The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 6

"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 cla.s.sics 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 pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s 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 repet.i.tion.

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 hoa.r.s.e whisper. You remember what a pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 subst.i.tute 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 pa.s.sion, 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 istae litterae_,--that's cla.s.sical 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 amba.s.sador 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 doc.u.ment from Stuttgard ought to be an unfailing soporific.

CHAPTER VI. QUEER COMPANIONSHIP