The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 40

"I scarcely know it myself," said the youth. "I feel as though in a dream, and know not what is real and what fiction."

"How have you pa.s.sed your time? What were you doin' while I was away?"

"Dreaming, I believe," said the other, with a sigh. "Some embers of my old ambition warmed up into a flame once more, and I fancied that there was that in me that by toil and labor might yet win upwards; and that, if so, this mere life of action would but bring repining and regret, and that I should feel as one who chose the meaner casket of fate, when both were within my reach."

"So you were at work again in the studio?"

"I have been finis.h.i.+ng the arm of the Faun in that pavilion outside the town." A flush of crimson covered his face as he spoke, which Billy as quickly noticed, but misinterpreted.

"Ay, and they praised you, I 'll be bound. They said it was the work of one whose genius would place him with the great ones of art, and that he who could do this while scarcely more than a boy, might, in riper years, be the great name of his century. Did they not tell you so?"

"No; not that, not that," said the other, slowly.

"Then they bade you go on, and strive and labor hard to develop into life the seeds of that glorious gift that was in you?"

"Nor that," sighed the youth, heavily, while a faint spot of crimson burned on one cheek, and a feverish l.u.s.tre lit up his eye.

"They did n't dispraise what you done, did they?" broke in Billy. "They could not, if they wanted to do it; but sure there's n.o.body would have the cruel heart to blight the ripenin' bud of genius,--to throw gloom over a spirit that has to struggle against its own misgivin's?"

"You wrong them, my dear friend; their words were all kindness and affection. They gave me hope, and encouragement too. They fancy that I have in me what will one day grow into fame itself; and even you, Billy, in your most sanguine hopes, have never dreamed of greater success for me than they have predicted in the calm of a moonlit saunter."

"May the saints in heaven reward them for it!" said Billy, and in his clasped hands and uplifted eyes was all the fervor of a prayer. "They have my best blessin' for their goodness," muttered he to himself.

"And so I am again a sculptor!" said Ma.s.sy, rising and walking the room. "Upon this career my whole heart and soul are henceforth to be concentrated; my fame, my happiness are to be those of the artist. From this day and this hour let every thought of what--not what I once was, but what I had hoped to be, be banished from my heart. I am Sebastian Greppi. Never let another name escape your lips to me. I will not, even for a second, turn from the path in which my own exertions are to win the goal. Let the faraway land of my infancy, its traditions, its a.s.sociations, be but dreams for evermore. Forwards! forwards!" cried he, pa.s.sionately; "not a glance, not a look, towards the past."

Billy stared with admiration at the youth, over whose features a glow of enthusiasm was now diffused, and in broken, unconnected words spoke encouragement and good cheer.

"I know well," said the youth, "how this same stubborn pride must be rooted out, how these false, deceitful visions of a stand and a station that I am never to attain must give place to n.o.bler and higher aspirations; and you, my dearest friend, must aid me in all this,--unceasingly, unwearyingly reminding me that to myself alone must I look for anything; and that if I would have a country, a name, or a home, it is by the toil of this head and these hands they are to be won.

My plan is this," said he, eagerly seizing the other's arm, and speaking with immense rapidity: "A life not alone of labor, but of the simplest; not a luxury, not an indulgence; our daily meals the humblest, our dress the commonest, nothing that to provide shall demand a moment's forethought or care; no wants that shall turn our thoughts from this great object, no care for the requirements that others need. Thus mastering small ambitions and petty desires, we shall concentrate all our faculties on our art; and even the humblest may thus outstrip those whose higher gifts reject such discipline."

"You 'll not live longer under the Duke's patronage, then?" said Traynor.

"Not an hour. I return to that garden no more. There's a cottage on the mountain road to Serravezza will suit us well: it stands alone and on an eminence, with a view over the plain and the sea beyond. You can see it from the door,--there, to the left of the olive wood, lower down than the old ruin. We 'll live there, Billy, and we 'll make of that mean spot a hallowed one, where young enthusiasts in art will come, years hence, when we have pa.s.sed away, to see the humble home Sebastian lived in,--to sit upon the gra.s.sy seat where he once sat, when dreaming of the mighty triumphs that have made him glorious." A wild burst of mocking laughter rung from the boy's lips as he said this; but its accents were less in derision of the boast than a species of hysterical ecstasy at the vision he had conjured up.

"And why would n't it be so?" exclaimed Billy, ardently,--"why would n't you be great and ill.u.s.trious?"

