One Of Them

“‘Who is that fellow that’s talking there, with a voice like Lablache?’ asked a big man at the door; and then, as the answer was whispered in his ear, he said, ‘Send him out here to me.’

“Out I went, and found myself face to face with O’Connell.

“‘I want a man to stand for Drogheda to-morrow; the gentleman I expected cannot arrive there possibly before three. Will you address the electors, and speak till he comes? If he isn’t there by half-past three, you shall be returned!’

“‘Done!’ said I. And by five o’clock on the following evening Gorman O’Shea was at the top of the poll and declared Member for Drogheda! That was, I may say, the first lift I ever got from Fortune. May I never!” exclaimed O’Shea, half angrily, – “may I never, if he’s not asleep – and snoring! These Saxons beat the world for stupidity.”

The Member now suddenly bethought him that it would be a favorable moment to read his telegram, and so he tore open the envelope, and held it to the light. It was headed as usual, and addressed in full, showing that no parsimony defrauded him of his full title. The body of the despatch was, however, brief enough, and contained only one word, “Bosh!” It was clear, bold, and unmistakably “Bosh!” Could insolence go further than that? To send such a message a thousand miles, at the cost of one pound fourteen and sixpence!

“What the deuce? you’ve nearly upset the table!” cried Heathcote, waking suddenly up, as O’Shea with a passionate gesture had thrown one of the decanters into the other’s lap.

“I was asleep, like yourself, I suppose,” said the Member, roughly. “I must say, we are neither of us the very liveliest company.”

“It was that yarn of yours about attacking monkeys with a poker, or some stuff of that kind, set me off,” yawned Heathcote, drearily. “I had not felt the least sleepy till then.”

“Here, let us fill our glasses, and drink to the jolly time that is coming for us,” said O’Shea, with all his native recklessness.

“With all my heart; but I wish I could guess from what quarter it’s coming,” said Heathcote, despondingly.

If neither felt much disposed to converse, they each drank deeply; and although scarcely more than a word or two would pass between them, they sat thus, hour after hour, till it was long past midnight.

It was after a long silence between them that Heathcote said: “I never tried so hard in my life to get drunk, without success. I find it won’t do, though; I’m just as clearheaded and as low-spirited as when I started.”

“Bosh!” muttered O’Shea, half dreamily.

“It’s no such thing!” retorted Heathcote. “At any ordinary time one bottle of that strong Burgundy would have gone to my head; and see, now I don’t feel it.”

“Maybe you ‘re fretting about something. It’s perhaps a weight on your heart – ”

“That’s it!” sighed out the other, as though the very avowal were an inexpressible relief to him.

“Is it for a woman?” asked O’Shea.

The other nodded, and then leaned his head on his hand.

“Upon my conscience, I sometimes think they ‘re worse than the Jews,” said the Member, violently; “and there’s no being ‘up to them.’”

“It’s our own fault, then,” cried Heathcote; “because we never play fairly with them.”

“Bosh!” muttered O’Shea, again.

“I defy you to deny it,” cried he, angrily.

“I ‘d like a five-pound note to argue it either way,” said O’Shea.

As if offended by the levity of the speech, Heathcote turned away and said nothing.

“When you get down to Rome, and have some fun over those ox-fences, you ‘ll forget all about her, whoever she is,” said O’Shea.

“I’m for England to-morrow, and for India next week, if they ‘ll have me.”

“Well, if that’s not madness – ”

“No, sir, it is not,” broke in Heathoote, angrily; “nor will I permit you or any other man to call it so.”

“What I meant was, that when a fellow had your prospects before him, India ought n’t to tempt him, even with the offer of the Governor-Generalship.”

“Forgive me my bad temper, like a good fellow,” cried Heathoote, grasping the other’s hand; “but, in honest truth, I have no prospects, no future, and there is not a more hopeless wretch to be found than the man before you.”

O’Shea was very near saying “Bosh!” once more, but he coughed it under.

Like all bashful men who have momentarily given way to impatience, Charles Heathoote was over eager to obtain his companion’s good will, and so he dashed at once into a full confession of all the difficulties that beset, and all the cares that surrounded him. O’Shea had never known accurately, till now, the amount of May Leslie’s fortune, nor how completely she was the mistress of her own fate. Neither had he ever heard of that strange provision in the will which imposed a forfeit upon her if unwilling to accept Charles Heathcote as her husband, – a condition which he shrewdly judged to be the very surest of all ways to prevent their marriage.

“And so you released her?” cried he, as Heathoote finished his narrative.

