Household, with an ample salary; a Master of the
Horse; an inspector of Woods and Forests; a something over Church lands;
and a Red Cross of Massa besides. I am quite ‘made up’ in his dignities,
for they are all set forth on his visiting-card with what purports to
be a coat of arms at top.” And, as she spoke, she held out the card in
derision.

“That’s silly, I must say,” said Upton, smiling; “and yet, I suppose
that here in Massa it was requisite he should assert all his pretensions
thus openly.”

“Perhaps so,” said she, dryly.

“And, after all,” said Upton, who seemed rather bent on a system of mild
tormenting,--“after all, there is something amiable in the weakness of
this display,--it smacks of gratitude! It is like saying to the world,
‘See what the munificence of my master has made me!’”

“What a delicate compliment, too, to his nobles, which proclaims that
for a station of trust and probity the Prince must recruit from the
kitchen and the stables. To _my_ thinking, there is no such impertinent
delusion as that popular one which asserts that we must seek
for everything in its least likely place,--take ministers out of
counting-houses, and military commanders from shop-boards. For the
treatment of weighty questions in peace or war, the gentleman element is
the first essential.”

“Just as long as the world thinks so, dear Princess; not an hour
longer.”

The Princess arose, and walked the room in evident displeasure. She half
suspected that his objections were only devices to irritate, and she
determined not to prolong the discussion. The temptation to reply
proved, however, too strong for her resolution, and she said,--

“The world has thought so for some centuries; and when a passing shade
of doubt has shaken the conviction, have not the people rushed from
revolution into actual bondage, as though any despotism were better than
the tyranny of their own passions?”

“I opine,” said Upton, calmly, “that the ‘prestige’ of the gentleman
consists in his belonging to an ‘order.’ Now, that is a privilege that
cannot be enjoyed by a mere popular leader. It is like the contrast
between a club and a public meeting.”

“It is something that you confess these people have no ‘prestige,’” said
she, triumphantly. “Indeed, their presence in the world of politics,
to my thinking, is a mere symbol of change,--an evidence that we are in
some stage of transition.”

“So we are, madame; there is nothing more true. Every people of Europe
have outgrown their governments, like young heirs risen to manhood,
ordering household affairs to their will. The popular voice now swells
above the whisper of cabinets. So long as each country limits itself
to home questions, this spirit will attract but slight notice. Let the
issue, however, become a great international one, and you will see the
popular will declaring wars, cementing alliances, and signing peaces in
a fashion to make statecraft tremble!”

“And you approve of this change, and welcome it?” asked she, derisively.

“I have never said so, madame. I foresee the hurricane, that’s all. Men
like Stubber are to be seen almost everywhere throughout Europe. They
are a kind of declaration that, for the government and guidance of
mankind, the possession of a good head and an honest heart is amply
sufficient; that rulers neither need fourteen quarterings nor names
coeval with the Roman Empire.”

“You have given me but another reason to detest him,” said the Princess,
angrily. “I don’t think I shall receive him to-day.”

“But you want to speak with him about that villa; there is some
formality to be gone through before a foreigner can own property here. I
think you promised Glencore you would arrange the matter.”

She made no reply, and he continued: “Poor fellow! a very short lease
would suffice for his time; he is sinking rapidly. The conflict his
mind wages between hope and doubt has hastened all the symptoms of his
malady.”

“In such a struggle a woman has more courage than a man.”

“Say more boldness, Princess,” said Upton, slyly.

“I repeat, courage, sir. It is fear, and nothing but fear, that agitates
him. He is afraid of the world’s sneer; afraid of what society will
think, and say, and write about him; afraid of the petty gossip of the
millions he will never see or hear of. This cowardice it is that checks
him in every aspiration to vindicate his wife’s honor and his boy’s
birth.”

“_Si cela se peut_,” said Upton, with a very equivocal smile.

A look of haughty anger, with a flush of crimson on her cheek, was the
only answer she made him.

“I mean that he is really not in a position to prove or disprove
anything. He assumed certain ‘levities’--I suppose the word will do--to
mean more than levities; he construed indiscretions into grave faults,
and faults into crimes. But that he did all this without sufficient
reason, or that he now has abundant evidence that he was mistaken, I am
unable to say, nor is it with broken faculties and a wandering intellect
that he can be expected to review the past and deliver judgment on it.”

“The whole moral of which is: what a luckless fate is that of a foreign
wife United to an English husband!”

“There is much force in the remark,” said Upton, calmly.

“To have her thoughts, and words, and actions submitted to the standard
of a nation whose moral subtleties she could never comprehend; to be
taught that a certain amount of gloom must be mixed up with life,
just as bitters are taken for tonics; that _ennui_ is the sure type of
virtue, and low spirits the healthiest condition of the mind,--these are
her first lessons: no wonder if she find them hard ones.

“To be told that all the harmless familiarities she has seen from her
childhood are dangerous freedoms, all the innocent gayeties of the world
about her are snares and pitfalls, is to make existence little better
than a penal servitude,--this is lesson the second. While, to complete
her education, she is instructed how to assume a censorial rigidity of
manner that would shame a duenna, and a condemnatory tone that assumes
to arraign all the criminals of society, and pass sentence on them. How
amiable she may become in disposition, and how suitable as a companion
by this training, _you_, sir, and your countrymen are best able to
pronounce.”

“You rather exaggerate our demerits, my dear Princess,” said Upton,
smiling. “We really do _not_ like to be so very odious as you would make
us.”

“You are excellent people, with whom no one can live,--that’s the whole
of it,” said she, with a saucy laugh. “If your friend Lord Glencore had
been satisfied to stay at home and marry one of his own nation, he might
have escaped a deal of unhappiness, and saved a most amiable creature
much more sorrow than falls to the lot of the least fortunate of her own
country. I conclude you have some influence over him?”

“As much, perhaps, as any one; but even that says little.”

“Can you not use it, therefore, to make him repair a great wrong?”

“You had some plan, I think?” said he, hesitatingly.

“Yes; I have written to her to come down here. I have pretended that
her presence is necessary to certain formalities about the sale of the
villa. I mean that they should meet, without apprising either of them. I
have sent the boy out of the way to Pontremoli to make me a copy of some
frescoes there; till the success of my scheme be decided, I did not wish
to make him a party to it.”

“You don’t know Glencore,--at least as I know him.”

“There is no reason that I should,” broke she in. “What I would try is
an experiment, every detail of which I would leave to chance. Were this
a case where all the wrong were on one side, and all the forgiveness
to come from the other, friendly aid and interposition might well be
needed; but here is a complication which neither you, nor I, nor any one
else can pretend to unravel. Let them meet, therefore, and let Fate--if
that be the name for it--decide what all the prevention and planning in
the world could never provide for.”

“The very fact that their meeting has been plotted beforehand will
suggest distrust.”

“Their manner in meeting will be the best answer to that,” said she,
resolutely. “There will be no acting between them, depend upon ‘t.”

“He told me that he had destroyed the registry of their marriage, nor
does he know where a single witness of the ceremony could be found.”

“I don’t want to know _how_ he could make the _amende_ till I know that
he is ready to do it,” said she, in the same calm tone.

“To have arranged a meeting with the boy had perhaps been better than
this. Glencore has not avowed it, but I think I can detect misgivings
for his treatment of the youth.”

“This was my first thought, and I spoke to young Massy the evening
before Lord Glencore arrived. I led him to tell me of his boyish days
in Ireland and his home there; a stern resolution to master all emotion
seemed to pervade whatever he said; and though, perhaps, the effort may
have cost him much, his manner did not betray it. He told me that he
was illegitimate, that the secret was divulged to him by his own father,
that he had never heard who his mother was, nor what rank in life she
occupied. When I said that she was one in high station, that she was
alive and well, and one of my own dearest friends, a sudden crimson
covered his face, as quickly followed by a sickly pallor; and though he
trembled in every limb, he never spoke a word. I endeavored to excite
in him some desire to learn more of her, if not to see her, but in
vain. The hard lesson he had taught himself enabled him to repress
every semblance of feeling. It was only when at last, driven to the very
limits of my patience, I abruptly asked him, ‘Have you no wish to see
your mother?’ that his coldness gave way, and, in a voice tremulous and
thick, he said, ‘My shame is enough for myself.’ I was burning to say
more, to put before him a contingency, the mere shadow of a possibility
that his claim to birth and station might one day or other be
vindicated. I did not actually do so, but I must have let drop some
chance word that betrayed my meaning, for he caught me up quickly, and
said, ‘It would come too late, if it came even to-day. I am that which
I am by many a hard struggle; you ‘ll never see me risk a disappointment
in life by any encouragement I may give to hope.’

“I then adverted to his father; but he checked me at once, saying,
‘When the ties that should be closest in life are stained with shame and
dishonor, they are bonds of slavery, not of affection. My debt to Lord
Glencore is the degradation I live in,--none other. His heritage to me
is the undying conflict in my heart between what I once thought I was
and what I now know I am. If we met, it would be to tell him so.’ In a
word, every feature of the father’s proud unforgivingness is reproduced
in the boy, and I dreaded the very possibility of their meeting. If
ever Lord Glencore avow his marriage and vindicate his wife’s honor, his
hardest task will be reconciliation with this boy.”

“All, and more than all, the evils I anticipated have followed this
insane vengeance,” said Upton. “I begin to think that one ought to leave
a golden bridge even to our revenge, Princess.”

“Assuredly, wherever a woman is the victim,” said she, smiling; “for you
are so certain to have reasons for distrusting yourself.”

Upton sat meditating for some time on the plan of the Princess; had
it only originated with himself, it was exactly the kind of project he
would have liked. He knew enough of life to be aware that one can do
very little more than launch events upon the great ocean of destiny;
that the pretension to guide and direct them is oftener a snare than
anything else; that the contingencies and accidents, the complications
too, which beset every move in life, disconcert all one’s
pre-arrangements, so that it is rare indeed when we are able to pursue
the same path towards any object by which we have set out.

