Lord Kilgobbin

ATLEE ON HIS TRAVELS

On board the Austrian Lloyd’s steamer in which he sailed from Constantinople, Joseph Atlee employed himself in the composition of a small volume purporting to be The Experiences of a Two Years’ Residence in Greece. In an opening chapter of this work he had modestly intimated to the reader how an intimate acquaintance with the language and literature of modern Greece, great opportunities of mixing with every class and condition of the people, a mind well stored with classical acquirements and thoroughly versed in antiquarian lore, a strong poetic temperament and the feeling of an artist for scenery, had all combined to give him a certain fitness for his task; and by the extracts from his diary it would be seen on what terms of freedom he conversed with Ministers and ambassadors, even with royalty itself.

A most pitiless chapter was devoted to the exposure of the mistakes and misrepresentations of a late Quarterly article called ‘Greece and her Protectors,’ whose statements were the more mercilessly handled and ridiculed that the paper in question had been written by himself, and the sarcastic allusions to the sources of the information not the less pungent on that account.

That the writer had been admitted to frequent audiences of the king, that he had discussed with his Majesty the cutting of the Isthmus of Corinth, that the king had seriously confided to him his belief that in the event of his abdication, the Ionian Islands must revert to him as a personal appanage, the terms on which they were annexed to Greece being decided by lawyers to bear this interpretation – all these Atlee denied of his own knowledge, an asked the reader to follow him into the royal cabinet for his reasons.

When, therefore, he heard that from some damage to the machinery the vessel must be detained some days at Syra to refit, Atlee was scarcely sorry that necessity gave him an opportunity to visit Athens.

A little about Ulysses and a good deal about Lord Byron, a smattering of Grote, and a more perfect memory of About, were, as he owned to himself, all his Greece; but he could answer for what three days in the country would do for him, particularly with that spirit of candid inquiry he could now bring to his task, and the genuine fairness with which he desired to judge the people.

‘The two years’ resident’ in Athens must doubtless often have dined with his Minister, and so Atlee sent his card to the Legation.

Mr. Brammell, our ‘present Minister at Athens,’ as the Times continued to designate him, as though to imply that the appointment might not be permanent, was an excellent man, of that stamp of which diplomacy has more – who consider that the Court to which they are accredited concentrates for the time the political interests of the globe. That any one in Europe thought, read, spoke, or listened to anything but what was then happening in Greece, Mr. Brammell could not believe. That France or Prussia, Spain or Italy, could divide attention with this small kingdom; that the great political minds of the Continent were not more eager to know what Comoundouros thought and Bulgaris required, than all about Bismarck and Gortschakoff, he could not be brought to conceive; and in consequence of these convictions, he was an admirable Minister, and fully represented all the interests of his country.

As that admirable public instructor, the Levant Herald, had frequently mentioned Atlee’s name, now as the guest of Kulbash Pasha, now as having attended some public ceremony with other persons of importance, and once as ‘our distinguished countryman, whose wise suggestions and acute observations have been duly accepted by the imperial cabinet,’ Brammell at once knew that this distinguished countryman should be entertained at dinner, and he sent him an invitation. That habit – so popular of late years – to send out some man from England to do something at a foreign Court that the British ambassador or Minister there either has not done, or cannot do, possibly ought never to do, had invested Atlee in Brammell’s eyes with the character of one of those semi-accredited inscrutable people whose function it would seem to be to make us out the most meddlesome people in Europe.

Of course Brammell was not pleased to see him at Athens, and he ran over all the possible contingencies he might have come for. It might be the old Greek loan, which was to be raked up again as a new grievance. It might be the pensions that they would not pay, or the brigands that they would not catch – pretty much for the same reasons – that they could not. It might be that they wanted to hear what Tsousicheff, the new Russian Minister, was doing, and whether the farce of the ‘Grand Idea’ was advertised for repetition. It might be Crete was on the tapis, or it might be the question of the Greek envoy to the Porte that the Sultan refused to receive, and which promised to turn out a very pretty quarrel if only adroitly treated.

