The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 13

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 pa.s.sion and excitement.

"But your boy,--your son, Glencore!"

"He shall be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d! 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 Charge 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 a.s.sert it, you will do so without a fragment of proof, since every doc.u.ment 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 t.i.tle 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 ign.o.ble 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 t.i.tle, 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 t.i.tle and estates."

"He has no birth, sir, he is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d: 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 doc.u.mentary 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 pa.s.sion. "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 n.o.body 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 role" women perform no ign.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 pa.s.sion 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 Emba.s.sy 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 feted with the public demonstrations that await royalty, it was a.s.suredly 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 Attache, 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 Charge 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 amba.s.sadors 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, l.u.s.trous 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sociating with the cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.s.sistance. 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, "Embra.s.sons-nous, nous sommes freres!" Now, the ill.u.s.tration is a very ign.o.ble 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.