The Fortunes Of Glencore

“Then you incline to believe Lady Glencore blameless?” asked Harcourt, anxiously.

“I think well of every one, my charming Colonel. It is the only true philosophy in life. Be as severe as you please on all who injure yourself, but always be lenient to the faults that only damage your friends. You have no idea how much practical wisdom the maxim contains, nor what a fund of charity it provides.”

“I ‘m ashamed to be so stupid, but I must come back to my old question. Is all this story against Glencore’s wife only a calumny?”

“And I must fall back upon my old remark, that all the rogues in the world are in jail; the people you see walking about and at large are unexceptionably honest, – every man of them. Ah, my dear deputy-assistant, adjutant, or commissary, or whatever it be, can you not perceive the more than folly of these perquisitions into character? You don’t require that the ice should be strong enough to sustain a twenty-four pounder before you venture to put foot on it, – enough that it is quite equal to your own weight; and so of the world at large, – everybody, or nearly everybody, has virtue enough for all we want with him. This English habit – for it is essentially English – of eternally investigating everything, is like the policy of a man who would fire a round-shot every morning at his house, to see if it were well and securely built.”

“I don’t, I can’t agree with you,” cried Harcourt.

“Be it so, my dear fellow; only don’t give me your reasons, and at least I shall respect your motives.”

“What would you do, then, in Glencore’s place? Let me ask you that.”

“You may as well inquire how I should behave if I were a quadruped. Don’t you perceive that I never could, by any possibility, place myself in such a false position? The man who, in a case of difficulty, takes counsel from his passions, is exactly like one, who being thirsty, fills himself out a bumper of aquafortis and drinks it off.”

“I wish with all my heart you ‘d give up aphorisms, and just tell me how we could serve this poor fellow; for I feel that there is a gleam of light breaking through his dark fortunes.”

“When a man is in the state Glencore is now in, the best policy is to let him alone. They tell us that when Murat’s blood was up, the Emperor always left him to his own guidance, since he either did something excessively brilliant, or made such a blunder as recalled him to subjection again. Let us treat our friend in this fashion, and wait. Oh, my worthy Colonel, if you but knew what a secret there is in that same waiting policy. Many a game is won by letting the adversary move out of his turn.”

“If all this subtlety be needed to guide a man in the plain road of life, what is to become of poor simple fellows like myself?”

“Let them never go far from home, Harcourt, and they ‘ll always find their way back,” said Upton; and his eyes twinkled with quiet drollery. “Come, now,” said he, with perfect good-nature of look and voice, “If I won’t tell you what I should counsel Glencore in this emergency, I ‘ll do the next best thing, I’ ll tell you what advice you’d give him.”

“Let us hear it, then,” said the other.

“You’d send him abroad to search out his wife; ask her forgiveness for all the wrong he has done her; call out any man that whispered the shadow of a reproach against her; and go back to such domesticity as it might please Heaven to accord him.”

“Certainly, if the woman has been unjustly dealt with – ”

“There’s the rock you always split on: you are everlastingly in search of a character. Be satisfied when you have eaten a hearty breakfast, and don’t ask for a bill of health. Researches are always dangerous. My great grandfather, who had a passion for genealogy, was cured of it by discovering that the first of the family was a staymaker! Let the lesson not be lost on us.”

“From all which I am to deduce that you ‘d ask no questions, – take her home again, and say nothing.”

“You forget, Harcourt, we are now discussing the line of action you would recommend; I am only hinting at the best mode of carrying out your ideas.”

“Just for the pleasure of showing me that I did n’t know how to walk in the road I made myself,” said Harcourt, laughing.

“What a happy laugh that was, Harcourt! How plainly, too, it said, ‘Thank Heaven I ‘m not like that fellow, with all his craft!’ And you are right too, my dear friend; if the devil were to walk the world now, he ‘d be bored beyond endurance, seeing nothing but the old vices played over again and again. And so it is with all of us who have a spice of his nature; we’d give anything to see one new trick on the cards. Good night, and pleasant dreams to you!” And with a sigh that had in its cadence something almost painful, he gave his two fingers to the honest grasp of the other, and withdrew.

