“By Jove! then, I will, just for that menace,” said Harcourt. “I said, 'This is vengeance on Glencore's part.'”
“To whom, sir, did you make this remark?”
“To myself, of course. I never alluded to the matter to any other; never.”
“So far, well,” said Glencore, solemnly; “for had you done so, we had never exchanged words again!”
“My dear fellow,” said Harcourt, laying his hand affectionately on the other's, “I can well imagine the price a sensitive nature like yours must pay for the friendship of one so little gifted with tact as I am. But remember always that there's this advantage in the intercourse: you can afford to hear and bear things from a man of my stamp, that would be outrages from perhaps the lips of a brother. As Upton, in one of his bland moments, once said to me, 'Fellows like you, Harcourt, are the bitters of the human pharmacopoeia,—somewhat hard to take, but very wholesome when you're once swallowed.'”
“You are the best of the triad, and no great praise that, either,” muttered Glencore to himself. After a pause, he continued: “It has not been from any distrust in your friendship, Harcourt, that I have not spoken to you before on this gloomy subject. I know well that you bear me more affection than any one of all those who call themselves my friends; but when a man is about to do that which never can meet approval from those who love him, he seeks no counsel, he invites no confidence. Like the gambler, who risks all on a single throw, he makes his venture from the impulse of a secret mysterious prompting within, that whispers, 'With this you are rescued or ruined!' Advice, counsel!” cried he, in bitter mockery, “tell me, when have such ever alleviated the tortures of a painful malady? Have you ever heard that the writhings of the sick man were calmed by the honeyed words of his friends at the bedside? I”—here his voice became full and loud—“I was burdened with a load too great for me to bear. It had bowed me to the earth, and all but crushed me! The sense of an unaccomplished vengeance was like a debt which, unrequited ere I died, sent me to my grave dishonored. Which of you all could tell me how to endure this? What shape could your philosophy assume?”
“Then I guessed aright,” broke in Harcourt. “This was done in vengeance.”
“I have no reckoning to render you, sir,” said Glencore, haughtily; “for any confidence of mine, you are more indebted to my passion than to my inclination. I came up here to speak and confer with you about this boy, whose guardianship you are unable to continue longer. Let us speak of that.”
“Yes,” said Harcourt, in his habitual tone of easy good humor, “they are going to send me out to India again. I have had eighteen years of it already; but I have no Parliamentary influence, nor could I trace a fortieth cousinship with the House of Lords; but, after all, it might be worse. Now, as to this lad, what if I were to take him out with me? This artist life that he seems to have adopted scarcely promises much.”
“Let me see Upton's letter,” said Glencore, gravely.