As the scheme was, however, that of another, he now scrutinized it, and
weighed every objection to its accomplishment, constantly returning to
the same difficulty, as he said,--

“You do not know Glencore.”

“The man who has but one passion, one impulse in life, is rarely a
difficult study,” was the measured reply. “Lord Glencore’s vengeance has
worn itself out, exactly as all similar outbreaks of temper do, for want
of opposition. There was nothing to feed, nothing to minister to it. He
sees--I have taken care that he should see--that his bolt has not struck
the mark; that her position is not the precarious thing he meant to
make it, but a station as much protected and fenced round by its own
conventionalities as that of any, the proudest lady in society. For one
that dares to impugn her, there are full fifty ready to condemn _him_;
and all this has been done without reprisal or recrimination; no
partisanship to arraign his moroseness and his cruelty,--none of that
‘coterie’ defence which divides society into two sections. This, of
course, has wounded his pride, but it has not stimulated his anger; but,
above all, it has imparted to her the advantage of a dignity of which
his vengeance was intended to deprive her.”

“You must be a sanguine and a hopeful spirit, Princess, if you deem that
such elements will unite happily hereafter,” said Upton, smiling.

“I really never carried my speculations so far,” replied she. “It is in
actual life, as in that of the stage, quite sufficient to accompany the
actors to the fall of the curtain.”

“The Chevalier Stubber, madame,” said a servant, entering, “wishes to
know if you will receive him.”

“Yes--no--yes. Tell him to come in,” said, she rapidly, as she resumed
her seat beside the fire.



CHAPTER L. ANTE-DINNER REFLECTIONS

Notwithstanding the strongly expressed sentiments of the Princess with
regard to the Chevalier Stubber, she received him with marked favor, and
gave him her hand to kiss, with evident cordiality. As for Upton, it was
the triumph of his manner to deal with men separated widely from himself
in station and abilities. He could throw such an air of good fellowship
into the smallest attentions, impart such a glow of kindliness to the
veriest commonplaces, that the very craftiest and shrewdest could never
detect. As he leaned his arm, therefore, on Stubber’s shoulder, and
smiled benignly on him, you would have said it was the affectionate
meeting with a long-absent brother. But there was something besides
this: there was the expansive confidence accorded to a trusty colleague;
and as he asked him about the Duchy, its taxation, its debt, its
alliances and difficulties, you might mark in the attention he bestowed
all the signs of one receiving very valuable information.

“You perceive, Princess,” said he, at last, “Stubber quite agrees with
the Duke of Cloudeslie,--these small states enjoy no real independence.”

“Then why are they not absorbed into the larger nations about them?”

“They have their uses; they are like substances interposed between
conflicting bodies, which receive and diminish the shock of collisions.
So that Prussia, when wanting to wound Austria, only pinches Baden; and
Austria, desirous of insulting Saxony, ‘takes it out’ on Sigmaringen.”

“It’s a pleasant destiny you assign them,” said she, laughing.

“Stubber will tell you I’m not far wrong in my appreciation.”

“I ‘m not for what they call ‘mediatizing’ them neither, my Lady,” said
Stubber, who generally used the designation to imply his highest degree
of respect. “That may all be very well for the interests of the great
states, and the balance of power, and all that sort of thing; but we
ought also to bestow a thought upon the people of these small countries,
especially on the inhabitants of their cities. What’s to become of
_them_ when you withdraw their courts, and throw their little capitals
into the position of provincial towns and even villages?”

“They will eke out a livelihood somehow, my dear Stubber. Be assured
that they ‘ll not starve. Masters of the Horse may have to keep livery
stables; chamberlains turn valets; ladies of the bedchamber descend to
the arts of millinery: but, after all, the change will be but in name,
and there will not be a whit more slavery in the new condition than in
the old one.”

“Well, I ‘m not so sure they ‘ll take the same comfortable view of it
that you do, Sir Horace,” said Stubber; “nor can I see who can possibly
want livery stables, or smart bonnets, or even a fine butler, when
the resources of the Court are withdrawn, and the city left to its own
devices.”

“Stubber suspects,” said Upton, “that the policy which prevails amongst
our great landed proprietors against small holdings is that which at
present influences the larger states of Europe against small kingdoms;
and so far he is right. It is unquestionably the notion of our day that
the influences of government require space for their exercise.”

“If the happiness of the people was to be thought of, which of course it
is not,” said Stubber, “I’d say leave them as they are.”

“Ah, my dear Stubber, you are now drawing the question into the realm of
the imaginary. What do any of us know about our happiness?”

“Enough to eat and drink, a comfortable roof over you, good clothes,
nothing oppressive or unequal in the laws,--these go for a good way
in the kind of thing I mean; and let me observe, sir, it is a great
privilege little states, like little people, enjoy, that they need have
no ambitions. They don’t want to conquer anybody; they neither ask for
the mouth of a river here, or an island there; and if only let alone,
they ‘ll never disturb the peace of the world at large.”

“My dear Stubber, you are quite a proficient at state-craft,” said
Upton, with the very least superciliousness in the accent.

“Well, I don’t know, Sir Horace,” said the other, modestly, “but as my
master’s means are about the double of what they were when I entered his
service, and as the people pay about one-sixth less in taxes than they
used to do, mayhap I might say that I have put the saddle on the right
part of the back.”

“Your foreign policy does not seem quite as unobjectionable as your home
management. That was an ugly business about that boy you gave up to the
Austrians.”

“Well, there were mistakes on all sides. You yourself, Sir Horace, gave
him a false passport; his real name turns out to be Massy: it made an
impression on me, from a circumstance that happened when I was a young
fellow living as pad-groom with Prince Tottskoy. I went over on a
lark one day to Capri, and was witness to a wedding there of a young
Englishman called Massy.”

“Were you, then, present at the ceremony?”

“Yes, sir; and what’s stranger still, I have a voucher for it.”

“A voucher for it. What do you mean?”

“It was this way, sir. There was a great supper for the country people
and the servants, and I was there, and I suppose I took too much of that
Capri wine; it was new and hot at the time, and I got into a row of
some sort, and I beat the Deputato from some place or t’ other, and got
locked up for three days; and the priest, a very jolly fellow, gave
me under his handwriting a voucher that I had been a witness of the
marriage, and all the festivities afterwards, just to show my master how
everything happened. But the Prince never asked me for any explanations,
and only said he ‘hoped I had amused myself well;’ and so I kept my
voucher to myself, and I have it at this very hour.”

“Will you let me see it, Stubber?”

“To be sure, sir, you shall have it, if I can lay my hand on ‘t in the
course of the day.”

“Let me beg you will go at once and search for it; it may be of more
importance than you know of. Go, my dear Stubber, and look it up.”

“I’ll not lose a moment, since you wish to have it,” said Stubber; “and
I am sure your ladyship will excuse my abrupt departure.”

The Princess assured him that her own interest in the document was not
inferior to that of Sir Horace, and he hastened off to prosecute his
search.

“Here, then, are all my plans altered at once,” exclaimed she, as the
door closed after him. “If this paper mean only as much as he asserts,
it will be ample proof of marriage, and lead us to the knowledge of all
those who were present at it.”

“Yet must we well reflect on the use we make of it,” said Upton.
“Glencore is now evidently balancing what course to take. As his chances
of recovery grow less each day, he seems to incline more and more to
repair the wrong he has done. Should we show on our side the merest
semblance of compulsion, I would not answer for him.”

“So that we have the power, as a last resource, I am content to
diplomatize,” said the Princess; “but you must see him this evening, and
press for a decision.”

“He has already asked me to come to him after we return from Court. It
will be late, but it is the hour at which he likes best to talk. If I
see occasion for it, I can allude to what Stubber has told us; but it
will be only if driven by necessity to it.”

“I would act more boldly and more promptly,” said she.

“And rouse an opposition, perhaps, that already is becoming dormant. No,
I know Glencore well, and will deal with him more patiently.”

“From the Chevalier Stubber, your Excellency,” said a servant,
presenting a sealed packet; and Sir Horace opened it at once. The
envelope contained a small and shabby slip of paper, of which the
writing appeared faint and indistinct. It was dated 18--, Church of
St. Lorenzo, Capri, and went to certify that Guglielmo Stubber had been
present, on the morning of the 18th August, at the marriage of the Most
Noble Signor Massy with the Princess de la Torre, having in quality
as witness signed the registry thereof; and then went on to state
the circumstance of his attendance at the supper, and the event which
ensued. It bore the name of the writer at foot, Basilio Nardoni, priest
of the aforesaid church and village.

“Little is Glencore aware that such an evidence as this is in
existence,” said Upton. “The conviction that he had his vengeance in his
power led him into this insane project. He fancied there was not a flaw
in that terrible indictment; and see, here is enough to open the door to
truth, and undo every detail of all his plotting. How strange is it that
the events of life should so often concur to expose the dark schemes of
men’s hearts; proofs starting up in un-thought-of places, as though to
show how vain was mere subtlety in conflict with the inevitable law of
Fate.”

“This Basilio Nardoni is an acquaintance of mine,” said the Princess,
bent on pursuing another train of thought; “he was chaplain to the
Cardinal Caraffa, and frequently brought me communications from his
Eminence. He can be found, if wanted.”

“It is unlikely--most unlikely--that we shall require him.”

“If you mean that Lord Glencore will himself make all the amends he can
for a gross injury and a fraud, no more is necessary,” said she, folding
the paper, and placing it in her pocket-book; “but if anything short of
this be intended, then there is no exposure too open, no publicity too
wide, to be given to the most cruel wrong the world has ever heard of.”

“Leave me to deal with Glencore. I think I am about the only one who can
treat with him.”

“And now for this dinner at Court, for I have changed my mind, and mean
to go,” said the Princess. “It is full time to dress, I believe.”

