The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 45

"And Cantworth, where is he?"

"He's off for Vienna, and a short trip to Hungary. I met him at dinner at the mess while waiting for the Dover packet. By the way, I saw a friend of your Excellency's,--Harcourt."

"Not gone to India?"

"No. They've made him a governor or commander-in-chief of something in the Mediterranean; I forget exactly where or what."

"You have brought me a mighty bag, Stevins," said Upton, sighing. "I had hoped for a little ease and rest now that the House is up."

"They are all blue-books, I believe," replied Stevins. "There's that blacking your Excellency wrote about, and the cricket-bats; the lathe must come out by the frigate, and the down mattress at the same time."

"Just do me the favor to open the bag, my dear Stevins. I am utterly without aid here," said Upton, sighing drearily; and the other proceeded to litter the table and the floor with a variety of strange and incongruous parcels.

"Report of factory commissioners," cried he, throwing down a weighty quarto. "Yarmouth bloaters; Atkinson's cerulean paste for the eyebrows; Worcester sauce; trade returns for Tahiti; a set of shoemaking tools; eight bottles of Darby's pyloric corrector; buffalo flesh-brushes,--devilish hard they seem; Hume's speech on the reduction of foreign legations; novels from Bull's; top-boots for a tiger; and a ma.s.s of letters," said Stevins, throwing them broadcast over the sofa.

"No despatches?" cried Upton, eagerly.

"Not one, by Jove!" said Stevins.

"Open one of those Darby's. I 'll take a teaspoonful at once. Will you try it, Stevins?"

"Thanks, your Excellency, I never take physic."

"Well, you dine here, then," said he, with a sly look at the Princess.

"Not to-day, your Excellency. I dine with Grammont at eight."

"Then I'll not detain you. Come back here to-morrow about eleven or a little later. Come to breakfast if you like."

"At what hour?"

"I don't know,--at any hour," sighed Upton, as he opened one of his letters and began to read; and Stevins bowed and withdrew, totally unnoticed and unrecognized as he slipped from the room.

One after another Upton threw down, after reading half a dozen lines, muttering some indistinct syllables over the dreary stupidity of letter-writers in general. Occasionally he came upon some pressing appeal for money,--some urgent request for even a small remittance by the next post; and these he only smiled at, while he refolded them with a studious care and neatness. "Why will you not help me with this chaos, dear Princess?" said he, at last.

"I am only waiting to be asked," said she; "but I feared that there might be secrets--"

"From you?" said he, with a voice of deep tenderness, while his eyes sparkled with an expression far more like raillery than affection. The Princess, however, had either not seen or not heeded it, for she was already deep in the correspondence.

"This is strictly private. Am I to read it?" said she.

"Of course," said he, bowing courteously. And she read:--

"Dear Upton,--Let us have a respite from tariffs and trade-talk for a month or two, and tell me rather what the world is doing around you. We have never got the right end of that story about the Princess Celestine as yet. Who was he? Not Labinsky, I'll be sworn. The K---- insists it was Roseville, and I hope you may be able to a.s.sure me that he is mistaken. He is worse tempered than ever. That Glencore business has exasperated him greatly. Could n't your Princess,--the world calls her yours ["How good of the world, and how delicate of your friend!" said she, smiling superciliously. "Let us see who the writer is. Oh! a great man,--the Lord Adderley," and went on with her reading:] couldn't your Princess find out something of real consequence to us about the Q----"

"What queen does he mean?" cried she, stopping.

"The Queen of Sheba, perhaps," said Upton, biting his lips with anger, while he made an attempt to take the letter from her.

"Pardon! this is interesting," said she, and went on:

"We shall want it soon; that is, if the manufacturing districts will not kindly afford us a diversion by some open-air demonstrations and a collision with the troops. We have offered them a most taking bait, by announcing wrongfully the departure of six regiments for India; thus leaving the large towns in the North apparently ungarrisoned. They are such poltroons that the chances are they 'll not bite! You were right about Emerson. We have made his brother a Bishop, and he voted with us on the Arms Bill. Cole is a sterling patriot and an old Whig. He says nothing shall seduce him from his party, save a Lords.h.i.+p of the Admiralty. Corruption everywhere, my dear Upton, except on the Treasury benches!

"Holecroft insists on being sent to Petersburg; and having ascertained that the Emperor will not accept him, I have induced the K----to nominate him to the post. 'Non culpa nostra,' etc. He can scarcely vote against us after such an evidence of our good-will. Find out what will give most umbrage to your Court, and I will tell you why in my next.

