It was not without surprise that Harcourt saw Glencore enter the
drawing-room a few minutes before dinner. Very pale and very feeble,
he slowly traversed the room, giving a hand to each of his guests, and
answering the inquiries for his health by a sickly smile, while he said,
“As you see me.”
“I am going to dine with you to-day, Harcourt,” said he, with an attempt
at gayety of manner. “Upton tells me that a little exertion of this kind
will do me good.”
“Upton's right,” cried the Colonel, “especially if he added that you
should take a glass or two of that admirable Burgundy. My life on 't but
that is the liquor to set a man on his legs again.”
“I did n't remark that this was exactly the effect it produced upon you
t' other night,” said Upton, with one of his own sly laughs.
“That comes of drinking it in bad company,” retorted Harcourt; “a man is
driven to take two glasses for one.”
As the dinner proceeded, Glencore rallied considerably, taking his part
in the conversation, and evidently enjoying the curiously contrasted
temperaments at either side of him. The one, all subtlety, refinement,
and finesse; the other, out-spoken, rude, and true-hearted; rarely
correct in a question of taste, but invariably right in every matter of
honorable dealing. Though it was clear enough that Upton relished the
eccentricities whose sallies he provoked, it was no less easy to see how
thoroughly he appreciated the frank and manly nature of the old soldier;
nor could all the crafty habits of his acute mind overcome the hearty
admiration with which he regarded him.
It is in the unrestricted ease of these “little dinners,” where two
or three old friends are met, that social intercourse assumes its most
charming form. The usages of the great world, which exact a species of
uniformity of breeding and manners, are here laid aside, and men talk
with all the bias and prejudices of their true nature, dashing the
topics discussed with traits of personality, and even whims, that are
most amusing. How little do we carry away of tact or wisdom from the
grand banquets of life; and what pleasant stores of thought, what
charming memories remain to us, after those small gatherings!
How, as I write this, one little room rises to my recollection, with its
quaint old sideboard of carved oak; its dark-brown cabinets, curiously
sculptured; its heavy old brocade curtains, and all its queer devices of
knick-knackery, where such meetings once were held, and where, throwing
off the cares of life,--shut out from them, as it were, by the massive
folds of the heavy drapery across the door,--. we talked in all the
fearless freedom of old friendship, rambling away from theme to theme,
contrasting our experiences, balancing our views in life, and mingling
through our converse the racy freshness of a boy's enjoyment with the
sager counsels of a man's reflectiveness. Alas! how very early is it
sometimes in life that we tread “the banquet-hall deserted.” But to our
story: the evening wore pleasantly on; Upton talked, as few but himself
could do, upon the public questions of the day; and Harcourt, with many
a blunt interruption, made the discourse but more easy and amusing. The
soldier was, indeed, less at his ease than the others. It was not alone
that many of the topics were not such as he was most familiar with, but
he felt angry and indignant at Glencore's seeming indifference as to the
fate of his son. Not a single reference to him even occurred; his name
was never even passingly mentioned. Nothing but the careworn, sickly
face, the wasted form and dejected expression before him, could have
restrained Harcourt from alluding to the boy. He bethought him, however,
that any indiscretion on his part might have the gravest consequences.
Upton, too, might have said something to quiet Glencore's mind. “At
all events, I'll wait,” said he to himself; “for wherever there is much
delicacy in a negotiation, I generally make a mess of it.” The more
genially, therefore, did Glencore lend himself to the pleasure of the
conversation, the more provoked did Harcourt feel at his heartlessness,
and the more did the struggle cost him to control his own sentiments.
Upton, who detected the secret working of men's minds with a marvellous
exactness, saw how the poor Colonel was suffering, and that, in all
probability, some unhappy explosion would at last ensue, and took an
opportunity of remarking that though all this chit-chat was delightful
for them, Glencore was still a sick man.
“We must n't forget, Harcourt,” said he, “that a chicken-broth diet
includes very digestible small-talk; and here we are leading our poor
friend through politics, war, diplomacy, and the rest of it, just as if
he had the stomach of an old campaigner and--”
“And the brain of a great diplomatist! Say it out, man, and avow
honestly the share of excellence you accord to each of us,” broke in
Harcourt, laughing.
“I would to Heaven we could exchange,” sighed Upton, languidly.
“The saints forbid!” exclaimed the other; “and it would do us little
good if we were able.”
“Why so?”
“I'd never know what to do with that fine intellect if I had it; and as
for _you_, what with your confounded pills and mixtures, your infernal
lotions and embrocations, you'd make my sound system as bad as your own
in three months' time.”
“You are quite wrong, my dear Harcourt; I should treat the stomach as
you would do the brain,--give it next to nothing to do, in the hopes it
might last the longer.”
“There now, good night,” said Harcourt; “he's always the better for
bitters, whether he gives or takes them.” And with a good-humored laugh
he left the room.
Glencore's eyes followed him as he retired; and then, as they closed, an
expression as of long-repressed suffering settled down on his features
so marked that Upton hastily asked,--
“Are you ill, are you in pain, Glencore?”