“It is almost six o’clock,” said Upton, starting up. “We have quite
forgotten ourselves.”



CHAPTER LI. CONFLICTING THOUGHTS

The Princess Sabloukoff found--not by any means an unfrequent experience
in life--that the dinner, whose dulness she had dreaded, turned out a
very pleasant affair. The Prince was unusually gracious. He was in good
spirits, and put forth powers of agreeability which had been successful
in one of less distinction than himself. He possessed eminently, what a
great orator once panegyrized as a high conversational element, “great
variety,” and could without abruptness pass from subject to subject,
with always what showed he had bestowed thought upon the theme before
him. Great people have few more enviable privileges than that they
choose their own topics for conversation. Nothing disagreeable, nothing
wearisome, nothing inopportune, can be intruded upon them. When they
have no longer anything worth saying, they can change the subject or the
company.

His Highness talked with Madame de Sabloukoff on questions of state
as he might have talked with a Metternich; he even invited from her
expressions of opinion that were almost counsels, sentiments that
might pass for warnings. He ranged over the news of the day, relating
occasionally some little anecdote, every actor in which was a celebrity;
or now and then communicating some piece of valueless secrecy, told with
all the mystery of a “great fact;” and then he discussed with Upton the
condition of England, and deplored, as all Continental rulers do,
the impending downfall of that kingdom, from the growing force of our
restless and daring democracy. He regretted much that Sir Horace was not
still in office, but consoled himself by reflecting that the pleasure he
enjoyed in his society had been in that case denied him. In fact, what
with insinuated flatteries, little signs of confidence, and a most
marked tone of cordiality, purposely meant to strike beholders, the
Prince conducted the conversation right royally, and played “Highness”
 to perfection.

And these two crafty, keen-sighted people, did they not smile at the
performance, and did they not, as they drove home at night, amuse
themselves as they recounted the little traits of the great man’s
dupery? Not a bit of it. They were charmed with his gracious manner, and
actually enchanted with his agreeability. Strong in their self-esteem,
they could not be brought to suspect that any artifice could be
practised on _them_, or that the mere trickery and tinsel of high
station could be imposed on them as true value. Nay, they even went
further, and discovered that his Highness was really a very remarkable
man, and one who received far less than the estimation due to him. His
flightiness became versatility; his eccentricity was all originalty; and
ere they reached the hotel, they had endowed him with almost every moral
and mental quality that can dignify manhood.

“It is really a magnificent turquoise,” said the Princess, gazing with
admiration at a ring the Prince had taken from his own finger to present
to her.

“How absurd is that English jealousy about foreign decorations! I was
obliged to decline the Red Cross of Massa which his Highness proposed
to confer on me. A monarchy that wants to emulate a republic is simply
ridiculous.”

“You English are obliged to pay dear for your hypocrisies; and you
ought, for you really love them.” And with this taunt the carriage
stopped at the door of the inn.

As Upton passed up the stairs, the waiter handed him a note, which he
hastily opened; it was from Glencore, and in these words:--

Dear Upton,--I can bear this suspense no longer; to remain here
canvassing with myself all the doubts that beset me is a torture
I cannot endure. I leave, therefore, at once for Florence. Once
there,--where I mean to see and hear for myself,--I can decide what is
to be the fate of the few days or weeks that yet remain to--Yours,

Glencore.


“He is gone, then,--his Lordship has started?”

“Yes, your Excellency, he is by this time near Lucca, for he gave orders
to have horses ready at all the stations.”

“Read that, madame,” said Upton, as he once more found himself alone
with the Princess; “you will see that all your plans are disconcerted.
He is off to Florence.”

Madame de Sabloukoff read the note, and threw it carelessly on the
table. “He wants to forgive himself, and only hesitates how to do so
gracefully,” said she, sneeringly.

“I think you are less than just to him,” said Upton, mildly; “his is a
noble nature, disfigured by one grand defect.”

“Your national character, like your language, is so full of
incongruities and contradictions that I am not ashamed to own myself
unequal to master it; but it strikes me that both one and the other
usurp freedoms that are not permitted to others. At all events, I am
rejoiced that he has gone. It is the most wearisome thing in life to
negotiate with one too near you. Diplomacy of even the humblest kind
requires distance.”

“You agree with the duellist, I perceive,” said he, laughing, “that
twelve paces is a more fatal distance than across a handkerchief:
proximity begets tremor.”

“You have guessed my meaning correctly,” said she; “meanwhile, I must
write to _her_ not to come here. Shall I say that we will be in Florence
in a day or two?”

“I was just thinking of those Serravezza springs,” said Upton; “they
contain a bi-chloride of potash, which Staub, in his treatise, says, ‘is
the element wanting in all nervous organizations.’”

“But remember the season,--we are in mid-winter; the hotels are closed.”

“The springs are running, Princess; ‘the earth,’ as Mos-chus says, ‘is
a mother that never ceases to nourish.’ I do suspect I need a little
nursing.”

The Princess understood him thoroughly. She well knew that whenever the
affairs of Europe followed an unbroken track, without anything eventful
or interesting, Sir Horace fell back upon his maladies for matter of
occupation. She had, however, now occasion for his advice and counsel,
and by no means concurred in his plan of spending some days, if not
weeks, in the dreary mountain solitudes of Serravezza. “You must
certainly consult Zanetti before you venture on these waters,” said
she; “they are highly dangerous if taken without the greatest
circumspection;” and she gave a catalogue of imaginary calamities which
had befallen various illustrious and gifted individuals, to which Upton
listened with profound attention.

“Very well,” sighed he, as she finished, “it must be as you say. I’ll
see Zanetti, for I cannot afford to die just yet. That ‘Greek question’
will have no solution without me,--no one has the key of it but myself.
That Panslavic scheme, too, in the Principalities attracts no notice
but _mine_; and as to Spain, the policy I have devised for that country
requires all the watchfulness I can bestow on it. No, Princess,”--here
he gave a melancholy sigh,--“we must not die at this moment. There are
just four men in Europe; I doubt if she could get on with three.”

“What proportion do you admit as to the other sex?” said she, laughing.

“I only know of one, madame;” and he kissed her hand with gallantry.
“And now for Florence, if you will.”

It is by no means improbable that our readers have a right to an apology
at our hands for the habit we have indulged of lingering along with the
two individuals whose sayings and doings are not directly essential
to our tale; but is not the story of every-day life our guarantee
that incidents and people cross and re-cross the path we are going,
attracting our attention, engaging our sympathy, enlisting our energies,
even in our most anxious periods? Such is the world; and we cannot
venture out of reality. Besides this, we are disposed to think that the
moral of a tale is often more effectively conveyed by the characters
than by the catastrophe of a story. The strange, discordant tones of
the human heart, blending, with melody the purest, sounds of passionate
meaning, are in themselves more powerful lessons than all the records of
rewarded virtue and all the calendars of punished vice. The nature of
a single man can be far more instructive than the history of every
accident that befalls him.

It is, then, with regret that we leave the Princess and Sir Horace to
pursue their journey alone. We confess a liking for their society, and
would often as soon loiter in the by-paths that they follow as journey
in the more recognized high-road of our true story. Not having the
conviction that our sympathy is shared by our readers, we again return
to the fortunes of Glencore.

When Lord Glencore’s carriage underwent the usual scrutiny exercised
towards travellers at the gate of Florence, and prying officials poked
their lanterns in every quarter, in all the security of their “caste,”
 two foot travellers were rudely pushed aside to await the time till the
pretentious equipage passed on. They were foreigners, and their effects,
which they carried in knapsacks, required examination.

“We have come a long way on foot to-day,” said the younger in a tone
that indicated nothing of one asking a favor. “Can’t we have this search
made at once?”

“Whisht! whisht!” whispered his companion, in English; “wait till the
Prince moves on, and be polite with them all.”

“I am seeking for nothing in the shape of compliment,” said the other;
“there is no reason why, because I am on foot, I must be detained for
this man.”

Again the other remonstrated, and suggested patience.

“What are you grumbling about, young fellow?” cried one of the officers.
“Do you fancy yourself of the same consequence as Milordo? And see, he
must wait his time here.”

“We came a good way on foot to-day, sir,” interposed the elder, eagerly,
taking the reply on himself, “and we ‘re tired and weary, and would be
deeply obliged if you’d examine us as soon as you could.”

“Stand aside and wait your turn,” was the stern response.

“You almost deserve the fellow’s insolence, Billy,” said the youth; “a
crown-piece in his hand had been far more intelligible than your appeal
to his pity.” And he threw himself wearily down on a stone bench.

Aroused by the accent of his own language, Lord Glencore sat up in his
carriage, and leaned out to catch sight of the speaker; but the shadow
of the overhanging roof concealed him from view. “Can’t you suffer those
two poor fellows to move on?” whispered his Lordship, as he placed a
piece of money in the officer’s hand; “they look tired and jaded.”

“There, thank his Excellency for his kindness to you, and go your way,”
 muttered the officer to Billy, who, without well understanding the
words, drew nigh the window; but the glass was already drawn up, the
postilions were once more in their saddles, and away dashed the cumbrous
carriage in all the noise and uproar that is deemed the proper tribute
to rank.

The youth heard that they were free to proceed, with a half-dogged
indifference, and throwing his knapsack on his shoulders, moved away.

“I asked them if they knew one of her name in the city, and they said,
‘No,’” said the elder.

“But they so easily mistake names: how did you call her?”

“I said ‘Harley,--la Signora Harley,’” rejoined the other; “and they
were positive she was not here. They never heard of her.”

“Well, we shall know soon,” sighed the youth, heavily. “Is not this an
inn, Billy?”

“Ay is it, but not one for our purpose,--it’s like a palace. They told
me of the ‘Leone d’Oro’ as a quiet place and cheap.”

