The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 57

"And will you tell me, Upton, that the world's estimate of a man's fame is not essential to his self-esteem, or that there yet lived one, who would brave obloquy without, by the force of something within him?"

"This I will tell you," replied Upton, "that he who balances between the two is scarcely an honest man, and that he who accepts the show for the substance is not a wise one."

"These are marvellous sentiments to hear from one whose craft has risen to a proverb, and whose address in life is believed to be not his meanest gift."

"I accept the irony in all good humor; I go farther, Glencore, I stoop to explain. When any one in the great and eventful journey of life seeks to guide himself safely, he has to weigh all the considerations, and calculate all the combinations adverse to him. The straight road is rarely, or never, possible; even if events were, which they are not, easy to read, they must be taken in combination with others, and with their consequences. The path of action becomes necessarily devious and winding, and compromises are called for at every step. It is not in the moment of s.h.i.+pwreck that a man stops to inquire into petty details of the articles he throws into a long-boat; he is bent on saving himself as best he can. He seizes what is next to him, if it suit his purpose. Now, were he to act in this manner in all the quiet security of his life on sh.o.r.e, his conduct would be highly blamable. No emergency would warrant his taking what belonged to another,--no critical moment would drive him to the instinct of self-preservation. Just the same is the interval between action and reflection. Give me time and forethought, and I will employ something better and higher than craft. My subtlety, as you like to call it, is not my best weapon; I only use it in emergency."

"I read the matter differently," said Glencore, sulkily; "I could, perhaps, offer another explanation of your practice."

"Pray let me hear it; we are all in confidence here, and I promise you I will not take badly whatever you say to me."

Glencore sat silent and motionless.

"Come, shall I say it for you, Glencore? for I think I know what is pa.s.sing in your mind."

The other nodded, and he went on,--

"You would tell me, in plain words, that I keep my craft for myself; my high principle for my friends."

Glencore only smiled, but Upton continued,--

"So, then, I have guessed aright; and the very worst you can allege against this course is, that what I bestow is better than what I retain!"

"One of Solomon's proverbs may be better than a s.h.i.+lling; but which would a hungry man rather have? I want no word-fencing, Upton; still less do I seek what might sow distrust between us. This much, however, has life taught me: the great trials of this world are like its great maladies. Providence has meant them to be fatal. We call in the doctor in the one case, or the counsellor in the other, out of habit rather than out of hope. Our own consciousness has already whispered that nothing can be of use; but we like to do as our neighbors, and so we take remedies and follow injunctions to the last. The wise man quickly detects by the character of the means how emergent is the case believed to be, and rightly judges that recourse to violent measures implies the presence of great peril. If he be really wise, then he desists at once from what can only torture his few remaining hours. They can be given to better things than the agonies of such agency. To this exact point has my case come, and by the counsels you have given me do I read my danger!

Your only remedy is as bad as the malady it is meant to cure! I cannot take it!"

"Accepting your own imagery, I would say," said Upton, "that you are one who will not submit to an operation of some pain that he might be cured."

Glencore sat moodily for some moments without speaking; at last he said,--

"I feel as though continual change of place and scene would be a relief to me. Let us rendezvous, therefore, somewhere for the autumn, and meanwhile I 'll wander about alone."

"What direction do you purpose to take?"

"The Schwarzwald and the Hohlenthal, first. I want to revisit a place I knew in happier days. Memory must surely have something besides sorrows to render us. I owned a little cottage there once, near Steig. I fished and read Uhland for a summer long. I wonder if I could resume the same life. I knew the whole village,--the blacksmith, the schoolmaster, the Dorfrichter,--all of them. Good, kind souls they were: how they wept when we parted! Nothing consoled them but my having purchased the cottage, and promised to come back again!"

Upton was glad to accept even this much of interest in the events of life, and drew Glencore on to talk of the days he had pa.s.sed in this solitary region.

As in the dreariest landscape a ray of sunlight will reveal some beautiful effects, making the eddies of the dark pool to glitter, lighting up the russet moss, and giving to the half-dried lichen a tinge of bright color, so will, occasionally, memory throw over a life of sorrow a gleam of happier meaning. Faces and events, forms and accents, that once found the way to our hearts, come back again, faintly and imperfectly it may be, but with a touch that revives in us what we once were. It is the one sole feature in which self-love becomes amiable, when, looking back on our past, we cherish the thought of a time before the world had made us sceptical and hard-hearted!

Glencore warmed as he told of that tranquil period when poetry gave a color to his life, and the wild conceptions of genius ran like a thread of gold through the whole web of existence. He quoted pa.s.sages that had struck him for their beauty or their truthfulness; he told how he had tried to allure his own mind to the tone that vibrated in "the magic music of verse," and how the very attempt had inspired him with gentler thoughts, a softer charity, and a more tender benevolence towards his fellows.

