Part 22 (1/2)
”We shall need his a.s.sistance,” said Upton, whose quick faculties were already busily travelling many a mile of the future. ”I 'll see him to-night, and try what can be done. In a few days you will have turned over in your mind what you yourself destine for him,--the fortune you mean to give--”
”It is already done,” said Glencore, laying a sealed letter on the table. ”All that I purpose in his behalf you will find there.”
”All this detail is too much for you, Glencore,” said the other, seeing that a weary, depressed expression had come over him, while his voice grew weaker with every word. ”I shall not leave this till late to-morrow, so that we can meet again. And now good night.”
CHAPTER XVII. A TeTE-a-TeTE
When Harcourt was aroused from his sound sleep by Upton, and requested in the very blandest tones of that eminent diplomatist to lend him every attention of his ”very remarkable faculties,” he was not by any means certain that he was not engaged in a strange dream; nor was the suspicion at all dispelled by the revelations addressed to him.
”Just dip the end of that towel in the water, Upton, and give it to me,”
cried he at last; and then, wiping his face and forehead, said, ”Have I heard you aright,--there was no marriage?”
Upton nodded a.s.sent.
”What a shameful way he has treated this poor boy, then!” cried the other. ”I never heard of anything equal to it in cruelty, and I conclude it was breaking this news to the lad that drove him out to sea on that night, and brought on this brain fever. By Jove, I 'd not take _his_ t.i.tle, and _your_ brains, to have such a sin on my conscience!”
”We are happily not called on to judge the act,” said Upton, cautiously.
”And why not? Is it not every honest man's duty to reprobate whatever he detects dishonorable or disgraceful? I do judge him, and sentence him too, and I say, moreover, that a more cold-blooded piece of cruelty I never heard of. He trains up this poor boy from childhood to fancy himself the heir to his station and fortune; he nurses in him all the pride that only a high rank can cover; and then, when the lad's years have brought him to the period when these things a.s.sume all their value, he sends for him to tell him he is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
”It is not impossible that I think worse of Glencore's conduct than you do yourself,” said Upton, gravely.
”But you never told him so, I'll be sworn,--you never said to him it was a rascally action. I'll lay a hundred pounds on it, you only expostulated on the inexpediency, or the inconvenience, or some such trumpery consideration, and did not tell him, in round numbers, that what he had done was an infamy.”
”Then I fancy you'd lose your money, pretty much as you are losing your temper,--that is, without getting anything in requital.”
”What did you say to him, then?” said Harcourt, slightly abashed.
”A great deal in the same strain as you have just spoken in, doubtless not as warm in vituperation, but possibly as likely to produce an effect; nor is it in the least necessary to dwell upon that. What Glencore has done, and what I have said about it, both belong to the past. They are over,--they are irrevocable. It is to what concerns the present and the future I wish now to address myself, and to interest you.”
”Why, the boy's name was in the Peerage,--I read it there myself.”
”My dear Harcourt, you must have paid very little attention to me a while ago, or you would have understood how that occurred.”
”And here were all the people, the tenantry on the estate, calling him the young lord, and the poor fellow growing up with the proud consciousness that the t.i.tle was his due.”
”There is not a hards.h.i.+p of the case I have not pictured to my own mind as forcibly as you can describe it,” said Upton; ”but I really do not perceive that any reprobation of the past has in the slightest a.s.sisted me in providing for the future.”
”And then,” murmured Harcourt,--for all the while he was pursuing his own train of thought, quite irrespective of all Upton was saying,--”and then he turns him adrift on the world without friend or fortune.”
”It is precisely that he may have both the one and the other that I have come to confer with you now,” replied Upton. ”Glencore has made a liberal provision for the boy, and asked me to become his guardian. I have no fancy for the trust, but I did n't see how I could decline it. In this letter he a.s.signs to him an income, which shall be legally secured to him. He commits to me the task of directing his education, and suggesting some future career, and for both these objects I want your counsel.”
”Education,--prospects,--why, what are you talking about? A poor fellow who has not a name, nor a home, nor one to acknowledge him,--what need has he of education, or what chance of prospects? I'd send him to sea, and if he wasn't drowned before he came to manhood, I'd give him his fortune, whatever it was, and say, 'Go settle in some of the colonies.'
You have no right to train him up to meet fresh mortifications and insults in life; to be flouted by every fellow that has a father, and outraged by every cur whose mother was married.”
”And are the colonies especially inhabited by illegitimate offspring?”
said Upton, dryly.
”At least he'd not be met with a rebuff at every step he made. The rude life of toil would be better than the polish of a civilization that could only reflect upon him.”