CHAPTER III. TRAVELLING ACQUAINTANCE

About the same hour of the same evening which we have just chronicled, a group of persons sat under some spreading chestnut-trees beside a brawling little rivulet at the Bagni de Lucca. They were travellers, chance acquaintances thrown together by the accidents of the road, and entertained for each other those varied sentiments of like and dislike, those mingled distrusts, suspicions, and beliefs, which, however unconsciously to ourselves, are part of the education travelling impresses, and which, when long persevered in, make up that acute but not always amiable individual we call “an old traveller.”

We are not about to present them all to our reader, and will only beg to introduce to his notice a few of the notabilities then present.Place aux dames!then; and, first of all, we beg attention to the dark-eyed, dark-haired, and very delicately featured woman, who, in half-mourning, and with a pretty but fantastically costumed girl beside her, is working at an embroidery-frame close to the river. She is a Mrs. Penthony Morris, the wife or the widow—both opinions prevail—of a Captain Penthony Morris, killed in a duel, or in India, or alive in the Marshalsea, or at Baden-Baden, as may be. She is striking-looking, admirably dressed, has a most beautiful foot, as you may see where it rests upon the rail of the chair placed in front of her, and is, altogether, what that very smartly dressed, much-beringed, and essenced young gentleman near her has already pronounced her, “a stunning fine woman.” He is a Mr. Mosely, one of those unhappy young Londoners whose family fame is ever destined to eclipse their own gentility, for he is immediately recognized, and drawlingly do men inquire some twenty times a day, “Ain't he a son of Trip and Mosely's, those fellows in Bond Street?” Unhappy Trip and Mosely! why have you rendered yourselves so great and illustrious? why have your tasteful devices in gauze, your “sacrifices” in challis, your “last new things in grenadine,” made such celebrity around you, that Tom Mosely, “out for his travels,” can no more escape the shop than if he were languishing at a customer over a “sweet article in white tarlatan”? In the two comfortable armchairs side by side sit two indubitable specimens, male and female, of the Anglo-Saxon family,—Mr. Morgan, that florid man, wiping his polished bald head, and that fat lady fanning with all her might. Are they not English? They are “out,” and, judging from their recorded experiences, only dying to be “in” again. “Such a set of cheating, lying, lazy set of rascals are these Italians! Independence, sir; don't talk to me of that humbug! What they want is English travellers to fleece and English women to marry.” Near to these, at full length, on two chairs, one of which reclines against a tree at an angle of about forty degrees, sits our Yankee acquaintance, whom we may as well present by his name, Leonidas Shaver Quackinboss; he is smoking a “Virginian” about the size of a marshal's bâton, and occasionally sipping at a “cobbler,” which with much pains he has compounded for his own drinking. Various others of different ranks and countries are scattered about, and in the centre of all, at a small table with a lamp, sits a short, burly figure, with a strange mixture of superciliousness and drollery in his face, as though there were a perpetual contest in his nature whether he would be impertinent or amusing. This was Mr. Gorman O'Shea, Member of Parliament for Inchabogue, and for three weeks a Lord of the Treasury when O'Connell was king.

ONE0044

Mr. O'Shea is fond of public speaking. He has a taste for proposing, or seconding, or returning thanks that verges on a passion, so that even in a private dinner with a friend he has been known to arise and address his own companion in a set speech, adorned with all the graces and flowers of post-prandial eloquence. Upon the present occasion he has been, to his great delight, deputed to read aloud to the company from that magic volume by which the Continent is expounded to Englishmen, and in whose pages they are instructed in everything, from passports to pictures, and drilled in all the mysteries of money, posting, police regulations, domes, dinners, and Divine service by a Clergyman of the Established Church. In a word, he is reciting John Murray.

To understand the drift of the present meeting, we ought to mention that, in the course of a conversation started that day at thetable d'hoteit was suggested that such of the company as felt disposed might make an excursion to Marlia to visit a celebrated villa there, whose gardens alone were amongst the great sights of Northern Italy. All had heard of this charming residence; views of it had been seen in every print-shop. It had its historical associations from a very early period. There were chambers where murders had been committed, conspiracies held, confederates poisoned. King and Kaiser had passed the night there; all of which were duly and faithfully chronicled in “John,” and impressively recited by Mr. Gorman O'Shea in the richest accents of his native Doric. “There you have it now,” said he, as he closed the volume; “and I will say, it has n't its equal anywhere for galleries, terraces, carved architraves, stuccoed ceilings, and frescos, and all the other balderdash peculiar to these places.”

