Lord Danesbury read Atlee’s letter with an enjoyment not unlike the feeling an old sportsman experiences in discovering that his cover hack—an animal not worth twenty pounds—was a capital fencer; that a beast only destined to the commonest of uses should actually have qualities that recalled the steeplechaser—that the scrubby little creature with the thin neck and the shabby quarters should have a turn of speed and a ‘big jump’ in him, was something scarcely credible, and highly interesting.
Now political life has its handicaps like the turf, and that old jockey of many Cabinets began seriously to think whether he might not lay a little money on that dark horse Joe Atlee, and make something out of him before he was better known in ‘the ring.’
He was smarting, besides, under the annoyances of that half-clever fellow Walpole, when Atlee’s letter reached him, and though the unlucky Cecil had taken ill and kept his room ever since his arrival, his Excellency had never forgiven him, nor by a word or sign showed any disposition to restore him to favour.
That he was himself overwhelmed by a correspondence, and left to deal with it almost alone, scarcely contributed to reconcile him to a youth who was not really ill, but smarting, as he deemed it, under a recent defeat; and he pointed to the mass of papers which now littered his breakfast-table, and querulously asked his niece if that brilliant young gentleman upstairs could be induced to postpone his sorrows and copy a despatch.
‘If it be not something very difficult or requiring very uncommon care, perhaps I could do it myself.’
‘So you could, Maude, but I want you too—I shall want you to copy out parts of Atlee’s last letter, which I wish to place before the Foreign Office Secretary. He ought to see what his protégé Brumsey is making of it. These are the idiots who get us into foreign wars, or those apologetic movements in diplomacy, which are as bad as lost battles. What a contrast to Atlee—a rare clever dog, Atlee—and so awake, not only to one, but to every contingency of a case. I like that fellow—I like a fellow that stops all the earths! Your half-clever ones never do that; they only do enough to prolong the race; they don’t win it. That bright relative of ours—Cecil—is one of those. Give Atlee Walpole’s chances, and where would he be?’
A very faint colour tinged her cheek as she listened, but did not speak.
‘That’s the real way to put it,’ continued he, more warmly. ‘Say to Atlee, “You shall enter public life without any pressing need to take office for a livelihood; you shall have friends able to push you with one party, and relations and connections with the Opposition, to save you from unnecessary cavil or question; you shall be well introduced socially, and have a seat in the House before—” What’s his age? five-and-twenty?’
‘I should say about three-and-twenty, my lord; but it is a mere guess.’
‘Three-and-twenty is he? I suspect you are right—he can’t be more. But what a deal the fellow has crammed for that time—plenty of rubbish, no doubt: old dramatists and such like; but he is well up in his treaties; and there’s not a speaker of eminence in the House that he cannot make contradict himself out of Hansard.’
‘Has he any fortune?’ sighed she, so lazily that it scarcely sounded as a question.
‘I suppose not.’
‘Nor any family?’
‘Brothers and sisters he may have—indeed, he is sure to have; but if you mean connections—belonging to persons of admitted station—of course he has not. The name alone might show it.’
Another little sigh, fainter than before, followed, and all was still.
‘Five years hence, if even so much, the plebeian name and the unknown stock will be in his favour; but we have to wade through a few dreary measures before that. I wish he was in the House—he ought to be in the House.’
‘Is there a vacancy?’ said she lazily.
‘Two. There is Cradford, and there is that Scotch place—the something-Burg, which, of course, one of their own people will insist on.’
‘Couldn’t he have Cradford?’ asked she, with a very slight animation.
‘He might—at least if Brand knew him, he’d see he was the man they wanted. I almost think I’ll write a line to Brand, and send him some extracts of the last letter. I will—here goes.’
‘If you’ll tell me—’
‘DEAR B.,—Read the inclosed, and say have you anybody better than the writer for your ancient borough of Cradford? The fellow can talk, and I am sure he can speak as well as he writes. He is well up in all Irish press iniquities. Better than all, he has neither prejudices nor principles, nor, as I believe, a five-pound note in the world. He is now in Greece, but I’ll have him over by telegraph if you give me encouragement.
‘Tell Tycross at F. O. to send Walpole to Guatemala, and order him to his post at once. G. will have told you that I shall not go back to Ireland. The blunder of my ever seeing it was the blackest in the life of yours, DANESBUBY.’
The first letter his lordship opened gave him very little time or inclination to bestow more thought on Atlee. It was from the head of the Cabinet, and in the coldest tone imaginable. The writer directed his attention to what had occurred in the House the night before, and how impossible it was for any Government to depend on colleagues whose administration had been so palpably blundering and unwise. ‘Conciliation can only succeed by the good faith it inspires. Once that it leaks out you are more eager to achieve a gain than confer a benefit, you cease to conciliate, and you only cajole. Now your lordship might have apprehended that, in this especial game, the Popish priest is your master and mine—not to add that he gives an undivided attention to a subject which we have to treat as one amongst many, and with the relations and bearings which attach it to other questions of state.
