“I own I do not expect to see him to-morrow. Kelson will certainly advise him against such a step, nor do I yet perceive what immediate good would result from our meeting, beyond the assuring him—as I certainly should—that all that had occurred was pure chance, and that, though perfectly familiar with his name and his pretensions, I had not the vaguest suspicion of his identity till I read his card. It may be that out of this strange blunder good may come. Let us hope it. I will write to-morrow.
“Truly yours,
“M. Sedley.”
Colonel Bramleigh re-read every line of the letter carefully; and as he laid it down with a sigh, he said, “What a complication of troubles on my hands! At the very moment that I am making engagements to relieve others, I may not have the means to meet my own difficulties. Sedley was quite wrong to make any advances to this man; they are sure to be misinterpreted. Kelson will think we are afraid, and raise his terms with us accordingly.” Again his eyes fell upon Lady Augusta's letter; but he had no temper now to encounter all the light gossip and frivolity it was sure to contain. He placed it in his pocket, and set out to take a walk. He wanted to think, but he also wanted the spring and energy which come of brisk exercise. He felt his mind would work more freely when he was in motion; and in the open air, too, he should escape from the terrible oppression of being continually confronted by himself—which he felt while he was in the solitude of his study.
“If M. Pracontal measure us by the standard of Master Jack,” muttered he, bitterly, “he will opine that the conflict ought not to be a tough one. What fools these sailors are when you take them off their own element; and what a little bit of a world is the quarter-deck of a frigate! Providence has not blessed me with brilliant sons; that is certain. It was through Temple we have come to know Lord Culduff; and I protest I anticipate little of either profit or pleasure from the acquaintanceship. As for Augustus, he is only so much shrewder than the others, that he is more cautious; his selfishness is immensely preservative.” This was not, it must be owned, a flattering estimate that he made of his sons; but he was a man to tell hard truths to himself; and to tell them roughly and roundly too, like one who, when he had to meet a difficulty in life, would rather confront it in its boldest shape.
So essentially realistic was the man's mind, that, till he had actually under his eyes these few lines describing Pracontal's look and manner, he had never been able to convince himself that this pretender was an actual bona fide creature. Up to this, the claim had been a vague menace, and no more, a tradition that ended in a threat! There was the whole of it! Kelson had written to Sedley, and Sedley to Kelson. There had been a half-amicable contest, a sort of round with the gloves, in which these two crafty men appeared rather like great moralists than cunning lawyers. Had they been peacemakers by Act of Parliament, they could not have urged more strenuously the advantages of amity and kindliness; how severely they censured the contentious spirit which drove men into litigation! and how beautifully they showed the Christian benefit of an arbitration “under the court,” the costs to be equitably divided!
Throughout the whole drama, however, M. Pracontal had never figured as an active character of the piece; and for all that Bramleigh could see, the machinery might work to the end, and the catastrophe be announced, not only without ever producing him, but actually without his having ever existed. If from time to time he might chance to read in the public papers of a suspicious foreigner, a “Frenchman or Italian of fashionable appearance,” having done this, that, or t'other, he would ask himself at once, “I wonder could that be my man? Is that the adventurer who wants to replace me here?” As time, however, rolled on, and nothing came out of this claim more palpable than a dropping letter from Sedley, to say he had submitted such a point to counsel, or he thought that the enemy seemed disposed to come to terms, Bramleigh actually began to regard the whole subject as a man might the danger of a storm, which, breaking afar off, might probably waste all its fury before it reached him.
Now, however, these feelings of vague, undefined doubt were to give way to a very palpable terror. His own son had seen Pracontal, and sat at table with him. Pracontal was a good-looking, well-mannered fellow, with, doubtless, all the readiness and the aplomb of a clever foreigner; not a creature of mean appearance and poverty-struck aspect, whose very person would disparage his pretensions, but a man with the bearing of the world and the habits of society.
So sudden and so complete was this revulsion, and so positively did it depict before him an actual conflict, that he could only think of how to deal with Pracontal personally, by what steps it might be safest to approach him, and how to treat a man whose changeful fortunes must doubtless have made him expert in difficulties, and at the same time a not unlikely dupe to well-devised and well-applied flatteries.
To have invited him frankly to Castello—to have assumed that it was a case in which a generous spirit might deal far more successfully than all the cavils and cranks of the law, was Bramleigh's first thought; but to do this with effect, he must confide the whole story of the peril to some at least of the family; and this, for many reasons, he could not stoop to. Bramleigh certainly attached no actual weight to this man's claim; he did not in his heart believe that there was any foundation for his pretension; but Sedley had told him that there was case enough to go to a jury, and a jury meant exposure, publicity, comment, and very unpleasant comment too, when party hatred should contribute its venom to the discussion. If, then, he shrunk from imparting this story to his sons and daughters, how long could he count on secrecy?—only till next assizes perhaps. At the first notice of trial the whole mischief would be out, and the matter be a world-wide scandal. Sedley advised a compromise, but the time was very unpropitious for this. It was downright impossible to get money at the moment. Every one was bent on “realizing,” in presence of all the crashes and bankruptcies around. None would lend on the best securities, and men were selling out at ruinous loss to meet pressing engagements. For the very first time in his life, Bramleigh felt what it was to want for ready money. He had every imaginable kind of wealth. Houses and lands, stocks, shares, ships, costly deposits and mortgages,—everything in short but gold; and yet it was gold alone could meet the emergency. How foolish it was of him to involve himself in Lord Culduflf's difficulties at such a crisis; had he not troubles enough of his own? Would that essenced and enamelled old dandy have stained his boots to have served him? That was a very unpleasant query, which would cross his mind, and never obtain anything like a satisfactory reply. Would not his calculation probably be that Bramleigh was amply recompensed for all he could do by the honor of being deemed the friend of a noble lord, so highly placed, and so much thought of in the world?