“Oh, Mr. O'Shea, what profanation!” interposed Mrs. Morris; “walls immortalized by Giotto and Cimabue!”

“Have n't they got stunning names of their own?” broke in Quackinboss. “That's one of the smallest dodges to secure fame. You must be something out of the common. There was a fellow up at Syracuse townland, Measles, North Carolina, and his name was Flay Harris; they called him Flea—”

“That ceiling of the great hall was a work of Guido's, you said?” inquired Mrs. Morris.

“A pupil of Guido's, a certain Simone Affretti, who afterwards made the designs for the Twelve Apostles in the window of the chapter-room at Sienna,” read out Mr. O'Shea.

“Who can vouch for one word of all that, sir?” burst in Mr. Morgan, with a choleric warmth. “Who is to tell me, sir, that you did n't write that, or Peter Noakes, or John Murray himself, if there be such a man.”

“I can vouch for the last,” said a pale, gentle-looking young fellow, who was arranging the flies in a fishing-book under a tree at a little distance. “If it will relieve you from any embarrassments on the score of belief, I can assist you so far.”

If there was a faint irony in this speech, the mild look of the speaker and his softened accents made it seem of the very faintest, and so even the bluff Mr. Morgan himself appeared to acknowledge.

“As you say so, Mr. Layton, I will consent to suppose there is such a man; not that the fact, in the slightest degree, touches my original proposition.”

“Certainly not, Tom,” chimed in Mrs. Morgan, in a thick voice, like one drowning.

“But if you doubt Guido, you may doubt Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo,” burst in Mrs. Morris, with a holy terror in her voice.

“Well, ma'am, I'm capable of all that—and worse.”

What that “worse” was there is no saying, though possibly Mr. Mosely was trying to guess at it in the whisper he ventured to Mrs. Morris, and which made that lady smile incredulously.

“I now, sir, rise to put the original motion,” said O'Shea, assuming that parliamentary tone which scandal pretended he displayed everywhere but in the House; “is it the opinion of this committee that we should all go and visit the Villa Caprini?”

“Are we quite sure it is to be seen?” interposed Mr. Layton; “it may be occupied, and by persons who have no fancy to receive strangers.”

“The observation strikes me as singularly narrow and illiberal, sir,” burst in Morgan, with warmth. “Are we of the nineteenth century to be told that any man—I don't care how he calls himself—has a vested right in the sight or inspection of objects devised and designed and completed centuries before he was born?”

“Well put, Tom,—remarkably well put,” smothered out Mrs. Morgan.

“Will you say, sir,” assumed he, thus cheered on to victory,—“will you say, sir, that if these objects—frescos, bas-reliefs, or whatever other name you give them—have the humanizing influence you assume for them,—which, by the way, I am quite ready to dispute at another opportunity with you or that other young gentleman yonder, whose simpering sneer would seem to disparage my sentiment—”

“If you mean me, sir,” took up Mr. Mosely, “I was n't so much as attending to one word you said.”

“No, Tom, certainly not,” burst in Mrs. Morgan, answering with energy some sudden ejaculated purpose of her wrathy spouse.

“I simply meant to say,” interposed Layton, mildly, “that such a visit as we propose might be objected to, or conceded in a way little agreeable to ourselves.”

“A well-written note, a gracefully worded request, which nobody could do better than Mr. Alfred Layton—” began Mrs. Morris, when a dissenting gesture from that gentleman stopped her. “Or, perhaps,” continued she, “Mr. Gorman O'Shea would so far assist our project?”

“My motion is to appear at the bar of the house,—I mean at the gate-lodge,—sending in our names, with a polite inquiry to know if we may see the place,” said Mr. O'Shea.

“Well, stranger, I stand upon your platform,” chimed in Quackinboss; “I 'm in no manner of ways 'posted' up in your Old World doings, but I 'd say that you 've fixed the question all straight.”

“Show-places are show-places; the people who take them know it,” blurted out Mr. Morgan. “Ay, and what's more, they're proud of it.”

“They are, Tom,” said his wife, authoritatively.

“If you 'd give me one of them a present, for the living in it, I 'd not take it No, sir, I 'd not,” reiterated Morgan, with a fierce energy. “What is a man in such a case, sir, but a sort of appraiser, a kind of agent to show off his own furniture, telling you to remark that cornice, and not to forget that malachite chimney-piece?”

“Very civil of him, certainly,” said Layton, in his low, quiet voice, which at the same time seemed to quiver with a faint irony.

“No, sir, not civil, only boastful; mere purse-pride, nothing more.”

“Nothing, Tom,—absolutely nothing.”

