Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service

And he hurriedly wrote half a dozen lines, which he enclosed and addressed, and then returning to his seat, said, “Bonne chance! I wish you success and a pleasant journey.”

I will not dwell upon the much longer and more commonplace interview that followed. Mr. Temple knew all about me, – knew my uncle, and knew the whole story of my misfortunes. He was not, however, the less cautious in every step he took; and as the sum to be intrusted to me was so large, he filled in a short bail-bond, and, while I sat with him, despatched it by one of his clerks to Lombard Street, for my uncle’s signature. This came in due time; and, furnished with instructions how to draw on the Paymaster-General, some current directions how to proceed till I presented myself at the Legation at Naples, and a sum sufficient for the travelling expenses, I left London that night for Calais, and began my journey. If I was very anxious to acquit myself creditably in this my first employment in the public service, and to exhibit an amount of zeal, tact, and discretion that might recommend me for future employment, I was still not indifferent to the delights of a journey paid for at the Queen’s expense, and which exacted from me none of those petty economies which mar the perfect enjoyment of travelling.

If I suffer myself to dwell on this part of my history, I shall be ruined, for I shall never get on; and you will, besides, inevitably – and as unjustly as inevitably – set me down for a snob.

I arrived at Naples at last. It was just as the day was closing in, but there was still light enough to see the glorious bay and the outline of Vesuvius in the background. I was, however, too full of my mission now to suffer my thoughts to wander to the picturesque, and so I made straight for the Legation.

I had been told that I should receive my last instructions from H.M.‘s Minister, and it was a certain Sir James Magruber that then held that office at Naples. I know so very little of people in his peculiar walk, that I can only hope he may not be a fair sample of his order; for he was the roughest, the rudest, and most uncourteous gentleman it has ever been my fortune to meet.

He was dressing for dinner when I sent up my card, and at once ordered that I should be shown up to his room.

“Where’s your bag?” cried he, roughly, as I entered.

Conceiving that this referred to my personal luggage, and was meant as the preliminary to inviting me to put up at his house, I said that I had left my “traps” at the hotel, and, with his permission, would install myself there for the few hours of my stay.

“Confound your ‘traps,’ as you call them,” said he. “I meant your despatches, – the bag from F. O. Ain’t you the messenger?”

“No, sir; I am not the messenger,” said I, haughtily.

“And what the devil do you mean, then, by sending me your card, and asking to see me at once?”

“Because my business is peremptory, sir,” said I, boldly, and proceeded at once to explain who I was and what I had come for. “To-morrow will be the tenth, sir,” said I, “and I ought to be at Rocco d’Anco by the morning of the twelfth, at farthest.”

He was brushing his hair all the time I was speaking, and I don’t think that he heard above half of what I said.

“And do you mean to tell me they are such infernal fools at F.O. that they ‘re going to pay one thousand pounds sterling to liberate this scamp St. John?”

“I think, sir, you will find that I have been sent out with this object”

“Why, it’s downright insanity! It is a thousand pities they had n’t caught the fellow years ago. Are you aware that there’s scarcely a crime in the statute-book he has not committed? I’d not say murder wasn’t amongst them. Why, sir, he cheated me, – me, – the man who now speaks to you, – at billiards. He greased my cue, sir. It was proved, – proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. The fellow called it a practical joke, but he forgot I had five ducats on the game; and he had the barefaced insolence to amuse Naples by a representation of me as I sided my ball, and knocked the marker down afterwards, thinking it was his fault. He was attached, this St. John was, to my mission here at the time; but I wrote home to demand – not to ask, but demand – his recall. His father’s vote was, however, of consequence to the Government, and they refused me. Yes, sir, they refused me; they told me to give him a leave of absence if I did not like to see him at the Legation; and I gave it, sir. And, thank Heaven, the fellow went into Calabria, and fell into the hands of the brigands, – too good company for him, I ‘m certain. I ‘ll be shot if he could n’t corrupt them; and now you ‘re come out here to pay a ransom for a fellow that any other country but England would send to the galleys.”

“Has he done nothing worse, sir,” asked I, timidly, “than this stupid practical joke?”

“What, sir, have you the face to put this question to me, – to H.M.‘s Minister at this court, – the subject of this knavish buffoonery? Am I a fit subject for a fraud, – a – a freedom, sir? Is it to a house which displays the royal arms over the entrance-door men come to play blackleg or clown? Where have you lived, with whom have you lived, what pursuit in life have you followed, that you should be sunk in such utter ignorance of all the habits of life and civilization?”

