Kitabı oku: «The Fortunes Of Glencore», sayfa 26

CHAPTER XLIII. DOINGS IN DOWNING STREET

The dull old precincts of Downing Street were more than usually astir. Hackney-coaches and cabs at an early hour, private chariots somewhat later, went to and fro along the dreary pavement, and two cabinet messengers with splashed calèches arrived in hot haste from Dover. Frequent, too, were the messages from the House; a leading Oppositionist was then thundering away against the Government, inveighing against the treacherous character of their foreign policy, and indignantly calling on them for certain despatches to their late envoy at Naples. At every cheer which greeted him from his party a fresh missive would be despatched from the Treasury benches, and the whisper, at first cautiously muttered, grew louder and louder, “Why does not Upton come down?”

So intricate has been the web of our petty entanglements, so complex the threads of those small intrigues by which we have earned our sobriquet of the “perfide Albion,” that it is difficult at this time of day to recall the exact question whose solution, in the words of the orator of the debate, “placed us either at the head of Europe, or consigned to us the fatal mediocrity of a third-rate power.” The prophecy, whichever way read, gives us unhappily no clew to the matter in hand, and we are only left to conjecture that it was an intervention in Spain, or “something about the Poles.” As is usual in such cases, the matter, insignificant enough in itself, was converted into a serious attack on the Government, and all the strength of the Opposition was arrayed to give power and consistency to the assault. As is equally usual, the cabinet was totally unprepared for defence; either they had altogether undervalued the subject, or they trusted to the secrecy with which they had conducted it; whichever of these be the right explanation, each minister could only say to his colleague, “It never came before me; Upton knows all about it.”

“And where is Upton? – why does he not come down?” – were again and again reiterated; while a shower of messages and even mandates invoked his presence.

The last of these was a peremptory note from no less a person than the Premier himself, written in three very significant words, thus: “Come, or go;” and given to a trusty whip, the Hon. Gerald Neville, to deliver.

Armed with this not very conciliatory document, the well-practised tactician drew up to the door of the Foreign Office, and demanded to see the Secretary of State.

“Give him this card and this note, sir,” said he to the well-dressed and very placid young gentleman who acted as his private secretary.

“Sir Horace is very poorly, sir; he is at this moment in a mineral bath; but as the matter you say is pressing, he will see you. Will you pass this way?”

Mr. Neville followed his guide through an infinity of passages, and at length reached a large folding-door, opening one side of which he was ushered into a spacious apartment, but so thoroughly impregnated with a thick and offensive vapor that he could barely perceive, through the mist, the bath in which Upton lay reclined, and the figure of a man, whose look and attitude bespoke the doctor, beside him.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” sighed Upton, extending two dripping fingers in salutation, “you have come in at the death. This is the last of it!”

“No, no; don’t say that,” cried the other, encouragingly. “Have you had any sudden seizure? What is the nature of it?”

“He,” said he, looking round to the doctor, “calls it ‘arachnoidal trismus,’ – a thing, he says, that they have all of them ignored for many a day, though Charlemagne died of it. Ah, Doctor,” – and he addressed a question to him in German.

A growled volley of gutturals ensued, and Upton went on: —

“Yes, Charlemagne, – Melancthon had it, but lingered for years. It is the peculiar affection of great intellectual natures over-taxed and over-worked.”

Whether there was that in the manner of the sick man that inspired hope, or something in the aspect of the doctor that suggested distrust, or a mixture of the two together, but certainly Neville rapidly rallied from the fears which had beset him on entering, and in a voice of a more cheery tone, said, —

“Come, come, Sir Horace, you ‘ll throw off this as you have done other such attacks. You have never been wanting either to your friends or yourself when the hour of emergency called. We are in a moment of such difficulty now, and you alone can rescue us.”

“How cruel of the Duke to write me that!” sighed Upton, as he held up the piece of paper, from which the water had obliterated all trace of the words. “It was so inconsiderate, – eh, Neville?”

“I’m not aware of the terms he employed,” said the other.