“What's before the house this evening,—the debate looks animated?” said a fine bright-eyed boy of about fourteen, who lounged carelessly on Layton's shoulder as he came up.

“It was a little scheme to visit the Villa Caprini, my Lord,” said Mosely, not sorry to have the opportunity of addressing himself to a person of title.

“How jolly, eh, Alfred? What say you to the plan?” said the boy, merrily.

Layton answered something, but in a tone too low to be overheard.

“Oh, as to that,” replied the boy, quickly, “if he be an Englishman who lives there, surely some of us must know him.”

“The very remark I was about to make, my Lord,” smiled in Mrs. Morris.

“Well, then, we agree to go there; that 's the main thing,” said O'Shea. “Two carriages, I suppose, will hold us; and, as to the time, shall we say to-morrow?”

To-morrow was unanimously voted by the company, who now set themselves to plot the details of the expedition, amidst which not the least knotty was, who were to be the fellow-travellers with Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, a post of danger assuredly not sought for with any heroic intrepidity, while an equally eager intrigue was on foot about securing the presence of the young Marquis of Agincourt and his tutor, Mr. Layton. The ballot, however, routed all previous machinations, deciding that the young peer was to travel with the Morgans and Colonel Quackinboss, an announcement which no deference to the parties themselves could prevent being received with a blank disappointment, except by Mr. Layton, who simply said,—

“We shall take care to be in time, Mrs. Morgan.” And then, drawing his pupil's arm within his own, strolled negligently away.

“I foretold all this,” said Charles Heathcote, peevishly, as a servant presented a number of visiting-cards with a polite request from the owners to be allowed to visit the villa and its gardens. “I often warned you of the infliction of inhabiting one of these celebrated places, which our inquisitive countrymenwillsee and their wiveswillwrite about.”

“Who are they, Charley?” said May, gayly. “Let us see if we may not know some of them.”

“Know them. Heaven forbid! Look at the equipages they have come in; only cast an eye at the two leathern conveniences now before the door, and say, is it likely that they contain any acquaintances of ours?”

“How hot they look, broiling down there! But who are they, Charley?”

“Mrs. Penthony Morris,—never heard of her; Mr. Algernon Mosely,—possibly the Bond Street man; Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Rice Morgan, of Plwmnwrar,—however that be pronounced; Mr. Layton and friend,—discreet friend, who will not figure by name; Mr. Gorman O'Shea, by all the powers! and, as I live, our Yankee again!”

“Not Quackinboss, surely?” broke in Sir William, good-humoredly.

“Yes. There he is: 'U. S. A., Colonel Leonidas Shaver Quackinboss;' and there's the man, too, with his coat on his arm, on that coach-box.”

“I'll certainly vote for my Transatlantic friend,” said the Baronet, “and consequently for any party of which he is a member.”

“As for me!” cried May,—“I 've quite a curiosity to see him; not to say that it would be downright churlishness to refuse any of our countrymen the permission thus asked for.”

“Be it so. I only stipulate for not playing cicerone to our amiable visitors; and the more surely to escape such an indignity, I 'm off till dinner.”

“Let Fenton wait on those gentlemen,” said the Baronet, “and go round with them through the house and the grounds. Order luncheon also to be ready.” There was a little, a very little, irritation, perhaps, in his voice, but May's pleasant smile quickly dispelled the momentary chagrin, and his good-humored face was soon itself again.

If I have not trespassed upon my reader's patience by minute descriptions of the characters I have introduced to him, it is in the expectation that their traits are such as, lying lightly on the surface, require little elucidation. Nor do I ask of him to bestow more attention to their features than he would upon those of travelling acquaintances with whom it is his fortune to journey in company for a brief space.

Strange enough, indeed, is that intimacy of travelling acquaintanceship —familiar without friendship, frank without being cordial. Curious pictures of life might be made from these groups thrown accidentally together in a steamboat or railroad, at the gay watering-place, or the little fishing-village in the bathing-season.

How free is all the intercourse of those who seem to have taken a vow with themselves never to meet each other again! With what humorous zest do they enjoy the oddities of this one, or the eccentricities of that, making up little knots and cliques, to be changed or dissolved within the day, and actually living on the eventualities of the hour, for their confidences! The contrasts that would repel in ordinary life, the disparities that would discourage, have actually invited intimacy; and people agree to associate, even familiarly, with those whom, in the recognized order of their daily existence, they would have as coldly repelled.

