Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “What, sir, have you the face to put this question to me, – to H.M.‘s Minister at this court, – the subject of this knavish buffoonery? Am I a fit subject for a fraud, – a – a freedom, sir? Is it to a house which displays the royal arms over the entrance-door men come to play blackleg or clown? Where have you lived, with whom have you lived, what pursuit in life have you followed, that you should be sunk in such utter ignorance of all the habits of life and civilization?”

      I replied that I was a gentleman, I trusted as well educated, and I knew as well-born, as himself.

      He sprang to the bell as I said this, and rang on till the room was crowded with servants, who came rushing in under the belief that it was a fire-alarm.

      “Take him away, – put him out – Giacomo, – Hippo-lyte, – Francis!” screamed he. “See that he’s out of the house this instant. Send Mr. Carlyon here. Let the police be called, and order gendarmes if he resists.”

      While he was thus frothing and foaming, I took my hat, and, passing quietly through the ranks of his household, descended the stairs, and proceeded into the street.

      I reached the “Vittoria” in no bland humor. I must own that I was flurried and irritated in no common degree. I was too much excited to be able, clearly, to decide how far the insult I had received required explanation and apology, or if it had passed the limits in which apology is still possible.

      Perhaps, thought I, if I call him out, he ‘ll hand me over to the police; perhaps he ‘ll have me sent over the frontier. Who knows what may be the limit to a minister’s power? While I was thus speculating and canvassing with myself, a card was presented to me by the waiter, – “Mr. Sponnington, Attaché, H.M.‘s Legation, Naples,” – and as suddenly the owner of it entered the room.

      He was a fair-faced, blue-eyed young man, very shortsighted, with a faint lisp and an effeminate air. He bowed slightly as he came forward, and said, “You ‘re Mr. Goss-lett, ain’t you?” And not waiting for any reply, he sat down and opened a roll of papers on the table. “Here are your instructions. You are to follow them when you can, you know, and diverge from them whenever you must. That is, do whatever you like, and take the consequences. Sir James won’t see you again. He says you insulted him; but he says that of almost every one. The cook insults him when the soup is too salt, and I insulted him last week by writing with pale ink. But you ‘d have done better if you ‘d got on well with him. He writes home, – do you understand? – he writes home.”

      “So do most people,” I said dryly.

      “Ah! but not the way he does. He writes home and has a fellow black-listed. Two crosses against you sends you to Greece, and three is ruin! Three means the United States.”

      “I assure you, sir, that as regards myself, your chief’s good opinion or good word are matters of supreme indifference.”

      Had I uttered an outrageous blasphemy, he could not have looked at me with greater horror.

      “Well,” said he, at last, “there it is; read it over. Bolton will cash your bills, and give you gold. You must have gold; they ‘ll not take anything else. I don’t believe there is much more to say.”

      “Were you acquainted with Mr. St. John?” asked I.

      “I should think I was. Rodney St John and I joined together.”

      “And what sort of a fellow is he? Is he such a scamp as his chief describes?”

      “He’s fast, if you mean that; but we ‘re all fast.”

      “Indeed!” said I, measuring him with a look, and thinking to compute the amount of his colleague’s iniquity.

      “But he’s not worse than Stormont, or Mosely, or myself; only he’s louder than we are. He must always be doing something no other fellow ever thought of. Don’t you know the kind of thing I mean? He wants to be original. Bad style that, very. That ‘s the way he got into this scrape. He made a bet he ‘d go up to Rocco d’Anco, and pass a week with Stoppa, the brigand, – the cruellest dog in Calabria. He didn’t say when he’d come back again, though; and there he is still, and Stoppa sent one of his fellows to drop a letter into the Legation, demanding twenty-five thousand francs for his release, or saying that his ears, nose, &c, will be sent on by instalments during the month. Ugly, ain’t it?”

      “I trust I shall be in time to save him. I suspect he’s a good fellow.”

      “Yes, I suppose he is,” said he, with an air of uneasiness; “only I ‘d not go up there, where you ‘re going, for a trifle, I tell you that.”

      “Perhaps not,” said I, quietly.

      “For,” resumed he, “when Stoppa sees that you’re a nobody, and not worth a ransom, he ‘d as soon shoot you as look at you.” And this thought seemed to amuse him so much that he laughed at it as he quitted the room and descended the stairs, and I even heard him cackling over it in the street.

      Before I went to bed that night I studied the map of Calabria thoroughly, and saw that by taking the diligence to Atri the next day I should reach Valdenone by about four o’clock, from which a guide could conduct me to Rocco d’Anco, – a mountain walk of about sixteen miles, – a feat which my pedestrian habits made me fully equal to. If the young attache’s attempt to terrorize over me was not a perfect success, I am free to own that my enterprise appeared to me a more daring exploit than I had believed it when I thought of it in Piccadilly. It was not merely that I was nearer to the peril, but everything conspired to make me more sensible to the danger. The very map, where a large tract was marked “little known,” suggested a terror of its own; and I fell asleep, at last, to dream of every wild incident of brigand life I had seen in pictures or witnessed on the stage.

      As that bland young gentleman so candidly told me, “I was a nobody,” and, consequently, of no interest to any one. Who would think of sending out an express messenger to ransom Paul Gosslett? At all events, I could console myself with the thought that if the world would give little for me, it would grieve even less; and with this not very cheering consolation I mounted to the banquette of the diligence, and started.

      After passing through a long, straggling suburb, not remarkable for anything but its squalor and poverty, we reached the seashore, and continued to skirt the bay for miles. I had no conception of anything so beautiful as the great sheet of blue water seen in the freshness of a glorious sunrise, with the white-sailed lateener skimming silently along, and reflected, as if in a mirror, on the unruffled surface. There was a peaceful beauty in all around, that was a positive enchantment, and the rich odors of the orange and the verbena filled the air almost to a sense of delicious stupefaction. Over and over did I say to myself, “Why cannot this delicious dream be prolonged for a lifetime? If existence could but perpetuate such a scene as this, let me travel along the shore of such a sea, overshadowed by the citron and the vine, – I ask for no more.” The courier or conductor was my only companion, – an old soldier of the first empire, who had fought on the Beresina and in Spain, – a rough old sabreur, not to be appeased by my best cigars and my brandy-flask into a good word for the English. He hated them formerly, and he hated them still. There might be, he was willing to believe, one or two of the nation that were not cani; but he had n’t met them himself, nor did he know any one who had. I relished his savagery, and somehow never felt in the slightest degree baffled or amazed by his rudeness. I asked him if he had heard of that unlucky countryman of mine who had been captured by the brigands, and he said that he had heard that Stoppa meant to roast him alive; for that Stoppa did n’t like the English, – a rather strong mode of expressing a national antipathy, but one, on the whole, he did not entirely СКАЧАТЬ