The moment of excitement was now over, and the youth stood pale, silent, and almost sickly in appearance; great drops of perspiration, too, stood on his forehead, and his quivering lips were bloodless.

"These visions are like meteor streaks," said he, falteringly; "they leave the sky blacker than they found it! But come along, let us to work, and we 'll soon forget mere speculation."

Of the life they now led each day exactly resembled the other. Rising early, the youth was in his studio at dawn; the faithful Billy, seated near, read for him while he worked. Watching, with a tact that only affection ever bestows, each changeful mood of the youth's mind, Traynor varied the topics with the varying humors of the other, and thus little of actual conversation took place between them, though their minds journeyed along together. To eke out subsistence, even humble as theirs, the young sculptor was obliged to make small busts and figures for sale, and Billy disposed of them at Lucca and Pisa, making short excursions to these cities as need required.

The toil of the day over, they wandered out towards the seash.o.r.e, taking the path which led through the olive road by the garden of the villa. At times the youth would steal away a moment from his companion, and enter the little park, with every avenue of which he was familiar; and although Billy noticed his absence, he strictly abstained from the slightest allusion to it. As he delayed longer and longer to return, Traynor maintained the same reserve, and thus there grew up gradually a secret between them,--a mystery that neither ventured to approach. With a delicacy that seemed an instinct in his humble nature, Billy would now and then feign occupation or fatigue to excuse himself from the evening stroll, and thus leave the youth free to wander as he wished; till at length it became a settled habit between them to separate at nightfall, to meet only on the morrow. These nights were spent in walking the garden around the villa, lingering stealthily amid the trees to watch the room where she was sitting, to catch a momentary glimpse of her figure as it pa.s.sed the window, to hear perchance a few faint accents of her voice. Hours long would he so watch in the silent night, his whole soul steeped in a delicious dream wherein her image moved, and came and went, with every pa.s.sing fancy. In the calm moonlight he would try to trace her footsteps in the gravel walk that led to the studio, and, lingering near them, whisper to her words of love.

One night, as he loitered thus, he thought he was perceived, for as he suddenly emerged from a dark alley into a broad s.p.a.ce where the moonlight fell strongly, he saw a figure on a terrace above him, but without being able to recognize to whom it belonged. Timidly and fearfully he retired within the shade, and crept noiselessly away, shocked at the very thought of discovery. The next day he found a small bouquet of fresh flowers on the rustic seat beneath the window. At first he scarcely dared to touch it; but with a sudden flash of hope that it had been destined for himself, he pressed the flowers to his lips, and hid them in his bosom. Each night now the same present attracted him to the same place, and thus at once within his heart was lighted a flame of hope that illuminated all his being, making his whole life a glorious episode, and filling all the long hours of the day with thoughts of her who thus could think of him.

Life has its triumphant moments, its dream of entrancing, ecstatic delight, when suocess has crowned a hard-fought struggle, or when the meed of other men's praise comes showered on us. The triumphs of heroism, of intellect, of n.o.ble endurance; the trials of temptation met and conquered; the glorious victory over self-interest,--are all great and enn.o.bling sensations; but what are they all compared with the first consciousness of being loved, of being to another the ideal we have made of her? To this, nothing the world can give is equal. From the moment we have felt it, life changes around us. Its crosses are but barriers opposed to our strong will, that to a.s.sail and storm is a duty. Then comes a heroism in meeting the every-day troubles of existence, as though we were soldiers in a good and holy cause. No longer unseen or unmarked in the great ocean of life, we feel that there is an eye ever turned towards us, a heart ever throbbing with our own; that our triumphs are its triumphs,--our sorrows its sorrows. Apart from all the intercourse with the world, with its changeful good and evil, we feel that we have a treasure that dangers cannot approach; we know that in our heart of hearts a blessed mystery is locked up,--a well of pure thoughts that can calm down the most fevered hour of life's anxieties.

So the youth felt, and, feeling so, was happy.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV. A MINISTER'S LETTER

British Legation, Naples,

Nov--, 18--.

My dear Harcourt,--Not mine the fault that your letter has lain six weeks unanswered; but having given up penwork myself for the last eight months, and Crawley, my private sec., being ill, the delay was unavoidable. The present communication you owe to the fortunate arrival here of Captain Mellish, who has kindly volunteered to be my amanuensis.

I am indeed sorely grieved at this delay. I shall be _desole_ if it occasion you anything beyond inconvenience. How a private sec. should permit himself the luxury of an attack of influenza I cannot conceive.

