One Of Them
by Charles Lever · English · Gutenberg #32840 · 1,144,047 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: One Of Them
Author: Charles Lever
Illustrator: Hablot Knight Browne
Release date: June 16, 2010 [eBook #32840]
Most recently updated: February 28, 2018
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32840
Credits: Produced by David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE OF THEM ***
Produced by David Widger
ONE OF THEM
By Charles James Lever.
With Illustrations By Phiz.
Boston: Little, Brown, And Company.
1902.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JAMES WHITESIDE, M.P., ETC., ETC., ETC.
My Dear Whiteside,--Amongst all the friends I can count over in my own
country, and from whom space and the accidents of life have separated,
and may separate me to the last, there is not “One of Them” for whom I
entertain a sincerer regard, united with a higher hope, than yourself;
and it is in my pride to say so openly, that I ask you to accept of this
dedication from
Your attached friend,
CHARLES LEVER.
Spezia, December 90, 1860.
CONTENTS
A WORD OF APOLOGY FOR MY TITLE.
ONE OF THEM, Volume I.
CHAPTER I. A PIAZZA AFTER SUNSET
CHAPTER II. THE VILLA CAPRINI
CHAPTER III. TRAVELLING ACQUAINTANCE
CHAPTER IV. VISITORS
CHAPTER V. ACCIDENTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
CHAPTER VI. THE MEMBER FOR INCHABOGUE
CHAPTER VII. MRS. PENTHONY MORRIS
CHAPTER VIII. PORT-NA-WHAPPLE
CHAPTER IX. A DINNER AT THE RECTORY
CHAPTER X. THE LABORATORY
CHAPTER XI. A REMITTANCE
CHAPTER XII. A FELLOW-TRAVELLER ON THE COACH
CHAPTER XIII. HOW THEY LIVED AT THE VILLA
CHAPTER XIV. THE BILLIARD-ROOM
CHAPTER XV. MRS. PENTHONY MORRIS AT HER WRITING-TABLE
CHAPTER XVI. A SICK-ROOM
CHAPTER XVII. A MASTER AND MAN
CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. MORRIS AS COUNSELLOR
CHAPTER XIX. JOE'S DIPLOMACY
CHAPTER XX. A DREARY FORENOON
CHAPTER XXI. MR. O'SHEA UPON POLITICS, AND THINGS IN GENERAL
CHAPTER XXII. THE PUBLIC SERVANT ABROAD
CHAPTER XXIII. BROKEN TIES
CHAPTER XXIV. A DAY IN EARLY SPRING
CHAPTER XXV. BEHIND THE SCENES
CHAPTER XXVI. A DARK REMEMBRANCE
CHAPTER XXVII. THE FRAGMENT OF A LETTER
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE O'SHEA AT HIS LODGINGS
CHAPTER XXIX. OLD LETTERS
CHAPTER XXX. TWIST, TROVER, AND CO
CHAPTER XXXI. IN THE TOILS
CHAPTER XXXII. A DRIVE ROUND THE CASCINE AT FLORENCE
CHAPTER XXXIII. SIR WILLIAM IN THE GOUT
CHAPTER XXXIV. A WARM DISCUSSION
CHAPTER XXXV. LOO AND HER FATHER
CHAPTER XXXVI. A GRAVE SCENE IN LIGHT COMPANY
CHAPTER XXXVI. MR. STOCMAR'S VISIT
CHAPTER XXXVIII. VERY OUTSPOKEN ON THE WORLD AT LARGE
CHAPTER XXXIX. FROM CLARA
CHAPTER XL. QUACKINBOSSIANA
CHAPTER XLI. QUACKINBOSS AT HOME
CHAPTER XLII. A NEW LOCATION
CHAPTER XLIII. BUNKUMVILLE
CHAPTER XLIV. THE LECTURER
CHAPTER XLV. OF BYGONES
CHAPTER XLVI. THE DOCTOR'S NARRATIVE
CHAPTER XLVII. A HAPPY ACCIDENT
CHAPTER XLVIII. AT ROME
CHAPTER XLIX. THE PALAZZO BALBI
CHAPTER L. THREE MET AGAIN
ONE OF THEM, Volume II.
CHAPTER I. THE LONE VILLA ON THE ÇAMPAGNA
CHAPTER II. A DINNER OF TWO
CHAPTER III. SOME LAST WORDS
CHAPTER IV. FOUND OUT
CHAPTER V. THE MANAGER'S ROOM AT THE “REGENT'S”
CHAPTER VI. MR. O'SHEA AT BADEN
CHAPTER VII. THE COTTAGE NEAR BREGENZ
CHAPTER VIII. CONSULTATION
CHAPTER IX. WORDS OF GOOD CHEER
CHAPTER X. THE LETTER FROM ALFRED LAYTON
CHAPTER XI. AN EAGER GUEST
CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION
A WORD OF APOLOGY FOR MY TITLE.
Before I begin my story, let me crave my reader's indulgence for a brief
word of explanation, for which I know no better form than a parable.
There is an Eastern tale--I forget exactly where or by whom told--of a
certain poor man, who, being in extreme distress, and sorely puzzled as
to how to eke out a livelihood, bethought him to give out that he was a
great magician, endowed with the most marvellous powers, amongst others,
that of tracing out crime, and detecting the secret history of all
guilty transactions. Day after day did he proclaim to the world his
wonderful gifts, telling his fellow-citizens what a remarkable man was
amongst them, and bidding them thank Destiny for the blessing of his
presence. Now, though the story has not recorded whether their gratitude
was equal to the occasion, we are informed that the Caliph heard of the
great magician, and summoned him to his presence, for it chanced just at
the moment that the royal treasury had been broken into by thieves, and
gems of priceless value carried away.
“Find out these thieves for me,” said the Caliph, “or with your own head
pay the penalty of their crime.”
“Grant me but forty days, O king,” cried he, “and I will bring them all
before you.”
So saying, he went away, but was no sooner at home and in the solitude
of his own house than be tore his beard, beat his breast, and, humbling
his head to the ground, cried out,
“Son of a burned father was I, not to be content with poverty and a poor
existence! Why did I ever pretend to gifts that I had not, or dare to
tell men that I possessed powers that were not mine? See to what
vainglory and boastfulness have brought me. In forty days I am to die an
ignominious death!”
Thus grieving and self-accusing, the weary hours passed over, and the
night closed in only to find him in all the anguish of his sorrow; nor
was it the least poignant of his sufferings, as he bethought him that
already one of his forty days was drawing to its close, for in his heart
he had destined this period to enjoyment and self-indulgence.
Now, though aspiring to the fame of a magician, so little learning did
he possess, that it was only by recourse to a contrivance he was able to
reckon the days as they passed, and calculate how much of life remained
to him. The expedient he hit upon was to throw each night into an olive-
jar a single date, by counting which at any time he could know how many
days had elapsed.
While his own conscience smote him bitterly for the foolish deception he
had practised, there were, as it happened, others who had consciences
too, and somewhat more heavily charged than his own. These were the
thieves who had stolen the treasure, and who firmly believed in the
magician's powers. Now, it so chanced that on the very instant he was
about to throw his first date into the jar, one of the robbers had crept
noiselessly to the window, and, peering through the half-closed shutter,
watched what was doing within. Dimly lighted by a single lamp, the
chamber was half shrouded in a mysterious gloom; still, the figure of a
man could be descried, as, with gestures of sorrow and suffering, he
approached a great jar in the middle of the room and bent over it. It
was doubtless an incantation, and the robber gazed with all eagerness;
but what was his terror as he beheld the man drop something into the
jar, exclaiming, as he did so, in a loud voice, “Let Allah be merciful
to us! there is one of them!” With the speed of a guilty heart he
hurried back to his confederates, saying, “I had but placed my eye to
the chink, when he knew that I was there, and cried, 'Ha! there is one
of them!'”
It is not necessary that I should go on to tell how each night a new
thief stole to the window at the same critical moment to witness the
same ceremony, and listen to the same terrible words; as little needful
to record how, when the last evening of all closed in, and the whole
robber band stood trembling without, the magician dropped upon his
knees, and, throwing in the last of his dates, cried out, “There are all
of them!” The application of the story is easy. You, good reader, are
the Caliph,--the mock magician is myself. Our tale will probably, from
time to time, reveal who may be
“One of Them.”
ONE OF THEM, Volume I.
CHAPTER I. A PIAZZA AFTER SUNSET
One of the most depressing and languid of all objects is the aspect of
an Italian city in the full noon of a hot summer's day. The massive
buildings, fortress-like and stern, which show no touch of life and
habitation; the glaring streets, un-traversed by a single passer; the
wide piazza, staring vacantly in the broiling sun; the shop doors
closed, all evidencing the season of the siesta, seem all waiting for
the hour when long shadows shall fall over the scorched pavement, and
some air--faint though it be--of coming night recall the population to a
semblance of active existence.
With the air of a heated wayfarer, throwing open his coat to refresh
himself, the city, at last, flings wide jalousie and shutter, and the
half-baked inhabitant strolls forth to taste the “bel fresco.” It is the
season when nationalities are seen undisturbed by the presence of
strangers. No travellers are now to be met with; the heavy rumbling of
the travelling-carriage no longer thunders over the massive causeway; no
postilion's whip awakes the echoes of the Piazza; no landlord's bell
summons the eager household to the deep-arched doorway. It is the People
alone are abroad,--that gentle Italian people, quiet-looking,
inoffensive as they are. A sort of languid grace, a kind of dignified
melancholy, pervades their demeanor, not at all unpleasing; and if the
stranger come fresh from the west of Europe, with its busy turmoil and
zeal of money-getting, he cannot but experience a sense of calm and
relief in the aspect of this easily satisfied and simple population. As
the gloom of evening thickens the scene assumes more of life and
movement. Vendors of cooling drinks, iced lemonades, and such-like, move
along with gay flags flaunting over the brilliant urnlike copper that
contains the refreshing beverage. Watermelons, in all the gushing
richness of color, are at every corner, and piles of delicious fruit lie
under the motley glare from many a paper lantern. Along the quays and
bridges, on wide terraces or jutting bastions, wherever a breath of
fresh air can be caught, crowds are seated, quietly enjoying the cool
hour. Not a sound to be heard, save the incessant motion of the fan,
which is, to this season, what is the cicala to the hot hour of noon.
One cannot help feeling struck by the aspect of a people come thus to
blend, like the members of one large family. There they are, of every
age and of every condition, mingling with a sort of familiar kindliness
that seems like a domesticity.
In all this open-air life, with its inseparable equality, one sees the
embers of that old fire which once kindled the Italian heart in the days
of their proud and glorious Republics. They are the descendants of those
who, in the self-same spots, discussed the acts of Doges and Senates,
haughty citizens of states, the haughtiest of all their age--and now--
Whether come by chance or detained by some accident, two English
travellers were seated one evening in front of the Café Doney, at
Florence, in contemplation of such a scene as this, listlessly smoking
their cigars; they conversed occasionally, in that “staccato” style of
conversation known to smokers.
One was an elderly, fine-looking man, of that hale and hearty stamp we
like to think English; the young fellow at his side was so exactly his
counterpart in lineament and feature that none could doubt them to be
father and son. It is true that the snow-white hair of one was
represented by a rich auburn in the other, and the quiet humor that
lurked about the father's mouth was concealed in the son's by a handsome
moustache, most carefully trimmed and curled.
The _café_ behind them was empty, save at a single table, where sat a
tall, gaunt, yellow-cheeked man, counting and recounting a number of
coins the waiter had given him in change, and of whose value he seemed
to entertain misgivings, as he held them up one by one to the light and
examined them closely. In feature he was acute and penetrating, with a
mixture of melancholy and intrepidity peculiarly characteristic; his
hair was long, black, and wave-less, and fell heavily over the collar of
his coat behind; his dress was a suit of coffee-colored brown,--coat,
waistcoat, and trousers; and even to his high-peaked conical hat the
same tint extended. In age, he might have been anything from two-and-
thirty to forty, or upwards.
Attracted by an extraordinary attempt of the stranger to express himself
in Italian to the waiter, the young Englishman turned round, and then as
quickly leaning down towards his father, said, in a subdued voice, “Only
think; there he is again! The Yankee we met at Meurice's, at Spa, Ems,
the Righi, Como, and Heaven knows where besides! There he is talking
Italian, own brother to his French, and with the same success too!”
“Well, well, Charley,” said the other, good-humoredly, “it is not from
an Englishman can come the sneer about such blunders. We make sad work
of genders and declensions ourselves; and as for our American, I rather
like him, and am not sorry to meet him again.”
“You surely cannot mean that. There's not a fault of his nation that he
does not, in one shape or other, represent; and, in a word, he is a bore
of the first water.”
“The accusation of boredom is one of those ugly confessions which ennui
occasionally makes of its own inability to be interested. Now, for my
part, the Yankee does not bore me. He is a sharp, shrewd man, always
eager for information.”
“I 'd call him inquisitive,” broke in the younger.
“There's an honest earnestness, too, in his manner,--a rough vigor--”
“That recalls stump-oratory, and that sledge-hammer school so popular
'down west.'”
“It is because he is intensely American that I like him, Charley. I
heartily respect the honest zeal with which he tells you that there are
no institutions, no country, no people to be compared with his own.”
“To me, the declaration is downright offensive; and I think there is a
wide interval between prejudice and an enlightened patriotism. And when
I hear an American claim for his nation a pre-eminence, not alone in
courage, skill, and inventive genius, but in all the arts of
civilization and refinement, I own I'm at a loss whether to laugh at or
leave him.”
“Take my advice, Charley, don't do either; or, if you must do one of the
two, better even the last than the first.”
Half stung by the tone of reproof in these words, and half angry with
himself, perhaps, for his own petulance, the young man flung the end of
his cigar away, and walked out into the street. Scarcely, however, had
he done so when the subject of their brief controversy arose, and
approached the Englishman, saying, with a drawling tone and nasal
accent, “How is your health, stranger? I hope I see you pretty well?”
“Quite so, I thank you,” said the other cordially, as he moved a chair
towards him.
“You've made a considerable tour of it [pronounced 'tower'] since we
met, I reckon. You were bound to do Lombardy, and the silkworms, and the
rice-fields, and the ancient cities, and the galleries, and such-like,--
and you 've done them?”
The Englishman bowed assent.
“Well, sir, so have I, and it don't pay. No, it don't! It's noways
pleasing to a man with a right sense of human natur' to see a set of
half-starved squalid loafers making a livin' out of old tombs and ruined
churches, with lying stories about martyrs' thumb-nails and saints'
shin-bones. That won't make a people, sir, will it?”
“But you must have seen a great deal to interest you, notwithstanding.”
“At Genoa, sir. I like Genoa,--they 're a wide-awake, active set there.
They 've got trade, sir, and they know it.”
“The city, I take it, is far more prosperous than pleasant, for
strangers?”
“Well now, sir, that ere remark of yours strikes me as downright narrow,
and, if I might be permitted, I 'd call it mean illiberal. Why should
you or I object to people who prefer their own affairs to the pleasant
task of amusing us?”
“Nay, I only meant to observe that one might find more agreeable
companions than men intently immersed in money-getting.”
“Another error, and a downright English error too; for it's one of your
national traits, stranger, always to abuse the very thing that you do
best. What are you as a people but a hard-working, industrious, serious
race, ever striving to do this a little cheaper, and that a little
quicker, so as to beat the foreigner, and with all that you 'll stand up
and say there ain't nothing on this universal globe to be compared to
loafing!”
“I would hope that you have not heard this sentiment from an
Englishman.”
“Not in them words, not exactly in them terms, but from the same
platform, stranger. Why, when you want to exalt a man for any great
service to the state, you ain't satisfied with making him a loafer,--for
a lord is just a loafer, and no more nor no less,--but you make his son
a loafer, and all his descendants forever. What would you say to a
fellow that had a fast trotter, able to do his mile, on a fair road, in
two forty-three, who, instead of keeping him in full working condition,
and making him earn his penny, would just turn him out in a paddock to
burst himself with clover, and the same with all his stock, for no other
earthly reason than that they were the best blood and bone to be found
anywhere? There ain't sense or reason in that, stranger, is there?”
“I don't think the parallel applies.”
“Maybe not, sir; but you have my meaning; perhaps I piled the metaphor
too high; but as John Jacob Byles says, 'If the charge has hit you, it
don't signify a red cent what the wadding was made of.'”
“I must say I think you are less than just in your estimate of our men
of leisure,” said the Englishman, mildly.
“I ain't sure of that, sir; they live too much together, like our people
down South, and that's not the way to get rid of prejudices. They 've
none of that rough-and-tumble with the world as makes men broad-minded
and marciful and forgiving; and they come at last to that wickedest
creed of all, to think themselves the superfine salt of the earth. Now,
there ain't no superfine salt peculiar to any rank or class. Human
natur' is good and bad everywhere,--ay, sir, I 'll go further, I 've
seen good in a Nigger!”
“I'm glad to hear you say so,” said the Englishman, repressing, but not
without difficulty, a tendency to smile.
“Yes, sir, there 's good amongst all men,--even the Irish.”
“I feel sorry that you should make them an extreme case.”
“Well, sir,” said he, drawing a long breath, “they're main ugly,--main
ugly, that's a fact. Not that they can do _us_ any mischief. Our
constitution is a mill where there's never too much water,--the more
power, the more we grind; and even if the stream do come down somewhat
stocked with snags and other rubbish upon it, the machine is an almighty
smasher, and don't leave one fragment sticking to the other when it gets
a stroke at 'em. Have you never been in the States, stranger?”
“Never. I have often planned such a ramble, but circumstances have
somehow or other always interfered with the accomplishment.”
“Well, sir, you 're bound to go there, if only to correct the wrong
impressions of your literary people, who do nothing but slander and
belie us.”
“Not latterly, surely. You have nothing to complain of on the part of
our late travellers.”
“I won't say that. They don't make such a fuss about chewing and
whittling, and the like, as the first fellows; but they go on a-sneering
about political dishonesty, Yankee sharpness, and trade rogueries, that
ain't noways pleasing,--and, what's more, it ain't fair. But as _I_ say,
sir, go and see for yourself, or, if you can't do that, send your son.
Is n't that young man there your son?”
The young Englishman turned and acknowledged the allusion to himself by
the coldest imaginable bow, and that peculiarly unspeculative stare so
distinctive in his class and station.
“I 'm unreasonable proud to see you again, sir,” said the Yankee,
rising.
“Too much honor!” said the other, stiffly.
“No, it ain't,--no honor whatever. It's a fact, though, and that's
better. Yes, sir, I like _you!_”
The young man merely bowed his acknowledgment, and looked even more
haughty than before. It was plain, however, that the American attached
little significance to the disdain of his manner, for he continued in
the same easy, unembarrassed tone,--
“Yes, sir, I was at Lucerne that morning when you flung the boatman into
the lake that tried to prevent your landing out of the boat. I saw how
you buckled to your work, and I said to myself, 'There 's good stuff
there, though he looks so uncommon conceited and proud.'”
“Charley is ready enough at that sort of thing,” said the father,
laughing heartily; and, indeed, after a moment of struggle to maintain
his gravity, the young man gave way and laughed too.
The American merely looked from one to the other, half sternly, and as
if vainly trying to ascertain the cause of their mirth. The elder
Englishman was quick to see the awkwardness of the moment, and apply a
remedy to it.
“I was amused,” said he, good-humoredly, “at the mention of what had
obtained for my son your favorable opinion. I believe that it's only
amongst the Anglo-Saxon races that pugnacity takes place as a virtue.”
“Well, sir, if a man has n't got it, it very little matters what other
qualities he possesses. They say courage is a bull-dog's property; but
would any one like to be lower than a bull-dog? Besides, sir, it is what
has made _you_ great, and _us_ greater.”
There was a tone of defiance in this speech evidently meant to provoke a
discussion, and the young man turned angrily round to accept the
challenge, when a significant look from his father restrained him. With
a few commonplace observations dexterously thrown out, the old man
contrived to change the channel of conversation, and then, reminded by
his watch of the lateness of the hour, he apologized for a hasty
departure, and took his leave.
“Well, was I right?” said the young man, as he walked along at his
father's side. “Is he not a bore, and the worst of all bores too,--a
quarrelsome one?”
“I 'm not so sure of that, Charley. It was plain he did n't fancy our
laughing so heartily, and wanted an explanation which he saw no means of
asking for; and it was, perhaps, as a sort of reprisal he made that
boastful speech; but I am deeply mistaken if there be not much to like
and respect in that man's nature.”
“There may be some grains of gold in the mud of the Arno there, if any
one would spend a life to search for them,” said the youth,
contemptuously. And with this ungracious speech the conversation closed,
and they walked on in silence.
CHAPTER II. THE VILLA CAPRINI
It was a few days after the brief scene we have just recorded that the
two Englishmen were seated, after sunset, on a little terraced plateau
in front of an antiquated villa. As they are destined to be intimate
acquaintances of our reader in this tale, let us introduce them by
name,--Sir William Heathcote and his son Charles.
