As we desire throughout this tale to make the actors themselves,
wherever it be possible, the narrators, using their words in preference
to our own, we shall now place before the reader a letter written by
Colonel Harcourt about a week after his arrival at Glencore, which will
at least serve to rescue him and ourselves from the task of repetition.
It was addressed to Sir Horace Upton, Her Majesty's Envoy at Stuttgard,
one who had formerly served in the same regiment with Glencore and
himself, but who left the army early to follow the career of diplomacy,
wherein, still a young man, he had risen to the rank of a minister.
It is not important, at this moment, to speak more particularly of his
character, than that it was in almost every respect the opposite of his
correspondent's. Where the one was frank, open, and unguarded, the other
was cold, cautious, and reserved; where one believed, the other doubted;
where one was hopeful, the other had nothing but misgivings. Harcourt
would have twenty times a day wounded the feelings, or jarred against
the susceptibility, of his best friend; Upton could not be brought to
trench upon the slightest prejudice of his greatest enemy. We might
continue this contrast to every detail of their characters; but enough
has now been said, and we proceed to the letter in question:
Glencore Castle. Dear Upton,--True to my promise to give you early
tidings of our old friend, I sit down to pen a few lines, which if a
rickety table and some infernal lampblack for ink should make illegible,
you 'll have to wait for the elucidation till my arrival. I found
Glencore terribly altered; I 'd not have known him. He used to be
muscular and rather full in habit; he is now a mere skeleton. His hair
and mustache were coal black; they are a motley gray.
He was straight as an arrow--pretentiously erect, many thought; he is
stooped now, and bent nearly double. His voice, too, the most clear and
ringing in the squadron, is become a hoarse whisper. You remember what a
passion he had for dress, and how heartily we all deplored the chance of
his being colonel, well knowing what precious caprices of costly costume
would be the consequence; well, a discharged corporal in a cast-off
mufti is stylish compared to him. I don't think he has a hat--I have
only seen an oilskin cap; but his coat, his one coat, is a curiosity of
industrious patchwork; and his trousers are a pair of our old overalls,
the same pattern we wore at Hounslow when the King reviewed us.
Great as these changes are, they are nothing to the alteration in the
poor fellow's disposition. He that was generous to munificence is now an
absolute miser, descending to the most pitiful economy and moaning over
every trifling outlay. He is irritable, too, to a degree. Far from
the jolly, light-hearted comrade, ready to join in the laugh against
himself, and enjoy a jest of which he was the object, he suspects a
slight in every allusion, and bristles up to resent a mere familiarity
as though it were an insult.
Of course I put much of this down to the score of illness, and of bad
health before he was so ill; but, depend upon it, he's not the man we
knew him. Heaven knows if he ever will be so again. The night I arrived
here he was more natural, more like himself, in fact, than he has ever
been since. His manner was heartier, and in his welcome there was a
touch of the old jovial good fellow, who never was so happy as
when sharing his quarters with a comrade. Since that he has grown
punctilious, anxiously asking me if I am comfortable, and teasing me
with apologies for what I don't miss, and excuses about things that I
should never have discovered wanting.
I think I see what is passing within him; he wants to be confidential,
and he does n't know how to go about it. I suppose he looks on me as
rather a rough father to confess to; he is n't quite sure what kind of
sympathy, if any, he 'll meet with from me, and he more than half dreads
a certain careless, outspoken way in which I have now and then addressed
his boy, of whom more anon.
I may be right, or I may be wrong, in this conjecture; but certain it
is, that nothing like confidential conversation has yet passed between
us, and each day seems to render the prospect of such only less and less
likely. I wish from my heart you were here; you are just the fellow to
suit him,--just calculated to nourish the susceptibilities that _I_
only shock. I said as much t' other day, in a half-careless way, and he
immediately caught it up, and said,
“Ay, George, Upton is a man one wants now and then in life, and when
the moment comes, there is no such thing as a substitute for him.” In a
joking manner, I then remarked, “Why not come over to see him?” “Leave
this!” cried he; “venture in the world again; expose myself to its
brutal insolence, or still more brutal pity!” In a torrent of passion,
he went on in this strain, till I heartily regretted that I had ever
touched this unlucky topic.
I date his greatest reserve from that same moment; and I am sure he
is disposed to connect me with the casual suggestion to go over to
Stuttgard, and deems me, in consequence, one utterly deficient in all
true feeling and delicacy.