There was little to bind those together whom we have represented as seated under the chestnut-trees at the Bagni de Lucca. They entertained their suspicions and distrusts and misgivings of each other to a liberal extent; they wasted no charities in their estimate of each other; and wherever posed by a difficulty, they did not lend to the interpretation any undue amount of generosity; nay, they even went further, and argued from little peculiarities of dress, manner, and demeanor, to the whole antecedents of him they criticised, and took especial pains in their moments of confidence to declare that they had only met Mr.——— for the first time at Ems, and never saw Mrs.——— till they were overtaken by the snow-storm on the Splugen.

Such-like was the company who now, headed by the obsequious butler, strolled leisurely through the spacious saloons of the Villa Caprini.

Who is there, in this universal vagabondage, has not made one of such groups? Where is the man that has not strolled, “John Murray” in hand, along his Dresden, his Venice, or his Rome; staring at ceilings, and gazing ruefully at time-discolored frescos,—grieved to acknowledge to his own heart how little he could catch of a connoisseur's enthusiasm or an antiquarian's fervor,—wondering within himself wherefore he could not feel like that other man whose raptures he was reading, and with sore misgivings that some nice sense had been omitted in his nature? Wonderfully poignant and painful things are these little appeals to an inner consciousness. How far such sentiments were distributed amongst those who now lounged and stared throughsalonand gallery, we must leave to the reader's own appreciation. They looked pleased, convinced, and astonished, and, be it confessed, “bored” in turn; they were called upon to admire much they did not care for, and wonder at many things which did not astonish them; they were often referred to histories which they had forgotten, if they ever knew them, and to names of whose celebrity they were ignorant; and it was with a most honest sense of relief they saw themselves reach the last room of the suite, where a few cabinet pictures and some rare carvings in ivory alone claimed their attention.

“A 'Virgin and Child,' by Murillo,” said the guide.

“The ninth 'Virgin and Child,' by all that's holy!” said Mr. O'Shea. “The ninth we have seen to-day!”

“The blue drapery, ladies and gentlemen,” continued the inexorable describer, “is particularly noticed. It is 'glazed' in a manner only known to Murillo.”

“I 'm glad of it, and I hope the secret died with him,” cried Mr. Morgan. “It looks for all the world like a bathing-dress.”

“The child squints. Don't he squint?” exclaimed Mosely.

“Oh, for shame!” cried Mrs. Morris. “Mr. Layton is quite shocked with your profane criticism.”

“I did not hear it, I assure you,” said that gentleman, as he arose from a long and close contemplation of a “St. John,” by Salvator.

“'St. John preaching in the Wilderness!'” said Quackinboss; “too tame for my taste. He don't seem to roll up his sleeves to the work,—does he?”

“It's not stump-oratory, surely?” said Layton, with a quiet smile.

“Ain't it, though! Well, stranger, I'm in a considerable unmixed error if it is not! You'd like to maintain that because a man does n't rise up from a velvet cushion and lay his hand upon a grand railing, all carved with grotesque intricacies, all his sentiments must needs be commonplace and vulgar; but I 'm here to tell you, sir, that you 'd hear grander things, nobler things, and greater things from a moss-covered old tree-stump in a western pine-forest, by the mouth of a plain, hardy son of hard toil, than you've often listened to in what you call your place in Parliament Now, that's a fact!”

There was that amount of energy in the way these words were uttered that seemed to say, if carried further, the discussion might become contentious.

Mr. Layton did not show any disposition to accept the gage of battle, but turned to seek for his pupil.

“You 're looking for the Marquis, Mr. Layton,” asked Mrs. Morris, “ain't you? I think you'll find him in the shrubberies, for he said all this only bored him, and he 'd go and look for a cool spot to smoke his cigar.”

“That's what it all comes to,” said Morgan, as soon as Layton had left the room; “that's the whole of it! You pay a fellow—a 'double first' something or other from Oxford or Cambridge—five hundred a year to go abroad with your son, and all he teaches him is to choose a cheroot.”

“And smoke it, Tom,” chimed in Mrs. Morgan.

“There ain't no harm in a weed, sir, I hope?” said Quackinboss. “The thinkers of this earth are most of 'em smoking men. What do you say, sir, to Humboldt, Niebuhr, your own Bulwer, and all our people, from John C. Colhoun to Daniel Webster? When a man puts a cigar between his lips, he as good as says, 'I 'm a-reflecting,—I 'm not in no ways to be broke in upon.' It's his own fault, sir, if he does n't think, for he has in a manner shut the door to keep out intruders.”

“Filthy custom!” muttered Mr. Morgan, with a garbled sentence, in which the word “America” was half audible.

“What's this he's saying about eating,—this Italian fellow?” said Mr. Mosely, as a servant addressed him in a foreign language.