‘That you cannot, with advantage to the Crown, or, indeed, to your own dignity, continue to hold your present office, is clear enough; and the only question now is in what way, consistent with the safety of the Administration, and respect for your lordship’s high character, the relinquishment had best be made. The debate has been, on Gregory’s motion, adjourned. It will be continued on Tuesday, and my colleagues opine that if your resignation was in their hands before that day, certain leaders of the Opposition would consent to withdraw their motion. I am not wholly agreed with the other members of the Cabinet on this point; but, without embarrassing you by the reasons which sway my judgment, I will simply place the matter before you for your own consideration, perfectly assured, as I am, that your decision will be come to only on consideration of what you deem best for the interests of the country.
‘My colleague at the Foreign Office will write to-day or to-morrow with reference to your former post, and I only allude to it now to say the unmixed satisfaction it would give the Cabinet to find that the greatest interests of Eastern Europe were once more in the keeping of the ablest diplomatist of the age, and one of the most far-sighted of modern statesmen.
‘A motion for the abolition of the Irish viceroyalty is now on the notice paper, and it will be matter for consideration whether we may not make it an open question in the Cabinet. Perhaps your lordship would favour me with such opinions on the subject as your experiences suggest.
‘The extra session has wearied out every one, and we can with difficulty make a House.—Yours sincerely, G. ANNIVEY.’
The next he opened was briefer. It ran thus:—
‘DEAR DANESBURY,—You must go back at once to Turkey. That inscrutable idiot Brumsey has discovered another mare’s-nest, and we are lucky if Gortschakoff does not call upon us for public apology. Brunow is outrageous and demands B.‘s recall. I sent off the despatch while he was with me. Leflo Pasha is very ill, they say dying, so that you must haste back to your old friend (query: which is he?) Kulbash, if it be not too late, as Apponyi thinks.—Yours, G.
‘P.S.—Take none of your Irish suite with you to the East. The papers are sure to note the names and attack you if you should. They shall be cared for somehow, if there be any who interest you.
‘You have seen that the House was not over civil to you on Saturday night, though A. thinks you got off well.’
‘Resign!’ cried he aloud, as he dashed the letter on the table. ‘I think I would resign! If they asked what would tempt me to go back there, I should be sorely puzzled to name it. No; not the blue ribbon itself would induce me to face that chaos once more. As to the hint about my Irish staff, it was quite unnecessary. Not very likely, Maude, we should take Walpole to finish in the Bosporus what he has begun on the Liffey.’
He turned hastily to theTimes, and threw his eyes over the summary of the debate. It was acrimonious and sneery. The Opposition leaders, with accustomed smoothness, had made it appear that the Viceroy’s Eastern experience had misled him, and that he thought ‘Tipperary was a Pashalick!’ Imbued with notions of wholesale measures of government, so applicable to Turkey, it was easy to see how the errors had affected his Irish policy. ‘There was,’ said the speaker, ‘somebody to be conciliated in Ireland, and some one to be hanged; and what more natural than that he should forget which, or that he should make the mistake of keeping all the flattery for the rebel and the rope for the priest.’ The neatness of the illustration took with the House, and the speaker was interrupted by ‘much laughter.’ And then he went on to say that, ‘as with those well-known ointments or medicines whose specific virtues lay in the enormous costliness of some of the constituents, so it must give unspeakable value to the efficacy of those healing measures for Ireland, to know that the whole British Constitution was boiled down to make one of them, and every right and liberty brayed in the mortar to furnish even one dose of this precious elixir.’ And then there was ‘laughter’ again.
‘He ought to be more merciful to charlatans. Dogs do not eat dogs,’ muttered his lordship to himself, and then asked his niece to send Walpole to him.
It was some time before Walpole appeared, and when he did, it was with such a wasted look and careworn aspect as might have pleaded in his favour.
‘Maude told me you wished to see me, my lord,’ said he, half diffidently.
‘Did I? eh? Did I say so? I forget all about it. What could it be? Let us see. Was it this stupid row they were making in the House? Have you read the debate?’
‘No, my lord; not looked at a paper.’
‘Of course not; you have been too ill, too weak. Have you seen a doctor?’
‘I don’t care to see a doctor; they all say the same thing. I only need rest and quiet.’