“You’re a better fellow than you think yourself, or wish any one else to believe you,” muttered Harcourt, as he puffed his cigar; and he ruminated over this reflection till it was bedtime.

And Harcourt was right.

CHAPTER XL. UPTONISM

About noon on the following day, Sir Horace Upton and the Colonel drove up to the gate of the villa at Sorrento, and learned, to their no small astonishment, that the Princess had taken her departure that morning for Como. If Upton heard these tidings with a sense of pain, nothing in his manner betrayed the sentiment; on the contrary, he proceeded to do the honors of the place like its owner. He showed Harcourt the grounds and the gardens, pointed out all the choice points of view, directed his attention to rare plants and curious animals; and then led him within doors to admire the objects of art and luxury which abounded there.

“And that, I conclude, is a portrait of the Princess,” said Harcourt, as he stood before what had been a flattering likeness twenty years back.

“Yes, and a wonderful resemblance,” said Upton, eying it through his glass. “Fatter and fuller now, perhaps; but it was done after an illness.”

“By Jove!” muttered Harcourt, “she must be beautiful; I don’t think I ever saw a handsomer woman!”

“You are only repeating a European verdict. She is the most perfectly beautiful woman of the Continent.”

“So there is no flattery in that picture?”

“Flattery! Why, my dear fellow, these people, the very cleverest of them, can’t imagine anything as lovely as that. They can imitate, – they never invent real beauty.”

“And clever, you say, too?”

“Esprit enough for a dozen reviewers and fifty fashionable novelists.” And as he spoke he smiled and coquetted with the portrait, as though to say, “Don’t mind my saying all this to your face.”

“I suppose her history is a very interesting one.”

“Her history, my worthy Harcourt! She has a dozen histories. Such women have a life of politics, a life of literature, a life of the salons, a life of the affections, not to speak of the episodes of jealousy, ambition, triumph, and sometimes defeat, that make up the brilliant web of their existence. Some three or four such people give the whole character and tone to the age they live in. They mould its interests, sway its fashions, suggest its tastes, and they finally rule those who fancy that they rule mankind.”

“Egad, then, it makes one very sorry for poor mankind,” muttered Harcourt, with a most honest sincerity of voice.

“Why should it do so, my good Harcourt? Is the refinement of a woman’s intellect a worse guide than the coarser instincts of a man’s nature? Would you not yourself rather trust your destinies to the fair creature yonder than be left to the legislative mercies of that old gentleman there, Hardenberg, or his fellow on the other side, Metternich?”

“Grim-looking fellow the Prussian; the other is much better,” said Harcourt, rather evading the question.

“I confess I prefer the Princess,” said Upton, as he bowed before the portrait in deepest courtesy. “But here comes breakfast. I have ordered them to give it to us here, that we may enjoy that glorious sea view while we eat.”

“I thought your cook a man of genius, Upton, but this fellow is his master,” said Harcourt, as he tasted his soup.

“They are brothers, – twins, too; and they have their separate gifts,” said Upton, affectedly. “My fellow, they tell me, has the finer intelligence; but he plays deeply, speculates on the Bourse, and it spoils his nerve.”

Harcourt watched the delivery of this speech to catch if there were any signs of raillery in the speaker; he felt that there was a kind of mockery in the words; but there was none in the manner, for there was not any in the mind of him who uttered them.

“My chef,” resumed Upton, “is a great essayist, who must have time for his efforts. This fellow is a feuilleton writer, who is required to be new and sparkling every day of the year, – always varied, never profound.”

“And is this your life of every day?” said Harcourt, as he surveyed the splendid room, and carried his glance towards the terraced gardens that flanked the sea.

“Pretty much this kind of thing,” sighed Upton, wearily.

“And no great hardship either, I should call it.”

“No, certainly not,” said the other, hesitatingly. “To one like myself, for instance, who has no health for the wear and tear of public life, and no heart for its ambitions, there is a great deal to like in the quiet retirement of a first-class mission.”

“Is there really, then, nothing to do?” asked Harcourt, innocently.