With an adherence to national tastes which are rapidly fading away, they
were enjoying their wine after dinner, and the spot they had selected
for it was well chosen. From the terrace where they sat, a perfect maze
of richly wooded glens could be seen, crossing and recrossing each other
in every direction. From the depths of some arose the light spray of
boiling mountain torrents; others, less wild in character, were marked
by the blue smoke curling up from some humble homestead. Many a zigzag
path of trellis-vines straggled up the hillsides, now half buried in
olives, now emerging in all the grotesque beauty of its own wayward
course. The tall maize and the red lucerne grew luxuriously beneath the
fig and the pomegranate, while here and there the rich soil, rent with
heat, seemed unable to conceal its affluence, and showed the yellow
gourds and the melons bursting up through the fruitful earth. It was
such a scene as at once combined Italian luxuriance with the verdant
freshness of a Tyrol landscape, and of which the little territory that
once called itself the Duchy of Lucca can boast many instances.
As background to the picture, the tall mountains of Carrara, lofty
enough to be called Alps, rose, snow-capped and jagged in the distance,
and upon their summits the last rays of the setting sun now glowed with
the ruddy brilliancy of a carbuncle.
These Italian landscapes win one thoroughly from all other scenery,
after a time. At first they seem hard and stern; there is a want of soft
distances; the eye looks in vain for the blended shadows of northern
landscape, and that rustic character so suggestive of country life; but
in their clear distinctness, their marvellous beauty of outline, and in
that vastness of view imparted by an atmosphere of cloudless purity,
there are charms indisputably great.
As the elder Englishman looked upon this fair picture, he gave a faint
sigh, and said: “I was thinking, Charley, what a mistake we make in life
in not seeking out such spots as these when the world goes well with us,
and we have our minds tuned to enjoyment, instead of coming to them
careworn and weary, and when, at best, they only distract us momentarily
from our griefs.”
“And my thought,” said the younger, “was, what a blunder it is to come
here at all. This villa life was only endurable by your Italian noble,
who came here once a year to squabble with his 'Fattore' and grind his
peasants. He came to see that they gave him his share of oil and did n't
water his miserable wine; he neither had society nor sport. As to our
English country-house life, what can compare with it!”
“Even that we have over-civilized, making it London in everything,--
London hours, London company, topics, habits, tastes, all smacking of
town life. Who, I ask you, thinks of his country existence, nowadays, as
a period of quietness and tranquil enjoyment? Who goes back to the shade
of his old elms to be with himself or some favorite author that he feels
to like as a dear friend?”
“No; but he goes for famous hunting and the best shooting in Europe, it
being no disparagement to either that he gets back at evening to a
capital dinner and as good company as he 'd find in town.”
“May is of _my_ mind,” said Sir William, half triumphantly; “she said so
last night.”
“And she told me exactly the reverse this morning,” said the younger.
“She said the monotony of this place was driving her mad. Scenery, she
remarked, without people, is pretty much what a panorama is, compared to
a play.”
“May is a traitress; and here she comes to make confession to which of
us she has been false,” said Sir William, gayly, as he arose to place a
chair for the young girl who now came towards them.
“I have heard you both, gentlemen,” said she, with a saucy toss of her
head, “and I should like to hear why I should not agree with each and
disagree afterwards, if it so pleased me.”
“Oh! if you fall back upon prerogative--” began Sir William.
“I have never quitted it. It is in the sovereignty of my woman's will
that I reconcile opinions seemingly adverse, and can enjoy all the
splendors of a capital and all the tameness of a village. I showed you
already how I could appreciate Paris; I mean now to prove how charmed I
can be with the solitudes of Marlia.”
“Which says, in plain English,” said the young man, “that you don't care
for either.”
“Will you condescend to be a little more gallant than my cousin, sir,”
said she, turning to Sir William, “and at least give me credit for
having a mind and knowing it?”
There was a pettish half-seriousness in her tone that made it almost
impossible to say whether she was amused or angry, and to this also the
changeful expression of her beautiful features contributed; for, though
she smiled, her dark gray eyes sparkled like one who invited a
contradiction. In this fleeting trait was the secret of her nature. May
Leslie was one of Fortune's spoiled children,--one of those upon whom so
many graces and good gifts had been lavished that it seemed as though
Fate had exhausted her resources, and left herself no more to bestow.
She had surpassing beauty, youth, health, high spirits, and immense
wealth. By her father's will she had been contracted in marriage with
her distant relative, Charles Heathcote, with the proviso that if, on
attaining the age of nineteen, she felt averse to the match, she should
forfeit a certain estate in Wales which had once belonged to the
Heathcotes, and contained the old residence of that family.
Sir William and his son had been living in the retirement of a little
German capital, when the tidings of this wardship reached them. A number
of unfortunate speculations had driven the baronet into exile from
England, and left him with a pittance barely sufficient to live in the
strictest economy. To this narrow fortune Charles Heathcote had come
back, after serving in a most extravagant Hussar regiment, and taking
his part in an Indian campaign; and the dashing' soldier first heard, as
he lay wounded in the hospital, that he must leave the service, and
retire into obscurity. If it had not been for his strong affection for
his father, Charles would have enlisted as a private soldier, and taken
his chance for future distinction, but he could not desert him at such a
moment, nor separate himself from that share of privation which should
be henceforth borne in common; and so he came back, a bronzed, brave
soldier, true-hearted and daring, and, if a little stern, no more so
than might be deemed natural in one who had met such a heavy reverse on
the very threshold of life.
Father and son were at supper in a little arbor of their garden near
Weimar, when the post brought them the startling news that May Leslie,
who was then at Malta, would be at Paris in a few days, where she
expected to meet them. When Sir William had read through the long letter
of the lawyer, giving an account of the late General Leslie's will, with
its strange condition, he handed it to his son, without a word.
The young man read it eagerly; his color changed once or twice as he
went on, and his face grew harder and sterner ere he finished. “Do you
mean to accept this wardship?” asked he, hurriedly.
“There are certain reasons for which I cannot decline it, Charley,” said
the other, mildly. “All my life long I have been Tom Leslie's debtor, in
gratitude, for as noble a sacrifice as ever man made. We were both
suitors to your mother, brother officers at the time, and well received
in her father's house. Leslie, however, was much better looked on than
myself, for I was then but a second son, while he was the heir of a very
large estate. There could not have been a doubt that his advances would
have outweighed mine in a father and mother's estimate, and as he was
madly in love, there seemed-nothing to prevent his success. Finding,
however, in a conversation with your mother, that her affections were
mine, he not only relinquished the place in my favor, but, although most
eager to purchase his troop, suffered me, his junior, to pass over his
head, and thus attain the rank which enabled me to marry. Leslie went to
India, where he married, and we never met again. It was only some seven
or eight months ago I read of his being named governor of a
Mediterranean dependency, and the very next paper mentioned his death,
when about to leave Calcutta.”
“It is, then, most probable that, when making this will, he had never
heard of our reverses in fortune?” said the young man.
“It is almost certain he had not, for it is dated the very year of that
panic which ruined me.”
“And, just as likely, might never have left such a will, had he known
our altered fortunes?”
“I 'm not so sure of that. At all events, I can answer for it that no
change in our condition would have made Tom Leslie alter the will, if he
had once made it in our favor.”
“I have no fancy for the compact, read it how you may,” said Charles,
impatiently; “nor can I say which I like least,--the notion of marrying
a woman who is bound to accept me, or accepting a forfeit to release her
from the obligation.”
“I own it is--embarrassing,” said Sir William, after a moment's
hesitation in choosing a suitable word.
“A downright indignity, I'd call it,” said the other, warmly, “and
calculated to make the man odious in the woman's eyes, whichever lot
befell him.”
“The wardship must be accepted, at all events,” said Sir William,
curtly, as he arose and folded up the letter.
“You are the best judge of that; for if it depended upon _me_”
“Come, come, Charley,” said Sir William, in his tone of habitual
kindness, “this life of quiet obscurity and poverty that we lead here
has no terrors for _me_. I have been so long away from England that if I
went back to-morrow I should look in vain for any of my old companions.
I have forgotten the habits and the ways of home, and I have learned to
submit myself to twenty things here which would be hardships elsewhere,
but I don't like to contemplate the same sort of existence for _you_; I
want to speculate on a very different future; and if--if--Nay, you need
not feel so impatient at a mere conjecture.”
“Well, to another point,” said the young man, hastily. “We have got, as
you have just said, to know that we can live very comfortably and
contentedly here, looking after our celery and seakale, and watching our
silver groschen; are you so very certain that you 'd like to change all
this life, and launch out into an expensive style of living, to suit the
notions of a rich heiress, and, what is worse again, to draw upon _her_
resources to do it?”
“I won't deny that it will cost me severely; but, until we see her and
know her, Charley, until we find out whether she may be one whose
qualities will make our sacrifices easy--”
“Would you accept this charge if she were perfectly portionless, and
without a shilling in the world?”
“If she were Tom Leslie's daughter, do you mean?”
“Ay, any one's daughter?”
“To be sure I would, boy; and if I were only to consult my own feelings
in the matter, I 'd say that I 'd prefer this alternative to the other.”
“Then I have no more to say,” said the son, as he walked away.
Within a month after this conversation, the little cottage was shut up,
the garden wicket closed with a heavy padlock, and to any chance
inquirer after its late residents, the answer returned was, that their
present address was Place Vendôme, Paris.
“Tell me your company,” said the old adage; but, alas! the maxim had
reference to other habits than our present-day ones. With what company
now does not every man mix? Bishops discuss crime and punishment with
ticket-of-leave men; fashionable exquisites visit the resorts of
thieves; “swell people” go to hear madrigals at Covent Garden; and, as
for the Ring, it is equally the table-land to peer and pickpocket. If,
then, you would hazard a guess as to a man's manners nowadays, ask not
his company, but his whereabouts. Run your eye over the addresses of
that twice-remanded insolvent, ranging from Norfolk Street, Strand, to
Berkeley Square, with Boulogne-sur-Mer, St John's Wood, Cadiz, the New
Cut, Bermondsey, and the Edgware Road, in the interval, and say if you
cannot, even out of such slight materials, sketch off his biography.
“The style is the man,” says the adage; and we might with as much truth
say, “the street is the man.” In his locality is written his ways and
means, his manners, his morals, his griefs, joys, and ambitions. We live
in an age prolific in this lesson. Only cast a glance at the daily
sacrifices of those who, to reside within the periphery of greatness,
submit to a crushing rent and a comfortless abode.
Think of him who, to date his note “------ Street, Berkeley Square,”
denies himself honest indulgence, all because the world has come to
believe that certain spots are the “Regions of the Best,” and that they
who live there must needs be that grand English ideal,--respectable.
Dear me, what unheard-of sacrifices does it demand of humble fortunes to
be Respectable! what pinching and starving and saving! what self-denial
and what striving! what cheerless little dinner-parties to other
Respectables! what dyeing of black silks and storing of old ostrich
feathers! And how and wherefore have we wandered off in this digression!
Simply to say that Sir William Heathoote and his ward were living in a
splendid quarter of Paris, and after that rambled into Germany, and
thence to Como and down to Rome, very often delighted with their choice
of residence, enjoying much that was enjoyable, but still--shall we own
it?--never finding the exact place they seemed to want, nor exactly the
people with whom they were willing to live in intimacy. They had been at
Baden in the summer, at Como in the late autumn, at Rome in the winter,
at Castellamare in the spring,--everywhere in its season, and yet
somehow--And so they began to try that last resource of bored people,--
places out of the season and places out of common resort,--and it was
thus that they found themselves at Florence in June, and in Marlia in
July.
CHAPTER III. TRAVELLING ACQUAINTANCE
About the same hour of the same evening which we have just chronicled, a
group of persons sat under some spreading chestnut-trees beside a
brawling little rivulet at the Bagni de Lucca. They were travellers,
chance acquaintances thrown together by the accidents of the road, and
entertained for each other those varied sentiments of like and dislike,
those mingled distrusts, suspicions, and beliefs, which, however
unconsciously to ourselves, are part of the education travelling
impresses, and which, when long persevered in, make up that acute but
not always amiable individual we call “an old traveller.”
We are not about to present them all to our reader, and will only beg to
introduce to his notice a few of the notabilities then present. _Place
aux dames!_ then; and, first of all, we beg attention to the dark-eyed,
dark-haired, and very delicately featured woman, who, in half-mourning,
and with a pretty but fantastically costumed girl beside her, is working
at an embroidery-frame close to the river. She is a Mrs. Penthony
Morris, the wife or the widow--both opinions prevail--of a Captain
Penthony Morris, killed in a duel, or in India, or alive in the
Marshalsea, or at Baden-Baden, as may be. She is striking-looking,
admirably dressed, has a most beautiful foot, as you may see where it
rests upon the rail of the chair placed in front of her, and is,
altogether, what that very smartly dressed, much-beringed, and essenced
young gentleman near her has already pronounced her, “a stunning fine
woman.” He is a Mr. Mosely, one of those unhappy young Londoners whose
family fame is ever destined to eclipse their own gentility, for he is
immediately recognized, and drawlingly do men inquire some twenty times
a day, “Ain't he a son of Trip and Mosely's, those fellows in Bond
Street?” Unhappy Trip and Mosely! why have you rendered yourselves so
great and illustrious? why have your tasteful devices in gauze, your
“sacrifices” in challis, your “last new things in grenadine,” made such
celebrity around you, that Tom Mosely, “out for his travels,” can no
more escape the shop than if he were languishing at a customer over a
“sweet article in white tarlatan”? In the two comfortable armchairs side
by side sit two indubitable specimens, male and female, of the Anglo-
Saxon family,--Mr. Morgan, that florid man, wiping his polished bald
head, and that fat lady fanning with all her might. Are they not
English? They are “out,” and, judging from their recorded experiences,
only dying to be “in” again. “Such a set of cheating, lying, lazy set of
rascals are these Italians! Independence, sir; don't talk to me of that
humbug! What they want is English travellers to fleece and English women
to marry.” Near to these, at full length, on two chairs, one of which
reclines against a tree at an angle of about forty degrees, sits our
Yankee acquaintance, whom we may as well present by his name, Leonidas
Shaver Quackinboss; he is smoking a “Virginian” about the size of a
marshal's bâton, and occasionally sipping at a “cobbler,” which with
much pains he has compounded for his own drinking. Various others of
different ranks and countries are scattered about, and in the centre of
all, at a small table with a lamp, sits a short, burly figure, with a
strange mixture of superciliousness and drollery in his face, as though
there were a perpetual contest in his nature whether he would be
impertinent or amusing. This was Mr. Gorman O'Shea, Member of Parliament
for Inchabogue, and for three weeks a Lord of the Treasury when
O'Connell was king.
Mr. O'Shea is fond of public speaking. He has a taste for proposing, or
seconding, or returning thanks that verges on a passion, so that even in
a private dinner with a friend he has been known to arise and address
his own companion in a set speech, adorned with all the graces and
flowers of post-prandial eloquence. Upon the present occasion he has
been, to his great delight, deputed to read aloud to the company from
that magic volume by which the Continent is expounded to Englishmen, and
in whose pages they are instructed in everything, from passports to
pictures, and drilled in all the mysteries of money, posting, police
regulations, domes, dinners, and Divine service by a Clergyman of the
Established Church. In a word, he is reciting John Murray.
To understand the drift of the present meeting, we ought to mention
that, in the course of a conversation started that day at the _table
d'hote_ it was suggested that such of the company as felt disposed might
make an excursion to Marlia to visit a celebrated villa there, whose
gardens alone were amongst the great sights of Northern Italy. All had
heard of this charming residence; views of it had been seen in every
print-shop. It had its historical associations from a very early period.
There were chambers where murders had been committed, conspiracies held,
confederates poisoned. King and Kaiser had passed the night there; all
of which were duly and faithfully chronicled in “John,” and impressively
recited by Mr. Gorman O'Shea in the richest accents of his native Doric.
“There you have it now,” said he, as he closed the volume; “and I will
say, it has n't its equal anywhere for galleries, terraces, carved
architraves, stuccoed ceilings, and frescos, and all the other
balderdash peculiar to these places.”
“Oh, Mr. O'Shea, what profanation!” interposed Mrs. Morris; “walls
immortalized by Giotto and Cimabue!”
“Have n't they got stunning names of their own?” broke in Quackinboss.
“That's one of the smallest dodges to secure fame. You must be something
out of the common. There was a fellow up at Syracuse townland, Measles,
North Carolina, and his name was Flay Harris; they called him Flea--”
“That ceiling of the great hall was a work of Guido's, you said?”
inquired Mrs. Morris.
“A pupil of Guido's, a certain Simone Affretti, who afterwards made the
designs for the Twelve Apostles in the window of the chapter-room at
Sienna,” read out Mr. O'Shea.
“Who can vouch for one word of all that, sir?” burst in Mr. Morgan, with
a choleric warmth. “Who is to tell me, sir, that you did n't write that,
or Peter Noakes, or John Murray himself, if there be such a man.”
“I can vouch for the last,” said a pale, gentle-looking young fellow,
who was arranging the flies in a fishing-book under a tree at a little
distance. “If it will relieve you from any embarrassments on the score
of belief, I can assist you so far.”
If there was a faint irony in this speech, the mild look of the speaker
and his softened accents made it seem of the very faintest, and so even
the bluff Mr. Morgan himself appeared to acknowledge.
“As you say so, Mr. Layton, I will consent to suppose there is such a
man; not that the fact, in the slightest degree, touches my original
proposition.”
“Certainly not, Tom,” chimed in Mrs. Morgan, in a thick voice, like one
drowning.
“But if you doubt Guido, you may doubt Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo,”
burst in Mrs. Morris, with a holy terror in her voice.
“Well, ma'am, I'm capable of all that--and worse.”
What that “worse” was there is no saying, though possibly Mr. Mosely was
trying to guess at it in the whisper he ventured to Mrs. Morris, and
which made that lady smile incredulously.
“I now, sir, rise to put the original motion,” said O'Shea, assuming
that parliamentary tone which scandal pretended he displayed everywhere
but in the House; “is it the opinion of this committee that we should
all go and visit the Villa Caprini?”
“Are we quite sure it is to be seen?” interposed Mr. Layton; “it may be
occupied, and by persons who have no fancy to receive strangers.”
“The observation strikes me as singularly narrow and illiberal, sir,”
burst in Morgan, with warmth. “Are we of the nineteenth century to be
told that any man--I don't care how he calls himself--has a vested right
in the sight or inspection of objects devised and designed and completed
centuries before he was born?”
“Well put, Tom,--remarkably well put,” smothered out Mrs. Morgan.
“Will you say, sir,” assumed he, thus cheered on to victory,--“will you
say, sir, that if these objects--frescos, bas-reliefs, or whatever other
name you give them--have the humanizing influence you assume for them,--
which, by the way, I am quite ready to dispute at another opportunity
with you or that other young gentleman yonder, whose simpering sneer
would seem to disparage my sentiment--”
“If you mean me, sir,” took up Mr. Mosely, “I was n't so much as
attending to one word you said.”
“No, Tom, certainly not,” burst in Mrs. Morgan, answering with energy
some sudden ejaculated purpose of her wrathy spouse.
“I simply meant to say,” interposed Layton, mildly, “that such a visit
as we propose might be objected to, or conceded in a way little
agreeable to ourselves.”
“A well-written note, a gracefully worded request, which nobody could do
better than Mr. Alfred Layton--” began Mrs. Morris, when a dissenting
gesture from that gentleman stopped her. “Or, perhaps,” continued she,
“Mr. Gorman O'Shea would so far assist our project?”
“My motion is to appear at the bar of the house,--I mean at the gate-
lodge,--sending in our names, with a polite inquiry to know if we may
see the place,” said Mr. O'Shea.
“Well, stranger, I stand upon your platform,” chimed in Quackinboss; “I
'm in no manner of ways 'posted' up in your Old World doings, but I 'd
say that you 've fixed the question all straight.”
“Show-places are show-places; the people who take them know it,” blurted
out Mr. Morgan. “Ay, and what's more, they're proud of it.”
“They are, Tom,” said his wife, authoritatively.
“If you 'd give me one of them a present, for the living in it, I 'd not
take it No, sir, I 'd not,” reiterated Morgan, with a fierce energy.
“What is a man in such a case, sir, but a sort of appraiser, a kind of
agent to show off his own furniture, telling you to remark that cornice,
and not to forget that malachite chimney-piece?”
“Very civil of him, certainly,” said Layton, in his low, quiet voice,
which at the same time seemed to quiver with a faint irony.
“No, sir, not civil, only boastful; mere purse-pride, nothing more.”
“Nothing, Tom,--absolutely nothing.”
“What's before the house this evening,--the debate looks animated?” said
a fine bright-eyed boy of about fourteen, who lounged carelessly on
Layton's shoulder as he came up.
“It was a little scheme to visit the Villa Caprini, my Lord,” said
Mosely, not sorry to have the opportunity of addressing himself to a
person of title.
“How jolly, eh, Alfred? What say you to the plan?” said the boy,
merrily.
Layton answered something, but in a tone too low to be overheard.
“Oh, as to that,” replied the boy, quickly, “if he be an Englishman who
lives there, surely some of us must know him.”
“The very remark I was about to make, my Lord,” smiled in Mrs. Morris.
“Well, then, we agree to go there; that 's the main thing,” said O'Shea.
“Two carriages, I suppose, will hold us; and, as to the time, shall we
say to-morrow?”