We shall hear of one's hairdresser having the impertinence to catch cold, to-morrow or next day!

If I don't mistake, it was you yourself recommended Crawley to me, and I am only half grateful for the service. He is a man of small prejudices; fancies that he ought to have a regular hour for dinner; thinks that he should have acquaintances; and will persist in imagining himself an existent something, appertaining to the Legation,--while, in reality, he is only a shadowy excrescence of my own indolent habits, the recipient of the trashy superfluities one commits to paper and calls despatches.

Latterly, in my increasing laziness, I have used him for more intimate correspondence; and, as Doctor Allitore has now denied me all manual exertion whatever, I am actually wholly dependent on such aid. I'm sure I long for the discovery of some other mode of transmitting one's brain-efforts than by the slow process of ma.n.u.script,--some photographic process that, by a series of bright pictures, might display _en tableau_ what one is now reduced to accomplish by narrative. As it ever did and ever will happen too, they have deluged me with work when I crave rest.

Every session of Parliament must have its blue-book; and by the devil's luck they have decided that Italy is to furnish the present one.

You have always been a soldier, and whenever your inspecting general came his round, your whole care has been to make the troop horses look as fat, the men's whiskers as trim, their overalls as clean, and their curb-chains as bright, as possible. You never imagined or dreamed of a contingency when it would be desirable that the animals should be all sorebacked, the whole regiment under stoppages, and the trumpeter in a quinsy. Had you been a diplomatist instead of a dragoon, this view of things might, perhaps, have presented itself, and the chief object of your desire have been to show that the system under which you functionated worked as ill as need be; that the court to which you were accredited abhorred you; its Ministers snubbed, its small officials slighted you; that all your communications were ill received, your counsels ill taken; that what you reprobated was adopted, what you advised rejected; in fact, that the only result of your presence was the maintenance of a perpetual ill-will and bad feeling; and that without the aid of a line-of-battle s.h.i.+p, or at least a frigate, your position was no longer tenable. From the moment, my dear H----, that you can establish this fact, you start into life as an able and active Minister, imbued with thoroughly British principles--an active a.s.serter of what is due to his country's rights and dignity, not truckling to court favor, or tamely submitting to royal impertinences; not like the n.o.ble lord at this place, or the more subservient viscount at that, but, in plain words, an admirable public servant, whose reward, whatever courts and cabinets may do, will always be willingly accorded by a grateful nation.

I am afraid this sketch of a special envoy's career will scarcely tempt you to exchange for a mission abroad! And you are quite right, my dear friend. It is a very unrewarding profession. I often wish myself that I had taken something in the colonies, or gone into the Church, or some other career which had given me time and opportunity to look after my health,--of which, by the way, I have but an indifferent account to render you. These people here can't hit it off at all, Harcourt; they keep muddling away about indigestion, deranged functions, and the rest of it. The mischief is in the blood,--I mean, in the undue distribution of the blood. So Treysenac, the man of Bagneres, proved to me. There is a flux and reflux in us, as in the tides, and when, from deficient energy or lax muscular power, that ceases, we are all driven by artificial means to remedy the defect. Treysenac's theory is position.

By a number of ingeniously contrived positions he accomplishes an artificial congestion of any part he pleases; and in his establishment at Bagneres you may see some fifty people strung up by the arms and legs, by the waists or the ankles, in the most marvellous manner, and with truly fabulous success. I myself pa.s.sed three mornings suspended by the middle, like the sheep in the decoration of the Golden Fleece, and was amazed at the strange sensations I experienced before I was cut down.

You know the obstinacy with which the medical people reject every discovery in the art, and only sanction its employment when the world has decreed in its favor. You will, therefore, not be surprised to hear that Larrey and Cooper, to whom I wrote about Treysenac's theory, sent me very unsatisfactory, indeed very unseemly, replies. I have resolved, however, not to let the thing drop, and am determined to originate a Suspensorium in England, when I can chance upon a man of intelligence and scientific knowledge to conduct it. Like mesmerism, the system has its antipathies; and thus yesterday Crawley fainted twice after a few minutes' suspension by the arms. But he is a bigot about anything he hears for the first time, and I was not sorry at his punishment.

I wish you would talk over this matter with any clever medical man in your neighborhood, and let me hear the result.

