The Fortunes Of Glencore. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ I have done?”

      “Why not? or, at least, why should n’t he become so after a month or two?”

      “Just because in that same month or two he’d either die broken-hearted, or plunge his knife into the heart of some comrade who insulted him.”

      “Not a bit of it. You don’t know him at all. Charley is a fine give-and-take fellow; a little proud, perhaps, because he lives apart from all that are his equals. Let Glencore just take courage to send him to Harrow or Rugby, and my life on it, but he ‘ll be the manliest fellow in the school.”

      “I ‘ll undertake, without Harrow or Rugby, that the boy should become something even greater than that,” said Upton, smiling.

      “Oh, I know you sneer at my ideas of what a young fellow ought to be,” said Harcourt; “but, somehow, you did not neglect these same pursuits yourself. You can shoot as well as most men, and you ride better than any I know of.”

      “One likes to do a little of everything, Harcourt,” said Upton, not at all displeased at this flattery; “and somehow it never suits a fellow, who really feels that he has fair abilities, to do anything badly; so that it comes to this: one does it well, or not at all. Now, you never heard me touch the piano?”

      “Never.”

      “Just because I’m only an inferior performer, and so I only play when perfectly alone.”

      “Egad, if I could only master a waltz, or one of the melodies, I’d be at it whenever any one would listen to me.”

      “You’re a good soul, and full of amiability, Harcourt,” said Upton; but the words sounded very much as though he said, “You’re a dear, good, sensible creature, without an atom of self-respect or esteem.”

      Indeed, so conscious was Harcourt that the expression meant no compliment that he actually reddened and looked away. At last he took courage to renew the conversation, and said, —

      “And what would you advise for the boy, then?”

      “I ‘d scarcely lay down a system; but I ‘ll tell you what I would not do. I ‘d not bore him with mathematics; I ‘d not put his mind on the stretch in any direction; I ‘d not stifle the development of any taste that may be struggling within him, but rather encourage and foster it, since it is precisely by such an indication you ‘ll get some clew to his nature. Do you understand me?”

      “I ‘m not quite sure I do; but I believe you’d leave him to something like utter idleness.”

      “What to you, my dear Harcourt, would be utter idleness, I’ve no doubt; but not to him, perhaps.”

      Again the Colonel looked mortified, but evidently knew not how to resent this new sneer.

      “Well,” said he, after a pause, “the lad will not require to be a genius.”

      “So much the better for him, probably; at all events, so much the better for his friends, and all who are to associate with him.”

      Here he looked fixedly at Upton, who smiled a most courteous acquiescence in the opinion, – a politeness that made poor Harcourt perfectly ashamed of his own rudeness, and he continued hurriedly, —

      “He’ll have abundance of money. The life Glencore leads here will be like a long minority to him. A fine old name and title, and the deuce is in it if he can’t rub through life pleasantly enough with such odds.”

      “I believe you are right, after all, Harcourt,” said Upton, sighing, and now speaking in a far more natural tone; “it is ‘rubbing through’ with the best of us, and no more!”

      “If you mean that the process is a very irksome one, I enter my dissent at once,” broke in Harcourt. “I ‘m not ashamed to own that I like life prodigiously; and if I be spared to say so, I ‘m sure I ‘ll have the same story to tell fifteen or twenty years hence; and yet I ‘m not a genius!”

      “No,” said Upton, smiling a bland assent.

      “Nor a philosopher either,” said Harcourt, irritated at the acknowledgment.

      “Certainly not,” chimed in Upton, with another smile.

      “Nor have I any wish to be one or the other,” rejoined Harcourt, now really provoked. “I know right well that if I were in trouble or difficulty to-morrow, – if I wanted a friend to help me with a loan of some thousand pounds, – it is not to a genius or a philosopher I ‘d look for the assistance.”

      It is ever a chance shot that explodes a magazine, and so is it that a random speech is sure to hit the mark that has escaped all the efforts of skilful direction.

      Upton winced and grew pale at these last words, and he fixed his penetrating gray eyes upon the speaker with a keenness all his own. Harcourt, however, bore the look without the slightest touch of uneasiness. The honest Colonel had spoken without any hidden meaning, nor had he the slightest intention of a personal application in his words. Of this fact Upton appeared soon to be convinced, for his features gradually recovered their wonted calmness.

      “How perfectly right you are, my dear Harcourt,” said he, mildly. “The man who expects to be happier by the possession of genius is like one who would like to warm himself through a burning-glass.”

      “Egad, that is a great consolation for us slow fellows,” said Harcourt, laughing; “and now what say you to a game at écarté; for I believe it is just the one solitary thing I am more than your match in?”

      “I accept inferiority in a great many others,” said Upton, blandly; “but I must decline the challenge, for I have a letter to write, and our post here starts at daybreak.”

      “Well, I’d rather carry the whole bag than indite one of its contents,” said the Colonel, rising; and, with a hearty shake of the hand, he left the room.

      A letter was fortunately not so great an infliction to Upton, who opened his desk at once, and with a rapid hand traced the following lines: —

      Mv dear Princess, – My last will have told you how and when I came here; I wish I but knew in what way to explain why I still remain! Imagine the dreariest desolation of Calabria in a climate of fog and sea-drift: sunless skies, leafless trees, impassable roads, the out-door comforts; the joys within depending on a gloomy old house, with a few gloomier inmates, and a host on a sick bed. Yet, with all this, I believe I am better; the doctor, a strange, unsophisticated creature, a cross between Galen and Caliban, seems to have hit off what the great dons of science never could detect, – the true seat of my malady. He says – and he really reasons out his case ingeniously – that the brain has been working for the inferior nerves, not limiting itself to cerebral functions, but actually performing the humbler office of muscular direction, and so forth; in fact, a field-marshal doing duty for a common soldier! I almost fancy I can corroborate his view, from internal sensations; I have a kind of secret instinct that he is right. Poor brain! why it should do the work of another department, with abundance of occupation of its own, I cannot make out. But to turn to something else. This is not a bad refuge just now. They cannot make out where I am, and all the inquiries at my club are answered by a vague impression that I have gone back to Germany, which the people at F. O. are aware is not the case. I have already told you that my suggestion has been negatived in the Cabinet: it was ill-timed, Allington says; but I ventured to remind his Lordship that a policy requiring years to develop, and more years still to push to a profitable conclusion, is not to be reduced to the category of СКАЧАТЬ