The Fortunes Of Glencore. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ and don’t let me have the torture of temptation. What a charming place this seems to be! – very wild, very rugged.”

      “Wild – rugged! I should think it is,” muttered Harcourt.

      “This pathway, though, does not bespeak much care. I wish our friend yonder would hold his lantern a little lower. How I envy you the kind of life you lead here, – so tranquil, so removed from all bores! By the way, you get the newspapers tolerably regularly?”

      “Yes, every day.”

      “That’s all right. If there be a luxury left to any man after the age of forty, it is to be let alone. It’s the best thing I know of. What a terrible bit of road! They might have made a pathway.”

      “Come, don’t grow faint-hearted. Here we are; this is Glencore.”

      “Wait a moment. Just let him raise that lantern. Really this is very striking – a very striking scene altogether. The doorway excellent, and that little watch-tower, with its lone-star light, a perfect picture.”

      “You ‘ll have time enough to admire all this; and we are keeping poor Glencore waiting,” said Harcourt, impatiently.

      “Very true; so we are.”

      “Glencore’s son, Upton,” said Harcourt, presenting the boy, who stood, half pride, half bashfulness, in the porch.

      “My dear boy, you see one of your father’s oldest friends in the world,” said Upton, throwing one arm on the boy’s shoulder, apparently caressing, but as much to aid himself in ascending the stair. “I’m charmed with your old Schloss here, my dear,” said he, as they moved along. “Modern architects cannot attain the massive simplicity of these structures. They have a kind of confectionery style with false ornament, and inappropriate decoration, that bears about the same relation to the original that a suit of Drury Lane tinfoil does to a coat of Milanese mail armor. This gallery is in excellent taste.”

      And as he spoke, the door in front of him opened, and the pale, sorrow-struck, and sickly figure of Glencore stood before him. Upton, with all his self-command, could scarcely repress an exclamation at the sight of one whom he had seen last in all the pride of youth and great personal powers; while Glencore, with the instinctive acuteness of his morbid temperament, as quickly saw the impression he had produced, and said, with a deep sigh, —

      “Ay, Horace, a sad wreck.”

      “Not so, my dear fellow,” said the other, taking the thin, cold hand within both his own; “as seaworthy as ever, after a little dry-docking and refitting. It is only a craft like that yonder,” and he pointed to Harcourt, “that can keep the sea in all weathers, and never care for the carpenter. You and I are of another build.”

      “And you – how are you?” asked Glencore, relieved to turn attention away from himself, while he drew his arm within the other’s.

      “The same poor ailing mortal you always knew me,” said Upton, languidly; “doomed to a life of uncongenial labor, condemned to climates totally unstated to me, I drag along existence, only astonished at the trouble I take to live, knowing pretty well as I do what life is worth.”

      “‘Jolly companions every one!’ By Jove!” said Har-court, “for a pair of fellows who were born on the sunny side of the road, I must say you are marvellous instances of gratitude.”

      “That excellent hippopotamus,” said Upton, “has no-thought for any calamity if it does not derange his digestion! How glad I am to see the soup! Now, Glencore, you shall witness no invalid’s appetite.”

      As the dinner proceeded, the tone of the conversation grew gradually lighter and pleasanter. Upton had only to permit his powers to take their free course to be agreeable, and now talked away on whatever came uppermost, with a charming union of reflectiveness and repartee. If a very rigid purist might take occasional Gallicisms in expression, and a constant leaning to French modes of thought, none could fail to be delighted with the graceful ease with which he wandered from theme to theme, adorning each with some trait of that originality which was his chief characteristic. Harcourt was pleased without well knowing how or why, while to Glencore it brought back the memory of the days of happy intercourse with the world, and all the brilliant hours of that polished circle in which he had lived. To the pleasure, then, which his powers conferred, there succeeded an impression of deep melancholy, so deep as to attract the notice of Harcourt, who hastily asked, —

      “If he felt ill?”

      “Not worse,” said he, faintly, “but weak – weary; and I know Upton will forgive me if I say good-night.”

      “What a wreck indeed!” exclaimed Upton, as Glencore left the room with his son. “I’d not have known him.”

      “And yet until the last half-hour I have not seen him so well for weeks past. I ‘m afraid something you said about Alicia Villars affected him,” said Harcourt.

      “My dear Harcourt, how young you are in all these things,” said Upton, as he lighted his cigarette. “A poor heart-stricken fellow, like Glencore, no more cares for what you would think a painful allusion, than an old weather-beaten sailor would for a breezy morning on the Downs at Brighton. His own sorrows lie too deeply moored to be disturbed by the light winds that ruffle the surface. And to think that all this is a woman’s doing! Is n’t that what’s passing in your mind, eh, most gallant Colonel?”

      “By Jove, and so it was! They were the very words I was on the point of uttering,” said Harcourt, half nettled at the ease with which the other read him.

      “And of course you understand the source of the sorrow?”

      “I’m not quite so sure of that,” said Harcourt, more and more piqued at the tone of bantering superiority with which the other spoke.

      “Yes, you do, Harcourt; I know you better than you know yourself. Your thoughts were these: Here’s a fellow with a title, a good name, good looks, and a fine fortune, going out of the world of a broken heart, and all for a woman!”

      “You knew her,” said Harcourt, anxious to divert the discussion from himself.

      “Intimately. Ninetta della Torre was the belle of Florence – what am I saying? of all Italy – when Glencore met her, about eighteen years ago. The Palazzo della Torre was the best house in Florence. The old Prince, her grandfather, – her father was killed in the Russian campaign, – was spending the last remnant of an immense fortune in every species of extravagance. Entertainments that surpassed those of the Pitti Palace in splendor, fêtes that cost fabulous sums, banquets voluptuous as those of ancient Rome, were things of weekly occurrence. Of course every foreigner, with any pretension to distinction, sought to be presented there, and we English happened just at that moment to stand tolerably high in Italian estimation. I am speaking of some eighteen or twenty years back, before we sent out that swarm of domestic economists who, under the somewhat erroneous notion of foreign cheapness, by a system of incessant higgle and bargain, cutting down every one’s demand to the measure of their own pockets, end by making the word ‘Englishman’ a synonym for all that is mean, shabby, and contemptible. The English of that day were of another class; and assuredly their characteristics, as regards munificence and high dealing, must have been strongly impressed upon the minds of foreigners, seeing how their successors, very different people, have contrived to trade upon the mere memory of these qualities ever since.”

      “Which all means that ‘my lord’ stood cheating better than those who came after him,” said Harcourt, bluntly.

      “He СКАЧАТЬ