‘Only that! Why, they are the two things nobody can get. Power cannot have them, nor money buy them. The retired tradesman—I beg his pardon, the cheesemonger—he is always a cheesemonger now who represents vulgarity and bank-stock—he may have his rest and quiet; but a Minister must not dream of such a luxury, nor any one who serves a Minister. Where’s the quiet to come from, I ask you, after such a tirade of abuse as that?’ And he pointed to theTimes. ‘There’sPunch, too, with a picture of me measuring out “Danesbury’s drops to cure loyalty.” That slim youth handing the spoon is meant foryou, Walpole.’
‘Perhaps so, my lord,’ said he coldly.
‘They haven’t given you too much leg, Cecil,’ said the other, laughing; but Cecil scarcely relished the joke.
‘I say, Piccadilly is scarcely the place for a man after that: I mean, of course, for a while,’ continued he. ‘These things are not eternal; they have their day. They had me last week travelling in Ireland on a camel; and I was made to say, “That the air of the desert always did me good!” Poor fun, was it not?’
‘Very poor fun indeed!’
‘And you were the boy preparing my chibouque; and, I must say, devilish like.’
‘I did not see it, my lord.’
‘That’s the best way. Don’t look at the caricatures; don’t read theSaturday Review; never know there is anything wrong with you; nor, if you can, that anything disagrees with you.’
‘I should like the last delusion best of all,’ said he.
‘Who would not?’ cried the old lord. ‘The way I used to eat potted prawns at Eton, and peach jam after them, and iced guavas, and never felt better! And now everything gives acidity.’
‘Just because our fathers and grandfathers would have those potted prawns you spoke of.’
‘No, no; you are all wrong. It’s the new race—it’s the new generation. They don’t bear reverses. Whenever the world goes wrong with them, they talk as they feel, they lose appetite, and they fall down in a state like your—a—Walpole—like your own!’
‘Well, my lord, I don’t think I could be called captious for saying that the world has not gone over well with me.’
‘Ah—hum. You mean—no matter—I suppose the luckiest hand is not all trumps! The thing is to score the trick—that’s the point, Walpole, to score the trick!’
‘Up to this, I have not been so fortunate.’
‘Well, who knows what’s coming! I have just asked the Foreign Office people to give you Guatemala; not a bad thing, as times go.’
‘Why, my lord, it’s banishment and barbarism together. The pay is miserable! Itisfar away, and itisnot Pall Mall or the Rue Rivoli.’
‘No, not that. There is twelve hundred for salary, and something for a house, and something more for a secretary that you don’t keep, and an office that you need not have. In fact, it makes more than two thousand; and for a single man in a place where he cannot be extravagant, it will suffice.’
‘Yes, my lord; but I was presumptuous enough to imagine a condition in which I should not be a single man, and I speculated on the possibility that another might venture to share even poverty as my companion.’
‘A woman wouldn’t go there—at least, she ought not. It’s all bush life, or something like it. Why should a woman bear that? or a man ask her to do so?’
‘You seem to forget, my lord, that affections may be engaged, and pledges interchanged.’
‘Get a bill of indemnity, therefore, to release you: better that than wait for yellow fever to do it.’ ‘I confess that your lordship’s words give me great discouragement, and if I could possibly believe that Lady Maude was of your mind—’
‘Maude! Maude! why, you never imagined that Lady Maude would leave comfort and civilisation for this bush life, with its rancheros and rattlesnakes. I confess,’ said he, with a bitter laugh, ‘I did not think either of you were bent on being Paul or Virginia.’
‘Have I your lordship’s permission to ask her own judgment in the matter: I mean with the assurance of its not being biassed by you?’
‘Freely, most freely do I give it. She is not the girl I believe her if she leaves you long in doubt. But I prejudge nothing, and I influence nothing.’
‘Am I to conclude, my lord, that I am sure of this appointment?’
‘I almost believe I can say you are. I have asked for a reply by telegraph, and I shall probably have one to-morrow.’
‘You seemed to have acted under the conviction that I should be glad to get this place.’
‘Yes, such was my conclusion. After that fiasco in Ireland you must go somewhere, for a time at least, out of the way. Now as a man cannot die for half-a-dozen years and come back to life when people have forgotten his unpopularity, the next best thing is South America. Bogota and the Argentine Republic have whitewashed many a reputation.’
‘I will remember your lordship’s wise words.’
‘Do so,’ said my lord curtly, for he felt offended at the flippant tone in which the other spoke. ‘I don’t mean to say that I’d send the writer of that letter yonder to Yucatan or Costa Rica.’
‘Who may the gifted writer be, my lord?’
‘Atlee, Joe Atlee; the fellow you sent over here.’
‘Indeed!’ was all that Walpole could utter.
‘Just take it to your room and read it over. You will be astonished at the thing. The fellow has got to know the bearings of a whole set of new questions, and how he understands the men he has got to deal with!’
‘With your leave I will do so,’ said he, as he took the letter and left the room.
Cecil Walpole’s Italian experiences had supplied him with an Italian proverb which says, ‘Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere,’ or, in other words, that no evil comes unmixed with good; and there is a marvellous amount of wisdom in the adage.
That there is a deep philosophy, too, in showing how carefully we should sift misfortune to the dregs, and ascertain what of benefit we might rescue from the dross, is not to be denied; and the more we reflect on it, the more should we see that the germ of all real consolation is intimately bound up in this reservation.
No sooner, then, did Walpole, in novelist phrase, ‘realise the fact’ that he was to go to Guatemala, than he set very practically to inquire what advantages, if any, could be squeezed out of this unpromising incident.
The creditors—and he had some—would not like it! The dreary process of dunning a man across half the globe, the hopelessness of appeals that took two months to come to hand, and the inefficacy of threats that were wafted over miles of ocean! And certainly he smiled as he thought of these, and rather maliciously bethought him of the truculent importunity that menaced him with some form of publicity in the more insolent appeal to some Minister at home. ‘Our tailor will moderate his language, our jeweller will appreciate the merits of polite letter-writing,’ thought he. ‘A few parallels of latitude become a great school-master.’
But there were greater advantages even than these. This banishment—for it was nothing else—could not by any possibility be persisted in, and if Lady Maude should consent to accompany him, would be very short-lived.
‘The women will take it up,’ said he, ‘and with that charming clanship that distinguishes them, will lead the Foreign Secretary a life of misery till he gives us something better.—“Maude says the thermometer has never been lower than 132°, and that there is no shade. The nights have no breeze, and are rather hotter than the days. She objects seriously to be waited on by people in feathers, and very few of them, and she remonstrates against alligators in the kitchen-garden, and wild cats coming after the canaries in the drawing-room.”
‘I hear the catalogue of misfortunes, which begins with nothing to eat, plus the terror of being eaten. I recognise the lament over lost civilisation and a wasted life, and I see Downing Street besieged with ladies in deputations, declaring that they care nothing for party or politics, but a great deal for the life of a dear young creature who is to be sacrificed to appease some people belonging to the existing Ministry. I think I know how beautifully illogical they will be, but how necessarily successful; and now for Maude herself.’
Of Lady Maude Bickerstaffe Walpole had seen next to nothing since his return; his own ill-health had confined him to his room, and her inquiries after him had been cold and formal; and though he wrote a tender little note and asked for books, slyly hinting what measure of bliss a five minutes’ visit would confer on him, the books he begged for were sent, but not a line of answer accompanied them. On the whole, he did not dislike this little show of resentment. What he really dreaded was indifference. So long as a woman is piqued with you, something can always be done; it is only when she becomes careless and unmindful of what you do, or say, or look, or think, that the game looks hopeless. Therefore it was that he regarded this demonstration of anger as rather favourable than otherwise.
‘Atlee has told her of the Greek! Atlee has stirred up her jealousy of the Titian Girl. Atlee has drawn a long indictment against me, and the fellow has done me good service in giving me something to plead to. Let me have a charge to meet, and I have no misgivings. What really unmans me is the distrust that will not even utter an allegation, and the indifference that does not want disproof.’
He learned that her ladyship was in the garden, and he hastened down to meet her. In his own small way Walpole was a clever tactician; and he counted much on the ardour with which he should open his case, and the amount of impetuosity that would give her very little time for reflection.
‘I shall at once assume that her fate is irrevocably knitted to my own, and I shall act as though the tie was indissoluble. After all, if she puts me to the proof, I have her letters—cold and guarded enough, it is true. No fervour, no gush of any kind, but calm dissertations on a future that must come, and a certain dignified acceptance of her own part in it. Not the kind of letters that a Q.C. could read with much rapture before a crowded court, and ask the assembled grocers, “What happiness has life to offer to the man robbed of those precious pledges of affection—how was he to face the world, stripped of every attribute that cherished hope and fed ambition?”’
He was walking slowly towards her when he first saw her, and he had some seconds to prepare himself ere they met.
‘I came down after you, Maude,’ said he, in a voice ingeniously modulated between the tone of old intimacy and a slight suspicion of emotion. ‘I came down to tell you my news’—he waited, and then added—‘my fate!’
Still she was silent, the changed word exciting no more interest than its predecessor.
‘Feeling as I do,’ he went on, ‘and how we stand towards each other, I cannot but know that my destiny has nothing good or evil in it, except as it contributes to your happiness.’ He stole a glance at her, but there was nothing in that cold, calm face that could guide him. With a bold effort, however, he went on: ‘My own fortune in life has but one test—is my existence to be shared with you or not? Withyourhand in mine, Maude,’—and he grasped the marble-cold fingers as he spoke—‘poverty, exile, hardships, and the world’s neglect, have no terrors for me. With your love, every ambition of my heart is gratified. Without it—’
‘I Should Like to Have Back My Letters’
‘Well, without it—what?’ said she, with a faint smile.
