Читать книгу The Fortunes Of Glencore - Lever Charles James - Страница 5

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 fireplaces, 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 bookshelves, partly covered by wainscot, and here and there displayed a worn-out portrait of some bygone warrior or dame, who little dreamed how much the color 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 fireplace, making, as it were, in this case two different apartments.

At one of those, 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.

At the second fireplace sat his son, and, though a mere boy, the lineaments 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 dreamy thought. Once or twice was he disturbed from his revery 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 did n’t like to disturb him.”

“Tired! weary! – with what? Where has he been; what has he been doing?” cried he, hastily. “Charles, 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, Charles, – it’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 father?”

“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.”

“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 these 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 himself from the fatigues of the road.

“Now, Charley, I am 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.

“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 gray I am! I saw myself in the glass to-day for the first time, and I really could n’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?”

“I believe so,” said the other, sighing.

“And they bled you and blistered you, of course. These fellows are like the farriers – they have but the one system for everything. Who was your torturer; where did you get him from?”

“A practitioner of the neighborhood, the wild growth of the mountain,” said Glencore, with a sickly smile; “but I must n’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, Glencore?”

“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 birthday; he seems older, does n’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 apprehension 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 haven’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. Har-court had a traveller’s appetite, and enjoyed himself thoroughly, while Glencore never touched a morsel, and the boy ate sparingly, watching the stranger with that intense curiosity which comes of living estranged from all society.

“Charley will treat you to a bottle of Burgundy, Har-court,” 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 at 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, Hibernicè called a cooper, three cobwebbed and well-crusted bottles.

“Now, Charley,” said Jarcourt, gayly, “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 Poniatowski, 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 carving of that bull is a work of real art; and if you were a connoisseur in such matters, you ‘d say the color 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 every one 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 bivouac, 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 termed 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.”

“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.”

“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 ourselves 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 outmanoeuvre 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 Samson with his hair en crop!”

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

“That’s Charley’s bedtime,” said Glencore, “and we are determined to make no stranger of you, George. He ‘ll say good-night.”

And with a manner of mingled shyness and pride the boy held out his hand, which the soldier shook cordially, saying, —

“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 have n’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-morrow – at 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 presently humming some old air to himself, he slowly mounted the stairs to his chamber.