The Fortunes Of Glencore

“What does that signify, Doctor?” said Harcourt, impatiently. “Telling me what a character in a fiction feels affects me no more than telling me what he does. Why, man, the one is as unreal as the other. The fellow that created him fashioned his thoughts as well as his actions.”

“To be sure he did; but when the fellow is a janius, what he makes is as much a crayture as either you or myself.”

“Come, come, Doctor, no mystification.”

“I don’t mean any,” broke in Billy. “What I want to say is this, that as we read every character to elicit truth, – truth in the working of human motives, truth in passion, truth in all the struggles of our poor weak natures, – why would n’t a great janius like Homer, or Shakspeare, or Milton, be better able to show us this in some picture drawn by themselves, than you or I be able to find it out for ourselves?”

Harcourt shook his head doubtfully.

“Well, now,” said Billy, returning to the charge, “did you ever see a waxwork model of anatomy? Every nerve and siny of a nerve was there, – not a vein nor an artery wanting. The artist that made it all just wanted to show you where everything was; but he never wanted you to believe it was alive, or ever had been. But with janius it’s different. He just gives you some traits of a character, he points him out to you passing, – just as I would to a man going along the street, – and there he is alive for ever and ever; not like you and me, that will be dead and buried to-morrow or next day, and the most known of us three lines in a parish registhry, but he goes down to posterity an example, an illustration – or a warning, maybe – to thousands and thousands of living men. Don’t talk to me about fiction! What he thought and felt is truer than all that you and I and a score like us ever did or ever will do. The creations of janius are the landmarks of humanity; and well for us is it that we have such to guide us!”

“All this may be very fine,” said Harcourt, contemptuously, “but give me the sentiments of a living man, or one that has lived, in preference to all the imaginary characters that have ever adorned a story.”

“Just as I suppose that you’d say that a soldier in the Blues, or some big, hulking corporal in the Guards, is a finer model of the human form than ever Praxiteles chiselled.”

“I know which I ‘d rather have alongside of me in a charge, Doctor,” said Harcourt, laughing; and then, to change the topic, he pointed to a lone cabin on the sea-shore, miles away, as it seemed, from all other habitations.

“That’s Michel Cady’s, sir,” said Traynor; “he lives by birds, – hunting them saygulls and cormorants through the crevices of the rocks, and stealing the eggs. There isn’t a precipice that he won’t climb, not a cliff that he won’t face.”

“Well, if that be his home, the pursuit does not seem a profitable one.”

“‘Tis as good as breaking stones on the road for four-pence a day, or carrying sea-weed five miles on your back to manure the potatoes,” said Billy, mournfully.

“That’s exactly the very thing that puzzles me,” said Harcourt, “why, in a country so remarkable for fertility, every one should be so miserably poor!”

“And you never heard any explanation of it?”

“Never; at least, never one that satisfied me.”

“Nor ever will you,” said Billy, sententiously.

“And why so?”

“Because,” said he, drawing a long breath, as if preparing for a discourse, – “because there’s no man capable of going into the whole subject; for it’s not merely an economical question or a social one, but it is metaphysical, and religious, and political, and ethnological, and historical, – ay, and geographical too! You have to consider, first, who and what are the aborigines. A conquered people that never gave in they were conquered. Who are the rulers? A Saxon race that always felt that they were infarior to them they ruled over!”

“By Jove, Doctor, I must stop you there; I never heard any acknowledgment of this inferiority you speak of.”

“I’d like to get a goold medal for arguin’ it out with you,” said Billy.

“And, after all, I don’t see how it would resolve the original doubt,” said Harcourt. “I want to know why the people are so poor, and I don’t want to hear of the battle of Clontarf, or the Danes at Dundalk.”

“There it is, you’d like to narrow down a great question of race, language, traditions, and laws to a little miserable dispute about labor and wages. O Manchester, Manchester! how ye’re in the heart of every Englishman, rich or poor, gentle or simple! You say you never heard of any confession of inferiority. Of course you did n’t; but quite the reverse, – a very confident sense of being far better than the poor Irish; and I’ll tell you how, and why, just as you, yourself, after a discusshion with me, when you find yourself dead bate, and not a word to reply, you ‘ll go home to a good dinner and a bottle of wine, dry clothes and a bright fire; and no matter how hard my argument pushed you, you’ll remember that I’m in rags, in a dirty cabin, with potatoes to ate and water to drink, and you ‘ll say, at all events, ‘I ‘m better off than he is;’ and there’s your superiority, neither more or less, – there it is! And all the while, I’m saying the same thing to myself, – ‘Sorrow matter for his fine broadcloth, and his white linen, and his very best roast beef that he’s atin’, – I ‘m his master! In all that dignifies the spacies in them grand qualities that makes us poets, rhetoricians, and the like, in those elegant attributes that, as the poet says, —

“In all our pursuitsLifts us high above brutes,’”

– in these, I say again, I ‘m his master!’”