“Nothing, if you don’t make it for yourself. You can have a harvest if you like to sow. Otherwise, you may lie in fallow the year long. The subordinates take the petty miseries of diplomacy for their share, – the sorrows of insulted Englishmen, the passport difficulties, the custom-house troubles, the police insults. The Secretary calls at the offices of the Government, carries messages and the answers; and I, when I have health for it, make my compliments to the King in a cocked hat on his birthday, and have twelve grease-pots illuminated over my door to honor the same festival.”

“And is that all?”

“Very nearly. In fact, when one does anything more, they generally do wrong; and by a steady persistence in this kind of thing for thirty years, you are called ‘a safe man, who never compromised his Government,’ and are certain to be employed by any party in power.”

“I begin to think I might be an envoy myself,” said Harcourt.

“No doubt of it; we have two or three of your calibre in Germany this moment, – men liked and respected; and, what is of more consequence, well looked upon at ‘the Office.’”

“I don’t exactly follow you in that last remark.”

“I scarcely expected you should; and as little can I make it clear to you. Know, however, that in that venerable pile in Downing Street called the Foreign Office, there is a strange, mysterious sentiment, – partly tradition, partly prejudice, partly toadyism, – which bands together all within its walls, from the whiskered porter at the door to the essenced Minister in his bureau, into one intellectual conglomerate, that judges of every man in ‘the Line’ – as they call diplomacy – with one accord. By that curious tribunal, which hears no evidence, nor ever utters a sentence, each man’s merits are weighed; and to stand well in the Office is better than all the favors of the Court, or the force of great abilities.”

“But I cannot comprehend how mere subordinates, the underlings of official life, can possibly influence the fortunes of men so much above them.”

“Picture to yourself the position of an humble guest at a great man’s table; imagine one to whose pretensions the sentiments of the servants’ hall are hostile: he is served to all appearance like the rest of the company; he gets his soup and his fish like those about him, and his wine-glass is duly replenished, – yet what a series of petty mortifications is he the victim of; how constantly is he made to feel that he is not in public favor; how certain, too, if he incur an awkwardness, to find that his distresses are exposed. The servants’ hall is the Office, my dear Harcourt, and its persecutions are equally polished.”

“Are you a favorite there yourself?” asked the other, slyly.

“A prime favorite; they all like me!” said he, throwing himself back in his chair, with an air of easy self-satisfaction; and Harcourt stared at him, curious to know whether so astute a man was the dupe of his own self-esteem, or merely amusing himself with the simplicity of another. Ah, my good Colonel, give up the problem; it is an enigma far above your powers to solve. That nature is too complex for your elucidation; in its intricate web no one thread holds the clew, but all is complicated, crossed, and entangled.

“Here comes a cabinet messenger again,” said Upton, as a courier’s calèche drove up, and a well-dressed and well-looking fellow leaped out.

“Ah, Stanhope, how are you?” said Sir Horace, shaking his hand with what from him was warmth. “Do you know Colonel Harcourt? Well, Frank, what news do you bring me?”

“The best of news.”

“From F. O., I suppose,” said Upton, sighing.

“Just so. Adderley has told the King you are the only man capable to succeed him. The Press says the same, and the clubs are all with you.”

“Not one of them all, I’d venture to say, has asked whether I have the strength or health for it,” said Sir Horace, with a voice of pathetic intonation.

“Why, as we never knew you want energy for whatever fell to your lot to do, we have the same hope still,” said Stanhope.

“So say I too,” cried Harcourt. “Like many a good hunter, he ‘ll do his work best when he is properly weighted.”

“It is quite refreshing to listen to you both – creatures with crocodile digestion – talk to a man who suffers nightmare if he over-eat a dry biscuit at supper. I tell you frankly, it would be the death of me to take the Foreign Office. I ‘d not live through the season, – the very dinners would kill me; and then, the House, the heat, the turmoil, the worry of opposition, and the jaunting back and forward to Brighton or to Windsor!”

While he muttered these complaints, he continued to read with great rapidity the letters which Stanhope had brought him, and which, despite all his practised coolness, had evidently afforded him pleasure in the perusal.

