We are not about to follow up the correspondence of Sir Horace by
detailing the reply which Harcourt sent, and all that thereupon ensued
between them.
We pass over, then, some months of time, and arrive at the late autumn.
It is a calm, still morning; the sea, streaked with tinted shadows,
is without a ripple; the ships of many nations that float on it are
motionless, their white sails hung out to bleach, their ensigns drooping
beside the masts. Over the summit of Vesuvius--for we are at Naples--a
light blue cloud hangs, the solitary one in all the sky. A mild,
plaintive song, the chant of some fishermen on the rocks, is the only
sound, save the continuous hum of that vast city, which swells and falls
at intervals.
Close beside the sea, seated on a rock, are two figures. One is that
of a youth of some eighteen or nineteen years; his features, eminently
handsome, wear an expression of gloomy pride as in deep preoccupation
he gazes out over the bay; to all seeming, indifferent to the fair scene
before him, and wrapped in his own sad thoughts. The other is a short,
square-built, almost uncouth figure, overshadowed by a wide straw hat,
which seems even to diminish his stature; a suit of black, wide
and ample enough for one twice his size, gives his appearance a
grotesqueness to which his features contribute their share.
It is, indeed, a strange physiognomy, to which Celt and Calmuc seem
equally to contribute. The low, overhanging forehead, the intensely keen
eye, sparkling with an almost imp-like drollery, are contrasted by
a firmly compressed mouth and a far-projecting under-jaw that imply
sternness even to cruelty; a mass of waving black hair, that covers neck
and shoulders, adds a species of savagery to a head which assuredly
has no need of such aid. Bent down over a large quarto volume, he never
lifts his eyes; but, intently occupied, his lips are rapidly repeating
the words as he reads them.
“Do you mean to pass the morning here?” asks the youth, at length, “or
where shall I find you later on?”
“I 'll do whatever you like best,” said the other, in a rich brogue; “I
'm agreeable to go or stay,--_ad utrumque pa-ratus_.” And Billy Traynor,
for it was he, shut up his venerable volume.
“I don't wish to disturb you,” said the boy, mildly, “you can read. I
cannot; I have a fretful, impatient feeling over me that perhaps will
go off with exercise. I'll set out, then, for a walk, and come back here
towards evening, then go and dine at the Rocca, and afterwards whatever
you please.”
“If you say that, then,” said Billy, in a voice of evident delight,
“we'll finish the day at the Professor Tadeucci's, and get him to go
over that analysis again.”
“I have no taste for chemistry. It always seems to me to end where it
began,” said the boy, impatiently. “Where do all researches tend to?
how are you elevated in intellect? how are your thoughts higher, wider,
nobler, by all these mixings and manipulations?”
“Is it nothing to know how thunder and lightning is made; to understand
electricity; to dive into the secrets of that old crater there, and see
the ingredients in the crucible that was bilin' three thousand years
ago?”
“These things appeal more grandly to my imagination when the mystery
of their forces is unrevealed. I like to think of them as dread
manifestations of a mighty will, rather than gaseous combinations or
metallic affinities.”
“And what prevents you?” said Billy, eagerly. “Is the grandeur of
the phenomenon impaired because it is in part intelligible? Ain't you
elevated as a reasoning being when you get what I may call a peep into
God's workshop, rather than by implicitly accepting results just as any
old woman accepts a superstition?”
“There is something ignoble in mechanism,” said the boy, angrily.
“Don't say that, while your heart is beatin' and your arteries is
contractin; never say it as long as your lungs dilate or collapse.
It's mechanism makes water burst out of the ground, and, swelling into
streams, flow as mighty rivers through the earth. It's mechanism raises
the sap to the topmost bough of the cedar-tree that waves over Lebanon.
'T is the same power moves planets above, just to show us that as there
is nothing without a cause, there is one great and final 'Cause' behind
all.”
“And will you tell me,” said the boy, sneeringly, “that a sunbeam pours
more gladness into your heart because a prism has explained to you the
composition of light?”
“God's blessings never seemed the less to me because he taught me the
beautiful laws that guide them,” said Billy, reverently; “every little
step that I take out of darkness is on the road, at least, to Him.”
In part abashed by the words, in part admonished by the tone of the
speaker, the boy was silent for some minutes. “You know, Billy,” said
he, at length, “that I spoke in no irreverence; that I would no more
insult your convictions than I would outrage my own. It is simply that
it suits my dreamy indolence to like the wonderful better than the
intelligible; and you must acknowledge that there never was so palatable
a theory for ignorance.”
“Ay, but I don't want you to be ignorant,” said Billy, earnestly;
“and there's no greater mistake than supposing that knowledge is an
impediment to the play of fancy. Take my word for it, Master Charles,
imagination, no more than any one else, does not work best in the dark.”
“I certainly am no adept under such circumstances,” said the boy. “I
have n't told you what happened me in the studio last night. I went in
without a candle, and, trying to grope my way to the table, I overturned
the large olive jar, full of clay, against my Niobe, and smashed her to
atoms.”
“Smashed Niobe!” cried Billy, in horror.
“In pieces. I stood over her sadder than ever she felt herself, and I
have not had the courage to enter the studio since.”
“Come, come, let us see if she couldn't be restored,” said Billy,
rising. “Let us go down there together.”
“You may, if you have any fancy,--there's the key,” said the boy. “I 'll
return there no more till the rubbish be cleared away.” And so saying,
he moved off, and was soon out of sight.
Deeply grieving over this disaster, Billy Traynor hastened from the
spot, but he had only reached the garden of the Chiaja when he heard a
faint, weak voice calling him by his name; he turned, and saw Sir Horace
Upton, who, seated in a sort of portable arm-chair, was enjoying the
fresh air from the sea.