“Released her! No. I never considered that she was bound. How could I?”

“Upon my conscience,” muttered the O’Shea, “it is a hard case – a mighty hard case – to see one’s way in; for if, as you say, it’s not a worthy part for a man to compel a girl to be his wife just because her father put it in his will, it’s very cruel to lose her only because she has a fine property.”

“It is for no such reason,” broke in Heathoote, half angrily. “I was unwilling – I am unwilling – that May Leslie should be bound by a contract she never shared in.

“That’s all balderdash!” cried O’Shea, with energy.

“What do you mean, sir?” retorted the other, passionately.

“What I mean is this,” resumed he: “that it’s all balderdash to talk of the hardship of doing things that we never planned out for ourselves. Sure, ain’t we doing them every moment of our lives? Ain’t I doing something because you contrived it? and ain’t you doing something else because I left it in your way?”

“It comes to this, then, that you ‘d marry a girl who did n’t care for you, if the circumstances were such as to oblige her to accept you?”

“Not absolutely, – not unreservedly,” replied O’Shea.

“Well, what is the reservation? Let us hear it.”

“Her fortune ought to be suitable.”

“Oh, this is monstrous!”

“Hear me out before you condemn me. In marriage, as in everything else, you must take it out in malt or in meal: don’t fancy that you ‘re going to get love and money too. It’s only in novels such luck exists.”

“I’m very glad I do not share your sentiments,” said Charles, sternly.

“They ‘re practical, anyway. But now to another point. Here we are, sitting by the fire in all frankness and candor. Answer me fairly two questions: Have you given up the race?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, have you any objection if I enter for the stakes myself?”

“You! Do you mean that you would propose for May Leslie?”

“I do; and, what’s more, I don’t despair of success, either.”

An angry flush rose to Heathcote’s face, and for a moment it seemed as if his passion was about to break forth; but he mastered it, and, rising slowly, said: “If I thought such a thing possible, it would very soon cure me of one sorrow.” After a pause, he added: “As for me, I have no permission to give or to withhold. Go, by all means, and make your offer. I only ask one thing: it is, that you will honestly tell me afterwards how it has been received.”

“That I pledge my word to. Where do you stop in Paris?”

“At the Windsor.”

“Well, you shall have a despatch from me, or see myself there, by Saturday evening; one or the other I swear to.”

“Agreed. I’ll not wish you success, for that would be hypocritical, but I ‘ll wish you well over it!” And with this speech, uttered in a tone of jeering sarcasm, Heathcote said good-bye, and departed.

CHAPTER XXII. THE PUBLIC SERVANT ABROAD

We scarcely thought that the distinguished public servant, Mr. Ogden, was likely to occupy once more any portion of our readers’ attention; and yet it so fell out that this useful personage, being on the Continent getting up his Austria and Northern Italy for the coming session, received a few lines from the Earl of Sommerville, half mandatory, half entreating, asking him to find out the young Marquis of Agincourt, and take him back with him to England.

Now the Earl was a great man, for he was father-in-law of a Cabinet Minister, and related to half the leaders of the party, so that Mr. Ogden, however little the mission suited his other plans, was fain at once to accept it, and set out in search of his charge.

We need not follow him in his pursuit through Lombardy and the Legations, down to Tuscany and Lucca, which latter city he reached at the close of a cold and dreary day of winter, cheered to him, however, by the certainty that he had at length come up with the object of his chase.

It was a habit with Quackinboss, whenever he sent out Layton’s servant on an errand, to leave the house door ajar, that the sick man might not be disturbed by the loud summons of the bell; and so on the evening in question was it found by Mr. Ogden, who, after some gentle admonitions by his knuckles and some preparatory coughs, at last groped his way into the interior, and eventually entered the spacious sitting-room. Quackinboss had dined, and was seated at his wine beside an ample fireplace, with a blazing wood-fire. An old-fashioned screen sheltered him from the draught of the ill-fitting windows, while a comfortable buffalo rug was stretched under his feet. The Colonel was in his second cigar, and in the drowsy mood of its easy enjoyment, when the harsh accents of Mr. Ogden’s voice startled him, by asking, “Can you inform me if Lord Agincourt lives here?”

“You ‘re a Britisher now, I expect?” said the Colonel, as he slowly puffed out a long volume of smoke, but never moved from his seat.

“My question having the precedence, sir, it will be, perhaps, more regular to answer it first,” said Ogden, with a slow pertinacity.