To-morrow was unanimously voted by the company, who now set themselves
to plot the details of the expedition, amidst which not the least knotty
was, who were to be the fellow-travellers with Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, a
post of danger assuredly not sought for with any heroic intrepidity,
while an equally eager intrigue was on foot about securing the presence
of the young Marquis of Agincourt and his tutor, Mr. Layton. The ballot,
however, routed all previous machinations, deciding that the young peer
was to travel with the Morgans and Colonel Quackinboss, an announcement
which no deference to the parties themselves could prevent being
received with a blank disappointment, except by Mr. Layton, who simply
said,--
“We shall take care to be in time, Mrs. Morgan.” And then, drawing his
pupil's arm within his own, strolled negligently away.
CHAPTER IV. VISITORS
“I foretold all this,” said Charles Heathcote, peevishly, as a servant
presented a number of visiting-cards with a polite request from the
owners to be allowed to visit the villa and its gardens. “I often warned
you of the infliction of inhabiting one of these celebrated places,
which our inquisitive countrymen _will_ see and their wives _will_ write
about.”
“Who are they, Charley?” said May, gayly. “Let us see if we may not know
some of them.”
“Know them. Heaven forbid! Look at the equipages they have come in; only
cast an eye at the two leathern conveniences now before the door, and
say, is it likely that they contain any acquaintances of ours?”
“How hot they look, broiling down there! But who are they, Charley?”
“Mrs. Penthony Morris,--never heard of her; Mr. Algernon Mosely,--
possibly the Bond Street man; Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Rice Morgan, of
Plwmnwrar,--however that be pronounced; Mr. Layton and friend,--discreet
friend, who will not figure by name; Mr. Gorman O'Shea, by all the
powers! and, as I live, our Yankee again!”
“Not Quackinboss, surely?” broke in Sir William, good-humoredly.
“Yes. There he is: 'U. S. A., Colonel Leonidas Shaver Quackinboss;' and
there's the man, too, with his coat on his arm, on that coach-box.”
“I'll certainly vote for my Transatlantic friend,” said the Baronet,
“and consequently for any party of which he is a member.”
“As for me!” cried May,--“I 've quite a curiosity to see him; not to say
that it would be downright churlishness to refuse any of our countrymen
the permission thus asked for.”
“Be it so. I only stipulate for not playing cicerone to our amiable
visitors; and the more surely to escape such an indignity, I 'm off till
dinner.”
“Let Fenton wait on those gentlemen,” said the Baronet, “and go round
with them through the house and the grounds. Order luncheon also to be
ready.” There was a little, a very little, irritation, perhaps, in his
voice, but May's pleasant smile quickly dispelled the momentary chagrin,
and his good-humored face was soon itself again.
If I have not trespassed upon my reader's patience by minute
descriptions of the characters I have introduced to him, it is in the
expectation that their traits are such as, lying lightly on the surface,
require little elucidation. Nor do I ask of him to bestow more attention
to their features than he would upon those of travelling acquaintances
with whom it is his fortune to journey in company for a brief space.
Strange enough, indeed, is that intimacy of travelling acquaintanceship
--familiar without friendship, frank without being cordial. Curious
pictures of life might be made from these groups thrown accidentally
together in a steamboat or railroad, at the gay watering-place, or the
little fishing-village in the bathing-season.
How free is all the intercourse of those who seem to have taken a vow
with themselves never to meet each other again! With what humorous zest
do they enjoy the oddities of this one, or the eccentricities of that,
making up little knots and cliques, to be changed or dissolved within
the day, and actually living on the eventualities of the hour, for their
confidences! The contrasts that would repel in ordinary life, the
disparities that would discourage, have actually invited intimacy; and
people agree to associate, even familiarly, with those whom, in the
recognized order of their daily existence, they would have as coldly
repelled.
There was little to bind those together whom we have represented as
seated under the chestnut-trees at the Bagni de Lucca. They entertained
their suspicions and distrusts and misgivings of each other to a liberal
extent; they wasted no charities in their estimate of each other; and
wherever posed by a difficulty, they did not lend to the interpretation
any undue amount of generosity; nay, they even went further, and argued
from little peculiarities of dress, manner, and demeanor, to the whole
antecedents of him they criticised, and took especial pains in their
moments of confidence to declare that they had only met Mr.------ for
the first time at Ems, and never saw Mrs.------ till they were overtaken
by the snow-storm on the Splugen.
Such-like was the company who now, headed by the obsequious butler,
strolled leisurely through the spacious saloons of the Villa Caprini.
Who is there, in this universal vagabondage, has not made one of such
groups? Where is the man that has not strolled, “John Murray” in hand,
along his Dresden, his Venice, or his Rome; staring at ceilings, and
gazing ruefully at time-discolored frescos,--grieved to acknowledge to
his own heart how little he could catch of a connoisseur's enthusiasm or
an antiquarian's fervor,--wondering within himself wherefore he could
not feel like that other man whose raptures he was reading, and with
sore misgivings that some nice sense had been omitted in his nature?
Wonderfully poignant and painful things are these little appeals to an
inner consciousness. How far such sentiments were distributed amongst
those who now lounged and stared through _salon_ and gallery, we must
leave to the reader's own appreciation. They looked pleased, convinced,
and astonished, and, be it confessed, “bored” in turn; they were called
upon to admire much they did not care for, and wonder at many things
which did not astonish them; they were often referred to histories which
they had forgotten, if they ever knew them, and to names of whose
celebrity they were ignorant; and it was with a most honest sense of
relief they saw themselves reach the last room of the suite, where a few
cabinet pictures and some rare carvings in ivory alone claimed their
attention.
“A 'Virgin and Child,' by Murillo,” said the guide.
“The ninth 'Virgin and Child,' by all that's holy!” said Mr. O'Shea.
“The ninth we have seen to-day!”
“The blue drapery, ladies and gentlemen,” continued the inexorable
describer, “is particularly noticed. It is 'glazed' in a manner only
known to Murillo.”
“I 'm glad of it, and I hope the secret died with him,” cried Mr.
Morgan. “It looks for all the world like a bathing-dress.”
“The child squints. Don't he squint?” exclaimed Mosely.
“Oh, for shame!” cried Mrs. Morris. “Mr. Layton is quite shocked with
your profane criticism.”
“I did not hear it, I assure you,” said that gentleman, as he arose from
a long and close contemplation of a “St. John,” by Salvator.
“'St. John preaching in the Wilderness!'” said Quackinboss; “too tame
for my taste. He don't seem to roll up his sleeves to the work,--does
he?”
“It's not stump-oratory, surely?” said Layton, with a quiet smile.
“Ain't it, though! Well, stranger, I'm in a considerable unmixed error
if it is not! You'd like to maintain that because a man does n't rise up
from a velvet cushion and lay his hand upon a grand railing, all carved
with grotesque intricacies, all his sentiments must needs be commonplace
and vulgar; but I 'm here to tell you, sir, that you 'd hear grander
things, nobler things, and greater things from a moss-covered old tree-
stump in a western pine-forest, by the mouth of a plain, hardy son of
hard toil, than you've often listened to in what you call your place in
Parliament Now, that's a fact!”
There was that amount of energy in the way these words were uttered that
seemed to say, if carried further, the discussion might become
contentious.
Mr. Layton did not show any disposition to accept the gage of battle,
but turned to seek for his pupil.
“You 're looking for the Marquis, Mr. Layton,” asked Mrs. Morris, “ain't
you? I think you'll find him in the shrubberies, for he said all this
only bored him, and he 'd go and look for a cool spot to smoke his
cigar.”
“That's what it all comes to,” said Morgan, as soon as Layton had left
the room; “that's the whole of it! You pay a fellow--a 'double first'
something or other from Oxford or Cambridge--five hundred a year to go
abroad with your son, and all he teaches him is to choose a cheroot.”
“And smoke it, Tom,” chimed in Mrs. Morgan.
“There ain't no harm in a weed, sir, I hope?” said Quackinboss. “The
thinkers of this earth are most of 'em smoking men. What do you say,
sir, to Humboldt, Niebuhr, your own Bulwer, and all our people, from
John C. Colhoun to Daniel Webster? When a man puts a cigar between his
lips, he as good as says, 'I 'm a-reflecting,--I 'm not in no ways to be
broke in upon.' It's his own fault, sir, if he does n't think, for he
has in a manner shut the door to keep out intruders.”
“Filthy custom!” muttered Mr. Morgan, with a garbled sentence, in which
the word “America” was half audible.
“What's this he's saying about eating,--this Italian fellow?” said Mr.
Mosely, as a servant addressed him in a foreign language.
“It is a polite invitation to a luncheon,” said Mrs. Morris, modestly
turning to her fellow-travellers for their decision.
“Do any of us know our host?” asked Mr. OShea. “He is a Sir William
Heathcote.”
“There was a director of the Central Trunk line of that name, who failed
for half a million sterling,” whispered Morgan; “should n't wonder if it
were he.”
“All the more certain to give us a jolly feed, if he be!” chuckled
Mosely. “I vote we accept.”
“That of course,” said Mrs. Morris.
“Well, I know him, I reckon,” drawled out Quackinboss; “and I rayther
suspect you owe this here politeness to _my_ company. Yes, sir!” said
he, half fiercely, to O'Shea, upon whose face a sort of incredulous
smile was breaking,--“yes, sir!”
“Being our own countryman, sir,--an Englishman,--I suspect,” said Mr.
Morgan, with warmth, “that the hospitality has been extended to us on
wider grounds.”
“But why should we dispute about the matter at all?” mildly remarked
Mrs. Morris. “Let us say yes, and be grateful.”
“There's good sense in that,” chimed in Mosely, “and I second it.”
“Carried with unanimity,” said O'Shea, as, turning to the servant, he
muttered something in broken French.
“Well, I'm sure, I never!” mumbled Quackinboss to himself; but what he
meant, or to what new circumstance in his life's experience he alluded,
there is unhappily no explanation in this history; but he followed the
rest with a drooping head and an air of half-melancholy resignation that
was not by any means unusual with him.
CHAPTER V. ACCIDENTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
When the young Marquis had made his escape from sightseeing, and all its
attendant inflictions, he was mainly bent on what he would himself have
called being “very jolly,”--that is to say, going his own way
unmolested, strolling the road he fancied, and following out his own
thoughts. Not that these same thoughts absolutely needed for their
exercise or development any extraordinary advantages of solitude and
retirement. He was no deep-minded sage, revolving worlds to come,--no
poet, in search of the inspiring influence of nature,--no subtle
politician, balancing the good and evil of some nice legislation. He was
simply one of those many thousand England yearly turns out from her
public schools of fine, dashing, free-hearted, careless boys, whose most
marked feature in character is a wholesome horror of all that is mean or
shabby. Less than a year before, he had been a midshipman in her
Majesty's gun-boat “Mosquito;” the death of an elder brother had made
him a Marquis, with the future prospect of several thousands a year.
He had scarcely seen or known his brother, so he grieved very little for
his loss, but he sorrowed sincerely over the change of fortune that
called him from his sea life and companions to an “on-shore” existence,
and instead of the gun-room and its gay guests, gave him the proprieties
of station and the requirements of high rank. One of his guardians
thought he ought to go into the Guards; another advised a university;
both agreed upon a tutor, and Mr. Layton was found, a young man of small
fortune, whose health, injured by over-reading for honors, required
change of scene and rest. They had been companions for a very short
time, but had, as the young Lord would have said, “hit it off” admirably
together; that is to say, partly from a just appreciation of his pupil,
and partly out of a natural indolence of disposition, Layton interfered
very little with him, gave him no troublesome tasks, imposed no actual
studies, but contented himself with a careful watch over the boy's
disposition, a gentle, scarce perceptible correction of his faults, and
an honest zeal to develop any generous trait in his nature, little
mindful of the disappointments his trustfulness must incur. Layton's
theory was that we all become wise too early in life, and that the
world's lessons should not be too soon implanted in a fresh unsuspecting
nature. His system was not destined to be sorely tested in the present
case. Harry Montserrat, Marquis of Agincourt, was a fortunate subject to
illustrate it by. There never was a less suspectful nature; he was
frank, generous, and brave; his faults were those of a hot, fiery
temper, and a disposition to resent, too early and too far, what with a
little patience he might have tolerated or even forgiven.
The fault, however, which Layton was more particularly guardful against,
was a certain over-consciousness of his station and its power, which
gradually began to show itself.
In his first experience of altered fortune he did nothing but regret the
past. It was no compensation to him for his careless sea-life, with all
its pleasant associations, to become of a sudden invested with station,
and treated with what he deemed over-deference. His reefer's jacket was
pleasanter “wear” than his padded frock-coat; the nimble boy who waited
on him in the gun-room he thought a far smarter attendant than his
obsequious valet; and, with all his midshipman's love of money-spending
and squandering, the charm of extravagance was gone when there were no
messmates to partake of it; nor did his well-groomed nag and his well-
dressed tiger suggest one-half the enjoyment he had often felt in a pony
ride over the cliffs of Malta, with some others of his mess, where falls
were rife and tumbles frequent. These, I say, were first thoughts, but
gradually others took their places. The enervation of a life of ease
began soon to show itself, and he felt the power of a certain station.
In the allowance his guardian made him, he had a far greater sum at his
disposal than he ever possessed before; and in the title of his rank he
soon discovered a magic that made the world beneath him very deferential
and very obliging.
“That boy has been very ill brought up, Mr. Layton; it will be your
chief care to instil into him proper notions of the place he is to
occupy one of these days,” said an old Earl, one of his guardians, and
who was most eager that every trace of his sea life should be
eradicated.
“Don't let him get spoiled, Layton, because he's a Lord,” said the other
guardian, who was an old Admiral. “There's good stuff in the lad, and it
would be a thousand pities it should be corrupted.”
Layton did his best to obey each; but the task had its difficulties. As
to the boy himself, the past and the present, the good and the evil, the
frank young middy and the rich lordling, warred and contended in his
nature; nor was it very certain at any moment which would ultimately
gain the mastery. Such, without dwelling more minutely, was he who now
strolled along through shrubbery and parterre, half listless as to the
way, but very happy withal, and very light-hearted.
There was something in the scene that recalled England to his mind.
There were more trees and turf than usually are found in Italian
landscape, and there was, half hidden between hazel and alder, a clear,
bright river, that brawled and fretted over rocks, or deepened into dark
pools, alternately. How the circling eddies of a fast-flowing stream do
appeal to young hearts! what music do they hear in the gushing waters!
what a story is there in that silvery current as it courses along
through waving meadows, or beneath tall mountains, and along some dark
and narrow gorge, emblem of life itself in its light and shade, its
peaceful intervals and its hours of struggle and conflict.
Forcing his way through the brushwood that guarded the banks, the boy
gained a little ledge of rock, against which the current swept with
violence, and then careered onward over a shallow, gravelly bed till
lost in another bend of the stream. Just as Agincourt reached the rock,
he spied a fishing-rod deeply and securely fastened in one of its
fissures, but whose taper point was now bending like a whip, and
springing violently under the struggling effort of a strong fish. He was
nothing of an angler. Of honest “Izaak” and his gentle craft he
absolutely knew nought, and of all the mysteries of hackles and green
drakes he was utterly ignorant; but his sailor instinct could tell him
when a spar was about to break, and this he now saw to be the case. The
strain was great, and every jerk now threatened to snap either line or
rod. He looked hurriedly around him for the fisherman, whose interests
were in such grave peril; but seeing no one near, he endeavored to
withdraw the rod. While he thus struggled, for it was fastened with
care, the efforts of the fish to escape became more and more violent,
and at last, just as the boy had succeeded in his task, a strong spring
from the fish snapped the rod near the tip, and at the same instant
snatched it from the youth's hand into the stream. Without a second's
hesitation, Agincourt dashed into the river, which rose nearly to his
shoulders, and, after a vigorous pursuit, reached the rod, but only as
the fish had broken the strong gut in two, and made his escape up the
rapid current.
The boy was toilfully clambering up the bank, with the broken rod in his
hand, when a somewhat angry summons in Italian met his ears. It was time
enough, he thought, to look for the speaker when he had gained dry land;
so he patiently fought his way upwards, and at last, out of breath and
exhausted, threw himself full length in the deep grass of the bank.
“I believe I am indebted to you, sir, for my smashed tackle and the loss
of a heavy fish besides?” said Charles Heathcote, as he came up to where
the youth was lying, his voice and manner indicating the anger that
moved him.
“I thought to have saved the rod and caught the fish too,” said the
other, half indolently; “but I only got a wet jacket for my pains.”
“I rather suspect, young gentleman, you are more conversant with a
measuring-yard than a salmon-rod,” said Heathcote, insolently, as he
surveyed the damaged fragments of his tackle.
“What do you mean by that, sir?” cried the boy, springing with a bound
to his feet, and advancing boldly towards his adversary.
“Simply that it 's not exactly the sort of sport you follow in Bond
Street,” retorted Heathcote, whose head was full of “Mosely and Trip,”
and felt certain that a scion of that great house was before him.
“You must be a rare snob not to know a gentleman when you see him,” said
Agincourt, with an insolent defiance in his look.
“Perhaps I'd be a better judge if I saw him after a good washing,” said
Heathcote, who, with one hasty glance at the river, now turned a fierce
eye on the youth.
Agincourt's gun-room experiences had not taught him to decline an
offered battle, and he threw off his cap to show that he was ready and
willing to accept the challenge, when suddenly Layton sprang between
them, crying out, “What's the meaning of all this?”
“The meaning is, that your young friend there has taken the liberty,
first, to smash my fishing-gear, and then to be very insolent to me, and
that I had very serious intentions of sending him to look for the one
and pay forfeit for the other.”
“Yes, I broke his rod, and I 'll pay for it, or, if he's a gentleman,
I'll beg his pardon, or fight him,” said the boy, in a tone of ill-
repressed anger.
“When there is an evident mistake somewhere,” said Layton, gently, “it
only needs a moment of forbearance to set it right.”
“Here's how it all happened,” broke in the boy, eagerly. And in a few
words he related his chance arrival at the spot, how he had seen the rod
in what he deemed imminent danger, and how with the best intentions he
had interfered to save it.
“I beg you to accept all my excuses for what I have said to you,” said
Heathcote, with a frank and manly courtesy. “I am quite ashamed of my
ill-temper, and hope you'll forgive it.”
“To be sure I will. But what about the rod,--you can't easily get such
another in these parts?”
The boy looked eagerly at Layton as he spoke. Layton as quickly gave an
admonitory glance of caution, and the youth's instinctive good breeding
understood it.
“I think you came over with a party of friends to see the villa,” said
Heathcote, to relieve the awkward pause between them.
“Not friends, exactly; people of our hotel.”
Heathcote smiled faintly, and rejoined,--
“Some of our pleasantest acquaintances come of chance intimacies,--don't
you think so?”
“Oh, for the matter of that, they 're jolly enough. There's a wonderful
Londoner, and a rare Yankee, and there's an Irishman would make the
fortune of the Haymarket.”
“You must own, Harry, they are all most kind and good-natured to you,”
said Layton, in a tone of mild half-rebuke.
“Well, ain't I just as--what shall I call it?--polite and the like to
them? Ay, Layton, frown away as much as you like, they're a rum lot.”
“It is young gentlemen of this age who nowadays are most severe on the
manners and habits of those they chance upon in a journey, not at all
aware that, as the world is all new to them, their criticism may have
for its object things of every-day frequency.”
The youth looked somewhat vexed at this reproof, but said nothing.
“I have the same unlucky habit myself,” said Heathcote, good-humoredly.
“I pronounce upon people with wonderfully little knowledge of them, and
no great experience of the world neither; and--case in point--your
American acquaintance is exactly one of those I feel the very strongest
antipathy to. We have met at least a dozen times during the winter and
autumn, and the very thought of finding _him_ in a place would decide
_me_ to leave it.”
It was not Layton's business to correct what he deemed faulty in this
sentiment; but in the sharp glance he threw towards his pupil, he seemed
to convey his disapproval of it.
“'My Coach,' Mr. Layton, is dying to tell us both we are wrong, sir,”
said the boy; “he likes the 'kernal.'” And this he said with a nasal
twang whose imitation was not to be mistaken.
Though Heathcote laughed at the boy's mimicry, his attention was more
taken by the expression “my Coach,” which not only revealed the
relations of tutor and pupil between them, but showed, by its
familiarity, that the youth stood in no great awe of his preceptor.
Perhaps Layton had no fancy for this liberty before a stranger; perhaps
he felt ashamed of the position itself; perhaps he caught something in
Heathcote's quick glance towards him,--whatever it was, he was irritated
and provoked, and angrily bit his lip, without uttering a word.
“Oh, here come the sight-seers! they are doing the grounds, and the
grottos, and the marble fountains,” cried the boy, as a large group came
out from a flower-garden and took their way towards an orangery. As they
issued forth, however, Mrs. Morris stopped to caress a very large St.
Bernard dog, who lay chained at the foot of an oak-tree. Charles
Heathcote had not time to warn her of her danger, when the animal sprang
fiercely at her. Had she not fallen suddenly backward, she must have
been fearfully mangled; as it was, she received a severe wound in the
wrist, and, overcome by pain and terror together, sank fainting on the
sward.
For some time the confusion was extreme. Some thought that the dog was
at liberty, and fled away in terror across the park; others averred that
he was--must be--mad, and his bite fatal; a few tried to be useful; but
Quackinboss hurried to the river, and, filling his hat with water,
sprinkled the cold face of the sufferer and washed the wound, carefully
binding it up with his handkerchief in a quick, business-like way, that
showed he was not new to such casualties.
Layton meanwhile took charge of the little girl, whose cries and screams
were heartrending.
