Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

stood before me.

"Is it you,' said he, with a quiet laugh, that accuse Pope of a bull?'

It is,' says I; and what's more, there isn't a poet from Horace downwards that I won't show bulls in; there's bulls in Shakespeare and in Milton; there's bulls in the ancients; I'll point out a bull in Aristophanes.'

What have we here?' said he, turning to the others.

"A poor crayture,' says I, 'like Goldsmith's chest of drawers'

With brains reduced a double debt to pay,
To dream by night, sell Sheffield ware by day.'

"Well, with that he took a fit of laughing, and handing the rest out of the boat, he made me come along at his side, discoorsin' me about my thravels, and all I seen, and all I read, till we reached an elegant little cottage on a bank right over the lake; and then he brought me in and made me take tay with the family; and I spent the night there; and when I

started the next morning there wasn't a screed' of my pack that they didn't buy, penknives, and whistles, and nutcrackers, and all, just, as they said, for keepsakes. Good luck to them, and happy hearts, wherever they are, for they made mine happy that day; ay, and for many an hour afterwards, as I just think over the kind words and pleasant faces."

More than one of the company had dropped off asleep during Billy's narrative, and of the others, their com plaisance as listeners appeared taxed to the utmost, while the Corporal snored loudly, like a man who had a right to indulge himself to the full

est extent.

"There's the bell again," muttered one; "that's from the lord's room,' and Craggs, starting up by the instinct of his office, hastened off to his master's chamber.

"My lord says you are to remain here," said he, as he re-entered a few minutes later; "he is satisfied with your skill, and I'm to send off a messenger to the post, to let them know he has detained you."

"I'm obaydient," said Billy, with a low bow, "and now for a brief repose!" And so saying, he drew a long woollen nightcap from his pocket, and putting it over his eyes, resigned himself to sleep with the practised air of one who needed but very little preparation to secure slumber.

CHAPTER IV.

A VISITOR.

THE old castle of Glencore contained but one spacious room, and this served all the purposes of drawing-room, dining-room, and library. It was a long and lofty chamber, with a raftered ceiling, from which a heavy chandelier hung by a massive chain of iron. Six windows, all in the same wall, deeply set and narrow, admitted a sparing light. In the opposite wall stood two fire-places, large, massive, and monumental; the carved supporters of the richly-chased pediment being of colossal size, and the great shield of the house crowning the pyramid of strange and uncouth objects that were grouped below. The walls were partly occupied by book-shelves, partly covered by wainscot, and here and there dis

played a worn-out portrait of some bygone warrior or dame, who little dreamed how much the colour of their effigies should be indebted to the sad effects of damp and mildew. The furniture consisted of every imaginable type, from the carved oak and ebony console, to the white-and-gold of Versailles taste, and the modern compromise of comfort with ugliness which chintz and soft cushions accomplish. Two great screens, thickly covered with prints and drawings, most of them political caricatures of some fifty years back, flanked each fire-place, making, as it were, in this case, two different apartments.

At one of these, on a low sofa, sat, or rather lay, Lord Glencore, pale and

wasted by long illness. His thin hand held a letter, to shade his eyes from the blazing wood fire, and the other hand hung listlessly at his side. The expression of the sick man's face was that of deep melancholy not the mere gloom of recent suffering, but the deep-cut traces of a long-carried affliction, a sorrow which had eaten into his very heart, and made its home there.

[ocr errors]

At the second fireplace sat his son, and, though a mere boy, the linea ments of his father marked the youth's face with a painful exactness. The same intensity was in the eyes-the same haughty character sat on the brow; and there was in the whole countenance the most extraordinary counterpart of the gloomy seriousness of the older face. He had been reading, but the fast-falling night obliged him to desist, and he sat now contemplating the bright embers of the wood fire in dreary thought. Once or twice was he disturbed from his reverie by the whispered voice of an old serving man, asking for something with that submissive manner assumed by those who are continually exposed to the outbreaks of another's temper; and at last the boy, who had hitherto scarcely deigned to notice the appeals to him, flung a bunch of keys contemptuously on the ground, with a muttered malediction on his tormentor.

"What's that?" cried out the sick man, startled at the sound.