“In pain? Yes,” said he, “these two hours back I have been suffering
intensely; but there's no help for it! Must you really leave this
to-morrow, Upton?”
“I must. This letter from the Foreign Office requires my immediate
presence in London, with a very great likelihood of being obliged to
start at once for the Continent.”
“And I had so much to say,--so many things to consult you on,” sighed
the other.
“Are you equal to it now?” asked Upton.
“I must try, at all events. You shall learn my plan.” He was silent
for some minutes, and sat with his head resting on his hand, in deep
reflection. At last he said, “Has it ever occurred to you, Upton, that
some incident of the past, some circumstance in itself insignificant,
should rise up, as it were, in after life to suit an actual emergency,
just as though fate had fashioned it for such a contingency?”
“I cannot say that I have experienced what you describe, if, indeed, I
fully understand it.”
“I'll explain better by an instance. You know now,”--here his voice
became slow, and the words fell with a marked distinctness,--“you know
now what I intend by this woman. Well, just as if to make my plan more
feasible, a circumstance intended for a very different object offers
itself to my aid. When my uncle, Sir Miles Herrick, heard that I was
about to marry a foreigner, he declared that he would never leave me a
shilling of his fortune. I am not very sure that I cared much for the
threat when it was uttered. My friends, however, thought differently;
and though they did not attempt to dissuade me from my marriage, they
suggested that I should try some means of overcoming this prejudice; at
all events, that I should not hurry on the match without an effort to
obtain his consent. I agreed,--not very willingly, indeed,--and so the
matter remained. The circumstance was well known amongst my two or three
most intimate friends, and constantly discussed by them. I need n't tell
you that the tone in which such things are talked of as often partakes
of levity as seriousness. They gave me all manner of absurd counsels,
one more outrageously ridiculous than the other. At last, one day,--we
were picnicking at Baia,--Old Clifford,--you remember that original
who had the famous schooner-yacht 'The Breeze,'--well, he took me aside
after dinner, and said, 'Glencore, I have it,--I have just hit upon the
expedient. Your uncle and I were old chums at Christ Church fifty years
ago. What if we were to tell him that you were going to marry a daughter
of mine? I don't think he'd object. I 'm half certain he 'd not. I have
been abroad these five-and-thirty years. Nobody in England knows much
about me now. Old Herrick can't live forever; he is my senior by a good
ten or twelve years; and if the delusion only lasts his time--'
“'But perhaps you have a daughter?' broke I in.
“'I have, and she is married already, so there is no risk on that
score.' I need n't repeat all that he said for, nor that I urged
against, the project; for though it was after dinner, and we all had
drunk very freely, the deception was one I firmly rejected. When a man
shows a great desire to serve you on a question of no common difficulty,
it is very hard to be severe upon his counsels, however unscrupulous
they may be. In fact, you accept them as proofs of friendship only the
stronger, seeing how much they must have cost him to offer.”
Upton smiled dubiously, and Glencore, blushing slightly, said, “You
don't concur in this, I perceive.”
“Not exactly,” said Upton, in his silkiest of tones; “I rather regard
these occasions as I should do the generosity of a man who, filling my
hand with base money, should say, 'Pass it if you can!'”
“In this case, however,” resumed Glencore, “he took his share of the
fraud, or at least was willing to do so, for I distinctly said 'No' to
the whole scheme. He grew very warm about it; at one moment appealing to
my 'good sense, not to kick seven thousand a year out of the window;' at
the next, in half-quarrelsome mood, asking 'if it were any objection I
had to be connected with his family.' To get rid of a very troublesome
subject, and to end a controversy that threatened to disturb a party,
I said at last, 'We 'll talk it over to-morrow, Clifford, and if your
arguments be as good as your heart, then perhaps they may yet convince
me.' This ended the theme, and we parted. I started the next day on
a shooting excursion into Calabria, and when I got back it was not of
meeting Clifford I was thinking. I hastened to meet the Delia Torres,
and then came our elopement. You know the rest. We went to the East,
passed the winter in Upper Egypt, and came to Cairo in spring, where
Charley was born. I got back to Naples after a year or two, and then
found that my uncle had just died, and in consequence of my marrying the
daughter of his old and attached friend, Sir Guy Clifford, had reversed
the intention of his will, and by a codicil left me his sole heir. It
was thus that my marriage, and even my boy's birth, became inserted
in the Peerage; my solicitor, in his vast eagerness for my interests,
having taken care to indorse the story with his own name. The
disinherited nephews and nieces, the half-cousins and others, soon got
wind of the real facts, and contested the will, on the ground of its
being executed under a delusion. I, of course, would not resist their
claim, and satisfied myself by denying the statement as to my marriage;
and so, after affording the current subject of gossip for a season, I
was completely forgotten, the more as we went to live abroad, and never
mixed with English. And now, Upton, it is this same incident I would
utilize for the present occasion, though, as I said before, when it
originally occurred it had a very different signification.”
“I don't exactly see how,” said Upton.
“In this wise. My real marriage was never inserted in the Peerage.