“What a regular day of misfortunes, this!” said Agincourt, as he
followed the mournful procession while they carried the still fainting
figure back to the house. “I fancy you 'll not let another batch of
sight-seers into your grounds in a hurry.”
“The ill-luck has all befallen our guests,” said Heathcote. “Our share
of the mishap is to be associated with so much calamity.”
All that care and kindness could provide waited on Mrs. Morris, as she
was carried into the villa and laid on a bed. May Leslie took all upon
herself, and while the doctor was sent for, used such remedies as she
had near. It was at once decided that she should not be removed, and
after some delay the company departed without her; the day that had
dawned so pleasantly thus closing in gloom and sadness, and the party so
bent on amusement returned homeward depressed and dispirited.
“They 're mean vicious, these Alp dogs, and never to be trusted,” said
Quackinboss.
“Heroines will be heroines,” said Mrs. Morgan, gruffly.
“Or rather won't be heroines when the occasion comes for it. She fainted
off like a school-girl,” growled out Morgan.
“I should think she did!” muttered Mosely, “when she felt the beast's
teeth in her.”
“A regular day of misfortunes!” repeated Agincourt.
“And we lost the elegant fine luncheon, too, into the bargain,” said
O'Shea. “Every one seemed to think it wouldn't be genteel to eat after
the disaster.”
“It is the fate of pleasure parties,” said Layton, moodily. And so they
jogged on in silence.
And thus ended a day of pleasure, as many have ended before it.
Assuredly, they who plan picnics are not animated by the spirit of an
actuary. There is a marvellous lack of calculation in their composition,
since, of all species of entertainment, there exists not one so much at
the mercy of accident, so thoroughly dependent for success on everything
going right. Like the Walcheren expedition, the “wind must not only blow
from the right point, but with a certain graduated amount of force.”
What elements of sunshine and shade, what combinations of good spirits
and good temper and good taste! what guidance and what moderation, what
genius of direction and what “respect for minorities”! We will not enter
upon the material sources of success, though, indeed, it should be owned
they are generally better looked to, and more cared for, than the moral
ingredients thus massed and commingled.
It was late when the party reached the Bagni, and, wishing each other a
half-cold good-night, separated.
And now, one last peep at the villa, where we have left the sufferer. It
was not until evening that the Heathcotes had so far recovered from the
shock of the morning's disaster and its consequences as to be able to
meet and talk over the events, and the actors in them.
“Well,” said Sir William, as they all sat round the tea-table, “what do
you say to my Yankee now? Of all that company, was there one that showed
the same readiness in a difficulty, a quick-witted aptitude to do the
right thing, and at the same time so unobtrusively and quietly that when
everything was over it was hard to say who had done it?”
“I call him charming. I'm in ecstasies with him,” said May, whose
exaggerations of praise or censure were usually unbounded.
“I 'm quite ready to own he 'came out' strong in the confusion,” said
Charles, half unwillingly; “but it was just the sort of incident that
such a man was sure to figure well in.”
“Show me the man who is active and ready-minded in his benevolence, and
I 'll show you one who has not to go far into his heart to search for
generous motives. I maintain it, Quackinboss is a fine fellow!” There
was almost a touch of anger in Sir William's voice as he said these
words, as though he would regard any disparagement of the American as an
offence to himself.
“I think Charley is a little jealous,” said May, with a sly malice; “he
evidently wanted to carry the wounded lady himself, when that great
giant interposed, and, seizing the prize, walked away as though he were
only carrying a baby.”
“I fancied it was the tutor was disappointed,” said Charles; “and the
way he devoted his cares to the little girl, when deprived of the mamma,
convinced me he was the party chiefly interested.”
“Which was the tutor?” asked May, hastily. “You don't mean the man with
all the velvet on his coat?”
“No, no; that was Mr. O'Shea, the Irish M.P., who, by the way, paid
_you_ the most persevering attention.”
“A hateful creature, insufferably pretentious and impertinent! The tutor
was, then, the pale young man in black?”
“A nice, modest fellow,” broke in Sir William; “and a fine boy that
young Marquis of Agincourt. I 'm glad you asked him up here, Charles. He
is to come on Tuesday, is he not?”
“Yes, I said Tuesday, because I can't get my tackle to rights before
that; and I promised to make him a fly-fisher. I owe him the
reparation.”
“You included the tutor, of course, in your invitation?” asked his
father.
“No. How stupid! I forgot him altogether.”
“Oh! that was too bad,” said May.
“Indeed,” cried Charles, turning towards her with a look of such
malicious significance that she blushed deeply, and averted her head.
“Let us invite them all up here for Tuesday, May,” said Sir William. “It
would be very unfair if they were to carry away only a disagreeable
memory of this visit. Let us try and efface the first unhappy
impression.”
“All right,” said Charles, “and I'll dash off a few lines to Mr. Layton,
I think his name is, to say that we expect he will favor us with his
company for a few days here. Am I not generosity itself, May?” said he,
in a low whisper, as he passed behind her chair.
A blush still deeper than the first, and a look of offended pride, were
her only answer.
“I must go in search of these good people's cards, for I forget some of
their names,” said Charles; “though I believe I remember the important
ones.”
This last sally was again directed towards May, but she, apparently, did
not hear it.
“Who knows but your patient upstairs may be well enough to meet her
friends, May?” said Sir William.
“Perhaps so. I can't tell,” answered she, vaguely; for she had but heard
him imperfectly, and scarcely knew what she was replying.
CHAPTER VI. THE MEMBER FOR INCHABOGUE
Mr. O'Shea lay in his bed at the Bagni di Lucca. It was late in the
afternoon, and he had not yet risen, being one of those who deem, to
travesty the poet,--
That the best of all ways To shorten our days Is to add a few hours to
the night, my dear.
In other words, he was ineffably bored and wearied, sick of the place,
the people, and himself, and only wearing over the time as one might do
the stated term of an imprisonment His agent--Mr. Mahony, the celebrated
Mr. Miles Mahony, who was agent for all the Irish gentlemen of Mr.
O'Shea's politics, and who has either estates very much encumbered, or
no estates at all--had written him that letter, which might be
stereotyped in every agent's office, and sent off indiscriminately by
post, at due intervals, to any of the clients, for there was the same
bead-roll of mishaps and calamities Ireland has been suffering under for
centuries. Take any traveller or guide-book experience of the land, and
it is a record of rain that never ceased. The Deluge was a passing April
shower compared to the national climate. Ask any proprietor, however,
more especially if a farmer, and he would tell you, “We're ruined,
entirely ruined, with the drought,”--perhaps he 'd have called it
“druth.” “If the rain doesn't fall before twenty-four hours, there will
be no potatoes, no grass, no straw, the wheat won't fill, the cattle
will be destroyed,” and so on; just as if the whole population was not
soaked through like a wet sponge, and the earth a sludge of mud and
swamp, to which Holland seems a sand-bank in comparison! Then came the
runaway tenants, only varied by those who couldn't be induced to “run”
on any terms. There was the usual “agrarian outrage,” with the increased
police force quartered on the barony in consequence, and perhaps a
threat of a special commission, with more expense besides. There was the
extract of the judge's charge, saying that he never remembered so “heavy
a calendar,” the whole winding up with an urgent appeal to send over ten
or twenty pounds to repair the chapel or the priest's house, or
contribute to some local object, “at your indifference to which there is
very great discontent at this moment.”
A pleasant postcript also mentioned that a dissolution of Parliament was
daily expected, and that it would be well you 'd “come home and look
after the borough, where the Tories were working night and day to
increase their influence.”
“Bad luck to them for Tories!” muttered he, as he threw the crumpled
document from him. “I 'd have been well off to-day if it was n't for
them. There's no telling the money the contested elections cost me,
while, to make out that I was a patriot, I could n't take a place, but
had to go on voting and voting out of the purity of my motives. It was
an evil hour when I took to politics at all. Joe! Joe!” cried he, aloud,
following up the appeal with a shrill whistle.
“Tear and ages, sure the house isn't on fire!” said a man, rushing into
the room with an air and manner that little indicated the respect due
from a servant to his master; “not to say,” added he, “that it's not
dacent or becomin' to whistle after me, as if I was a tarrier or a bull-
dog.”
“Hold your prate, will you?” said Mr. O'Shea.
“Why would I? 'Tis humiliated I am before all in the place.”
“Will you hold your prate?” muttered his master, in a deeper tone,
while, stretching forth his hand, he seemed in search of any missile to
hurl at his mutinous follower.
“If I do, then, it's undher protest, mind that I put it on record that I
'm only yieldin' to the 'vis magiory.'”
“What o'clock is it?” yawned out O'Shea.
“It wants a trifle of four o'clock.”
“And the day,--what's it like?”
“Blazin' hot--hotter than yesterday--'hotter than New Orleens,' Mr.
Quackinbosh says.”
“D--n Mr. Quackinbosh, and New Orleens too!” growled out O'Shea.
“With all my heart. He's always laughing at what he calls _my_ Irish, as
if it was n't better than _his_ English.”
“Any strangers arrived?”
“Devil a one. Ould Pagnini says he 'll be ruined entirely; there never
was such a set, he says, in the house before,--nothing called for but
the reg'lar meals, and no wine but the drink of the country, that is n't
wine at all.”
“He's an insolent scoundrel!”
“He is not. He is the dacentest man I seen since I come to Italy.”
“Will you hold your prate, or do you want me to kick you downstairs?”
“I do not!” said he, with a stern doggedness that was almost comic.
“Did you order breakfast?”
“I did, when I heard you screech out. 'There he is,' said ould Pan; 'I
wish he 'd be in the same hurry to call for his bill.'”
“Insolent rascal! Did you blacken his eye?”
“I did not”
“What did you do, then?”
“I did nothing.”
“What did you say? You're ready enough with a bad tongue when it's not
called for,--what did you say?”
“I said people called for their bills when they were lavin' a house, and
too lucky you 'll be, says I, if he pays it when he calls for it.”
This seemed too much for Mr. O'Shea's endurance, for he sprang out of
bed and hurled a heavy old olive-wood inkstand at his follower. Joe,
apparently habituated to such projectiles, speedily ducked his head, and
the missile struck the frame of an old looking-glass, and carried away a
much-ornamented but very frail chandelier at its side.
“There's more of it,” said Joe. “Damage to furniture in settin'-room,
forty-six pauls and a half.” With this sage reflection, he pushed the
fragments aside with his foot, and then, turning to the door, he took
from the hands of a waiter the tray containing his master's breakfast,
arranging it deliberately before him with the most unbroken tranquillity
of demeanor.
“Did n't you say it was chocolate I'd have instead of coffee?” said
O'Shea, angrily.
“I did not; they grumble enough about sending up anything, and I was n't
goin' to provoke them,” said Joe, calmly.
“No letters, I suppose, but this?”
“Sorra one.”
“What's going on below?” asked he, in a more lively tone, as though
dismissing an unpleasant theme. “Any one come,--anything doing?”
“Nothing; they 're all off to that villa to spend the day, and not to be
back till late at night.”
“Stupid fun, after all; the road is roasting, and the place, when you
get there, not worth the trouble; but they 're so proud of visiting a
baronet, that's the whole secret of it, those vulgar Morgans and that
Yankee fellow.”
These mutterings he continued while he went on dressing, and though not
intended to be addressed to Joe, he was in no wise disconcerted when
that free-and-easy individual replied to them.
“'Your master 's not coming with us, I believe,' said Mrs. Morgan to me.
'I'm sure, however, there must have been a mistake. It 's so strange
that he got no invitation.'
“'But he did, ma'am,' says I; 'he got a card like the rest.'”
“Well done, Joe; a lie never choked you. Go on,” cried O'Shea, laughing.
“'But you see, ma'am,' says I, 'my master never goes anywhere in that
kind of promiscuous way. He expects to be called on and trated with
“differince,” as becomes a member of Parliament--'
“'For Ireland?' says she.
“'Yes, ma'am,' says I. 'We haven't as many goats there as in other parts
I 'm tould of, nor the females don't ride straddle legs, with men's hats
on thim.'”
“You didn't say that?” burst in O'Shea, with a mock severity.
“I did, and more,--a great deal more. What business was it of hers that
you were not asked to the picnic? What had she to say to it? Why did she
follow me down the street the other morning, and stay watching all the
time I was in at the banker's, and though, when I came out, I made
believe I was stuffin' the bank-notes into my pocket, I saw by the
impudent laugh on her face that she knew I got nothing?”
“By the way, you never told me what Twist and Trover said.”
“I did.”
“Well, what was it? Tell it again,” said O'Shea, angrily.
“Mr. Trover said, 'Of course, whatever your master wants, just step in
there and show it to Mr. Twist;' and Mr. Twist said, 'Are you here
again,' says he, 'after the warnin' I gave you? Go back and tell your
master 't is takin' up his two last bills he ought to be, instead of
passin' more.'
“' Mr. Trover, sir,' says I, 'sent me in.'
“'Well, Mr. Twist sent you out again,' says he, 'and there's your
answer.'
“'Short and sweet,' says I, goin' out, and pretending to be putting up
the notes as I went.”
“Did you go down to the other fellow's,--Macapes?”
“I did; but as he seen me coming out of the other place, he only
ballyragged me, and said, 'We only discount for them as has letters of
credit on us.'
“'Well,' says I, 'but who knows that they 're not coming in the post
now?'
“'We 'll wait till we see them,' says he.
“'By my conscience,' says I, 'I hope you 'll not eat your breakfast till
they come.' And so I walked away. Oh dear! is n't it a suspicious
world?”
“It's a rascally world!” broke out O'Shea, with bitterness.
“It is!” assented Joe, with a positive energy there was no gainsaying.
“Is Mr. Layton gone with the rest this morning?”
“He is, and the Marquis. They 're a-horseback on two ponies not worth
fifty shilling apiece.”
“And that counter-jumper, Mosely, I'll wager he too thinks himself first
favorite for the heiress.”
“Well, then, in the name of all that's lucky, why don't you thry your
own chance?” said Joe, coaxingly.
“Is n't it because I _did_ try that they have left me out of this
invitation? Is n't it because they saw I was like to be the winning
horse that they scratched me out of the race? Is n't it just because
Gorman O'Shea was the man to carry off the prize that they would n't let
me enter the lists?”
“There 's only two more as rich as her in all England,” chimed in Joe,
“and one of them will never marry any but the Emperor of Roosia.”
“She has money enough!” muttered O'Shea. “And neither father nor mother,
brother, sister, kith or kin,” continued Joe, in a tone of exultation
that seemed to say he knew of no such good luck in life as to stand
alone and friendless in the world.
“Those Heathcotes are related to her.”
“No more than they are to you. I have it all from Miss Smithers, the
maid. 'We 're as free as air, Mr. Rouse,' says she; 'wherever we have a
“conceit,” we can follow it' That's plain talking, anyhow.”
“Would you marry Smithers, Joe?” said his master, with a roguish twinkle
in his eye.
“Maybe, if I knew for what; though, by my conscience, she's no beauty!”
“I meant, of course, for a good consideration.”
“Not on a bill, though,--money down,--hard money.”
“And how much of it?” asked O'Shea, with a knowing look.
“The price of that place at Einsale.”
“The 'Trout and Triangle,' Joe?” laughed out his master. “Are you still
yearning after being an innkeeper in your native town?”
“I am just that,” replied Joe, solemnly. “'T is what I 'd rather be than
Lord Mayor of Dublin!”
“Well, it is an honorable ambition, no doubt of it. Nothing can be more
reasonable, besides, than a man's desire to fill that station in life
which, to his boyish ideas, seemed high and enviable.” This speech Mr.
O'Shea delivered in a tone by which he occasionally turned to rehearse
oratorical effects, and which, by some strange sympathy, always appeared
to please his follower. “Yes, Joe,” continued he, “as the poet says,
'The child is father of the man.'”
“You mane the man is father of the child,” broke in Joe.
“I do not, booby; I meant what I have said, and what Wordsworth said
before me.”
“The more fool he, then. It's nobody's father he 'd be. Arrah! that's
the way you always spoil a fine sintiment with something out of a poet.
Poets and play-actors never helped a man out of a ditch!”
“Will you marry this Smithers, if that be her name?” said O'Shea,
angrily.
“For the place--”
“I mean as much.”
“I would, if I was treated--'raysonable,'” said he, pausing for a moment
in search of the precise word he wanted.
Mr. O'Shea sighed heavily; his exchequer contained nothing but promises;
and none knew better than his follower what such pledges were worth.
“It would be the making of you, Joe,” said he, after a brief silence,
“if I was to marry this heiress.”
“Indeed, it might be,” responded the other.
“It would be the grand event of _your_ life, that's what it would be.
What could I not do for you? You might be land-steward; you might be
under-agent, bailiff, driver,--eh?”
“Yes,” said Joe, closing his eyes, as if he desired to relish the vision
undisturbed by external distractions.
“I have always treated you as a sort of friend, Joe,--you know that.”
“I do, sir. I do, indeed.”
“And I mean to prove myself your friend too. It is not the man who has
stuck faithfully by me that I 'd desert. Where's my dressing-gown?”
“She was torn under the arm, and I gave her to be mended; put this round
you,” said he, draping a much-befrogged pelisse over his master's
shoulders.
“These are not my slippers, you stupid ass!”
“They are the ould ones. Don't you remember shying one of the others,
yesterday, at the organ-boy, and it fell in the river and was lost?”
Mr. O'Shea's brow darkened as he sat down to his meal. “Tell Pan,” said
he, “to send me up some broth and a chop about seven. I must keep the
house to-day, and be indisposed. And do you go over to Lucca, and raise
me a few Naps on my 'rose-amethyst' ring. Three will do; five would be
better, though.”
Joe sighed. It was a mission he had so often been charged with and never
came well out of, since his master would invariably insist on hearing
every step of the negotiation, and as unfailingly revenged upon his
envoy all the impertinences to which the treaty gave rise.
“Don't come back with any insolent balderdash about the stone being
false, or having a flaw in it. Holditch values it at two hundred and
thirty pounds; and, if it wasn't a family ring, I'd have taken the
money. And, mind you, don't be talking about whose it is,--it 's a
gentleman waiting for his letters--”
“Sure I know,” burst in Joe; “his remittances, that ought to be here
every day.”
“Just so; and that merely requires a few Naps--”
“To pay his cigars--”
“There's no need of more explanation. Away with you; and tell Bruno I
'll want a saddle-horse to-morrow, to be here at the door by two
o'clock.”
Joe took his departure, and Mr. O'Shea was left to his own meditations.
It may seem a small cause for depression of spirits, but, in truth, it
was always a day of deep humiliation to Mr. O'Shea when his necessities
compelled him to separate himself from that cherished relic, his great-
grandmother's ring. It had been reserved in his family, as a sort of
charm, for generations; his grand-uncle Luke had married on the strength
of it; his own father had flashed it in the eyes of Bath and Cheltenham,
for many a winter, with great success; and he himself had so
significantly pointed out incorrect items in his hotel bills, with the
forefinger that bore it, that landlords had never pressed for payment,
but gone away heart-full of the man who owned such splendor.
It would be a curious subject to inquire how many men have owed their
distinction or success in life to some small adjunct, some adventitious
appendage of this kind; a horse, a picture, a rare bronze, a statue, a
curious manuscript, a fragment of old armor, have made their owners
famous, when they have had the craft to merge their identity in the more
absorbing interest of the wondrous treasure. And thus the man that owns
the winner of the Derby, a great cup carved by Cellini, or a _chef-
d'oeuvre_ of Claude or Turner, may repose upon the fame of his
possession, identified as he is with so much greatness. Oh! ye
possessors of show places, handsome wives, rare gardens, or costly gems,
in what borrowed bravery do ye meet the world! Not that in this happy
category Mr. O'Shea had his niche; no, he was only the owner of a ring--
a rose-amethyst ring--whose purity was perhaps not more above suspicion
than his own. And yet it had done him marvellous service on more than
one occasion. It had astonished the bathers at St. Leonard, and dazzled
the dinner company at Tunbridge Wells; Harrogate had winked under it,
and Malvern gazed at it with awe; and society, so to say, was divided
into those who knew the man from the ring, and those who knew the ring
from the man.
CHAPTER VII. MRS. PENTHONY MORRIS
Our reader has been told how Mrs. Penthony Morris stormed the Villa
Caprini, established herself, child, maid, and Skye terrier within its
walls, and became, ere many days went over, a sort of influence in the
place. It is not in chemistry alone that a single ingredient, minute and
scarce perceptible, can change the property and alter all the quality of
the mass with which it is mingled. Human nature exhibits phenomena
precisely alike, and certain individuals possess the marvellous power of
tingeing the world they mix in, with their own hue and color, and
flavoring society with sweet or bitter, as temper induces them. The
first and most essential quality of such persons is a rapid--an actually
instinctive--appreciation of the characters they meet, even passingly,
in the world's intercourse. They have not to spell out temperaments
slowly and laboriously. To them men's natures are not written in
phonetic signs or dark symbols, but in letters large and legible. They
see, salute, speak with you, and they understand you. Not, perhaps, as
old friends know you, with reference to this or that minute trick of
mind or temper, but, with a far wider range of your character than even
old friends have taken, they know your likes and dislikes, the things
you fear and hope, the weak points you would fortify, and sometimes the
strong ones you would mask,--in a word, for all the purposes of
intercourse, they are able to estimate your strength and weakness, and
all this ere, perhaps, you have noted the accents of their voice or the
color of their eyes.