‘You would not torture me by such a doubt? Would you rack my soul by a misery I have not words to speak of?’
‘I thought you were going to say what it might be, when I stopped you.’
‘Oh, drop this cold and bantering tone, dearest Maude. Remember the question is now of my very life itself. If you cannot be affectionate, at least be reasonable!’
‘I shall try,’ said she calmly.
Stung to the quick by a composure which he could not imitate, he was able, however, to repress every show of anger, and with a manner cold and measured as her own, he went on: ‘My lord advises that I should go back to diplomacy, and has asked the Ministers to give me Guatemala. It is nothing very splendid. It is far away in a remote part of the world; not over-well paid, but at least I shall be Chargé-d’Affaires, and by three years—four at most, of this banishment—I shall have a claim for something better.
‘I hope you may, I’m sure,’ said she, as he seemed to expect something like a remark.
‘That is not enough, Maude, if the hope be not a wish—and a wish that includes self-interest.’
‘I am so dull, Cecil: tell me what you mean.’
‘Simply this, then: does your heart tell you that you could share this fortune, and brave these hardships; in one word, will you say what will make me regard this fate as the happiest of my existence? will you give me this dear hand as my own—my own?’ and he pressed his lips upon it rapturously as he spoke.
She made no effort to release her hand; nor for a second or two did she say one word. At last, in a very measured tone, she said, ‘I should like to have back my letters.’
‘Your letters? Do you mean, Maude, that—that you would break with me?’
‘I mean certainly that I should not go to this horrid place—’
‘Then I shall refuse it,’ broke he in impetuously.
‘Not that only, Cecil,’ said she, for the first time faltering; ‘but except being very good friends, I do not desire that there should be more between us.’
‘No engagement?’
‘No, no engagement. I do not believe there ever was an actual promise, at least on my part. Other people had no right to promise for either of us—and—and, in fact, the present is a good opportunity to end it.’
‘To end it,’ echoed he, in intense bitterness; ‘to end it?’
‘And I should like to have my letters,’ said she calmly, while she took some freshly plucked flowers from a basket on her arm, and appeared to seek for something at the bottom of the basket.
‘I thought you would come down here, Cecil,’ said she, ‘when you had spoken to my uncle. Indeed, I was sure you would, and so I brought these with me.’ And she drew forth a somewhat thick bundle of notes and letters tied with a narrow ribbon. ‘These are yours,’ said she, handing them.
Far more piqued by her cold self-possession than really wounded in feeling, he took the packet without a word; at last he said, ‘This is your own wish—your own, unprompted by others?’
She stared almost insolently at him for answer.
‘I mean, Maude—oh, forgive me if I utter that dear name once more—I mean there has been no influence used to make you treat me thus?’
‘You have known me to very little purpose all these years, Cecil Walpole, to ask me such a question.’
‘I am not sure of that. I know too well what misrepresentation and calumny can do anywhere; and I have been involved in certain difficulties which, if not explained away, might be made accusations—grave accusations.’
‘I make none—I listen to none.’
‘I have become an object of complete indifference, then? You feel no interest in me either way. If I dared, Maude. I should like to ask the date of this change—when it began?’
‘I don’t well know what you mean. There was not, so far as I am aware, anything between us, except a certain esteem and respect, of which convenience was to make something more. Now convenience has broken faith with us, but we are not the less very good friends—excellent friends if you like.’
‘Excellent friends! I could swear to the friendship!’ said he, with a malicious energy.
‘So at least I mean to be,’ said she calmly.
‘I hope it is not I shall fail in the compact. And now, will my quality of friend entitle me to ask one question, Maude?’
‘I am not sure till I hear it.’
‘I might have hoped a better opinion of my discretion; at all events, I will risk my question. What I would ask is, how far Joseph Atlee is mixed up with your judgment of me? Will you tell me this?’
‘I will only tell you, sir, that you are over-vain of that discretion you believe you possess.’
‘Then I am right,’ cried he, almost insolently. ‘Ihavehit the blot.’
A glance, a mere glance of haughty disdain, was the only reply she made.
‘I am shocked, Maude,’ said he at last. ‘I am ashamed that we should spend in this way perhaps the very last few minutes we shall ever pass together. Heart-broken as I am, I should desire to carry away one memory at least of her whose love was the loadstar of my existence.’
‘I want my letters, Cecil,’ said she coldly.