The more Brammell thought of it, the more he felt assured this must be the reason of Atlee’s visit, and the more indignant he grew that extra-official means should be employed to investigate what he had written seventeen despatches to explain – seventeen despatches, with nine ‘inclosures,’ and a ‘private and confidential,’ about to appear in a blue-book.

To make the dinner as confidential as might be, the only guests besides Atlee were a couple of yachting Englishmen, a German Professor of Archæology, and the American Minister, who, of course, speaking no language but his own, could always be escaped from by a digression into French, German, or Italian.

Atlee felt, as he entered the drawing-room, that the company was what he irreverently called afterwards, a scratch team; and with an almost equal quickness, he saw that he himself was the ‘personage’ of the entertainment, the ‘man of mark’ of the party.

The same tact which enabled him to perceive all this, made him especially guarded in all he said, so that his host’s efforts to unveil his intentions and learn what he had come for were complete failures. ‘Greece was a charming country – Greece was the parent of any civilisation we boasted. She gave us those ideas of architecture with which we raised that glorious temple at Kensington, and that taste for sculpture which we exhibited near Apsley House. Aristophanes gave us our comic drama, and only the defaults of our language made it difficult to show why the member for Cork did not more often recall Demosthenes.’

As for insolvency, it was a very gentlemanlike failing; while brigandage was only what Sheil used to euphemise as ‘the wild justice’ of noble spirits, too impatient for the sluggard steps of slow redress, and too proud not to be self-reliant.

Thus excusing and extenuating wherein he could not flatter, Atlee talked on the entire evening, till he sent the two Englishmen home heartily sick of a bombastic eulogy on the land where a pilot had run their cutter on a rock, and a revenue officer had seized all their tobacco. The German had retired early, and the Yankee hastened to his lodgings to ‘jot down’ all the fine things he could commit to his next despatch home, and overwhelm Mr. Seward with an array of historic celebrities such as had never been seen at Washington.

‘They’re gone at last,’ said the Minister. ‘Let us have our cigar on the terrace.’

The unbounded frankness, the unlimited trustfulness that now ensued between these two men, was charming. Brammell represented one hard worked and sorely tried in his country’s service – the perfect slave of office, spending nights long at his desk, but not appreciated, not valued at home. It was delightful, therefore, to him, to find a man like Atlee to whom he could tell this – could tell for what an ungrateful country he toiled, what ignorance he sought to enlighten, what actual stupidity he had to counteract. He spoke of the Office – from his tone of horror it might have been the Holy Office – with a sort of tremulous terror and aversion: the absurd instructions they sent him, the impossible things he was to do, the inconceivable lines of policy he was to insist on; how but for him the king would abdicate, and a Russian protectorate be proclaimed; how the revolt at Athens would be proclaimed in Thessaly; how Skulkekoff, the Russian general, was waiting to move into the provinces ‘at the first check my policy shall receive here,’ cried he. ‘I shall show you on this map; and here are the names, armament, and tonnage of a hundred and ninety-four gunboats now ready at Nicholief to move down on Constantinople.’

Was it not strange, was it not worse than strange, after such a show of unbounded confidence as this, Atlee would reveal nothing? Whatever his grievances against the people he served – and who is without them? – he would say nothing, he had no complaint to make. Things he admitted were bad, but they might be worse. The monarchy existed still, and the House of Lords was, for a while at least, tolerated. Ireland was disturbed, but not in open rebellion; and if we had no army to speak of, we still had a navy, and even the present Admiralty only lost about five ships a year!

Till long after midnight did they fence with each other, with buttons on their foils – very harmlessly, no doubt, but very uselessly too: Brammell could make nothing of a man who neither wanted to hear about finance or taxation, court scandal, schools, or public robbery; and though he could not in so many words ask – What have you come for? why are you here? he said this in full fifty different ways for three hours and more.

‘You make some stay amongst us, I trust?’ said the Minister, as his guest rose to take leave. ‘You mean to see something of this interesting country before you leave?’

‘I fear not; when the repairs to the steamer enable her to put to sea, they are to let me know by telegraph, and I shall join her.’

‘Are you so pressed for time that you cannot spare us a week or two?’

‘Totally impossible! Parliament will sit in January next, and I must hasten home.’