“I don’t care where or what it be; one day and night here will do all I
want. And then for Genoa, Billy, and the sea, and the world beyond the
sea,” said the youth, with increasing animation. “You shall see what a
different fellow I’ll be when I throw behind me forever the traditions
of this dreary life here.”

“I know well the good stuff that’s in ye,” said the other,
affectionately.

“Ay, but you don’t know that I have energy as well as pride,” said the
other.

“There’s nothing beyond your reach if you will only strive to get it,”
 said he again, in the same voice.

“You’re an arrant flatterer, old boy,” cried the youth, throwing his arm
around him; “but I would not have you otherwise for the world. There is
a happiness even in the self-deception of your praise that I could not
deny myself.”

Thus chatting, they arrived at the humble door of the “Leone d’Oro,”
 where they installed themselves for the night. It was a house frequented
by couriers and _vetturini_, and at the common table for this company
they now took their places for supper. The Carnival was just drawing to
its close, and all the gayeties of that merry season were going forward.
Nothing was talked of but the brilliant festivities of the city, the
splendid balls of the Court, and the magnificent receptions in the
houses of the nobility.

“The Palazzo della Torre takes the lead of all,” said one. “There were
upwards of three thousand masks there this evening, I ‘m told, and the
gardens were just as full as the _salons_.”

“She is rich enough to afford it well,” cried another. “I counted twenty
servants in white and gold liveries on the stairs alone.”

“Were you there, then?” asked the youth, whom we may at once call by his
name of Massy.

“Yes, sir; a mask and a domino, such as you see yonder, are passports
everywhere for the next twenty-four hours; and though I ‘m only a
courier, I have been chatting with duchesses, and exchanging smart
sayings with countesses, in almost every great house in Florence this
evening. The Pergola Theatre, too, is open, and all the boxes crowded
with visitors.”

“You are a stranger, as I detect by your accent,” said another, “and you
ought to have a look at a scene such as you’ll never witness in your own
land.”

“What would come of such freedoms with us, Billy?” whispered Massy.
“Would our great lords tolerate, even for a few hours, the association
with honest fellows of this stamp?”

“There would be danger in the attempt, anyhow,” said Billy.

“What calumnies would be circulated, what slanderous tales would be sent
abroad, under cover of this secrecy! How many a coward stab would
be given in the shadow of that immunity! For one who would use the
privilege for mere amusement, how many would turn it to account for
private vengeance.”

“Are you quite certain such accidents do not occur here?”

“That society tolerates the custom is the best answer to this. There may
be, for aught we know, many a cruel vengeance executed under favor of
this secrecy. Many may cover their faces to unmask their hearts; but,
after all, they continue to observe a habit which centuries back their
forefathers followed; and the inference fairly is, that it is not
baneful. For my own part, I am glad to have an opportunity of witnessing
these Saturnalia, and to-morrow I ‘ll buy a mask and a domino, Billy,
and so shall you too. Why should we not have a day’s fooling, like the
rest?”

Billy shook his head and laughed, and they soon afterwards parted for
the night.

While young Massy slept soundly, not a dream disturbing the calmness
of his rest, Lord Glencore passed the night in a state of feverish
excitement. Led on by some strange, mysterious influence, which he could
as little account for as resist, he had come back to the city where the
fatal incident of his life had occurred. With what purpose, he could not
tell. It was not, indeed, that he had no object in view. It was rather
that he had so many and conflicting ones that they marred and destroyed
each other. No longer under the guidance of calm reason, his head
wandered from the past to the present and the future, disturbed by
passion and excited by injured self-love. At one moment, sentiments of
sorrow and shame would take the ascendant; and at the next, a vindictive
desire to follow out his vengeance and witness the ruin that he had
accomplished. The unbroken, unrelieved pressure of one thought, for
years and years of time, had at last undermined his reasoning powers;
and every attempt at calm judgment or reflection was sure to be attended
with some violent paroxysm of irrepressible rage.

There are men in whom the combative element is so strong that it usurps
all their guidance, and when once they are enlisted in a contest, they
cannot desist till the struggle be decided for or against them. Such was
Glencore. To discover that the terrible injury he had inflicted on
his wife had not crushed her nor driven her with shame from the world,
aroused once more all the vindictive passions of his nature. It was a
defiance he could not withstand. Guilty or innocent, it mattered not;
she had braved him,--at least so he was told,--and as such he had come
to see her with his own eyes. If this was the thought which predominated
in his mind, others there were that had their passing power over
him,--moments of tenderness, moments in which the long past came back
again, full of softening memories; and then he would burst into tears
and cry bitterly.

If he ventured to project any plan for reconciliation with her he had
so cruelly wronged, he as suddenly bethought him that her spirit was not
less high and haughty than his own. She had, so far as he could learn,
never quailed before his vengeance; how, then, might he suppose would
she act in the presence of his avowed injustice? Was it not, besides,
too late to repair the wrong? Even for his boy’s sake, would it not be
better if he inherited sufficient means to support an honorable life,
unknown and unnoticed, than bequeath to him a name so associated with
shame and sorrow?

“Who can tell,” he would cry aloud, “what my harsh treatment may not
have made him? what resentment may have taken root in his young heart?
what distrust may have eaten into his nature? If I could but see him and
talk with him as a stranger,--if I could be able to judge him apart from
the influences that my own feelings would create,--even then, what would
it avail me? I have so sullied and tarnished a proud name that he could
never bear it without reproach. ‘Who is this Lord Glencore?’ people
would say. ‘What is the strange story of his birth? Has any one yet
got at the truth? Was the father the cruel tyrant, or the mother the
worthless creature, we hear tell of? Is he even legitimate, and, if so,
why does he walk apart from his equals, and live without recognition
by his order?’ This is the noble heritage I am to leave him,--this the
proud position to which he is to succeed! And yet Upton says that the
boy’s rights are inalienable; that, think how I may, do what I will, the
day on which I die, he is the rightful Lord Glencore. His claim may lie
dormant, the proofs may be buried, but that, in truth and fact, he will
be what all my subterfuge and all my falsehood cannot deny him. And
then, if the day should come that he asserts his right,--if, by some
of those wonderful accidents that reveal the mysteries of the world,
he should succeed to prove his claim,--what a memory will he cherish
of _me!_ Will not every sorrow of his youth, every indignity of his
manhood, be associated with my name? Will he or can he ever forgive him
who defamed the mother and despoiled the son?”

In the terrible conflict of such thoughts as these he passed the night;
intervals of violent grief or passion alone breaking the sad connection
of such reflections, till at length the worn-out faculties, incapable
of further exercise, wandered away into incoherency, and he raved in all
the wildness of insanity.

It was thus that Upton found him on his arrival.



CHAPTER LII. MAJOR SCARESBY’S VISIT

Down the crowded thoroughfare of the Borgo d’ Ognisanti the tide of
Carnival mummers poured unceasingly. Hideous masks and gay dominos,
ludicrous impersonations and absurd satires on costume, abounded, and
the entire population seemed to have given themselves up to merriment,
and were fooling it to the top o’ their bent. Bands of music and
chorus-singers from the theatre filled the air with their loud strains,
and carriages crowded with fantastic figures moved past, pelting the
bystanders with mock sweetmeats, and covering them with showers of
flour. It was a season of universal license, and, short of actual
outrage, all was permitted for the time. Nor did the enjoyment of the
scene seem to be confined to the poorer classes of the people, who thus
for the nonce assumed equality with their richer neighbors; but all,
even to the very highest, mixed in the wild excitement of the pageant,
and took the rough treatment they met with in perfect good-humor.
Dukes and princes, white from head to foot with the snowy shower, went
laughingly along, and grave dignitaries were fain to walk arm-inarm
with the most ludicrous monstrosities, whose gestures turned on them
the laughter of all around. Occasionally--but, it must be owned,
rarely--some philosopher of a sterner school might be seen passing
hurriedly along, his severe features and contemptuous glances owning
to little sympathy with the mummery about him; but even _he_ had to
compromise his proud disdain, and escape, as best he might, from the
indiscriminate justice of the crowd. To detect one of this stamp, to
follow, and turn upon him the full tide of popular fury, seemed to be
the greatest triumph of the scene. When such a victim presented himself,
all joined in the pursuit: nuns embraced, devils environed him, angels
perched on his shoulders, mock wild boars rushed between his legs; his
hat was decorated with feathers, his clothes inundated with showers of
meal or flour; hackney-coachmen, dressed as ladies, fainted in his arms,
and semi-naked bacchanals pressed drink to his lips. In a word, each
contributed what he might of attention to the luckless individual, whose
resistance--if he were so impolitic as to make any--only increased the
zest of the persecution.

An instance of this kind had now attracted general attention, nor was
the amusement diminished by the discovery that he was a foreigner and an
Englishman. Impertinent allusions to his nation, absurd attempts at his
language, ludicrous travesties of what were supposed to be his native
customs, were showered on him, in company with a hailstorm of mock
bonbons and lime-pellets; till, covered with powder, and outraged
beyond all endurance, he fought his way into the entrance of the Hôtel
d’Italie, followed by the cries and laughter of the populace.

“Cursed tomfoolery! Confounded asses!” cried he, as he found himself in
a harbor of refuge. “What the devil fun can they discover in making each
other dirtier than their daily habits bespeak them? I say,” cried he,
addressing a waiter, “is Sir Horace Upton staying here? Well, will you
say Major Scaresby--be correct in the name--Major Scaresby requests to
pay his respects.”

“His Excellency will see you, sir,” said the man, returning quickly with
the reply.

From the end of a room, so darkened by closed shutters and curtains as
to make all approach difficult, a weak voice called out, “Ah, Scaresby,
how d’ ye do? I was just thinking to myself that I could n’t be in
Florence, since I had not seen you.”

“You are too good, too kind, Sir Horace, to say so,” said the other,
with a voice whose tones by no means corresponded with the words.