The lady of whom it is now our business to speak was one of this gifted
class. Whence she came, and how she became such, we are not about to
enter upon. She had had her share of trials, and yet was both young and
good-looking; her good looks in no wise evidencing the vestiges of any
sorrow. Whether a widowed or deserted wife, she bore bereavement
admirably; indeed, so far as one could see, she professed a very rare
ethical philosophy. Her theory was, the world was a very nice world, the
people in it very nice people; life itself a very nice thing; and that
people, generally speaking, only needed their own consent to be very
happy and contented. She had, it is true, some very able adjuncts to
carry out her system. There was scarcely an acquirement that she did not
possess reasonably well; she spoke several languages, sang, rode, drew,
played billiards most gracefully, and could manufacture the most
charming cigarettes that ever were smoked. Some of these are envied
qualities, and suggest envy; but against this she was careful to guard,
and this by a very simple method indeed. In whatever she did, tried, or
attempted, she always asked your advice. She had carefully studied the
effect of the imputed superiority of those who counsel their neighbors,
and she saw in its working one of the most tangible of all human
weaknesses. The tendency to guide and direct others is a very popular
one. Generous people practise it out of their generosity; gentle natures
indulge in the practice in very sympathy. To stern moralists it is an
occasion for the hard lessons they love to inculcate. The young are
pleased with its importance; the old are gratified to exercise their
just prerogative. “Tell me how do you do this;” or, “Teach me how to
correct that;” “What would you advise in _my_ place?” or, “What reply
would you give to that?” are appeals that involve a very subtle
flattery. Every man, and more decisively too, every woman, likes to be
deemed shrewd and worldly-wise. Now, Mrs. Morris had reflected deeply
over this trait, and saw to what good account care and watchfulness
might turn it. He who seeks to be guided by another makes his appeal in
a guise of humility, besides, which is always a flattery, and when this
is done artfully, with every aid from good looks and a graceful manner,
success is rarely wanting; and lastly, it is the only form of
selfishness the world neither resents nor repudiates.
He who comes to you with a perfectly finished tale of his misfortunes,
with “Finis” written on the last volume of his woes, is simply a bore;
whereas he who approaches you while the catastrophe yet hangs impending,
has always an interest attached to him. He may marry the heiress yet, he
may be arrested on that charge of forgery, obtain that Cross of the
Bath, or be shot in that duel; you are at least talking to a man Fortune
has not done with, and this much is something.
Mrs. Morris had been little more than a fortnight domesticated at the
Villa Caprini, where her weakness still detained her, and yet she had
contrived to consult Sir William about her fortune, invested, almost
entirely, in “Peruvians,” which her agent, Mr. Halker, had told her were
“excellent;” but whether the people of that name, or the country, or the
celebrated Bark, was the subject of the investment, she really professed
not to know.
To May Leslie she had confided the great secret of her heart,--an
unpublished novel; a story mainly comprised of the sad events of her own
life, and the propriety of giving which to the world was the disputed
question of her existence.
As to Charles, she had consulted him how best to disembarrass herself of
the attentions of Mr. Mosely, who was really become a persecutor. She
owned that in asking his counsel she could not impart to him all the
circumstances which he had a right to be possessed of,--she appealed to
his delicacy not to question her. So that whether wife or widow, he knew
not what she might be, and, in fact, she even made of the obscurity
another subject of his interest, and so involved him in her story that
he could think of nothing else. She managed each of these confidences
with such consummate skill that each believed himself her one sole
trusted friend, depositary of her cares, refuge of her sorrows; and
while thus insinuating herself into a share of their sympathy, she
displayed, as though by mere accident, many of her attractions, and gave
herself an opportunity of showing how interesting she was in her sorrow
and how fascinating in her joy!
The Heathcotes--father, son, and niece--were possessed of a very ample
share of the goods of fortune. They had health, wealth, freedom to live
where and how they liked.
They were well disposed towards each other and towards the world;
inclined to enjoy life, and suited to its enjoyment. But somehow, pretty
much like some mass of complicated machinery, which by default of some
small piece of mechanism--a spring, a screw, or a pinion the more--
stands idle and inert,--all its force useless, all its power unused,
they had no pursuit,--did nothing. Mrs. Morris was exactly the motive
power wanting; and by her agency interests sprang up, occupations were
created, pleasures invented. Without bustle, without even excitement,
the dull routine of the day grew animate; the hours sped glibly along.
Little Clara, too, was no small aid to this change. In the quiet
monotony of a grave household a child's influence is magical. As the
sight of a butterfly out at sea brings up thoughts of shady alleys and
woodbine-covered windows, of “the grass and the flowers among the
grass,” so will a child's light step and merry voice throw a whole flood
of sunny associations over the sad-colored quietude of some old house.
Clara was every one's companion and everywhere,--with Charles as he
fished, with May Leslie in the flower-garden, with old Sir William in
the orangery, or looking over pictures beside him in the long-galleried
library.
Mrs. Morris herself was yet too great an invalid for an active life. Her
chair would be wheeled out into the lawn, under the shade of an immense
weeping-ash, and there, during the day, as to some “general staff,” came
all the “reports” of what was doing each morning. Newspapers and books
would be littered about her, and even letters brought her to read, from
dear friends, with whose names conversation had made her familiar. A
portion of time was, however, reserved for Clara's lessons, which no
plan or project was ever suffered to invade.
It may seem a somewhat dreary invitation if we ask our readers to assist
at one of these mornings. Pinnock and Mrs. Barbauld and Mangnall are,
perhaps, not the company to their taste, nor will they care to cast up
multiplications, or stumble through the blotted French exercise. Well,
we can only pledge ourselves not to exaggerate the infliction of these
evils. And now to our task. It is about eleven o'clock of a fine
summer's day, in Italy; Mrs. Morris sits at her embroidery-frame, under
the long-branched willow; Clara, at a table near, is drawing, her long
silky curls falling over the paper, and even interfering with her work,
as is shown by an impatient toss of her head, or even a hastier gesture,
as with her hands she flings them back upon her neck.
“It was to Charley I said it, mamma,” said she, without lifting her
head, and went on with her work.
“Have I not told you, already, to call him Mr. Charles Heathcote, or Mr.
Heathcote, Clara?”
“But he says he won't have it.”
“What an expression,--'won't have it'!”
“Well, I know,” cried she, with impatience; and then laughingly said, “I
've forgot, in a hurry, old dear Lindley Murray.”
“I beg of you to give up that vile trash of doggerel rhyme. And now what
was it you said to Mr. Heathcote?”
“I told him that I was an only child,--'a violet on a grassy bank, in
sweetness all alone,' as the little book says.”
“And then he asked about your papa; if you remembered him?”
“No, mamma.”
“He made some mention, some allusion, to papa?”
“Only a little sly remark of how fond he must be of _me_, or _I_ of
_him_.”
“And what did you answer?”
“I only wiped my eyes, mamma; and then he seemed so sorry to have given
me pain that he spoke of something else. Like Sir Guyon,--
“'He talked of roses, lilies, and the rest, The shady alley, and the
upland swelling; Wondered what notes birds warbled in their nest, What
tales the rippling river then was telling.'”
“And then you left him, and came away?” said her mother.
“Yes, mamma. I said it was my lesson time, and that you were so exact
and so punctual that I did not dare to be late.”
“Was it then he asked if mamma had always been your governess, Clara?”
“No; it was May that asked that question. May Leslie has a very pretty
way of pumping, mamma, though you 'd not suspect it She begins with the
usual 'Are you very fond of Italy?' or 'Don't you prefer England?' and
then 'What part of England?'”
Mrs. Morris bit her lip, and colored slightly; and then, laying her work
on her lap, stared steadfastly at the girl, still deeply intent on her
drawing.
“I like them to begin that way,” continued Clara. “It costs no trouble
to answer such bungling questions; and whenever they push me closer, I
've an infallible method, mamma,--it never fails.”
“What's that?” asked her mother, dryly.
“I just say, as innocently as possible, 'I 'll run and ask mamma; I 'm
certain she 'll be delighted to tell you.' And then, if you only saw the
shame and confusion they get into, saying, 'On no account, Clara
dearest. I had no object in asking. It was mere idle talking,' and so
on. Oh dear! what humiliation all their curiosity costs them!”
“You try to be too shrewd, too cunning, Miss Clara,” said her mother,
rebukingly. “It is a knife that often cuts with the handle. Be satisfied
with discovering people's intentions, and don't plume yourself about the
cleverness of finding them out, or else, Clara,”--and here she spoke
more slowly,--“or else, Clara, they will find _you_ out too.”
“Oh, surely not, while I continue the thoughtless, guileless little
child mamma has made me,” said she. And the tears rose to her eyes, with
an expression of mingled anger and sorrow it was sad to see in one so
young.
“Clara!” cried her mother, in a voice of angry meaning; and then,
suddenly checking herself, she said, in a lower tone, “let there be none
of this.”
“Sir William asked me how old I was, mamma.”
“And you said--”
“I believed twelve. Is it twelve? I ought to know, mamma, something for
certain, for I was eleven two years ago, and then I have been ten since
that; and when I was your sister, at Brighton, I was thirteen.”
“Do you dare--” But ere she said more, the child had buried her head
between her hands, and, by the convulsive motion of her shoulders,
showed that she was sobbing bitterly. The mother continued her work,
unmoved by this emotion. She took occasion, it is true, when lifting up
the ball of worsted which had fallen, to glance furtively towards the
child; but, except by this, bestowed no other notice on her.
“Well,” cried the little girl, with a half-wild laugh, as she flung back
her yellow hair, “Anderson says,--
“'On joy comes grief,--on mirth comes sorrow; We laugh to-day, that we
may cry to-morrow.'
And I believe one is just as pleasant as the other,--eh, mamma? _You_
ought to know.”
“This is one of your naughty days, Clara, and I had hoped we had seen
the last of them,” said her mother, in a grave but not severe tone.
“The naughty days are much more like to see the last of _me_,” said the
child, half aloud, and with a heavy sigh.
“Clara,” said her mother, in the same calm, quiet voice, “I have made
you my friend and my confidante at an age when any other had treated you
with strict discipline and reserve. You have been taught to see life--as
my sad experience revealed it to me, too--too late.”
“And for me, too--too soon!” burst in the child, passionately.
“Here 's poor Clara breaking her heart over her exercise,” burst in Sir
William, as he came forward, and, stooping over the child, kissed her
twice on the forehead. “Do let me have a favor to-day, and let this be a
holiday.”
“Oh, yes, by all means,” cried she, eagerly, clapping her hands.
“The lizard can lie in the sun, and bask 'Mid the odor of fragrant
herbs; Little knows he of a wearisome task, Or the French irregular
verbs.
“The cicala, too, in the long deep grass, All day sings happily, And I'd
venture to swear He has never a care For the odious rule of three.
“And as for the bee, And his industry--”
“Oh, what a rhyme” laughed in Mrs. Morris.
“Oh, let her go on,” cried Sir William. “Go on, Clara.”
“And as for the bee, And his industry, I distrust his toilsome hours,
For he roves up and down, Like a 'man upon town,' With a natural taste
for flowers.
There, mamma, no more,--not another the whole day long, I promise you,”
cried she, as she threw her arms around her neck and kissed her
affectionately.
“Oh, these doggerel rhymes Are like nursery chimes, That sang us to
sleep long ago.
I declare I'm forgetting already; so I'll go and look for Charley, and
help him to tie greendrakes, and the rest of them.”
“What a strange child!” said Sir William, as he looked fondly after her
as she fled across the lawn.
“I have never seen her so thoroughly happy before,” said Mrs. Morris,
with a faint sigh. “This lovely place, these delicious gardens, these
charming old woods, the villa itself, so full of objects of interest,
have made up a sort of fairy-tale existence for her which is positive
enchantment. It is, indeed, high time we should tear ourselves away from
fascinations which will leave all life afterwards a very dull affair.”
“Oh, that day is very distant, I should hope,” said he, with sincere
cordiality; “indeed, my ward and myself were, this very morning,
plotting by what pretext, by what skilful devices, we could induce you
to spend your autumn with us.”
Mrs. Morris covered her face, as if to conceal her emotion, but a faint
sob was still audible from beneath her handkerchief. “Oh!” cried she, in
a faint and broken voice, “if you but knew in what a wounded heart you
have poured this balm!--if I could tell--what I cannot tell you--at
least, not yet--No, no, Sir William, we must leave this. I have already
written to my agent about letters for Alexandria and Cairo. You know,”
she added, with a sad smile, “the doctors have sentenced me to Egypt for
the winter.”
“These fellows are mere alarmists. Italy is the best climate in the
world, or, rather, it has all the climates in the world; besides, I have
some wonderful counsel to give you about your bonds. I intend that Miss
Clara shall be the great heiress of her day. At all events, you shall
settle it with May.” And so, with that dread of a scene, a sort of
terror about everything emotional,--not very unnatural in gentlemen of a
certain time of life, and with strong sanguineous temperaments,--Sir
William hurried away and left her to her own reflections.
Thus alone, Mrs. Morris took a letter from her pocket, and began to read
it. Apparently the document had been perused by her before, for she
passed hastily over the first page, scarcely skimming the lines with her
eye. It was as if to give increased opportunity for judgment on the
contents that she muttered the words as she read them. They ran thus:--
“A month or six weeks back our proposal might have been accepted, so at
least Collier thinks; but he is now in funds, has money in abundance,
and _you_ know _what_ he is at such moments. When Collier went to him at
his lodgings in King Street, he found him in high spirits, boasting that
he occupied the old quarters of the French Emperor,--that he had even
succeeded to his arm-chair and his writing-table. 'A splendid augury,
Tom,' said he, laughing. 'Who knows but I, too, shall be “restored” one
of these days?' After some bantering he stopped suddenly, and said, ' By
the way, what the devil brings you here? Is n't it something about Loo?
They say you want to marry her yourself, Collier,--is that true?' Not
heeding C.'s denial, given in all solemnity, he went on to show that you
could be no possible use to Collier,--that he himself could utilize your
abilities, and give your talents a fitting sphere; whereas in Collier's
set you would be utterly lost. C. said it was as good as a play to hear
his talk of all the fine things you might have done, and might yet do,
in concert. 'Then there's Clara, too,' cried he, again; 'she 'll make
the greatest hit of our day. She can come out for a season at the
Haymarket, and she can marry whoever she likes.' Once in this vein, it
was very hard to bring him back to anything like a bargain. Indeed,
Collier says he would n't hear of any but immense terms,--ridiculed the
notion of your wanting to be free, for mere freedom's sake, and
jocularly said, 'Tell me frankly, whom does _she_ want to marry? or who
wants to marry _her!_ I 'm not an unreasonable fellow if I 'm treated on
“the square.”' Collier assured him that you only desired liberty, that
you might take your own road in life. 'Then let her take it, by all
means,' cried he. 'I am not molesting her,--never have molested her,
even when she went so far as to call herself by another name; she need
n't cry out before she's hurt;' and so on. C. at last brought him to
distinct terms, and he said, 'She shall cut the painter for five
thousand; she's worth to me every guinea of it, and I'll not take less.'
Of course, Collier said these were impossible conditions; and then they
talked away about other matters. You know his boastful way, and how
little reliance can be laid on any statement he makes; but certain it
is, Collier came away fully impressed with the flourishing condition of
his present fortune, his intimacy with great people, and his actual
influence with men in power. That this is not entirely fabulous I have
just received a most disagreeable proof. When Collier rose to go away,
he said, 'By the way, you occasionally see Nick Holmes; well, just give
him a hint to set his house in order, for they are going to stop payment
of that Irish pension of his. It appears, from some correspondence of
Lord Cornwallis that has just turned up, Nick's pension was to be
continued for a stated term of years, and that he has been in receipt of
it for the last six years without any right whatever. It is very hard on
Nick,' said he, 'seeing that he sold himself to the devil, not at least
to be his own master in this world. I 'm sorry for the old dog on family
grounds, for he is at least one of my father-in-laws.' I quote his words
as Collier gave them, and to-day I have received a Treasury order to
forward to the Lords a copy of the letter or warrant under which I
received my pension. I mean simply to refer them to my evidence on
Shehan's trial, where my testimony hanged both father and son. If this
incident shows nothing else, it demonstrates the amount of information
he has of what is doing or to be done in Downing Street. As to the
pension, I 'm not much afraid; my revelations of 1808 would be worse
than the cost of me in the budget.
“If I find that nothing can be done with Ludlow, I don't think I shall
remain here longer, and the chances are that I shall take a run as far
as Baden, and who says not over the Alps after? Don't be frightened,
dear Loo, we shall meet at the same _table d'hôte_, drink at the same
public spring, bet on the same card at _rouge-et-noir_, and I will never
betray either of us. Of your Heathcotes I can learn next to nothing.
There was a baronet of the name who ruined himself by searches after a
title--an earldom, I believe--and railroad speculations, but he died, or
is supposed to have died, abroad. At all events, your present owners of
the name keep a good house, and treat you handsomely, so that there can
be no great mistake in knowing them. Sufficient for the day is the evil-
-as the old saying is; and it is a wise one if we understood how to
apply it.
“I have been twice with Hadson and Reames, but there is nothing to be
done. They say that the town does not care for a wife's book against her
husband; they have the whole story better told, and on oath, in the
Divorce Court. A really slashing volume of a husband against his wife
might, however, take; he could say a number of things would amuse the
public, and have a large sympathy with him. These are Hadson's or
Reames's words, I don't know which, for they always talk together. How
odd that _you_ should have thought of the ballet for Clara just as I had
suggested it! Of course, till free of Ludlow, it is out of the question.
I am sorry to seal and send off such a disagreeable letter, dear Louisa,
but who knows the sad exigencies of this weary world better than your
affectionate father,
“N. Holmes.
“I accidentally heard yesterday that there was actually a Mrs. Penthony
Morris travelling somewhere in Switzerland. Washington Irving, I
believe, once chanced upon a living Ichabod Crane, when he had flattered
himself that the name was his own invention. The complication in the
present case might be embarrassing. So bear it in mind.”
“Tant pis pour elle, whoever the other Mrs. Morris may be,” said she,
laughing, as she folded up the letter, and half mechanically regarded
the seal. “You ought to change your crest, respectable father mine,”
muttered she; “the wags might say that your portcullis was a gallows.”
And then, with a weary sigh, she closed her eyes, and fell a-thinking.
That quiet, tranquil, even-tempered category of mankind, whose present
has few casualties, and whose future is, so far as human foresight can
extend, assured to them, can form not the slightest conception of the
mingled pleasure and pain that chequer the life of “the adventurer.” The
man who consents to gamble existence, has all the violent ecstasies of
joy and grief that wait on changeful fortunes.
“Shall I hit upon the right number this time? Will red win once more? Is
the run of luck good or ill, or, it may be, exhausted?” These are
questions ever rising to his mind; and what contrivance, what
preparation, what spirit of exigency do they evoke! Theirs is a hand-to-
hand conflict with Fate; they can subsidize no legions, skulk behind no
parapets; in open field must the war be carried on; and what a cruel war
it becomes when every wound festers into a crime!
This young and pretty woman, on whose fair features not a painful line
was traced, and whose beautifully chiselled mouth smiled with a
semblance of inward peace, was just then revolving thoughts little
flattering to humanity generally. She had, all young as she was, arrived
at the ungracious conclusion that what are called the good are mere
dupes, and that every step in life's ladder only lifts us higher and
higher out of the realm of kindly sympathies and affections. Reading the
great moralist in a version of their own, such people deem all virtue
“vanity,” and the struggles and sacrifices it entails, “vexation of
spirit.” Let us frankly own that Mrs. Morris did not lose herself in any
world of abstractions; she was eminently practical, and would no more
have thrown away her time in speculations on humanity generally than
would a whist-player, in the crisis of the odd trick, have suffered his
mind to wander away to the manufactory where the cards were made, and
the lives and habits of those who made them.
And now she had to think over Sir William, of whom she was half afraid;
of Charles, whom she but half liked; and of May, whom she half envied.
There were none of them very deep or difficult to read, but she had seen
enough of life to know that many people, like fairy tales, are simple in
perusal, but contain some subtle maxim, some cunning truth, in their
moral. Were these of this order? She could not yet determine; how,
therefore, should we? And so we leave her.
CHAPTER VIII. PORT-NA-WHAPPLE
Although time has not advanced, nor any change of season occurred to
tinge the landscape with colder hues, we are obliged to ask our reader's
company to a scene as unlike the sunny land we have been sojourning in
as possible. It is a little bay on the extreme north coast of Ireland,
closely landlocked by rugged cliffs, whose basalt formation indicates a
sort of half-brotherhood with the famed Causeway. Seen from the tall
precipices above, on a summer's day, when a vertical sunlight would have
fallen on the strip of yellow crescent-like beach along which white-
crested waves slowly came and went, the spot was singularly beautiful,
and the one long, low, white cottage which faced the sea would have
seemed a most enviable abode, so peaceful, so calm it looked. Closely
girt in on three sides by rocky cliffs, whose wild, fantastic outlines
presented every imaginable form, now rising in graceful pinnacles and
minarets, now standing out in all the stern majesty of some massive
fortress or donjon keep, some blue and purple heaths might be seen
clothing the little shelves of rock, and, wherever a deeper cleft
occurred, some tall, broad-leaved ferns; but, except these, no other
vegetation was to be met with. Indeed, the country for miles around
displayed little else than the arid yellowish grass that springs from
light sandy soil, the scant pasturage of mountain sheep. Directly in
front of the bay, and with a distinctness occasionally startling, might
be seen rising up from the sea a mass of stately cliffs, which seemed
like a reflection of the Causeway. This was Staffa, something more than
thirty-odd miles off, but which, in the thin atmosphere of a calm day,
might easily be traced out from the little cove of Port-na-Whapple.
