There is a trait in the lives of great diplomatists of which it is just
possible some one or other of my readers may not have heard, which is,
that none of them have ever attained to any great eminence without an
attachment--we can find no better word for it--to some woman of superior
understanding who has united within herself great talents for society
with a high and soaring ambition.
They who only recognize in the world of politics the dry details of
ordinary parliamentary business, poor-law questions, sanitary rules,
railroad bills, and colonial grants can form but a scanty notion of the
excitement derived from the high interests of party, and the great game
played by about twenty mighty gamblers, with the whole world for the
table, and kingdoms for counters. In this “grand rôle” women perform no
ignoble part; nay, it were not too much to say that theirs is the very
motive-power of the whole vast machinery.
Had we any right to step beyond the limits of our story for
illustration, it would not be difficult to quote names enough to show
that we are speaking not at hazard, but “from book,” and that great
events derive far less of their impulse from “the lords” than from “the
ladies of creation.” Whatever be the part they take in these contests,
their chief attention is ever directed, not to the smaller battle-field
of home questions, but to the greater and wider campaign of
international politics. Men may wrangle and hair-split, and divide about
a harbor bill or a road cession; but women occupy themselves in devising
how thrones may be shaken and dynasties disturbed,--how frontiers may be
changed, and nationalities trafficked; for, strange as it may seem,
the stupendous incidents which mould human destinies are more under the
influence of passion and intrigue than the commonest events of every-day
life.
Our readers may, and not very unreasonably, begin to suspect that it was
in some moment of abstraction we wrote “Glencore” at the head of these
pages, and that these speculations are but the preface to some very
abstruse reflections upon the political condition of Europe. But no;
they are simply intended as a prelude to the fact that Sir Horace Upton
was not exempt from the weakness of his order, and that he, too, reposed
his trust upon a woman's judgment.
The name of his illustrious guide was the Princess Sabloukoff,
by birth a Pole, but married to a Russian of vast wealth and high
family, from whom she separated early in life, to mingle in the
world with all the “prestige” of position, riches, and--greater than
either--extreme beauty, and a manner of such fascination as made her
name of European celebrity.
When Sir Horace first met her, he was the junior member of our Embassy
at Naples, and she the distinguished leader of fashion in that city.
We are not about to busy ourselves with the various narratives which
professed to explain her influence at Court, or the secret means to
which she owed her ascendency over royal highnesses, and her sway over
cardinals. Enough that she possessed such, and that the world knew it.
The same success attended her at Vienna and at Paris. She was courted
and sought after everywhere; and if her arrival was not fêted with the
public demonstrations that await royalty, it was assuredly an event
recognized with all that could flatter her vanity or minister to her
self-esteem.
When Sir Horace was presented to her as an Attaché, she simply bowed and
smiled. He renewed his acquaintance some ten years later as a Secretary,
when she vouchsafed to say she remembered him. A third time, after a
lapse of years, he came before her as a Chargé d'Affaires, when she
conversed with him; and lastly, when time had made him a Minister, and
with less generosity had laid its impress upon herself, she gave him her
hand, and said,--
“My dear Horace, how charming to see an old friend, if you will be good
enough to let me call you so.”
And he was so; he accepted the friendship as frankly as it was
proffered. He knew that time was when he could have no pretension to
this distinction: but the beautiful Princess was no longer young; the
fascinations she had wielded were already a kind of Court tradition;
archdukes and ambassadors were no more her slaves; nor was she the
terror of jealous queens and Court favorites. Sir Horace knew all this;
but he also knew that, she being such, his ambition had never dared
to aspire to her friendship, and it was only in her days of declining
fortune that he could hope for such distinction.
All this may seem very strange and very odd, dear reader; but we live
in very strange and very odd times, and more than one-half the world
is only living on “second-hand,”--second-hand shawls and second-hand
speeches, second-hand books, and Court suits and opinions are all rife;
and why not second-hand friendships?
