IN TURKEY
Leaving the sick man to the tender care of those ladies whose division of labour we have just hinted at, we turn to other interests, and to one of our characters, who, though to all seeming neglected, has not lapsed from our memory.
Joe Atlee had been despatched on a very confidential mission by Lord Danesbury. Not only was he to repossess himself of certain papers he had never heard of, from a man he had never seen, but he was also to impress this unknown individual with the immense sense of fidelity to another who no longer had any power to reward him, and besides this, to persuade him, being a Greek, that the favour of a great ambassador of England was better than roubles of gold and vases of malachite.
Modern history has shown us what a great aid to success in life is the contribution of a ‘light heart,’ and Joe Atlee certainly brought this element of victory along with him on his journey.
His instructions were assuredly of the roughest. To impress Lord Danesbury favourably on the score of his acuteness he must not press for details, seek for explanations, and, above all, he must ask no questions. In fact, to accomplish that victory which he ambitioned for his cleverness, and on which his Excellency should say, ‘Atlee saw it at once—Atlee caught the whole thing at a glance,’ Joe must be satisfied with the least definite directions that ever were issued, and the most confused statement of duties and difficulties that ever puzzled a human intelligence. Indeed, as he himself summed up his instructions in his own room, they went no further than this: That there was a Greek, who, with a number of other names, was occasionally called Speridionides—a great scoundrel, and with every good reason for not being come at—who was to be found somewhere in Stamboul—probably at the bazaar at nightfall. He was to be bullied, or bribed, or wheedled, or menaced, to give up some letters which Lord Danesbury had once written to him, and to pledge himself to complete secrecy as to their contents ever after. From this Greek, whose perfect confidence Atlee was to obtain, he was to learn whether Kulbash Pasha, Lord Danesbury’s sworn friend and ally, was not lapsing from his English alliance and inclining towards Russian connections. To Kulbash himself Atlee had letters accrediting him as the trusted and confidential agent of Lord Danesbury, and with the Pasha, Joe was instructed to treat with an air and bearing of unlimited trustfulness. He was also to mention that his Excellency was eager to be back at his old post as ambassador, that he loved the country, the climate, his old colleagues in the Sultan’s service, and all the interests and questions that made up their political life.
Last of all, Atlee was to ascertain every point on which any successor to Lord Danesbury was likely to be mistaken, and how a misconception might be ingeniously widened into a grave blunder; and by what means such incidents should be properly commented on by the local papers, and unfavourable comparisons drawn between the author of these measures and ‘the great and enlightened statesman’ who had so lately left them.
In a word, Atlee saw that he was to personate the character of a most unsuspecting, confiding young gentleman, who possessed a certain natural aptitude for affairs of importance, and that amount of discretion such as suited him to be employed confidentially; and to perform this part he addressed himself.
The Pasha liked him so much that he invited him to be his guest while he remained at Constantinople, and soon satisfied that he was a guileless youth fresh to the world and its ways, he talked very freely before him, and affecting to discuss mere possibilities, actually sketched events and consequences which Atlee shrewdly guessed to be all within the range of casualties.
Lord Danesbury’s post at Constantinople had not been filled up, except by the appointment of a Chargé-d’Affaires; it being one of the approved modes of snubbing a government to accredit a person of inferior rank to its court. Lord Danesbury detested this man with a hate that only official life comprehends, the mingled rancour, jealousy, and malice suggested by a successor, being a combination only known to men who serve their country.
‘Find out what Brumsey is doing; he is said to be doing wrong. He knows nothing of Turkey. Learn his blunders, and let me know them.’
This was the easiest of all Atlee’s missions, for Brumsey was the weakest and most transparent of all imbecile Whigs. A junior diplomatist of small faculties and great ambitions, he wanted to do something, not being clear as to what, which should startle his chiefs, and make ‘the Office’ exclaim: ‘See what Sam Brumsey has been doing! Hasn’t Brumsey hit the nail on the head! Brumsey’s last despatch is the finest state-paper since the days of Canning!’ Now no one knew the short range of this man’s intellectual tether better than Lord Danesbury—since Brumsey had been his own private secretary once, and the two men hated each other as only a haughty superior and a craven dependant know how to hate.
The old ambassador was right. Russian craft had dug many a pitfall for the English diplomatist, and Brumsey had fallen into every one of them. Acting on secret information—all ingeniously prepared to entrap him—Brumsey had discovered a secret demand made by Russia to enable one of the imperial family to make the tour of the Black Sea with a ship-of-war. Though it might be matter of controversy whether Turkey herself could, without the assent of the other Powers to the Treaty of Paris, give her permission, Brumsey was too elated by his discovery to hesitate about this, but at once communicated to the Grand-Vizier a formal declaration of the displeasure with which England would witness such an infraction of a solemn engagement.
As no such project had ever been entertained, no such demand ever made, Kulbash Pasha not only laughed heartily at the mock-thunder of the Englishman, but at the energy with which a small official always opens fire, and in the jocularity of his Turkish nature—for they are jocular, these children of the Koran—he told the whole incident to Atlee.
‘Your old master, Mr. Atlee,’ said he, ‘would scarcely have read us so sharp a lesson as that; but,’ he added, ‘we always hear stronger language from the man who couldn’t station a gunboat at Pera than from the ambassador who could call up the Mediterranean squadron from Malta.’