I need n't tell you that my stay here is the reverse of a pleasure. I
'm never what fine people call bored anywhere; and I could amuse myself
gloriously in this queer spot. I have shot some half-dozen seals,
hooked the heaviest salmon I ever saw rise to a fly, and have had rare
coursing,--not to say that Glencore's table, with certain reforms I have
introduced, is very tolerable, and his cellar unimpeachable. I'll back
his chambertin against your Excellency's, and I have discovered a bin
of red hermitage that would convert a whole vineyard of the smallest
Lafitte into Sneyd's claret; but with all these seductions, I can't
stand the life of continued restraint I 'm reduced to. Glencore
evidently sent for me to make some revelations, which, now that he sees
me, he cannot accomplish. For aught I know, there may be as many changes
in _me_ to _his_ eyes as to _mine_ there are in _him_. I only can vouch
for it, that if I ride three stone heavier, I have n't the worse place,
and I don't detect any striking falling off in my appreciation of good
fare and good fellows.
I spoke of the boy; he is a fine lad,--somewhat haughty, perhaps; a
little spoiled by the country people calling him the young lord; but
a generous fellow, and very like Glencore when he first joined us at
Canterbury. By way of educating him himself, Glencore has been driving
Virgil and decimal fractions into him; and the boy, bred in the
country,--never out of it for a day,--can't load a gun or tie a hackle.
Not the worst thing about the lad is his inordinate love for Glencore,
whom he imagines to be about the greatest and most gifted being that
ever lived. I can scarcely help smiling at the implicitness of this
honest faith; but I take good care not to smile; on the contrary, I
give every possible encouragement to the belief. I conclude the
disenchantment will arrive only too early at last.
You 'll not know what to make of such a lengthy epistle from me, and
you 'll doubtless torture that fine diplomatic intelligence of yours to
detect the secret motive of my long-windedness; but the simple fact is,
it has rained incessantly for the last three days, and promises the same
cheering weather for as many more. Glencore doesn't fancy that the
boy's lessons should be broken in upon, and _hinc istæ litteræ_,--that's
classical for you.
I wish I could say when I am likely to beat my retreat. I 'd stay--not
very willingly, perhaps, but still I 'd stay--if I thought myself of any
use; but I cannot persuade myself that I am such. Glencore is now about
again, feeble of course, and much pulled down, but able to go about the
house and the garden. I can contribute nothing to his recovery, and I
fear as little to his comfort. I even doubt if he desires me to prolong
my visit; but such is my fear of offending him, that I actually dread
to allude to my departure, till I can sound my way as to how he 'll
take it. This fact alone will show you how much he is changed from the
Glencore of long ago. Another feature in him, totally unlike his
former self, struck me the other evening. We were talking of old
messmates--Croydon, Stanhope, Loftus, and yourself--and instead of
dwelling, as he once would have done, exclusively on your traits of
character and disposition, he discussed nothing but your abilities, and
the capacity by which you could win your way to honors and distinction.
I need n't say how, in such a valuation, you came off best. Indeed, he
professes the highest esteem for your talents, and says, “You'll see
Upton either a cabinet minister or ambassador at Paris yet;” and this he
repeated in the same words last night, as if to show it was not dropped
as a mere random observation.
I have some scruples about venturing to offer anything bordering on
a suggestion to a great and wily diplomatist like yourself; but if an
illustrious framer of treaties and protocols would condescend to take
a hint from an old dragoon colonel, I 'd say that a few lines from your
crafty pen might possibly unlock this poor fellow's heart, and lead
him to unburthen to _you_ what he evidently cannot persuade himself to
reveal to me. I can see plainly enough that there is something on his
mind; but I know it just as a stupid old hound feels there is a fox in
the cover, but cannot for the life of him see how he's to “draw” him.
A letter from you would do him good, at all events; even the little
gossip of your gossiping career would cheer and amuse him. He said very
plaintively, two nights ago, “They 've all forgotten me. When a man
retires from the world he begins to die, and the great event, after all,
is only the _coup de grace_ to a long agony of torture.” Do write to
him, then; the address is “Glencore Castle, Leenane, Ireland,” where, I
suppose, I shall be still a resident for another fortnight to come.
Glencore has just sent for me; but I must close this for the post, or it
will be too late.
Yours ever truly,
George Harcourt.
I open this to say that he sent for me to ask your address,--whether
through the Foreign Office, or direct to Stuttgard. You 'll probably not
hear for some days, for he writes with extreme difficulty, and I leave
it to your wise discretion to write to him or not in the interval.
Poor fellow, he looks very ill to-day. He says that he never slept the
whole night, and that the laudanum he took to induce drowsiness only
excited and maddened him. I counselled a hot jorum of mulled
porter before getting into bed; but he deemed me a monster for the
recommendation, and seemed quite disgusted besides. Could n't you send
him over a despatch? I think such a document from Stuttgard ought to be
an unfailing soporific.