Now, the friendship between a bygone beauty of forty--and we will not
say how many more years--and a hackneyed, half-disgusted man of the
world, of the same age, is a very curious contract. There is no love
in it; as little is there any strong tie of esteem: but there is a
wonderful bond of self-interest and mutual convenience. Each seems to
have at last found “one that understands him;” similarity of pursuit
has engendered similarity of taste. They have each seen the world from
exactly the same point of view, and they have come out of it equally
heart-wearied and tired, stored with vast resources of social knowledge,
and with a keen insight into every phase of that complex machinery by
which one-half the world cheats the other.
Madame de Sabloukoff was still handsome; she had far more than what
is ill-naturedly called the remains of good looks. She had a brilliant
complexion, lustrous dark eyes, and a profusion of the most beautiful
hair. She was, besides, a most splendid dresser. Her toilet was the very
perfection of taste, and if a little inclining to over-magnificence, not
the less becoming to one whose whole air and bearing assumed something
of queenly dignity.
In the world of society there is a very great prestige attends those who
have at some one time played a great part in life. The deposed king, the
ex-minister, the banished general, and even the bygone beauty, receive a
species of respectful homage, which the wider world without-doors is not
always ready to accord them. Good breeding, in fact, concedes what mere
justice might deny; and they who have to fall back upon “souvenirs” for
their greatness, always find their advantage in associating with the
class whose prerogative is good manners.
The Princess Sabloukoff was not, however, one of those who can live upon
the interest of a bygone fame. She saw that, when the time of coquetry
and its fascinations has passed, still, with faculties like hers,
there was yet a great game to be played. Hitherto she had only studied
characters; now she began to reflect upon events. The transition was
an easy one, to which her former knowledge contributed largely its
assistance. There was scarcely a royalty, hardly a leading personage, in
Europe she did not know personally and well. She had lived in intimacy
with ministers, and statesmen, and great politicians. She knew them
in all that “life of the _salon_” where men alternately expand into
frankness, and practise the wily devices of their crafty callings. She
had seen them in all the weaknesses, too, of inferior minds, eager after
small objects, tormented by insignificant cares. They who habitually
dealt with these mighty personages only beheld them in their dignity of
station, or surrounded by the imposing accessories of office. What an
advantage, then, to regard them closer and nearer,--to be aware of their
shortcomings, and acquainted with the secret springs of their ambitions!
The Princess and Sir Horace very soon saw that each needed the other.
When Robert Macaire accidentally met an accomplished gamester who
“turned the king” as often as he did, and could reciprocate every
trick and artifice with him, he threw down the cards, saying,
“Embrassons-nous, nous sommes frères!” Now, the illustration is a very
ignoble one, but it conveys no very inexact idea of the bond which
united these two distinguished individuals.
Sir Horace was one of those fine, acute intelligences which may
be gapped and blunted if applied to rough work, but are splendid
instruments where you would cut cleanly and cut deep. She saw this at
once. He, too, recognized in her a wonderful knowledge of life, joined
to vast powers of employing it with profit. No more was wanting to
establish a friendship between them. Dispositions must be, to a certain
degree, different between those who are to live together as friends, but
tastes must be alike. Theirs were so. They had the same veneration for
the same things, the same regard for the same celebrities, and the same
contempt for the small successes which were engaging the minds of
many around them. If the Princess had a real appreciation of the fine
abilities of Sir Horace, he estimated at their full value all the
resources of her wondrous tact and skill, and the fascinations which
even yet surrounded her.
Have we said enough to explain the terms of this alliance, or must we
make one more confession, and own that her insidious praise--a flattery
too delicate and fine ever to be committed to absolute eulogy--convinced
Sir Horace that she alone, of all the world, was able to comprehend the
vast stores of his knowledge, and the wide measure of his capacity as a
statesman?
In the great game of statecraft, diplomatists are not above looking into
each other's hands; but this must always be accomplished by means of
a confederate. How terribly alike are all human rogueries, whether the
scene be a conference at Vienna, or the tent of a thimblerig at Ascot!
