Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851

"Why, I will tell you. The Marchesa conceals nothing from her brother, and he is one of the few Italians who are in high favor with the Austrian court."

"Well!"

"And I suspect that poor Dr. Riccabocca fled his country from some mad experiment at revolution, and is still hiding from the Austrian police."

"But they can't hurt him here," said Frank, with an Englishman's dogged inborn conviction of the sanctity of his native island. "I should like to see an Austrian pretend to dictate to us whom to receive and whom to reject."

"Hum – that's true and constitutional, no doubt; but Riccabocca may have excellent reasons – and, to speak plainly, I know he has, (perhaps as affecting the safety of friends in Italy) – for preserving his incognito, and we are bound to respect those reasons without inquiring further."

"Still, I can not think so meanly of Madame di Negra," persisted Frank (shrewd here, though credulous elsewhere, and both from his sense of honor), "as to suppose that she would descend to be a spy, and injure a poor countryman of her own, who trusts to the same hospitality she receives herself at our English hands. Oh, if I thought that, I could not love her!" added Frank, with energy.

"Certainly you are right. But see in what a false position you would place both her brother and herself. If they knew Riccabocca's secret, and proclaimed it to the Austrian government, as you say, it would be cruel and mean; but if they knew it and concealed it, it might involve them both in the most serious consequences. You know the Austrian policy is proverbially so jealous and tyrannical?"

"Well, the newspapers say so, certainly."

"And, in short, your discretion can do no harm, and your indiscretion may. Therefore, give me your word, Frank. I can't stay to argue now."

"I'll not allude to the Riccaboccas, upon my honor," answered Frank; "still I am sure they would be as safe with the Marchesa as with – "

"I rely on your honor," interrupted Randal, hastily, and hurried off.

CHAPTER V

Toward the evening of the following day, Randal Leslie walked slowly from a village on the main road (about two miles from Rood Hall), at which he had got out of the coach. He passed through meads and corn-fields, and by the skirts of woods which had formerly belonged to his ancestors, but had long since been alienated. He was alone amidst the haunts of his boyhood, the scenes in which he had first invoked the grand Spirit of Knowledge, to bid the Celestial Still One minister to the commands of an earthly and turbulent ambition. He paused often in his path, especially when the undulations of the ground gave a glimpse of the gray church tower, or the gloomy firs that rose above the desolate wastes of Rood.

"Here," thought Randal, with a softening eye – "here, how often, comparing the fertility of the lands passed away from the inheritance of my fathers, with the forlorn wilds that are left to their mouldering hall – here, how often have I said to myself – 'I will rebuild the fortunes of my house.' And straightway Toil lost its aspect of drudge, and grew kingly, and books became as living armies to serve my thought. Again – again – O thou haughty Past, brace and strengthen me in the battle with the Future." His pale lips writhed as he soliloquized, for his conscience spoke to him while he thus addressed his will, and its voice was heard more audibly in the quiet of the rural landscape, than amid the turmoil and din of that armed and sleepless camp which we call a city.