As Billy finished his growing panegyric upon his country and himself, he burst out in a joyous laugh, and cried, “Did ye ever hear conceit like that? Did ye ever expect to see the day that a ragged poor blackguard like me would dare to say as much to one like you? And, after all, it’s the greatest compliment I could pay you.”

“How so, Billy? I don’t exactly see that.”

“Why, that if you weren’t a gentleman, – a raal gentleman, born and bred, – I could never have ventured to tell you what I said now. It is because, in your own refined feelings, you can pardon all the coarseness of mine, that I have my safety.”

“You’re as great a courtier as you are a scholar, Billy,” said Harcourt, laughing; “meanwhile, I’m not likely to be enlightened as to the cause of Irish poverty.”

“‘T is a whole volume I could write on the same subject,” said Billy; “for there’s so many causes in operation, com-binin’, and assistin’, and aggravatin’ each other. But if you want the head and front of the mischief in one word, it is this, that no Irishman ever gave his heart and sowl to his own business, but always was mindin’ something else that he had nothin’ to say to; and so, ye see, the priest does be thinkin’ of politics, the parson’s thinkin’ of the priest, the people are always on the watch for a crack at the agent or the tithe-proctor, and the landlord, instead of looking after his property, is up in Dublin dinin’ with the Lord-Leftinint and abusin’ his tenants. I don’t want to screen myself, nor say I’m better than my neighbors, for though I have a larned profession to live by, I ‘d rather be writin’ a ballad, and singin’ it too, down Thomas Street, than I ‘d be lecturin’ at the Surgeons’ Hall.”

“You are certainly a very strange people,” said Harcourt.

“And yet there’s another thing stranger still, which is, that your countrymen never took any advantage of our eccentricities, to rule us by; and if they had any wit in their heads, they ‘d have seen, easy enough, that all these traits are exactly the clews to a nation’s heart. That’s what Pitt meant when he said, ‘Let me make the songs of a people, and I don’t care who makes the laws.’ Look down now in that glen before you, as far as you can see. There’s Belmullet, and ain’t you glad to be so near your journey’s end? for you’re mighty tired of all this discoorsin’.”

“On the contrary, Billy, even when I disagree with what you say, I’m pleased to hear your reasons; at the same time, I ‘m glad we are drawing nigh to this poor boy, and I only trust we may not be too late.”

Billy muttered a pious concurrence in the wish, and they rode along for some time in silence. “There’s the Bay of Belmullet now under your feet,” cried Billy, as he pulled up short, and pointed with his whip seaward. “There’s five fathoms, and fine anchoring ground on every inch ye see there. There’s elegant shelter from tempestuous winds. There’s a coast rich in herrings, oysters, lobsters, and crabs; farther out there’s cod, and haddock, and mackerel in the sayson. There’s sea wrack for kelp, and every other con-vanience any one can require; and a poorer set of devils than ye ‘ll see when we get down there, there’s nowhere to be found. Well, well! ‘if idleness is bliss, it’s folly to work hard.’” And with this paraphrase, Billy made way for the Colonel, as the path had now become too narrow for two abreast, and in this way they descended to the shore.

CHAPTER XV. A SICK BED

Although the cabin in which the sick boy lay was one of the best in the village, its interior presented a picture of great poverty. It consisted of a single room, in the middle of which a mud wall of a few feet in height formed a sort of partition, abutting against which was the bed, – the one bed of the entire family, – now devoted to the guest. Two or three coarsely fashioned stools, a rickety table, and a still more rickety dresser comprised all the furniture. The floor was uneven and fissured, and the solitary window was mended with an old hat, – thus diminishing the faint light which struggled through the narrow aperture.

A large net, attached to the rafters, hung down in heavy festoons overhead, the corks and sinks dangling in dangerous proximity to the heads underneath. Several spars and oars littered one corner, and a newly painted buoy filled another; but, in spite of all these encumbrances, there was space around the fire for a goodly company of some eight or nine of all ages, who were pleasantly eating their supper from a large pot of potatoes that smoked and steamed in front of them.

“God save all here!” cried Billy, as he preceded the Colonel into the cabin.

“Save ye kindly,” was the courteous answer, in a chorus of voices; at the same time, seeing a gentleman at the door, the whole party arose at once to receive him. Nothing could have surpassed the perfect good-breeding with which the fisherman and his wife did the honors of their humble home; and Harcourt at once forgot the poverty-struck aspect of the scene in the general courtesy of the welcome.