La Sabloukoff was unrivalled in the art. She knew how to push raillery
and _persiflage_ to the very frontiers of truth, and even peep over and
see what lay beyond. Sir Horace traded on the material with which she
supplied him, and acquired the reputation of being all that was crafty
and subtle in diplomacy.
How did Upton know this? Whence came he by that? What mysterious source
of information is he possessed of? Who could have revealed such a secret
to him? were questions often asked in that dreary old drawing-room
of Downing Street, where men's destinies are shaped, and the fate of
millions decided, from four o'clock to six of an afternoon.
Often and often were the measures of the Cabinet shaped by the tidings
which arrived with all the speed of a foreign courier; over and over
again were the speeches in Parliament based upon information received
from him. It has even happened that the news from his hand has caused
the telegraph of the Admiralty to signalize the “Thunderer” to put
to sea with all haste. In a word, he was the trusted agent of our
Government, whether ruled by a Whig or a Tory, and his despatches were
ever regarded as a sure warranty for action.
The English Minister at a Foreign Court labors under one great
disadvantage, which is, that his policy, and all the consequences that
are to follow it, are rarely, if ever, shaped with any reference to the
state of matters then existing in his own country. Absorbed as he is in
great European questions, how can he follow with sufficient attention
the course of events at home, or recognize, in the signs and tokens of
the division list, the changeful fortunes of party? He may be advising
energy when the cry is all for temporizing; counselling patience and
submission, when the nation is eager for a row; recommend religious
concessions in the very week that Exeter Hall is denouncing toleration;
or actually suggesting aid to a Government that a popular orator has
proclaimed to be everything that is unjust and ignominious.
It was Sir Horace Upton's fortune to have fallen into one of these
embarrassments. He had advised the Home Government to take some
measures, or at least look with favor on certain movements of the Poles
in Russia, in order the better to obtain some concessions then required
from the Cabinet of the Czar. The Premier did not approve of the
suggestion, nor was it like to meet acceptance at home. We were in a
pro-Russian fever at the moment. Some mob disturbances at Norwich,
a Chartist meeting at Stockport, and something else in Wales, had
frightened the nation into a hot stage of conservatism; and never
was there such an ill-chosen moment to succor Poles or awaken dormant
nationalities.
Upton's proposal was rejected. He was even visited with one of those
disagreeable acknowledgments by which the Foreign Office reminds a
speculative minister that he is going _ultra crepidam_. When an envoy
is snubbed, he always asks for leave of absence. If the castigation
be severe, he invariably, on his return to England, goes to visit the
Leader of the Opposition. This is the ritual. Sir Horace, however,
only observed it in half. He came home; but after his first morning's
attendance at the Foreign Office, he disappeared; none saw or heard
of him. He knew well all the value of mystery, and he accordingly
disappeared from public view altogether.
When, therefore, Harcourt's letter reached him, proposing that he should
visit Glencore, the project came most opportunely; and that he only
accepted it for a day, was in the spirit of his habitual diplomacy,
since he then gave himself all the power of an immediate departure,
or permitted the option of remaining gracefully, in defiance of all
pre-engage-ments, and all plans to be elsewhere. We have been driven,
for the sake of this small fact, to go a great way round in our history;
but we promise our readers that Sir Horace was one of those people whose
motives are never tracked without a considerable _détour_. The reader
knows now why he was at Glencore,--he already knew how.
The terrible interview with Glencore brought back a second relapse of
greater violence than the first, and it was nigh a fortnight ere he was
pronounced out of danger. It was a strange life that Harcourt and Upton
led in that dreary interval. Guests of one whose life was in utmost
peril, they met in that old gallery each day to talk, in half-whispered
sentences, over the sick man's case, and his chances of recovery.