“Adderley bore it,” continued he, “just because he was a mere machine, wound up to play off so many despatches, like so many tunes; and then, he permitted a degree of interference on the King’s part I never could have suffered; and he liked to be addressed by the King of Prussia as ‘Dear Adderley.’ But what do I care for all these vanities? Have I not seen enough of the thing they call the great world? Is not this retreat better and dearer to me than all the glare and crash of London, or all the pomp and splendor of Windsor?”

“By Jove! I suspect you are right, after all,” said Harcourt, with an honest energy of voice.

“Were I younger, and stronger in health, perhaps,” said Upton, “this might have tempted me. Perhaps I can picture to myself what I might have made of it; for you may perceive, George, these people have done nothing: they have been pouring hot water on the tea-leaves Pitt left them, – no more.”

“And you ‘d have a brewing of your own, I ‘ve no doubt,” responded the other.

“I’d at least have foreseen the time when this compact, this Holy Alliance, should become impossible; when the developed intelligence of Europe would seek something else from their rulers than a well-concocted scheme of repression. I ‘d have provided for the hour when England must either break with her own people or her allies; and I ‘d have inaugurated a new policy, based upon the enlarged views and extended intelligence of mankind.”

“I ‘m not certain that I quite apprehend you,” muttered Harcourt.

“No matter; but you can surely understand that if a set of mere mediocrities have saved England, a batch of clever men might have done something more. She came out of the last war the acknowledged head of Europe: does she now hold that place, and what will she be at the next great struggle?”

“England is as great as ever she was,” cried Harcourt, boldly.

“Greater in nothing is she than in the implicit credulity of her people!” sighed Upton. “I only wish I could have the same faith in my physicians that she has in hers! By the way, Stanhope, what of that new fellow they have got at St. Leonard’s? They tell me he builds you up in some preparation of gypsum, so that you can’t move or stir, and that the perfect repose thus imparted to the system is the highest order of restorative.”

“They were just about to try him for manslaughter when I left England,” said Stanhope, laughing.

“As often the fate of genius in these days as in more barbarous times,” said Upton. “I read his pamphlet with much interest. If you were going back, Harcourt, I ‘d have begged of you to try him.”

“And I ‘m forced to say, I’d have refused you flatly.”

“Yet it is precisely creatures of robust constitution, like you, that should submit themselves to these trials, for the sake of humanity. Frail organizations, like mine, cannot brave these ordeals. What are they talking of in town? Any gossip afloat?”

“The change of ministry is the only topic. Glencore’s affair has worn itself out.”

“What was that about Glencore?” asked Upton, half indolently.

“A strange story; one can scarcely believe it. They say that Glencore, hearing of the King’s great anxiety to be rid of the Queen, asked an audience of his Majesty, and actually suggested, as the best possible expedient, that his Majesty should deny the marriage. They add that he reasoned the case so cleverly, and with such consummate craft and skill, it was with the greatest difficulty that the King could be persuaded that he was deranged. Some say his Majesty was outraged beyond endurance; others, that he was vastly amused, and laughed immoderately over it.”

“And the world, how do they pronounce upon it?”

“There are two great parties, – one for Glencore’s sanity the other against; but, as I said before, the cabinet changes have absorbed all interest latterly, and the Viscount and his case are forgotten; and when I started, the great question was, who was to have the Foreign Office.”

“I believe I could tell them one who will not,” said Upton, with a melancholy smile. “Dine with me, both of you, to-day, at seven; no company, you know. There is an opera in the evening, and my box is at your service, if you like to go; and so, till then;” and with a little gesture of the hand he waved an adieu, and glided from the room.

“I’m sorry he’s not up to the work of office,” said Har-court; “there’s plenty of ability in him.”

“The best man we have,” said Stanhope; “so they say at the Office.”

“He’s gone to lie down, I take it; he seemed much exhausted. What say you to a walk back to town?”

“I ask nothing better,” said Stanhope; and they started for Naples.

CHAPTER XLI. AN EVENING IN FLORENCE

That happy valley of the Val d’Arno, in which fair Florence stands, possesses, amidst all its virtues, none more conspicuous than the blessed forgetfulness of the past, so eminently the gift of those who dwell there. Faults and follies of a few years back have so faded by time as to be already historical; and as, in certain climates, rocks and stones become shrined by lichens, and moss-covered in a year or two, so here, in equally brief space, bygones are shrouded and shadowed in a way that nothing short of cruelty and violence could once more expose to view.