“Yes, Scaresby, everything in this good city is in a manner associated
with your name. Its intrigues, its quarrels, its loves and jealousies,
its mysteries, in fine, have had no such interpreter as yourself within
the memory of man! What a pity there were no Scaresbys in the Cinque
Cento! How sad there were none of your family here in the Medician
period! What a picture might we then have had of a society fuller even
than the present of moral delinquencies.” There was a degree of
pomposity in the manner he uttered this that served to conceal in a
great measure its sarcasm.

“I am much flattered to learn that I have ever enlightened your
Excellency on any subject,” said the Major, dryly.

“That you have, Scaresby. I was a mere dabbler in moral toxicology when
I heard your first lecture, and, I assure you, I was struck by your
knowledge. And how is the dear city doing?”

“It is masquerading to-day,” said Scaresby, “and, consequently, far more
natural than at any other period of the whole year. Smeared faces and
dirty finery,--exactly its suitable wear!”

“Who are here, Major? Any one that one knows?”

“Old Millington is here.”

“The Marquis?”

“Yes, he ‘s here, fresh painted and lacquered; his eyes twinkling with
a mock lustre that makes him look like an old po’-chaise with a pair of
new lamps!”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Sir Horace, encouragingly.

“And then--there’s Mabworth.”

“Sir Paul Mabworth?”

“Ay, the same old bore as ever! He has got off one of Burke’s speeches
on the India Bill by heart, and says that he spoke it on the question of
the grant for Maynooth. Oh, if poor Burke could only look up!”

“Look down! you ought to say, Scaresby; depend upon’t, he ‘s not on the
Opposition benches still!”

“I hate the fellow,” said Scaresby, whose ill-temper was always
augmented by any attempted smartness of those he conversed with. “He has
taken Walmsley’s cook away from him, and never gives any one a dinner.”

“That is shameful; a perfect dog in the manger!”

“Worse; he ‘s a dog without any manger! For he keeps his house on
board-wages, and there’s literally nothing to eat! That poor thing,
Strejowsky.”

“Oh, Olga Strejowsky, do you mean? What of her?”

“Why, there’s another husband just turned up. They thought he was killed
in the Caucasus, but he was only passing a few years in Siberia; and so
he has come back, and claims all the emeralds. You remember, of course,
that famous necklace, and the great drops! They belonged once to the
Empress Catherine, but Mabworth says that he took the concern with all
its dependencies; he ‘ll give up his bargain, but make no compromise.”

“She’s growing old, I fancy.”

“She’s younger than the Sabloukoff by five good years, and they tell me
_she_ plays Beauty to this hour.”

Ah, Scaresby, had you known what words were these you have just uttered,
or had you only seen the face of him who heard them, you had rather
bitten your tongue off than suffered it to fashion them!

“Brignolles danced with her at that celebrated _fête_ given by the
Prince of Orleans something like eight-and-thirty years ago.”

“And how is the dear Duke?” asked Upton, sharply.

“Just as you saw him at the Court of Louis XVIII.; he swaggers a little
more as he gets more feeble about the legs, and he shows his teeth when
he laughs, more decidedly since his last journey to Paris. Devilish
clever fellows these modern dentists are! He wants to marry; I suppose
you ‘ve heard it.”

“Not a word of it. Who is the happy fair?”

“The Nina, as they call her now. She was one of the Delia Torres, who
married, or didn’t marry, Glencore. Don’t you remember him? He was
Colonel of the Eleventh, and a devil of a martinet he was.”

“I remember him,” said Upton, dryly.

“Well, he ran off with one of those girls, and some say they were
married at Capri,--as if it signified what happened at Capri! She was
a deuced good-looking girl at the time,--a coquette, you know,--and
Glencore was one of those stiff English fellows that think every man is
making up to his wife; he drank besides.”

“No, pardon me, there you are mistaken. I knew him intimately; Glencore
was as temperate as myself.”

“I have it from Lowther, who used to take him home at night; _he_ said
Glencore never went to bed sober! At all events, she hated him, and
detested his miserly habits.”

“Another mistake, my dear Major. Glencore was never what is called a
rich man, but he was always a generous one!”

“I suppose you’ll not deny that he used to thrash her? Ay, and with a
horsewhip too!”

“Come, come, Scaresby; this is really too coarse for mere jesting.”

“Jest? By Jove! it was very bitter earnest. She told Brignolles all
about it. I ‘m not sure she didn’t show him the marks.”

“Take my word for it, Scaresby,” said Upton, dropping his voice to a low
but measured tone, “this is a base calumny, and the Duke of Brignolles
no more circulated such a story than I did. He is a man of honor, and
utterly incapable of it.”

“I can only repeat that I believe it to be perfectly true!” said
Scaresby, calmly. “Nobody here ever doubted the story.”

“I cannot say what measure of charity accompanies your zeal for truth in
this amiable society, Scaresby, but I can repeat my assertion that this
must be a falsehood.”

“You will find it very hard, nevertheless, to bring any one over to your
opinion,” retorted the unappeasable Major. “He was a fellow everybody
hated; proud and supercilious to all, and treated his wife’s
relations--who were of far better blood than himself--as though they
were _canaille_.”

A loud crash, as if of something heavy having fallen, here interrupted
their colloquy, and Upton sprang from his seat and hastened into the
adjoining room. Close beside the door--so close that he almost fell over
it in entering--lay the figure of Lord Glencore. In his efforts to
reach the door he had fainted, and there he lay,--a cold, clammy sweat
covering his livid features, and his bloodless lips slightly parted.

It was almost an hour ere his consciousness returned; but when it did,
and he saw Upton alone at his bedside, he pressed his hand within his
own, and said, “I heard it all, Upton, every word! I tried to reach
the room; I got out of bed--and was already at the door--when my brain
reeled, and my heart grew faint It may have been malady, it might be
passion,--I know not; but I saw no more. He is gone,--is he not?” cried
he, in a faint whisper.

“Yes, yes,--an hour ago; but you will think nothing of what he said,
when I tell you his name. It was Scaresby,--Major Scaresby; one whose
bad tongue is the one solitary claim by which he subsists in a society
of slanderers!”

“And he is gone!” repeated the other, in a tone of deep despondency.

“Of course he is. I never saw him since; but be assured of what I have
just told you, that his libels carry no reproach. He is a calumniator by
temperament.”

“I ‘d have shot him, if I could have opened the door,” muttered Glencore
between his teeth; but Upton heard the words distinctly. “What am I to
this man,” cried he, aloud, “or he to me, that I am to be arraigned
by him on charges of any kind, true or false? What accident of fortune
makes him my judge? Tell me that, sir. Who has appealed to him for
protection? Who has demanded to be righted at his hand?”

“Will you not hear me, Glencore, when I say that his slanders have no
sting? In the circles wherein he mixes, it is the mere scandal that
amuses; for its veracity, there is not one that cares. You, or I, or
some one else, supply the name of an actor in a disreputable drama, the
plot of which alone interests, not the performer.”

“And am I to sit tamely down under this degradation?” exclaimed
Glencore, passionately. “I have never subscribed to this dictation.
There is little, indeed, of life left to me, but there is enough,
perhaps, to vindicate myself against men of this stamp. You shall take
him a message from me; you shall tell him by what accident I overheard
his discoveries.”

“My dear Glencore, there are graver interests, far worthier cares, than
any this man’s name can enter into, which should now engage you.”

“I say he shall have my provocation, and that within an hour!” cried
Glencore, wildly.

“You would give this man and his words a consequence that neither have
ever possessed,” said Upton, in a mild and subdued tone. “Remember,
Glencore, when I left with you this morning that paper of Stubber’s it
was with a distinct understanding that other and wiser thoughts than
those of vengeance were to occupy your attention. I never scrupled to
place it in your hands; I never hesitated about confiding to you what in
a lawyer’s phrase would be a proof against you. When an act of justice
was to be done, I would not stain it by the faintest shadow of coercion.
I left you free, I leave you still free, from everything but the
dictates of your own honor.”

Glencore made no reply, but the conflict of his thoughts seemed to
agitate him greatly.

“The man who has pursued a false path in life,” said Upton, calmly,
“has need of much courage to retrace his steps; but courage is not the
quality you fail in, Glencore, so that I appeal to you with confidence.”

“I have need of courage,” muttered Glencore; “you say truly. What was it
the doctor said this morning,--aneurism?”

Upton moved his head with an inclination barely perceptible.

“What a Nemesis there is in nature,” said Glencore, with a sickly
attempt to smile, “that passion should beget malady! I never knew,
physically speaking, that I had a heart--till it was broken. So that,”
 resumed he, in a more agreeable tone, “death may ensue at any moment--on
the least excitement?”

“He warned you gravely on that point,” said Upton, cautiously.

“How strange that I should have come through that trial of an hour ago!
It was not that the struggle did not move me. I could have torn that
fellow limb from limb, Upton, if I had but the strength! But see,” cried
he, feebly, “what a poor wretch I am; I cannot close these fingers!”
 and he held out a worn and clammy hand as he spoke. “Do with me as you
will,” said he, after a pause; “I ought to have followed your counsels
long ago!”

Upton was too subtle an anatomist of human motives to venture by even
the slightest word to disturb a train of thought which any interference
could only damage. As the other still continued to meditate, and, by
his manner and look, in a calmer and more reflective spirit, the wily
diplomatist moved noiselessly away, and left him alone.



CHAPTER LIII. A MASK IN CARNIVAL TIME

From the gorgeous halls of the Pitti Palace down to the humblest chamber
in Camaldole, Florence was a scene of rejoicing. As night closed in, the
crowds seemed only to increase, and the din and clamor to grow louder.
It seemed as though festivity and joy had overflowed from the houses,
filling the streets with merry-makers. In the clear cold air, groups
feasted, and sang, and danced, all mingling and intermixing with a
freedom that showed how thoroughly the spirit of pleasure-seeking can
annihilate the distinctions of class. The soiled and tattered mummer
leaned over the carriage-door and exchanged compliments with the masked
duchess within. The titled noble of a dozen quarterings stopped to
pledge a merry company who pressed him to drain a glass of Monte
Pulciano with them. There was a perfect fellowship between those whom
fortune had so widely separated, and the polished accents of high
society were heard to blend with the quaint and racy expressions of the
“people.”