"Tis nothing, my lord, but the keys that fell out of my hand," replied the old man, humbly. "Mr. Craggs is away to Leenane, and I was going to get out the wine for dinner."

"Where's Mr. Charles?" asked Lord Glencore.

"He's there beyant," muttered the other in a low voice, while he pointed towards the distant fireplace, "but he looks tired and weary, and I didn't like to disturb him."

"Tired! weary! - with what? where has he been?-what has he been doing?" cried he, hastily. "Charlés, Charles, I say!"

And slowly rising from his seat, and with an air of languid indifference, the boy came towards him.

Lord Glencore's face darkened as he gazed on him.

"Where have you been?" asked he, sternly.

"Yonder," said the boy, in an accent like the echo of his own.

"There's Mr. Craggs now, my lord," said the old butler, as he looked out of the window, and eagerly seized the opportunity to interrupt the scene; "there he is, and a gentleman with him."

"Ha! go and meet him, Charlesit's Harcourt. Go and receive him, show him his room, and then bring him here to me.'

The boy heard without a word, and left the room with the same slow step and the same look of apathy. Just as he reached the hall the stranger was entering it. He was a tall, well-built man, with the mingled ease and stiffness of a soldier in his bearing; his face was handsome, but somewhat stern, and his voice had that tone which implies the long habit of command.

"You're a Massy, that I'll swear to," said he, frankly, as he shook the boy's hand; "the family face in every lineament. And how is your fa

ther?"

"Better; he has had a severe illness."

"So his letter told me. I was up the Rhine when I received it, and started at once for Ireland."

"He has been very impatient for your coming," said the boy; "he has talked of nothing else."

66

Ay, we are old friends. Glencore and I have been schoolfellows, chums at college, and messmates in the same regiment," said he, with a slight touch of sorrow in his tone. Will he be able to see me now? Is he confined to bed?"

"No, he will dine with you. I'm to show you your room, and then bring you to him."

"That's better news than I hoped for, boy. By the way, what's your name?"

"Charles Conyngham."

"To be sure, Charles, how could I have forgotten it! So, Charles, this is to be my quarters, and a glorious view there is from this window what's the mountain yonder?"

"Ben Creggan."

"We must climb that summit some of those days, Charley. I hope you're a good walker. You shall be my guide through this wild region here, for I have a passion for explorings."

And he talked away rapidly, while he made a brief toilet, and refreshed him from the fatigues of the road.

"Now, Charley, I'm at your orders; let us descend to the drawing-room."

"You'll find my father there," said the boy, as he stopped short at the door; and Harcourt, staring at him for a second or two in silence, turned the handle and entered.

Lord Glencore never turned his head as the other drew nigh, but sat with his forehead resting on the table, extending his hand only in welcome.

66

"My poor fellow!" said Harcourt, grasping the thin and wasted fingers, my poor fellow, how glad I am to be with you again." And he seated himself at his side as he spoke. “You had a relapse after you wrote to me?" Glencore slowly raised his head, and pushing back a small velvet skull-cap that he wore, said

"You'd not have known me, George. Eh? see how grey I am! I saw myself in the glass to-day for the first time, and I really couldn't believe my eyes."

"In another week the change will be just as great the other way. It was some kind of a fever, was it not?"

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

"A practitioner of the neighbourhood, the wild growth of the mountain," said Glencore, with a sickly smile; "but I mustn't be ungrateful; he saved my life, if that be a cause for gratitude."

"And a right good one, I take it. How like you that boy is, Glencore. I started back when he met me. It was just as if I was transported again to old school-days, and had seen yourself as you used to be long ago! Do you remember the long meadow, Glen

core ?"

"Harcourt," said he, falteringly, "don't talk to me of long ago, at least not now." And then, as if thinking aloud, added, "How strange that a man without a hope should like the future better than the past."

"How old is Charley ?" asked Harcourt, anxious to engage him on some other theme.

"He'll be fifteen, I think, his next birth-day; he seems older, doesn't he?"

"Yes, the boy is well grown and athletic. What has he been doing?have you had him at a school?"

"At a school!" said Glencore, starting; "no, he has lived always here with myself. I have been his tutor I read with him every day, till that illness seized me."

"He looks clever; is he so ?"