This was the very admission that Upton sought to obtain, and in a far more cheery voice he said, —

“If I was capable of the effort, – if Doctor Geimirstad thought it safe for me to venture, – I could set all this to right. These people are all talking ‘without book,’ Neville, – the ever-recurring blunder of an Opposition when they address themselves to a foreign question: they go upon a newspaper paragraph, or the equally incorrect ‘private communication from a friend.’ Men in office alone can attain to truth – exact truth – about questions of foreign policy.”

“The debate is taking a serious turn, however,” interposed Neville. “They reiterate very bold assertions, which none of our people are in a position to contradict. Their confidence is evidently increasing with the show of confusion in our ranks. Something must be done to meet them, and that quickly.”

“Well, I suppose I must go,” sighed Upton; and as he held out his wrist to have his pulse felt, he addressed a few words to the doctor.

“He calls it ‘a life period,’ Neville. He says that he won’t answer for the consequences.”

The doctor muttered on.

“He adds that the trismus may be thus converted into ‘Bi-trismus.’ Just imagine Bi-trismus!”

This was a stretch of fancy clear and away beyond Neville’s apprehension, and he began to feel certain misgivings about pushing a request so full of danger; but from this he was in a measure relieved by the tone in which Upton now addressed his valet with directions as to the dress he intended to wear. “The loose pelisse, with the astrakhan, Giuseppe, and that vest of cramoisie velvet; and if you will just glance at the newspaper, Neville, in the next room, I ‘ll come to you immediately.”

The newspapers of the morning after this interview afford us the speediest mode of completing the incidents; and the concluding sentences of a leading article will be enough to place before our readers what ensued: —

“It was at this moment, and amidst the most enthusiastic cheers of the Treasury bench, that Sir Horace Upton entered the House. Leaning on the arm of Mr. Neville, he slowly passed up and took his accustomed place. The traces of severe illness in his features, and the great debility which his gestures displayed, gave an unusual interest to a scene already almost dramatic in its character. For a moment the great chief of Opposition was obliged to pause in his assault, to let this flood-tide of sympathy pass on; and when at length he did resume, it was plain to see how much the tone of his invective had been tempered by a respect for the actual feeling of the House. The necessity for this act of deference, added to the consciousness that he was in presence of the man whose acts he so strenuously denounced, were too much for the nerves of the orator, and he came to an abrupt conclusion, whose confused and uncertain sentences scarcely warranted the cheers with which his friends rallied him.

“Sir Horace rose at once to reply. His voice was at first so inarticulate that we could but catch the burden of what he said, – a request that the House would accord him all the indulgence which his state of debility and suffering called for. If the first few sentences he uttered imparted a painful significance to the entreaty, it very soon became apparent that he had no occasion to bespeak such indulgence. In a voice that gained strength and fulness as he proceeded, he entered upon what might be called a narrative of the foreign policy of the administration, clearly showing that their course was guided by certain great principles which dictated a line of action firm and undeviating; that the measures of the Government, however modified by passing events in Europe, had been uniformly consistent, – based upon the faith of treaties, but ever mindful of the growing requirements of the age. Through a narrative of singular complexity he guided himself with consummate skill, and though detailing events which occupied every region of the globe, neither confusion nor inconsistency ever marred the recital, and names and places and dates were quoted by him without any artificial aid to memory.”

There was in the polished air, and calm, dispassionate delivery of the speaker, something which seemed to charm the ears of those who for four hours before had been so mercilessly assailed by all the vituperation and insolence of party animosity. It was, so to say, a period of relief and repose, to which even antagonists were not insensible. No man ever understood the advantage of his gifts in this way better than Upton, nor ever was there one who could convert the powers which fascinated society into the means of controlling a popular assembly, with greater assurance of success. He was a man of a strictly logical mind, a close and acute thinker; he was of a highly imaginative temperament, rich in all the resources of a poetic fancy; he was thoroughly well read, and gifted with a ready memory; but, above all these, – transcendently above them all, – he was a “man of the world;” and no one, either in Parliament or out of it, knew so well when it was wrong to say “the right thing.” But let us resume our quotation: —

“For more than three hours did the House listen with breathless attention to a narrative which in no parliamentary experience has been surpassed for the lucid clearness of its details, the unbroken flow of its relation. The orator up to this time had strictly devoted himself to explanation; he now proceeded to what might be called reply. If the House was charmed and instructed before, it was now positively astonished and electrified by the overwhelming force of the speaker’s raillery and invective. Not satisfied with showing the evil consequences that must ensue from any adoption of the measures recommended by the Opposition, he proceeded to exhibit the insufficiency of views always based upon false information.

“‘We have been taunted,’ said he, ‘with the charge of fomenting discords in foreign lands; we have been arraigned as disturbers of the world’s peace, and called the firebrands of Europe; we are exhibited as parading the Continent with a more than Quixotic ardor, since we seek less the redress of wrong than the opportunity to display our own powers of interference, – that quality which the learned gentleman has significantly stigmatized as a spirit of meddling impertinence, offensive to the whole world of civilization. Let me tell him, sir, that the very debate of this night has elicited, and from himself too, the very outrages he has had the temerity to ascribe to us. His has been this indiscriminate ardor, his this unjudging rashness, his this meddling impertinence (I am but quoting, not inventing, a phrase), by which, without accurate, without, indeed, any, information, he has ventured to charge the Government with what no administration would be guilty, of – a cool and deliberate violation of the national law of Europe.

“‘He has told you, sir, that in our eagerness to distinguish ourselves as universal redressers of injury, we have “ferreted out” – I take his own polished expression – the case of an obscure boy in an obscure corner of Italy, converted a commonplace and very vulgar incident into a tale of interest, and, by a series of artful devices and insinuations based upon this narrative, a grave and insulting charge upon one of the oldest of our allies. He has alleged that throughout the whole of those proceedings we had not the shadow of pretence for our interference; that the acts imputed occurred in a land over which we had no control, and in the person of an individual in whom we had no interest; that this Sebastiano Greppi – this image boy, for so with a courteous pleasantry he has called him – was a Neapolitan subject, the affiliated envoy of I know not what number of secret societies; that his sculptural pretensions were but pretexts to conceal his real avocations, – the agency of a bloodthirsty faction; that his crime was no less than an act of high treason; and that Austrian gentleness and mercy were never more conspicuously illustrated than in the commutation of a death-sentence to one of perpetual imprisonment.

“‘What a rude task is mine when I must say that for even one of these assertions there is not the slightest foundation in fact. Greppi’s offence was not a crime against the state; as little was it committed within the limits of the Austrian territory. He is not the envoy, or even a member, of any revolutionary club; he never – I am speaking with knowledge, sir – he never mingled in the schemes of plotting politicians; as far removed is he from sympathy with such men, as, in the genius of a great artist, he is elevated above the humble path to which the learned gentleman’s raillery would sentence him. For the character of “an image vendor,” the learned gentleman must look nearer home; and, lastly, this youth is an Englishman, and born of a race and a blood that need feel no shame in comparison with any I see around me!’

“To the loud cry of ‘Name, name,’ which now arose, Sir Horace replied: ‘If I do not announce the name at this moment, it is because there are circumstances in the history of the youth to which publicity would give irreparable pain. These are details which I have no right to bring under discussion, and which must inevitably thus become matters of town-talk. To any gentleman of the opposite side who may desire to verify the assertions I have made to the House, I would, under pledge of secrecy, reveal the name. I would do more; I would permit him to confide it to a select number of friends equally pledged with himself. This is surely enough?’”

We have no occasion to continue our quotation farther, and we take up our history as Sir Horace, overwhelmed by the warmest praises and congratulations, drove off from the House to his home. Amid all the excitement and enthusiasm which this brilliant success produced among the ministerialists, there was a kind of dread lest the overtaxed powers of the orator should pay the heavy penalty of such an effort. They had all heard how he came from a sick chamber; they had all seen him, trembling, faint, and almost voiceless, as he stole up to his place, and they began to fear lest they had, in the hot zeal of party, imperilled the ablest chief in their ranks.