Harcourt frankly told Upton that the first relapse was the consequence
of a scene between Glencore and himself. Upton made no similar
confession. He reflected deeply, however, over all that had passed, and
came to the conclusion that, in Glencore's present condition, opposition
might prejudice his chance of recovery, but never avail to turn him from
his project. He also set himself to study the boy's character, and found
it, in all respects, the very type of his father's. Great bashfulness,
united to great boldness, timidity, and distrust, were there side by
side with a rash, impetuous nature that would hesitate at nothing in
pursuit of an object. Pride, however, was the great principle of his
being,--the good and evil motive of all that was in him. He had pride
on every subject. His name, his rank, his station, a consciousness of
natural quickness, a sense of aptitude to learn whatever came before
him,--all gave him the same feeling of pride.
“There's a deal of good in that lad,” said Harcourt to Upton, one
evening, as the boy had left the room; “I like his strong affection
for his father, and that unbounded faith he seems to have in Glencore's
being better than every one else in the world.”
“It is an excellent religion, my dear Harcourt, if it could only last!”
said the diplomat, smiling amiably.
“And why should n't it last?” asked the other, impatiently.
“Just because nothing lasts that has its origin in ignorance. The boy
has seen nothing of life, has had no opportunity for forming a judgment
or instituting a comparison between any two objects. The first shot
that breaches that same fortress of belief, down will come the whole
edifice!”
“You 'd give a lad to the Jesuits, then, to be trained up in every
artifice and distrust?”
“Far from it, Harcourt. I think their system a mistake all through. The
science of life must be self-learned, and it is a slow acquisition.
All that education can do is to prepare the mind to receive it. Now, to
employ the first years of a boy's life by storing him with prejudices,
is just to encumber a vessel with a rotten cargo that she must throw
overboard before she can load with a profitable freight.”
“And is it in that category you'd class his love for his father?” asked
the Colonel.
“Of course not; but any unnatural or exaggerated estimate of him is a
great error, to lead to an equally unfair depreciation when the time of
deception is past. To be plain, Harcourt, is that boy fitted to enter
one of our great public schools, stand the hard, rough usage of his own
equals, and buffet it as you or I have done?”
“Why not? or, at least, why should n't he become so after a month or
two?”
“Just because in that same month or two he'd either die broken-hearted,
or plunge his knife into the heart of some comrade who insulted him.”
“Not a bit of it. You don't know him at all. Charley is a fine
give-and-take fellow; a little proud, perhaps, because he lives apart
from all that are his equals. Let Glencore just take courage to send him
to Harrow or Rugby, and my life on it, but he 'll be the manliest fellow
in the school.”
“I 'll undertake, without Harrow or Rugby, that the boy should become
something even greater than that,” said Upton, smiling.
“Oh, I know you sneer at my ideas of what a young fellow ought to be,”
said Harcourt; “but, somehow, you did not neglect these same pursuits
yourself. You can shoot as well as most men, and you ride better than
any I know of.”
“One likes to do a little of everything, Harcourt,” said Upton, not at
all displeased at this flattery; “and somehow it never suits a fellow,
who really feels that he has fair abilities, to do anything badly; so
that it comes to this: one does it well, or not at all. Now, you never
heard me touch the piano?”
“Never.”
“Just because I'm only an inferior performer, and so I only play when
perfectly alone.”
“Egad, if I could only master a waltz, or one of the melodies, I'd be at
it whenever any one would listen to me.”
“You're a good soul, and full of amiability, Harcourt,” said Upton; but
the words sounded very much as though he said, “You're a dear, good,
sensible creature, without an atom of self-respect or esteem.”
Indeed, so conscious was Harcourt that the expression meant no
compliment that he actually reddened and looked away. At last he took
courage to renew the conversation, and said,--
“And what would you advise for the boy, then?”
“I 'd scarcely lay down a system; but I 'll tell you what I would not
do. I 'd not bore him with mathematics; I 'd not put his mind on the
stretch in any direction; I 'd not stifle the development of any taste
that may be struggling within him, but rather encourage and foster it,
since it is precisely by such an indication you 'll get some clew to his
nature. Do you understand me?”
“I 'm not quite sure I do; but I believe you'd leave him to something
like utter idleness.”