This was to imply that he was in the House, or that he expected to be, or that he ought to be, and even if he were not, that his presence in England was all-essential to somebody who was in Parliament, and for whom his information, his explanation, his accusation, or anything else, was all needed, and so Brammell read it and bowed accordingly.

‘By the way,’ said the Minister, as the other was leaving the room, and with that sudden abruptness of a wayward thought, ‘we have been talking of all sorts of things and people, but not a word about what we are so full of here. How is this difficulty about the new Greek envoy to the Porte to end? You know, of course, the Sultan refuses to receive him?’

‘The Pasha told me something of it, but I confess to have paid little attention. I treated the matter as insignificant.’

‘Insignificant! You cannot mean that an affront so openly administered as this, the greatest national offence that could be offered, is insignificant?’ and then with a volubility that smacked very little of want of preparation, he showed that the idea of sending a particular man, long compromised by his complicity in the Cretan revolt, to Constantinople, came from Russia, and that the opposition of the Porte to accept him was also Russian. ‘I got to the bottom of the whole intrigue. I wrote home how Tsousicheff was nursing this new quarrel. I told our people facts of the Muscovite policy that they never got a hint of from their ambassador at St. Petersburg.’

‘It was rare luck that we had you here: good-night, good-night,’ said Atlee as he buttoned his coat.

‘More than that, I said, “If the Cabinet here persist in sending Kostalergi – “’

‘Whom did you say? What name was it you said?’

‘Kostalergi – the Prince. As much a prince as you are. First of all, they have no better; and secondly, this is the most consummate adventurer in the East.’

‘I should like to know him. Is he here – at Athens?’

‘Of course he is. He is waiting till he hears the Sultan will receive him.’

‘I should like to know him,’ said Atlee, more seriously.

‘Nothing easier. He comes here every day. Will you meet him at dinner to-morrow?’

‘Delighted! but then I should like a little conversation with him in the morning. Perhaps you would kindly make me known to him?’

‘With sincere pleasure. I’ll write and ask him to dine – and I’ll say that you will wait on him. I’ll say, “My distinguished friend Mr. Atlee, of whom you have heard, will wait on you about eleven or twelve.” Will that do?’

‘Perfectly. So then I may make my visit on the presumption of being expected?’

‘Certainly. Not that Kostalergi wants much preparation. He plays baccarat all night, but he is at his desk at six.’

‘Is he rich?’

‘Hasn’t a sixpence – but plays all the same. And what people are more surprised at, pays when he loses. If I had not already passed an evening in your company, I should be bold enough to hint to you the need of caution – great caution – in talking with him.’

‘I know – I am aware,’ said Atlee, with a meaning smile.

‘You will not be misled by his cunning, Mr. Atlee, but beware of his candour.’

‘I will be on my guard. Many thanks for the caution. Good-night! – once more, good-night!’

CHAPTER LXIV

GREEK MEETS GREEK

So excited did Atlee feel about meeting the father of Nina Kostalergi – of whose strange doings and adventurous life he had heard much – that he scarcely slept the entire night. It puzzled him greatly to determine in what character he should present himself to this crafty Greek. Political amateurship was now so popular in England, that he might easily enough pass off for one of those ‘Bulls’ desirous to make himself up on the Greek question. This was a part that offered no difficulty. ‘Give me five minutes of any man – a little longer with a woman – and I’ll know where his sympathies incline to.’ This was a constant boast of his, and not altogether a vain one. He might be an archæological traveller eager about new-discovered relics and curious about ruined temples. He might be a yachting man, who only cared for Salamis as good anchorage, nor thought of the Acropolis, except as a point of departure; or he might be one of those myriads who travel without knowing where, or caring why: airing their ennui now at Thebes, now at Trolhatten; a weariful, dispirited race, who rarely look so thoroughly alive as when choosing a cigar or changing their money. There was no reason why the ‘distinguished Mr. Atlee’ might not be one of these – he was accredited, too, by his Minister, and his ‘solidarity,’ as the French call it, was beyond question.

While yet revolving these points, a kavass – with much gold in his jacket, and a voluminous petticoat of white calico – came to inform him that his Excellency the Prince hope to see him at breakfast at eleven o’clock; and it now only wanted a few minutes of that hour. Atlee detained the messenger to show him the road, and at last set out.