I replied that I was a gentleman, I trusted as well educated, and I knew as well-born, as himself.

He sprang to the bell as I said this, and rang on till the room was crowded with servants, who came rushing in under the belief that it was a fire-alarm.

“Take him away, – put him out – Giacomo, – Hippo-lyte, – Francis!” screamed he. “See that he’s out of the house this instant. Send Mr. Carlyon here. Let the police be called, and order gendarmes if he resists.”

While he was thus frothing and foaming, I took my hat, and, passing quietly through the ranks of his household, descended the stairs, and proceeded into the street.

I reached the “Vittoria” in no bland humor. I must own that I was flurried and irritated in no common degree. I was too much excited to be able, clearly, to decide how far the insult I had received required explanation and apology, or if it had passed the limits in which apology is still possible.

Perhaps, thought I, if I call him out, he ‘ll hand me over to the police; perhaps he ‘ll have me sent over the frontier. Who knows what may be the limit to a minister’s power? While I was thus speculating and canvassing with myself, a card was presented to me by the waiter, – “Mr. Sponnington, Attaché, H.M.‘s Legation, Naples,” – and as suddenly the owner of it entered the room.

He was a fair-faced, blue-eyed young man, very shortsighted, with a faint lisp and an effeminate air. He bowed slightly as he came forward, and said, “You ‘re Mr. Goss-lett, ain’t you?” And not waiting for any reply, he sat down and opened a roll of papers on the table. “Here are your instructions. You are to follow them when you can, you know, and diverge from them whenever you must. That is, do whatever you like, and take the consequences. Sir James won’t see you again. He says you insulted him; but he says that of almost every one. The cook insults him when the soup is too salt, and I insulted him last week by writing with pale ink. But you ‘d have done better if you ‘d got on well with him. He writes home, – do you understand? – he writes home.”

“So do most people,” I said dryly.

“Ah! but not the way he does. He writes home and has a fellow black-listed. Two crosses against you sends you to Greece, and three is ruin! Three means the United States.”

“I assure you, sir, that as regards myself, your chief’s good opinion or good word are matters of supreme indifference.”

Had I uttered an outrageous blasphemy, he could not have looked at me with greater horror.

“Well,” said he, at last, “there it is; read it over. Bolton will cash your bills, and give you gold. You must have gold; they ‘ll not take anything else. I don’t believe there is much more to say.”

“Were you acquainted with Mr. St. John?” asked I.

“I should think I was. Rodney St John and I joined together.”

“And what sort of a fellow is he? Is he such a scamp as his chief describes?”

“He’s fast, if you mean that; but we ‘re all fast.”

“Indeed!” said I, measuring him with a look, and thinking to compute the amount of his colleague’s iniquity.

“But he’s not worse than Stormont, or Mosely, or myself; only he’s louder than we are. He must always be doing something no other fellow ever thought of. Don’t you know the kind of thing I mean? He wants to be original. Bad style that, very. That ‘s the way he got into this scrape. He made a bet he ‘d go up to Rocco d’Anco, and pass a week with Stoppa, the brigand, – the cruellest dog in Calabria. He didn’t say when he’d come back again, though; and there he is still, and Stoppa sent one of his fellows to drop a letter into the Legation, demanding twenty-five thousand francs for his release, or saying that his ears, nose, &c, will be sent on by instalments during the month. Ugly, ain’t it?”

“I trust I shall be in time to save him. I suspect he’s a good fellow.”

“Yes, I suppose he is,” said he, with an air of uneasiness; “only I ‘d not go up there, where you ‘re going, for a trifle, I tell you that.”

“Perhaps not,” said I, quietly.

“For,” resumed he, “when Stoppa sees that you’re a nobody, and not worth a ransom, he ‘d as soon shoot you as look at you.” And this thought seemed to amuse him so much that he laughed at it as he quitted the room and descended the stairs, and I even heard him cackling over it in the street.

Before I went to bed that night I studied the map of Calabria thoroughly, and saw that by taking the diligence to Atri the next day I should reach Valdenone by about four o’clock, from which a guide could conduct me to Rocco d’Anco, – a mountain walk of about sixteen miles, – a feat which my pedestrian habits made me fully equal to. If the young attache’s attempt to terrorize over me was not a perfect success, I am free to own that my enterprise appeared to me a more daring exploit than I had believed it when I thought of it in Piccadilly. It was not merely that I was nearer to the peril, but everything conspired to make me more sensible to the danger. The very map, where a large tract was marked “little known,” suggested a terror of its own; and I fell asleep, at last, to dream of every wild incident of brigand life I had seen in pictures or witnessed on the stage.