“What to _you_, my dear Harcourt, would be utter idleness, I've no
doubt; but not to him, perhaps.”
Again the Colonel looked mortified, but evidently knew not how to resent
this new sneer.
“Well,” said he, after a pause, “the lad will not require to be a
genius.”
“So much the better for him, probably; at all events, so much the better
for his friends, and all who are to associate with him.”
Here he looked fixedly at Upton, who smiled a most courteous
acquiescence in the opinion,--a politeness that made poor Harcourt
perfectly ashamed of his own rudeness, and he continued hurriedly,--
“He'll have abundance of money. The life Glencore leads here will be
like a long minority to him. A fine old name and title, and the deuce is
in it if he can't rub through life pleasantly enough with such odds.”
“I believe you are right, after all, Harcourt,” said Upton, sighing, and
now speaking in a far more natural tone; “it _is_ 'rubbing through' with
the best of us, and no more!”
“If you mean that the process is a very irksome one, I enter my dissent
at once,” broke in Harcourt. “I 'm not ashamed to own that I like life
prodigiously; and if I be spared to say so, I 'm sure I 'll have the
same story to tell fifteen or twenty years hence; and yet I 'm not a
genius!”
“No,” said Upton, smiling a bland assent.
“Nor a philosopher either,” said Harcourt, irritated at the
acknowledgment.
“Certainly not,” chimed in Upton, with another smile.
“Nor have I any wish to be one or the other,” rejoined Harcourt,
now really provoked. “I know right well that if I were in trouble or
difficulty to-morrow,--if I wanted a friend to help me with a loan of
some thousand pounds,--it is not to a genius or a philosopher I 'd look
for the assistance.”
It is ever a chance shot that explodes a magazine, and so is it that a
random speech is sure to hit the mark that has escaped all the efforts
of skilful direction.
Upton winced and grew pale at these last words, and he fixed his
penetrating gray eyes upon the speaker with a keenness all his own.
Harcourt, however, bore the look without the slightest touch of
uneasiness. The honest Colonel had spoken without any hidden meaning,
nor had he the slightest intention of a personal application in his
words. Of this fact Upton appeared soon to be convinced, for his
features gradually recovered their wonted calmness.
“How perfectly right you are, my dear Harcourt,” said he, mildly. “The
man who expects to be happier by the possession of genius is like one
who would like to warm himself through a burning-glass.”
“Egad, that is a great consolation for us slow fellows,” said Harcourt,
laughing; “and now what say you to a game at _écarté_; for I believe it
is just the one solitary thing I am more than your match in?”
“I accept inferiority in a great many others,” said Upton, blandly; “but
I must decline the challenge, for I have a letter to write, and our post
here starts at daybreak.”
“Well, I'd rather carry the whole bag than indite one of its contents,”
said the Colonel, rising; and, with a hearty shake of the hand, he left
the room.
A letter was fortunately not so great an infliction to Upton, who opened
his desk at once, and with a rapid hand traced the following lines:--
Mv dear Princess,--My last will have told you how and when I came here;
I wish I but knew in what way to explain why I still remain! Imagine
the dreariest desolation of Calabria in a climate of fog and sea-drift:
sunless skies, leafless trees, impassable roads, the out-door comforts;
the joys within depending on a gloomy old house, with a few gloomier
inmates, and a host on a sick bed. Yet, with all this, I believe I am
better; the doctor, a strange, unsophisticated creature, a cross between
Galen and Caliban, seems to have hit off what the great dons of science
never could detect,--the true seat of my malady. He says--and he really
reasons out his case ingeniously--that the brain has been working for
the inferior nerves, not limiting itself to cerebral functions, but
actually performing the humbler office of muscular direction, and so
forth; in fact, a field-marshal doing duty for a common soldier! I
almost fancy I can corroborate his view, from internal sensations; I
have a kind of secret instinct that he is right. Poor brain! why it
should do the work of another department, with abundance of occupation
of its own, I cannot make out. But to turn to something else. This is
not a bad refuge just now. They cannot make out where I am, and all the
inquiries at my club are answered by a vague impression that I have gone
back to Germany, which the people at F. O. are aware is not the case.
