Lord Kilgobbin Part 78

It was some time before Walpole appeared, and when he did, it was with such a wasted look and careworn aspect as might have pleaded in his favour.

'Maude told me you wished to see me, my lord,' said he, half diffidently.

'Did I? eh? Did I say so? I forget all about it. What could it be? Let us see. Was it this stupid row they were making in the House? Have you read the debate?'

'No, my lord; not looked at a paper.'

'Of course not; you have been too ill, too weak. Have you seen a doctor?'

'I don't care to see a doctor; they all say the same thing. I only need rest and quiet.'

'Only that! Why, they are the two things n.o.body can get. Power cannot have them, nor money buy them. The retired tradesman--I beg his pardon, the cheesemonger--he is always a cheesemonger now who represents vulgarity and bank-stock--he may have his rest and quiet; but a Minister must not dream of such a luxury, nor any one who serves a Minister. Where's the quiet to come from, I ask you, after such a tirade of abuse as that?' And he pointed to the _Times_. 'There's _Punch_, too, with a picture of me measuring out "Danesbury's drops to cure loyalty." That slim youth handing the spoon is meant for _you_, Walpole.'

'Perhaps so, my lord,' said he coldly.

'They haven't given you too much leg, Cecil,' said the other, laughing; but Cecil scarcely relished the joke.

'I say, Piccadilly is scarcely the place for a man after that: I mean, of course, for a while,' continued he. 'These things are not eternal; they have their day. They had me last week travelling in Ireland on a camel; and I was made to say, "That the air of the desert always did me good!" Poor fun, was it not?'

'Very poor fun indeed!'

'And you were the boy preparing my chibouque; and, I must say, devilish like.'

'I did not see it, my lord.'

'That's the best way. Don't look at the caricatures; don't read the _Sat.u.r.day Review_; never know there is anything wrong with you; nor, if you can, that anything disagrees with you.'

'I should like the last delusion best of all,' said he.

'Who would not?' cried the old lord. 'The way I used to eat potted prawns at Eton, and peach jam after them, and iced guavas, and never felt better!

And now everything gives acidity.'

'Just because our fathers and grandfathers would have those potted prawns you spoke of.'

'No, no; you are all wrong. It's the new race--it's the new generation.

They don't bear reverses. Whenever the world goes wrong with them, they talk as they feel, they lose appet.i.te, and they fall down in a state like your--a--Walpole--like your own!'

'Well, my lord, I don't think I could be called captious for saying that the world has not gone over well with me.'

'Ah--hum. You mean--no matter--I suppose the luckiest hand is not all trumps! The thing is to score the trick--that's the point, Walpole, to score the trick!'

'Up to this, I have not been so fortunate.'

'Well, who knows what's coming! I have just asked the Foreign Office people to give you Guatemala; not a bad thing, as times go.'

'Why, my lord, it's banishment and barbarism together. The pay is miserable! It _is_ far away, and it _is_ not Pall Mall or the Rue Rivoli.'

'No, not that. There is twelve hundred for salary, and something for a house, and something more for a secretary that you don't keep, and an office that you need not have. In fact, it makes more than two thousand; and for a single man in a place where he cannot be extravagant, it will suffice.'

'Yes, my lord; but I was presumptuous enough to imagine a condition in which I should not be a single man, and I speculated on the possibility that another might venture to share even poverty as my companion.'

'A woman wouldn't go there--at least, she ought not. It's all bush life, or something like it. Why should a woman bear that? or a man ask her to do so?'

'You seem to forget, my lord, that affections may be engaged, and pledges interchanged.'

'Get a bill of indemnity, therefore, to release you: better that than wait for yellow fever to do it.' 'I confess that your lords.h.i.+p's words give me great discouragement, and if I could possibly believe that Lady Maude was of your mind--'

'Maude! Maude! why, you never imagined that Lady Maude would leave comfort and civilisation for this bush life, with its rancheros and rattlesnakes. I confess,' said he, with a bitter laugh, 'I did not think either of you were bent on being Paul or Virginia.'

'Have I your lords.h.i.+p's permission to ask her own judgment in the matter: I mean with the a.s.surance of its not being bia.s.sed by you?'

'Freely, most freely do I give it. She is not the girl I believe her if she leaves you long in doubt. But I prejudge nothing, and I influence nothing.'

'Am I to conclude, my lord, that I am sure of this appointment?'

'I almost believe I can say you are. I have asked for a reply by telegraph, and I shall probably have one to-morrow.'

'You seemed to have acted under the conviction that I should be glad to get this place.'

'Yes, such was my conclusion. After that fiasco in Ireland you must go somewhere, for a time at least, out of the way. Now as a man cannot die for half-a-dozen years and come back to life when people have forgotten his unpopularity, the next best thing is South America. Bogota and the Argentine Republic have whitewashed many a reputation.'

'I will remember your lords.h.i.+p's wise words.'

'Do so,' said my lord curtly, for he felt offended at the flippant tone in which the other spoke. 'I don't mean to say that I'd send the writer of that letter yonder to Yucatan or Costa Rica.'

'Who may the gifted writer be, my lord?'

'Atlee, Joe Atlee; the fellow you sent over here.'

'Indeed!' was all that Walpole could utter.

'Just take it to your room and read it over. You will be astonished at the thing. The fellow has got to know the bearings of a whole set of new questions, and how he understands the men he has got to deal with!'

'With your leave I will do so,' said he, as he took the letter and left the room.

CHAPTER LX

A DEFEAT

Cecil Walpole's Italian experiences had supplied him with an Italian proverb which says, '_Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere_,' or, in other words, that no evil comes unmixed with good; and there is a marvellous amount of wisdom in the adage.

That there is a deep philosophy, too, in showing how carefully we should sift misfortune to the dregs, and ascertain what of benefit we might rescue from the dross, is not to be denied; and the more we reflect on it, the more should we see that the germ of all real consolation is intimately bound up in this reservation.

No sooner, then, did Walpole, in novelist phrase, 'realise the fact' that he was to go to Guatemala, than he set very practically to inquire what advantages, if any, could be squeezed out of this unpromising incident.