"Like the rest of us, George, he may learn, but he can't be taught. The old obstinacy of the race is strong in him, and to rouse him to rebel all you have to do is to give him a task; but his faculties are good, his appre hension quick, and his memory, if he would but tax it, excellent. Here's Craggs come to tell us of dinner; give me your arm, George, we havn't far to go this one room serves us for everything."

"You're better lodged than I expected; your letters told me to look for a mere barrack; and the place stands so well."

"Yes, the spot was well chosen, although I suppose its founders cared little enough about the picturesque."

The dinner-table was spread behind one of the massive screens, and under the careful direction of Craggs and old Simon, was well and amply supplied fish and game, the delicacies of other localities, being here in abundance. Harcourt had a traveller's appetite, and enjoyed himself thoroughly, while Glencore never touched a morsel, and the boy eat sparingly, watching the stranger with that intense curiosity which comes of living estranged from all society.

"Charley will treat you to a glass of Burgundy, Harcourt," said Glencore, as they drew round the fire; "he keeps the cellar-key."

"Let us have two, Charley," said Harcourt, as the boy arose to leave the room, "and take care that you

carry them steadily."

The boy stood for a second and looked at his father, as if interrogating, and then a sudden flush suffused his face as Glencore made a gesture with his hand for him to go.

"You don't perceive how you touched him to the quick there, Harcourt? You talked to him as to how he should carry the wine; he thought that office menial and beneath him, and he looked to me to know what he should do.'

"

"What a fool you have made of the

boy!" said Harcourt, bluntly. "By Jove! it was time I should come here!"

When the boy came back he was followed by the old butler, carefully carrying in a small wicker contrivance, Hibernice called a cooper, three cobwebbed and well-crusted bottles.

"Now, Charley," said Harcourt, gaily, "if you want to see a man thoroughly happy, just step up to my room and fetch me a small leather sack you'll find there of tobacco, and on the dressing-table you'll see my meerschaum-pipe; be cautious with it, for it belonged to no less a man than Ponitowski, the poor fellow who died at Leipsic."

The lad stood again irresolute and confused, when a signal from his father motioned him away to acquit the errand.

"Thank you," said Harcourt, as he re-entered; you see I am not vain of my meerschaum without reason. The earving of those stags is a work of real art; and if you were a connoisseur in such matters, you'd say the colour was perfect. Have you given up smoking, Glencore? you used to be fond of a weed."

"I care but little for it," said Glencore, sighing.

"Take to it again, my dear fellow, if only that it is a bond 'tween yourself and everyone who whiffs his cloud. There are wonderfully few habits - I was going to say enjoyments, and I might say so, but I'll call them habits that consort so well with every condition and every circumstance of life, that become the prince and the peasant, suit the garden of the palace, and the red watch-fire of the barrack, relieve the weary hours of a calm at sea, or refresh the tired hunter in the prairies."

"You must tell Charley some of your adventures in the west. The Colonel has passed two years in the Rocky Mountains," said Glencore to his son.

"Ay, Charley, I have knocked about the world as much as most men, and seen, too, my share of its wonders. If accidents by sea and land can interest you, if you care for stories of Indian life, and the wild habits of a prairie hunter, I'm your man. Your father can tell you more of salons and the great world, of what may be called the high game of life

"I have forgotten it, as much as if I had never seen it," said Glencore, interrupting, and with a severity of voice that showed the theme displeased him. And now a pause ensued, painful perhaps to the others, but scarcely felt by Harcourt, as he smoked away peacefully, and seemed lost in the windings of his own fancies.

"Have you shooting here, Glencore?" asked he at length.

"There might be, if I were to preserve the game."

[ocr errors]

"And you do not. Do you fish ?" "No; never."

"You give yourself up to farming, then?"

"Not even that; the truth is, Harcourt, I literally do nothing. A few newspapers, a stray review or so reach me in these solitudes, and keep me, in a measure, informed as to the course of events; but Charley and I con over our classics together, and scrawl sheets of paper with algebraic signs, and puzzle our heads over strange formulas, wonderfully indifferent to what the world is doing at the other side of this little estuary.

[ocr errors]

"You of all men living to lead such a life as this! a fellow that never could cram occupation enough into his short twenty-four hours," broke in Harcourt.