“It is a polite invitation to a luncheon,” said Mrs. Morris, modestly turning to her fellow-travellers for their decision.

“Do any of us know our host?” asked Mr. OShea. “He is a Sir William Heathcote.”

“There was a director of the Central Trunk line of that name, who failed for half a million sterling,” whispered Morgan; “should n't wonder if it were he.”

“All the more certain to give us a jolly feed, if he be!” chuckled Mosely. “I vote we accept.”

“That of course,” said Mrs. Morris.

“Well, I know him, I reckon,” drawled out Quackinboss; “and I rayther suspect you owe this here politeness tomycompany. Yes, sir!” said he, half fiercely, to O'Shea, upon whose face a sort of incredulous smile was breaking,—“yes, sir!”

“Being our own countryman, sir,—an Englishman,—I suspect,” said Mr. Morgan, with warmth, “that the hospitality has been extended to us on wider grounds.”

“But why should we dispute about the matter at all?” mildly remarked Mrs. Morris. “Let us say yes, and be grateful.”

“There's good sense in that,” chimed in Mosely, “and I second it.”

“Carried with unanimity,” said O'Shea, as, turning to the servant, he muttered something in broken French.

“Well, I'm sure, I never!” mumbled Quackinboss to himself; but what he meant, or to what new circumstance in his life's experience he alluded, there is unhappily no explanation in this history; but he followed the rest with a drooping head and an air of half-melancholy resignation that was not by any means unusual with him.

When the young Marquis had made his escape from sightseeing, and all its attendant inflictions, he was mainly bent on what he would himself have called being “very jolly,”—that is to say, going his own way unmolested, strolling the road he fancied, and following out his own thoughts. Not that these same thoughts absolutely needed for their exercise or development any extraordinary advantages of solitude and retirement. He was no deep-minded sage, revolving worlds to come,—no poet, in search of the inspiring influence of nature,—no subtle politician, balancing the good and evil of some nice legislation. He was simply one of those many thousand England yearly turns out from her public schools of fine, dashing, free-hearted, careless boys, whose most marked feature in character is a wholesome horror of all that is mean or shabby. Less than a year before, he had been a midshipman in her Majesty's gun-boat “Mosquito;” the death of an elder brother had made him a Marquis, with the future prospect of several thousands a year.

He had scarcely seen or known his brother, so he grieved very little for his loss, but he sorrowed sincerely over the change of fortune that called him from his sea life and companions to an “on-shore” existence, and instead of the gun-room and its gay guests, gave him the proprieties of station and the requirements of high rank. One of his guardians thought he ought to go into the Guards; another advised a university; both agreed upon a tutor, and Mr. Layton was found, a young man of small fortune, whose health, injured by over-reading for honors, required change of scene and rest. They had been companions for a very short time, but had, as the young Lord would have said, “hit it off” admirably together; that is to say, partly from a just appreciation of his pupil, and partly out of a natural indolence of disposition, Layton interfered very little with him, gave him no troublesome tasks, imposed no actual studies, but contented himself with a careful watch over the boy's disposition, a gentle, scarce perceptible correction of his faults, and an honest zeal to develop any generous trait in his nature, little mindful of the disappointments his trustfulness must incur. Layton's theory was that we all become wise too early in life, and that the world's lessons should not be too soon implanted in a fresh unsuspecting nature. His system was not destined to be sorely tested in the present case. Harry Montserrat, Marquis of Agincourt, was a fortunate subject to illustrate it by. There never was a less suspectful nature; he was frank, generous, and brave; his faults were those of a hot, fiery temper, and a disposition to resent, too early and too far, what with a little patience he might have tolerated or even forgiven.

The fault, however, which Layton was more particularly guardful against, was a certain over-consciousness of his station and its power, which gradually began to show itself.

In his first experience of altered fortune he did nothing but regret the past. It was no compensation to him for his careless sea-life, with all its pleasant associations, to become of a sudden invested with station, and treated with what he deemed over-deference. His reefer's jacket was pleasanter “wear” than his padded frock-coat; the nimble boy who waited on him in the gun-room he thought a far smarter attendant than his obsequious valet; and, with all his midshipman's love of money-spending and squandering, the charm of extravagance was gone when there were no messmates to partake of it; nor did his well-groomed nag and his well-dressed tiger suggest one-half the enjoyment he had often felt in a pony ride over the cliffs of Malta, with some others of his mess, where falls were rife and tumbles frequent. These, I say, were first thoughts, but gradually others took their places. The enervation of a life of ease began soon to show itself, and he felt the power of a certain station. In the allowance his guardian made him, he had a far greater sum at his disposal than he ever possessed before; and in the title of his rank he soon discovered a magic that made the world beneath him very deferential and very obliging.