As that bland young gentleman so candidly told me, “I was a nobody,” and, consequently, of no interest to any one. Who would think of sending out an express messenger to ransom Paul Gosslett? At all events, I could console myself with the thought that if the world would give little for me, it would grieve even less; and with this not very cheering consolation I mounted to the banquette of the diligence, and started.

After passing through a long, straggling suburb, not remarkable for anything but its squalor and poverty, we reached the seashore, and continued to skirt the bay for miles. I had no conception of anything so beautiful as the great sheet of blue water seen in the freshness of a glorious sunrise, with the white-sailed lateener skimming silently along, and reflected, as if in a mirror, on the unruffled surface. There was a peaceful beauty in all around, that was a positive enchantment, and the rich odors of the orange and the verbena filled the air almost to a sense of delicious stupefaction. Over and over did I say to myself, “Why cannot this delicious dream be prolonged for a lifetime? If existence could but perpetuate such a scene as this, let me travel along the shore of such a sea, overshadowed by the citron and the vine, – I ask for no more.” The courier or conductor was my only companion, – an old soldier of the first empire, who had fought on the Beresina and in Spain, – a rough old sabreur, not to be appeased by my best cigars and my brandy-flask into a good word for the English. He hated them formerly, and he hated them still. There might be, he was willing to believe, one or two of the nation that were not cani; but he had n’t met them himself, nor did he know any one who had. I relished his savagery, and somehow never felt in the slightest degree baffled or amazed by his rudeness. I asked him if he had heard of that unlucky countryman of mine who had been captured by the brigands, and he said that he had heard that Stoppa meant to roast him alive; for that Stoppa did n’t like the English, – a rather strong mode of expressing a national antipathy, but one, on the whole, he did not entirely disapprove of.

“Stoppa, however,” said I, assuming as a fact what I meant for a question, – “Stoppa is a man of his word. If he offered to take a ransom, he’ll keep his promise?”

“That he will, if the money is paid down in zecchin gold. He ‘ll take nothing else. He ‘ll give up the man; but I ‘d not fancy being the fellow who brought the ransom if there was a light piece in the mass.”

“He ‘d surely respect the messenger who carried the money?”

“Just as much as I respect that old mare who won’t come up to her collar;” and he snatched the whip, as he spoke, from the driver, and laid a heavy lash over the sluggish beast’s loins. “Look here,” said he to me, as we parted company at Corallo, “you ‘re not bad, – for an Englishman, at least, – and I ‘d rather you did n’t come to trouble. Don’t you get any further into these mountains than St. Andrea, and don’t stay, even there, too long. Don’t go in Stoppa’s way; for if you have money, he ‘ll cut your throat for it, and if you have n’t, he ‘ll smash your skull for being without it. I ‘ll be on the way back to Naples on Saturday; and if you’ll take a friend’s advice, you’ll be beside me.”

I was not sorry to get away from my old grumbling companion; but his words of warning went with me in the long evening’s drive up to St. Andrea, a wild mountain road, over which I jogged in a very uncomfortable barroccino.

Was I really rushing into such peril as he described? And if so, why so? I could scarcely affect to believe that any motives of humanity moved me; still less, any sense of personal regard or attachment. I had never known – not even seen – Mr. St. John. In what I had heard of him there was nothing that interested me. It was true that I expected to be rewarded for my services; but if there was actual danger in what I was about to do, what recompense would be sufficient? And was it likely that this consideration would weigh heavily on the minds of those who employed me? Then, again, this narrative, or report, or whatever it was, how was I to find the material for it? Was it to be imagined that I was to familiarize myself with brigand life by living amongst these rascals, so as to be able to make a Blue Book about them? Was it believed that I could go to them, like a census commissioner, and ask their names and ages, how long they had been in their present line of life, and how they throve on it? I’ll not harass myself more about them, thought I, at last. I ‘ll describe my brigand as I find him. The fellow who comes to meet me for the money shall be the class. “Ex pede Herculem” shall serve one here, and I have no doubt I shall be as accurate as the others who contribute to this sort of literature.

I arrived at St. Andrea as the Angelus was ringing, and saw that pretty sight of a whole village on their knees at evening prayer, which would have been prettier had not the devotees been impressed with the most rascally countenances I ever beheld.