If Atlee’s first letter to Lord Danesbury admitted of a certain disappointment as regarded Speridionides, it made ample compensation by the keen sketch it conveyed of how matters stood at the Porte, the uncertain fate of Kulbash Pasha’s policy, and the scarcely credible blunder of Brumsey.
To tell the English ambassador how much he was regretted and how much needed, how the partisans of England felt themselves deserted and abandoned by his withdrawal, and how gravely the best interests of Turkey itself were compromised for want of that statesmanlike intelligence that had up to this guided the counsels of the Divan: all these formed only a part of Atlee’s task, for he wrote letters and leaders, in this sense, to all the great journals of London, Paris, and Vienna; so that when the Times and the Post asked the English people whether they were satisfied that the benefit of the Crimean War should be frittered away by an incompetent youth in the position of a man of high ability, the Débats commented on the want of support France suffered at the Porte by the inferior agency of England, and the Neue Presse of Vienna more openly declared that if England had determined to annex Turkey and govern it as a crown colony, it would have been at least courtesy to have informed her co-signatories of the fact.
At the same time, an Irish paper in the National interest quietly desired to be informed how was it that the man who made such a mull of Ireland could be so much needed in Turkey, aided by a well-known fellow-citizen, more celebrated for smashing lamps and wringing off knockers than for administering the rights of a colony; and by which of his services, ballad-writing or beating the police, he had gained the favour of the present Cabinet. ‘In fact,’ concluded the writer, ‘if we hear more of this appointment, we promise our readers some biographical memoirs of the respected individual, which may serve to show the rising youth of Ireland by what gifts success in life is most surely achieved, as well as what peculiar accomplishments find most merit with the grave-minded men who rule us.’
A Cork paper announced on the same day, amongst the promotions, that Joseph Atlee had been made C.B., and mildly inquired if the honour were bestowed for that paper on Ireland in the last Quarterly, and dryly wound up by saying, ‘We are not selfish, whatever people may say of us. Our friends on the Bosporus shall have the noble lord cheap! Let his Excellency only assure us that he will return with his whole staff, and not leave us Mr. Cecil Walpole, or any other like incapacity, behind him, as a director of the Poor-Law Board, or inspector-general of gaols, or deputy-assistant-secretary anywhere, and we assent freely to the change that sends this man to the East and leaves us here to flounder on with such aids to our mistakes as a Liberal Government can safely afford to spare us.’
A paragraph in another part of the same paper, which asked if the Joseph Atlee who, it was rumoured, was to go out as Governor to Labuan, could be this man, had, it is needless to say, been written by himself.
The Levant Herald contented itself with an authorised contradiction to the report that Sir Joseph Atlee—the Sir was an ingenious blunder—had conformed to Islamism, and was in treaty for the palace of Tashkir Bey at Therapia.
With a neatness and tact all his own, Atlee narrated Brumsey’s blunder in a tone so simple and almost deferential, that Lord Danesbury could show the letter to any of his colleagues. The whole spirit of the document was regret that a very well-intentioned gentleman of good connections and irreproachable morals should be an ass! Not that he employed the insufferable designation.
The Cabinet at home were on thorns lest the press—the vile Tory organs—should get wind of the case and cap the blundering government of Ireland with the almost equally gross mistake in diplomacy.
‘We shall have the Standard at us,’ said the Premier.
‘Far worse,’ replied the Foreign Secretary. ‘I shall have Brunow here in a white passion to demand an apology and the recall of our man at Constantinople.’
To accuse a well-known housebreaker of a burglary that he had not committed, nor had any immediate thought of committing, is the very luckiest stroke of fortune that could befall him. He comes out not alone innocent, but injured. The persecutions by which bad men have assailed him for years have at last their illustration, and the calumniated saint walks forth into the world, his head high and his port erect, even though a crowbar should peep out from his coat-pocket and the jingle of false keys go with him as he went.
Far too astute to make the scandal public by the newspapers, Atlee only hinted to his chief the danger that might ensue if the secret leaked out. He well knew that a press scandal is a nine-day fever, but a menaced publicity is a chronic malady that may go on for years.
The last lines of his letter were: ‘I have made a curious and interesting acquaintance—a certain Stephanotis Bey, governor of Scutari in Albania, a very venerable old fellow, who was never at Constantinople till now. The Pasha tells me in confidence that he is enormously wealthy. His fortune was made by brigandage in Greece, from which he retired a few years ago, shocked by the sudden death of his brother, who was decapitated at Corinth with five others. The Bey is a nice, gentle-mannered, simple-hearted old man, kind to the poor, and eminently hospitable. He has invited me down to Prevesa for the pig-shooting. If I have your permission to accept the invitation, I shall make a rapid visit to Athens, and make one more effort to discover Speridionides. Might I ask the favour of an answer by telegraph? So many documents and archives were stolen here at the time of the fire of the Embassy, that, by a timely measure of discredit, we can impair the value of all papers whatever, and I have already a mass of false despatches, notes, and telegrams ready for publication, and subsequent denial, if you advise it. In one of these I have imitated Walpole’s style so well that I scarcely think he will read it without misgivings. With so much “bad bank paper” in circulation, Speridionides is not likely to set a high price on his own scrip.’