Port-na-Whapple had once been a noted spot amongst fishermen; the
largest “takes” of salmon--and of the finest fish on the coast--had been
made there. For three or four weeks in the early autumn the little bay
was the scene of a most vigorous activity, the beach covered with rude
huts of branches and boat canvas, the strand crowded with people, all
busily engaged salting, drying, or packing the fish; boats launching, or
standing in, deep-laden with their speckled freight; great fires blazing
in every sheltered nook, where the cares of household were carried on in
common, for the fishermen who frequented the place lived like one large
family. They came from the same village in the neighborhood, and, from
time out of mind, had resorted to this bay as to a spot especially and
distinctively their own. They had so identified themselves with the
place that they were only known as Port-na-Whapple men; a vigorous,
stalwart, sturdy race of fellows were they, too, that none molested or
interfered with willingly.
About forty years before the time we now speak of, a new proprietor had
succeeded to the vast estate, which had once belonged to the Mark-Kers,
and he quickly discovered that the most valuable part of his inheritance
consisted in the fishing royalties of the coast. To assert a right to
what nobody ever believed was the actual property of any one in
particular, was not a very easy process. Had the Port-na-Whapple men
been told that the air they breathed, or the salt sea they traversed,
were heritable, they could as readily have believed it, as that any one
should assert his claim to the strip of sandy beach where they and their
fathers before them had fished for ages.
Sir Archibald Beresford, however, was not a man to relinquish a claim he
had once preferred; he had right and parchment on his side, and he cared
very little for prescription, or what he called the prejudices of a
barbarous peasantry. He went vigorously to work, served the trespassers
with due notice to quit, and proceeded against the delinquents at
sessions. For years and years the conflict lasted, with various and
changeful successes. Now, the landlord would seem triumphant, he had
gained his decree, taken ont his execution against the nets, the boats,
and the tackle, but when the hour of enforcing the law arrived, his
bailiffs had been beaten ignominiously from the field, and the fishermen
left in full possession of the territory. Driven to desperation by the
stubborn resistance, Sir Archy determined on a bolder stand. He erected
a cottage on the beach, and established himself there with a strong
garrison of retainers well armed, and prepared to defend their rights.
Port-na-Whapple was at length won, and although some bloody affrays did
occasionally occur between the rival parties, the fishermen were
compelled to abandon the station and seek a livelihood elsewhere.
With a confidence inspired by some years of security, Sir Archy
diminished his garrison, till at length it was his habit to come down to
the bay accompanied by only a single servant. The old feud appeared to
have died out; not, indeed, that the landlord met those signs of respect
from his tenantry which imply good understanding between them; no
welcome met him when he came, no regrets followed him when he departed,
and even few of the country people accorded the courtesy of touching
their hat as they met him passingly on the road. He was a “hard man,”
however, and cared little for such slights. At length--it was a season
when he had exceeded his usual stay at the coast--there came a period of
great distress amongst the fishermen. Day after day the boats went out
and returned empty. It was in vain that they passed days and nights at
sea, venturing far out upon that wild northern ocean,--the most
treacherous in existence,--in vain they explored the bays, more perilous
still than the open sea. Their sole subsistence was derived from the
sea, and what was to be done? Gaunt famine was stamped on many a hardy
face, and strong men dragged their limbs lazily and languidly, as if in
sickness. As Sir Archy had never succeeded in obtaining a tenant for the
royalty of Port-na-Whapple, he amused himself gaffing the salmon, which
he from time to time sent as presents to his friends; and even now, in
this season of dearth, many a well-filled hamper found its way up the
steep cliffs to be despatched to some remote corner of the kingdom. It
was on one of these days that an enormous fish--far too big for any
basket--was carefully encased in a matting, and sent off by the
Coleraine coach, labelled, “The largest ever gaffed at Port-na-Whapple.”
Many an eye, half glazed with hunger, saw the fish, and gazed on the
superscription as it was sent into the village, and looks of ominous
meaning were cast over the deep cliffs towards the little cottage below.
The morning after this, while Sir Archibald's servant was at the post
for his letters, a boat rowed into the little cove, and some men, having
thrown out the anchor, waded ashore.
“What brings you here, fellows?” cried Sir Archy, haughtily, as he met
them on the beach.
“We are come to gaff a bigger fish than yours o' yesterday,” said the
foremost, striking him on the forehead with the handle of the gaff; and
he passed the spear through his heart while he yet reeled under the
blow.
Notwithstanding the most active exertions of the Government of the day
and the local magistrature, the authors of the foul deed were never
discovered, and although there could be no doubt they were well known to
a large population, none betrayed them. More strange still, from that
day and hour not a fish was ever taken at Port-na-Whapple!
The property had fallen into Chancery, and, the interests of the
claimants not being very closely guarded, the fishermen were again at
liberty to fish wherever they pleased. The privilege was of no value;
the fish had deserted the spot, and even when they swarmed at Carrig-a-
rede, and all along the shore, not one ever was taken there! That the
place was deemed “uncannie,” and that none frequented it, need not cause
any wonder, and so the little cottage fell into ruin, the boat-house was
undermined by the sea and carried away, and even of the little boat-pier
only a few bare piles now remained to mark the place, when at length
there arrived, from Dublin, a doctor to take charge of the Ballintray
Dispensary, and, not being able to find a habitable spot in the village,
he was fain to put the old cottage in repair, little influenced by the
superstition that attached to the unholy place.
He was an elderly man, whose family consisted of his wife and a single
servant, and who, from the day of his first arrival, showed a decided
repugnance to forming acquaintance with any, or holding other
intercourse with his neighbors than what the cares of his profession
required. In person he was tall, and even stately; his features those of
a man once handsome, but now disfigured by two red blotches over the
eyes, and a tremulousness of the nether lip, indications of long years
of dissipation, which his watery eye and shaking hand abundantly
confirmed. Either, too, from a consciousness of his infirmity, or a
shame not less deeply rooted, he never met the eyes of those he
addressed, but turned his gaze either askance or to the ground, giving
him then an expression very different from the look he wore when alone
and unobserved. At such times the face was handsome but haughty, a
character of almost defiant pride in the eye, while the angles of the
mouth were slightly drawn down, as one sees in persons of proud
temperament. A few words will suffice for so much of his history as the
reader need know. Herbert Layton had the proud distinction of being a
Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of twenty-one, and, three
years later, won, against many distinguished competitors, the chair of
medicine in the university. His whole academic career had been a
succession of triumphs, and even able men made this excuse for not
obtaining honors, that they were “in Layton's division.” His was one of
those rare natures to which acquirements the most diverse and opposite
are easy. The most critical knowledge of the classics was combined in
him with a high-soaring acquaintance with science, and while he carried
away the gold medal for verse composition, the very same week announced
him as prizeman for microscopic researches. And while he thus swept the
college of honors, he was ever foremost in all athletic games and manly
exercises. Indeed, the story goes that the gown in which he won his
fellowship had been hastily thrown over the jacket of the cricketer. If
the blemish served to afflict those who felt the truest friendship for
him, it rather contributed to exaggerate the prestige of his name that
he was haughty and even overbearing in manner; not meanly condescending
to be vain of his successes and the high eminence he had won,--far from
it, no man treated such triumphs with such supercilious levity, boldly
declaring that they were within the reach of all, and that it was a
simple question of application to any,--his proud demeanor had its
source in a certain sense of self-reliance, and a haughty conviction
that the occasion had not come--might never come--to show the world the
great “stuff that was in him;” and thus, many a rumor ran, “Layton is
sorry for having taken to medicine; it can lead to nothing: at the Bar
he must have gained every eminence, entered Parliament, risen Heaven
knows to what or where. Layton cannot conceal his dissatisfaction with a
career of no high rewards.” And thus they sought for the explanation of
that demeanor which hurt the pride of many and the sympathy of all.
Partly from the aggressive nature of the passion of self-esteem, never
satisfied if with each day it has not made further inroad, partly,
perhaps, from the estrangement of friends, wearied out by endless
pretensions, Layton at last lived utterly companionless and alone. His
habits of hard work made this the less remarkable; but stories were soon
abroad that he had abandoned himself to drink, and that the hours
believed to be passed in study were in reality spent in debauch and
intoxication. His appearance but unhappily gave some corroboration to
the rumor. He had grown careless in his dress, slouching in his walk;
his pale, thoughtful face was often flushed with a glow exercise never
gives; and his clear bright eye no longer met another's with boldness.
He neglected, besides, all his collegiate duties, his pupils rarely
could obtain sight of him, his class-room was always deserted, a brief
notice “that the Regius Professor was indisposed, and would not
lecture,” remaining affixed to the door for the entire session.
While this once great reputation was thus crumbling away, there arose
another, and, the time considered, a far more dangerous imputation. It
was the terrible period of 1807, and men said that Layton was deep in
all the designs of the Emmet party. So completely was the insurrection
limited to men of the very humbler walks in life, so destitute was the
cause of all support from persons of station or influence, that it is
scarcely possible to picture the shock--almost passing belief--of the
world when this report began to gain currency and credit. Were the
public to-morrow to learn that some great and trusted political leader
was found out to be secretly in the pay of France or Russia, it would
not excite more incredulous horror than at that day was caused by
imputing rebellious projects to Herbert Layton.
The honor of the University was too deeply involved to suffer such a
charge to be rashly circulated. The board summoned the Regius Professor
to attend before them. He returned his reply to the summons on the back
of a letter constituting him a member of the “United Irishmen,” the
great rebel association of the day. As much out of regard to their own
fame, as in pity for a rashness that might have cost him his life, they
destroyed the document and deprived him of his fellowship.
From the day that he wandered forth a ruined, houseless, destitute man,
little is known of him. At long intervals of time, men would say, “Could
that have been poor Herbert, that 'Layton,' taken up by the police for
drunkenness, or accused of some petty crime? Was it he who was charged
with sending threatening letters to this one, or making insolent demands
on that?” Another would say, “I could swear I saw Layton as a witness in
one of those pot-house trials where the course of law proceedings is
made the matter of vulgar jest.” Another met him hawking quack medicines
in a remote rural district.
It is not necessary we should follow him through these changes, each
lower than the last in degradation. We arrive by a bound at a period
when he kept a small apothecary's shop in a little village of North
Wales, and where, with seeming reformation of character, he lived
discreetly, and devoted himself assiduously to the education of an only
son.
By dint of immense effort, and sacrifices the most painful, he succeeded
in entering his boy at Cambridge; but in his last year, his means
failing, he had obtained a tutorship for him,--no less a charge than
that of the young Marquis of Agincourt,--an appointment to which his
college tutor had recommended him. Almost immediately after this, a
vacancy occurring in the little village of Ballintray for a dispensary
doctor, Layton applied for the appointment, and obtained it. Few,
indeed, of the electors had ever heard of his name, but all were
astonished at the ample qualifications tendered by one willing to accept
such humble duties. The rector of the parish, Dr. Millar, was, though
his junior, perhaps, the only one well conversant with Layton's story,
for he had been his contemporary at the University.
On the two or three occasions on which they met, Dr. Millar never
evinced by the slightest allusion any knowledge of the other's
antecedents. He even, by adroit reference to English life and habits, in
contradistinction to Irish, seemed to infer that his experiences were
more at home there; and whatever might have been Layton's own secret
promptings, there was nothing in the clergyman's manner to provoke the
slightest constraint or awkwardness.
The reader is now sufficiently informed to accompany us to the little
cottage on the beach of Port-na-Whapple. It is a warm autumnal
afternoon, the air calm and still, but the great sea comes heaving in,
wave swelling after wave, as though moved by a storm. Strange contrast
to that loud thundering ocean the little peaceful cottage, whose blue
smoke rises in a thin, straight column into the air. The door is open,
and a few ducks, with their young brood, are waddling up and down the
blue stone step, as though educating their young in feats of difficulty
and daring. On a coarse wooden perch within the hall sits a very old
gray parrot, so old that his feathers have assumed a sort of half-woolly
look, and his bleared eyes only open at intervals, as though he had seen
quite enough of this world already, and could afford to take it easily.
In the attitude of the head, partially thrown forward and slightly on
one side, there is a mock air of thought and reflection, marvellously
aided by a habit the creature has of muttering to himself such little
broken ends of speech as he possesses. Layton had bought him a great
many years back, having fancied he could detect a resemblance in him to
a once famed vice-provost of Trinity, after whom he called him “Dr.
Barret,” a name the bird felt proud of, as well he might, and seemed
even now, in his half dotage, to warm up on hearing it. Through the open
door of a little room adjoining might be seen a very pale, sickly woman,
who coughed almost incessantly as she bent over an embroidery-frame.
Though not much more than middle-aged, her hair was perfectly white, and
deep discolorations--the track of tears for many a day--marked her worn
cheeks.
On the opposite side of the hall, in a small room whose furniture was an
humble truckle-bed, and a few shelves with physic-bottles, the doctor
was engaged at his toilet, if by so pretentious a term we may record the
few preparations he was making to render his every-day appearance more
presentable. As he stood thus in trousers and shirt, his broad chest and
powerful neck exposed, he seemed to testify even yet to the athletic
vigor of one who was known as the best hurler and racket-player of his
day. He had been swimming a long stretch far out to sea, and air and
exercise together had effaced many of those signs of dissipation which
his face usually wore, while in his voice there was a frank boldness
that only came back to him at some rare intervals.
“I can fancy, Grace,” cried he, loud enough to be heard across the hall,
“that Millar is quite proud of his condescension. The great rector of
the parish, man of fortune besides, stooping to invite the dispensary
doctor! Twelve hundred per annum associating with eighty! To be sure he
says, 'You will only meet two friends and neighbors of mine,' as though
to intimate, 'I am doing this on the sly; I don't mean to make you a
guest on field-days.'”
She muttered something, speedily interrupted by a cough; and he, not
caring to catch her words, went on:--
“It is a politeness that cuts both ways, and makes _me_ as uncomfortable
as him. This waistcoat has a beggarly account of empty button-holes; and
as for my coat, nothing but a dim candle-light would screen its
deficiencies. I was a fool to accept!” cried he, impatiently.
“Don't go, Tom! don't go!” screamed the parrot, addressing him by a
familiar sobriquet.
“And why not, doctor?” said Layton, laughing at the apropos.
“Don't go! don't go!” repeated the bird.
“Give me your reasons, old boy, and not impossible is it I 'll agree
with you. What do you say, Grace?” added he, advancing to the door of
his room the better to catch her words.
“It is to them the honor is _done_, not to you,” said she, faintly, and
as though the speech cost her heavily.
“Very hard to persuade the rector of that,--very hard to convince the
man of silver side-dishes and cut decanters that he is not the patron of
him who dines off Delf and drinks out of pewter. Is this cravat too
ragged, Grace? I think I 'd better wear my black one.”
“Yes, the black one,” said she, coughing painfully.
“After all, it is no grand occasion,--a little party of four.”
“What a swell! what a swell!” shrieked the parrot.
“Ain't I? By Jove,” laughed Layton, “the doctor is marvellous in his
remarks to-day.”
“There, I have done my best with such scanty 'properties,'” said he, as
he turned away from the glass. “The greatest peril to a shabby man is
the self-imposed obligation to show he is better than he looks. It is an
almost invariable blunder.”
She muttered something inaudibly, and, as usual, he went on with his own
thoughts.
“One either assumes a more dictatorial tone, or takes more than his
share of the talk, or is more apt to contradict the great man of the
company,--at least _I_ do.”
“Don't go, Tom! don't! don't!” called out Dr. Barret.
“Not go?--after all these splendid preparations!” said Layton, with a
laugh. “After yourself exclaiming, 'What a swell!'”
“It 'll never pay,--never pay,--never pay!” croaked out Poll.
“That I'm sure of, doctor. I never knew one of these politic things that
did; but yet we go on through life practising them in the face of all
their failure, dancing attendance at levées, loitering in antechambers,
all to be remembered by some great man who is just as likely to hate the
sight of us. However, this shall be my last transgression.”
The faint female voice muttered some indistinct words about what he
“owed to himself,” and the “rightful station that belonged to him;” but
he speedily cut the reflection short as he said: “So long as a man is
poor as I am, he can only hold his head high by total estrangement from
the world. Let him dare to mix with it, and his threadbare coat and
patched shoes will soon convince him that they will extend no equality
to him who comes among them in such beggarly fashion. With what
authority, I ask, can he speak, whose very poverty refutes his
sentiments, and the simple question stands forth unanswerable: 'If this
man knew so much, why is he as we see him?'”
“This is, then, to say that misfortune is never unmerited. Surely you do
not mean that, Herbert?” said she, with an eagerness almost painful.
“It is exactly what I would say,--that for all the purposes of worldly
judgments upon men, there is no easier rule than to assume that they who
fail deserve failure. Richelieu never asked those who sought high
command, 'Are you skilful in the field? are you clever in strategy?'
but' 'Are you lucky?'”
A deep sigh was her only answer.
“I wonder who Millar's fourth man is to be? Colonel Karstairs, I know,
is one; a man of importance to me, Grace,” said he, laughing; “a two-
guinea subscriber to the dispensary! How I wish I were in a more fitting
spirit of submissiveness to my betters; and, by ill fortune, this is one
of my rebellious days!”
“Don't go, Tom! Don't go, I say!” yelled out Poll.
“Prophet of evil, and evil prophet, hold your tongue! I will go,” said
he, sternly, and as if answering a responsible adviser; and setting his
hat on, with a certain air of dogged defiance, he left the house.
His wife arose, and with feeble steps tottered to the door of the
cottage to look after him. A few steps brought him to the foot of the
cliff, up the steep face of which a zigzag path led upwards for fully
four hundred feet, a narrow track trodden by the bare feet of hardy
mountaineers into some semblance of a pathway, but such as few denizens
of towns would willingly have taken. Layton, however, stepped along like
one whose foot was not new to the heather; nay, the very nature of the
ascent, the bracing air of the sea, and something in the peril itself of
the way, seemed to revive in the man his ancient vigor; and few, seeing
him from the beach below, as he boldly breasted the steep bluff, or
sprang lightly over some fissured chasm, would have deemed him one long
since past the prime of life,--one who had spent more than youth, and
its ambitions, in excess.
At first, the spirit to press onward appeared to possess him entirely;
but ere he reached the half ascent, he turned to look down on the yellow
strip of strand and the little cottage, up to whose very door-sill now
the foam seemed curling. Never before had its isolation seemed so
complete. Not a sail was to be seen seaward, not even a gull broke the
stillness with his cry; a low, mournful plash, with now and then a
rumbling half thunder, as the sea resounded within some rocky cavern,
were the only sounds, and Layton sat down on a mossy ledge, to drink in
the solitude in all its fulness. Amidst thoughts of mingled pain and
pleasure, memories of long-past struggles, college triumphs and college
friendships, came dreary recollections of dark reverses, when the world
seemed to fall back from him, and leave him to isolation. Few had ever
started with more ambitious yearnings,--few with more personal
assurances of success. Whatever he tried he was sure to be told,
“_There_ lies your road, Layton; _that_ is the path will lead you to
high rewards.” He had, besides,--strange inexplicable gift,--that
prestige of superiority about him that made men cede the place to him,
as if by prescription. “And what had come of it all?--what had come of
it all?” he cried out aloud, suddenly awaking out of the past to face
the present. “Why have I failed?” asked he wildly of himself. “Is it
that others have passed me in the race? Have my successes been
discovered to have been gained by trick or fraud? Have my acquirements
been pronounced mere pretensions? These, surely, cannot be alleged of
one whose fame can be attested by almost every scientific and literary
journal of the empire. No, no! the explanation is easier,--the poet was
wrong,--Fortune _is_ a Deity, and some men are born to be unlucky.”
With a sudden start he arose, and rallied from these musings. He quickly
bethought himself of his engagement, and continued his way upward. When
he reached the tableland at top, it wanted but a few minutes of five
o'clock, and five was the hour for which he was invited, and there was
yet two miles to walk to the Rectory. Any one who has lived for a
considerable space estranged from society and its requirements, will own
to the sense of slavery impressed by a return to the habits of the
world. He will feel that every ordinance is a tyranny, and the necessity
of being dressed for this, or punctual for that, a downright bondage.
Thus chafing and irritable, Layton walked along. Never was man less
disposed to accept hospitality as a polite attention, and more than once
did he halt, irresolute whether he should not retrace his steps towards
home. “No man,” thought he, “could get off more cheaply. They would
ascribe it all to my ignorance. What should a poor devil with eighty
pounds a year know of politeness? and when I had said, _I_ had forgotten
the invitation, they would forget _me!_”
Thus self-accusing and self-disparaging, he reached the little avenue
gate, which by a trim gravel walk led up to the parsonage. The neat
lodge, with its rustic porch, all overgrown with a rich japonica,--the
well-kept road, along whose sides two little paved channels conducted
the water,--the flower-plats at intervals in the smooth emerald turf,
were all assurances of care and propriety; and as Layton marked them, he
muttered, “This is one of the lucky ones.”