“Well, I ain’t quite sure o’ that, stranger.” drawled out the other. “Mine was a sort of an amendment, and so might be put before the original motion.”

The remark chimed in well with the humor of one never indisposed to word-fencing, and so he deferred to the suggestion, told his name and his object in coming. “And now, sir,” added he, “I hope not to be deemed indiscreet in asking an equal candor from you.”

“You ain’t a doctor?” asked Quackinboss.

“No, sir; not a physician, at least.”

“That’s a pity,” said Quackinboss, slowly, as he brushed the ashes off his cigar. “Help yourself, stranger; that’s claret, t’other’s the country wine, and this is cognac, – all three bad o’ their kind; but, as they say here to everything, ‘Come si fa, eh? Come si fa!’”

“It is not from any disparagement of your hospitality, sir,” said Ogden, somewhat pompously, “that I am forced to recall you to my first question.”

“Come si fa!” repeated Quackinboss, still ruminating over the philosophy of that expression, one of the very few he had ever succeeded in committing to memory.

“Am I to conclude, sir, that you decline giving me the information I ask?”

“I ain’t in a witness-box, stranger. I ‘m a-sittin’ at my own fireside. I ‘m a-smokin’ my Virginian, where I ‘ve a right to, and if you choose to come in neighborly-like, and take a liquor with me, we ‘ll talk it over, whatever it is; but if you think to come Holy Office and the Inquisition over Shaver Quackinboss, you ‘ve caught the wrong squirrel by the tail, Britisher, you have!”

“I must say, sir, you have put a most forced and unfair construction upon a very simple circumstance. I asked you if the Marquis of Agincourt resided here?”

“And so you ain’t a doctor?” said Quackinboss, pensively.

“No, sir; I have already told you as much.”

“Bred to the law, belike?”

“I have studied, sir, but not practised as a lawyer.”

“Well, now, I expected you was!” said Quackinboss, with an air of self-satisfaction. “You chaps betray yourselves sooner than any other class in all creation; as Flay Harris says: ‘A lawyer is a fellow won’t drink out of the bung-hole, but must always be for tapping the cask for himself.’ You ain’t long in these parts?”

“No, sir; a very short time, indeed,” said Ogden, drearily.

“You needn’t sigh about it, stranger, though it is main dull in these diggin’s! Here’s a people that don’t understand human natur’. What I mean, sir, is, human natur’ means goin’ ahead; doin’ a somewhat your father and your grandfather never so much as dreamt of. But what are these critturs about? Jest showin’ the great things that was done centuries before they was born, – what pictures and statues and monuments their own ancestors could make, and of which they are jest showmen, nothing more!”

“The Arts are Italy’s noblest inheritance,” said Ogden, sententionsly.

“That ain’t my platform, stranger. Civilization never got anything from painters or sculptors. They never taught mankind to be truthful or patient or self-denyin’ or charitable. You may look at a bronze Hercules till you ‘re black in the face, and it will never make you give a cent to a lame cripple. I ‘ll go further again, stranger, and I ‘ll say that there ain’t anything has thrown so many stumblin’-blocks before pro-gress as what you call the Arts, for there ain’t the equal o’ them to make people idlers. What’s all that loafing about galleries, I ask ye, but the worst of all idling? If you want them sort of emotions, go to the real article, sir. Look at an hospital, that’s more life-like than Gerard Dow and his dropsical woman, – ay, and may touch your heart, belike, before you get away.”

“Though your conversation interests me much, sir, you will pardon my observing that I feel myself an intruder.”

“No, you ain’t; I’m jest in a talkin’ humor, and I’d rather have you than that Italian crittur, as don’t understand me.”

“Even the flattery of your observation, sir, cannot make me forget that another object claims my attention.”

“For I ‘ve remarked,” resumed Quackinboss, as if in continuation of his speech, “that a foreigner that don’t know English wearies after a while in listenin’, even though you ‘re tellin’ him very interesting things.”

“I perceive, sir,” said Ogden, rising, “that I have certainly been mistaken in the address. I was told that at the Palazzo Barsotti – ”

“Well, you ‘re jest there; that’s what they call this ramshackle old crazy consarn. Their palaces, bein’ main like their nobility, would be all the better for a little washin’ and smartenin’ up.”

“You can perhaps, however, inform me where Lord Agincourt does live?”

“Well, he lives, as I may say, a little promiscuous. If he ain’t here. it’s because he’s there! You understand?”

“I cannot say very confidently that I do understand,” said Ogden, slowly.