‘So that you came down here with mine, prepared for this rupture, Maude? It was all prearranged in your mind.’
‘More discretion—more discretion, or good taste—which is it?’
‘I ask pardon, most humbly I ask it; your rebuke was quite just. I was presuming upon a past which has no relation to the present. I shall not offend any more. And now, what was it you said?’
‘I want my letters.’
‘They are here,’ said he, drawing a thick envelope fully crammed with letters from his pocket and placing it in her hand. ‘Scarcely as carefully or as nicely kept as mine, for they have been read over too many times; and with what rapture, Maude. How pressed to my heart and to my lips, how treasured! Shall I tell you?’
There was that of exaggerated passion—almost rant—in these last words, that certainly did not impress them with reality; and either Lady Maude was right in doubting their sincerity, or cruelly unjust, for she smiled faintly as she heard them.
‘No, don’t tell me,’ said she faintly. ‘I am already so much flattered by courteous anticipation of my wishes that I ask for nothing more.’
He bowed his head lowly; but his smile was one of triumph, as he thought how, this time at least, he had wounded her.
‘There are some trinkets, Cecil,’ said she coldly, ‘which I have made into a packet, and you will find them on your dressing-table. And—it may save you some discomfort if I say that you need not give yourself trouble to recover the little ring with an opal I once gave you, for I have it now.’
‘May I dare?’
‘You may not dare. Good-bye.’
And she gave her hand; he bent over it for a moment, scarcely touched it with his lips, and turned away.
Of all the discomfitures in life there was one which Cecil Walpole did not believe could possibly befall him. Indeed, if it could have been made a matter of betting, he would have wagered all he had in the world that no woman should ever be able to say she refused his offer of marriage.
He had canvassed the matter very often with himself, and always arrived at the same conclusion—that if a man were not a mere coxcomb, blinded by vanity and self-esteem, he could always know how a woman really felt towards him; and that where the question admitted of a doubt—where, indeed, there was even a flaw in the absolute certainty—no man with a due sense of what was owing to himself would risk his dignity by the possibility of a refusal. It was a part of his peculiar ethics that a man thus rejected was damaged, pretty much as a bill that has been denied acceptance. It was the same wound to credit, the same outrage on character. Considering, therefore, that nothing obliged a man to make an offer of his hand till he had assured himself of success, it was to his thinking a mere gratuitous pursuit of insult to be refused. That no especial delicacy kept these things secret, that women talked of them freely—ay, triumphantly—that they made the staple of conversation at afternoon tea and the club, with all the flippant comments that dear friends know how to contribute as to your vanity and presumption, he was well aware. Indeed, he had been long an eloquent contributor to that scandal literature which amuses the leisure of fashion and helps on the tedium of an ordinary dinner. How Lady Maude would report the late scene in the garden to the Countess of Mecherscroft, who would tell it to her company at her country-house!—How the Lady Georginas would discuss it over luncheon, and the Lord Georges talk of it out shooting! What a host of pleasant anecdotes would be told of his inordinate puppyism and self-esteem! How even the dullest fellows would dare to throw a stone at him! What a target for a while he would be for every marksman at any range to shoot at! All these his quick-witted ingenuity pictured at once before him.
‘I see it all,’ cried he, as he paced his room in self-examination. ‘I have suffered myself to be carried away by a burst of momentary impulse. I brought up all my reserves, and have failed utterly. Nothing can save me now, but a “change of front.” It is the last bit of generalship remaining—a change of front—a change of front!’ And he repeated the words over and over, as though hoping they might light up his ingenuity. ‘I might go and tell her that all I had been saying was mere jest—that I could never have dreamed of asking her to follow me into barbarism: that to go to Guatemala was equivalent to accepting a yellow fever—it was courting disease, perhaps death; that my insistence was a mere mockery, in the worst possible taste; but that I had already agreed with Lord Danesbury, our engagement should be cancelled; that his lordship’s memory of our conversation would corroborate me in saying I had no intention to propose such a sacrifice to her; and indeed I had but provoked her to say the very things, and use the very arguments, I had already employed to myself as a sort of aid to my own heartfelt convictions. Here would be a “change of front” with a vengeance.
‘She will already have written off the whole interview: the despatch is finished,’ cried he, after a moment. ‘It is a change of front the day after the battle. The people will read of my manoeuvre with the bulletin of victory before them.