Traversing one dreary, ill-built street after another, they arrived at last at what seemed a little lane, the entrance to which carriages were denied by a line of stone posts, at the extremity of which a small green gate appeared in a wall. Pushing this wide open, the kavass stood respectfully, while Atlee passed in, and found himself in what for Greece was a garden. There were two fine palm-trees, and a small scrub of oleanders and dwarf cedars that grew around a little fish-pond, where a small Triton in the middle, with distended cheeks, should have poured forth a refreshing jet of water, but his lips were dry, and his conch-shell empty, and the muddy tank at his feet a mere surface of broad water-lilies convulsively shaken by bull-frogs. A short shady path led to the house, a two-storeyed edifice, with the external stair of wood that seemed to crawl round it on every side.

In a good-sized room of the ground-floor Atlee found the prince awaiting him. He was confined to a sofa by a slight sprain, he called it, and apologised for his not being able to rise.

The prince, though advanced in years, was still handsome: his features had all the splendid regularity of their Greek origin; but in the enormous orbits, of which the tint was nearly black, and the indented temples, traversed by veins of immense size, and the firm compression of his lips, might be read the signs of a man who carried the gambling spirit into every incident of life, one ready ‘to back his luck,’ and show a bold front to fortune when fate proved adverse.

The Greek’s manner was perfect. There was all the ease of a man used to society, with a sort of half-sly courtesy, as he said, ‘This is kindness, Mr. Atlee – this is real kindness. I scarcely thought an Englishman would have the courage to call upon anything so unpopular as I am.’

‘I have come to see you and the Parthenon, Prince, and I have begun with you.’

‘And you will tell them, when you get home, that I am not the terrible revolutionist they think me: that I am neither Danton nor Félix Pyat, but a very mild and rather tiresome old man, whose extreme violence goes no further than believing that people ought to be masters in their own house, and that when any one disputes the right, the best thing is to throw him out of the window.’

‘If he will not go by the door,’ remarked Atlee.

‘No, I would not give him the chance of the door. Otherwise you make no distinction between your friends and your enemies. It is by the mild methods – what you call “milk-and-water methods” – men spoil all their efforts for freedom. You always want to cut off somebody’s head and spill no blood. There’s the mistake of those Irish rebels: they tell me they have courage, but I find it hard to believe them.’

‘Do believe them then, and know for certain that there is not a braver people in Europe.’

‘How do you keep them down, then?’

‘You must not ask me that, for I am one of them.’

‘You Irish?’

‘Yes, Irish – very Irish.’

‘Ah! I see. Irish in an English sense? Just as there are Greeks here who believe in Kulbash Pasha, and would say, Stay at home and till your currant-fields and mind your coasting trade. Don’t try to be civilised, for civilisation goes badly with brigandage, and scarcely suits trickery. And you are aware, Mr. Atlee, that trickery and brigandage are more to Greece than olives or dried figs?’

There was that of mockery in the way he said this, and the little smile that played about his mouth when he finished, that left Atlee in considerable doubt how to read him.

‘I study your newspapers, Mr. Atlee,’ resumed he. ‘I never omit to read your Times, and I see how my old acquaintance, Lord Danesbury, has been making Turkey out of Ireland! It is so hard to persuade an old ambassador that you cannot do everything by corruption!’

‘I scarcely think you do him justice.’

‘Poor Danesbury,’ ejaculated he sorrowfully.

‘You opine that his policy is a mistake?’

‘Poor Danesbury!’ said he again.

‘He is one of our ablest men, notwithstanding. At this moment we have not his superior in anything.’

‘I was going to say, Poor Danesbury, but I now say, Poor England.’

Atlee bit his lips with anger at the sarcasm, but went on, ‘I infer you are not aware of the exact share subordinates have had in what you call Lord Danesbury’s Irish blunders – ’

‘Pardon my interrupting you, but a really able man has no subordinates. His inferior agents are so thoroughly absorbed by his own individuality that they have no wills – no instincts – and, therefore, they can do no indiscretions They are the simple emanations of himself in action.’

‘In Turkey, perhaps,’ said Atlee, with a smile.

