CHAPTER XXVIII.
Perhaps no two animals upon the face of the earth have fewer points of attraction for each other, in all ordinary circumstances, than a plain English peasant and an Italian valet. When Joshua Brown and Carlo Carlini were left together in the sitting-room of the master of the latter, there was but one single link of sympathy between them, and that a very remote and indirect one. Every Italian, I believe--not from nature, perhaps, but from the circumstances and accidents of his country--has more or less of the pedlar in him. He is always dealing with some kind of wares, religious, political, moral, philosophical, even if they be not commercial in the ordinary sense--wherein he is very sharp, too. He is always exalting these wares with praise, and magnifying his own information and capabilities; and he is, nine times out often, trying to make you believe that pinchbeck is gold, and that an Italian is an old Roman.
I speak generally, without meaning to say for one moment that there are not many exceptions; but still, between such a man as Joshua Brown and such another as Carlo Carlini, there seemed to be but one tie, namely, the pedlarism which I have mentioned. There were, however, in reality, other and better ties, which they found out after a time; and, strange to say, the most powerful of these was honesty of purpose.
"Will you come down with me, sir, and take a glass of wine?" said Carlo Carlini to the pedlar, well knowing what his master's injunction to take care of his guest implied; "or perhaps you have not dined, sir, and would like something more solid."
There was a certain dignity and grace about the man, nothing abated by his foreign accent and look, which had a good deal of effect upon the pedlar, whose general notions of valets and valetry were not very sublime.
"Really," thought Joshua Brown, "this is quite a grand sort of a man. One would take him for a prince in disguise, if one didn't know better. He seems no way proud, however, but just like his master."
Here his contemplations came to an end, and he replied with a low bow--
"Thank you, sir; I have not dined. As to wine, it's very little of it I get, for there's less of it in our country than in yours, I take it, and not very good either."
"There is plenty of very good wine in England," said Carlini, shaking his head solemnly backwards and forwards; "only very dear, Mr. Brown. But my master, who is a rich man and a liberal one, does not grudge me my glass of wine, knowing that I have been accustomed to it all my life as well as himself; for we both come from countries where there is nothing else but wine to be drunk except water."
"Is not your master an Englishman, then?" asked Mr. Brown.
"No; a Spaniard, to be sure," replied Carlini with a start: "what made you think he was an Englishman?"
"Why, his language, his name, his manner, his look," said Joshua Brown, "all made me feel sure he was an Englishman."
"Oh, as to his language," said Carlini, "he speaks Italian, Spanish, and French, just as well as he does English; and then as to his name, that's his father's name, and he was an Englishman. His manners and appearance may be English, too; but, nevertheless, he has lived with Spaniards all his life, having been brought up as the nephew and heir of Don Balthazar de Xamorça. But come--let us go down, Mr. Brown. You shall have some dinner, and then we will have a quiet glass of wine together, as you call it in England."
Joshua Brown followed his new friend down to a small room on the sunk story, meditating very profoundly as he went. There was something that puzzled him greatly. He could not make the two broken ends of Colonel Middleton's story fit at all, and at last he convinced himself that the servant must have made a mistake. "He cannot have been long in Colonel Middleton's service," he thought; "I will find out how long he has been with him."
In pursuance of this resolution, Mr. Joshua Brown, after having comforted the inner man with some very soft and savoury viands, and as soon as a glass of not bad wine was placed in his hand, looked across to Signor Carlini with a very shrewd expression of countenance, winking his eye over the rich juice of the grape, and saying--
"A very good master, yours, Mr. Carlini, I should think. One does not meet with such every day."
"No, that one doesn't," answered Carlini, heartily. "No one has an easier or a better place than I have."
"I suppose you've had it a long time," said the pedlar, in an inquiring tone.
"About five years," replied Carlini, "but I knew him three or four years before that. Ah, Mr. Brown! one sees strange changes in this world. When first I saw my present master, he brought into my counting-house a draft for twenty thousand dollars, and I paid it as if it had been no sum at all. The next time I saw him, I was a waiter at an inn; and when he paid the bill he gave me a dollar for myself, without knowing me again."
"That is a strange history, indeed," said the pedlar. "How came you to have such a fall, sir?"
"Oh! revolution, revolution!" replied Carlini; "revolution, by which poor men think to better their condition, but which always ends in making them the first sufferers. It was the revolution in the New World that ruined me; but as it only brought me down to the same rank from which I rose, and indeed not quite to that, I have no cause to grumble. Mine's a very strange history altogether."
"It must be so, indeed," answered Joshua Brown: "I should like of all things to hear it. I always like to hear people's histories, Mr. Carlini--not for curiosity's sake only, but because there is always something in them to show us how good God is to all his creatures, and to make us contented with our own lot; and also to hear a real history from a man's own mouth is to me like seeing a picture, especially if there are many ups and downs in it to represent the mountains and the valleys."
"Well," said Carlini, "take another glass of wine, and I'll tell you something of it, for it is worth listening to."
"And so is your master's, too, I should think," rejoined Mr. Brown, whose curiosity was directed more towards the history of Colonel Middleton himself than that of his servant.
"Not half so much as mine," answered Carlini; "for his has been all prosperity from beginning to end, and mine has been continually changing, as you will see."