Doubtless, though Ambition have objects more vast and beneficent than the restoration of a name —that in itself is high and chivalrous, and appeals to a strong interest in the human heart. But all emotions, and all ends, of a nobler character, had seemed to filter themselves free from every golden grain in passing through the mechanism of Randal's intellect, and came forth at last into egotism clear and unalloyed. Nevertheless, it is a strange truth that, to a man of cultivated mind, however perverted and vicious, there are vouchsafed gleams of brighter sentiments, irregular perceptions of moral beauty, denied to the brutal unreasoning wickedness of uneducated villainy – which perhaps ultimately serve as his punishment – according to the old thought of the satirist, that there is no greater curse than to perceive virtue, yet adopt vice. And as the solitary schemer walked slowly on, and his childhood – innocent at least of deed – came distinct before him through the halo of bygone dreams – dreams far purer than those from which he now rose each morning to the active world of Man – a profound melancholy crept over him, and suddenly he exclaimed aloud, "Then I aspired to be renowned and great —now, how is it that, so advanced in my career, all that seemed lofty in the means has vanished from me, and the only means that I contemplate are those which my childhood would have called poor and vile? Ah! is it that I then read but books, and now my knowledge has passed onward, and men contaminate more than books? But," he continued in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself, "if power is only so to be won – and of what use is knowledge if it be not power – does not success in life justify all things? And who prizes the wise man if he fails?" He continued his way, but still the soft tranquillity around rebuked him, and still his reason was dissatisfied, as well as his conscience. There are times when Nature, like a bath of youth, seems to restore to the jaded soul its freshness – times from which some men have emerged, as if reborn. The crises of life are very silent. Suddenly the scene opened on Randal Leslie's eyes. The bare desert common – the dilapidated church – the old house, partially seen in the dank dreary hollow, into which it seemed to Randal to have sunken deeper and lowlier than when he saw it last. And on the common were some young men playing at hockey. That old-fashioned game, now very uncommon in England, except at schools, was still preserved in the primitive simplicity of Rood by the young yeomen and farmers. Randal stood by the stile and looked on, for among the players he recognized his brother Oliver. Presently the ball was struck toward Oliver, and the group instantly gathered round that young gentleman, and snatched him from Randal's eye; but the elder brother heard a displeasing din, a derisive laughter. Oliver had shrunk from the danger of the thick clubbed sticks that plied around him, and received some strokes across the legs, for his voice rose whining, and was drowned by shouts of, "Go to your mammy. That's Noll Leslie – all over. Butter shins."

Randal's sallow face became scarlet. "The jest of boors – a Leslie!" he muttered, and ground his teeth. He sprang over the stile, and walked erect and haughtily across the ground. The players cried out indignantly. Randal raised his hat, and they recognized him, and stopped the game. For him at least a certain respect was felt. Oliver turned round quickly, and ran up to him. Randal caught his arm firmly, and, without saying a word to the rest, drew him away toward the house. Oliver cast a regretful, lingering look behind him, rubbed his shins, and then stole a timid glance toward Randal's severe and moody countenance.

"You are not angry that I was playing at hockey with our neighbors," said he deprecatingly, observing that Randal would not break the silence.

"No," replied the elder brother; "but, in associating with his inferiors, a gentleman still knows how to maintain his dignity. There is no harm in playing with inferiors, but it is necessary to a gentleman to play so that he is not the laughing-stock of clowns."

Oliver hung his head, and made no answer. They came into the slovenly precincts of the court, and the pigs stared at them from the palings as they had stared years before, at Frank Hazeldean.

Mr. Leslie senior, in a shabby straw hat, was engaged in feeding the chickens before the threshold, and he performed even that occupation with a maundering lackadaisical slothfulness, dropping down the grains almost one by one from his inert dreamy fingers.

Randal's sister, her hair still and forever hanging about her ears, was seated on a rush-bottom chair, reading a tattered novel; and from the parlor window was heard the querulous voice of Mrs. Leslie, in high fidget and complaint.

Somehow or other, as the young heir to all this helpless poverty stood in the court-yard, with his sharp, refined, intelligent features, and his strange elegance of dress and aspect, one better comprehended how, left solely to the egotism of his knowledge and his ambition, in such a family, and without any of the sweet nameless lessons of Home, he had grown up into such close and secret solitude of soul – how the mind had taken so little nutriment from the heart, and how that affection and respect which the warm circle of the hearth usually calls forth had passed with him to the graves of dead fathers, growing, as it were, bloodless and ghoul-like amid the charnels on which they fed.

"Ha, Randal, boy," said Mr. Leslie, looking up lazily, "how d'ye do? Who could have expected you? My dear – my dear," he cried, in a broken voice, and as if in helpless dismay, "here's Randal, and he'll be wanting dinner, or supper, or something." But in the mean while, Randal's sister Juliet had sprung up and thrown her arms round her brother's neck, and he had drawn her aside caressingly, for Randal's strongest human affection was for this sister.

"You are growing very pretty, Juliet," said he, smoothing back her hair; "why do yourself such injustice – why not pay more attention to your appearance, as I have so often begged you to do?"

"I did not expect you, dear Randal; you always come so suddenly, and catch us en dish-a-bill."

"Dish-a-bill!" echoed Randal, with a groan. – "Dishabille!– you ought never to be so caught!"

"No one else does so catch us – nobody else ever comes! Heigho," and the young lady sighed very heartily.