"Tieck is right, Upton, when he says there are two natures in us, distinct and apart: one, the imaginative and ideal; the other, the actual and the sensual. Many shake them together and confound them, making of the incongruous mixture that vile compound of inconsistency where the beautiful and the true are ever warring with the deformed and the false; their lives a long struggle with themselves, a perpetual contest between high hope and base enjoyment. A few keep them apart, retaining, through their worldliness, some hallowed spot in the heart, where ign.o.ble desires and mean aspirations have never dared to come. A fewer still have made the active work of life subordinate to the guiding spirit of purity, adventuring on no road unsanctioned by high and holy thoughts, caring for no ambitions but such as make us n.o.bler and better.

"I once had a thought of such a life; and even the memory of it, like the prayers we have learned in our childhood, has a hallowing influence over after years. If that poor boy, Upton," and his lips trembled on the words,--"if that poor boy could have been brought up thus humbly! If he had been taught to know no more than an existence of such simplicity called for, what a load of care might it have spared _his_ heart and _mine!_"

"You have read over those letters I gave you about him?" asked Upton, who eagerly availed himself of the opportunity to approach an almost forbidden theme.

"I have read them over and over," said Glencore, sadly; "in all the mention of him I read the faults of my own nature,--a stubborn spirit of pride that hardens as much as elevates; a resentful temper, too p.r.o.ne to give way to its own impulses; an over-confidence in himself, too, always ready to revenge its defeats on the world about him. These are his defects, and they are mine. Poor fellow, that he should inherit all that I have of bad, and yet not be heir to the accidents of fortune which make others so lenient to faults!"

If Upton heard these words with much interest, no less was he struck by the fact that Glencore made no inquiry whatever as to the youth's fate.

The last letter of the packet revealed the story of an eventful duel and the boy's escape from Ma.s.sa by night, with his subsequent arrest by the police; and yet in the face of incidents like these he continued to speculate on traits of mind and character, nor even adverted to the more closely touching events of his fate. By many an artful hint and ingenious device did Sir Horace try to tempt him to some show of curiosity; but all were fruitless. Glencore would talk freely and willingly of the boy's disposition and his capacity; he would even speculate on the successes and failures such a temperament might meet with in life; but still he spoke as men might speak of a character in a fiction, ingeniously weighing casualties and discussing chances; never, even by accident, approaching the actual story of his life, or seeming to attach any interest to his destiny.

Upton's shrewd intelligence quickly told him that this reserve was not accidental; and he deliberated within himself how far it was safe to invade it.

At length he resumed the attempt by adroitly alluding to the spirited resistance the boy had made to his capture, and the consequences one might naturally enough ascribe to a proud and high-hearted youth thus tyrannically punished.

"I have heard something," said Upton, "of the severities practised at Kuffstein, and they recall the horrible tales of the Inquisition; the terrible contrivances to extort confessions,--expedients that often break down the intellect whose secrets they would discover; so that one actually shudders at the name of a spot so a.s.sociated with evil."

Glencore placed his hands over his face, but did not utter a word; and again Upton went on urging, by every device he could think of, some indication that might mean interest, if not anxiety, when suddenly he felt Glencore's hand grasp his arm with violence.

"No more of this, Upton," cried he, sternly; "you do not know the torture you are giving me." There was a long and painful pause between them, at the end of which Glencore spoke, but it was in a voice scarcely above a whisper, and every accent of which trembled with emotion. "You remember one sad and memorable night, Upton, in that old castle in Ireland,--the night when I came to the resolution of this vengeance! I sent for the boy to my room; we were alone there together, face to face.

It was such a scene as could brook no witness, nor dare I now recall its details as they occurred. He came in frankly and boldly, as he felt he had a right to do. How he left that room,--cowed, abashed, and degraded,--I have yet before me. Our meeting did not exceed many minutes in duration; neither of us could have endured it longer. Brief as it was, we ratified a compact between us: it was this,--neither was ever to question or inquire after the other, as no tie should unite, no interest should bind us. Had you seen him then, Upton," cried Glencore, wildly, "the proud disdain with which he listened to my attempts at excuse, the haughty distance with which he seemed to reject every thought of complaint, the stern coldness with which he heard me plan out his future,--you would have said that some curse had fallen upon my heart, or it could never have been dead to traits which proclaimed him to be my own. In that moment it was my lot to be like him who held out his own right hand to be first burned, ere he gave his body to the flames.

"We parted without an embrace; not even a farewell was spoken between us. While I gloried in his pride, had he but yielded ever so little, had one syllable of weakness, one tear escaped him, I had given up my project, reversed all my planned vengeance, and taken him to my heart as my own. But no! He was resolved on proving by his nature that he was of that stern race from which, by a falsehood, I was about to exclude him.