And so you are surprised, you say, how little influence English representations exercise over the determinations of foreign cabinets. I go farther, and confess no astonishment at all at the no-influence! My dear dragoon, have you not, some hundred and fifty times in this life, endured a small martyrdom in seeing a very indifferent rider torment almost to madness the animal he bestrode, just by sheer ignorance and awkwardness,--now worrying the flank with incautious heel, now irritating the soft side of the mouth with incessant jerkings; always counteracting the good impulses, ever prompting the bad ones of his beast? And have you not, while heartily wis.h.i.+ng yourself in the saddle, felt the utter inutility of administering any counsels to the rider?

You saw, and rightly saw, that even if he attempted to follow your suggestions, he would do so awkwardly and inaptly, acting at wrong moments and without that continuity of purpose which must ever accompany an act of address; and that for his safety, and even for the welfare of the animal, it were as well they should jog on together as they had done, trusting that after a time they might establish a sort of compromise, endurable, if not beneficial, to both.

Such, my dear friend, in brief, is the state of many of those foreign governments to whom we are so profuse of our wise counsels. It were doubtless much better if they ruled well; but let us see if the road to this knotty consummation be by the adoption of methods totally new to them, estranged from all their instincts and habits, and full of perils which their very fears will exaggerate. Const.i.tutional governments, like underdone roast beef, suit our natures and our lat.i.tude; but they would seem lamentable experiments when tried south of the Alps. Liberty with us means the right to break heads at a county election, and to print impertinences in newspapers. With the Spaniard or the Italian it would be to carry a poniard more openly, and use it more frequently than at present.

At all events, if it be any satisfaction to you, you may be a.s.sured that the rulers in all these cases are not much better off than those they rule over. They lead lives of incessant terror, distrust, and anxiety.

Their existence is poisoned by ceaseless fears of treachery,--they know not where. They change ministers as travellers change the direction of their journey, to disconcert the supposed plans of their enemies; and they vacillate between cruelty and mercy, really not knowing in which lies their safety. Don't fancy that they have any innate pleasure in harsh measures. The likelihood is, they hate them as much as you do yourself; but they know no other system; and, to come back to my cavalry ill.u.s.tration, the only time they tried a snaffle, they were run away with.

I trust these prosings will be a warning to you how you touch upon politics again in a letter to me; but I really did not wish to-be a bore, and now here I am, ready to answer, as far as in me lies, all your interrogatories; first premising that I am not at liberty to enter upon the question of Glencore himself, and for the simple reason that he has made me his confidant. And now, as to the boy, I could make nothing of him, Harcourt; and for this reason,--he had not what sailors call "steerage way" on him. He went wherever you bade, but without an impulse. I tried to make him care for his career; for the gay world; for the b.u.t.terfly life of young diplomacy; for certain dissipations,--excellent things occasionally to develop nascent faculties. I endeavored to interest him by literary society and savans, but unsuccessfully. For art indeed he showed some disposition, and modelled prettily; but it never rose above "amateurs.h.i.+p." Now, enthusiasm, although a very excellent ingredient, will no more make an artist than a brisk kitchen fire will provide a dinner where all the materials are wanting.

I began to despair of him, Harcourt, when I saw that there were no features about him. He could do everything reasonably well, because there was no hope of his doing anything with real excellence. He wandered away from me to Carrara, with his quaint companion the Doctor; and after some months wrote me rather a st.u.r.dy letter, rejecting all moneyed advances, past and future, and saying something very haughty, and of course very stupid, about the "glorious sense of independence."

I replied, but he never answered me; and here might have ended all my knowledge of his history, had not a letter, of which I send you an extract, resumed the narrative. The writer is the Princess Sabloukoff, a lady of whose attractions and fascinations you have often heard me speak. When you have read, and thought over the enclosed, let me have your opinion. I do not, I cannot, believe in the rumor you allude to. Glencore is not the man to marry at his time of life, and in his circ.u.mstances. Send me, however, all the particulars you are in possession of. I hope they don't mean to send you to India, because you seem to dislike it. For my own part, I suspect I should enjoy that country immensely. Heat is the first element of daily comfort, and all the appliances to moderate it are _ex-officio_ luxuries; besides that in India there is a splendid and enlarged selfishness in the mode of life very different from the petty egotisms of our rude Northland.

If you do go, pray take Naples in the way. The route by Alexandria and Suez, they all tell me, is the best and most expeditious.

Mellish desires me to add his remembrances, hoping you have not forgotten him. He served in the "Fifth" with you in Canada,--that is, if you be the same George Harcourt who played Tony Lumpkin so execrably at Montreal. I have told him it is probable, and am yours ever,

H. U.

CHAPTER x.x.xV. HARCOURT'S LODGINGS