"Patience, patience; my day is coming, and then yours, my sister," replied Randal with genuine pity, as he gazed upon what a little care could have trained into so fair a flower, and what now looked so like a weed.

Here Mrs. Leslie, in a state of intense excitement – having rushed through the parlor – leaving a fragment of her gown between the yawning brass of the never-mended Brummagem work-table – tore across the hall – whirled out of the door, scattering the chickens to the right and left, and clutched hold of Randal in her motherly embrace. "La, how you do shake my nerves," she cried, after giving him a most hearty and uncomfortable kiss. "And you are hungry, too, and nothing in the house but cold mutton! Jenny, Jenny, I say Jenny! Juliet, have you seen Jenny? Where's Jenny? Out with the old man, I'll be bound."

"I am not hungry, mother," said Randal; "I wish for nothing but tea." Juliet, scrambling up her hair, darted into the house to prepare the tea, and also to "tidy herself." She dearly loved her fine brother, but she was greatly in awe of him.

Randal seated himself on the broken pales. "Take care they don't come down," said Mr. Leslie, with some anxiety.

"Oh, sir, I am very light; nothing comes down with me."

The pigs stared up, and grunted in amaze at the stranger.

"Mother," said the young man, detaining Mrs. Leslie, who wanted to set off in chase of Jenny – "mother, you should not let Oliver associate with those village boors. It is time to think of a profession for him."

"Oh, he eats us out of house and home – such an appetite! But as to a profession – what is he fit for! He will never be a scholar."

Randal nodded a moody assent; for, indeed, Oliver had been sent to Cambridge, and supported there out of Randal's income from his official pay; – and Oliver had been plucked for his Little Go.

"There is the army," said the elder brother – "a gentleman's calling. How handsome Juliet ought to be – but – I left money for masters – and she pronounces French like a chambermaid."

"Yet she is fond of her book too. She's always reading, and good for nothing else."

"Reading! – those trashy novels!"

"So like you – you always come to scold, and make things unpleasant," said Mrs. Leslie, peevishly. "You are grown too fine for us, and I am sure we suffer affronts enough from others, not to want a little respect from our own children."

"I did not mean to affront you," said Randal, sadly. "Pardon me. But who else has done so?"

Then Mrs. Leslie went into a minute and most irritating catalogue of all the mortifications and insults she had received; the grievances of a petty provincial family, with much pretension and small power; of all people, indeed, without the disposition to please – without the ability to serve – who exaggerate every offense, and are thankful for no kindness. Farmer Jones had insolently refused to send his wagon twenty miles for coals. Mr. Giles, the butcher, requesting the payment of his bill, had stated that the custom at Rood was too small for him to allow credit. Squire Thornhill, who was the present owner of the fairest slice of the old Leslie domains, had taken the liberty to ask permission to shoot over Mr. Leslie's land, since Mr. Leslie did not preserve. Lady Spratt (new people from the city, who hired a neighboring country seat) had taken a discharged servant of Mrs. Leslie's without applying for the character. The Lord Lieutenant had given a ball, and had not invited the Leslies. Mr. Leslie's tenants had voted against their landlord's wish at the recent election. More than all, Squire Hazeldean and his Harry had called at Rood, and though Mrs. Leslie had screamed out to Jenny, "Not at home," she had been seen at the window, and the Squire had actually forced his way in, and caught the whole family "in a state not fit to be seen." That was a trifle, but the Squire had presumed to instruct Mr. Leslie how to manage his property, and Mrs. Hazeldean had actually told Juliet to hold up her head and tie up her hair, "as if we were her cottagers!" said Mrs. Leslie, with the pride of a Montfydget.

All these and various other annoyances, though Randal was too sensible not to perceive their insignificance, still galled and mortified the listening heir of Rood. They showed, at least, even to the well-meant officiousness of the Hazeldeans, the small account in which the fallen family was held. As he sat still on the moss-grown pale, gloomy and taciturn, his mother standing beside him, with her cap awry, Mr. Leslie shamblingly sauntered up and said, in a pensive, dolorous whine —

"I wish we had a good sum of money, Randal, boy!"

To do Mr. Leslie justice, he seldom gave vent to any wish that savored of avarice. His mind must be singularly aroused, to wander out of its normal limits of sluggish, dull content.