Glencore's pale cheek flushed slightly, and an impatient movement of his fingers on the table showed how ill he relished any allusion to his own former life.

"Charley will show you to-morrow all the wonders of our erudition, Harcourt," said he, changing the subject; "we have got to think ourselvers very learned, and I hope you'll be polite enough not to undeceive us."

"You'll have a merciful critic, Charley," said the Colonel, laughing, "for more reasons than one. Had the question been how to track a wolf, or wind an antelope, to outmanœuvre a scout party, or harpoon a calf-whale, I'd not yield to many, but if you throw me amongst Greek roots, or double equations, I'm only Sampson, with his hair én crop !"

The solemn clock over the mantelpiece struck ten, and the boy arose as it ceased.

"That's Charley's bed-time," said Glencore, and we are determined to make no stranger of you, George. He'll say good night."

And with a manner of mingled shy

ness and pride the boy held out his hand, which the soldier shook cordially, saying

66 To-morrow, then, Charley, I count upon you for my day, and so that it be not to be passed in the library I'll acquit myself creditably."

I like your boy, Glencore," said he, as soon as they were alone. "Of course I have seen very little of him; and if I had seen more I should be but a sorry judge of what people would call his abilities; but he is a good stamp; gentleman' is written on him in a hand that any can read; and, by Jove! let them talk as they will, but that's half the battle of life!"

"He is a strange fellow; you'll not understand him in a moment," said Glencore, smiling half sadly to himself.

"Not understand him, Glencore; I read him like print, man; you think that his shy, bashful manner imposes upon me; not a bit of it; I see the fellow is as proud as Lucifer. All your solitude and estrangement from the world, hasn't driven out of his head that he's to be a viscount one of these days; and somehow, wherever he has picked it up, he has got a very pretty notion of the importance and rank that same title confers."

"Let us not speak of this now, Harcourt; I'm far too weak to enter upon what it would lead to. It is, however, the great reason for which I entreated

you to come here. And to-morrowat all events in a day or two-we can speak of it fully. And now I must leave you. You'll have to rough it here, George; but as there is no man can do so with a better grace I can spare my apologies; only, I beg, don't let the place be worse than it need be. Give your orders; get what you can; and see if your tact and knowledge of life cannot remedy many a difficulty which our ignorance or apathy have served to perpetuate.

I'll take the command of the garrison with pleasure," said Harcourt, filling up his glass, and replenishing the fire. "And now a good night's rest to you, for I half suspect I have already jeopardied some of it."

The old campaigner sat till long past midnight. The generous wine, his pipe, the cheerful wood-fire, were all companionable enough, and well-suited thoughts which took no high or heroic range, but were chiefly reveries of the past, some sad, some pleasant, but all tinged with the one philosophy, which made him regard the world as a campaign, wherein he who grumbles or repines is but a sorry soldier, and unworthy of his cloth.

It was not till the last glass was drained that he arose to seek his bed, and pleasantly humming some old air to himself, he slowly mounted the stairs to his chamber.

CHAPTER V.

COLONEL HARCOURT'S LETTER.

As we desire throughout this tale to make the actors themselves, wherever it be possible, the narrators, using their words in preference to our own, we shall now place before the reader a letter written by Colonel Harcourt about a week after his arrival at Glencore, which will at least serve to rescue him and ourselves from the task of repetition.

It was addressed to Sir Horace Up. ton, Her Majesty's Envoy at Studtgard, one who had formerly served in the same regiment with Glencore and himself, but who left the army early, to follow the career of diplomacy wherein, still a young man, he had risen to the rank of a minister. not important to the object of our story to speak more particularly of his character, than that it was in almost

It is

every respect the opposite of his correspondent. Where the one was frank, open, and unguarded, the other was cold, cautious, and reserved; where one believed, the other doubted; where one was hopeful, the other had nothing but misgivings. Harcourt would have twenty times a day wounded the feelings, or jarred against the susceptibility of his best friend; Upton could not be brought to trench upon the slightest prejudice of his greatest enemy. We might continue this contrast to every detail of their characters, but enough has now been said, and we proceed to the letter in question :—

"Glencore Castle.

"DEAR UPTON,-True to my promise to give you early tidings of our old friend, I sit down to pen a few lines,

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »