“I never suspected that,” said she, with a sigh.
“Of course you never did; nor am I in a great hurry to tell it even now. I'd not whisper it if Sir Brook were on the same island with us. Do you know, girl, that he resents a word against the mine as if it was a stain upon his own honour. For a while I used to catch up his enthusiasm, and think if we only go on steadily, if we simply persist, we are sure to succeed in the end. But when week after week rolled over, and not a trace of a mineral appeared when the very workmen said we were toiling in vain when I felt half-ashamed to meet the jeering questions of the neighbours, and used to skulk up to the shaft by the back way,—he remarked it, and said to me one morning, 'I am afraid, Tom, it is your sense of loyalty to me that keeps you here, and not your hope of success. Be frank, and tell me if this be so.' I blundered out something about my determination to share his fate, whatever it might be, and it would have been lucky if I had stopped there; but I went on to say that I thought the mine was an arrant delusion, and that the sooner we turned our backs on it, and addressed our energies to another quarter, the better. 'You think so?' said he, looking almost fiercely at me. 'I am certain of it,' said I, decisively; for I thought the moment had come when a word of truth could do him good service. He went out without speaking, and instead of going to Lavanna, where the mine is, he went over to Cagliari, and only came home late at night. The next morning, while we were taking our coffee before 'setting out, he said to me, 'Don't strap on your knapsack to-day. I don't mean you should come down into the shaft again.' 'How so?' asked I; 'what have I said or done that could offend you?' 'Nothing, my dear boy,' said he, laying his hand on my shoulder; 'but I cannot bear you should meet this dreary life of toil without the one thing that can lighten its gloom—Hope. I have managed, therefore, to raise a small sum on the mine; for,' said he, with a sly laugh, 'there are men in Cagliari who don't take the despondent view you have taken of it; and I have written to my old friend at the Horse Guards to give you a commission, and you shall go and be a soldier.' And leave you here, sir, all alone?' 'Far from alone, lad. I have that companion which you tell me never joined you. I have Hope with me.'
“'Then I'll stay too, sir, and try if he'll not give me his company yet. At all events, I shall have yours; and there is nothing I know that could recompense me for the loss of it.' It was not very easy to turn him from his plan, but I insisted so heartily-for I'd have stayed on now, if it were to have entailed a whole life of poverty-that he gave in at last; and from that hour to this, not a word of other than agreement has passed between us. For my own part, I began to work with a will, and a determination that I never felt before; and perhaps I overtaxed my strength, for I caught this fever by remaining till the heavy dews began to fall, and in this climate it is always a danger.”
“And the mine, Tom—did it grow better?” “Not a bit. I verily believe we never saw ore from that day. We got upon yellow clay, and lower down upon limestone rock, and then upon water; and we are pumping away yet, and old Sir Brook is just as much interested by the decrease of the water as if he saw a silver floor beneath it. 'We've got eight inches less this morning, Tom; we are doing famously now.' I declare to you, Lucy, when I saw his fine cheery look and bright honest eye, I thought how far better this man's fancies are than the hard facts of other people; and I'd rather have his great nature than all the wealth success could bring us.”
“My own dear brother!” was all she could say, as she grasped his hand, and held it with both her own.
“The worst of all is, that in the infatuation he feels about this mining project he forgets everything else. Letters come to him from agents and men of business asking for speedy answers; some occasionally come to tell that funds upon which he had reckoned to meet certain payments had been withdrawn from his banker long sinca When he reads these, he ponders a moment, and mutters, 'The old story, I suppose. It is so easy to write Brook Fossbrooke;' and then the whole seems to pass out of his mind, and he'll say, 'Come along, Tom; we must push matters a little; I'll want some coin by the end of the month.'
“When I grew so weak that I could n't go to the mine, the accounts he used to give me daily made me think we must be prospering. He would come back every night so cheery and so hopeful, and his eyes would sparkle as he 'd tell of a bright vein that they 'd just 'struck.' He owned that the men were less sanguine, but what could they know? They had no other teaching than the poor experiences of daily labor. If they saw lead or silver, they believed in it. To him, however, the signs of the coming ore were enough; and then he would open a paper full of dark earth in which a few shining particles might be detected, and point them out to me as the germs of untold riches. 'These are silver, Tom, every one of them; they are oxidized, but still perfectly pure. I 've seen the natives in Ceylon washing earth not richer than this;' and the poor fellow would make this hopeful tidings the reason for treating me to champagne, which in an unlucky moment the doctor said would be good for me, and which Sir Brook declared always disagreed with him. But I don't believe it, Lucy,—I don't believe it! I am certain that he suffered many a privation to give me luxuries that he would n't share. Shall I tell you the breakfast I saw him eating one morning? I had gone to his room to speak to him before he started to the mine, and, opening the door gently, I surprised him at his breakfast,—a piece of brown bread and a cup of coffee without milk was his meal, to support him till he came home at nightfall. I knew if he were aware that I had seen him that it would have given him great distress, so I crept quietly back to my bed, and lay down to think of this once pampered, flattered gentleman, and how grand the nature must be that could hold up uncomplaining and unshaken under such poverty as this. Nor is it that he ignores the past, Lucy, or strives to forget it,—far from that. He is full of memories of bygone events and people, but he talks of his own part in the grand world he once lived in as one might talk of another individual; nor is there the semblance of a regret that all this splendor has passed away never to return. He will be here on Sunday to pay us a visit, Lucy; and though perhaps you 'll find him sadly changed in appearance, you 'll see that his fine nature is the same as ever.”
“And will he persist in this project, Tom, in spite of all failure and in defiance of hope?”
“That's the very point I 'm puzzled about. If he decide to go on, so must I. I 'll not leave him, whatever come of it.”
“No, no, Tom; that I know you will not do.”