As Layton moved on with laggard step, he halted frequently to mark some
new device or other of ornamental gardening. Now it was a tasteful group
of rock-work, over which gracefully creepers hung in festoons; now it
was a little knot of flowering shrubs, so artfully intermingled as to
seem as though growing from a single stem; now a tiny fishpond could be
descried through the foliage; even the rustic seats, placed at points of
commanding view, seemed to say how much the whole scene had been planned
for enjoyment, and that every tint of foliage, every undulation of the
sward, every distant glimpse caught through a narrow vista, had all been
artfully contrived to yield its share of pleasure.
“I wonder,” muttered he, bitterly, to himself,--“I wonder when this man
preaches on a Sunday against wealth and its temptations, reminding
others that out of this world men take nothing, but go out upon their
new pilgrimage naked and poor, does he ever turn a thought to all these
things, so beautiful now, and with that vitality that will make them
beautiful years and years after he himself has become dust? I have
little doubt,” added he, hurriedly, “that he says all this, and believes
it too. Here am I, after just as many determinations to eat no man's
salt, nor sit down to any board better than my own,--here I am to-day
creeping like a poor parasite to a great man's table,--ay, he is a great
man to _me!_
“How strange is the casuistry, too, with which humble people like myself
persuade themselves that they go into the world against their will; that
they do so purely from motives of policy, forgetting all the while how
ignoble is the motive they lay claim to.
“The old Roman moralist told us that poverty had no heavier infliction
in its train than that it made men ridiculous, but I tell him he is
wrong. It makes men untrue to themselves, false to their own hearts,
enemies to their own convictions, doing twenty things every day of their
lives that they affect to deem prudent, and know to be contemptible. I
wish my worthy host had left me unnoticed!”
He was at last at the door, and rang the bell with the impatient
boldness of one chafing and angry with himself. There was a short delay,
for the servants were all engaged in the dining-room, and Layton rang
again.
“Dr. Millar at home?” asked he, sternly, of the well-powdered footman
who stood before him.
“Yes, sir; he's at dinner.”
“At dinner! I was invited to dinner!”
“I know, sir; and the doctor waited for half an hour beyond the time;
but he has only gone in this moment.”
It is just possible, in Layton's then frame of mind, that he had turned
away and left the house, never to re-enter it, when a slight
circumstance determined him to the opposite. This was the footman's
respectful manner as he took the hat from his hand, and threw wide the
door for him to pass onward. Ay, it is ever so! Things too trivial and
insignificant for notice in this life are every hour influencing our
actions and swaying our motives. Men have stormed a breach for a smile,
and gone out in black despair with life just for a cold word or a cold
look. So much more quickly does the heart influence than the head, even
with the very cleverest amongst us.
As Layton entered the dining-room, his host rose to receive him, and,
with a polished courtesy, apologized for having gone to table before his
arrival. “I gave you half an hour, doctor, and I would have given you
longer, but that I am aware a physician is not always master of his
time. Colonel Karstairs you are acquainted with. Let me present you to
Mr. Ogden. Dr. Layton, Mr. Ogden.”
There is no manner that so impresses the world with the idea of self-
sufficiency and pretension as that of the bashful man contending against
his own diffidence; and this same timidity, that one would imagine so
easily rubbed off by contact with the world, actually increases with
age, and, however glossed over by an assumed ease and a seeming
indifference, lives to torment its possessor to his last day. Of this
Layton was an unhappy victim, and while imbued with a consummate self-
esteem, he had a painful consciousness of the criticism that his manner
and breeding might call forth. The result of this conflict was to render
him stern, defiant, and even overbearing,--traits which imparted their
character even to his features in first intercourse with strangers.
“I don't know how Halford managed it,” said Mr. Ogden, as he reseated
himself at table, “but I 've heard him say that his professional
engagements never lost him a dinner.”
Simple as were these words, they contained a rebuke, and the air of the
man that uttered them did not diminish their significance.
Mr. Ogden was a thin, pale, pock-marked man, with an upstanding head of
gray hair, a very high and retreating forehead, and a long upper lip,--
one of those men in whom the face, disproportionately large for the
head, always gives the impression of a self-sufficient nature. He had a
harsh, sharp voice, with an articulation of a most painful accuracy,
even his commonplaces being enunciated with a sort of distinct
impressiveness, as though to imply that his copper was of more value
than another man's gold. Nor was this altogether a delusion; he had had
a considerable experience of mankind and the world, and had contrived to
pass his bad money on them as excellent coin of the realm. He was--and
it is very distinctive in its mark--one of those men who always live in
a class above their own, and, whatever be the recognition and the
acceptance they have there, are ever regarded by their rightful equals
as something peculiarly privileged and superior.
“My Lord” would have called him a useful man; his friends all described
him as “influential.” But he was something greater than either,--he was
a successful man. We are constantly told that the efficiency of our army
is mainly owing to the admirable skill and ability of its petty
officers. That to their unobtrusive diligence, care, and intelligence we
are indebted for all those qualities by which a force is rendered
manageable, and victories are won. Do we not see something very similar
in our Bureaucracy? Is not our Government itself almost entirely in the
hands of “petty officers”? The great minister who rises in his place in
Parliament, the exponent of some grand policy, the author of some
extensive measure, is, after all, little more than the mouthpiece of
some “Mr. Ogden” in Downing Street; some not very brilliant or very
statesmanlike personage, but a man of business habits, every-day
intelligence, and long official traditions,--one of those three or four
men in all England who can say to a minister, “It can't be done,” and
yet give no reason why.
The men of this Ogden stamp are, in reality, great influences in a
country like ours, where frequent changes of government require that the
traditions of office should be transmitted through something higher and
more responsible than mere clerks. They are the stokers who keep the
fires alight and the steam up till a new captain comes aboard, and,
though neither commanders nor pilots, they _do_ manage to influence the
course of the ship, by the mere fact that they can diminish the force of
her speed or increase its power without any one being very well aware of
how or wherefore.
Such men as these are great people in that dingy old house, whose frail
props without are more than emblems of what goes on within. Of their
very offices men speak as of the Holy of Holies; places where none enter
fearlessly save secretaries of state, and at whose door inferior mortals
wipe their feet with heart-sinking fear and lowness of spirit,
rehearsing not unfrequently the abject words of submissiveness with
which they are to approach such greatness.
It is curious, therefore, to see one of these men in private life. One
wishes to know how M. Houdin will look without his conjuring-rod, or
what Coriolanus will do in plain clothes; for, after all, he must come
into the world unattended with his belongings, and can no more carry
Downing Street about with him than could Albert Smith carry “China” to a
dinner-party.
And now the soup has been brought back, and the fish, somewhat cold and
mangled, to be sure, has been served to Dr. Layton; the servant has
helped him to an admirable glass of sherry, and the dinner proceeds
pleasantly enough,--not, however, without its casualties. But of these
the next chapter will tell us.
CHAPTER IX. A DINNER AT THE RECTORY
These are men who have specialities for giving admirable “little
dinners,” and little dinners are unquestionably the _ne plus ultra_ of
social enjoyment. To accomplish these there are far more requirements
necessary than the world usually wots of. They are not the triumphs of
great houses, with regiments of yellow plush and gold candelabra; they
affect no vast dining-rooms, nor a private band. They are, on the
contrary, the prerogatives of moderate incomes, middle-aged or elderly
hosts, usually bachelors, with small houses, furnished in the perfection
of comfort, without any display, but where everything, from the careful
disposal of a fire-screen to the noiseless gait of the footman, shows
you that a certain supervision and discipline prevail, even though you
never hear an order and rarely see a servant.
Where these people get their cooks, I never could make out! It is easy
enough to understand that fish and soup, your sirloin and your woodcock,
could be well and carefully dressed, but who devised that exquisite
little _entrée_, what genius presided over that dish of macaroni, that
omelette, or that soufflé? Whence, besides, came the infinite taste of
the whole meal, with its few dishes, served in an order of artistic
elegance? And that butler, too,--how quiet, how observant, how noiseless
his ministration; how steady his decanter hand! Where did they find
_him?_ And that pale sherry, and that Chablis, and that exquisite cup of
Mocha? Don't tell me that you or I can have them all as good,--that you
know his wine-merchant, and have the receipt for his coffee. You might
as well tell me you could sing like Mario because you employ his
hairdresser. No, no; they who accomplish these things are peculiar
organizations. They have great gifts of order and system, the nicest
perceptions of taste, considerable refinement, and no small share of
sensuality. They possess a number of high qualities in miniature, and
are, so to say, “great men seen through the wrong end of a telescope.”
Of this the Rev. Dr. Millar was a pleasing specimen. With that
consciousness of having done everything possible for your comfort which
makes a good host, he had a racy gratification in quietly watching your
enjoyment. Easily and unobtrusively marking your taste for this or
preference for that, he would contrive that your liking should be
gratified, as though by mere accident, and never let you know yourself a
debtor for the attentions bestowed upon you. It was his pride to have a
perfect establishment: would that all vanity were as harmless and as
pleasurable to others! And now to the dinner, which, in our digression,
we are forgetting.
“Try these cutlets, doctor,” interposed the host. “It is a receipt I
brought back with me from Provence; I think you 'll find them good.”
“An over-rich, greasy sort of cuisine is the Provençale,” remarked
Ogden.
“And yet almost every good cook of France comes from that country,” said
Layton.
Ogden raised his large double eye-glass to look at the man who thus
dared to “cap” a remark of his.
“I wish we could get out of the bastard French cookery all the clubs
give us nowadays,” said the Colonel. “You neither see a good English
joint nor a well-dressed entrée.”
“An emblem of the alliance,” said Layton, “where each nation spoils
something of its own in the effort to be more palatable to its
neighbor.”
“Apparently, then, Sir, the great statesmen who promoted this policy are
not fortunate enough to enjoy your sanction?” said Ogden, with an
insolent air.
“My sanction is scarcely the word for it. They have not, certainly, my
approval.”
“I hope you like French wines, though, doctor,” said the host, eager to
draw the conversation into some easier channel. “Taste that Sauterne.”
“It only wants age to be perfect,” said the doctor, sipping. “All these
French white wines require more time than the red.”
Ogden again looked through his glass at the dispensary doctor who thus
dared to give judgment on a question of such connoisseurship; and then,
with the air of one not easily imposed on, said,--
“You have travelled much abroad, perhaps?”
Layton bowed a silent assent.
“I think I saw a German diploma amongst the papers you forwarded to our
committee?” said Karstairs.
“Yes, I am a doctor of medicine of Gottingen.”
“A university, I verily believe, only known to Englishmen through
Canning's doggerel,” said Ogden.
“I trust not, sir. I hope that Blumenbach's name alone would rescue it
from such oblivion.”
“I like the Germans, I confess,” broke in the Colonel. “I served with
Arentschild's Hanoverians, and never knew better or pleasanter fellows.”
“Oh, I by no means undervalue Germans!” said Ogden. “I think we, at this
very moment, owe to them no small gratitude for suggesting to us the
inestimable practice of examination for all public employment.”
“In my mind, the greatest humbug of an age of humbug!” said Layton,
fiercely.
“Nay, doctor, you will, I 'm certain, recall your words when I tell you
that my friend here, Mr. Ogden, is one of the most distinguished
promoters of that system.”
“The gentleman would confer a far deeper obligation upon me by
sustaining than by withdrawing his thesis,” said Ogden, with a sarcastic
smile.
“To undertake the task of sustaining the cause of ignorance against
knowledge,” said Layton, quietly, “would be an ungrateful one always. In
the present case, too, it would be like pitting myself against that
gentleman opposite. I decline such an office.”
“So, then, you confess that such would be your cause, sir?” said Ogden,
triumphantly.
“No, sir; but it would partake so much the appearance of such a
struggle, that I cannot accept it. What I called a humbug was the
attempt to test men's fitness for the public service by an examination
at which the most incapable might distinguish himself, and the ablest
not pass. The system of examination begot the system of 'grinding,'--a
vulgar term for a more vulgar practice, and a system the most fatal to
all liberal education, limiting study to a question-and-answer formula,
and making acquirements only desirable when within the rubric of a
Government commission. Very different would have been the result if the
diploma of certain recognized educational establishments had been
required as qualification to serve the State; if the law ran, 'You shall
be a graduate of this university, or that college, or possess the
licentiate degree of that school.'”
“Your observations seem, then, rather directed against certain
commissioners than the system they practise?” said Odgen, sarcastically.
“Scarcely, sir. My experience is very limited. I never met but one of
them!”
The Colonel laughed heartily at this speech,--he could n't help it; and
even the host, mortified as he was, gave a half-smile. As for Ogden, his
pale face grew a shade sicklier, and his green eyes more fishy.
“To question the post-office clerk or the landing waiter,” continued
Layton, with fresh warmth,--for when excited he could rarely control
himself,--“to test some poor aspirant for eighty pounds per annum in his
knowledge of mathematics or his skill in physical geography, while you
make governors that cannot speak correctly, and vice-governors whose
despatches are the scorn of Downing Street; to proclaim that you want
your tide-waiter to be a moral philosopher, but that the highest offices
in the State may be held by any political partisan active enough,
troublesome enough, and noisy enough to make himself worth purchase; you
demand logarithms and special geometry from a clerk in the Customs,
while you make a mill-owner a cabinet minister on the simple showing of
his persevering; and your commissioners, too,--'Quis custodiet, ipsos
custodes!'”
“You probably, however, submitted to be examined, once on a time, for
your medical degree?” asked Ogden.
“Yes, sir; and that ordeal once passed, I had ample leisure to unlearn
the mass of useless rubbish required of me, and to address myself to the
real cares of my profession. But do you suppose that if it were demanded
of me to subject myself to another examination to hold the humble post I
now fill, that I should have accepted it?”
“I really cannot answer that question,” said Ogden, superciliously.
“Then I will, sir. I would not have done so. Eighty pounds a year is a
very attractive bribe, but it may require too costly a sacrifice to win
it.”
“The neighborhood is a very poor one,” struck in Millar, “and, indeed,
if it had not been for the strenuous exertions of my friend Colonel
Karstairs here, we should never have raised the forty pounds which gives
us the claim for as much more in the presentments.”
“And yet you got two hundred and thirty for a regatta in June last!”
said Layton, with a quiet smile.
“The way of the world, doctor; the way of the world! Men are never
stingy in what regards their own amusements!”
“That is the port, doctor; the other is Lafitte,” said the rector, as he
saw Layton hesitate about a choice.
And now the talk took a capricious turn, as it will do occasionally, in
those companies where people are old-fashioned enough to “sit” after
dinner, and let the decanter circulate. Even here, however, conversation
could not run smoothly. Ogden launched into the manufacture of wines,
the chemistry of adulterations, and the grape disease, on every one of
which Layton found something to correct him,--some slip or error to set
right,--an annoyance all the more poignant that Karstairs seemed to
enjoy it heartily. From fabricated wines to poisons the transition was
easy, and they began to talk of certain curious trials wherein the
medical testimony formed the turning-point of conviction. Here, again,
Layton was his superior in information, and made the superiority felt.
Of what the most subtle tests consisted, and wherein their fallacy lay,
he was thoroughly master, while his retentive memory supplied a vast
variety of curious and interesting illustration.
Has our reader ever “assisted” at a scene where the great talker of a
company has unexpectedly found himself confronted by some unknown,
undistinguished competitor, who, with the pertinacity of an actual
persecution, will follow him through all the devious windings of an
evening's conversation, ever present to correct, contradict, amend, or
refute? In vain the hunted martyr seeks out some new line of country, or
starts new game; his tormentor is ever close behind him. Ogden wandered
from law to literature. He tried art, scientific discovery, religious
controversy, agriculture, foreign travel, the drama, and field sports;
and Layton followed him through all,--always able to take up the theme
and carry it beyond where the other had halted. If Millar underwent all
the tortures of an unhappy host at this, Karstairs was in ecstasy. He
had been spending a week at the Rectory in Ogden's company, and it
seemed a sort of just retribution now that this dictatorial personage
should have met his persecutor. Layton, always drinking deeply as the
wine came to him, and excited by a sort of conflict which for years back
he had never known, grew more and more daring in his contradictions,
less deferential, and less fearful of offending. Whatever little reserve
he had felt at first, oozed away as the evening advanced. The law of
physics is the rule of morals, and as the swing of the pendulum is
greater in proportion to the retraction, so the bashful man, once
emancipated from his reserve, becomes the most daringly aggressive to
mortals. Not content with refuting, he now ridiculed; his vein of banter
was his richest, and he indulged it in all the easy freedom of one who
defied reprisals. Millar tried once or twice to interpose, and was at
last fain to suggest that, as the decanters came round untouched, they
should adjourn to coffee.
Ogden rose abruptly at the intimation, and, muttering something
inaudible, led the way into the drawing-room.
“You have been too hard upon him, doctor,” whispered Karstairs, as he
walked along at Layton's side. “You should be more careful; he is a man
of note on the other side of the Channel; he was a Treasury Lord for
some six months once, and is always in office somewhere. I see you are
rather sorry for this yourself.”
“Sorry! I 'm sorry to leave that glorious Madeira, which I know I shall
never taste again,” said Layton, sternly.
“Are you a smoker, Dr. Layton?” said the host. “If so, don't forget this
house gives all a bachelor's privileges. Try these cheroots.”
“Liberty Hall!” chimed in the Colonel, with a vacant laugh.
“Not a bad name for your dining-room, Millar,” said Ogden, bitterly.
A slight shrug was the parson's answer.
“Is this man a frequent guest here?” he asked again, in a low whisper.
“It is his first time. I need scarcely say, it shall be his last,”
replied Millar, as cautiously.
“I felt for you, Millar. I felt what pain he must have been giving you,
though, for myself, I pledge you my word it was most amusing; his
violence, his presumption, the dictatorial tone in which he affirmed his
opinions, were high comedy. I was half sorry when you proposed coffee.”
Under pretence of admiring some curiously carved chessmen, Karstairs had
withdrawn the doctor into a small room adjoining; but, in reality, his
object was the friendly one of suggesting greater caution and more
reserve on his part.
“I don't say,” whispered he,--“I don't say that you were n't right, and
he wrong in everything. I know nothing about false quantities in Latin,
or German metaphysics, or early Christian art. You may be an authority
in all of them. All I say is, _he_ is a great Government official, and
_you_ are a village doctor.”
“That was exactly why I couldn't let slip the opportunity,” broke in
Layton. “Let me tell you an incident I once witnessed in my old days of
coach travelling. I was going up from Liverpool to London in the
'Umpire,' that wonderful fast coach that astonished the world by making
the journey in thirty-six hours. I sat behind the coachman, and was
struck by the appearance of the man on the box-seat, who, though it was
the depth of winter, and the day one of cutting sleet and cold wind,
wore no upper coat, or any protection against the weather. He was, as
you may imagine, speedily wet through, and presented in his dripping and
soaked habiliments as sorry a spectacle as need be. In fact, if any
man's external could proclaim want and privation, his did. The signs of
poverty, however, could not screen him from the application of 'Won't
you remember the coachman, sir?' He, with no small difficulty,--for he
was nearly benumbed with cold,--extricated a sixpence from his pocket
and tendered it. The burly driver flung it contemptuously back to him
with insult, and sneeringly asked him how he could dare to seat himself
on the box when he was travelling like a pauper? The traveller never
answered a word; a slight flush, once, indeed, showed how the insult
stung him, but he never uttered a syllable.
“'If I had you down here for five minutes, I 'd teach you as how you 'd
set yourself on the box-seat again!' cried coachee, whose passion seemed
only aggravated by the other's submission. Scarcely were the words
spoken, when the dripping traveller began to descend from the coach. He
was soon on the ground, and almost as he touched it the coachman rushed
upon him. It was a hand-to-hand conflict, which, however, could not have
lasted four minutes. The stranger not only 'stopped' every blow of the
other, but followed each 'stop' by a well-sent-in one of his own, dealt
with a force that, judging from his size, seemed miraculous. With closed
eyes, a smashed jaw, and a disabled wrist, the coachman was carried
away; while the other, as he drank off a glass of cold water, simply
said, 'If that man wishes to know where to find me again, tell him to
ask for Tom Spring, Crane Alley, Borough Road!'”
Karstairs followed the anecdote with interest, but, somehow--for he was
not a very brilliant man, though “an excellent officer”--missed the
application. “Capital--excellent--by Jove!” cried he. “I 'd have given a
crown to have seen it.”
Layton turned away in half ill-humor.
“And so it was Tom Spring himself?” said the Colonel. “Who 'd have
guessed it?”
Layton made no reply, but began to set the chessmen upon the board at
random.
“Is this another amongst your manifold accomplishments, sir?” asked
Ogden, as he came up to the table.
“I play most games,” said Layton, carelessly; “but it's only at
billiards that I pretend to any skill.”
“I'm a very unworthy antagonist,” said Ogden; “but perhaps you will
condescend to a game with me,--at chess, I mean?”
“With pleasure,” said Layton, setting the pieces at once. He won the
first move, and just as he was about to begin he stopped, and said, “I
wish I knew your strength.”
“The players give me a knight, and generally beat me,” said Ogden.
“Oh! I understand. Will you allow me to fetch a cheroot? I move king's
knight's pawn one square.” He arose as he spoke, and walked into the
adjoining room.
Ogden moved his queen's pawn.
Layton, from the adjoining room, asked the move, and then said, “King's
bishop to knight's first square;” meanwhile continuing to search for a
cigar to his liking.