“That boy has been very ill brought up, Mr. Layton; it will be your chief care to instil into him proper notions of the place he is to occupy one of these days,” said an old Earl, one of his guardians, and who was most eager that every trace of his sea life should be eradicated.

“Don't let him get spoiled, Layton, because he's a Lord,” said the other guardian, who was an old Admiral. “There's good stuff in the lad, and it would be a thousand pities it should be corrupted.”

Layton did his best to obey each; but the task had its difficulties. As to the boy himself, the past and the present, the good and the evil, the frank young middy and the rich lordling, warred and contended in his nature; nor was it very certain at any moment which would ultimately gain the mastery. Such, without dwelling more minutely, was he who now strolled along through shrubbery and parterre, half listless as to the way, but very happy withal, and very light-hearted.

There was something in the scene that recalled England to his mind. There were more trees and turf than usually are found in Italian landscape, and there was, half hidden between hazel and alder, a clear, bright river, that brawled and fretted over rocks, or deepened into dark pools, alternately. How the circling eddies of a fast-flowing stream do appeal to young hearts! what music do they hear in the gushing waters! what a story is there in that silvery current as it courses along through waving meadows, or beneath tall mountains, and along some dark and narrow gorge, emblem of life itself in its light and shade, its peaceful intervals and its hours of struggle and conflict.

Forcing his way through the brushwood that guarded the banks, the boy gained a little ledge of rock, against which the current swept with violence, and then careered onward over a shallow, gravelly bed till lost in another bend of the stream. Just as Agincourt reached the rock, he spied a fishing-rod deeply and securely fastened in one of its fissures, but whose taper point was now bending like a whip, and springing violently under the struggling effort of a strong fish. He was nothing of an angler. Of honest “Izaak” and his gentle craft he absolutely knew nought, and of all the mysteries of hackles and green drakes he was utterly ignorant; but his sailor instinct could tell him when a spar was about to break, and this he now saw to be the case. The strain was great, and every jerk now threatened to snap either line or rod. He looked hurriedly around him for the fisherman, whose interests were in such grave peril; but seeing no one near, he endeavored to withdraw the rod. While he thus struggled, for it was fastened with care, the efforts of the fish to escape became more and more violent, and at last, just as the boy had succeeded in his task, a strong spring from the fish snapped the rod near the tip, and at the same instant snatched it from the youth's hand into the stream. Without a second's hesitation, Agincourt dashed into the river, which rose nearly to his shoulders, and, after a vigorous pursuit, reached the rod, but only as the fish had broken the strong gut in two, and made his escape up the rapid current.

The boy was toilfully clambering up the bank, with the broken rod in his hand, when a somewhat angry summons in Italian met his ears. It was time enough, he thought, to look for the speaker when he had gained dry land; so he patiently fought his way upwards, and at last, out of breath and exhausted, threw himself full length in the deep grass of the bank.

“I believe I am indebted to you, sir, for my smashed tackle and the loss of a heavy fish besides?” said Charles Heathcote, as he came up to where the youth was lying, his voice and manner indicating the anger that moved him.

“I thought to have saved the rod and caught the fish too,” said the other, half indolently; “but I only got a wet jacket for my pains.”

“I rather suspect, young gentleman, you are more conversant with a measuring-yard than a salmon-rod,” said Heathcote, insolently, as he surveyed the damaged fragments of his tackle.

“What do you mean by that, sir?” cried the boy, springing with a bound to his feet, and advancing boldly towards his adversary.

“Simply that it 's not exactly the sort of sport you follow in Bond Street,” retorted Heathcote, whose head was full of “Mosely and Trip,” and felt certain that a scion of that great house was before him.

“You must be a rare snob not to know a gentleman when you see him,” said Agincourt, with an insolent defiance in his look.

“Perhaps I'd be a better judge if I saw him after a good washing,” said Heathcote, who, with one hasty glance at the river, now turned a fierce eye on the youth.

Agincourt's gun-room experiences had not taught him to decline an offered battle, and he threw off his cap to show that he was ready and willing to accept the challenge, when suddenly Layton sprang between them, crying out, “What's the meaning of all this?”

“The meaning is, that your young friend there has taken the liberty, first, to smash my fishing-gear, and then to be very insolent to me, and that I had very serious intentions of sending him to look for the one and pay forfeit for the other.”

“Yes, I broke his rod, and I 'll pay for it, or, if he's a gentleman, I'll beg his pardon, or fight him,” said the boy, in a tone of ill-repressed anger.