I have already told you that my suggestion has been negatived in the
Cabinet: it was ill-timed, Allington says; but I ventured to remind his
Lordship that a policy requiring years to develop, and more years still
to push to a profitable conclusion, is not to be reduced to the category
of mere _à propos_ measures. He was vexed, and replied weakly and
angrily. I rejoined, and left him. Next day he sent for me, but my reply
was, “I was leaving town;” and I left. I don't want the Bath, because it
would be “ill-timed;” so that they must give me Vienna, or be satisfied
to see me in the House and the Opposition!
Your tidings of Brekenoff came exactly in the nick. Allington said
pompously that they were sure of him; so I just said, “Ask him if they
would like our sending a Consular Agent to Cracow?” It seems that he was
so flurried by a fancied detection that he made a full acknowledgment
of all. But even at this, Allington takes no alarm. The malady of the
Treasury benches is deafness, with a touch of blindness. What a cumbrous
piece of bungling machinery is this boasted “representative government”
of ours! No promptitude, no secrecy! Everything debated, and discussed,
and discouraged, before begun; every blot-hit for an antagonist to
profit by! Even the characters of our public men exposed, and their
weaknesses displayed to view, so that every state of Europe may see
where to wound us, and through whom! There is no use in the Countess
remaining here any longer; the King never noticed her at the last ball;
she is angry at it, and if she shows her irritation she 'll spoil all. I
always thought Josephine would fail in England. It is, indeed, a widely
different thing to succeed in the small Courts of Germany, and our great
whirlpool of St. James. _You_ could do it, my dear friend; but where is
the other dare attempt it?
Until I hear from you again I can come to no resolution. One thing is
clear,--they do not, or they will not, see the danger I have pointed
out to them. All the home policy of our country is drifting, day by
day, towards a democracy: how, in the name of common sense, then, is our
foreign policy to be maintained at the standard of the Holy Alliance?
What an absurd juxtaposition is there between popular rights and
an alliance with the Czar! This peril will overtake them one day or
another, and then, to escape from national indignation, the minister,
whoever he may be, will be driven to make war. But I can't wait for
this; and yet, were I to resign, my resignation would not embarrass
them,--it would irritate and annoy, but not disconcert. Brekenoff will
surely go home on leave. You ought to meet him; he is certain to be at
Ems. It is the refuge of disgraced diplomacy. Try if something cannot be
done with him. He used to say formerly yours were the only dinners now
in Europe. He hates Allington. This feeling, and his love for white
truffles, are, I believe, the only clews to the man. Be sure, however,
that the truffles are Piedmontese; they have a slight flavor of garlic,
rather agreeable than otherwise. Like Josephine's lisp, it is a defect
that serves for a distinction. The article in the “Beau Monde” was
clever, prettily written, and even well worked out; but state affairs
are never really well treated save by those who conduct them. One must
have played the game himself to understand all the nice subtleties of
the contest. These, your mere reviewer or newspaper scribe never attains
to; and then he has no reserves,--none of those mysterious concealments
that are to negotiations like the eloquent pauses of conversation: the
moment when dialogue ceases, and the real interchange of ideas begins.
The fine touch, the keen _aperçu_, belongs alone to those who have had
to exercise these same qualities in the treatment of great questions;
and hence it is that though the Public be often much struck, and
even enlightened, by the powerful “article” or the able “leader,” the
Statesman is rarely taught anything by the journalist, save the force
and direction of public opinion.
I had a deal to say to you about poor Glencore, whom you tell me
you remember; but, how to say it? He is broken-hearted--literally
broken-hearted--by her desertion of him. It was one of those
ill-assorted leagues which cannot hold together. Why they did not
see this, and make the best of it,--sensibly, dispassionately, even
amicably,--it is difficult to say. An Englishman, it would seem,
must always hate his wife if she cannot love him; and, after all, how
involuntary are all affections, and what a severe penalty is this for an
unwitting offence!
