They were novi homines, the Brakesperes, though they always claimed to be sprung from ancient Norman blood. Only seventy years ago old Martin Brakespere was a wool-stapler in Uttoxeter; and though highly respected for the wealth he was reported to have amassed, was very much jeered at privately, and with bated breath, for keeping an apocryphal genealogical tree hanging up in his back-shop, and for invariably boasting, after his second glass of grog at the Greyhound, about his lineage. But when, after old Martin had been some score years quietly resting in Uttoxeter churchyard, his son Sir Richard Brakespere, who had been successively solicitor and attorney general, was raised to the peerage, and took his seat on the woolsack as Baron Beauport, Lord High Chancellor of England, the Herald's College, and all the rest of the genealogical authorities, said that the line was thoroughly made out and received the revival of the ancient title with the greatest laudation. A wiry, fox-headed, thin chip of a lawyer, the first Baron Beauport, as knowing as a ferret, and not unlike one in the face. He administered the laws of his country very well, and he lent some of the money he had inherited from his father to the sovereign of his country and the first gentleman in Europe at a very high rate of interest, it is said. Rumour reports that he did not get all his money back again, taking instead thereof an increase in rank, and dying, at an advanced age, as Earl Beauport, succeeded in his title and estates by his only son, Theodore Brakespere, by courtesy Viscount Caterham.
When his father died, Lord Caterham, the second Earl Beauport, was nearly fifty years old, a prim little gentleman who loved music and wore a wig; a dried-up chip of a little man, who lived in a little house in Hans Place with an old servant, a big violoncello, and a special and peculiar breed of pug-dogs. To walk out with the pug-dogs in the morning, to be carefully dressed and tittivated and buckled and curled by the old servant in the afternoon, and either to play the violoncello in a Beethoven or Mozart selection with some other old amateur fogies, or to be present at a performance of chamber-music, or philharmonics, or oratorio-rehearsals in the evening, constituted the sole pleasure of the second Earl Beauport's life. He never married; and at his death, some fifteen years after his father's, the title and, with the exception of a few legacies to musical charities, the estates passed to his cousin George Brakespere, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxon, and then of Little Milman Street, Bedford Row, and the Northern Circuit, briefless barrister.
Just in the very nick of time came the peerage and the estates to George Brakespere, for he was surrounded by duns, and over head and ears in love. With all his hard work at Oxford, and he had worked hard, he had the reputation of being the best bowler at Bullingdon, and the hardest rider after hounds; of having the best old port and the finest cigars (it was before the days of claret and short pipes), and the best old oak furniture, library of books, and before-letter proofs in the University. All these could not be paid for out of an undergraduate's income; and the large remainder of unpaid bills hung round him and plagued him heavily long after he had left Oxford and been called to the bar. It was horribly up-hill work getting a connection among the attorneys; he tried writing for reviews, and succeeded, but earned very little money. And then, on circuit, at an assize-ball, he fell in love with Gertrude Carrington, a haughty county beauty, only daughter of Sir Joshua Carrington, Chairman of Quarter Sessions; and that nearly finished him. Gertrude Carrington was very haughty and very wilful; she admired the clever face and the bold bearing of the young barrister; but in all probability she would have thought no more of him, had not the eminent Sir Joshua, who kept his eyes very sharply about him, marked the flirtation, and immediately expressed his total disapproval of it. That was enough for Gertrude, and she at once went in for George Brakespere, heart and soul. She made no objection to a clandestine correspondence, and responded regularly and warmly to George's passionate letters. She gave him two or three secret meetings under an old oak in a secluded part of her father's park,--Homershams was a five-hours' journey from town,--and these assignations always involved George's sleeping at an inn, and put him to large expense; and when she came up to stay with her cousins in town, she let him know all the parties to which they were going, and rendered him a mendicant for invitations. When the change of fortune came, and George succeeded to the title, Sir Joshua succumbed at once, and became anxious for the match. Had George inherited money only, it is probable that from sheer wilfulness Gertrude would have thrown him over; but the notion of being a countess, of taking precedence and pas of all the neighbouring gentry, had its influence, and they were married. Two sons were born to them,--Viscount Caterham and the Hon. Lionel Brakespere,--and a daughter, who only survived her birth a few weeks. As Earl Beauport, George Brakespere retained the energy and activity of mind and body, the love of exercise and field-sports, the clear brain and singleness of purpose, which had distinguished him as a commoner: but there was a skeleton in his house, whose bony fingers touched his heart in his gayest moments, numbed his energies, and warped his usefulness; whose dread presence he could not escape from, whose chilling influence nor wine, nor work, nor medicine, nor gaiety, could palliate. It was ever present in a tangible shape; he knew his weakness and wickedness in permitting it to conquer him,--he strove against it, but vainly; and in the dead watches of the night often he lay broad awake railing against the fate which had mingled so bitter an ingredient in his cup of happiness.
The door swung open and the Countess entered, a woman nearly fifty now, but not looking her age by at least eight years. A tall handsome woman, with the charms of her former beauty mellowed but not impaired; the face was more full, but the firm chiselling of the nose and lips, the brightness of the eyes, the luxurious dark gloss of the hair, were there still. As she entered, her husband advanced to meet her; and as he touched her forehead with his lips, she laid her hand on his, and asked "What news?"
He shook his head sadly, and said, "The worst."
"The worst!" she repeated, faintly; "he's not dead? Beauport, you--you would not say it in that way--he's not dead?"
"I wish to God he were!" said Lord Beauport through his teeth. "I wish it had pleased God to take him years and years ago! No! he's not dead." Then throwing himself into a chair, and staring vacantly at the fire, he repeated, "I wish to God he were!"
"Anything but that!" said the Countess, with a sense of immense relief; "anything but that! whatever he has done may be atoned for, and repented, and--But what has he done? where is he? have you seen Mr. Farquhar?"
"I have--and I know all. Gertrude, Lionel is a scoundrel and a criminal--no, don't interrupt me! I myself have prosecuted and transported men for less crimes than he has committed; years ago he would have been hanged. He is a forger!"
"A forger!"