What a relief to these agonies had it been, could they have seen Upton as he once more gained the solitude of his chamber, where, divested of all the restraints of an audience, he walked leisurely up and down, smoking a cigar, and occasionally smiling pleasantly as some “conceit” crossed his mind.

Had there been any one to mark him there, it is more than likely that he would have regarded him as a man revelling in the after-thought of a great success, – one who, having come gloriously through the combat, was triumphantly recalling to his memory every incident of the fight. How little had they understood Sir Horace Upton who would have read him in this wise! That daring and soaring nature rarely dallied in the past; even the present was scarcely full enough for the craving of a spirit that cried ever, “Forward!”

What might be made of that night’s success; how best it should be turned to account! – these were the thoughts which beset him, and many were the devices which his subtlety hit on to this end. There was not a goal his ambition could point to but which became associated with some deteriorating ingredient. He was tired of the Continent, he hated England, he shuddered at the Colonies. “India, perhaps,” said he, hesitatingly, – “India, perhaps, might do.” To continue as he was, – to remain in office, as having reached the topmost round of the ladder, – would have been insupportable indeed; and yet how, without longer service at his post, could any man claim a higher reward?

CHAPTER XLIV. THE SUBTLETIES OF STATECRAFT

It was not till Sir Horace had smoked his third cigar that he seated himself at his writing-table. He then wrote rapidly a brief note, of which he proceeded to make a careful copy. This he folded and placed in an envelope, addressing it to his Grace the Duke of Cloudeslie.

A few minutes afterwards he began to prepare for bed. The day was already breaking, and yet that sick man was unwearied and unwasted; not a trace of fatigue on features that, under the infliction of a tiresome dinner-party, would have seemed bereft of hope.

The tied-up knocker, the straw-strewn street, the closely drawn curtains announced to London the next morning that the distinguished minister was seriously ill; and from an early hour the tide of inquirers, in carriages and on foot, passed silently along that dreary way. High and mighty were the names inscribed in the porter’s book; royal dukes had called in person; and never was public solicitude more widely manifested. There is something very flattering in the thought of a great intelligence being damaged and endangered in our service! With all its melancholy influences, there is a feeling of importance suggested by the idea that for us and our interests a man of commanding powers should have jeoparded his life. There is a very general prejudice, not alone in obtaining the best article for our money, but the most of it also; and this sentiment extends to the individuals employed in the public service; and it is doubtless a very consolatory reflection to the tax-paying classes that the great functionaries of state are not indolent recipients of princely incomes, but hard-worked men of office, up late and early at their duties, – prematurely old, and worn out before their time! Something of this same feeling inspires much of the sympathy displayed for a sick statesman, – a sentiment not altogether void of a certain misgiving that we have probably over-taxed the energies employed in our behalf.

Scarcely one in a hundred of those who now called and “left their names” had ever seen Sir Horace Upton in their lives. Few are more removed from public knowledge than the men who fill even the highest places in our diplomacy. He was, therefore, to the mass a mere name. Since his accession to office little or nothing had been heard of him, and of that little, the greater part was made up of sneering allusions to his habits of indolence; impertinent hints about his caprices and his tastes. Yet now, by a grand effort in the “House,” and a well got-up report of a dangerous illness the day after, was he the most marked man in all the state, – the theme of solicitude throughout two millions of people!

There was a dash of mystery, too, in the whole incident, which heightened its flavor for public taste; a vague, indistinct impression – it did not even amount to rumor – was abroad, that Sir Horace had not been “fairly treated” by his colleagues; either that they could, if they wished it, have defended the cause themselves, or that they had needlessly called him from a sick bed to come to the rescue, or that some subtle trap had been laid to ensnare him. These were vulgar beliefs, which, if they obtained little credence in the higher region of club-life, were extensively circulated, and not discredited, in less distinguished circles. How they ever got abroad at all; how they found their ways into newspaper paragraphs, terrifying timid supporters of the ministry by the dread prospect of a “smash,” exciting the hopes of Opposition with the notion of a great secession, throwing broadcast before the world of readers every species of speculation, all kinds of combination, – who knows how all this happened? Who, indeed, ever knew how things a thousand times more secret ever got wind and became club-talk ere the actors in the events had finished an afternoon’s canter in the Park?