“It was well as you was n’t a practisin’ lawyer, Britisher, for you ain’t smart! that’s a fact. No, sir; you ain’t smart!”

“Your countrymen’s estimate of that quality has a high standard, sir,” said Ogden, haughtily.

“What do you mean by my countrymen?” asked the other, quickly.

“I ventured to presume that you were an American,” said Ogden, with a supercilious smile.

“Well, stranger, you were main right; though darn me con-siderable if I know how you discovered it. Don’t you be a-goin’, now that we ‘re gettin’ friendly together. Set down a bit. Maybe you ‘d taste a morsel of something.”

“Excuse me, I have just dined.”

“Well, mix a summut in your glass. It’s a rare pleasure to me, stranger, to have a chat with a man as talks like a Christian. I’m tired of ‘Come si fa,’ – that’s a fact, sir.”

“I regret that I cannot profit by your polite invitation,” said Ogden, bowing stiffly. “I had been directed to this house as the residence of Lord Agincourt and his tutor; and as neither of them live here – ”

“Who told you that? There’s one of them a-bed in that room there; he’s caught swamp-fever, and it’s gone up to the head. He’s the tutor, – poor fellow.”

“And the Marquis?”

“The Marquis! he’s a small parcel to have such a big direction on him, ain’t he? He’s at a villa, a few miles off; but he ‘ll be over here to-morrow morning.”

“You are quite sure of that?” asked Ogden.

“Yes, sir,” said Quackinboss, drinking off his glass, and nodding, in token of salutation.

“I must beg you to accept my excuses for this intrusion on my part,” began Ogden.

“Jest set you down there again; there’s a point I ‘d like to be cleared up about I ‘m sure you ‘ll not refuse me. Jest set down.”

Ogden resumed his seat, although with an air and manner of no small disinclination.

“No wine, thank you. Excuse me,” said he, stiffly, as Quackinboss tried to fill his glass.

“You remarked awhile ago,” said Quackinboss, slowly, and like a man weighing all his words, “that I was an American born. Now, sir, it ain’t a very likely thing that any man who was ever raised in the States is goin’ to deny it. It ain’t, I say, very probable as he ‘d say I’m a Chinese, or a Mexican, or a Spaniard; no, nor a Britisher. Whatever we do in this life, stranger, one thing, I suppose, is pretty certain, – we don’t say the worst of ourselves. Ain’t that your platform, sir?”

“I agree to the general principle.”

“Agreein’, then, to the gen’ral principle, here’s where we go next, for I ain’t a-goin’ to let you off, Britisher; I ‘ve got a harpoon in you now, and I ‘ll tow you after me into shoal water; see if I don’t. Agreein’, as we say, to the gen’ral principle, that no man likes to make his face blacker than it need be, what good could it do me to say that I wasn’t born a free citizen of the freest country of the universe?”

“I am really at a loss to see how I am interested in this matter. I have not, besides, that perfect leisure abstract discussion requires. You will forgive me if I take my leave.” He moved hastily towards the door as he spoke, followed by Quackinboss, whose voice had now assumed the full tones and the swelling modulations of public oratory.

“That great land, sanctified by the blood of the pilgrim fathers, and whose proudest boast it is that from the first day, when the star-spangled banner of Freedom dallied with the wind and scorned the sun, waving its barred folds over the heads of routed enemies, – to that glorious consummation, when, from the rugged plains of New England to the golden groves of Florida – ”

“Good-bye, sir, – good-evening,” said Ogden, passing out and gaining the landing-place.

“ – One universal shout, floating over the Atlantic waters, proclaimed to the Old World that the ‘Young’ was alive and kickin’ – ”

“Good-night,” cried Ogden, from the bottom of the stairs; and Quackinboss re-entered his chamber and banged the door after him, muttering something to himself about Lexington and Concord, Columbus and Quincy Adams.

CHAPTER XXIII. BROKEN TIES

It was a sorrowful morning at the Villa Caprini on the 22d of November. Agincourt had come to take his last farewell of his kind friends, half heart-broken that he was not permitted even to see poor Layton before he went. Quackinbose, however, was obdurate on the point, and would suffer no one to pass the sick man’s door. Mr. Ogden sat in the carriage as the boy dashed hurriedly into the house to say “Good-bye.” Room after room he searched in vain. No one to be met with. What could it mean? – the drawing-room, the library, all empty!

“Are they all out, Fenton?” cried he, at last.

“No, my Lord, Sir William was here a moment since, Miss Leslie is in her room, and Mrs. Morris, I think, is in the garden.”