“He ‘s no better, your honor, – no better at all,” said the man, as Harcourt drew nigh the sick bed. “He does be always ravin’, – ravin’ on, – beggin’ and implorin’ that we won’t take him back to the Castle; and if he falls asleep, the first thing he says when he wakes up is, ‘Where am I? – tell me I’m not at Glencore!’ and he keeps on screechin’, ‘Tell me, tell me so!’”

Harcourt bent down over the bed and gazed at him. Slowly and languidly the sick boy raised his heavy lids and returned the stare.

“You know me, Charley, boy, don’t you?” said he, softly.

“Yes,” muttered he, in a weak tone.

“Who am I, Charley? Tell me who is speaking to you.”

“Yes,” said he again.

“Poor fellow!” Bighed Harcourt, “he does not know me!”

“Where’s the pain?” asked Billy, suddenly.

The boy placed his hand on his forehead, and then on his temples.

“Look up! look at me!” said Billy. “Ay, there it is! the pupil does not contract, – there’s mischief in the brain. He wants to say something to you, sir,” said he to Harcourt; “he’s makin’ signs to you to stoop down.”

Harcourt put his ear close to the sick boy’s lips, and listened.

“No, my dear child, of course not,” said he, after a pause. “You shall remain here, and I will stay with you too. In a few days your father will come – ”

A wild yell, a shriek that made the cabin ring, now broke from the boy, followed by another, and then a third; and then with a spring he arose from the bed, and tried to escape. Weak and exhausted as he was, such was the strength supplied by fever, it was all that they could do to subdue him and replace him in the bed; violent convulsions followed this severe access, and it was not till after hours of intense suffering that he calmed down again and seemed to slumber.

“There’s more than we know of here, Colonel,” said Billy, as he drew him to one side. “There’s moral causes as well as malady at work.”

“There may be, but I know nothing of them,” said Harcourt; and in the frank air of the speaker the other did not hesitate to repose his trust.

“If we hope to save him, we ought to find out where the mischief lies,” said Billy; “for, if ye remark, his ravin’ is always upon one subject; he never wanders from that.”

“He has a dread of home. Some altercation with his father has, doubtless, impressed him with this notion.”

“Ah, that isn’t enough, we must go ‘deeper; we want a clew to the part of the brain engaged. Meanwhile, here’s at him, with the antiphlogistic touch;” and he opened his lancet-case, and tucked up his cuffs. “Houlde the basin, Biddy.”

“There, Harvey himself couldn’t do it nater than that. It’s an elegant study to be feelin’ a pulse while the blood is flowin’. It comes at first like a dammed-up cataract, a regular out-pouring, just as a young girl would tell her love, all wild and tumultuous; then, after a time, she gets more temperate, the feelings are relieved, and the ardor is moderated, till at last, wearied and worn out, the heart seems to ask for rest; and then ye’ll remark a settled faint smile coming over the lips, and a clammy coldness in the face.”

“He’s fainting, sir,” broke in Biddy.

“He is, ma’am, and it’s myself done it,” said Billy. “Oh, dear, oh, dear! If we could only do with the moral heart what we can with the raal physical one, what wonderful poets we ‘d be!”

“What hopes have you?” whispered Harcourt.

“The best, the very best. There ‘s youth and a fine constitution to work upon; and what more does a doctor want? As ould Marsden said, ‘You can’t destroy these in a fortnight, so the patient must live.’ But you must help me, Colonel, and you can help me.”

“Command me in any way, Doctor.”

“Here’s the modus, then. You must go back to the Castle and find out, if you can, what happened between his father and him. It does not signify now, nor will it for some days; but when he comes to the convalescent stage, it’s then we ‘ll need to know how to manage him, and what subjects to keep him away from. ‘T is the same with the brain as with a sprained ankle; you may exercise if you don’t twist it; but just come down once on the wrong spot, and maybe ye won’t yell out!”

“You ‘ll not quit him, then.”

“I’m a senthry on his post, waiting to get a shot at the enemy if he shows the top of his head. Ah, sir, if ye only knew physic, ye ‘d acknowledge there ‘s nothing as treacherous as dizaze. Ye hunt him out of the brain, and then he is in the lungs. Ye chase him out of that, and he skulks in the liver. At him there, and he takes to the fibrous membranes, and then it’s regular hide-and-go-seek all over the body. Trackin’ a bear is child’s play to it.” And so saying, Billy held the Colonel’s stirrup for him to mount, and giving his most courteous salutation, and his best wishes for a good journey, he turned and re-entered the cabin.

CHAPTER XVI. THE “PROJECT”

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.”