He ponders over this calamity just as if it were the crushing stroke by
which a man's whole career was to be finished forever.
The stupidity of all stupidities is in these cases to fly from the world
and avoid society. By doing this a man rears a barrier he never can
repass; he proclaims aloud his sentiment of the injury, quite forgetting
all the offence he is giving to the hundred and fifty others who, in the
same predicament as himself, are by no means disposed to turn hermits
on account of it. Men make revolutionary governments, smash dynasties,
transgress laws, but they cannot oppose _convenances!_
I need scarcely say that there is nothing to be gained by reason-ing
with him. He has worked himself up to a chronic fury, and talks of
vengeance all day long, like a Corsican. For company here I have an
old brother officer of my days of tinsel and pipe-clay,--an excellent
creature, whom I amuse myself by tormenting. There is also Glencore's
boy,--a strange, dreamy kind of haughty fellow, an exaggeration of
his father in disposition, but with good abilities. These are not the
elements of much social agreeability; but you know, dear friend, how
little I stand in need of what is called company. Your last letter,
charming as it was, has afforded me all the companionship I could
desire. I have re-read it till I know it by heart. I could almost chide
you for that delightful little party in my absence, but of course it
was, as all you ever do is, perfectly right; and, after all, I am,
perhaps, not sorry that you had those people when I was away, so that we
shall be more _chez nous_ when we meet. But when is that to be? Who can
tell? My medico insists upon five full weeks for my cure. Allington is
very likely, in his present temper, to order me back to my post. You
seem to think that you must be in Berlin when Seckendorf arrives, so
that--But I will not darken the future by gloomy forebodings. I _could_
leave this--that is, if any urgency required it--at once; but, if
possible, it is better I should remain at least a little longer. My last
meeting with Glencore was unpleasant. Poor fellow! his temper is not
what it used to be, and he is forgetful of what is due to one whose
nerves are in the sad state of mine. You shall hear all my complainings
when we meet, dear Princess; and with this I kiss your hand, begging you
to accept all “_mes hommages” et mon estime_,
H. U.
Your letter must be addressed “Leenane, Ireland.” Your last had only
“Glencore” on it, and not very legible either, so that it made what I
wished _I_ could do, “the tour of Scotland,” before reaching me.
Sir Horace read over his letter carefully, as though it had been
a despatch, and, when he had done, folded it up with an air of
satisfaction. He had said nothing that he wished unsaid, and he had
mentioned a little about everything he desired to touch upon. He then
took his “drops” from a queer-looking little phial he carried about with
him, and having looked at his face in a pocket-glass, he half closed his
eyes in revery.
Strange, confused visions were they that flitted through his brain.
Thoughts of ambition the most daring, fancies about health, speculations
in politics, finance, religion, literature, the arts, society,--all came
and went. Plans and projects jostled each other at every instant. Now
his brow would darken, and his thin lips close tightly, as some painful
impression crossed him; now again a smile, a slight laugh even, betrayed
the passing of some amusing conception. It was easy to see how such
a nature could suffice to itself, and how little he needed of that
give-and-take which companionship supplies. He could--to steal a figure
from our steam language--he could “bank his fires,” and await any
emergency, and, while scarcely consuming any fuel, prepare for the most
trying demand upon his powers. A hasty movement of feet overhead, and
the sound of voices talking loudly, aroused him from his reflections,
while a servant entered abruptly to say that Lord Glencore wished to see
him immediately.
“Is his Lordship worse?” asked Upton.
“No, sir; but he was very angry with the young lord this evening about
something, and they say that with the passion he opened the bandage on
his head, and set the vein a-bleed-ing again. Billy Traynor is there now
trying to stop it.”
“I'll go upstairs,” said Sir Horace, rising, and beginning to fortify
himself with caps, and capes, and comforters,--precautions that he never
omitted when moving from one room to the other.