The palace where Lady Glencore once displayed all her attractions of beauty and toilette, and dispensed a hospitality of princely splendor, had remained for a course of time close barred and shut up. The massive gate was locked, the windows shuttered, and curious tourists were told that there were objects of interest within, but it was impossible to obtain sight of them. The crowds who once flocked there at nightfall, and whose equipages filled the court, now drove on to other haunts, scarcely glancing as they passed at the darkened casements of the grim old edifice; when at length the rumor ran that “some one” had arrived there. Lights were seen in the porter’s lodge, the iron grille was observed to open and shut, and tradespeople came and went within the building; and, finally, the assurance gained ground that its former owner had returned.

“Only think who has come back to us,” said one of the idlers of the Cascine, as he lounged on the steps of a fashionable carriage, – “La Nina!” And at once the story went far and near, repeated at every corner, and discussed in every circle; so that had a stranger to the place but caught the passing sounds, he would have heard that one name uttered in every group he encountered. La Nina! and why not the Countess of Glencore, or, at least, the Countess de la Torre? As when exiled royalists assume titles in accordance with fallen fortunes, so, in Italy, injured fame seeks sympathy in the familiarity of the Christian name, and “Society” at once accepts the designation as that of those who throw themselves upon the affectionate kindness of the world, rather than insist upon its reverence and respect.

Many of her former friends were still there; but there was also a numerous class, principally foreigners, who only knew of her by repute. The traditions of her beauty, her gracefulness, the charms of her demeanor, and the brilliancy of her diamonds, abounded. Her admirers were of all ages, from those who worshipped her loveliness to that not less enthusiastic section who swore by her cook; and it was indeed “great tidings” to hear that she had returned.

Some statistician has asserted that no less than a hundred thousand people awake every day in London, not one of whom knows where he will pass the night. Now, Florence is but a small city, and the lacquered-boot class bear but a slight proportion to the shoeless herd of humanity. Yet there is a very tolerable sprinkling of well-dressed, well-got-up individuals, who daily arise without the very vaguest conception of who is to house them, fire them, light them, and cigar them for the evening. They are an interesting class, and have this strong appeal to human sympathy, that not one of them, by any possible effort, could contribute to his own support.

They toil not, neither do they spin. They have the very fewest of social qualities; they possess no conversational gifts; they are not even moderately good reporters of the passing events of the day. And yet, strange to say, the world they live in seems to have some need of them. Are they the last relics of a once gifted class, – worn out, effete, and exhausted, – degenerated like modern Greeks from those who once shook the Parthenon? Or are they what anatomists call “rudimentary structures,” – the first abortive attempts of nature to fashion something profitable and good? Who knows?

Amidst this class the Nina’s arrival was announced as the happiest of all tidings; and speculation immediately set to work to imagine who would be the favorites of the house; what would be its habits and hours; would she again enter the great world of society, or would she, as her quiet, unannounced arrival portended, seek a less conspicuous position? Nor was this the mere talk of the cafés and the Cascine. The salons were eagerly discussing the very same theme.

In certain social conditions a degree of astuteness is acquired as to who may and who may not be visited, that, in its tortuous intricacy of reasons, would puzzle the craftiest head that ever wagged in Equity. Not that the code is a severe one; it is exactly in its lenity lies its difficulty, – so much may be done, but so little may be fatal! The Countess in the present case enjoyed what in England is reckoned a great privilege, – she was tried by her peers – or “something more.” They were, however, all nice discriminators as to the class of case before them, and they knew well what danger there was in admitting to their “guild” any with a little more disgrace than their neighbors. It was curious enough that she, in whose behalf all this solicitude was excited, should have been less than indifferent as to the result; and when, on the third day of the trial, a verdict was delivered in her favor, and a shower of visiting-cards at the porter’s lodge declared that the act of her recognition had passed, her orders were that the cards should be sent back to their owners, as the Countess had not the honor of their acquaintance.