“Quite a piece of good fortune to meet you, Doctor,” said he, smiling;
“neither you nor your pupil have been near me for ten days or more.”
“'Tis our own loss then, your Excellency,” said Billy, bowing; “even
a chance few minutes in your company is like whetting the intellectual
razor,--I feel myself sharper for the whole day after.”
“Then why not come oftener, man? Are you afraid of wearing the steel all
away?”
“'T is more afraid I am of gapping the fine edge of your Excellency by
contact with my own ruggedness,” said Billy, obsequiously.
“You were intended for a courtier, Doctor,” said Sir Horace, smiling.
“If there was such a thing as a court fool nowadays, I'd look for the
place.”
“The age is too dull for such a functionary. They'll not find ten men
in any country of Europe equal to the office,” said Sir Horace. “One has
only to see how lamentably dull are the journals dedicated to wit and
drollery, to admit this fact; though written by many hands, how rare
it is to chance upon what provokes a laugh. You 'll have fifty
metaphysicians anywhere before you 'll hit on one Molière. Will you
kindly open that umbrella for me? This autumnal sun, they say, gives
sunstroke. And now what do you think of this boy? He'll not make a
diplomatist, that's clear.”
“He 'll not make anything,--just for one simple reason, because he could
be whatever he pleased.”
“An intellectual spendthrift,” sighed Sir Horace “What a hopeless
bankruptcy it leads to!”
“My notion is 'twould be spoiling him entirely to teach him a trade or
a profession. Let his great faculties shoot up without being trimmed or
trained; don't want to twist or twine or turn them at all, but just see
whether he won't, out of his uncurbed nature, do better than all our
discipline could effect. There's no better colt than the one that was
never backed till he was a five-year-old.”
“He ought to have a career,” said Sir Horace, thoughtfully. “Every man
ought to have a calling, if only that he may be able to abandon it.”
“Just as a sailor has a point of departure,” said Billy.
“Precisely,” said Sir Horace, pleased at being so well appreciated.
“You are aware, Doctor,” resumed he, after a pause, “that the lad will
have little or no private fortune. There are family circumstances that
I cannot enter into, nor would your own delicacy require it, that will
leave him almost dependent on his own efforts. Now, as time is rolling
over, we should bethink us what direction it were wisest to give his
talents; for he has talents.”
“He has genius and talents both,” said Billy; “he has the raw material,
and the workshop to manufacture it.”
“I am rejoiced to hear such an account from one so well able to
pronounce,” said Sir Horace, blandly; and Billy bowed, and blushed with
a sense of happiness that none but humble men, so praised, could ever
feel.
“I should like much to hear what you would advise for him,” said Upton.
“He's so full of promise,” said Billy, “that whatever he takes to he 'll
be sure to fancy he 'd be better at something else. See, now,--it isn 't
a bull I 'm sayin', but I 'll make a blunder of it if I try to explain.”
“Go on; I think I apprehend you.”
“By coorse you do. Well, it's that same feelin' makes me cautious
of sayin' what he ought to do. For, after all, a variety of capacity
implies discursiveness, and discursiveness is the mother of failure.”
“You speak like an oracle, Doctor.”
“If I do, it's because the priest is beside me,” said Billy, howmg. “My
notion is this: I'd let him cultivate his fine gifts for a year or two
in any way he liked,--in work or idleness; for they 'll grow in the
fallow as well as in the tilled land. I 'd let him be whatever he
liked,--striving always, as he's sure to be striving, after something
higher, and greater, and better than he'll ever reach; and then, when he
has felt both his strength and his weakness, I 'd try and attach him to
some great man in public life; set a grand ambition before him, and say,
'Go on.'”
“He's scarcely the stuff for public life,” muttered Sir Horace.
“He is,” said Billy, boldly.
“He 'd be easily abashed,--easily deterred by failure.”
“Sorra bit. Success might cloy, but failure would never damp him.”
“I can't fancy him a speaker.”
“Rouse him by a strong theme and a flat contradiction, and you 'll see
what he can do.”
“And then his lounging, idle habits--”
“He'll do more in two hours than any one else in two days.”
“You are a warm admirer, my dear Doctor,” said Sir Horace, smiling
blandly. “I should almost rather have such a friend than the qualities
that win the friendship.--Have you a message for me, Antoine?” said
he to a servant who stood at a little distance, waiting the order to
approach. The man came forward, and whispered a few words. Sir Horace's
cheek gave a faint, the very faintest possible, sign of flush as he
listened, and uttering a brief “Very well,” dismissed the messenger.
“Will you give me your arm, Doctor?” said he, languidly; and the elegant
Sir Horace Upton passed down the crowded promenade, leaning on his
uncouth companion, without the slightest consciousness of the surprise
and sarcasm around him. No man more thoroughly could appreciate
conventionalities; he would weigh the effect of appearances to the
veriest nicety; but in practice he seemed either to forget his knowledge
or despise it. So that, as leaning on the little dwarf's arm he moved
along, his very air of fashionable languor seemed to heighten the
absurdity of the contrast. Nay, he actually seemed to bestow an almost
deferential attention to what the other said, bowing blandly his
acquiescence, and smiling with an urbanity all his own.
Of the crowd that passed, nearly all knew the English Minister.
Uncovered heads were bent obsequiously; graceful salutations met him as
he went; while a hundred conjectures ran as to who and what might be his
companion.
He was a Mesmeric Professor, a Writer in Cipher, a Rabbi, an Egyptian
Explorer, an Alchemist, an African Traveller, and, at last, Monsieur
Thiers!--and so the fine world of Naples discussed the humble individual
whom you and I, dear reader, are acquainted with as Billy Traynor.