Theatres and palaces lay open, all lighted “_a giorno_.” The whole
population of the city surged and swayed to and fro like a mighty sea in
motion, making the air resound the while with a wild mixture of sounds,
wherein music and laughter were blended. Amid the orgie, however, not
an act, not a word of rudeness, disturbed the general content. It was a
season of universal joy, and none dared to destroy the spell of pleasure
that presided.

Our task is not to follow the princely equipages as they rolled in
unceasing tides within the marble courts, nor yet to track the strong
flood that poured through the wide thoroughfares in all the wildest
exuberance of their joy.

Our business is with two travellers, who, well weary of being for hours
a-foot, and partly sated with pleasure, sat down to rest themselves on a
bench beside the Arno.

“It is glorious fooling, that must be owned, Billy,” said Charles Massy,
“and the spirit is most contagious. How little have you or I in
common with these people! We scarce can catch the accents of the droll
allusions, we cannot follow the strains of their rude songs, and yet we
are carried away like the rest to feel a wild enjoyment in all this din,
and glitter, and movement. How well they do it, too!”

“That’s all by rayson of concentration,” said ‘Billy, gravely. “They
are highly charged with fun. The ould adage says, ‘Non semper sunt
Saturnalia,’--It is not every day Morris kills a cow.”

“Yet it is by this very habit of enjoyment that they know how to be
happy.”

“To be sure it is,” cried Billy; “_they_ have a ritual for it which _we_
have n’t; as Cicero tells us, ‘In jucundis nullum periculum.’ But ye see
we have no notion of any amusement without a dash of danger through it,
if not even cruelty!”

“The French know how to reconcile the two natures; they are brave, and
light-hearted too.”

“And the Irish, Mister Charles,--the Irish especially,” said Billy,
proudly; “for I was alludin’ to the English in what I said last. The
‘versatile ingenium’ is all our own.

     He goes into a tent and he spends half a-crown,
     Comes out, meets a friend, and for love knocks him down.

There ‘s an elegant philosophy in that, now, that a Saxon would never
see! For it is out of the very fulness of the heart, ye may remark, that
Pat does this, just as much as to say, ‘I don’t care for the expense!’
He smashes a skull just as he would a whole dresser of crockery-ware!
There’s something very grand in that recklessness.”

The tone of the remark, and a certain wild energy of his manner, showed
that poor Billy’s faculties were slightly under the influences of the
Tuscan grape; and the youth smiled at sight of an excess so rare.

“How hard it must be,” said Massy, “to go back to the workaday routine
of life after one of these outbursts,--to resume not alone the drudgery,
but all the slavish observances that humble men yield to great ones!”

“‘Tis what Bacon says, ‘There’s nothing so hard as unlearnin’ anything;’
and the proof is how few of us ever do it! We always go on mucin’ old
thoughts with new,--puttin’ different kinds of wine into the same glass,
and then wonderin’ we are not invigorated!”

“You ‘re in a mood for moralizing to-night, I see, Billy,” said the
other, smiling.

“The levities of life always puts me on that thrack, just as too bright
a day reminds me to take out an umbrella with me.”

“Yet I do not see that all your observation of the world has indisposed
you to enjoy it, or that you take harsher views of life the closer you
look at it.”

“Quite the reverse; the more I see of mankind, the more I ‘m struck with
the fact that the very wickedest and worst can’t get rid of remorse!
‘Tis something out of a man’s nature entirely--something that dwells
outside of him--sets him on to commit a crime; and then he begins
to rayson and dispute with the temptation, just like one keepin’ bad
company, and listenin’ to impure notions and evil suggestions day after
day; as he does this, he gets to have a taste for that kind of low
society,--I mane with his own bad thoughts,--till at last every other
ceases to amuse him. Look! what’s that there; where are they goin’ with
all the torches there?” cried he, suddenly, springing up and pointing
to a dense crowd that passed along the street. It was a band of music,
dressed in a quaint mediaeval costume, on its way to serenade some
palace.

“Let us follow and listen to them, Billy,” said the youth; and they
arose and joined the throng.

Following in the wake of the dense mass, they at last reached the gates
of a great palace, and after some waiting gained access to the spacious
courtyard. The grim old statues and armorial bearings shone in the glare
of a hundred torches, and the deep echoes rang with the brazen voices of
the band as, pent up within the quadrangle, the din of a large
orchestra arose. On a great terrace overhead numerous figures were
grouped,--indistinctly seen from the light of the _salons_ within,--but
whose mysterious movements completed the charm of a very interesting
picture.

Some wrapped in shawls to shroud them from the night air, some, less
cautiously emerging from the rooms within, leaned over the marble
balustrade and showed their jewelled arms in the dim hazy light, while
around and about them gay uniforms and costumes abounded. As Billy gave
himself up to the excitement of the music, young Massy, more interested
by the aspect of the scene, gazed unceasingly at the balcony. There was
just that shadowy indistinctness in the whole that invested it with a
kind of romantic interest, and he could weave stories and incidents from
those whose figures passed and repassed before him. He fancied that in
their gestures he could trace many meanings, and as the bent-down heads
approached, and their hands touched, he fashioned many a tale in his own
mind of moving fortunes.

“And see, she comes again to that same dark angle of the terrace,”
 muttered he to himself, as, shrouded in a large mantle and with a half
mask on her features, a tall and graceful figure passed into the place
he spoke of. “She looks like one among, but not of, them. How much of
heart-weariness is there in that attitude; how full is it of sad and
tender melancholy! Would that I could see her face! My life on’t that
it is beautiful! There, she is tearing up her bouquet; leaf by leaf the
rose-leaves are falling, as though one by one hopes are decaying in
her heart.” He pushed his way through the dense throng till he gained a
corner of the court where a few leaves and flower-stems yet strewed the
ground; carefully gathering up these, he crushed them in his hand, and
seemed to feel as though a nearer tie bound him to the fair unknown. How
little ministers to the hope; how infinitely less again will feed the
imagination of a young heart!

Between them now there was, to his appreciation, some mysterious link.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “true, I stand unknown, unnoticed; yet it is
to _me_ of all the thousands here she could reveal what is passing in
that heart! I know it, I feel it! She has a sorrow whose burden I might
help to bear. There is cruelty, or treachery, or falsehood arrayed
against her; and through all the splendor of the scene--all the wild
gayety of the orgie--some spectral image never leaves her side! I would
stake existence on it that I have read her aright!”

Of all the intoxications that can entrance the human faculties, there is
none so maddening as that produced by giving full sway to an exuberant
imagination. The bewilderment resists every effort of reason, and in its
onward course carries away its victims with all the force of a mountain
torrent. A winding stair, long unused and partly dilapidated, led to the
end of the terrace where she stood, and Massy, yielding to some strange
impulse, slowly and noiselessly crept up this till he gained a spot only
a few yards removed from her. The dark shadow of the building almost
completely concealed his figure, and left him free to contemplate her
unnoticed.

Some event of interest within had withdrawn all from the terrace
save herself; the whole balcony was suddenly deserted, and she alone
remained, to all seeming lost to the scene around her. It was then that
she removed her mask, and suffering it to fall back on her neck, rested
her head pensively on her hand. Massy bent over eagerly to try and catch
sight of her face; the effort he made startled her, she looked round,
and he cried out, “Ida--Ida! My heart could not deceive me!” In another
instant he had climbed the balcony and was beside her.

“I thought we had parted forever, Sebastian,” said she; “you told me so
on the last night at Massa.”

“And so I meant when I said it,” cried he; “nor is our meeting now of my
planning. I came to Florence, it is true, to see, but not to speak with
you, ere I left Europe forever. For three entire days I have searched
the city to discover where you lived, and chance--I have no better name
for it--chance has led me hither.”

“It is an unkind fortune that has made us meet again,” said she, in a
voice of deep melancholy.

“I have never known fortune in any other mood,” said he, fiercely. “When
clouds show me the edge of their silver linings, I only prepare myself
for storm and hurricane.”

“I know you have endured much,” said she, in a voice of deeper sadness.

“You know but little of what I have endured,” rejoined he, sternly.
“You saw me taunted, indeed, with my humble calling, insulted for my low
birth, expelled ignominiously from a house where my presence had been
sought for; and yet all these, grievous enough, are little to other
evils I have had to bear.”

“By what unhappy accident, what mischance, have you made _her_ your
enemy, Sebastian? She would not even suffer me to speak to you. She
went so far as to tell me that there was a reason for the dislike,--one
which, if she could reveal, I would never question.”

“How can I tell?” cried he, angrily. “I was born, I suppose, under an
evil star; for nothing prospers with me.”

“But can you even guess her reasons?” said she, eagerly.

“No, except it be the presumption of one in _my_ condition daring to
aspire to one in _yours_; and that, as the world goes, would be reason
enough. It is probable, too, that I did not state these pretensions of
mine over delicately. I told her, with a frankness that was not quite
acceptable, I was one who could not speak of birth or blood. She did not
like the coarse word I applied to myself, and I will not repeat it; and
she ventured to suggest that, had there not appeared some ambiguity
in her own position, _I_ could never have so far forgotten mine as to
advance such pretensions--”

“Well, and then?” cried the girl, eagerly.

“Well, and then,” said he, deliberately, “I told her I had heard rumors
of the kind she alluded to, but to _me_ they carried no significance;
that it was for _you_ I cared. The accidents of life around you had no
influence on my choice; you might be all that the greatest wealth and
highest blood could make you, or as poor and ignoble as myself, without
any change in my affections. ‘These,’ said she, ‘are the insulting
promptings of that English breeding which you say has mixed with your
blood, and if for no other cause would make me distrust you.’