"Don't bother yourself about the Greeks. The time is not come yet, nor will it till it suit our policy to loosen the ties with Russia. As to France, there is not, nor will there be, in our time at least, any Government there. We must deal with them as with a public meeting, which may reverse to-morrow the resolutions they have adopted to-day. The French will never be formidable till they are unanimous. They 'll never be unanimous till we declare war with them! Remember, I don't want anything serious with Cineselli. Irritate and worry as much as you can.

Send even for a s.h.i.+p or two from Malta; but go no farther. I want this for our radicals at home. Our own friends are in the secret. Write me a short despatch about our good relations with the Two Sicilies; and send me some news in a private letter. Let me have some ortolans in the bag, and believe me yours,

"Adderley."

"There," said she, turning over a number of letters with a mere glance at their contents, "these are all trash,--shooting and fox-hunting news, which one reads in the newspapers better, or at least more briefly, narrated, with all that death and marriage intelligence which you English are so fond of parading before the world. But what is this literary gem here? Where did the paper come from? And that wonderful seal, and still more wonderful address?--'To his Wors.h.i.+pful Excellency the Truly Worthy and Right Honorable Sir Horace Upton, Plenipotentiary, Negotiator, and Extraordinary Diplomatist, living at Naples.'"

"What can it mean?" said he, languidly.

"You shall hear," said she, breaking the ma.s.sive seal of green wax, which, to the size of a crown piece, ornamented one side of the epistle.

"It is dated Schwats, Tyrol, and begins: 'Venerated and Reverend Excellency, when these unsymmetrically-designed, and not more ingeniously-conceived syllables--' Let us see his name," said she, stop-ping suddenly, and turning to the last page, read, "'W. T., _vulgo_, Billy Traynor,--a name cognate to your Wors.h.i.+pful Eminence in times past.'"

"To be sure, I remember him perfectly,--a strange creature that came out here with that boy you heard me speak of. Pray read on."

"I stopped at 'syllables.' Yes--when these curiously-conceived syllables, then, come under the visionary apertures of your acute understanding, they will disclose to your much-reflecting and nice-discriminating mind as cruel and murderous a deed as ever a miscreant imagination suggested to a diabolically-constructed and nefariously-fas.h.i.+oned organization, showing that Nature in her bland adaptiveness never imposes a mistaken fruit on a genuine arborescence'--Do you understand him?" asked she.

"Partly, perhaps," continued he. "Let us have the subject."

"'Not to weary your exalted and never-enough-to-be-esteemed intelligence, I will proceed, without further ambiguous or circ.u.mgyratory evolutions, to the main body of my allegation. It happened in this way: Charley--your venerated wors.h.i.+p knows who I mean--Charley, ever deep in marmorial pursuits, and far progressed in sculptorial excellence, with a genius that Phidias, if he did not envy, would esteem--'

"Really I cannot go on with these interminable parentheses," said she; "you must decipher them yourself." Upton took the letter, and read it, at first hastily, and then, recommencing, with more of care and attention, occasionally stopping to reflect, and consider the details.

"This is likely to be a troublesome business," said he. "This boy has got himself into a serious sc.r.a.pe. Love and a duel are bad enough; but an Austrian state-prison, and a sentence of twenty years in irons, are even worse. So far as I can make out from my not over lucid correspondent, he had conceived a violent affection for a young lady at Ma.s.sa, to whose favor a young Austrian of high rank at the same time pretended."

"Wahnsdorf, I'm certain," broke in the Princess; "and the girl--that Mademoiselle--"

"Harley," interposed Sir Horace.

"Just so,--Harley. Pray go on," said she, eagerly.

"A very serious altercation and a duel were the consequences of this rivalry, and Wahnsdorf has been dangerously wounded; his life is still in peril. The Harleys have been sent out of the country, and my unlucky _protege_, handed over to the Austrians, has been tried, condemned, and sentenced to twenty years in Kuffstein, a Tyrol fortress where great severity is practised,--from the neighborhood of which this letter is written, entreating my speedy interference and protection."

"What can you do? It is not even within your jurisdiction," said she, carelessly.

"True; nor was the capture by the Austrians within theirs, Princess. It is a case where a.s.suredly everybody was in the wrong, and, therefore, admirably adapted for nice negotiation."

"Who and what is the youth?"

"I have called him a _protege_."

"Has he no more tender claim to the affectionate solicitude of Sir Horace Upton?" said she, with an easy air of sarcasm.

"None, on my honor," said he, eagerly; "none, at least, of the kind you infer. His is a very sad story, which I 'll tell you about at another time. For the present, I may say that he is English, and as such must be protected by the English authorities. The Government of Ma.s.sa have clearly committed a great fault in handing him over to the Austrians.

Stubber must be 'brought to book' for this in the first instance. By this we shall obtain a perfect insight into the whole affair."