It was as though my own blood hurled a proud defiance to me.

"As he walked slowly to the door, his glove fell from his hand. I stealthily caught it up. I wanted to keep it as a memorial of that bitter hour; but he turned hastily around and plucked it from my hand.

The action was even a rude one; and with a mocking smile, as though he read my meaning and despised it, he departed.

"You now have heard the last secret of my heart in this sad history.

Let us speak of it no more." And with this, Glencore arose and left the deck.

CHAPTER XLVI. THE FLOOD IN THE MAGRA

When it rains in Italy it does so with a pa.s.sionate ardor that bespeaks an unusual pleasure. It is no "soft dissolving in tears," but a perfect outburst of woe,--wailing in accents the very wildest, and deluging the land in torrents. Mountain streams that were rivulets in the morning, before noon arrives are great rivers, swollen and turbid, carrying away ma.s.sive rocks from their foundations, and tearing up large trees by the roots. The dried-up stony bed you have crossed a couple of hours back with unwetted feet is now the course of a stream that would defy the boldest.

These sudden changes are remarkably frequent along that beautiful tract between Nice and Ma.s.sa, and which is known as the "Riviera di Levante."

The rivers, fed from innumerable streams that pour down from the Apennines, are almost instantaneously swollen; and as their bed continually slopes towards the sea, the course of the waters is one of headlong velocity. Of these, the most dangerous by far is the Magra. The river, which even in dry seasons is a considerable stream, becomes, when fed by its tributaries, a very formidable body of water, stretching full a mile in width, and occasionally spreading a vast sheet of foam close to the very outskirts of Sarzana. The pa.s.sage of the river is all the more dangerous at these periods as it approaches the sea, and more than one instance is recorded where the stout raft, devoted to the use of travellers, has been carried away to the ocean.

Where the great post-road from Genoa to the South pa.s.ses, a miserable shealing stands, half hidden in tall osiers, and surrounded with a sedgy, swampy soil the foot sinks in at every step. This is the shelter of the boatmen who navigate the raft, and who, in relays by day and night, are in waiting for the service of travellers. In the dreary days of winter, or in the drearier nights, it is scarcely possible to imagine a more hopeless spot; deep in the midst of a low marshy tract, the especial home of tertian fever, with the wild stream roaring at the very door-sill, and the thunder of the angry ocean near, it is indeed all that one can picture of desolation and wretchedness. Nor do the living features of the scene relieve its gloomy influence. Though strong men, and many of them in the prime of life, premature age and decay seem to have settled down upon them. Their l.u.s.treless eyes and leaden lips tell of ague, and their sad, thoughtful faces bespeak those who are often called upon to meet peril, and who are destined to lives of emergency and hazard.

It was in the low and miserable hut we speak of, just as night set in of a raw November, that four of these raftsmen sat at their smoky fire, in company with two travellers on foot, whose humble means compelled them to await the arrival of some one rich enough to hire the raft. Meanly clad and wayworn were the strangers who now sat endeavoring to dry their dripping clothes at the blaze, and conversing in a low tone together.

If the elder, dressed in a russet-colored blouse and a broad-leafed hat, his face almost hid in beard and moustaches, seemed by his short and almost grotesque figure a travelling showman, the appearance of the younger, despite all the poverty of his dress, implied a very different cla.s.s.

He was tall and well knit, with a loose activity in all his gestures which almost invariably characterizes the Englishman; and though his dark hair and his bronzed cheek gave him something of a foreign look, there was a calm, cold self-possession in his air that denoted the Anglo-Saxon. He sat smoking his cigar, his head resting on one hand, and evidently listening with attention to the words of his companion. The conversation that pa.s.sed will save us the trouble of introducing them to our reader, if he have not already guessed them.

"If we don't wait," said the elder, "till somebody richer and better off than ourselves comes, we 'll have to pay seven francs for pa.s.sin' in such a night as this."

"It is a downright robbery to ask so much," cried the other, angrily.

"What so great danger is there, or what so great hards.h.i.+p, after all?"

"There is both one and the other, I believe," replied he, in a tone evidently meant to moderate his pa.s.sion; "and just look at the poor craytures that has to do it. They're as weak as a bit of wet paper; they haven't strength to make themselves heard when they talk out there beside the river."

"The fellow yonder," said the youth, "has got good brawny arms and sinewy legs of his own."

"Ay, and he is starved after all. A cut of rye bread and an onion won't keep the heart up, nor a jug of red vinegar, though ye call it grape-juice. On my conscience, I 'm thinkin' that the only people that preserves their strength upon nothin' is the Irish. I used to carry the bags over Slieb-na-boregan mountain and the Turk's Causeway on wet potatoes and b.u.t.termilk, and never a day late for eleven years."