The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 28

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 emba.s.sies 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 coa.r.s.er 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 dest.i.tute 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 a.s.sumed me to be the author, and of course I am not going to give them the _eclat_ of a personal denial. The fellow who wrote it must be an a.s.s; 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.s 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 ma.s.s of waving black hair, that covers neck and shoulders, adds a species of savagery to a head which a.s.suredly 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 pa.s.s 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 a.n.a.lysis 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, n.o.bler, 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 G.o.d's workshop, rather than by implicitly accepting results just as any old woman accepts a superst.i.tion?"

"There is something ign.o.ble 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?"

"G.o.d'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 circ.u.mstances," 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 Moliere. 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."