So Randal looked at him in surprise, and said, "Do you, sir? – why?"

"The manors of Rood and Dulmansberry, and all the lands therein, which my great-grandfather sold away, are to be sold again when Squire Thornhill's eldest son comes of age, to cut off the entail. Sir John Spratt talks of buying them. I should like to have them back again! 'Tis a shame to see the Leslie estates hawked about, and bought by Spratts and people. I wish I had a great – great sum of ready money."

The poor gentleman extended his helpless fingers as he spoke, and fell into a dejected reverie.

Randal sprang from the paling, a movement which frightened the contemplative pigs, and set them off squalling and scampering. "When does young Thornhill come of age?"

"He was nineteen last August. I know it, because the day he was born I picked up my fossil of the sea-horse, just by Dulmansberry church, when the joy-bells were ringing. My fossil sea-horse? It will be an heirloom, Randal – "

"Two years – nearly two years – yet – ah, ah!" said Randal; and his sister now appearing to announce that tea was ready, he threw his arm round her neck and kissed her. Juliet had arranged her hair and trimmed up her dress. She looked very pretty, and she had now the air of a gentlewoman – something of Randal's own refinement in her slender proportions and well-shaped head.

"Be patient, patient still, my dear sister," whispered Randal, "and keep your heart whole for two years longer."

The young man was gay and good-humored over his simple meal, while his family grouped round him. When it was over, Mr. Leslie lighted his pipe, and called for his brandy-and-water. Mrs. Leslie began to question about London and Court, and the new King and the new Queen, and Mr. Audley Egerton, and hoped Mr. Egerton would leave Randal all his money, and that Randal would marry a rich woman, and that the King would make him a prime-minister one of these days; and then she would like to see if Farmer Jones would refuse to send his wagon for coals! And every now and then, as the word "riches" or "money" caught Mr. Leslie's ear, he shook his head, drew his pipe from his mouth, and muttered, "A Spratt should not have what belonged to my great-great-grandfather, if I had a good sum of ready money! – the old family estates!" Oliver and Juliet sate silent, and on their good-behavior; and Randal, indulging his own reveries, dreamily heard the words "money," "Spratt," "great-great-grandfather," "rich wife," "family estates;" and they sounded to him vague and afar off, like whispers from the world of romance and legend – weird prophecies of things to be.

Such was the hearth which warmed the viper that nestled and gnawed at the heart of Randal, poisoned all the aspirations that youth should have rendered pure, ambition lofty, and knowledge beneficent and divine.

CHAPTER VI

When the rest of the household were in deep sleep, Randal stood long at his open window, looking over the dreary, comfortless scene – the moon gleaming from skies half-autumnal, half-wintry, upon squalid decay, through the ragged fissures of the firs; and when he lay down to rest, his sleep was feverish, and troubled by turbulent dreams.

However, he was up early, and with an unwonted color in his cheeks, which his sister ascribed to the country air. After breakfast, he took his way toward Hazeldean, mounted upon a tolerable horse, which he hired of a neighboring farmer who occasionally hunted. Before noon, the garden and terrace of the Casino came in sight. He reined in his horse, and by the little fountain at which Leonard had been wont to eat his radishes and con his book, he saw Riccabocca seated under the shade of the red umbrella. And by the Italian's side stood a form that a Greek of old might have deemed the Naiad of the Fount; for in its youthful beauty there was something so full of poetry – something at once so sweet and so stately – that it spoke to the imagination while it charmed the sense.

Randal dismounted, tied his horse to the gate, and, walking down a trellised alley, came suddenly to the spot. His dark shadow fell over the clear mirror of the fountain just as Riccabocca had said, "All here is so secure from evil! – the waves of the fountain are never troubled like those of the river!" and Violante had answered in her soft native tongue, and lifting her dark, spiritual eyes – "But the fountain would be but a lifeless pool, oh, my father, if the spray did not mount toward the skies!"

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

YOU'RE ANOTHER!