To the garden he hurried off at once, and just caught sight of Mrs. Morris and Clara, as, side by side, they turned the angle of an alley.

“At last!” cried he, as he came up with them. “At last I have found some one. Here have I been this half-hour in search of you all, over house and grounds. Why, what’s the matter? – what makes you look so grave?”

“Don’t you know? – haven’t you heard?” cried Mrs. Morris, with a sigh.

“Heard what?”

“Heard that Charles has gone off, – started for England last night, with the intention of joining the first regiment ordered for India.”

“I wish to Heaven he ‘d have taken me with him!” cried the boy, eagerly.

“Very possibly,” said she, dryly; “but Charles was certainly to blame for leaving a home of happiness and affection in this abrupt way. I don’t see how poor Sir William is ever to get over it, not to speak of leaving May Leslie. I hope, Agincourt, this is not the way you ‘ll treat the young lady you ‘re betrothed to.”

“I ‘ll never get myself into any such scrape, depend on’t. Poor Charley!”

“Why not poor May?” whispered Mrs. Morris.

“Well, poor May, too, if she cared for him; but I don’t think she did.”

“Oh, what a shame to say so! I ‘m afraid you young gentlemen are brought up in great heresies nowadays, and don’t put any faith in love.”

Had the boy been an acute observer, he would have marked how little the careless levity of the remark coincided with the assumed sadness of her former manner; but he never noticed this.

“Well,” broke in the boy, bluntly, “why not marry him, if she cared for him? I don’t suppose you ‘ll ask me to believe that Charley would have gone away if she had n’t refused him?”

“What a wily serpent it is!” said Mrs. Morris, smiling; “wanting to wring confidences from me whether I will or no.”

“No. I ‘ll be hanged if I am wily, – am I, Clara?”

What Clara answered was not very distinct, for her face was partly covered with her handkerchief.

“There, you see Clara is rather an unhappy witness to call to character. You ‘d better come to me for a reputation,” said Mrs. Morris, laughingly.

“It’s no matter, I’m going away now,” said he, sorrowfully.

“Going away, – where?”

“Going back to England; they ‘ve sent a man to capture me, as if I was a wild beast, and he’s there at the door now, – precious impatient, too, I promise you, because I ‘m keeping the post-horses waiting.”

“Oh, make him come in to luncheon. He’s a gentleman, – isn’t he?”

“I should think he is! A great political swell, too, a something in the Admiralty, or the Colonies, or wherever it is.”

“Well, just take Clara, and she ‘ll find out May for you, and send your travelling-companion into the garden here. I’ll do the honors to him till lunch-time.” And Mrs. Morris now turned into a shady walk, to think over what topics she should start for the amusement of the great official from Downing Street.

If we were going to tell tales of her, – which we are not, – we might reveal how it happened that she had seen a good deal of such sort of people, at one era of her life, living in a Blue-Book atmosphere, and hearing much out of “Hansard.” We merely mention the fact; as to the how, it is not necessary to refer to it. Not more are we bound to say why she did not retain for such high company what, in French, is called “the most distinguished consideration,” – why, on the contrary, she thought and pronounced them the most insupportable of all bores. Our readers cannot fail to have remarked and appreciated the delicate reserve we have unvaryingly observed towards this lady, – a respectful courtesy that no amount of our curiosity could endanger. Now, “charming women,” of whom Mrs. M. was certainly one, have a great fondness for little occasional displays of their fascinations upon strangers. Whether it is that they are susceptible of those emotions of vanity that sway smaller natures, or whether it be merely to keep their fascinations from rusting by want of exercise, is hard to say; but so is the fact, and the enjoyment is all the higher when, by any knowledge of a speciality, they can astonish their chance acquaintance. For what Lord Agincourt had irreverently styled the “great political swell,” she therefore prepared herself with such memories as some years of life had stored for her. “He’ll wonder,” thought she, “where I came by all my Downing Street slang. I ‘ll certainly puzzle him with my cant of office.” And so thinking, she walked briskly along in the clear frosty air over the crisped leaves that strewed the walk, till she beheld a person approaching from the extreme end of the alley.

The distance between them was yet considerable, and yet how was it that she seemed to falter in her steps, and suddenly, clasping her heart with both hands, appeared seized with a sort of convulsion? At the same instant she threw a terrified glance on every side, and looked like one prepared for sudden flight. To these emotions, more rapid in their course than it has taken time to describe them, succeeded a cold, determined calm, in which her features regained their usual expression, though marked by a paleness like death.