“When there is an evident mistake somewhere,” said Layton, gently, “it only needs a moment of forbearance to set it right.”

“Here's how it all happened,” broke in the boy, eagerly. And in a few words he related his chance arrival at the spot, how he had seen the rod in what he deemed imminent danger, and how with the best intentions he had interfered to save it.

“I beg you to accept all my excuses for what I have said to you,” said Heathcote, with a frank and manly courtesy. “I am quite ashamed of my ill-temper, and hope you'll forgive it.”

“To be sure I will. But what about the rod,—you can't easily get such another in these parts?”

The boy looked eagerly at Layton as he spoke. Layton as quickly gave an admonitory glance of caution, and the youth's instinctive good breeding understood it.

“I think you came over with a party of friends to see the villa,” said Heathcote, to relieve the awkward pause between them.

“Not friends, exactly; people of our hotel.”

Heathcote smiled faintly, and rejoined,—

“Some of our pleasantest acquaintances come of chance intimacies,—don't you think so?”

“Oh, for the matter of that, they 're jolly enough. There's a wonderful Londoner, and a rare Yankee, and there's an Irishman would make the fortune of the Haymarket.”

“You must own, Harry, they are all most kind and good-natured to you,” said Layton, in a tone of mild half-rebuke.

“Well, ain't I just as—what shall I call it?—polite and the like to them? Ay, Layton, frown away as much as you like, they're a rum lot.”

“It is young gentlemen of this age who nowadays are most severe on the manners and habits of those they chance upon in a journey, not at all aware that, as the world is all new to them, their criticism may have for its object things of every-day frequency.”

The youth looked somewhat vexed at this reproof, but said nothing.

“I have the same unlucky habit myself,” said Heathcote, good-humoredly. “I pronounce upon people with wonderfully little knowledge of them, and no great experience of the world neither; and—case in point—your American acquaintance is exactly one of those I feel the very strongest antipathy to. We have met at least a dozen times during the winter and autumn, and the very thought of findinghimin a place would decidemeto leave it.”

It was not Layton's business to correct what he deemed faulty in this sentiment; but in the sharp glance he threw towards his pupil, he seemed to convey his disapproval of it.

“'My Coach,' Mr. Layton, is dying to tell us both we are wrong, sir,” said the boy; “he likes the 'kernal.'” And this he said with a nasal twang whose imitation was not to be mistaken.

Though Heathcote laughed at the boy's mimicry, his attention was more taken by the expression “my Coach,” which not only revealed the relations of tutor and pupil between them, but showed, by its familiarity, that the youth stood in no great awe of his preceptor.

Perhaps Layton had no fancy for this liberty before a stranger; perhaps he felt ashamed of the position itself; perhaps he caught something in Heathcote's quick glance towards him,—whatever it was, he was irritated and provoked, and angrily bit his lip, without uttering a word.

“Oh, here come the sight-seers! they are doing the grounds, and the grottos, and the marble fountains,” cried the boy, as a large group came out from a flower-garden and took their way towards an orangery. As they issued forth, however, Mrs. Morris stopped to caress a very large St. Bernard dog, who lay chained at the foot of an oak-tree. Charles Heathcote had not time to warn her of her danger, when the animal sprang fiercely at her. Had she not fallen suddenly backward, she must have been fearfully mangled; as it was, she received a severe wound in the wrist, and, overcome by pain and terror together, sank fainting on the sward.

For some time the confusion was extreme. Some thought that the dog was at liberty, and fled away in terror across the park; others averred that he was—must be—mad, and his bite fatal; a few tried to be useful; but Quackinboss hurried to the river, and, filling his hat with water, sprinkled the cold face of the sufferer and washed the wound, carefully binding it up with his handkerchief in a quick, business-like way, that showed he was not new to such casualties.

Layton meanwhile took charge of the little girl, whose cries and screams were heartrending.

“What a regular day of misfortunes, this!” said Agincourt, as he followed the mournful procession while they carried the still fainting figure back to the house. “I fancy you 'll not let another batch of sight-seers into your grounds in a hurry.”

“The ill-luck has all befallen our guests,” said Heathcote. “Our share of the mishap is to be associated with so much calamity.”

All that care and kindness could provide waited on Mrs. Morris, as she was carried into the villa and laid on a bed. May Leslie took all upon herself, and while the doctor was sent for, used such remedies as she had near. It was at once decided that she should not be removed, and after some delay the company departed without her; the day that had dawned so pleasantly thus closing in gloom and sadness, and the party so bent on amusement returned homeward depressed and dispirited.

ONE0066

“They 're mean vicious, these Alp dogs, and never to be trusted,” said Quackinboss.