‘Poor Frank Touchet used to say,’ cried he aloud, ‘“Whenever they refuse my cheques at the Bank, I always transfer my account”; and fortunately the world is big enough for these tactics for several years. That’s a change of front too, if I knew how to adapt it. I must marry another woman—there’s nothing else for it. It is the only escape; and the question is, who shall she be?’ The more he meditated over this change of front the more he saw that his destiny pointed to the Greek. If he could see clearly before him to a high career in diplomacy, the Greek girl, in everything but fortune, would suit him well. Her marvellous beauty, her grace of manner, her social tact and readiness, her skill in languages, were all the very qualities most in request. Such a woman would make the full complement, by her fascinations, of all that her husband could accomplish by his abilities. The little indiscretions of old men—especially old men—with these women, the lapses of confidence they made them, the dropping admissions of this or that intention, made up what Walpole knew to be high diplomacy.
‘Nothing worth hearing is ever got by a man,’ was an adage he treasured as deep wisdom. Why kings resort to that watering-place, and accidentally meet certain Ministers going somewhere else; why kaisers affect to review troops here, that they may be able to talk statecraft there; how princely compacts and contracts of marriage are made at sulphur springs; all these and such like leaked out as small-talk with a young and pretty woman, whose frivolity of manner went bail for the safety of the confidence, and went far to persuade Walpole, that though bank-stock might be a surer investment, there were paying qualities in certain women that in the end promised larger returns than mere money and higher rewards than mere wealth. ‘Yes,’ cried he to himself, ‘this is the real change of front—this has all in its favour.’
Nor yet all. Strong as Walpole’s self-esteem was, and high his estimate of his own capacity, he had—he could not conceal it—a certain misgiving as to whether he really understood that girl or not. ‘I have watched many a bolt from her bow,’ said he, ‘and think I know their range. But now and then she has shot an arrow into the clear sky, and far beyond my sight to follow it.’
That scene in the wood too. Absurd enough that it should obtrude itself at such a moment, but it was the sort of indication that meant much more to a man like Walpole than to men of other experiences. Was she flirting with this young Austrian soldier? No great harm if she were; but still there had been passages between himself and her which should have bound her over to more circumspection. Was there not a shadowy sort of engagement between them? Lawyers deem a mere promise to grant a lease as equivalent to a contract. It would be a curious question in morals to inquire how far the licensed perjuries of courtship are statutory offences. Perhaps a sly consciousness on his own part that he was not playing perfectly fair made him, as it might do, more than usually tenacious that his adversary should be honest. What chance the innocent public would have with two people who were so adroit with each other was his next thought; and he actually laughed aloud as it occurred to him. ‘I only wish my lord would invite us here before we sail. If I could but show her to Maude, half an hour of these women together would be the heaviest vengeance I could ask her! I wonder how could that be managed?’
‘A despatch, sir, his lordship begs you to read,’ said a servant, entering. It was an open envelope, and contained these words on a slip of paper:—
‘W. shall have Guatemala. He must go out by the mail of November 15. Send him here for instructions.’ Some words in cipher followed, and an under-secretary’s initials.
‘Now, then, for the “change of front.” I’ll write to Nina by this post. I’ll ask my lord to let me tear off this portion of the telegram, and I shall inclose it.’
The letter was not so easily written as he thought—at least he made more than one draft—and was at last in great doubt whether a long statement or a few and very decided lines might be better. How he ultimately determined, and what he said, cannot be given here; for, unhappily, the conditions of my narrative require I should ask my reader to accompany me to a very distant spot and other interests which were just then occupying the attention of an almost forgotten acquaintance of ours, the redoubted Joseph Atlee.
Joseph Atlee had a very busy morning of it on a certain November day at Pera, when the post brought him tidings that Lord Danesbury had resigned the Irish viceroyalty, and had been once more named to his old post as ambassador at Constantinople.
‘My uncle desires me,’ wrote Lady Maude, ‘to impress you with the now all-important necessity of obtaining the papers you know of, and, so far as you are able, to secure that no authorised copies of them are extant. Kulbash Pasha will, my lord says, be very tractable when once assured that our return to Turkey is a certainty; but should you detect signs of hesitation or distrust in the Grand-Vizier’s conduct, you will hint that the investigation as to the issue of the Galatz shares—“preference shares”—may be reopened at any moment, and that the Ottoman Bank agent, Schaffer, has drawn up a memoir which my uncle now holds. I copy my lord’s words for all this, and sincerely hope you will understand it, which, I confess,Ido not at all. My lord cautioned me not to occupy your time or attention by any reference to Irish questions, but leave you perfectly free to deal with those larger interests of the East that should now engage you. I forbear, therefore, to do more than mark with a pencil the part in the debates which might interest you especially, and merely add the fact, otherwise, perhaps, not very credible, that Mr. Walpoledidwrite the famous letter imputed to him—didpromise the amnesty, or whatever be the name of it, anddidpledge the honour of the Government to a transaction with these Fenian leaders. With what success to his own prospects, theGazettewill speak that announces his appointment to Guatemala.
