Harcourt took it, and read, “Major Scaresby, from Naples.” “What think you, Glencore? Ought we to admit this gentleman? It may be that this visit relates to what we have been speaking about.”
“Scaresby—Scaresby—I know the name,” muttered Glencore. “To be sure! There was a fellow that hung about Florence and Rome long ago, and called himself Scaresby; an ill-tongued old scandal-monger people encouraged in a land where newspapers are not permitted.”
“He affects to have something very pressing to communicate. Perhaps it were better to have him up.”
“Don't make me known to him, then, or let me have to talk to him,” said Glencore, throwing himself down on a sofa; “and let his visit be as brief as you can manage.”
Harcourt made a significant sign to his servant, and the moment after the Major was heard ascending the stairs.
“Very persistent of me, you'll say, Colonel Harcourt. Devilish tenacious of my intentions, to force myself thus upon you!” said the Major, as he bustled into the room, with a white leather bag in his hand; “but I promised Upton I'd not lie down on a bed till I saw you.”
“All the apologies should come from my side, Major,” said Harcourt, as he handed him to a chair; “but the fact was, that having an invalid friend with me, quite incapable of seeing company, and having matters of some importance to discuss with him—”
“Just so,” broke in Scaresby; “and if it were not that I had given a very strong pledge to Upton, I 'd have given my message to your servant, and gone off to my hotel. But he laid great stress on my seeing you, and obtaining certain papers which, if I understand aright, have reached you in mistake, being meant for the Minister at Downing Street. Here's his own note, however, which will explain all.”
It ran thus:—
Dear H———,—So I find that some of the despatches have got into your enclosure instead of that “on his Majesty's service.” I therefore send off the insupportable old bore who will deliver this, to rescue them, and convey them to their fitting destination. “The extraordinaries” will be burdened to some fifty or sixty pounds for it; but they very rarely are expended so profitably as in getting rid of an intolerable nuisance. Give him all the things, therefore, and pack him off to Downing Street. I'm far more uneasy, however, about some prescriptions which I suspect are along with them. One, a lotion for the cervical vertebrae, of invaluable activity, which you may take a copy of, but strictly, on honor, for your own use only. Scaresby will obtain the Princess's letter, and hand it to you. It is certain not to have been opened at F. O., as they never read anything not alluded to in the private correspondence.