‘If in Turkey, why not in England, or, at least, in Ireland? If you are well served – and mind, you must be well served, or you are powerless – you can always in political life see the adversary’s hand. That he sees yours, is of course true: the great question then is, how much you mean to mislead him by the showing it? I give you an instance: Lord Danesbury’s cleverest stroke in policy here, the one hit probably he made in the East, was to have a private correspondence with the Khedive made known to the Russian embassy, and induce Gortschakoff to believe that he could not trust the Pasha! All the Russian preparations to move down on the Provinces were countermanded. The stores of grain that were being made on the Pruth were arrested, and three, nearly four weeks elapsed before the mistake was discovered, and in that interval England had reinforced the squadron at Malta, and taken steps to encourage Turkey – always to be done by money, or promise of money.’

‘It was a coup of great adroitness,’ said Atlee.

‘It was more,’ cried the Greek, with elation. ‘It was a move of such subtlety as smacks of something higher than the Saxon! The men who do these things have the instinct of their craft. It is theirs to understand that chemistry of human motives by which a certain combination results in effects totally remote from the agents that produce it. Can you follow me?’

‘I believe I can.’

‘I would rather say, Is my attempt at an explanation sufficiently clear to be intelligible?’

Atlee looked fixedly at him, and he could do so unobserved, for the other was now occupied in preparing his pipe, without minding the question. Therefore Atlee set himself to study the features before him. It was evident enough, from the intensity of his gaze and a certain trembling of his upper lip, that the scrutiny cost him no common effort. It was, in fact, the effort to divine what, if he mistook to read aright, would be an irreparable blunder.

With the long-drawn inspiration a man makes before he adventures a daring feat, he said: ‘It is time I should be candid with you, Prince. It is time I should tell you that I am in Greece only to see you.’

‘To see me?’ said the other, and a very faint flush passed across his face.

‘To see you,’ said Atlee slowly, while he drew out a pocket-book and took from it a letter. ‘This,’ said he, handing it, ‘is to your address.’ The words on the cover were M. Spiridionides.

‘I am Spiridion Kostalergi, and by birth a Prince of Delos,’ said the Greek, waving back the letter.

‘I am well aware of that, and it is only in perfect confidence that I venture to recall a past that your Excellency will see I respect,’ and Atlee spoke with an air of deference.

‘The antecedents of the men who serve this country are not to be measured by the artificial habits of a people who regulate condition by money. Your statesmen have no need to be journalists, teachers, tutors; Frenchmen and Italians are all these, and on the Lower Danube and in Greece we are these and something more. – Nor are we less politicians that we are more men of the world. – The little of statecraft that French Emperor ever knew, he picked up in his days of exile.’ All this he blurted out in short and passionate bursts, like an angry man who was trying to be logical in his anger, and to make an effort of reason subdue his wrath.

‘If I had not understood these things as you yourself understand them, I should not have been so indiscreet as to offer you that letter,’ and once more he proffered it.

This time the Greek took it, tore open the envelope, and read it through.

‘It is from Lord Danesbury,’ said he at length. ‘When we parted last, I was, in a certain sense, my lord’s subordinate – that is, there were things none of his staff or secretaries or attachés or dragomen could do, and I could do them. Times are changed, and if we are to meet again, it will be as colleagues. It is true, Mr. Atlee, the ambassador of England and the envoy of Greece are not exactly of the same rank. I do not permit myself many illusions, and this is not one of them; but remember, if Great Britain be a first-rate Power, Greece is a volcano. It is for us to say when there shall be an eruption.’

It was evident, from the rambling tenor of this speech, he was speaking rather to conceal his thoughts and give himself time for reflection, than to enunciate any definite opinion; and so Atlee, with native acuteness, read him, as he simply bowed a cold assent.

‘Why should I give him back his letters?’ burst out the Greek warmly. ‘What does he offer me in exchange for them? Money! mere money! By what presumption does he assume that I must be in such want of money, that the only question should be the sum? May not the time come when I shall be questioned in our chamber as to certain matters of policy, and my only vindication be the documents of this same English ambassador, written in his own hand, and signed with his name? Will you tell me that the triumphant assertion of a man’s honour is not more to him than bank-notes?’