"You're another!" It's a vulgar retort, but a common one – though not much in use among well-bred people. But there are many ways of saying it – various modes of conveying the same meaning. "Et tu Brute," observed some one, on reading a debate in the House of Commons; "I often see these words quoted; what can they mean?" "I should say," was the answer, "they mean, 'Oh, you brute!'" "Well, I rather think they mean 'You're another!'" Let the classicist determine which interpretation is the right one.

"You're another!" may be conveyed in a mild tone and manner. For instance: – "The right honorable gentleman seems not to apprehend the points of the argument: he says he does not understand how so and so is so and so. We can only supply him with arguments level to the meanest capacity, not with brains. Nature having been sparing in her endowments to the honorable gentleman, must be matter of deep regret to those who are under the painful necessity of listening to the oft-times-refuted assertions and so-called arguments which he has advanced upon this very question."

The honorable gentleman, thus delicately alluded to, replies, "My honorable and learned friend (if he will permit me to call him so) complains that his arguments are not understood; the simple reason being that they are unintelligible. He calls them arguments level to the meanest capacity, and let me assure him they are level to the meanest capacity only, for they are his own. Let me hasten to relieve his anxiety as to the remarks which I have felt it my duty to make upon the question under discussion, by assuring him that they have been understood by those who have intelligence to appreciate them, though I am not prepared to vouch as much for my honorable and learned friend on the other side of the House." Thus,

Each lolls the tongue out at the other,And shakes his empty noddle at his brother.

One honorable member accuses another of stating that which is the "reverse of true" – the other responds by a charge of "gross misrepresentation of the facts of the case." Coalheavers would use a shorter and more emphatic word to express the same thing, though it would neither be classical nor conformable to the rules of the House. The Frenchman delicately defined a white lie to be "valking round about de trooth." We know what honorable members mean when they talk in the above guise. It is, "You're another!"

Dr. Whiston accuses the Chapter of Rochester with applying for their own purposes the funds bequeathed by pious men of former times for the education of the poor. The reply of the Chapter is – "You Atheist!" and they deprive the doctor of his living. Sir Samuel Romilly once proposed to alter the law of bankruptcy, and to make freehold estates assets appropriable for debts, like personal property. The existing law he held to be pregnant with dishonesty and fraud against creditors. Mr. Canning immediately was down upon him with the "You're another" argument. "Dishonesty!" he said, "why, this proposal is neither more nor less than a dangerous and most dishonest attack upon the aristocracy, and the beginning of something which may end, if carried, like the French Revolution."

Worthy men are often found differing about some speculative point, respecting which neither can have any more certain knowledge than the other, and they wax fierce and bitter, each devoting the other to a fate which we dare not venture to describe. One calls the other "bigot," who retorts by calling out "idolater," or perhaps "fanatic;" and the phrases are bandied about with the gusto and fervor of Billingsgate – the meaning of the whole is, "You're another!"

Literary men have frequently ventured into this bandying about of strange talk. Rival country editors have sometimes been great adepts in it; though the fashion is gradually going out of date. There is nothing like the bitterness of criticism now, which used to prevail some fifty years ago. Godwin mildly assailed Southey as a renegade, in return for which Southey abused Godwin's abominably ugly nose. Moore spoke slightingly of Leigh Hunt's Cockney poetry, and Leigh Hunt in reply ridiculed Moore's diminutive figure. Southey cut up Byron in the Reviews, and Byron cut up Southey in the Vision of Judgment. Scott did not appreciate Coleridge, and Coleridge spoke of Ivanhoe and The Bride of Lammermoor as "those wretched abortions."

You often hear of talkers who are "good at a retort." It means they can say "You're another!" in a biting, clever way. The wit of many men is of this kind – cutting and sarcastic. Nicknames grow out of it – the Christian calls the Turk an Infidel – as the Turk calls the Christian a Dog of an Unbeliever. Whig and Tory retort on each other the charge of oppressor. "The priest calls the lawyer a cheat, the lawyer beknaves the divine." It all means "You're another!" Phrenologists say the propensity arises in the organ of combativeness. However that may be, there is need of an abatement. Retort, even the most delicately put, is indignation, and indignation is the handsome brother of hatred. It breeds bitterness between man and man, and produces nothing but evil. The practice is only a modification of Billingsgate, cover it with what elegant device we may. In any guise the "You're another" style of speech ought to be deprecated and discountenanced.