“‘Stained as it may be,’ said I, ‘that same English blood is the best
pride I possess.’ She grew pale with passion as I said this, but never
spoke a word; and there we stood, staring haughtily at each other, till
she pointed to the door, and so I left her. And now, Ida, who is she
that treats me thus disdainfully? I ask you not in anger, for I know too
well how the world regards such as me to presume to question its harsh
injustice. But tell me, I beseech you, that she is one to whose station
these prejudices are the fitting accompaniments, and let me feel that
it is less myself as the individual that she wrongs, than the class I
belong to is that which she despises. I can better bear this contumely
when I know that it is an instinct.”

“If birth and blood can justify a prejudice, a Princess of the house of
Delia Torre might claim the privilege,” said the girl, haughtily. “No
family of the North, at least, will dispute with our own in lineage; but
there are other causes which may warrant all that she feels towards you
even more strongly, Sebastian. This boast of your English origin, this
it is which has doubtless injured you in her esteem. Too much reason has
she had to cherish the antipathy! Betrayed into a secret marriage by an
Englishman who represented himself as of a race noble as her own, she
was deserted and abandoned by him afterwards. This is the terrible
mystery which I never dared to tell you, and which led us to a life of
seclusion at Massa. This is the source of that hatred towards all of a
nation which she must ever associate with the greatest misfortunes of
her life! And from this unhappy event was she led to make me take that
solemn oath that I spoke of, never to link my fortunes with one of that
hated land.”

“But you told me that you had not made the pledge,” said he, wildly.

“Nor had I then, Sebastian; but since we last met, worked on by
solicitation, I could not resist; tortured by a narrative of such
sorrows as I never listened to before, I yielded, and gave my promise.”

“It matters little to _me!_” said he, gloomily; “a barrier the more or
the less can be of slight moment when there rolls a wide sea between us!
Had you ever loved me, such a pledge had been impossible.”

“It was you yourself, Sebastian, told me we were never to meet again,”
 rejoined she.

“Better that we had never done so!” muttered he. “Nay, perhaps I am
wrong,” added he, fiercely; “this meeting may serve to mark how little
there ever was between us!”

“Is this cruelty affected, Sebastian, or is it real?”

“It cannot be cruel to echo your own words. Besides,” said he, with an
air of mockery in the words, “she who lives in this gorgeous palace,
surrounded with all the splendors of life, can have little complaint to
make against the cruelty of fortune!”

“How unlike yourself is all this!” cried she. “You of all I have ever
seen or known, understood how to rise above the accidents of fate,
placing your happiness and your ambitions in a sphere where mere
questions of wealth never entered. What can have so changed you?”

Before he could reply, a sudden movement in the crowd beneath attracted
the attention of both, and a number of persons who had filled the
terrace now passed hurriedly into the _salons_, where, to judge from
the commotion, an event of some importance had occurred. Ida lost not
a moment in entering, when she was met by the words: “It is she, Nina
herself is ill; some mask--a stranger, it would seem--has said something
or threatened something.” In fact, she had been carried to her room in
strong convulsions; and while some were in search of medical aid
for her, others, not less eagerly, were endeavoring to detect the
delinquent.

From the gay and brilliant picture of festivity which was presented but
a few minutes back, what a change now came over the scene! Many hurried
away at once, shocked at even a momentary shadow on the sunny road of
their existence; others as anxiously pressed on to recount the incident
elsewhere; some, again, moved by curiosity or some better prompting,
exerted themselves to investigate what amounted to a gross violation of
the etiquette of a carnival; and thus, in the _salons_, on the stairs,
and in the court itself, the greatest bustle and confusion prevailed. At
length some suggested that the gate of the palace should be closed,
and none suffered to depart without unmasking. The motion was at once
adopted, and a small knot of persons, the friends of the Countess,
assumed the task of the scrutiny.

Despite complaints and remonstrances as to the inconvenience and delay
thus occasioned, they examined every carriage as it passed out. None,
however, but faces familiar to the Florentine world were to be met with;
the well-known of every ball and _fête_ were there, and if a stranger
presented himself, he was sure to be one for whom some acquaintance
could bear testimony.

At a fire in one of the smaller _salons_ stood a small group, of which
the Duc de Brignolles and Major Scaresby formed a part. Sentiments of a
very different order had detained these two individuals, and while
the former was deeply moved by the insult offered to the Countess, the
latter felt an intense desire to probe the circumstance to the bottom.

“Devilish odd it is!” cried Scaresby; “here we have been this last hour
and a half turning a whole house out of the windows, and yet there’s no
one to tell us what it’s all for, what it ‘s all about!”

“Pardon, monsieur,” said the Duke, severely. “We know that a lady
whose hospitality we have been accepting has retired from her company
insulted. It is very clearly our duty that this should not pass
unpunished.”

“Oughtn’t we to have some clearer insight into what constituted the
insult? It may have been a practical joke,--a _mauvaise plaisanterie_,
Duke.”

“We have no claim to any confidence not extended to us, sir,” said
the Frenchman. “To me it is quite sufficient that the Countess feels
aggrieved.”

“Not but we shall cut an absurd figure to-morrow, when we own that we
don’t know what we were so indignant about.”

“Only so many of us as have characters for the ‘latest intelligence.’”

To this sally there succeeded a somewhat awkward pause, Scaresby
occupying himself with thoughts of some perfectly safe vengeance.

“I shouldn’t wonder if it was that Count Marsano--that fellow who used
to be about the Nina long ago--come back again. He was at Como this
summer, and made many inquiries after his old love!”

A most insulting stare of defiance was the only reply the old Duke
could make to what he would have been delighted to resent as a personal
affront.

“Marsano is a _mauvais drôle_,” said a Russian; “and if a woman slighted
him, or he suspected that she did, he’s the very man to execute a
vengeance of the kind.”

“I should apply a harsher epithet to a man capable of such conduct,”
 said the Duke.

“He ‘d not take it patiently, Duke,” said the other.

“It is precisely in that hope, sir, that I should employ it,” said the
Duke.

Again was the conversation assuming a critical turn, and again an
interval of ominous silence succeeded.

“There is but one carriage now in the court, your Excellency,” said the
servant, addressing the Duke in a low voice, “and the gentleman inside
appears to be seriously ill. It might be better, perhaps, not to detain
him.”

“Of course not,” said the Duke; “but stay, I will go down myself.”

There were still a considerable number of persons on foot in the court
when the Duke descended, but only one equipage remained,--a hired
carriage,--at the open door of which a servant was standing, holding a
glass of water for his master.

“Can I be of any use to your master?” said the Duke, approaching. “Is he
ill?”

“I fear he has burst a blood-vessel, sir,” said the man. “He is too weak
to answer me.”

“Who is it,--what ‘s his name?”

“I am not able to tell you, sir; I only accompanied him from the hotel.”

“Let us have a doctor at once; he appears to be dying,” said the Duke,
as he placed his fingers on the sick man’s wrist. “Let some one go for a
physician.”

“There is one here,” cried a voice. “I’m a doctor;” and Billy Traynor
pushed his way to the spot. “Come, Master Charles, get into the coach
and help me to lift him out.”

Young Massy obeyed, and not without difficulty they succeeded at last
in disengaging the almost lifeless form of a man whose dark domino was
perfectly saturated with fresh blood; his half mask still covered his
face, and, to screen his features from the vulgar gaze of the crowd,
they suffered it to remain there.

Up the wide stairs and into a spacious _salon_ they now carried the
figure, whose drooping head and hanging limbs gave little signs of life.
They placed him on a sofa, and Traynor, with a ready hand, untied
the mask and removed it. “Merciful Heavens,” cried he, “it’s my Lord
himself!”

The youth bent down, gazed for a few seconds at the corpse-like face,
and fell fainting to the floor.

“My Lord Glencore himself!” said the Duke, who was himself an old and
attached friend.

“Hush! not a word,” whispered Traynor; “he ‘s rallyin’--he ‘s comin’ to;
don’t utter a syllable.”

Slowly and languidly the dying man raised his eyelids, and gazed at each
of those around him. From their faces he turned his gaze to the chamber,
viewing the walls and the ceiling all in turn; and then, in an accent
barely audible, he said, “Where am I?”

“Amongst friends, who love and will cherish you, dear Glencore,” said
the Duke, affectionately.

“Ah, Brignolles, I remember you. And this,--who is this?”

“Traynor, my Lord,--Billy Traynor, that will never leave you while he
can serve you!”

“Whose tears are those upon my hand,--I feel them hot and burning,” said
the sick man; and Billy stepped back, that the light should fall upon
the figure that knelt beside him.

“Don’t cry, poor fellow,” said Glencore; “it must be a hard world, or
you have many better and dearer friends than I could have ever been to
you. Who is this?”

Billy tried, but could not answer.

“Tell him, if you know who it is; see how wild and excited it has made
him,” cried the Duke; for, stretching out both hands, Glencore had
caught the boy’s face on either side, and continued to gaze on it, in
wild eagerness. “It’ is--it is!” cried he, pressing it to his bosom, and
kissing the forehead over and over again.

“Whom does he fancy it? Whom does he suspect?”

“This is--look, Brignolles,” cried the dying man, in a voice already
thick with a death-rattle,--“this is the seventh Lord Viscount Glencore.
I declare it. And now------”

He fell back, and never spoke more. A single shudder shook his feeble
frame, and he was dead.

We have had occasion once before in this veracious history to speak of
the polite oblivion Florentine society so well understands to throw over
the course of events which might cloud, even for a moment, the sunny
surface of its enjoyment. No people, so far as we know, have greater
gifts in this way; to shroud the disagreeables of life in decent
shadow--to ignore or forget them is their grand prerogative.