“Do you purpose to continue the game without seeing the board?” asked
Ogden, as he bit his lip with impatience.
“Not if you prefer otherwise,” said Layton, who now came back to his
place, with his cigar fully lighted.
“You see what an inexorable enemy I have, Millar,” said Ogden, with an
affected laugh; “he will not be satisfied unless my defeat be
ignominious.”
“Is it so certain to be a defeat, George?” said the rector. “Chess was
always your great game. I remember how the Windsor Club entertained you
on the occasion of your victory over that Swiss player, Eshwald.”
“And so you have beaten Eshwald,” broke in Layton, hastily. “We must
give no quarter here.” And with this he threw away his cigar, and bent
down over the board.
“We shall only disturb them, Karstairs; come along into the drawing-
room, and let us talk parish business,” said the rector. “Our little
dinner has scarcely gone off so well as I had expected,” said Millar,
when they were alone. “I meant to do our doctor a service, by asking him
to meet Odgen, who has patronage and influence in every quarter; but I
suspect that this evening will be remembered grievously against him.”
“I confess I was highly amused at it all, and not sorry to see your
friend Ogden so sorely baited. You know well what a life he has led us
here for the last week.”
“A hard hitter sometimes, to be sure,” said the rector, smiling; “but a
well-meaning man, and always ready for a kind action. I wish Layton had
used more moderation,--more deference towards him.”
“Your Madeira did it all, Millar. Why did you give the fellow such
insinuating tipple as that old '31 wine?”
“I can't say that I was not forewarned,” continued Millar. “I was told,
on his coming down to our neighborhood, to be careful of him. It was
even intimated to me that his ungovernable and overbearing temper had
wrecked his whole fortune in life; for, of course, one can easily see
such a man ought not to be sentenced to the charge of a village
dispensary.”
“No matter how clever you are, there must be discipline; that's what
I've always told the youngsters in my regiment.”
The rector sighed; it was one of those hopeless little sighs a man
involuntarily heaves when he finds that his companion in a _tête-à-tête_
is always “half an hour behind the coach.”
“I intended, besides,” resumed Millar, “that Ogden should have
recommended to the Government the establishment of a small hospital down
here; an additional fifty or sixty pounds a year would have been a great
help to Layton.”
“And of course he 'll do it, when you ask him,” said the hearty Colonel.
“Now that he has seen the man, and had the measure of his capacity, he
'll be all the readier to serve him.”
“The cleverest of all my school and college companions sacrificed his
whole career in life by shooting the pheasant a great minister had just
'marked.' He was about to be invited to spend a week at Drayton; but the
invitation never came.”
“I protest, Millar, I don't understand that sort of thing.”
“Have you never felt, when walking very fast, and eagerly intent upon
some object, that if an urchin crossed your path, or came rudely against
you, it was hard to resist the temptation of giving him a box on the
ear? I don't mean to say that the cases are parallel, but great people
do, somehow, acquire a habit of thinking that the road ought always to
be cleared for _them_, and they will not endure whatever interferes with
their wishes.”
“But don't you think if you gave Layton a hint--”
“Is n't that like it? Hear that---”
A loud burst of laughter from the adjoining room cut short the colloquy,
and Layton's voice was heard in a tone of triumph, saying, “I saw your
plan--I even let you follow it up to the last, for I knew you were
checkmated.”
“I 'm off my play; I have not touched a chessman these three years,”
said Ogden, pettishly.
“Nor I for three times three years; nor was it ever my favorite game.”
“I'm coming to crave a cup of tea from you, Millar,” said Ogden,
entering the drawing-room, flushed in the cheek, and with a flurried
manner.
“Who won the game?” asked the Colonel, eagerly.
“Dr. Layton was the conqueror; but I don't regard myself as an ignoble
foe, notwithstanding,” said Ogden, with a sort of look of appeal towards
the doctor.
“I 'll give you a bishop and play you for--” He stopped in some
confusion, and then, with an effort at a laugh, added, “I was going to
say fifty pounds, quite forgetting that it was possible you might beat
me.”
“And yet, sir, I have the presumption to think that there are things
which I could do fully as well as Dr. Layton.”
Layton turned hastily round from the table, where, having half filled a
large glass with brandy, he was about to fill up with soda-water; he set
down the unopened soda-water bottle, and, drinking off the raw spirit at
a draught, said,--
“What are they? Let's hear them, for I take the challenge; these
gentlemen be my witnesses that I accepted the gage before I knew your
weapon.” Here he replenished his glass, and this time still higher than
before, and drank it off. “You have, doubtless, your speciality, your
pet subject, art or science, what is it? Or have you more than one?
You're not like the fellow that Scott tells us could only talk of tanned
leather,--eh, Millar, you remember that anecdote?”
The rector started with that sort of spasm that unobtrusive men feel
when first accosted familiarly by those almost strangers to them.
“Better brandy than this I never tasted,” said Layton, now filling out a
bumper, while his hand shook so much that he spilled the liquor over the
table; “and, as Tom Warrendar used to say, as he who gives you
unpleasant advice is bound in honor to lend you money, so he who gives
you light claret, if he be a man of honor, will console you with old
brandy afterwards; and you are a man of honor, Millar, and a man of
conscience, and so is our colonel here,--albeit nothing remarkable in
other respects; and as for that public servant, as he likes to call
himself,--the public servant, if I must be candid,--the public servant
is neither more nor less than--” Here he stretched out his arm to its
full length, to give by the gesture greater emphasis to what he was
about to utter, and then staring half wildly, half insolently around
him, he sank down heavily into a deep armchair, and as his arms dropped
listlessly beside him, fell back insensible.
“I will say that I never felt deeper obligation to a brandy-bottle; it
is the first enjoyable moment of the whole evening,” said Ogden, as he
sat down to the tea-table.
In somewhat less than half an hour afterwards, Layton awoke with a sort
of start, and looked wildly and confusedly around him. What or how much
he remembered of the events of the evening, is not possible to say, as,
with a sudden spring to his feet, he took his hat, and with a short
“good-night,” left the house, and hurried down the avenue.
CHAPTER X. THE LABORATORY
There was a small closet-like room in Layton's cottage which he had
fitted up, as well as his very narrow means permitted, as a laboratory.
Everything in it was, of course, of the very humblest kind; soda-water
flasks were fashioned into retorts, and even blacking-jars held strange
chemical mixtures. Here, however, he spent most of his time in the
search of some ingredient by which he hoped to arrest the progress of
all spasmodic disease. An accidental benefit he had himself derived from
a certain salt of ammonia had suggested the inquiry, and for years back
this had constituted the main object of all his thoughts. Determined, if
his discovery were to prove a success, it should burst upon the world in
all its completeness, he had never revealed to any one but his son the
object of his studies. Alfred, indeed, was made participator of his
hopes and ambitions; he had seen all the steps of the inquiry, and
understood thoroughly the train of reasoning on which the theory was
based. The young man's patience in investigation and his powers of
calculation were of immense value to his father, and Layton deeply
regretted the absence of the one sole assistant he could or would
confide in. A certain impatience, partly constitutional, partly from
habits of intemperance, had indisposed the old man to those laborious
calculations by which chemical discovery is so frequently accompanied,
and these he threw upon his son, who never deemed any labor too great,
or any investigation too wearisome, if it should save his father some
part of his daily fatigue. It was not for months after Alfred's
departure that Layton could re-enter his study, and resume his old
pursuits. The want of the companionship that cheered him, and the able
help that seconded all his efforts, had so damped his ardor, that he
had, if not abandoned his pursuit, at least deferred its prosecution
indefinitely. At last, however, by a vigorous effort, he resumed his old
labor, and in the interest of his search he soon regained much of his
former ambition for success.
The investigations of chemistry have about them all the fluctuating
fortunes of a deep and subtle game. There are the same vacillations of
good and bad luck; the same tides of hope and fear; the almost certain
prospect of success dashed and darkened by failure; the grief and
disappointment of failure dispelled by glimpses of bright hope. So many
are the disturbing influences, so subtle the causes which derange
experiment, where some infinitesimal excess or deficiency, some minute
accession of heat or cold, some chance adulteration in this or that
ingredient, can vitiate a whole course of inquiry, requiring the labor
of weeks to be all begun again, that the pursuit at length assumes many
of the features of a game, and a game only to be won by securing every
imaginable condition of success.
Perhaps this very character was what imparted to Layton's mind one of
the most stimulating of all interests; at all events, he addressed
himself to his task like one who, baffled and repulsed as he might be,
would still not acknowledge defeat. As well from the indefatigable ardor
he showed, as from the occasional bursts of boastful triumph in
anticipation of a great success in store, his poor ailing wife had grown
to fancy that his pursuit was something akin to those wonderful
researches after the elixir vitae, or the philosopher's stone. She knew
as little of his real object as of the means he employed to attain it,
but she could see the feverish eagerness that daily gained on him, mark
his long hours of intense thought, his days of labor, his nights of
wakefulness, and her fears were that these studies were undermining his
strength and breaking up his vigor.
It was, then, with a grateful joy at her heart she saw him invited to
the Rectory,--admitted once more to the world of his equals, and the
notice of society. She had waited hour by hour for his return home, and
it was already daybreak ere she heard him enter the cottage, and repair
to his own room. Who knows what deep and heartfelt anxieties were hers
as she sought her bed at last? What sorrowful forebodings might not have
oppressed her? What bitter tears have coursed along her worn cheeks? for
his step was short and impatient as he crossed the little hall, and the
heavy slam of his door, and the harsh grating of the lock, told that he
was ruffled and angry. The morning wore on heavily,--drearily to her, as
she watched and waited, and at last she crept noiselessly to the door,
and tapped at it gently.
“Who's there? Come in!” cried he, roughly.
“I came only to ask if you would not have your breakfast,” said she,
timidly. “It is already near eleven o'clock.”
“So late, Grace?” said he, with a more kindly accent, as he offered her
a seat. “I don't well know how the time slipped over; not that I was
engaged in anything that interested me,--I do not believe I have done
anything whatever,--no, nothing,” muttered he, vaguely, as his wearied
eye ranged over the table.
“You are tired to-day, Herbert, and you need rest,” said she, in a soft,
gentle tone. “Let this be a holiday.”
“Mine are all holidays now,” replied he, with an effort at gayety. Then
suddenly, with an altered voice, he added: “I ought never to have gone
there last night, Grace. I knew well what would come of it. I have no
habits, no temper, no taste, for such associates. What other thoughts
could cross me as I sat there, sipping their claret, than of the cold
poverty that awaited me at home? What pleasure to me could that short
hour of festivity be, when I knew and felt I must come back to this? And
then, the misery, the insult of that state of watchfulness, to see that
none took liberties with me on the score of my humble station.”
“But surely, Herbert, there is not any one--”
“I don't know that,” broke he in. “He who wears finer linen than you is
often a terrible tyrant, on no higher or better ground. If any man has
been taught that lesson, _I_ have! The world has one easy formula for
its guidance. If you be poor, you must be either incompetent or
improvident, or both; your patched coat and shabby hat are vouchers for
one or the other, and sleek success does not trouble itself to ask
which.”
“The name of Herbert Layton is a sure guarantee against such
depreciation,” said she, in a voice tremulous with pride and emotion.
“So it might, if it had not earned a little extra notoriety in police
courts,” said he, with a laugh of intense bitterness.
“Tell me of your dinner last night,” said she, eager to withdraw him
from the vein she ever dreaded most. “Was your party a pleasant one?”
“Pleasant!--no, the very reverse of pleasant! We had discussion instead
of conversation, and in lieu of those slight differences of sentiment
which flavor talk, we had stubborn contradictions. All _my_ fault, too,
Grace. I was in one of _my_ unhappy humors, and actually forgot I was a
dispensary doctor and in the presence of an ex-Treasury Lord, with great
influence and high acquaintances. You can fancy, Grace, how boldly I
dissented from all he said.”
“But if you were in the right, Herbert--”
“Which is exactly what I was not; at least, I was quite as often in the
wrong. My amusement was derived from seeing how powerless he was to
expose the fallacies that outraged him. He was stunned by a fire of
blank cartridge, and obliged to retreat before it. But now that it's all
over, I may find the amusement a costly one. And then, I drank too much
wine--” She gave a heavy sigh, and turned away to hide her look. “Yes,”
resumed he, with a fierce bitterness in his tone, “the momentary flush
of self-esteem--Dutch courage, though it be--is a marvellous temptation
to a poor, beaten-down, crushed spirit, and wine alone can give it; and
so I drank, and drank on.”
“But not to excess,” said she, in a half-broken whisper.
“At least to unconsciousness. I know nothing of how or when I quitted
the Rectory, nor how I came down the cliffs and reached this in safety.
The path is dangerous enough at noonday with a steady head and a
cautious foot, and yet last night assuredly I could not boast of
either.”
Another and a deeper sigh escaped her, despite her efforts to stifle it.
“Ay, Grace, the doctor was right when he said to me, 'Don't go there.'
How well if I had but taken his advice! I am no longer fit for such
associates. They live lives of easy security,--they have not the cares
and struggles of a daily conflict for existence; we meet, therefore, on
unequal grounds. Their sentiments cost them no more care than the French
roll upon their breakfast-table. They can afford to be wrong as they can
afford debt, but the poor wretch like myself, a bare degree above
starvation, has as little credit with fine folk as with the huckster. I
ought never to have gone there! Leave me now,” added he, half sternly;
“let me see if these gases and essences will not make me forget
humanity. No, I do not care for breakfast,--I cannot eat!”
With the same noiseless step she had entered, she now glided softly from
the room, closing the door so gently that it was only when he looked
round that he was aware of being alone. For a moment or two he busied
himself with the objects on the table; he arranged phials and retorts,
he lighted his stove, he stood fanning the charcoal till the red mass
glowed brightly, and then, as though forgetting the pursuit he was
engaged in, he sat down upon a chair, and sank into a dreamy revery.
Another low tap at the door aroused him from his musings, and the low
voice he knew so well gently told him it was his morning to attend the
dispensary, a distance fully three miles off. More than one complaint
had been already made of his irregularity and neglect, and, intending to
pay more attention in future, he had charged his wife to keep him
mindful of his duties.
“You will scarcely reach Ballintray before one o'clock, Herbert,” said
she, in her habitually timid tone.
“What if I should not try? What if I throw up the beggarly office at
once? What if I burst through this slavery of patrons and chairmen and
boards? Do you fancy we should starve, Grace?”
“Oh, no, Herbert,” cried she, eagerly; “I have no fears for our future.”
“Then your courage is greater than mine,” said he, bitterly, and with
one of the sudden changes of humor which often marked him. “Can't you
anticipate how the world would pass sentence on me, the idle debauchee,
who would not earn his livelihood, but must needs forfeit his
subsistence from sheer indolence?--ay, and the world would be right too.
He who breaks stones upon the highroad will not perform his task the
better because he can tell the chemical constituent of every fragment
beneath his hammer. Men want common work from common workmen, and there
are always enough to be found. I'll set out at once.”
With this resolve, uttered in a tone she never gainsaid or replied to,
he took his hat and left the cottage.
There is no more aggressive spirit than that of the man who, with the
full consciousness of great powers, sees himself destined to fill some
humble and insignificant station, well knowing the while the inferiority
of those who have conquered the high places in life. Of all the
disqualifying elements of his own character, his unsteadiness, his want
of thrift, perseverance, or conduct, his deficiency in tact or due
courtesy, his stubborn indifference to others,--of all these he will
take no account as he whispers to his heart,
“I passed that fellow at school!--I beat this one at college!--how often
have I helped yonder celebrity with his theme!--how many times have I
written his exercise for that great dignitary!” Oh, what a deep well of
bitterness lies in the nature of one so tried and tortured, and how
cruel is the war that he at last wages with the world, and, worse again,
with his own heart!
Scarcely noticing the salutations of the country people, as they touched
their hats to him on the road, or the more familiar addresses of the
better-to-do farmers as they passed, Layton strode onwards to the little
village where his dispensary stood.
“Yer unco late, docther, this morning,” said one, in that rebukeful tone
the northern Irishman never scruples to employ when he thinks he has
just cause of complaint.
“It's na the way to heal folk to keep them waitin' twa hours at a closed
door,” said another.
“I'se warrant he's gleb eneuch to call for his siller when it's due to
him,” said a third.
“My gran'mither is just gane hame; she would na bide any longer for yer
comin',” said a pert-looking girl, with a saucy toss of her head.
“It's na honest to take people's money and gie naething for it,” said an
old white-haired man on crutches; “and I 'll just bring it before the
board.”
Layton turned an angry look over the crowd, but never uttered a word.
Pride alone would have prevented him from answering them, had he not the
deeper motive that in his conflict with himself he took little heed of
what they said.
“Where's the key, Sandy?” cried he, impatiently, to an old cripple who
assisted him in the common work of the dispensary.
The man came close and whispered something secretly in his ear.
“And carried the key away, do you say?” asked Layton, eagerly.
“Just so, sir. There was anither wi' him,--a stranger,--and he was mair
angry than his rev'rance, and said, 'What can ye expec'? Is it like that
a man o' his habits could be entrusted with such a charge as this?”
“And Dr. Millar--what did he reply?”
“Na much; he just shook his head this way, and muttered, 'I hoped for
better,--I hoped for better!' I dinna think they 'd have taken away the
key, but that old Jonas Graham kem up at the time, and said, 'It's mair
than a month since we seen him'--yourself he meant--'down here, and them
as has the strength for it would rather gae all the gait to Coleraine
than tak their chance o' him.' For a' that,” said Sandy, “I opened the
dispensary door, and was sarvin' out salts and the like, when the
stranger said, 'Is it to a cretur like that the people are to trust
their health? Just turn the key in the door, Millar, and you'll
certainly save some one from being poisoned this morning.' And so he
did, and here we are.” And poor Sandy turned a rueful look on the
surrounders as he finished.
“I can't cure you as kings used to cure the evil, long ago, by royal
touch, good people,” said Layton, mockingly; “and your guardians, or
governors, or whatever they call themselves, have shut me out of my own
premises. I am a priest cut off from his temple.”
“I 'm na come here to ask for charity,” said a stout old fellow, who
stood alongside of a shaggy mountain pony; “I 'm able to pay ye for a'
your docther's stuff, and your skill besides.”
“Well spoken, and like a man of independence,” said Layton. “Let us open
the treaty with a gill of brandy, and you shall tell me your case while
I am sipping it.” And with these words he led the way into a public-
house, followed by the farmer, leaving the crowd to disperse when and
how they pleased.
Whatever the nature of those ailments now so confidentially imparted,
they were long enough in narration not only to require one, or two, or
three gills, but a full bottle of strong mountain whiskey, of which it
is but fair to say the farmer took his share. Layton's powers as a
talker were not long in exercise ere they gained their due influence
over his companion. Of the very themes the countryman deemed his own, he
found the doctor knew far more than himself; while by his knowledge of
life and human nature generally, he surprised his listener, who actually
could not tear himself away from one so full of anecdote and
observation.
Partly warned by the lateness of the hour--for already the market was
over and the streets deserted--and partly by the thick utterance of his
companion, whose heavy, bloodshot eye and sullen look now evidenced how
deeply he had exceeded, the farmer at last arose to go away.
“You 're not 'flitting.' as you call it hereabouts,” said Layton, half
stupidly, “you're not thinking of leaving me alone to my own company,
are you?”
“I maun be thinkin' of home; it's more than twalve miles o' a mountain
that's afore me. There's na anither but yoursel' had made me forget it
a' this while,” said the farmer, as he buttoned his coat and prepared
for the road. “Just tell me now what's to pay for the bit o' writin' ye
gav' me.”
“You 've had a consultation, my friend,--not a visit, but a regular
consultation. You've not been treated like the outer populace, and only
heard the oracles from afar, but you have been suffered to sit down
beside the augur, to question him, and to drink with him. Pay,--nothing
to pay! I'll cure your boy, there's my word on't. These cases are
specialities with me. Bell used to say, 'Ask Layton to look at that
fellow in such a ward; he's the only one of us understands this sort of
thing. Layton will tell us all about it.' And I 'm Layton! Ay, sir, this
poor, shabby, ill-dressed fellow that you see before you is that same
Herbert Layton; so much for brains and ability to work a man's way in
life! Order another quart of Isla whiskey, man,--that's my fee; at least
it shall be to-day. Tell them to send me pen, ink, and paper, and not
disturb me; tell them, besides--no, nevermind, I'll tell them that! And
now, good-day, my honest fellow. _You_ 've been _my_ physician to-day as
much as _I_ have been _yours_. You have cured a sick heart--cheated it,
at least--out of one paroxysm, and so, a good journey, and safe home to
you. Send me news of your boy, and good-bye.” And his head dropped as he
spoke; his arms fell heavily at his sides; and he appeared to have sunk
into a profound sleep. The stupor was but brief; the farmer was not well
out of the village when Layton, calling for a basin of cold water,
plunged his face and part of his head in it, baring his brawny throat,
and bathing it with the refreshing liquid. As he was thus employed, he
caught sight of his face reflected in a much-cracked mirror over the
fireplace, and stood gazing for a few seconds at his blotched and
bloated countenance.
“A year or two left still, belike,” muttered he. “Past insuring, but
still seaworthy, or, at least”--and here his voice assumed an intense
mockery in tone,--“at least, capable of more shipwreck!” The sight of
the writing-materials on the table seemed to recall him to something he
had half forgotten, and, after a pa
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