“Heroines will be heroines,” said Mrs. Morgan, gruffly.

“Or rather won't be heroines when the occasion comes for it. She fainted off like a school-girl,” growled out Morgan.

“I should think she did!” muttered Mosely, “when she felt the beast's teeth in her.”

“A regular day of misfortunes!” repeated Agincourt.

“And we lost the elegant fine luncheon, too, into the bargain,” said O'Shea. “Every one seemed to think it wouldn't be genteel to eat after the disaster.”

“It is the fate of pleasure parties,” said Layton, moodily. And so they jogged on in silence.

And thus ended a day of pleasure, as many have ended before it.

Assuredly, they who plan picnics are not animated by the spirit of an actuary. There is a marvellous lack of calculation in their composition, since, of all species of entertainment, there exists not one so much at the mercy of accident, so thoroughly dependent for success on everything going right. Like the Walcheren expedition, the “wind must not only blow from the right point, but with a certain graduated amount of force.” What elements of sunshine and shade, what combinations of good spirits and good temper and good taste! what guidance and what moderation, what genius of direction and what “respect for minorities”! We will not enter upon the material sources of success, though, indeed, it should be owned they are generally better looked to, and more cared for, than the moral ingredients thus massed and commingled.

It was late when the party reached the Bagni, and, wishing each other a half-cold good-night, separated.

And now, one last peep at the villa, where we have left the sufferer. It was not until evening that the Heathcotes had so far recovered from the shock of the morning's disaster and its consequences as to be able to meet and talk over the events, and the actors in them.

“Well,” said Sir William, as they all sat round the tea-table, “what do you say to my Yankee now? Of all that company, was there one that showed the same readiness in a difficulty, a quick-witted aptitude to do the right thing, and at the same time so unobtrusively and quietly that when everything was over it was hard to say who had done it?”

“I call him charming. I'm in ecstasies with him,” said May, whose exaggerations of praise or censure were usually unbounded.

“I 'm quite ready to own he 'came out' strong in the confusion,” said Charles, half unwillingly; “but it was just the sort of incident that such a man was sure to figure well in.”

“Show me the man who is active and ready-minded in his benevolence, and I 'll show you one who has not to go far into his heart to search for generous motives. I maintain it, Quackinboss is a fine fellow!” There was almost a touch of anger in Sir William's voice as he said these words, as though he would regard any disparagement of the American as an offence to himself.

“I think Charley is a little jealous,” said May, with a sly malice; “he evidently wanted to carry the wounded lady himself, when that great giant interposed, and, seizing the prize, walked away as though he were only carrying a baby.”

“I fancied it was the tutor was disappointed,” said Charles; “and the way he devoted his cares to the little girl, when deprived of the mamma, convinced me he was the party chiefly interested.”

“Which was the tutor?” asked May, hastily. “You don't mean the man with all the velvet on his coat?”

“No, no; that was Mr. O'Shea, the Irish M.P., who, by the way, paidyouthe most persevering attention.”

“A hateful creature, insufferably pretentious and impertinent! The tutor was, then, the pale young man in black?”

“A nice, modest fellow,” broke in Sir William; “and a fine boy that young Marquis of Agincourt. I 'm glad you asked him up here, Charles. He is to come on Tuesday, is he not?”

“Yes, I said Tuesday, because I can't get my tackle to rights before that; and I promised to make him a fly-fisher. I owe him the reparation.”

“You included the tutor, of course, in your invitation?” asked his father.

“No. How stupid! I forgot him altogether.”

“Oh! that was too bad,” said May.

“Indeed,” cried Charles, turning towards her with a look of such malicious significance that she blushed deeply, and averted her head.

“Let us invite them all up here for Tuesday, May,” said Sir William. “It would be very unfair if they were to carry away only a disagreeable memory of this visit. Let us try and efface the first unhappy impression.”

“All right,” said Charles, “and I'll dash off a few lines to Mr. Layton, I think his name is, to say that we expect he will favor us with his company for a few days here. Am I not generosity itself, May?” said he, in a low whisper, as he passed behind her chair.

A blush still deeper than the first, and a look of offended pride, were her only answer.

“I must go in search of these good people's cards, for I forget some of their names,” said Charles; “though I believe I remember the important ones.”

This last sally was again directed towards May, but she, apparently, did not hear it.

“Who knows but your patient upstairs may be well enough to meet her friends, May?” said Sir William.

“Perhaps so. I can't tell,” answered she, vaguely; for she had but heard him imperfectly, and scarcely knew what she was replying.

Back to IndexNext