If, then, the world of London learned on the morning in question that Sir Horace Upton was very ill, it also surmised – why and wherefore it knows best – that the same Sir Horace was an ill-used man. Now, of all the objects of public sympathy and interest, next after a foreign emperor on a visit at Buckingham Palace, or a newly arrived hippopotamus at the Zoological Gardens, there is nothing your British public is so fond of as “an ill-used man.” It is essential, however, to his great success that he be ill-used in high places; that his enemies and calumniators should have been, if not princes, at least dukes and marquises and great dignitaries of the state. Let him only be supposed to be martyred by these, and there is no saying where his popularity may be carried. A very general impression is current that the mass of the nation is more or less “ill-used,” – denied its natural claims and just rewards. To hit upon, therefore, a good representation of this hard usage, to find a tangible embodiment of this great injustice, is a discovery that is never unappreciated.

To read his speech of the night before, and to peruse the ill-scrawled bulletin of his health at the hall door in the morning, made up the measure of his popularity, and the world exclaimed, “Think of the man they have treated in this fashion!” Every one framed the indictment to his own taste; nor was the wrong the less grievous that none could give it a name. Even cautious men fell into the trap, and were heard to say, “If all we hear be true, Upton has not been fairly treated.”

What an air of confirmation to all these rumors did it give, when the evening papers announced in the most striking type: Resignation of Sir Horace Upton. If the terms in which he communicated that step to the Premier were not before the world, the date, the very night of the debate, showed that the resolution had been come to suddenly.

Some of the journals affected to be in the whole secret of the transaction, and only waiting the opportune moment to announce it to the world. The dark, mysterious paragraphs in which journalists show their no-meanings abounded, and menacing hints were thrown out that the country would no longer submit to. – Heaven knows what. There was, besides all this, a very considerable amount of that catechetical inquiry, which, by suggesting a number of improbabilities, hopes to arrive at the likely, and thus, by asking questions where they had a perfect confidence they would never be answered, they seemed to overwhelm their adversaries with shame and discomfiture. The great fact, however, was indisputable, – Upton had resigned.

To the many who looked up at the shuttered windows of his sad-looking London house, this reflection occurred naturally enough, – How little the poor sufferer, on his sick bed, cared for the contest that raged around him; how far away were, in all probability, his thoughts from that world of striving and ambition whose waves came to his door-sills. Let us, in that privilege which belongs to us, take a peep within the curtained room, where a bright fire is blazing, and where, seated behind a screen, Sir Horace is now penning a note; a bland half smile rippling his features as some pleasant conceit has flashed across his mind. We have rarely seen him looking so well. The stimulating events of the last few days have done for him more than all the counsels of his doctors, and his eyes are brighter and his cheeks fuller than usual. A small miniature hangs suspended by a narrow ribbon round his neck, and a massive gold bracelet adorns one wrist, – “two souvenirs” which he stops to contemplate as he writes; nor is there a touch of sorrowful meaning in the glance he bestows upon them, – the look rather seems the self-complacent regard that a successful general might bestow on the decorations he had won by his valor. It is essentially vainglorious.

More than once has he paused to read over the sentence he has written, and one may see, by the motion of his lips as he reads, how completely he has achieved the sentiment he would express. “Yes, charming Princess,” said he, perusing the lines before him, “I’ve once more to throw myself at your feet, and reiterate the assurances of a devotion which has formed the happiness of my existence.” (“That does not sound quite French, after all,” muttered he; “better perhaps: ‘has formed the religion of my heart.’”) “I know you will reproach my precipitancy; I feel how your judgment, unerring as it ever is, will condemn what may seem a sudden ebullition of temper; but, I ask, is this amongst the catalogue of my weaknesses? Am I of that clay which is always fissured when heated? No. You know me better, —you alone of all the world have the clew to a heart whose affections are all your own. The few explanations of all that has happened must be reserved for our meeting. Of course, neither the newspapers nor the reviews have any conception of the truth. Four words will set your heart at ease, and these you must have: ‘I have done wisely;’ with that assurance you have no more to fear. I mean to leave this in all secrecy by the end of the week. I shall go over to Brussels, where you can address me under the name of Richard Bingham. I shall only remain there to watch events for a day or two, and thence on to Geneva.