I'll now manage that it shall so appear, to give me the opportunity of
formally contradicting it, and alluding to the strange persistence with
which, having married me some fifteen years ago to a lady who never
existed, they now are pleased to unite me to one whose character might
have secured me against the calumny. I 'll threaten an action for libel,
etc., obtain a most full, explicit, and abject apology, and then, when
this has gone the round of all the journals of Europe, her doom is
sealed!”
“But she has surely letters, writings, proofs of some sort.”
“No, Upton, I have not left a scrap in her possession; she has not
a line, not a letter to vindicate her. On the night I broke open her
writing-desk, I took away everything that bore the traces of my own
hand. I tell you again she is in my power, and never was power less
disposed to mercy.”
“Once more, my dear friend,” said Upton, “I am driven to tell you that I
cannot be a profitable counsellor in a matter to every detail of which
I object. Consider calmly for one moment what you are doing. See how,
in your desire to be avenged upon _her_, you throw the heaviest share of
the penalty on your own poor boy. I am not her advocate now. I will
not say one word to mitigate the course of your anger towards her, but
remember that you are actually defrauding him of his birthright. This is
not a question where you have a choice. There is no discretionary power
left you.”
“I 'll do it,” said Glencore, with a savage energy.
“In other words, to wreak a vengeance upon one, you are prepared to
immolate another, not only guiltless, but who possesses every claim to
your love and affection.”
“And do you think that if I sacrifice the last tie that attaches me to
life, Upton, that I retire from this contest heart-whole? No, far from
it; I go forth from the struggle broken, blasted, friendless!”
“And do you mean that this vengeance should outlive you? Suppose, for
instance, that she should survive you.”
“It shall be to live on in shame, then,” cried he, savagely.
“And were she to die first?”
“In that case--I have not thought well enough about that. It is
possible,--it is just possible; but these are subtleties, Upton, to
detach me from my purpose, or weaken my resolution to carry it
through. You would apply the craft of your calling to the case, and,
by suggesting emergencies, open a road to evasions. Enough for me the
present. I neither care to prejudge the future, nor control it. I know,”
cried he, suddenly, and with eyes flashing angrily as he spoke,--“I know
that if you desire to use the confidence I have reposed in you against
me, you can give me trouble and even difficulty; but I defy Sir Horace
Upton, with all his skill and all his cunning, to outwit me.”
There was that in the tone in which he uttered these words, and the
exaggerated energy of his manner, that convinced Upton, Glencore's
reason was not intact. It was not what could amount to aberration in the
ordinary sense, but sufficient evidence was there to show that judgment
had become so obscured by passion that the mental power was weakened by
the moral.
“Tell me, therefore, Upton,” cried he, “before we part, do you leave
this house my friend or my enemy?”
“It is as your sincere, attached friend that I now dispute with you,
inch by inch, a dangerous position, with a judgment under no influence
from passion, viewing this question by the coldest of all tests,--mere
expediency--'
“There it is,” broke in Glencore; “you claim an advantage over me,
because you are devoid of feeling; but this is a case, sir, where the
sense of injury gives the instinct of reparation. Is it nothing to me,
think you, that I am content to go down dishonored to my grave, but also
to be the last of my name and station? Is it nothing that a whole line
of honorable ancestry is extinguished at once? Is it nothing that I
surrender him who formed my sole solace and companionship in life? You
talk of your calm, unbiassed mind; but I tell you, till your brain be on
fire like mine, and your heart swollen to very bursting, that you have
no right to dictate to _me!_ Besides, it is done! The blow has fallen,”
added he, with a deeper solemnity of voice. “The gulf that separates us
is already created. She and I can meet no more. But why continue this
contest? It was to aid me in directing that boy's fortunes I first
sought your advice, not to attempt to dissuade me from what I will not
be turned from.”
“In what way can I serve you?” said Upton, calmly.
“Will you consent to be his guardian?”
“I will.”
Glencore seized the other's hand, and pressed it to his heart, and for
some seconds he could not speak.
“This is all that I ask, Upton,” said he. “It is the greatest boon
friendship could accord me. I need no more. Could you have remained here
a day or two more, we could have settled upon some plan together as to
his future life; as it is, we can arrange it by letter.”
“He must leave this,” said Upton, thoughtfully.
“Of course,--at once!”
“How far is Harcourt to be informed in this matter; have you spoken to
him already?”
“No; nor mean to do so. I should have from _him_ nothing but reproaches
for having betrayed the boy into false hopes of a station he was never
to fill. You must tell Harcourt. I leave it to yourself to find the
suitable moment.”
“We shall need his assistance,” said Upton, whose quick faculties were
already busily travelling many a mile of the future. “I 'll see him
to-night, and try what can be done. In a few days you will have turned
over in your mind what you yourself destine for him,--the fortune you
mean to give--”
“It is already done,” said Glencore, laying a sealed letter on the
table. “All that I purpose in his behalf you will find there.”
“All this detail is too much for you, Glencore,” said the other, seeing
that a weary, depressed expression had come over him, while his
voice grew weaker with every word. “I shall not leave this till late
to-morrow, so that we can meet again. And now good night.”