My dear Harcourt,--I arrived here yesterday, and by good fortune
caught your letter at F. O., where it was awaiting the departure of the
messenger for Germany.
Your account of poor Glencore is most distressing. At the same time, my
knowledge of the man and his temper in a measure prepared me for it.
You say that he wishes to see me, and intends to write. Now, there is a
small business matter between us, which his lawyer seems much disposed
to push on to a difficulty, if not to worse. To prevent this, if
possible,--at all events to see whether a visit from me might not be
serviceable,--I shall cross over to Ireland on Tuesday, and be with you
by Friday, or at latest Saturday. Tell him that I am coming, but only
for a day. My engagements are such that I must be here again early in
the following week. On Thursday I go down to Windsor.
There is wonderfully little stirring here, but I keep that little for
our meeting. You are aware, my dear friend, what a poor, shattered,
broken-down fellow I am; so that I need not ask you to give me a
comfortable quarter for my one night, and some shell-fish, if easily
procurable, for my one dinner.
Yours, ever and faithfully,
H. U.
We have already told our reader that the note was a brief one, and yet
was it not altogether uncharacteristic. Sir Horace Upton--it will spare
us both some repetition if we present him at once--was one of a very
composite order of human architecture; a kind of being, in fact, of
which many would deny the existence, till they met and knew them, so
full of contradictions, real and apparent, was his nature. Chivalrous
in sentiment and cunning in action, noble in aspiration and utterly
sceptical as regards motives, one half of his temperament was the
antidote to the other. Fastidious to a painful extent in matters of
taste, he was simplicity itself in all the requirements of his life;
and with all a courtier's love of great people, not only tolerating,
but actually preferring the society of men beneath him. In person he was
tall, and with that air of distinction in his manner that belongs only
to those who unite natural graces with long habits of high society. His
features were finely formed, and would have been strikingly handsome,
were the expression not spoiled by a look of astuteness,--a something
that implied a tendency to overreach,--which marred their repose
and injured their uniformity. Not that his manner ever betrayed this
weakness; far from it,--his was a most polished courtesy. It was
impossible to conceive an address more bland or more conciliating. His
very gestures, his voice, languid by a slight habit of indisposition,
seemed as though exerted above their strength in the desire to please,
and making the object of his attentions to feel himself the mark of
peculiar honor. There ran through all his nature, through everything he
did or said or thought, a certain haughty humility, which served, while
it assigned an humble place to himself, to mark out one still more
humble for those about him. There were not many things he could not
do; indeed, he had actually done most of those which win honor and
distinction in life. He had achieved a very gallant but brief military
career in India, made a most brilliant opening in Parliament, where his
abilities at once marked him out for office, was suspected to be the
writer of the cleverest political satire, and more than suspected to be
the author of “the novel” of the day. With all this, he had great social
success. He was deep enough for a ministerial dinner, and “fast” enough
for a party of young Guardsmen at Greenwich. With women, too, he was
especially a favorite; there was a Machiavelian subtlety which he could
throw into small things, a mode of making the veriest trifles little
Chinese puzzles of ingenuity, that flattered and amused them. In a word,
he had great adaptiveness, and it was a quality he indulged less for the
gratification of others than for the pleasure it afforded himself.
He had mixed largely in society, not only of his own, but of every
country of Europe. He knew every chord of that complex instrument which
people call the world, like a master; and although a certain jaded and
wearied look, a tone of exhaustion and fatigue, seemed to say that he
was tired of it all, that he had found it barren and worthless, the real
truth was, he enjoyed life to the full as much as on the first day in
which he entered it; and for this simple reason,--that he had started
with an humble opinion of mankind, their hopes, fears, and ambitions,
and so he continued, not disappointed, to the end.