Scarcely, therefore, had three weeks elapsed, than the terrible
catastrophe at the Palazzo della Torre was totally consigned to the
bygones; it ceased to be thought or spoken of, and was as much matter
of remote history as an incident in the times of one of the Medici. Too
much interested in the future to waste time on the past, they launched
into speculations as to whether the Countess would be likely to marry
again; what change the late event might effect in the amount of her
fortune; and how far her position in the world might be altered by the
incident. He who, in the ordinary esteem of society, would have felt
less acutely than his neighbors for Glencore’s sad fate,--Upton,--was
in reality deeply and sincerely affected. The traits which make a
consummate man of the world--one whose prerogative it is to appreciate
others, and be able to guide and influence their actions--are, in truth,
very high and rare gifts, and imply resources of fine sentiment as fully
as stores of intellectual wealth. Upton sorrowed over Glencore as for
one whose noble nature had been poisoned by an impetuous temper, and
over whose best instincts an ungovernable self-esteem had ever held
the mastery. They had been friends almost from boyhood, and the very
worldliest of men can feel the bitterness of that isolation in which the
“turn of life” too frequently commences. Such friendships are never made
in later life. We lend our affections when young on very small security,
and though it is true we are occasionally unfortunate, we do now
and then make a safe investment. No men are more prone to attach an
exaggerated value to early friendships than those who, stirred by strong
ambitions, and animated by high resolves, have played for the great
stakes in the world’s lottery. Too much immersed in the cares and
contests of life to find time to contract close personal attachments,
they fall back upon the memory of school or college days to supply the
want of their hearts. There is a sophistry, too, that seduces them to
believe that then, at least, they were loved for what they were, for
qualities of their nature, not for accidents of station, or the proud
rewards of success. There is also another and a very strange element in
the pleasure such memories afford. Our early attachments serve as points
of departure by which we measure the distance we have travelled in life.
“Ay,” say we, “we were schoolfellows; I remember how he took the lead of
me in this or that science, how far behind he left me in such a thing;
and yet look at us now!” Upton had very often to fall back upon
similar recollections; neither his school nor his college life had
been remarkable for distinction; but it was always perceived that every
attainment he achieved was such as would be available in after life. Nor
did he ever burden himself with the toils of scholarship while there
lay within his reach stores of knowledge that might serve to contest the
higher and greater prizes that he had already set before his ambition.

But let us return to himself as, alone and sorrow-struck, he sat in
his room of the Hôtel d’Italie. Various cares and duties consequent
on Glencore’s death had devolved entirely upon him. Young Massy had
suddenly disappeared from Florence on the morning after the funeral, and
was seen no more, and Upton was the only one who could discharge any of
the necessary duties of such a moment. The very nature of the task
thus imposed upon him had its own depressing influence on his mind; the
gloomy pomp of death--the terrible companionship between affliction and
worldliness--the tear of the mourner--the heart-broken sigh drowned in
the sharp knock of the coffin-maker. He had gone through it all, and sat
moodily pondering over the future, when Madame de Sabloukoff entered.

“She ‘s much better this morning, and I think we can go over and dine
with her to-day,” said she, removing her shawl and taking a seat.

He gave a little easy smile that seemed assent, but did not speak.

“I perceive you have not opened your letters this morning,” said she,
turning towards the table, littered over with letters and despatches of
every size and shape! “This seems to be from the King,--is that his mode
of writing ‘G. R.’ in the corner?”

“So it is,” said Upton, faintly. “Will you be kind enough to read it for
me?”

“Pavilion, Brighton.

“Dear Upton,--Let me be the first to congratulate you on an appointment
which it affords me the greatest pleasure to confirm--

“What does he allude to?” cried she, stopping suddenly, while a slight
tinge of color showed surprise, and a little displeasure, perhaps,
mingled in her emotions.

“I have not the very remotest conception,” said Upton, calmly. “Let
us see what that large despatch contains; it comes from the Duke of
Agecombe. Oh,” said he, with a great effort to appear as calm and
unmoved as possible, “I see what it is, they have given me India!”

“India!” exclaimed she, in amazement.

“I mean, my dear Princess, they have given me the Governor-Generalship.”

“Which, of course, you would not accept.”

“Why not, pray?”

“India!” It is banishment, barbarism, isolation from all that really
interests or embellishes existence,--a despotism that is wanting in the
only element which gives a despot dignity, that he founds or strengthens
a dynasty.”

“No, no, charming Princess,” said he, smiling; “it is a very glorious
sovereignty, with unlimited resources and--a very handsome stipend.”

“Which, therefore, you do not decline,” said she, with a very peculiar
smile.

“With your companionship, I should call it a paradise,” said he.

“And without such?”

“Such a sacrifice as one must never shrink from at the call of duty,”
 said he, bowing profoundly.

The Princess dined that day with the Countess of Glencore, and Sir
Horace Upton journeyed towards England.



CHAPTER LIV. THE END

Tears have gone over, and once more--it is for the last time--we come
back to the old castle in the West, beside the estuary of the Killeries.
Neglect and ruin have made heavy inroads on it. The battlements of
the great tower have fallen. Of the windows, the stormy winds of the
Atlantic have left only the stone mullions. The terrace is cumbered with
loose stones and fallen masonry. Not a trace of the garden remains, save
in the chance presence of some flowering plant or shrub, half-choked
by weeds, and wearing out a sad existence in uncared-for solitude. The
entrance-gate is closely barred and fastened, but a low portal, in
a side wing, lies open, entering by which we can view the dreary
desolation within. The apartments once inhabited by Lord Glencore are
all dismantled and empty. The wind and the rain sweep at will along the
vaulted corridors and through the deep-arched chambers. Of the damp,
discolored walls and ceilings, large patches litter the floors with
fragments of stucco and carved architraves.

One small chamber, on the ground-floor, maintains a habitable aspect.
Here a bed and a few articles of furniture, some kitchen utensils and
a little bookshelf, all neatly and orderly arranged, show that some one
calls this a home! Sad and lonely enough is it! Not a sound to break
the weary stillness, save the deep roar of the heavy sea; not a living
voice, save the wild shrill cry of the osprey, as he soars above the
barren cliffs! It is winter, and what desolation can be deeper or
gloomier! The sea-sent mists wrap the mountains and even the lough
itself in their vapory shroud. The cold thin rain falls unceasingly; a
cheerless, damp, and heavy atmosphere dwells even within doors; and the
gray half light gives a shadowy indistinctness even to objects at hand,
disposing the mind to sad and dreary imaginings.

In a deep straw chair, beside the turf fire, sits a very old man, with
a large square volume upon his knee. Dwarfed by nature and shrunk by
years, there is something of almost goblin semblance in the bright
lustre of his dark eyes, and the rapid motion of his lips as he reads to
himself half aloud. The almost wild energy of his features has survived
the wear and tear of time, and, old as he is, there is about him a dash
of vigor that seems to defy age. Poor Billy Traynor is now upwards of
eighty; but his faculties are clear, his memory unclouded, and, like
Moses, his eye not dimmed. “The Three Chronicles of Loughdooner,” in
which he is reading, is the history of the Glencores, and contains,
amongst its family records, many curious predictions and prophecies.
The heirs of that ancient house were, from time immemorial, the sport of
fortune, enduring vicissitudes without end. No reverses seemed ever
too heavy to rally from; no depth of evil fate too deep for them to
extricate themselves. Involved in difficulties innumerable, engaged in
plots, conspiracies, luckless undertakings, abortive enterprises, still
they contrived to survive all around them, and come out with, indeed,
ruined fortunes and beggared estate, but still with life, and with what
is the next to life itself, an unconquerable energy of character.

It was in the encouragement of these gifts that Billy now sought for
what cheered the last declining days of his solitary life. His lord,
as he ever called him, had been for years and years away in a distant
colony, living under another name. Dwelling amongst the rough settlers
of a wild remote tract, a few brief lines at long intervals were the
only tidings that assured Billy he was yet living; yet were they enough
to convince him, coupled with the hereditary traits of his house, that
some one day or other he would come back again to resume his proud place
and the noble name of his ancestors. More than once had it been the fate
of the Glencores to see “the hearth cold, and the roof-tree blackened;”
 and Billy now muttered the lines of an old chronicle where such a
destiny was bewailed:--

     “Where are the voices, whispering low,
         Of lovers side by side?
     And where the haughty dames who swept
         Thy terraces in pride?
     Where is the wild and joyous mirth
         That drown’d th’ Atlantic’s roar,
     Making the rafters ring again
         With welcome to Glencore?
     “And where’s the step of belted knight,
         That strode the massive floor?
     And where’s the laugh of lady bright,
         We used to hear of yore?
     The hound that bayed, the prancing steed,
         Impatient at the door,
     May bide the time for many a year--
         They ‘ll never see Glencore!

“And he came back, after all,--Lord Hugo,--and was taken prisoner at
Ormond by Cromwell, and sentenced to death!” said Billy. “Sentenced to
death!--but never shot! Nobody knew why, or ever will know. After years
and years of exile he came back, and was at the Court of Charles, but
never liked,--they say dangerous! That ‘s exactly the word,--dangerous!”

He started up from his revery, and, taking his stick, issued from the
room. The mist was beginning to rise, and he took his way towards the
shore of the lough, through the wet and tangled grass. It was a long and
toilsome walk for one so old as he was, but he went manfully onward, and
at last reached the little jetty where the boats from the mainland were
wont to put in. All was cheerless and leaden-hued over the wide waste
of water; a surging swell swept heavily along, but not a sail was to be
seen. Far across the lough he could descry the harbor of Leenane, where
the boats were at anchor, and see the lazy smoke as it slowly rose
in the thick atmosphere. Seated on a stone at the water’s edge, Billy
watched long and patiently, his eyes turning at times towards the bleak
mountain-road, which for miles was visible. At last, with a weary sigh,
he arose, and muttering, “He won’t come to-day,” turned back again to
his lonely home.

To this hour he lives, and waits the “coming of Glencore.”

THE END.





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