Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/779

1885.] had my little interest in the house speculations, in the Danube Valley Reclamation schemes and the Hungarian Land-banks. Well, well, perhaps it was lucky for me that the Viennese society and blank days of bear-shooting in the Carpathians bored me. At all events I was in Pekin, having cleared out everything Austrian at handsome profits before the krach came in the great exhibition year. By the way, I remember that relative of yours, Mr Moray, in China, but we will talk about him another time, I soon tired of China, and touched nothing there. No doubt there was money to be made by outsiders in silks and opium. But the fact was, it was the kind of money-making which is likely to leave pitch on the fingers. And as I caught an ague besides, I went to sun myself and get rid of the shivers in the dry uplands of the Columbian Republic. There I dipped into coffee-plantations, and dyed my hands in indigo-growing, – always in the way of legitimate investments, remember; and I should have done a good deal better than I did, had it not been for the moral tone of the country. I give you my word of honour, that when you get mixed up with a syndicate there, the rascals would leave even a British Minister in the lurch; and more than once I had to come down handsomely, to save the credit of those whom malevolent scandal might have called my confederates. But I pray you to observe, my young friend, that though I have made many hits in my time, I never in my life did one dishonourable action, and so I saw my properties, in Columbia seriously depreciated. The more was the pity. Had others only run as straight, I might have left the Legation there with a handsome fortune. And I don't know, after all, but what I should have regretted it, for satisfactory speculation is the salt of life.

"But I am getting prosaic, and I fear I begin to twaddle. Oh yes, it is no use your protesting – I take your civility for what it is worth. And at any rate, I should say little about my squabbles with the Foreign Office.

"As for successive Foreign Secretaries, I always found them the most impracticable of men." And here Mr Winstanley smiled. "They said – and you may imagine how absurd the accusation was – that I was never to be counted upon from month to month; that the health and digestion which seemed perfect in London were always breaking down in foreign climates; that I was perpetually giving myself leave of absence; and that if they sent a specially important despatch, I was always crossing it en route. You conceive, that to a gentleman of comfortable means, there was no dealing with officials of that stamp. So I intimated courteously, that, leaving my services at her Majesty's disposal, I was quite content to be shelved in the meantime. To do them justice, they took me readily at my word, offering me the ribbon of St Michael and St George, which I declined respectfully with thanks."

"Did you not find it a little dull, sir, that change to a private life?"

"Dull, my good friend! dull! Why, I am never dull. I have always been too full of occupations. As for being bored sometimes, I don't say: that is a different thing altogether, and the common lot of well-to-do humanity. At this moment I have no end of promising schemes on hand, as you will learn when we improve our acquaintance. But apropos to being bored, having a conscience and some consideration for you, I shall ring for my candle, and wish you good night."