“I am quite charmed with your account of poor Lady G – , though, as I read, I can detect how all the fascinations you tell of were but reflected glories. Your view of her situation is admirable, and, by your skilful tactique, it is she herself that ostracizes the society that would only have accepted her on sufferance. How true is your remark as to the great question at issue, – not her guilt or innocence, but what danger might accrue to others from infractions that invite publicity. The cabinet were discussing t’ other day a measure by which sales of estated property could be legalized without those tiresome and costly researches into title which, in a country where confiscations were frequent, became at last endless labor. Don’t you think that some such measure might be beneficially adopted as regards female character? Could there not be invented a species of social guarantee which, rejecting all investigation into bygones after a certain limit, would confer a valid title that none might dispute?

“Lawyers tell us that no man’s property would stand the test of a search for title. Are we quite certain how far the other sex are our betters in this respect; and might it not be wise to interpose a limit beyond which research need not proceed?

“I concur in all you say about G – himself. He was always looking for better security than he needed, – a great mistake, whether the investment consist of our affections or our money. Physicians say that if any man could only see the delicate anatomy on which his life depends, and watch the play of those organs that sustain him, he would not have courage to move a step or utter a loud word. Might we not carry the analogy into morals, and ask, is it safe or prudent in us to investigate too deeply? are we wise in dissecting motives? or would it not be better to enjoy our moral as we do our material health, without seeking to assure ourselves further?

“Besides all this, the untravelled Englishman – and such was Glencore when he married – never can be brought to understand the harmless levities of foreign life. Like a fresh-water sailor, he always fancies the boat is going to upset, and he throws himself out at the first ‘jobble’! I own to you frankly, I never knew the case in question; ‘how far she went,’ is a secret to me. I might have heard the whole story. It required some address in me to escape it; but I do detest these narrations, where truth is marred by passion, and all just inferences confused and confounded with vague and absurd suspicions.

“Glencore’s conduct throughout was little short of insanity; like a man who, hearing his banker is insecure, takes refuge in insolvency, he ruins himself to escape embarrassment. They tell me here that the shock has completely deranged his intellect, and that he lives a life of melancholy isolation in that old castle in Ireland.

“How few men in this world can count the cost of their actions, and make up that simple calculation, ‘How much shall I have to pay for it?’

“Take any view one pleases of the case, would it not have been better for him to have remained in the world and of it? Would not its pleasures, even its cares, have proved better ‘distractions’ than his own brooding thoughts? If a man have a secret ailment, does he parade it in public? Why, then, this exposure of a pain for which there is no sympathy?

“Life, after all, is only a system of compensations. Wish it to be whatever you please, but accept it as it really is, and make the best of it! For my own part, I have ever felt like one who, having got a most disastrous account of a road he was about to travel, is delightfully surprised to find the way better and the inns more comfortable than he looked for. In the main, men and women are very good; our mistake is, expecting to find people always in our own humor. Now, if one is very rich, this is practical enough; but the mass must be content to encounter disparity of mood and difference of taste at every step. There is, therefore, some tact required in conforming to these ‘irregularities,’ and unhappily everybody has not got tact.

“You, charming Princess, have tact; but you have beauty, wit, fascination, rank, – all that can grace high station, and all that high station can reflect upon great natural gifts; that you should see the world through a rose-tinted medium is a very condition of your identity; and there is truth, as well as good philosophy, in this view! You have often told me that if people were not exactly all that strict moralists might wish, yet that they made up a society very pleasant and livable withal, and that there was also a floating capital of kindness and good feeling quite sufficient to trade upon, and even grow richer by negotiating!