The most governing notion of his own life was an impression that he had
a disease of the chest, some subtle and mysterious affection which had
defied the doctors, and would go on to defy them to the last. He had
been dangerously wounded in the Burmese war, and attributed the origin
of his malady to this cause. Others there were who said that the want of
recognition to his services in that campaign was the direst of all the
injuries he had received. And true it was, a most brilliant career had
met with neither honors nor advancement, and Upton left the service in
disgust, carrying away with him only the lingering sufferings of his
wound. To suggest to him that his malady had any affinity to any known
affection was to outrage him, since the mere supposition would reduce
him to a species of equality with some one else,--a thought infinitely
worse than any mere physical suffering; and, indeed, to avoid this
shocking possibility, he vacillated as to the locality of his disorder,
making it now in the lung, now in the heart, at one time in the
bronchial tubes, at another in the valves of the aorta. It was his
pleasure to consult for this complaint every great physician of Europe,
and not alone consult, but commit himself to their direction, and this
with a credulity which he could scarcely have summoned in any other
cause.
It was difficult to say how far he himself believed in this
disorder,--the pressure of any momentous event, the necessity of action,
never finding him unequal to any effort, no matter how onerous. Give him
a difficulty,--a minister to outwit, a secret scheme to unravel, a false
move to profit by,--and he rose above all his pulmonary symptoms, and
could exert himself with a degree of power and perseverance that very
few men could equal, none surpass. Indeed it seemed as though he kept
this malady for the pastime of idle hours, as other men do a novel or
a newspaper, but would never permit it to interfere with the graver
business of life.
We have, perhaps, been prolix in our description; but we have felt it
the more requisite to be thus diffuse, since the studious simplicity
which marked all his manner might have deceived our reader, and which
the impression of his mere words have failed to convey.
“You will be glad to hear Upton is in England, Glen-core,” said
Harcourt, as the sick man was assisted to his seat in the library, “and,
what is more, intends to pay you a visit.”
“Upton coming here!” exclaimed Glencore, with an expression of mingled
astonishment and confusion; “how do you know that?”
“He writes me from Long's to say that he 'll be with us by Friday, or,
if not, by Saturday.”
“What a miserable place to receive him!” exclaimed Glencore. “As for
you, Harcourt, you know how to rough it, and have bivouacked too often
under the stars to care much for satin curtains. But think of Upton
here! How is he to eat, where is he to sleep?”
“By Jove! we 'll treat him handsomely. Don't you fret yourself about his
comforts; besides, I 've seen a great deal of Upton, and, with all his
fastidiousness and refinement, he's a thorough good fellow at taking
things for the best. Invite him to Chatsworth, and the chances are he'll
find fault with twenty things,--with the place, the cookery, and the
servants; but take him down to the Highlands, lodge him in a shieling,
with bannocks for breakfast and a Fyne herring for supper, and I 'll
wager my life you 'll not see a ruffle in his temper, nor hear a word of
impatience out of his mouth.”
“I know that he is a well-bred gentleman,” said Glencore, half
pettishly; “but I have no fancy for putting his good manners to a severe
test, particularly at the cost of my own feelings.”
“I tell you again he shall be admirably treated; he shall have my room;
and, as for his dinner, Master Billy and I are going to make a raid
amongst the lobster-pots. And what with turbot, oysters, grouse-pie,
and mountain mutton, I 'll make the diplomatist sorrow that he is not
accredited to some native sovereign in the Arran islands, instead of
some 'mere German Hertzog.' He can only stay one day.”
“One day!”
“That's all; he is over head and ears in business, and he goes down to
Windsor on Thursday, so that there is no help for it.”
“I wish I may be strong enough; I hope to Heaven that I may rally--”
Glencore stopped suddenly as he got thus far, but the agitation the
words cost him seemed most painful.
“I say again, don't distress yourself about Upton,--leave the care of
entertaining him to _me_. I 'll vouch for it that he leaves us well
satisfied with his welcome.”
“It was not of _that_ I was thinking,” said he, impatiently; “I have
much to say to him,--things of great importance. It may be that I
shall be unequal to the effort; I cannot answer for my strength for a
day,--not for an hour. Could you not write to him, and ask him to defer
his coming till such time as he can spare me a week, or at least some
days?”
“My dear Glencore, you know the man well, and that we are lucky if we
can have him on his _own_ terms, not to think of imposing _ours_; he is
sure to have a number of engagements while he is in England.”
“Well, be it so,” said Glencore, sighing, with the air of a man
resigning himself to an inevitable necessity.