‘I am myself very far from sorry at our change of destination. I prefer the Bosporus to the Bay of Dublin, and like Pera better than the Phoenix. It is not alone that the interests are greater, the questions larger, and the consequences more important to the world at large, but that, as my uncle has just said, you are spared the peddling impertinence of Parliament interfering at every moment, and questioning your conduct, from an invitation to Cardinal Cullen to the dismissal of a chief constable. Happily, the gentlemen at Westminster know nothing about Turkey, and have the prudence not to ventilate their ignorance, except in secret committee. I am sorry to have to tell you that my lord sees great difficulty in what you propose as to yourself. F. O., he says, would not easily consent to your being named even a third secretary without your going through the established grade of attaché. All the unquestionable merits he knows you to possess would count for nothing against an official regulation. The course my lord would suggest is this: To enter now as mere attaché, to continue in this position some three or four months, come over here for the general election in February, get into “the House,” and after some few sessions, one or two, rejoin diplomacy, to which you might be appointed as a secretary of legation. My uncle named to me three, if not four cases of this kind—one, indeed, stepped at once into a mission and became a minister; and though of course the Opposition made a fuss, they failed in their attempt to break the appointment, and the man will probably be soon an ambassador. I accept the little yataghan, but sincerely wish the present had been of less value. There is one enormous emerald in the handle which I am much tempted to transfer to a ring. Perhaps I ought, in decency, to have your permission for the change. The burnous is very beautiful, but I could not accept it—an article of dress is in the category of things impossible. Have you no Irish sisters, or even cousins? Pray give me a destination to address it to in your next.
‘My uncle desires me to say that, all invaluable as your services have become where you are, he needs you greatly here, and would hear with pleasure that you were about to return. He is curious to know who wrote “L’Orient et Lord D.” in the lastRevue des Deux Mondes. The savagery of the attack implies a personal rancour. Find out the author, and reply to him in theEdinburgh. My lord suspects he may have had access to the papers he has already alluded to, and is the more eager to repossess them.’
A telegraphic despatch in cipher was put into his hands as he was reading. It was from Lord Danesbury, and said: ‘Come back as soon as you can, but not before making K. Pasha know his fate is in my hands.’
As the Grand-Vizier had already learned from the Ottoman ambassador at London the news that Lord Danesbury was about to resume his former post at Constantinople, his Turkish impassiveness was in no way imperilled by Atlee’s abrupt announcement. It is true he would have been pleased had the English Government sent out some one new to the East and a stranger to all Oriental questions. He would have liked one of those veterans of diplomacy versed in the old-fashioned ways and knaveries of German courts, and whose shrewdest ideas of a subtle policy are centred in a few social spies and a ‘Cabinet Noir.’ The Pasha had no desire to see there a man who knew all the secret machinery of a Turkish administration, what corruption could do, and where to look for the men who could employ it.
The thing was done, however, and with that philosophy of resignation to a fact in which no nation can rival his own, he muttered his polite congratulations on the event, and declared that the dearest wish of his heart was now accomplished.
‘We had half begun to believe you had abandoned us, Mr. Atlee,’ said he. ‘When England commits her interests to inferior men, she usually means to imply that they are worth nothing better. I am rejoiced to see that we are, at last, awakened from this delusion. With his Excellency Lord Danesbury here, we shall be soon once more where we have been.’
‘Your fleet is in effective condition, well armed, and well disciplined?’
‘All, all,’ smiled the Pasha.
‘The army reformed, the artillery supplied with the most efficient guns, and officers of European services encouraged to join your staff?’
‘All.’
‘Wise economies in your financial matters, close supervision in the collection of the revenue, and searching inquiries where abuses exist?’
‘All.’
‘Especial care that the administration of justice should be beyond even the malevolence of distrust, that men of station and influence should be clear-handed and honourable, not a taint of unfairness to attach to them?’
‘Be it all so,’ ejaculated the Pasha blandly.
‘By the way, I am reminded by a line I have just received from his Excellency with reference to Sulina, or was it Galatz?’
The Pasha could not decide, and he went on—
‘I remember, it is Galatz. There is some curious question there of a concession for a line of railroad, which a Servian commissioner had the skill to obtain from the Cabinet here, by a sort of influence which our Stock Exchange people in London scarcely regard as regular.’
The Pasha nodded to imply attention, and smoked on as before.
‘But I weary your Excellency,’ said Atlee, rising, ‘and my real business here is accomplished.’
‘Tell my lord that I await his arrival with impatience, that of all pending questions none shall receive solution till he comes, that I am the very least of his servants.’ And with an air of most dignified sincerity, he bowed him out, and Atlee hastened away to tell his chief that he had ‘squared the Turk,’ and would sail on the morrow.